6

Frances, hold this over your left eye and see if you can read the letters in the last line.”

“T-Z-C-O-F.”

“Good. Cover your right eye and try this set.”

“B at the beginning. P, I think, at the end. The middle is a mystery.”

She turned on the lights and sat at her desk, the same desk I’d sat in front of a few times a year for almost ten years. She was a good doctor, the best GP I’d ever had. Smart, thorough, and not overly chatty, which suited me fine.

“Well,” she said, “there’s a deficit in your left eye, which is likely related to the larger problem. Any more seizures?”

“No, just the headaches.”

“You’re taking your pills?”

I nodded.

“I spoke with Dr. Bell. She’s lovely, isn’t she?”

“She is.”

“So still a no-go on the surgery?”

“I want to move ahead with what we talked about.”

She gave me a sad smile. “Frances, I want you to ask me one more time, just so we’re absolutely clear on what you need from me.”

I didn’t need her, really. A fistful of painkillers and a bottle of whisky might well do the trick, but nothing was sure with that way of doing things, and the endgame was only part of what I was after. When I was a young woman, the law said I had no choice when it came to my own body. But now that I was older, the law was suddenly on my side. I would have my say. Death would come for me, as it had come for my father and my mother, but it would come for me on my terms. Dominion.

I stiffened my spine, then drew in a long breath and let it flow slowly out, just taking in the moment. “Dr. Langley, I would like a medically assisted death.”

She opened a drawer in a filing cabinet and started pulling out papers. Perhaps she’d done this very thing for someone yesterday, and the day before. Maybe it was routine medical business these days. I’d seen the protests on television, the rants from those who deemed it murderous. They quoted scripture and stoked fears of doctors indiscriminately killing off old folks and disabled children. And I heard the cries from those who were in favour, the ones who wanted mercy for their loved ones and themselves. “Our dogs and cats have a better shot at ending their lives peacefully than cancer patients do,” a tearful woman said on the news after nursing her mother through needless agony. Then two years ago, almost to the day, the politicians and the judges yielded to the will of the people—people like me, as it turned out.

Dr. Langley handed me the papers. “You’ll need to make a formal request in writing, and you need an independent witness. Take some time to really think this over. You can always change your mind.”

I took my papers and stepped out into the fresh June morning. I walked the six blocks home and found Edie parked in front of my house in her shiny new car, a jolly compact model the colour of a robin’s egg. It looked good on her. I hadn’t talked to her since leaving the house for the last time three days before. I’d meant to send her an email, then this business with my eye came up and I lost track of time. As soon as she spotted me, she waved through the window and tooted the horn. She hopped out of the car and spread her arms wide.

“Pretty snazzy, right? I was just about to leave. I came to see if you wanted to have lunch with me, celebrate the new wheels.”

“I can make you some lunch if you like.” I wondered if there was anything in my fridge fit to serve her.

“Frances, live a little. My treat. Anywhere you like.”

I hadn’t eaten in a restaurant since the grotty diners of my youth. “All right. But you choose the place.”

WE SAT AT A table with a large piece of brown paper covering the white tablecloth, a fine idea, I thought. Heavy cutlery, fresh flowers on the table, servers who wore black aprons tied at their waists and moved quickly and precisely through the dining room like bees in a hive. Edie was at ease there. She belonged. She ordered a pasta dish—handmade ravioli filled with roasted chicken, wild mushrooms, and Cambozola (a kind of cheese, she assured me) in a sherry cream sauce—as did I, too confused by the menu to decide for myself.

My food was placed gently in front of me, an enormous white plate and in the centre a neat pile of yellow squares with scalloped edges covered in a cream sauce and sprinkled with little bits of green. It looked like a painting. I pressed the tines of my fork into the soft centre of the top square, sliced it in half with my knife, and raised it so I could see what was inside. I dipped it in the sauce and placed it in my mouth. It tasted of earth and milk, wine and woodsmoke.

“Oh my God, this is so good, right?” Edie said.

I couldn’t speak and fought against weeping. I ate a second piece, even better than the first. As Edie talked, her words became muffled and distant, and the hubbub of the restaurant fell away. All I heard was the clack of my silverware, the sound of my teeth working. All I felt was the texture of the moist chicken and silky cream. There was nothing but that beautiful food. When the last bite was gone, I swiped a crusty piece of bread across the plate to sop up the sauce and suddenly the room roared to life.

When Edie stepped away to pay the bill, I grew cold, deep to the bone. The skin on my face tingled, and when I tried to stand, my legs buckled. I went down. I felt my head bang hard against the floor, and I saw Edie’s frightened face above me shouting my name. Then blackness.

