Winnipeg, Manitoba, September 15, 1969
Felicity was splitting in two, a slow, torturous tearing. She lay on the couch groaning and clutching her stomach. Aunt Rose knelt beside her, rubbing her back. She had moved in with Aunt Rose when she came home, not wanting to see Mom’s anguished face everywhere she turned. Aunt Rose had called Mom when Felicity’s labour started.
“I’m trying to figure out how often the contractions are coming,” Aunt Rose said to Mom, “but she’s so agitated I can’t tell when one starts and the other one stops. We’re starting to calm down though, aren’t we, flower?”
“Aunt Rose, it hurts, it hurts. I hate it,” Felicity wailed.
“I know, flower. It will be over soon, and then you’ll have your beautiful baby.”
She didn’t want the baby. She wanted to get it out of her and move on with her life.
“It may be a bit soon, but we’d better get to the hospital just in case,” Aunt Rose suggested.
Mom said, “Felicity, get up and brush your hair and put on something reasonable.”
“I can’t, Mom.”
“Rose, help her. There are still standards around here. I’ll get the hospital bag.”
At the hospital, a nurse took Felicity behind a curtain for an examination. “I don’t want anyone to touch me,” she said. Pain curled through every part of her, throbbing even behind her toenails.
“It’s too bad you didn’t feel that way nine months ago,” said Mom. Felicity reared up from the stretcher, palm open to slap her, but Aunt Rose laid her back down and formed a barrier between her and Mom.
“We’ll give you something soon,” said the nurse. “Takes all the pain away and you won’t feel a thing.”
“No!” said Aunt Rose. “Don’t give her anything! Those drugs are awful!”
The nurse flapped her hand at Aunt Rose. “And how would you know? You couldn’t have received an epidural. They’re new.”
“I got knocked out when I had my baby,” Aunt Rose said. “I couldn’t remember anything. I woke up tied to a board, all scratched and bruised.”
“That was twilight sleep. This is different. She’ll be awake the whole time.”
It was true. When the needle went in, there was an agonizing moment of coldness, but then Felicity really couldn’t feel a thing. Not being able to feel a thing physically helped her mind to go numb as well. Not being able to feel a thing also meant that she couldn’t feel how to push the baby out, and so the doctor pulled it out with forceps. Then there was a bustle of testing and bathing and wrapping the baby while Mom and Aunt Rose sat exhausted in the hard orange plastic chairs.
A nurse approached with a swaddled bundle, the edges of the blanket hanging down beneath her elbows, and Mom asked, “Is it a boy or a girl?”
A sudden hope beamed its rays into Felicity’s heart. Maybe the doctor had been wrong. What if the baby was Claude’s after all?
“A girl!” the nurse said, peeling away the blanket from the baby’s face, and Felicity stared down at the blue eyes, chiselled nose, and rounded chin of Brian.
Once she was sewn up, Felicity fell asleep. An hour later, a nurse woke her. “How are your breasts feeling?” she asked.
Felicity touched them and winced. “They’re sore.”
“Your milk is going to start coming in. But you aren’t planning to breastfeed, are you? They make some very good formulas now.”
Felicity looked at Mom and Aunt Rose who were still seated at her bedside. “Feed it from my breasts? No way.”
“It might be nice to try,” said Aunt Rose.
Felicity recoiled. “Ugh! No!”
Later that day, Jack and Josiah arrived, bearing a large bouquet of flowers. Felicity couldn’t say much to them in front of Mom. When they left, taking Aunt Rose with them, Mom said to Felicity, “What are you calling the baby?” Felicity was surprised at how calm Mom was. How the disapproving fire of her glare had cooled at the first sight of the infant.
Felicity said, “I thought of Mara.” Wait! she thought. She wasn’t keeping the baby. She wanted to get back to normal life.
“That’s a pretty name,” Mom said. “It’s Biblical. I dreaded you picking some of the silly hippy names that are so popular these days. Children named River and Rain and things like that. Why Mara?”
“Robert Schumann. He’s a composer who was married to Clara. He really loved her, and they were both talented musicians. And it’s also the name of a character in Porgy and Bess that I learned in case I ever have the chance to audition. But Clara’s a little bit old-fashioned, so I thought I’d change it to Mara. I’d like my baby to have that kind of love and that kind of talent in her life. Since I don’t.”
Mom pounced. “Well, why don’t you? Why don’t you call the baby’s father?” She hesitated. “It’s Brian, isn’t it?”
“I can’t, Mom. Just understand, I can’t.”
Aunt Rose came back the next day, and as Felicity snoozed, she heard Mom ask her, “Should I call Brian?”
