Claiming Noah Read online

  When they got home James tucked Catriona into bed with a hot water bottle and a movie playing on the television in their bedroom. She saw how much strength it took for him to put on a brave face and she wanted to ask him how he was feeling, but she couldn’t find the words to console him. Instead she stayed silent while he fussed over her until she fell asleep.

  • • •

  For the first month after the miscarriage James coddled her and didn’t mention IVF – until Christmas Day, when he showed her a present he had planned to give to their unborn baby: a wooden mobile with the characters from ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’, complete with a cow jumping over the moon. She responded with a tight smile but said nothing, unable to find the words to tell him that she had changed her mind about having a child. By the second month, he was tentatively suggesting dates for another implantation. And by the third month, when Catriona hadn’t agreed to a date, he started to get angry.

  They were sitting at their usual table at Greco’s one Sunday morning, eating eggs Benedict and reading the papers, when the latest fight erupted. Catriona had read out loud a snippet from one of the newspaper magazines about the dangers associated with women over the age of thirty-five having children and she remarked that it was a good thing they wouldn’t have to worry about that any more.

  James frowned at her from over the top of his coffee cup. ‘Cat, I know losing the baby was awful, but we can’t just give up. We decided to do this. We knew it wouldn’t be easy. For God’s sake, we have three babies sitting on ice just waiting for us!’

  Catriona scoffed. ‘That’s easy for you to say, you’re not the one who has to lie spread-eagled on a table while a doctor shoves a tube into you. And if we do get pregnant again, it’s me who has to deal with the sickness and the exhaustion and watching everything I eat and drink so I don’t lose the baby again.’

  She watched James set down his coffee cup, take a deep breath and adjust his glasses on the bridge of his nose. ‘We’ve been through this hundreds of times. It wasn’t your fault, you didn’t do anything wrong. You can’t keep blaming yourself.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t your fault, was it?’ she said, pretending to read an article in the newspaper and trying to keep her voice from wavering. ‘How do you know it wasn’t something I did?’

  When James didn’t respond Catriona looked up to find him staring at her, his gaze full of sympathy. As the waiter cleared their plates from the table, she felt her resolve dissipate. This wasn’t just about her. She sighed and closed the paper. A dog at the next table strained at its leash, trying to get to a Pomeranian being walked past the cafe by a woman who was talking on her phone and seemed oblivious to the commotion. Catriona watched the dog until it settled again at its owner’s feet, and then she looked at James.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m being a bitch.’

  His shook his head. ‘You’re not. You’re scared you’ll miscarry again. And I get that. I’m scared of that too. But we promised each other we would do this. I really want to be a dad. Please can we try again? This is so important to me.’

  So, they soon found themselves at Doctor Malapi’s office, again listening to his corny jokes as he implanted an embryo into Catriona’s uterus. This time the television on the ceiling was turned on and Catriona and James watched a day-time soap opera in silence as Doctor Malapi completed the procedure.

  The results came from Doctor Malapi two weeks after the implantation. James answered the call and when he hung up the bad news was written all over his face. ‘The pregnancy didn’t take this time. But Doctor Malapi said we shouldn’t be discouraged, because we did get pregnant the first time. He suggested we book another appointment and try again with the third embryo. He said there’s still a high chance of falling pregnant.’

  Though she felt fear taking hold of her again, Catriona nodded her assent. ‘I can do it one more time. Let’s book the appointment. But, James, if it doesn’t happen this time then that’s it, I can’t do it again.’

  • • •

  As soon as they had gone through the third implantation, Catriona and James told Doctor Malapi that regardless of the outcome of the procedure they weren’t going to use their fourth embryo. He tried to persuade them to wait until they knew if the implantation was successful, but Catriona couldn’t be dissuaded from her decision.

  ‘You have four options,’ Doctor Malapi said as he pushed a brochure titled Options for Excess Embryos across his desk towards Catriona and James. ‘You can provide consent for the embryo to be used for research purposes.’

  ‘No,’ Catriona said, rifling through the pages. ‘I’ve heard the types of things they use embryos for.’

  ‘You can allow the embryo to succumb.’

  ‘No,’ James said.

  ‘You can keep the embryo frozen for another nine years.’

  ‘But not forever, so what’s the point?’ Catriona said. ‘We’ll have to make a decision about what to do with it sooner or later, so we may as well do it now.’

  Doctor Malapi looked surprised by the pragmatism of her statement. She had read that most couples choose to pay to keep their embryos frozen year after year, delaying the inevitable moment when they had to decide what to do with them. Catriona found this indecision pointless. She preferred to make the decision now and move on with her life, whatever the outcome, rather than living with it for another nine years.

  ‘Well, you also have a fourth option,’ Doctor Malapi said. ‘You can donate the embryo to a couple who can’t conceive naturally.’

  Catriona and James looked at each other, a recognition of concurrence passing between them. They knew firsthand the anguish of being unable to fall pregnant, watching how easy it seemed for other couples. It felt like the right thing to do to help another couple in the same predicament.

  Doctor Malapi stood up. ‘I’ll leave you alone to chat about it. There’s no rush – just let me know once you’ve made a decision.’ He left the room, and James shifted his chair closer to Catriona’s so he could read the brochure over her shoulder.

