became pregnant, he began buying her vitamin supplements, talking about the trips the three of them would take, starting a special bank account for the baby. He built a little table and chair set for her thirty-fourth birthday.
Put the baby things away, people told them. Put them away. There'll be another time.
But whenever she went out Julie noticed how cautiously they approached, their trapped look as they avoided her big belly.
"You'll try again. Won't you?" they'd say.
SHE COLLECTED THE CLOTHES in a bag. Bending over, annoyed at her big belly, she helped Michael dismantle the crib. They put away the stroller, the Snugli, the bassinet. She felt him keep his distance, afraid, even accidentally, to touch.
Just as they were finishing, Bob and Andrea stopped by. She and Andrea had gone through their pregnancies together discussing everything from her Cheerios and ice cream, Julie's pickled herring and cheese, to birth positions ("On my side," Andrea joked, "like a voluptuous Rubenesque painting.")
Once she'd asked how Andrea felt about bringing a child into today's world and she said, "Not hopeful. But even five or six years with a child would be better than nothing."
Not long ago, at a party, she'd overheard a man say, "You know when a war's going to break out because right before it happens everyone gets pregnant. Something to do with survival of the species. . . ."
She looked at Andrea's big belly now, then down at her own. "Is there anything more you need for the baby?" she asked. "Please. Go upstairs and see."
When Andrea came back, her hands hung empty at her side. "We still need a bassinet, but … are you sure?"
The bassinet. It was one of those silly things—white, with pink and blue cats. Julie had found it at a garage sale. She and Michael had sung as they brought the bassinet into the living room, falling exhausted on the couch. Andrea had complimented them on their good fortune. "I've gone to all the garage sales and haven't come across one bassinet yet. You must be lucky."
"My, what ridiculous looking cats!" Andrea laughed nervously now, as Michael helped Bob carry the bassinet downstairs. "It's bad enough you can't get anything for a baby that isn't pink or blue. But cats with both colours?"
Julie waved as Bob and Andrea pulled away. When they were gone, Michael turned to her and they held each other in the driveway. "I love your hair, Jules," he whispered, stroking the fine red strands that fell to her shoulders.
A WEEK PASSED. It had been four weeks since the doctor last heard the heartbeat. He was concerned. "If another week goes by you could risk spontaneous haemorrhages which can be fatal, but," he tried, seeking to reassure them, "there's still only a small chance of this occurring."
She nodded. How calm, professional he was. She could feel her eyes glaze over. "What would you recommend?"
The doctor appeared thoughtful. "You could have it out right away, of course."
A C-section. Michael agreed. "They're quite common, honey. Lots of women have them."
She nodded again, but she felt cheated. "Actually, I'd prefer not to." Couldn't she have anything?
The doctor looked down. "Well dear, it could be difficult. Without a head . . . ."
"Without a head?" Why say that? She glanced at Michael, then back at the doctor.
"What I mean is, since the head's not fully developed .... Since it may not dilate the cervix. . . ." The doctor shrugged to indicate how useless it was to explain. "Well Julie, you're a nurse, I'm sure you understand."
"Why not get a C-section?" Michael argued. "Surely you don't need to carry it any longer."
"It. Why does everyone make it seem as if I'm walking around with a rotten vegetable," she said, "a turnip or cabbage."
He put his arm around her. "Don't you just want to get the baby out and be done with this?"
No. She did not. Though just why she couldn't explain. She took Michael's hand from her shoulder and pressed it between her own hands which were cold, shaking. Inside my body, my husband and I created a baby with no head. No brain, she thought. Not human. But the baby didn't feel that way to her. This baby was her dream. Even a dream that died, you didn't stop carrying.
She would not have the baby taken from her.
TO DISGUISE HER PREGNANCY, she wrapped herself in Michael's huge raincoat. She didn't want strangers cooing over her now. She didn't want anyone patting her belly. Above all, she didn't want to have the baby where everybody knew her; where all the nurses she worked with would offer their sympathy, and see the child. She and Michael had decided on Vancouver. It was well over five hundred miles away but they had friends there—or could, if they wanted, remain anonymous. Maybe she wouldn't need the C-section; a specialist could induce labour. In case she had any problems with the airline, the doctor had given her a note: May travel by air, thirty-four weeks pregnant, not in labour.
This was not entirely true. She was over thirty-six weeks, actually, and women are not supposed to fly in their last month of pregnancy. She'd started having irregular contractions the night before. But that morning when the doctor examined her and referred her to a specialist she had been reassured it would be safe to fly.
Now she was afraid she might have the baby on the plane. She didn't want anyone to see it. She wasn't sure if even she and Michael would want to.
Before they'd decided to go to Vancouver, she'd told the doctor they planned to look at the baby.
He advised against it. "You never know how you or your husband will react. And then it will be too late to wish you hadn't."
"But I'm a nurse," she'd said. "I've seen babies like this."
"An anencephalic?" He looked at her as if she were crazy. "Usually these babies are miscarried early because the brain is absent or so poorly developed. But," he shrugged, "I'm sure you already know that."
He could have said anencephalic monster, that's what the medical books called it. She read in one text, A sizeable number of cases have been suspected to be environmental: a maternal fever in early pregnancy, pesticides and herbicides, recent potato blights in the United Kingdom. There was a small photograph in a book by a lay-midwife who wrote, These babies have, for some reason, disproportionately long arms and legs. But the baby, who had lived a week, wore a scarf around its head.
"I can always decide at the time, can't I?" she'd told the doctor.
He shrugged. "The decision's yours. But if it were up to me—if you were my daughter—I certainly wouldn't want you to."
She stared at him.
"You know, you might be risking your marriage."
"My marriage?" She looked at Michael and laughed.
"It may affect how you make love. Sometimes it
