The Unfinished Child Read Online Free PDF

Barry might as well be sleeping alone.
    Their conversation had settled nothing; they had talked around the baby as if it wasn’t there, but another baby had no place in her ordered life. It wasn’t only Barry who loved his routines. His love of order had rubbed off on her too. Over the years, she had become a careful list maker, the kind of person who didn’t wait for the ketchup to run out before buying another one. One look in her pantry confirmed the orderliness of her mind. She and Barry had life insurance, house insurance, car insurance, dental insurance, they even had disability insurance. Nothing would take them by surprise.
    No, it wasn’t right at all. She felt as if someone had gotten a hold of one of her lists without asking and added just one word: baby .
    In the morning, Marie awoke to find the bed beside her empty. She glanced at the clock and was surprised to see it was an hour later than her usual time to rise. The chill coming off the wall confirmed that the cold snap continued.
    She could just make out the sound of her husband’s voice downstairs, but the words were lost in the clinking of cutlery on dishes. At the thought of food Marie’s stomach heaved. She reached for the box of saltine crackers on her bedside table and slipped one from its crinkly sleeve. The coarse salt crystals dissolved instantly on her tongue, and soon her mouth was moist enough that she could even lick her chapped lips.
    Laughter filtered up from downstairs, and she smiled as she pictured Sophia telling her older sister a joke. Or maybe the two girls were laughing as they tried to get their dad to solve a riddle.
    She reached for another cracker and nibbled tiny bites, beginning with the corners and then working her way around the edges to form a neat and uniform circle. Crumbs spilled onto her chest and settled in the bony hollow between her breasts. She stared at the dried bits of cracker for a moment, and then at the stretch marks on her breasts, silver minnows that mapped the terrain of breastfeeding.
    Her nipples were sore. Her breasts were tender to touch and felt heavy and fibrous. The obvious signs of pregnancy that she had once so eagerly courted she had recently tried to ignore.
    More crumbs settled between her breasts. When her kids were small she had lived for years with crumbs and sand in the bed and the feeling that she would never again have clean sheets. Once, when Nicole was three and Sophia had just celebrated her first birthday, Elizabeth had dropped by after work. The house looked as if a bomb had gone off inside of a toy store. Dolls and stuffed animals and small plastic knick-knacks were strewn all over the floor, mixed up with the pots and pans that had been dragged from the kitchen cupboards. Marie felt the sting of inadequacy that had shadowed her since having children. Normally she kept a clean house. Even when Marie was a child, her mother had never had to tell her to clean her room. She knew it was useless to expect any kind of order when the kids were so young, but she couldn’t stop caring about the mess. She tried to laugh it off, but she was exhausted. Her sleep-deprived eyes burned when she closed them tight. Her shoulder-length hair no longer had any shape or lustre. Her waist had yet to reappear from the pregnancies. Her skin felt dry, her breasts overused. Just the day before she had discovered that her nipples no longer pointed straight ahead as they once had. Now they drooped downward as if looking for lost coins. How sad. Her breasts had been lovely once.
    In contrast, Elizabeth looked neat and crisp in her summer pantsuit and sandals. Elizabeth’s dark hair had recently been streaked with golden highlights. Her toenails were freshly painted, her clothes weren’t stained, and her breasts weren’t leaking. Everything about her was proper and trim. When she stood up, her hips were high, narrow, and compact. She had the most shapely arms too, firm and muscular. When Marie raised her arms