For most of Thomas’s seventy-two years, he had been largely of the belief that life was simply a series of random events strung together by the thread of time. Coincidence happened, certainly. And miracles, they popped up and dazzled people out of their trousers on occasion, too. Hadn’t he, after all, had his share of miraculous occasions? But he couldn’t deny that there were also times – too many times, now – that life had tapped on his shoulder and whispered, Surely you can’t believe this isn’t all orchestrated by something greater, old friend?
Like now, on this rainy Monday afternoon in May in 2009, as Thomas sat watching the news on the TV and he experienced that strange, unworldly tap on his shoulder. There was too much alignment in it. For instance, he had only retired, finally, from the store last week, so he happened to be home on a weekday and watching the afternoon news broadcast. And instead of being at her book club, when Thomas would usually watch the evening news, Aida was at home, coming out of the bathroom with her hair all wet while Elsie set his cup of tea in front of him as he watched the television.
Elsie clicked her tongue at the image that appeared on the screen. ‘Such a terrible thing.’
Aida rubbed at her hair with a towel and said, ‘What’s terrible?’
On the screen was a black and white photograph of a newborn baby. The baby was crying, its eyes screwed shut and its gummy mouth opened wide. In place of arms and legs the baby had four short stumps, hints of hands and feet curling inwards.
Thomas picked up his tea. ‘Some scientists have discovered something new about that drug they used to give pregnant women, the one that caused all those birth defects back in the fifties and sixties.’
‘Thalidomide,’ Elsie said. ‘Appalling what happened. And so many of them.’
Another still image came onto the screen: a girl child in a pretty dress, lifting a toy up with her feet. A voiceover commentary droned about recent research, the blood vessels and limbs of developing foetuses, class actions and lawsuits.
‘That was always unknown, wasn’t it?’ Elsie said, sitting on the couch alongside him. ‘Why it didn’t seem to affect babies whose mothers had taken it later in pregnancy. What are they saying, love? It inhibits the blood-vessel formation?’
Thomas was about to point out that she was watching the same newscast as him, therefore knew as much as he did, and he turned to Aida to bring her in on the joke but the words turned to powder in his mouth.
Aida’s face was white. She was staring at the television, a trembling hand halfway to her mouth.
‘Are you okay, love?’
Aida blinked a few times, but her eyes didn’t leave the television. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
Dismayed, Elsie set down her cup. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’ve never seen these pictures before.’
More photographs flashed into the frame. Children seated on the edge of a pool, splashing long legs in the water, all with small stumps in place of arms; a young boy bent over a school book, pencil gripped in a hand at his elbow.
Aida was rambling, ‘I mean – I knew about it, I’d heard, but I’ve never seen these photos, those children –’
Thomas anxiously lifted the remote and the screen went blank.
‘No!’ Aida cried.
‘It’s upsetting you,’ he said, confused.
‘I need to see it. Turn it back on.’
He complied. When the television lit up, an advertisement for home air-conditioning blazed across the screen. Aida’s shoulders slumped and she suddenly looked every minute of her sixty-seven years.
Thomas shot a questioning look at Elsie, but Elsie’s gaze was fixed on Aida, watching her take a shaky breath, walk to the armchair and sit herself on the edge of the seat. Training her eyes on the carpet, Aida appeared to try and compose herself.
After what felt like a long time, she said, ‘I took that drug –’ she waved in the direction of the TV ‘– back when I was . . . I didn’t know it was harmful. I guess nobody did then. I only took it a couple of times, for the sickness, but I also took one in the very early days. Dad had a prescription, he took them to help him sleep, and Mum gave me one on the day that she found out I was pregnant. I was pretty distraught, and she thought it would calm me, I suppose.’
Thomas felt his insides curdle.
Elsie said, ‘Oh, love, I’m sure nothing would have happened –’
Aida cut her off. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you. After she was born, I saw her.’
‘You did tell us that,’ Elsie said, carefully. ‘You went into the nursery. But the matron caught you and made you leave.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t tell you that I picked her up and held her. That I looked at her.’
Elsie glanced at Thomas, and he felt a responsibility to do something in the weight of that glance. Problem was, he felt like he was sinking and there was bugger all he could do about it.
Aida wouldn’t look at them. ‘She wasn’t in the nursery with the other babies. I . . .’ Her head drooped even further. ‘I lied to you about that. She was hidden away, in a different room. I didn’t know she was a girl at this stage, of course. After the birth they never told me. No matter how much I begged, they wouldn’t tell me anything.’ She paused, absently massaging her right hand, the memory of the old injury. ‘It was an office or something, where I found her.’
In a voice faraway, Aida recounted it all. How she had followed the sound of the infant’s cries and found the baby not in the nursery, but tucked away in a small office. How she had seen the card stamped baby for adoption. This, Thomas had heard before. Only on rare occasions over the years had Aida spoken of her story and neither Thomas nor Elsie had ever wanted to press her any further than what she was willing to say. Why draw open her wounds? Now, Thomas listened as she described picking up the baby, and how it had stopped crying instantly in her arms. As she spoke Aida made miming movements with her hands.
‘I held her for a while, feeling the weight of her in my arms. It felt so right, you know?’ She looked to Elsie, who nodded sadly with understanding. ‘Then I put her down on a desk, I think . . .’ she frowned, recalling. ‘The face was so beautiful, so perfect. I wanted to know the sex, so I unwrapped the swaddle, legs first. Two fine legs, kicking away. And I looked in the nappy and saw she was a girl.’ Briefly she smiled, before her face drained of colour again. ‘Then I unwrapped the top half of her.’
Thomas heard it before Aida said it.
‘One of her arms was shortened, it ended at the elbow. She had this tiny little hand, tucked back on itself. It was beautiful. Her other arm –’ she drew in a quavering breath. ‘It was missing altogether.’
She looked up at them, chin quivering in anger. ‘My parents lied to me. They never intended to keep my baby – they only let me believe that to keep me quiet. But in the end they used her body as leverage. They said there was no way they could keep a baby . . .’ she put her hands over her face. ‘A baby like that.’
As he watched Elsie put her arms around Aida, Thomas realised: there it was. The intersection, the point where everything lined up with too much precision to be random. Where coincidence seemed too ridiculously, impossibly coincidental.