Blame (32 page)

‘Can you see there?' said the ultrasound technician, ‘there's your baby's heartbeat. It's nice and strong, just what you want.'

‘It won't last,' she had said to Geoff in the car on the way home.

‘Maybe not, but maybe, just maybe it will. I know that you're prepared for the worst and I can't think any other way either but would it be so bad to include a few positive thoughts along with our worst case scenario thinking?'

‘No,' Caro had agreed, ‘not so bad.'

As her pregnancy with Gabe continued, she felt like she'd go mad. ‘It would almost be a relief if it ended now,' she told Geoff one night when she was five months pregnant. ‘I've done this before. I can handle it. I don't know how much longer I can handle holding onto hope.'

‘You can handle it just like Lex and I are handling it, Caro; just like they tell you to do at your meetings. One day at a time.'

And she had.

Holding a healthy baby in her arms had seemed almost too miraculous to believe but Gabe was here to stay.

‘Look, the doors are opening,' says Lex, she and Gabe having returned from the park without Caro realising.

Anna had agreed to be checked into a psychiatric facility for an indeterminate period. It was that or go to prison. Once she had admitted to pushing Maya in front of the car, she had not been able to stop.

‘I pushed her, I pushed her, I pushed her,' she had wailed over and over again, and Caro recalled how nothing anyone at the police station said could induce her to stop or get up off the floor. Eventually, Walt had picked her up and put her on a couch. An ambulance had been called. Keith had been called. Anna had repeated her sin over and over, seemingly not even stopping to breathe until the paramedics gave her a shot of something that made her subside into silence.

Before she went to prison, Caro had reached out to Keith but he hadn't answered any of her emails or phone messages, and she didn't blame him.

Caro had read articles about Anna's story on the internet. ‘Mothers in this situation often lack support from the medical community, or from their own communities,' was a quote that made Caro wince every time she thought about it. ‘I tried,' she would say to herself. ‘I tried.'

Caro holds her breath as she watches a woman emerge from the building.

It is Anna. She is as thin as Caro has ever seen her, but she walks with her shoulders back and, as she comes closer, Caro can see an uncertain smile on her face.

She had been shocked to receive the first letter from Anna six months ago. She had nearly thrown out the plain blue envelope with the junk mail until she looked at it more closely.

I've been following your blog. I'm not allowed to send emails but I am allowed on the computer under supervision. I googled you and found your blog. I wanted to see how you were and I wanted to apologise. I can almost see the shock on your face because ‘sorry' seems like such an inadequate, simplistic word. It's taken me a long time to get to the place where I was ready to apologise. I read the words you write and I can hear your voice and I miss you. I can see why so many people follow you. You
have a way of making everything seem . . . well, not fine but perhaps bearable? That's what you did for me even when your own life was so not bearable. I don't think you knew how much you meant to me, how much your words and your listening ear meant to me. I should have told you. I hope you know now. Every comment that says you are a ‘lifesaver' is true. It's what you do, Caro. You see someone hurting and in pain and you step in to see how you can help.

I betrayed that in you. I betrayed your help and your kindness and your patience and your friendship.

I betrayed my daughter and my husband. I betrayed myself.

It's taken me years to admit these things, to admit what I did. I should have asked for help. I know that now. You did your best but you had your own child and Keith did his best but it was all too much for me. I should have shouted as loud as I could that I wasn't coping but I didn't know how to explain it. You're supposed to love your child no matter who they are or how much they hurt you. I still can't really explain what happened but all I can say is that not every woman is meant to be a mother and not every child can be loved. It sounds terrible but I have to admit the truth if I'm going to build a life for myself when I leave this place in a few months. I don't know if you heard but Keith filed for divorce as soon as I left home. I understand that. I don't blame him. Our marriage was over anyway. My mother told me that he has remarried and has a child. Apparently she is fine, so maybe the faulty gene lay with me. I wish him well, I really do. My mother has visited me every month while I've been here and she is waiting for me to get out so I can come and stay with her. We have a lot more
to talk about now. We both failed at being mothers. I'm not saying that for sympathy. It's a fact. It's a fact that I needed to accept about myself and now that I have, I feel as though I can move on with my life. I know that people have said that all I needed was more support from those around me but I'm not sure about that. I don't know if there could ever have been enough support for me to be able to deal with Maya as she got bigger and older and stronger. There are some very special people in the world raising children with enormous difficulties but I wasn't meant to be one of them.

I hope you write back, Caro. I hope you can forgive me. I hope we can still have some kind of a friendship.

Caro had cried for days after that first letter. She had been angry and sad, and everything in between, but in the end, she had felt only sympathy for how lost Anna must have been feeling.

‘
Dear Anna
,' she had begun in her head before deciding not to write back. ‘
Dear Anna
,' she had written on the first page of a pale pink writing pad and then torn off the sheet and crumpled it up. ‘
Dear Anna
,' she had finally started her letter to her friend.

I miss you. Sometimes I think about us laughing over cake and I feel an ache inside my body. We laughed a lot didn't we, even though our lives were falling apart? I know I've said “I'm sorry,” countless times but I wanted to say it again. I'm sorry, Anna. I shouldn't have left my couch. I shouldn't have gotten into my
car. I shouldn't have been there. But mostly I'm sorry that I failed to see you weren't just waving. I was wrapped up in my own life, consumed by my own pain and I didn't see you go under. I used to comfort myself with the idea that I was a good person and a good friend because I did try to help those around me. But now I know that you have no right to try and fix someone else if you, yourself, are broken.

Everything has changed in my life and I feel like I have the energy to be a better friend, to really help those who reach out to me.