  ‘It says we can choose whether we want to have contact with the recipient couple or not,’ Catriona said.

  ‘Not,’ James said firmly.

  Catriona shifted in her chair so she could look at him. His expression was resolute.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s not fair to those parents. Imagine if that was us? We’d want the baby to feel like it was ours, and we couldn’t do that if there was another couple involved.’

  Catriona stared out the window of Doctor Malapi’s office and watched a woman and a small blonde-haired child cross the street. ‘But if we don’t have any contact with the parents then we’ll never know if there’s a child out there. Just imagine: you’re walking down the street and you come face-to-face with a child, or a teenager, who looks exactly like you or me. What would you do?’

  James scrunched up his face, as he always did when he was deep in thought. ‘But they probably wouldn’t look exactly like us. And we wouldn’t automatically assume it was our child. Besides, what are the chances of that? The couple who adopt it might not even live in Sydney.’

  ‘Doesn’t it creep you out, though?’ Catriona asked. ‘Our baby, growing in another woman’s womb?’

  She pictured a baby with her eyes and James’s hair lying in another woman’s arms, being fed from her breast.

  ‘But how is that any different to adoption?’ James said. ‘If we were pregnant and couldn’t raise the baby, we’d put it up for adoption. This isn’t any different to that.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right,’ Catriona said, handing the brochure to James and sitting up straighter in her chair. Even though the thought of another couple raising their child unnerved her, it was far preferable to wasting an embryo they had gone to such lengths to conceive. And she knew she wouldn’t change her mind about using the embryo herself.

  When they told Doctor Malapi their decision, he explained that before they could sign the consent form
to donate their spare embryo they had to attend a counselling session run by the fertility clinic. They did as they were told and faced a barrage of questions from the stern counsellor who questioned them about whether they would have a change of heart, what would happen if they divorced and how they would react if the child decided to contact them after they turned eighteen, when Catriona and James’s details would be made available to them through the donor register. The questions bothered Catriona but she signed the consent form, trying to convince herself that embryo donation was the right choice for them.

  • • •

  James wasn’t home when Doctor Malapi called. Catriona wanted to tell him the news face-to-face, so she fought the urge to call him.

  ‘We’re pregnant,’ she said as soon as he walked through the front door.

  He pulled her into an embrace so tight he lifted her off the ground. ‘I told you!’

  ‘Don’t squeeze the baby,’ Catriona said, but she was smiling as she said it.

  He looked the happiest she had seen him in five months, since the last time they found out they were pregnant. This was his last chance of becoming a father and even though she knew he wouldn’t blame her if something went wrong with the pregnancy again, Catriona felt the responsibility to keep their baby safe weighing heavily on her chest.

  She followed James down the hallway and into the living room. ‘I’m going to be so careful this time, I promise. I’m not going to let anything bad happen.’

  ‘I’ve told you, it wasn’t your fault—’

  ‘I know you have, but this time, I promise, I’m going to be the girl scout of pregnant women.’

  James sat on the white leather couch in the living room, pulling Catriona down beside him. The shutters were closed and the lamps lit, their soft glow reflected in James’s eyes.

  ‘What does that mean?’ he asked. ‘You’re going to force our neighbours to buy cookies from you?’

  Catriona smiled. ‘Maybe.’

  She looked at her feet as she rubbed them back and forth over the grey-and-white striped rug, the soles making a soothing sound as they slid against the abrasive whorls of wool. She wanted to see a baby playing on that rug one day soon. She couldn’t be so cavalier with her pregnancy this time.

  ‘No, I mean I’m going to do everything right,’ she said, looking back at James. ‘I’m going to take vitamins, and have naps, and not go anywhere near alcohol or coffee. I’m going to read the pregnancy books cover to cover, and I’m only going to eat the foods the books tell me I can.’

  James kissed her forehead and she closed her eyes, inhaling the familiar musky smell of his aftershave. ‘I know you’ll be great,’ he said. ‘Our baby is so lucky to have you for a mother.’

  Her heart beat faster at his words; she wished she had as much faith in herself as James did.

  3

  DIANA

  Saturday, 4 June 2011

  An act of human arrogance. Man trying to take the place of God. That’s how the Catholic Church viewed IVF and any other artificial methods to conceive a baby, so Diana’s mother told her over an otherwise pleasant lunch one Saturday.

  ‘What’s so arrogant about it?’ Diana’s husband Liam asked her when she told him later that night while they were getting ready for bed.

  ‘Apparently Father Keating said that anything other than natural conception by a married couple is against the will of God.’

  ‘Well, if Father Keating says so, then it must be true.’