I came around in the emergency department with no memory of how I’d got there. My head throbbed and my mouth tasted of iron. I tried to roll on my side, but my muscles were locked, stiff as stone and burning with pain. Edie’s voice was somewhere under the ringing in my ears.

“Frances. Frances.”

I looked to my right and there she was, leaning on the bedrail, red-faced and tearful. I strained to put together what was happening. A young male doctor dressed in blue scrubs appeared at the other side of the bed.

“Mrs. Delaney, I’m Dr. Virani. I’m on call for neurosurgery today. How are you feeling?”

“Thirsty. Edie, could you . . .”

Edie slipped outside the curtain.

“You had a seizure at a restaurant today. Do you remember?”

“Not really.”

“Your granddaughter called the ambulance and they brought you here. I’ve looked at your file. Have you been taking your medication?”

I nodded.

“The CT today shows significant growth of the tumour since your last scan. I know you’ve refused treatment for the glio, but your seizure meds need to be increased. Okay?” He examined me, then he sat on the end of the bed. “Mrs. Delaney—”

“Not missus. Just Frances.”

“Frances. I highly recommend you reconsider the surgery.”

“No, thank you.”

“There’s nothing I can say to change your mind?”

“No, thank you.”

He shook his head, handed me a prescription, and left. Edie came back holding a bottle of water and a small plastic cup. She poured a little and offered it to me.

“Do you need me to hold it for you?” she asked.

I reached for the cup and took a small sip. Then another.

“I told them I was your granddaughter,” she said. “They weren’t going to let me come in, so I improvised. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. Other than you think I look old enough to be your granny.”

Edie stood by the side of the bed, her arms hung by her sides, nibbling her lower lip as she often did when she was nervous.

“You can go home now. I’ll be fine.”

“No way. I’m not leaving you in this dump.” She tried to smile, but her lips were wobbling and trembling too much. “I don’t know what to do.”

She looked more distressed than I’d ever seen her, and I realized that she knew about the tumour.

“I’ll tell you what to do—go find me a nurse. I want to get out of here.”

She drove me home, helped me up the stairs, and sat on my bed as I fell asleep. When I woke up, she was lying next to me, reading a book.

“What are you still doing here? What time is it?”

“Almost seven thirty.”

“Have you called your mother?”

“I told her I was at Colin’s.”

“I need a hot bath and you need to go home. Help me up.” I hobbled behind her while she gathered up her things. “Listen, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about today.”

“You don’t need to be sorry.” She walked toward the door, then looked over her shoulder at me. “Frances, what’s going to happen to you?”

“I’m going to die like everyone else on the planet.”

“When?”

“I don’t know, my love. A few months from now, I’d say. Possibly sooner. I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” she said and closed the door.

After a long soak in the bath, I lay my stiff and aching body on my bed and watched the twilight through my window, sick and sad about the way this day had turned out. I’d planned on telling her gently, with care. What a mess.

The sky grew dark, and the moon rose, bright and full. I felt the sudden crush of time bearing down on me and closing in fast. I’d yet to find my independent witness for the assisted death request, and it could wait no longer. I got up and found an old phone book, squinted at the page, and there it was, a name and number I thought would take me ages to find. I dialled and was amazed by how unchanged her voice was.

“Dear God. Frances Delaney,” she said. “After all this time.”

THE NEXT MORNING, MY phone rang just as the bus pulled away from the curb. Edie, checking in and asking to come see me. “Tomorrow,” I said. “I have something to do today.” I checked for the third time that I had indeed taken my seizure pills. The fear of falling in a heap on the filthy floor of the bus was so strong I could barely breathe.

Half an hour later, I was within walking distance of the address Sister Barb had given me on the phone the night before.

I rang the bell and smoothed my hair. Then she was in front of me, an old woman but instantly recognizable. That same wide smile that took over her whole face, that same clipped haircut now like a silver cap on her head.

“Hello, Frances.”

“Hello, Sister Barb.”

She led me to her kitchen, a long tidy space with knotty pine cabinets and a well-used harvest table set in the middle. I sat quietly while she made a pot of tea and laid out a plate of sticky raisin buns.

“No one has called me Sister Barb in a long time,” she said as she poured. “Milk?”

“Yes, please.”

She still wore a small gold cross around her neck, this one dangling from a thin gold chain. She noticed me eyeing it as she spread a large pat of butter on a bun.

“I left the nuns, not God.”

“When did you leave?”

“A few years after you left the home.”

We sat and sipped tea together, as we had many times before in the kitchen at the home, and a wave of nostalgia swept over me. Being with her was surprisingly pleasant, almost easy, not at all tainted by the ghosts of grief and resentment as I had expected it would be. She asked me if I still carried around that old dictionary.

