Happy and You Know It

by Laura Hankin

  “Sorry, Thea?” Whitney asked as Thea continued to type away on her phone. “I hope you don’t mind me asking but, what are you . . . are you typing something about the TrueMommy?”

  “Yeah, I know a few other mothers and moms-to-be,” Thea said. “I’m warning them too.”

  “You don’t have to . . . ,” Whitney began helplessly as Thea pressed send.

  “Women have to look out for one another,” Thea said. “Right?” Her phone began to buzz with responses, which she showed to Claire:

  Weird! Never heard of it but thanks, I’ll keep an eye out.

  Yeah, not surprised. Wellness stuff is generally a crock of shit.

  Her phone buzzed a third time, and Thea rolled her eyes. “This is my wife’s sister, who lives in Hoboken. She’s a total nutter. Her greatest ambition was to be a trophy wife, and she got it. I have a hard time believing she and Amy come from the same gene pool. I suspect the milkman.” She laughed, but then bit her lip as she read the response, first to herself, next aloud to the other women:

  “Uh don’t know where u heard that, but no scam. It’s totally amazing. Tell me these ladies are not the hottest healthiest mothers in all of New Jersey!!”

  “Oh. Oh, no,” Whitney said, putting her head in her hands.

  Thea held up the phone, showing them a picture of a bunch of blond women sitting on a rug, babies in front of them. Then she handed the phone to Claire. “Amy’s sister is the extremely tan one,” she said as the little ellipses that meant Amy’s sister was typing appeared at the bottom of the screen. With an electronic whoosh, the message came through as Amara, Whitney, and Claire looked down at the phone.

  My playgroup!! Minus Tara, who took the picture. She’s got this thing about photos because her cousin’s baby’s picture was used on some child porn site, which is like OMG but also I’m not going to NOT take pictures of my baby, so can u not make me feel bad about it?

  Claire, Amara, and Whitney looked up at one another, the realization hitting them all at the same time.

  “Oh, my God,” Whitney said.

  “Motherfucker,” Amara said.

  Claire handed the phone back to Thea. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “but we have to go.”

  Chapter 36

  Gwen sat in a far-back corner of her walk-in closet, going over her plan for the next few weeks. Christopher had his own closet and never came this far into this little room of hers—she’d hung up a bulwark of old clothes from her parents that she couldn’t bear to get rid of, and the musty coats and bathrobes acted like a charm to ward him off, smelling as they did of her grief at losing her mother and father and her disappointment in him as a replacement. The one time he had barged in on her, she’d simply pulled her father’s old sports coat off a hanger and pretended to weep into it, and Christopher had backed out, telling her to take all the time she needed. So now it was a perfect place to store anything she didn’t want him to see. She took any extra TrueMommy shipments she had lying around, a leather-bound planner full of her records and notes, and cash that she hadn’t yet been able to deposit in her private bank account, and put them in old shoeboxes from Bloomingdale’s, then shoved them back onto a very high shelf when she wasn’t using them, just in case Rosie came in sometime to explore. The closet, which had been intended as a servants’ quarters back when the house was first constructed, was big enough for an armchair and bright with recessed lighting. She found it funny that her closet doubled as her office, an appropriate fit for the kind of double life she was leading.

  She’d told Christopher that she needed to be alone and rest for a little while, and he—walking on eggshells around her and trying to be the perfect husband over the past couple of months in the hopes that she was fool enough to give him another chance—had promised to keep the girls occupied. As she made notes in her planner, the faint sounds of the rest of her family playing together rose from downstairs. Rosie let out a happy shriek as Christopher roared. Gwen could picture him chasing their laughing little girl around the room as Reagan watched and clapped her hands, babbling, “Dada,” her favorite word.

