Falling From Grace (23 page)

Rainbow rattled down the stairs, out of breath. She held a clump of blue dough in her hand. “We got to make play dough today.” She spied the microscope. “Can I see? Can I?”

She pushed a stool over beside me and climbed up. Dropping the dough on the table, she peered through the paired lenses. “It's like a caterpillar,” she said, her voice full of wonder. “What's its name?”

“Water bear. Its scientific name is tardigrade.”

“Where did it come from?”

I showed her the moss. “I found it at the top of Bruce the Spruce last year.”

Rainbow frowned. “But he's dead.”

I smoothed the hair on the back of her head. “Yes, but isn't it nice to have one of his friends. The water bear dried up to a flake of dust in the sample bag with the moss. I added a drop of water and brought it to life again.”

Rainbow lifted her head from the microscope, eyes wide. “You made it alive from dead?”

“It was dry, not dead,” I explained. “Water bears can dry out for a hundred years and still come back to life in water.”

“A hundred years?”

“It's called cryptobiosis,” I said. “And that's not all. They can live in cold to absolute zero, temperatures up to one hundred and thirty degrees Celsius, six thousand atmospheres of pressure,
X
-ray radiation one hundred times the human lethal dose, and vacuum.”

I had expected Rainbow to be impressed, or at least curious, but she turned back to the sample, hands gripped around the barrels of the eyepieces.

“They travel all around the world on the wind. Scientists call it
tardigrade rain
.” I don't know why I continued on. She wasn't listening. In an odd way I felt like I owed it to the water bear to let Rainbow know how amazing it was. To impress on her that there were creatures in the world that could recover from almost anything. “We find them on mountaintops, in the deserts, and the tops of the tallest trees. They're the most resilient of species.”

Rainbow slid from the stool and stood in front of me, her body vibrating, face bright with desire. “Could we?”

“Could we what?”

“Do the same to Paul? Bring him back to life?”

My throat tightened at the suggestion. “I wish we could, sweets.”

“Let's try.”

I pointed to my leg. Rainbow's shoulders sagged. I was trapped at home. I hadn't seen Paul since my trial, when a sheriff fitted my left ankle with a transmitter and my home phone with an electronic receiver that notified the corrections branch if I left the house without permission twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I had signed a form agreeing to keep the peace and be on upright behaviour. I wondered if ranting and kicking furniture fell into the category of upright. Grace drove from Qualicum once a week to bring groceries and take Rainbow on an outing. We missed our walks along the water and through the park. Two more weeks to go.

Rainbow turned and plodded to the bottom of the stairs, her feet scuffing across the unpainted concrete floor.

“Don't you want to find more water bears?” I swivelled around on the stool.

“No.”

“Where're you going?”

“Homework.” Rainbow spent hours writing up sheets of made-up math questions and answering them herself. Inventing stories about trees for Cedar. I worried at each ring of the phone, each knock on the door, in fear of a visit from social services, the return of Mary.

“Would you like to bake cookies?”

She whirled around. “Chocolate chip? For Marcel?”

“You and Grace can visit him on Saturday.”

Rainbow ran back and hugged me with an energy that nearly unseated me. “I love you, Dr. Faye,” she said. A warm beam of sunshine wrapped itself around my heart.

While we slept that night, the water bear dried out in the Petri dish and slipped back into cryptobiosis. Paul lay in a white-sheeted hospital bed on the other side of the city. The latest prognosis was discouraging. The longer the coma, the less chance of recovery. The doctors used terms like
persistent vegetative state
,
locked-in syndrome
,
brain death
. Talked of transferring him out of
ICU
and into the neuroward for
supportive care
. Daniel kept me informed by phone; his calm voice always ended with the same line, “Don't give up hope. Miracles happen in this place.”

A few minutes after four
AM
, a miracle did happen. Daniel walked by Paul's bed and said to his patient, “Hey, buddy, want a brewski?” Expecting no answer, he carried on with his work, recording readings from the monitors. When he turned again to Paul's passive body, what he saw made his heart race. Paul didn't open his eyes, pupils working to focus on the machines, the lack of green, the weakness in his limbs. He didn't smile or whisper a name, Daniel's head dipping close to hear. Paul's resurrection from his personal cryptobiosis— initiated by beer, not water—was as subtle as the movement of tardigrade rain on atmospheric winds.

Paul moved his left forefinger.

22

Paul's hand
moved, a toe, a flicker of an eye, like a restless seed in his body flowering into movement, into gradual awareness of his limited world, baby steps to recovery. When he could breathe on his own, the hospital staff moved him off the
ICU
and lifted the visiting restrictions. I had completed my sentence and visited daily, alone or with Rainbow, or Grace when she could make it. The doctors ordered low stimulation to allow the brain to heal. The nurses said, “Nonsense” and urged us all to talk. We played music and videos, read books out loud, something Rainbow, with her new-found skill, loved to do for him. She was reading the ending of
Where the Wild Things Are
about a little boy who runs away to a mysterious island only to realize he misses his mother when Paul opened his eyes and gazed around the room. Rainbow and I later argued about who he focused on first. “I think it was you,” I said. “He noticed a new freckle on your nose.” “No, Dr. Faye,” Rainbow assured me. “I know it was you.” We both insisted he had an upturned curl at the corners of his mouth. His first smile in three months.

The hospital piled on the resources. Speech therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy. Daniel warned us that Paul's personality might change, a common result of head injury. “I know one couple,” he confided, “who separated three years after the husband's injury because she claimed he wasn't the man she married. She told me, ‘his kiss wasn't his kiss anymore.'”