  Diana rolled her eyes at Liam as she stepped out of her skirt, folded it and placed it in the wicker clothes hamper in the corner of their bedroom. She also scooped up Liam’s clothes, which he had thrown in the direction of the hamper but not bothered to put inside. His jeans hung over the rail at the end of their iron-framed bed, which had once belonged to Diana’s grandparents. Two black socks had separated and ended up a metre apart – one next to the white dressing table Diana had kept from her childhood, the oval mirror tarnished at the edges and the trinket drawers swollen from age, and the other by an armchair she had found at a kerbside pick-up and re-upholstered when she couldn’t clean off the musty smell of its previous owners. She had inherited her father’s frugality and as a result their house was filled with a confused mix of pre-loved furniture, mostly found or given to them by friends or family who didn’t want the pieces any more. Diana didn’t mind; she wasn’t a fan of the photos she saw in magazines of houses in which the couch cushions matched the artwork, which matched a collection of vases – always a set of three – placed on a shelf with no purpose other than aesthetics. She felt that houses were for living in, not for display.

  ‘You know how Mum is,’ Diana said once the clothes were in the hamper. ‘She listens to everything Father Keating says. It’s an Italian thing.’

  Diana’s mother had attended mass with Father Keating every Sunday since she could remember. Diana used to go as well, but she stopped once she started dating Liam. He was also raised Catholic but he didn’t believe in attending church other than for weddings, christenings or funerals. Diana hadn’t seen Father Keating since he officiated at her wedding to Liam a year earlier.

  Liam pulled back the floral quilt cover and settled himself into bed, propping several pillows behind his back. ‘Well, did you tell her it’s like adopting a baby?’ he asked as he watched Diana pull on her pyjamas, a flannelette pair with images of polar bears that he hated but she insisted on wearing in winter. The seal around their bedroom window was in need of repair. In winter the cold seeped through the gap under the aluminium frame and their bedroom grew so cold Diana could see the mist of her breath hovering like a cloud above her face. She reminded Liam to fix it whenever she dared but he always reacted in anger, telling her she was nagging him, so she gave up and relied on her flannelette pyjamas and thick socks instead.

  ‘We’re just adopting an embryo rather than a baby,’ he said. ‘It’s the same thing.’

  ‘I told her.’

  ‘And? What did she say?’

  Diana walked over to her husband’s side of the bed and put both hands on his cheeks, mimicking her mother. ‘But, Diana, my darling, it won’t be your baby. It will be another woman’s baby. Another woman’s and another man’s. How can you put another woman’s child in your womb?’

  Liam laughed. ‘Classic Eleanor. Any chance for drama.’

  Diana walked over to the dressing table and picked up her hairbrush. ‘I know. I felt like we were in a soap opera.’

  ‘How’d the conversation end up?’

  Diana paused mid-stroke. She always brushed her long brown hair out before she went to sleep. Liam loved her hair and wouldn’t let her cut it, so she kept it long to please him even though she knew it was unusual for a woman in her mid-twenties to have hair long enough to reach her waist.

  Liam was watching her. ‘Di? How’d the conversation end up?’

  ‘I told her we’d go to dinner at her place tomorrow night to talk about it some more.’

  He thumped his hand against the bedcovers. ‘Damn it, why’d you say that? I don’t want to go to your mother’s house again. We’re there all the time.’

  She knew that would make him angry. He’d be even angrier when he found out that her mother had also invited Father Keating.

  Diana put her hairbrush down and sat on the corner of the bed, facing Liam. She reached for her husband’s hand across the bed. ‘Please do this for me. It will mean so much to Mum, and to me.’

  Liam blew a breath through his nose. ‘Fine, if it will stop you talking about it. But we’re not staying long. There are a million things I’d rather do on a Sunday night than hang out with your mother.’

  ‘We’ll stay an hour, tops.’

  Liam gave her a disbelieving look and then threw all but one of the pillows on to the floor and lay down with his back to her. Within a couple of minutes Diana heard his steady breathing, which told her he was already asleep.

  Diana quietly finished getting ready for bed and then slipped
between the sheets next to her husband, already dreading his reaction when he found out he would have to spend an evening with the priest. She debated waking him up to tell him so she could deal with his anger privately rather than in front of her mother and Father Keating, but she knew if she told him he would never agree to go.

  • • •

  ‘Stop fidgeting,’ Liam said as he took one hand off the steering wheel to pull Diana’s ponytail from her grasp. ‘It drives me mad when you do that.’

  Before they were married, Liam had found it endearing the way Diana constantly fidgeted with things around her: how she tore paper napkins into confetti, or twisted the chain for the silver locket she always wore into a tight spiral when she was nervous, or, as she had just been doing, ran her hair between her fingers when she was deep in thought. But lately whenever he caught her fidgeting he just told her off.

  Liam pulled the car into the kerb out the front of Diana’s mother’s house, a two-storey structure with the imposing columns and elaborate entrance favoured by Italian families, while Diana rubbed her locket between her fingers without realising it. When she saw the reaction on Liam’s face she dropped her hands to her sides and clenched the fabric of her skirt to prevent her hands from betraying her again.

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered.

  She wanted to make a joke to lighten the mood, but from the scowl on Liam’s face she knew a joke wouldn’t be well received. His dark eyes, inherited from a distant Spanish ancestor, turned even darker when he was in a foul mood like this, which seemed to happen often lately, and his full eyebrows knotted together in a way that caused a deep line to appear in the middle of his forehead. Diana had told him many times that if he kept scowling he would end up with wrinkles well before his thirtieth birthday, but that tended to make his mood even worse.