The Good Mother

by Sue Miller

  “And did she show signs, Doctor, of having been traumatized by the events described here?”

  Payne’s head moved quickly. “No, I think not. In part because, as Anna has suggested, it occurred in a context where there was a fair amount of nudity, a fair amount of physical contact going on; and she had gotten comfortable with that. That was all familiar to her.” He frowned. “I did find her preoccupied with those issues, to a degree. But it was hard for me to sort out the reasons for that. And it seemed to me just as likely that she’d picked up on Brian’s response to her telling him about it, about what happened.”

  “Could you explain that?” Muth seemed not to understand.

  “Yes. Molly misses her father, cares for him very deeply, but doesn’t see him often enough. And when she does see him, he’s frequently got his mind on other things—work, or his new marriage. In that situation, she brought up this episode with Leo Cutter, and suddenly found her father intensely interested in her, in what she had to say. In a purely unconscious way, without being aware of doing it, she may have responded to that increased interest.”

  “And this would account for her preoccupation?” It was a revelation to Muth.

  “It might at least in part account for it. Children,” Payne smiled ruefully, “use what power they have.” Then he sat forward and grew serious again. “But another real source of preoccupation, I think, is that the rules are so clearly different from household to household. And where you have that, when a child has to manage that, often she spends a lot of time exploring the boundaries, testing the difference in limits. It’s a difficult transition for a small child to make, between different standards of behavior, and it’s not unusual for them to spend a lot of time right on the edge of that difference.” He made a gesture oddly like Dr. Herzog’s the day before, a slice across his palm with his other hand.

  “I think in all likelihood what we’re seeing in Molly is some of a little of each of these kinds of behaviors.”

  Muth frowned, the slow student. “But you don’t find her damaged by the episode we’ve heard about?”

  “Not damaged.” Payne shook his head and sat back. “I don’t think she perceived it as frightening or threatening in any way.”

  Muth nodded slowly, taking it in. Then he said, “Doctor, you’ve heard testimony from Dr. Herzog, who also saw Molly.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know Dr. Herzog’s work?”

  “I don’t. But the psychiatric world is large, and we’re from different regions.”

  “Well, Dr. Herzog concluded, from watching Molly play with these”—his hand made its dainty circle—“anatomically correct dolls, that she had been traumatized, that she was suffering from the effects of the experience. Can you respond to that?”

  “With all due respect to Dr. Herzog, I can’t agree with him. And I’d suggest that these dolls”—he turned to the judge—“I don’t know if you’ve seen these dolls, your honor.” The judge nodded ambiguously, and Payne turned back to Muth. “Well, these dolls are themselves, I think, terrifying.” Payne’s thick brows had lowered. “Preoccupying themselves . . . for a child. The male genitals are . . . deformed, at best. The female genitals look like a wound, an injury. Maybe, at best, some strange animal. And there’s all this hair. It’s the child’s nightmare of what sexuality might be.

  “So if a child was unable to stop focusing on those genitals, well, I’d say that was all too predictable a response. A fascination with that. I really must say,” he shook his head sternly, “I disapprove of the use of a prop so distracting, so insistent on one meaning. If a child can’t bear to look at them, we say he’s traumatized. If he can look at nothing but them, we also say he’s traumatized. Yet either response, given the bizarre, disturbing nature of what he’s looking at—she’s looking at, in this case—seems perfectly understandable to me.”

  “So you do not agree with Dr. Herzog’s findings?” Muth frowned.

  “No. And the most relevant observation I had had about Molly had nothing to do with these sexual issues at all.”

  “And what was that observation, Doctor?”

  “Well, that Molly’s real concern, the driving force for her right now, is a fear of being left, of abandonment. When she played with—what I’ll call more nonthreatening toys, just dolls, animals, puppets—what got acted out again and again was her sense of being left alone, her anger at both her parents. If she’s at risk in any sense, it’s around that issue.”

  “Aha,” Muth said. “And what do you see, as the source of that fear?”

  “The divorce, of course, is the main source, and connected with that, her father’s departure. She has internalized that, blames herself for it to some degree, in spite of what she’s been told by both parents.”

  “Which is?”

  “That it’s not her fault, that Daddy and Mommy couldn’t get along, and so on. She knows those things. If you ask her why her parents got divorced, she’ll tell you that in a quite reasonable, quasi-grownup voice. And then she’ll play out for you a little girl who’s so naughty that she’s put in a room all alone.”

  “I see. And—”

  “But she also fears her mother’s abandonment,” Payne interrupted. “It’s in that sense that her mother’s relationship with Leo has been difficult for her, though there’s also the shift to full-time day care to take into account. But here you’ve got a little girl who’s lost her father, been very close to Mother. And now she begins to lose Mother in some sense too. And so we see the immaturity, the acting out, the need for attention.”