  The girls would miss him. She intended to fight for near-full custody once she dropped the divorce bomb on him, and she thought she had a strong case. He had a pattern, after all, and if he couldn’t control himself around women and gambling, could he really be trusted to parent these girls as well as she could? He would feel terrible and self-loathing, and she would be just generous enough with her concessions that he’d be grateful and not fight her too hard or dig too deeply into finances. She’d let him visit, and the girls could go stay with him sometimes, but for the most part, they’d live at the Connecticut house with her. Sooner or later, she’d be able to find a new man to be a good father figure for them. She knew what to look for this time—a steady, unremarkable man with a well-paying job who felt grateful to have her. Someone who knew that she was supposed to be out of his league and would work every day to keep her and her girls happy.

  She looked at the planner in front of her. She was getting so close now. She circled a date in October when she’d start to wind down the whole thing. She could start the new year fresh, with only a small, loyal group of customers. She smiled. A fresh start sounded wonderful.

  Downstairs, the doorbell rang.

  Chapter 37

  Whitney stood on the steps of Gwen’s brownstone behind Amara, Claire, and the rest of the hurriedly contacted playgroup women flanking them, all of them slightly out of breath, their children having been left with various husbands. Whitney trembled like she had a fever as Amara rang the doorbell. “I hope you know,” Amara said under her breath, “that if Gwen turns out to be a lying monster, that still doesn’t excuse you screwing her husband.”

  “Oh, believe me, I know,” Whitney said.

  Then Christopher answered the door, cradling Reagan in one arm. That charming smile she had loved so much beamed straight out at Amara and the mass of women. It faded as he saw Claire and then disappeared completely when he registered Whitney’s presence. She felt a stab of pain, like the plunge of a needle into unbroken skin, at the look of revulsion that passed over his face, and then a deeper, more abiding sadness at the death of an old Whitney—a Whitney who thought that the passion of a handsome, wealthy man could save her. That Whitney and her ignorance shriveled into dust as this Whitney looked straight ahead. She had more important things to worry about now. She felt capable of lifting a car with her bare hands. Of murder. Of anything.

  “Is Gwen here?” Amara asked Christopher.

  He nodded, confused. “She’s resting upstairs in the bedroom,” he said. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not sure if this is a good time. . . .”

  “Take the children somewhere else,” Whitney said. “Now.”

  Chapter 38

  Gwen heard footsteps coming down the hallway, toward the bedroom door. Christopher, she thought with a flash of annoyance, and shoved the planner back into a shoebox, leaving the top askew in her haste. She grabbed the nearest coat of her mother’s, an old full-length mink pelt, and thrust it on, burying her face in its sleeve and trying to work up some tears that would scare him away.

  But Amara opened the door, with Ellie, Meredith, and Vicki filing in behind her. Oh, God, had they come to take her out for some attempt at a girls’ night, some misguided gesture of friendship? The last thing she had the energy for right now was some dinner where they all steadily got plastered while attempting to convince her that she was too good for Christopher. (She’d known that for years now.)

  Strange, Claire was there too. Gwen had hoped that, during her forced isolation, Claire would pickle in alcohol and self-destruct. What a disappointment to see her looking healthier than ever. Gwen gave a sniffle, thinking of excuses to send them away.

  “Did we catch you in the middle of something?” Amara asked, her voice a little cold for someone about to spirit her off on a fu
n adventure.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Gwen said, struggling to her feet, acutely aware of the shoebox next to her. Just don’t look at it, she told herself, and they won’t look either. “I wasn’t expecting you all!”

  “Surprise,” Amara said.

  “I feel like I’m crying every time you see me now,” she said lightly. “It’s just . . . my parents died when I was in my twenties, and I’ve kept some things of theirs, and I come in here sometimes so it’s like I’m with them. Maybe you could give me a moment to collect myself, and then I could make us some coffee downstairs?” She looked up, expecting to see their sympathetic faces, only to notice Whitney standing at the back of the crowd. Her stomach dropped. “What is she doing here?” she asked. She fixed Whitney with her most guilt-inducing stare. “If you’ve come to apologize, I’m not ready.” Whitney looked back, brazen, and Gwen’s doubts began to grow.