“Oh, honey,” said Aunt Rose. “Not if Felicity doesn’t want that.”
“But why doesn’t she?”
“Maybe the way it happened with Brian wasn’t nice.”
“No!” Mom said. “Brian wouldn’t.”
Felicity screamed soundlessly into her pillow. She wondered what Mom would say if she knew that she and Felicity were now linked not just by blood, but by forced motherhood.
Felicity and Mara went home to Mom’s house. She had last slept in her childhood bedroom when she came home to sing Messiah. Then, professional triumph in what she knew had been a spectacular performance had mingled with the loathing that followed her night with Brian, and her fears for her relationship with Claude, which had now come true. She curled under the blankets and got up only to use the bathroom, or to scrounge for food. Food was her only comfort, but eating the way she did meant that her stomach remained swollen, lifting the blankets in a mound as if she were still pregnant. All the more reason not to show the world how disgusting she was.
Mom got a Moses basket for Mara and placed it beside Felicity’s bed, but Felicity ignored Mara’s cries. It was Mom who came into Felicity’s room at night to give Mara her bottles. Jack came by as often as he could to help. When Mom realized that no amount of nagging or yelling would get Felicity out of bed, she started coming home from work at lunch to feed and change Mara. Felicity covered her head with blankets when Mara cried and, soon enough, Mara stopped bothering. She lay on her back staring at the ceiling until her grandmother or Jack showed up.
After a month of this, the phone rang while Felicity was making a snack. She answered without thinking. It was Lindsay. “We haven’t spoken since you left the Royal Opera,” he said. “It was very difficult to track you down, Felicity. Sir Thomas spoke to Philip Cook, and he remembered you’d studied with an Eileen Fisher, and he contacted her and she gave him your mother’s telephone number.”
Felicity felt a rush of embarrassment. “I wasn’t planning to leave, Lindsay. But the truth is —” She tried to decide what to share.
“You were pregnant.”
“You knew?”
“Of course I knew. I knew for months,” he said. He laughed. “It was rather obvious, Felicity. But don’t worry, I’ve kept that piece of knowledge to myself.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t feel it was my place. Anyway, the reason I’m ringing you has to do with The Tender Land.” Every muscle, every nerve, every drop of blood in Felicity’s body began to sing out loud.
“Sir Thomas was extremely impressed with your work on Laurie. And he’s had an inquiry from the Vancouver Opera Association. It’s in Canada. Where Joan Sutherland made her North American debut. Is that anywhere near you?”
Now Felicity laughed, an unfamiliar feeling in her throat. “It’s days away, unless you fly.”
“Oh,” said Lindsay. “They’re doing Tender Land in a couple of weeks. Bit of a gamble, but they had Jane Masters singing the role. It was a huge coup for them. But she’s fallen ill, rumour is cancer. Keep that to yourself.”
“Jane Masters?” The name was an incantation. Jane was one of the foremost singers of contemporary music in the world.
“They need someone who knows the role. And nobody but you seems to know it.”
Mom would have to watch Mara while Felicity was in Vancouver, and that might take some convincing.
The next day, when Mom was at work, Felicity spent a couple of hours with her Tender Land score. She needed to pack, but she struggled to find clothing that fit. She tried on outfit after outfit, whipping them off in disgust when they wouldn’t zip or button or clung too tightly to her rolls of fat. Finally, she let out a howl that tore at her throat. Mara made a sympathetic squawk. Felicity went downstairs and dialled. When he answered, she wasted no time, “I need you, Jack.”
“Why?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I just got a call from the Vancouver Opera Association. They have an emergency, and they need me there tomorrow to do a show.”
“That’s great! That’s fantastic, Fizzy! So what’s the problem?”
“I just need you.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Minutes later, he surveyed the scene in Felicity’s bedroom. Mara lay in the Moses basket. Clothes were draped everywhere.
“Packing, I see.”
Felicity sank down on the bed and put her head in her hands. Jack sat next to her and waited.
“Jack,” she said, “I feel ugly, and fat, and disgusting. I have to go play Laurie, an innocent, beautiful girl, and I’m so gross.” The idea had formed subconsciously and now it felt like a stone on her tongue. She raised her eyes to him, summoning all the longing and pleading she could from the wells inside her.
“Oh,” Jack said. “Fizzy. You want —”
She didn’t want, she needed to feel life stir within her again. Not the life of a treacherous baby, insisting on moving and kicking no matter how hard she wished it still, but the life of a man, growing and swelling, filling the space inside her, if only just for a few minutes.
Jack cleared his throat, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. Felicity pushed a pile of dresses to the floor, making space on the bed. “Come on, Jack.”