“Every time I hear the word choreography, I think of you,” she said. “I can see you now, circling it and saying it out loud a few times after you heard it on the radio. I always thought it such a charming habit.”

“Why did you leave the nuns?”

She blew out a long breath. “Oh, lots of reasons, I guess. Mostly because I found that I worked better without the restrictions of holy life.”

I smiled. “Lots of things work better without the restrictions of holy life.”

“So tell me about yourself. Did you marry or have any more children?”

“I did not. You?”

“No. I did a lot of travelling. Spent ten years with a children’s charity in Vietnam. Then another ten in an orphanage in China. Now I’m happy to be a homebody. What did you end up doing workwise? I remember you saying you wanted to be a teacher.”

“I was a housekeeper. Just retired, actually.”

If she was disappointed, she hid it well.

“Have you been happy, Frances?”

“Here and there. You?”

“Here and there,” she said and sighed. She pushed the plate with her half-eaten bun on it aside and swallowed some tea. “You know, we weren’t allowed to have any involvement with the girls once they’d gone. But after you left us, I was concerned about how you were coping with your mother’s death, and I called your priest. I remember using the pay phone in town so Sister Bernadette wouldn’t find out. He told me you were well cared for, and I was so relieved. Then after I left the Church, I decided to get in touch with you and see how you were getting on, but I couldn’t find you. Not a trace of you anywhere. I gave up when I realized that maybe you didn’t want to be found.”

Her expression darkened a little, like a cloud passing across her face.

“It’s odd because I’ve thought a lot about you over the years, but then when you called, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to see you or not.”

The air had somehow shifted in the room, and I felt my nerves start to rev up. I reached for a bun and took a bite. My throat had gone dry, and the bun caught going down. I took a swig of tea to help it along.

“You know what?” she said. “I really believed I could make a difference. Change the system from the inside. I believed I was doing good work, helping you girls get through, placing those babies in deserving homes—that was the phrase of the time. Deserving homes. But now, when I think back on it, I feel ashamed of it.” She paused and shook her head. “I didn’t even ask if it was what you wanted.”

“Nobody asked me what I wanted.”

“I know, I know. My God, I was so naive. I wanted to become the new guard, oust all the Bernadettes. And believe me, I tried.” She looked away, toward the open window. When she turned back, she reached for my hand. “Do you think you can forgive me?”

Look at you, asking me for absolution. And look at me, about to ask you to bear witness and secure my smooth passage to the grave. Two young women who’d been trapped by time, now two old women within spitting distance of death with not much to show for it but heartbreak and regret. I felt a powerful urge to embrace her, to say something that would make her see that we had been in it together all along. Don’t you see, Sister? We were duped, you and me. Fooled by the guilt-mongers and the shame-brokers into believing that there was no other way. Bamboozled.

“Barb, I remember your kindness,” I said. “I remember it very well.” I gave her hand a couple of soft pats.

“And I remember your strength.” She topped up our tea. “Now, tell me why you’ve come to see me.”

I reached into my bag and pulled out my assisted death application. “I need your help with something.”

She raised her hands. “Frances, I can’t help you find your daughter. You’ll need to go to child services and—”

“All I need is your signature.” I slid the paper across the table.

She started looking around the room, and I pointed to her head, where her reading glasses were perched.

She read what I’d written, then looked up at me. “How old are you? Late fifties?”

I nodded. “Fifty-eight.”

She laid her glasses on the table and rubbed her eyes. “Too young for this. I’m so very sorry. More than I can say. You’ve had a hard go in this life, haven’t you?”

I shrugged. “Harder than some, easier than many.”

“Are you in a lot of pain?”

“I’m managing. I just don’t want any more than I can bear.”

“Do you know when it will happen?”

“I’m not sure yet. I still have a few things to work out.”

She tapped the paper with her index finger. “And this is what you want? What you really want for yourself?”

I nodded. “Thank you for asking.”

She got up, rifled through a drawer, and came back with a thick black fountain pen.

I pulled the paper across the table and signed my name with her beautiful pen, then passed the pen and paper to her. She hesitated for a moment, then signed her name.

“And what will your God have to say about your part in this?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, smiling. “I guess I’ll ask when I see him.”

We sat quietly for a minute or two, then chatted about her travels and her young nieces and a little about Edie, and when she opened the door for me to leave, she asked me why I had chosen her to be my witness.

“You said to call if I ever needed anything,” I said. “And I figured maybe you owed me one.”

She laid her hand on my forearm. “Frances, may I pray for you?”

I leaned in and kissed her cheek. “I’m hedging my bets these days. I’ll take anything you got.”