  “Oh, that’s not at all close to the reason that we’re here,” Amara said. And then Ellie and Meredith jumped forward, pushing Gwen down into the armchair, restraining her with their arms, and she knew that, somehow, they’d figured it out. Their palms against her shoulders were firm, and she winced at the pressure.

  “You’re hurting me!” she said. “What’s going on? Why are you doing this?”

  “Don’t play dumb with us,” Amara said. “We know about TrueMommy.”

  “What about TrueMommy?” she asked, struggling against Ellie and Meredith as her mind whirred. “The speed? I don’t understand why you’re attacking me—”

  “So you’re, what?” Amara asked. “A fucking TrueMommy shill? A plant they send to manipulate women who consider you a friend?”

  Things clicked into place. They thought she was some minion. She could work with that. She could spin that straw into perfect gold. “Oh, God,” she said, and let her voice choke up. “You’re right. I was a plant, but I didn’t realize I was a harmful one! I am so, so sorry. I never meant to hurt you all like this. I didn’t know—”

  “Yeah, right,” Ellie said, digging her fingernails into Gwen’s shoulder.

  “Okay, I knew a little,” Gwen yelped. “They asked me if I was interested in working out a deal where I got a commission in exchange for doing my best to keep people enthusiastic about it. I thought it was just an innocent marketing tactic, like any brand might do, like Whitney did in all her sponsored posts! Then they kept asking for more and more—to report on anything out of the ordinary, to keep an eye on things. I didn’t realize how out of hand it would get.”

  “You’d screw us over for a commission when an entire playgroup can fit in your closet? What the hell is wrong with you?” Amara asked. “What kind of money-hungry monster are you?”

  “And what about the group in Hoboken?” Whitney asked.

  So they knew about that too. Gwen fell back on the most trusted weapon in her arsenal—widening those blueberry eyes of hers. “We don’t have any money left,” she said haltingly. “Christopher gambled most of it away. I had to do something or we’d lose the brownstone and wouldn’t be able to provide for our girls. You all have to understand—I needed to protect them.” She bit down hard on her tongue and let the shock of it bring tears to her eyes. “I knew there was something fishy about the pills, like we all did, but I didn’t know details. I closed my eyes to it all until it was too late, and I am so, so sorry for how I hurt you all and the other groups they sent me to.”

  The hatred in Amara’s face started to soften infinitesimally, the wariness in Whitney’s posture loosening. Ellie and Meredith began to release their grips on her as Vicki blinked, having already stayed focused far longer than she was used to. They wanted to believe the best in her and the best in themselves. They wanted to think that no one who had gotten to know them so well could want to cause them harm. She’d make it easy for them to hold on to that illusion.

  “It was one of those things where you don’t realize how deep in you’re getting, and when you finally do realize, you’re too afraid to tell the truth. I wanted to tell you so many times, but I worried they’d find out, that they’d harm me and the girls.” She looked at Whitney. “We’ve all made mistakes, haven’t we?” Whitney looked down at the ground. “You have to understand. I’ve hated myself every day since it started.” When she finished, the other women were all silent for a moment.

  Then Amara shook her head and let out a heavy sigh. “God, Gwen,” she said. “You really fucked up.”

  Triumph began to glimmer inside Gwen, still nascent, but growing stronger and stronger. “I know that. Please. What do you want me to do?”

  “Stay away from us,” Amara said. “Tell any other playgroups you’ve been doing this to what’s going on. Let TrueMommy know that we’re onto them and they’d better stop.”

  “I will,” she said. “I swear.” She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, God,” she said. “Where are Reagan and Rosie? They don’t know what’s happening, do they?”

  “No,” Ellie said. “Christopher took them to the park.”

  “Thank you,” Gwen said, and Ellie nodded.

  “Let’s go,” Amara said to the other women, and as they all gave Gwen final glances of disgust or regret or bafflement and then turned to go, Gwen allowed herself to relax just a little bit too much.

  “Despite everything, I am sorry about Christopher,” Whitney said, turning around unexpectedly, far too close to the shoebox, and because Gwen had thought she was safe, she flinched, making a movement toward the box on instinct as if to grab it out of Whitney’s reach. She stopped herself, but it was too late. Whitney had seen it.