• • •

I stood
on a kitchen chair and taped the end of a streamer to a curtain rod. Marcel, out of jail a few days, held the other end, his release ten days earlier than expected. “For my stellar behaviour,” he insisted. Grace directed the placement of the decorations from the table where she sat blowing up balloons.

“Hurry up, you two.” She tied a knot in the end of a large blue globe with a snap. “I need help. I'm too old for this. I haven't got the lungs. She'll be home soon.”

We had guessed at the date of Rainbow's birthday based on her statement, “It's when the leaves fall.” When asked to make a list of gifts she said, “Mary didn't believe in presents.” I cursed the woman for the hundredth time.

“You're gaining weight,” Grace commented, eyeing me as I balanced on the chair.

I gave no answer, afraid Grace would guess my secret hidden beneath the extra baggy sweatshirt I wore. I couldn't tell her, not before I had made a decision. For Grace, abortion was a choice for everyone but her own family. A few days before my trial, I had visited a genetic counsellor.

“There's a simple test for mutation in the
FGFR3
gene, the gene responsible for achondroplasia. This gene makes a protein involved in the development and maintenance of bone and brain tissue,” explained the clinician, a serious man in his fifties. “Is your partner a dwarf?”

“No.”

He went on, “Your baby has a fifty per cent chance of having achondroplasia, a fifty per cent chance of normal stature. When both parents have achondroplasia, the chance of their offspring having normal stature is twenty-five per cent; having achondroplasia, also fifty per cent. There's a twenty-five per cent chance of occurrence of homozygous achondroplasia.”

“What's that?

“Two copies of the mutated gene. It's most always fatal.”

“You said the test is simple?”

“Yes, it's a blood test. It's best done in the first trimester. Routine periodic ultrasound can detect the bone abnormalities but not until the third trimester when it's too late.”

“Too late?”

He paused. “For a termination.”

The word settled on my shoulders like a shawl of nettles, a prickly comfort. It could be that easy. No one need know. Paul none the wiser. Life would go on. “How long do I have to decide?”

“The turnaround time for results is three to four weeks. If you choose to abort, it's best done by fourteen weeks, but we can push it later.” He consulted my chart. “You're how many weeks?”

“Almost six.”

“Decide soon.”

I thanked the man. “I'll have to think about it.”

“Don't think too long,” he urged as I walked out the door.

I had cried all the way home.

I had the test a week later.

Now at eleven weeks, I had not yet heard the result. Time was getting short.

Grace continued talking. “And you're pale.” She paused in the middle of ripping open a package of streamers. “Are you well?”

“I'm fine.” I jumped to the floor with a thud to prove my robust health.

Marcel checked the cake in the oven for the tenth time. “Ma mére's recipe.” Gobs of batter and a dusting of flour covered his paunch.

“The cake will fall if you open the oven one more time,” Grace warned.

He eased the oven door closed. “I'll make the frosting.”

Mel sat reading in the living room. I was surprised he had made the trip with Grace, his visits rare.

The phone rang. “Would you answer it, Grace?” I asked, my arms full of coloured napkins and paper plates decorated with comical bears in party hats.

Grace returned from the hallway. “It's the father who picked Rainbow up to go to the playground. She's been fighting.” She collected her purse from the table. “I'll bring her home.”

Rainbow traipsed red-eyed and solemn from the car to the house, a purple bruise rising on her right cheekbone.

“Grace told me not to fight,” she declared, plopping onto a kitchen chair with a humph. “I wanted to punch those kids.”

“Looks like they managed to punch you. Grace is right, no fighting,” I said. “What happened?”

Rainbow pushed out her bottom lip and refused to speak.

“We can't have the party until you tell us what happen,” Marcel wheedled. “My cake, he will get stale.”

Rainbow lifted her head; her mouth dropped open at the sight of the decorations, the table set with colourful napkins and hats, the cake on the sideboard. “You made me a birthday?” she said. “With presents?”

“Yes, and we'll have it when you've explained about the fighting.”

“I can't.” She dropped back onto the chair and crossed her arms.

“Yes, you can,” Grace insisted. “We're not going to spank you. We believe in peaceful resolution to problems. We're your friends. We want to know what's happened.”

Mel appeared in the doorway and leaned against the frame, his hands in his pockets.

Rainbow swung her legs back and forth under the chair. “Freak,” she whispered.

“What?” I said.

“They called me a freak.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Your mother is a midget and your dad is a giant and you are a freak,” she yelled, her face twisting with anguish before she burst into helpless sobs.

Anger rocketed through my body.
Midget
. The word transported me back decades. I was nine years old, alone and on my way home from school.

A red convertible cruised past. “Hey, midget,” a voice drawled from the open window. My guardians, Patrick and Steve, were at baseball practice, nowhere in sight.

I walked on, feigning nonchalance, stomach churning like a wild, white river. The car did a
U
-turn and passed me again, then pulled into a driveway ahead, blocking the sidewalk. I stopped, heart thudding. Doors opened and four boys stepped out. I focused on the cracks in the sidewalk; I could see their legs as they walked toward me—black boots and jeans, a pair of sneakers, hairy legs with shorts. “Hey, freak. We wanna talk to you.” I didn't wait. I turned and ran, painfully aware of each inadequate stride. I listened for footsteps, the roar of the car engine to overwhelm me, surround me like a net and lift me off the ground. The thud of my blood pulsing through my head drowned out all else. Warm pee trickled down the inside of my pants.