Eddie was doing well with his wrestling, getting advice and coaching from Constable Earlie Morrison, Becker’s partner. Earlie had been a pro wrestler once upon a time and was now a kind of big brother to him. A wrestling tournament, with all its out-of-town testosterone blown in on a visit, would not be a wise milieu for a baby doll, however significant the Family Studies unit might be on Eddie’s educational vector. I’d said I would look after the creature for the evening, provided he came and picked it up again after he got home.
The instructions were simple. If the doll cried, I was to pick it up and walk with it. If it was wet (it had some sort of computerized pee-release inside its belly, apparently), I was to change it, and at certain times I was to give it a bottle of formula. The computer would be able to analyze what was put inside it—there was a powdered mixture of stuff I was supposed to prepare and administer four times throughout the evening. Eddie told me that some of the guys had fed the baby beer. The computer took note of the fact, and the Family Studies teacher had not been amused.
“No weird stuff, okay, Polly?” Eddie said, quite seriously. “I need this credit to graduate.”
“I promise I won’t feed your baby beer,” I’d said.
“And be careful when you pick it up—support its head, I mean. My buddy Grant got nailed for child abuse that way.”
“I promise I won’t shake it senseless,” I’d said. However, the creature proved itself to have rotten timing, and later in the evening I could have shaken its little microchips loose, if my temper had won.
Needless to say, Becker was not thrilled when I told him about my plans to travel to the U.K. in February to go to the conference. In fact, he went kind of postal.
Most of his distress, it appeared, came from the fact that I was preparing to board an airplane. Becker had received a new assignment upon his return from Calgary, a kind of secondment from his regular duties with the OPP, and though he was vague and mysterious about the details, I gathered it had something to do with airport security. The September 11 th terrorist attacks were still fresh in everyone’s minds, and Becker wasn’t the only person who was voicing a mistrust of air travel. I knew that the airlines were reeling with the shock of the thing and that the numbers of people flying anywhere at all were alarmingly low. Everybody knew that governments worldwide were stepping up airport security measures in the wake of the tragedy, and Becker apparently had some background in the field, previous to his career as a provincial police officer, which led to his new assignment. “Research and Development”, he called it, funded by the Canadian government. He wouldn’t say much more than that.
“I know about these things, Polly,” he said. “You have no idea how easy it is for people to board an airplane with weapons, explosives, you name it. You couldn’t pay me to board a plane at the moment, and I’m sure as hell not going to let you do it either. Especially when you’re carrying my baby.” My Baby. Not Our Baby. Sigh.
“But if you’re working to improve security, you’d think that you, of all people, would have more confidence in the whole thing than the average person, not less.”
“That shows how much you know,” he said. “You’re not going, Polly.”
“Wanna bet?”
It was at that point, of course, that the wretched automatic baby started howling. I’d stashed it in the bedroom at the back, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t have to explain it to Becker, who, I knew, would not regard it with delight.
“What the fuck is that?” he said. I explained as succinctly as I could as I went to get it. It would not shut up. Becker’s face darkened. “You need this?” he said. “Like you want to practice dealing with a screaming baby? Polly, I have been there—I know what this is like. I don’t need reminding.”
“I don’t have this thing here to remind you of anything,” I said. “This is a favour for Eddie.”
“And how does it feel?” he said. He was looking at me with profound curiosity.
“You just have to walk it,” I said. “It will stop soon.” It didn’t. So I went through the drill, referring to the printed instructions the thing had come with. I changed it. It still screamed. I heated up some water on the propane stove and mixed up its formula and tested it for temperature against my wrist the way the pamphlet said and stuck the bottle into the pursed, plastic mouth, and it was only then that the horrible recorded shrieks were silenced.
“You know, you could have taken the battery out,” Becker said sardonically. He had been watching me with an odd smile on his face, and he hadn’t offered to help. Not that there was much he could have done, I suppose, but he could have offered to hold it while I was making its formula stuff. It shrieked louder if you put it down. But no—he just sat there with his arms crossed, watching me.
“If I’d done that, Eddie would flunk his course,” I said. “I told him I’d look after it.”
“Your grip on reality appears to be getting loose,” Becker said. “Here you are, playing baby dolls in a shack in the bush, and meanwhile, there’s a real baby growing inside you, and you’re planning to go on a trip to God knows where, and once again, all you’re thinking of is yourself and nobody else.”
From that point on, the conversation degenerated into a childish shouting match that did neither of us much credit. If the baby had been out and about at that point, instead of being safely wrapped up in its placential duvet, I think we might have torn the poor thing to pieces, each tugging at a limb like toddlers fighting over a toy. While we were yelling at each other, I recalled that old King Solomon story, the one about the mothers fighting over a baby before King Solly suggests that it be chopped in half to let each person have a bit. If I had been there, I’m not sure that even then I’d have been willing to let go of my share.
Luckily, we had reached the dessert stage by that point, so I can’t say that dinner was ruined, although my stomach was distinctly unsettled by the time he stomped out, leaving half his apple pie uneaten on the plate. It didn’t go to waste, though. Moments later, I found myself finishing it off—after all, I was eating for two.
After Becker had gone, I found Lug-nut and Rosie curled up together on the bed in the lean-to bedroom, their ears laid back and their eyes wide, tails thumping in that “it wasn’t my fault” kind of way. I telescoped forward to a day when the kid would be present in body as well as spirit, a hearing, thinking person whose parents had just been shouting at each other. Becker and I argued a lot, there was no doubt about it, and while we always made up at some point afterwards, the process of disagreement was rarely conducted in a mature fashion. I knew how damaging that kind of atmosphere could be to a child—how small people naturally assume that the tempests raging in the household are of their own making, how they slip into the self-assigned role of scapegoat, of perpetrator. Heck, I read the newspapers, I know how it happens. Becker and I didn’t need to come to blows in order for the climate between us to reach the level designated “emotionally traumatic” by the authorities. Abusive, even. I curled up on the bed beside the dogs and stroked their fuzzy heads and spoke soothing words to them.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay, it didn’t have anything to do with you.” Then it occurred to me that I couldn’t say the same thing to the little fetus currently doing multiple-cell gymnastics in my belly. I placed my hand over the general area—which at thirteen weeks was already beginning to swell, a pleasant tightening, as if the muscles were binding together like some kind of protective armour. The argument I’d just had with Becker had everything to do with the baby—or at least we wouldn’t have had such a nasty one if the baby wasn’t a fact. If I married him, was that