  Chapter 39

  Oh,” Whitney said, and so Amara turned around right in time to see Whitney lunge forward, scooping a shoebox off the ground a moment quicker than Gwen could get to it. What the hell did Whitney want with Gwen’s shoes? This wasn’t exactly the time to be raiding her closet. But Whitney reached in and pulled out a clear Tupperware container—large enough to hold half a chicken and filled to the very top with loose TrueMommy caplets. She handed the container to Amara and then grabbed a leather journal and began flipping through. “The notes in here don’t seem like someone who was just supposed to keep an eye on things,” Whitney said. “There are schedules. Accounting.”

  “What?” Amara asked as Claire held out her hand for the planner.

  Gwen let out a strange, disbelieving laugh. “Oh, come on,” she said. “You’re going to listen to Whitney?” Amara bent her head over the journal while Claire turned the pages slowly, both of them looking at Gwen’s cryptic abbreviations in her neat cursive. This wasn’t the work of some minion. This was the work of a mastermind. Amara felt the world growing fuzzy around her, Gwen’s voice like a mosquito in her ear as she buzzed relentlessly on. “Whitney, who lied to you all for months about sleeping with my husband, who might just as easily have slept with any of yours?”

  Amara realized she was hugging the box of TrueMommy and wrenched off the top, spilling a conical mound of the amber pills into her palm. The smooth hill of capsules gleamed and beckoned. All this time, Gwen had been pretending she felt their pain when really she was the source of it.

  “Gwen. You are a sociopath,” Amara said.

  “No,” Gwen said. “No. I wanted to help you. The pills made your lives easier—”

  “Our lives,” Amara said, dazed, as rage began to gather and swirl behind her eyes. “You never took them at all, did you?”

  Gwen hesitated for just a moment too long. “I did!”

  Amara rocketed toward Gwen, a short-fused firecracker set ablaze, shaking her handful of pills in Gwen’s face. “I should shove these down your fucking throat, you psycho,” she yelled. “You’ve infected our entire lives!” She hurled the pills at Gwen, who flinched as the capsules bounced off her and scattered on the floor, far too light to hurt the way Amara wanted them to. “Do you understand what you’ve done to us?” she yelled, ready to sla
p Gwen, to tear out her heartless heart. Claire stepped forward and put her hand on Amara’s shoulder, and suddenly, Amara saw herself as if from above, saw what her own wrathful body had become, and hated it. She stepped back. “Of course you don’t understand,” Amara said, her voice cracking with exhaustion. “You never even took them.”

  Gwen looked Amara straight in the eye. Then she gathered up a handful of the pills and, as if in an offering, swallowed them.

  Chapter 40

  The capsules scraped Gwen’s throat as they went down, leaving her raw. She would have to humble herself before the women, do what they wanted her to do, distract them. But Amara simply stepped back, her whole body slumping, and turned into Claire’s embrace, beginning to cry. “I don’t want to be like her. I don’t want to live some double life anymore,” Amara said between her racking sobs as Claire stroked her hair. “I don’t want to keep this secret from Daniel. I don’t want to keep lying.”

  “But what about everything we said before?” Ellie asked. “About Child Protective Services, and everyone finding out?”

  “Gwen was the one who brought up Child Protective Services, wasn’t she?” Claire asked, and Meredith furrowed her brow as if trying to remember, then let out a gasp as she confirmed it in her mind.

  “Oh, Gwen,” she said.

  “Please,” Gwen said, desperate. “Please. Just let me wind it down in secret. I’ll stop it all. No one will get hurt. I’ll find some way to prove it to you. You can look at the records. I can give you the names of all the women so you can check up on them. I’ll give you a cut if you want! Just let me take care of it.” Her body started to tingle as it absorbed the drug, her levelheadedness disappearing in a million synaptic bursts. She fought to maintain control. She could wind down the operation and still have her smaller group of women who didn’t need the wellness excuse. She could still get the Connecticut house.