I thought about her on the bus ride home. I wondered if late at night she saw the faces of all the girls she’d known, the faces of all the infants offered up, the ones passed over willingly by sad, silent girls like me and the ones torn from girls who screeched and carried on and begged to keep them.

Go to child services, she said. As if I hadn’t been there more times than I could count. The first day I walked into the rundown low-rise building, all hepped up on indignation and rage, I couldn’t have been more than twenty-one, skinny, broke, almost mad with loneliness. I hadn’t given a single thought to what I would have done had they handed me my child. All I knew was that I wanted what was mine. But before I uttered a word to anyone, I panicked and ran out.

A week later, I went back, and again the next week and the week after that, never finding the nerve to speak. I let a few weeks pass, then went back again. I was loitering in the hallway when a woman walked up to me, introduced herself as Judy, a social worker, then led me to her office. She made me coffee, then I sat while she wrote notes and filed papers and occasionally looked at me and smiled. Twenty minutes passed before I left, having not said a word. Six months later, I wandered in again and asked the receptionist if I could see someone named Judy, but by then she was off having a baby of her own. After another six months went by, I went back and found Judy at her desk. She looked at me and said, “How can I help you if you won’t speak?”

“I just want to know if Georgina is all right,” I said and burst into tears.

Judy took down all the details of the birth, then left me in her office. Twenty minutes later, she came back with a file. She told me a married couple had adopted my daughter, two professors at the university. They’d left a note on the file for me in case I came sniffing around someday. Judy said they were “open to their daughter exploring her heritage,” whatever that meant, but they asked that I wait until she was at least twelve, the age they believed she’d be able to cope with my surfacing.

The whole time Judy talked, I cried. Looking back on it, I see now that I was likely depressed, but at least I was with it enough to know that my child was best left there in that room, safely tucked away in a beige file folder. I thanked Judy and went home to my freezing room in a boarding house at the bottom of Cochrane Street.

After that day, I’d think I saw my daughter every so often in a crowd. Or I’d wake in the night, sweaty and gasping for air, having dreamt she’d drowned or been abducted or contracted a deadly disease. I’d had a few jobs in houses with small children, and I spent far too much time cleaning their cribs and high chairs and wiping down all the toys and doodads required to keep a toddler entertained. Eventually, I started turning down jobs in houses with children, and professors.

By the time Georgina’s twelfth birthday rolled around, I was a healthier person, but not a richer one, and not a more educated one. And every time I thought it might be the right moment to reach out, I imagined her greeting me in a well-appointed living room, with her wealthy, intellectual parents by her side while her “heritage” sat facing them—a penniless cleaning woman with bad nerves. I believed I had nothing to offer her, and also that she would twig that within five minutes in my company. I feared that she’d be disappointed at best, ashamed at worst, and that either way she’d be somehow harmed by me. I decided to let her be, and instead I wondered about her constantly. If her hair was gingery like mine and my mother’s. If she liked books and did well at school. If she had a friend who loved her. If, if, if.

By now, my daughter had had forty-three birthdays. And I had had forty-three years of wondering and waiting for the right time to present myself to her. But now the window had closed. I knew there was a solid argument to be made for revealing myself, but there was an equally solid one against it. If she wanted no part of a relationship with me, then I’d carry that until my last breath. And one day she might suffer the guilt of rejecting a dying woman. If she wanted to know me, then she’d have found me only to have me snatched away. Either way, it was a burden she didn’t deserve. Still, I wanted nothing more than to be known as her mother, just for a few minutes. Just long enough for her to tell me that it had all worked out for the best. I’d feel righteous, the wise and sacrificing mother. But I couldn’t bring myself to risk hearing that it hadn’t worked out, that the woman who’d raised her was vindictive and cruel, that her father had beaten her or worse. That I’d made a mistake of epic proportions and she’d spent her whole life blaming and hating me for what I had and hadn’t done.

Barb had asked me for forgiveness. She’d looked so earnest—she’d so badly wanted me to grant it. I wasn’t sure I had. I too wanted to be pardoned, to sit and have tea with my daughter in a cozy kitchen, to reach for her hand and beg forgiveness for not fighting to keep her.

I got off the bus near Dr. Langley’s office, dropped off my witnessed paperwork, and then began walking toward home. I stopped at a restaurant that looked like somewhere Edie might eat. I sat at a table on a wooden patio set up to face the street and ordered a glass of champagne. The waiter recited the specials and I told him to bring me the one he thought was the best, a seafood soup followed by a seared breast of duck. I ate and drank and smoked a cigarette in the late afternoon sunshine as if my life were just beginning.