It hasn't been an easy journey. Some nights in prison I used to want to scream into the silence at the unfairness of it all. I don't know why you and I had to travel such a hard road but I do know that if you walk it, every painful step, and if you keep walking it then there is something better at the end. I hope that you will let me take your hand and walk a little bit with you. I promise to be better this time because I am better. When you come home I'd love to be able to share a giant slab of chocolate mud cake with you and maybe a few more laughs.

Love, your friend, Caro

Anna's next letter had arrived after a week and then they arrived every week in response to Caro's replies.

It had taken Caro months to work up the courage to ask Anna the question that had been on her mind since the day her friend revealed the truth:
How did you know it was going to be my car that turned into the cul-de-sac? How could you be sure?

When she finally wrote this down and sent it to Anna in a letter, she didn't hear from Anna for weeks. It was the first time in months that her letters had not arrived regularly.

‘I'll never hear from her again,' she thought.

But finally, there was an answer.
It never occurred to me that it would be anyone else, Caro. You saved me. You always saved me.

Caro had felt she should be angry, feel used, hate Anna for throwing her into the middle of a catastrophe, but in the end all she felt was desperate sorrow for someone who was so completely lost and who thought that she was utterly alone.

Anna's final letter had simply been a request:
Can you meet me when I leave the hospital? My mother has said she'll come but I think I would like it to be you. I am going to be living with my mother, but I would like to see you when I can and if you have the time. Can you meet me, Caro? Can you?

‘No way,' said Geoff when Caro told him.

But Caro had known what she would do. She had not argued, had not yelled or become tearful; she had simply stated what she would do.

‘I'll come with you,' Geoff had said.

‘No, I'll take the kids. It will make it less awkward.'

‘Caro, don't be ridiculous. She's not sane. You can't expose our kids to her.'

‘I know her, Geoff. We'll be fine.'

‘Yeah,' said Lex, overhearing the conversation from the kitchen, where she was making Gabe her famous caramel salted popcorn. ‘We'll be fine.'

‘No use arguing with her,' said Caro.

‘No,' agreed Geoff, ‘not as she's going to be studying law, but I still don't think it's a good idea.'

‘It may be the last time I see her, Geoff. I don't know what's going to happen. She may not want to see me again if she's trying to rebuild her life. I want her to see that I'm okay; that she doesn't have to worry about me.'

‘Can't you just tell her in writing?'

‘Give it a rest, Dad, I want to see her too,' said Lex coming into the room.'

‘Why?' said Geoff.

Lex shrugged her shoulders and shovelled popcorn into her mouth. Geoff folded his arms and waited. ‘I guess,' said Lex, swallowing, ‘it's because she changed our lives.'

‘That's my point,' said Geoff, ‘she changed our lives. Your mother went to prison because of her.'

‘I went to prison because of me, Geoff. You know that.'

‘I know why you must hate her, Dad. I understand what she did to our family, but sometimes when I think about her I feel like the whole thing wasn't just black and white. I know that Mum would never have gone to prison without her but what if it had never happened and Mum had never stopped drinking . . .'

‘You can't seriously be suggesting that what happened was a good thing, Lex?'

‘No, Dad,' Lex had sighed and raised her eyebrow at her father in a perfect imitation of his own gesture, ‘but I think that some lives need a giant catalyst to change their direction. I was never interested in law before I watched Mum talk to the lawyer and read about the trial, and neither you nor I know what life would have been like now if there had never been a car accident. Personally, I don't think that you and Mum would still be married and we certainly wouldn't have Gabe.'

‘Lex, I don't . . .'

‘Dad, she was part of my childhood. Maya was part of my childhood and I want to see Anna again. I want to see that she's okay. I don't know why but I don't resent her for what she did and I want to see her. I'm old enough to make this decision myself . . . okay?'

‘Okay,' Geoff had said shaking his head, ‘but I still don't like it.'

‘I understand,' Caro had said, ‘but you need to trust me on this. Trust us.'

Caro watches Anna approach and feels the strong desire for a drink wash over her. She tries to imagine what Anna is thinking as she looks at her and her children. Caro has not told Anna about Gabe. In their letters they have reminisced about Maya and talked about Caro's work but Anna has only asked once about Lex. Even though the question was written down Caro had been able to sense how difficult it was for Anna to ask, how hard it would be for her to
avoid thinking about Maya at the age Lex was now. Discussing Gabe felt wrong because Caro sensed that Anna would rebuild her life without children and that for her to hear about Caro's good fortune would be too much for her to handle. She had felt herself unable to simply write that she had a son without having to rhapsodise about him. It had been easier to say nothing.

Anna's steps are small, hesitant as she gets closer.

‘Maybe this was a bad idea,' thinks Caro and she feels she can almost taste the burn of vodka in the back of her throat and hear the clink of ice against the side of the glass. But then she feels Gabe's hand creep into hers and, at the same time, Lex leans down and rests her head on her shoulder.

‘I can get through this,' she thinks.

Anna stops in front of Caro and her children. Her blonde hair is tied back, there are lines around her eyes and her skin is pale. She is holding a large duffle bag in front of her, as though to protect herself. She looks at Lex and her smile widens and then she studies Gabe.

‘Oh, Caro,' she says, looking up so Caro can see the shine of tears in her eyes, ‘I didn't know . . . he's . . . he's beautiful . . . they're both so . . . beautiful.'

‘Hello, Anna,' Caro says and she can feels the tears slipping down her cheeks, ‘Hello, old friend.'

Acknowledgements

Jane Palfreyman and the whole team at A & U.

Sarina Rowell for her copyediting skills.

Belinda Lee for always knowing the right thing to say.

Gaby Naher.

And as always, my mother, David, Mikhayla, Isabella and Jacob.