Jack’s fingers unfolded. “Felicity,” he said, “I was going to tell you.” The air in the room grew heavy. He plunged ahead. “Remember I told you I’ve been spending time with Abby? Your friend from church?”
“Yes,” Felicity said. “I remember.” She had only pretended to support Jack in this endeavour. He had always been hers, and she didn’t want to share him with Abby. And although Abby had been her friend longer than Felicity could remember, the closer Abby got to Jack, the less Felicity wanted to spend time with her.
“I’m thinking of making it more serious.”
“You mean making Abby the only one.”
“I mean maybe marriage. I mean maybe kids.”
Felicity doubled over, feeling like her labour pains had returned. The idea of Abby in the condition Felicity had just been in, but with Jack’s baby inside her, was like carrying a boulder where Mara had been. Jack would be a fantastic partner to Abby during pregnancy, and after she pushed out their child. The baby might have Felicity’s colour. She tried to keep her voice casual as she said, “I didn’t think you wanted kids.”
“I don’t. I didn’t. But Abby does, and, well, I guess helping out with Mara changed my mind.”
By leaning on Jack, Felicity had driven him closer to the thing she least wanted him to have. She knew Abby would make a perfect wife and mother, something Felicity could never be. Music and her own emotional life left no room for nurturing.
“It’s not only that, Fizzy. When I finish my degree, I’m thinking of going to the Lutheran seminary in Saskatoon.”
The block of ice inside Felicity hardened and crusted over with snow. She hugged herself around the middle as another contraction of grief bent her over again. “You want to be a pastor?”
“I think so,” Jack said. “I think I can do some good that way. People need to understand that following Christ is so much more than a bunch of rules. Churches need modernizing, or they will die.”
“So let them die!” Felicity shouted. She grabbed her pillow and threw it at him. “Aren’t you making rules now, Jack Mueller, you hypocrite? You always liked sex before. You’ve never had a problem with it! God gave us sex! He gave us a way to feel close to each other and heal, and people decided to turn it into this thing that only certain people get to do in certain ways.”
Jack put a hand on her knee. “That’s actually excellent theology, Felicity. You’re right.” He began lifting his sweater over his head. “Okay. We’ll do it this one time, but it has to be the last, understood?”
As Felicity took her own clothes off, she looked through the window and saw a flock of geese slicing through the smoky grey sky. She lay back on the bed as Jack took in the dark red stretch marks across her stomach and hips, the sagging layer of flesh hanging from her lower abdomen, her now-deflated breasts. She said, “I’m hideous, Jack. None of my clothes fit. What am I going to do?”
Jack traced one of the stretch marks with his little finger. “Borrow some from Rose. She’s a bigger lady, and she’s a good dresser. I’m sure she can spare a few outfits. Just until you get back to yourself, and you will. Be easy on yourself, it’s only been a month.” He looked at the Moses basket. “Should we do this with her here?”
Felicity shrugged. “Why not?”
“Well, okay then,” Jack said, as he took one of Felicity’s breasts in his hand. He felt his way around her new contours, providing sex like it was medicine, and Felicity blossomed as she recovered. When they were finished, Jack said, “I really need a smoke.”
“We have to go outside,” Felicity said. “My mom will go nuts if she smells it in her house.” She looked out of the window. “Is it cold out?”
“A bit. Wear a sweater.” As Felicity rummaged through the pile of clothes on the floor, Jack said, “Wait. We have to bring Mara.”
“Can’t we just leave her inside?”
“No, we can’t, Felicity. What if she chokes?” Felicity looked away as he stood up. “Where’s her stuff?” She indicated the drawer, and watched as Jack wrapped her daughter in a blanket, the way he had once done for her when she lay on his couch. No one would take care of her now. It was her job to take care of another person. The edges of her heart curled inward.
“When does she have to eat?” he asked. Felicity shrugged again. “Come on, Fizzy, you can’t punish her because of who her father is.”
Felicity knew that she was supposed to feel a rush of love for this tiny human being, but whenever she looked at her child, a dull feeling came over her. It was more than just Brian being Mara’s father and Mara having his face. It was the realization that Felicity had made a chain for herself, forged of blood rather than steel; that she had put a rope around her own neck and tightened the noose, and for what? To win a contest with Sheila that the winner actually lost.
They went out to the patio through the glass sliding doors and Jack placed the Moses basket on the ground between their two wicker chairs. Felicity propped a bottle up with the nipple in Mara’s mouth as Jack rolled a joint on the wicker table.
As she blew the sacred smoke up to the graphite sky, listening to the fading cries of the geese, a shriveled, brown leaf gusted across the lawn. “Snow’s in the air,” Jack said.