  Muth nodded, silent for a moment. “I see. And can you talk for a minute about the child’s relationship to the mother?”

  “Yes. It’s very close, very intense. Not inappropriately so for a child her age. But the mother has been the main source of affection, though she’s also deeply attached to Father.”

  “But he’s more remote.”

  Fine stood. “Objection your honor. He’s leading the witness.”

  The judge nodded. “I’ll sustain that. Rephrase your question, Counselor.”

  “Ah,” Muth said. “O.K. So you’d say . . . so, who, in your opinion, is the psychological parent in this case?”

  Payne smiled. “Well, I don’t draw the line in quite that way, Mr. Muth. I do know what you’re talking about, but the child here is attached to both parents.” He turned to the judge, frowning. “That’s part of the difficulty in this case, your honor. And both parents are very attached to the child, too. It seems to me that neither is using custody in any way to punish the other. They both feel that the child would genuinely be better off with them. Each feels he can offer the better environment. But I would say that your client, Mr. Muth,” he turned back to Muth, “your client, Anna, is more important to Molly’s psychological health at this point. That Molly is at some risk around the issue of feeling abandoned. And that to lose her mother now would be yet another, even more painful wrench—the most painful wrench possible, given their closeness—and that would be the most damaging thing I could think of for this little girl right now.”

  “And it’s on this basis that you offer your opinion?”

  “Well, and feeling that there’s not a risk in the home, Mother’s home, if she stays there.”

  “And on what do you base that? That opinion?”

  “Well, first of all that everyone realizes that what happened shouldn’t have. That Anna’s ready to have counseling if that’s the court’s recommendation. And she’s also ready to stop seeing Mr. Cutter, if we wish to make that a condition.” He looked up at the judge again. “I look on the episode as just that, an episode. An episode of bad judgment. But not worth changing custody over, particularly when the child is so attached to her mother, and the mother is perfectly capable of caring for her.”

  Muth’s head bobbed slowly, soberly. “Thank you,” he said.

  Fine walked directly up to Payne when he was called, talking even as he approached.

  “Now, Doctor,
you call this an episode of bad judgment.”

  “Yes.” Payne nodded.

  “You mean the incident where Molly touched Mr. Cutter’s genital organs?”

  “Yes.”

  “But the fact of the matter is, isn’t it, that for the entire duration of her mother’s relationship with Mr. Cutter, the child was exposed to a high degree of sexual activity?”

  “That’s not my understanding.” Payne’s mouth tightened.

  “That’s not your understanding?”

  “No. For the first month or so, Molly was exposed to nothing.”

  “Oh,” Fine said sarcastically. “So it was only for the last several months of the relationship that the child was exposed to their sexual activity.”

  “No. I don’t consider nudity sexual activity.”

  “Do you consider intercourse sexual activity, Doctor?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And on at least one occasion they had intercourse in front of the child, did they not?”

  “The child seems to have been asleep, Mr. Fine.” Payne’s voice was soft, controlled.

  “I see.” Fine turned and faced the courtroom. “And is this something you recommend, Doctor, having intercourse in bed with a child who may or may not be asleep?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “So that would be another episode of bad judgment.”

  Payne paused. “Yes,” he said.

  Fine turned. “And the amount of nudity, Doctor. That the child was apparently quite used to seeing her mother and Mr. Cutter naked in bed and in the bathroom. Is that bad judgment?”

  “I don’t think it was a good idea, no.”

  “And that they waltzed around—excuse me—walked around, the apartment naked? That she watched Mr. Cutter take showers? Is that another example of bad judgment?”

  “Well, in the best of circumstances, I think it wouldn’t happen.”

  “So time and time again, Mrs. Dunlap showed bad judgment around these sexual issues with her daughter.”

  “In this relationship, yes.”

  “But you would recommend the child go back with this mother?” Fine’s tone was incredulous.

  “Nobody is a perfect parent. The child is deeply attached—”

  “Yes or no, Doctor.”

  “Yes. I do recommend that.” Payne set his mouth in a tight line.

  Fine’s tone changed. “Now, Mrs. Dunlap works at two jobs, doesn’t she?”

  “Two part-time jobs, yes.”

  “And this has meant she’s had to put her child into day care full-time, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you mention in your report that Mrs. Dunlap has been psychologically more absent, I think you said, since the beginning of her relationship with Mr. Cutter?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “So there’s some sense in which the abandonment you speak of as having traumatized the child has been caused by the mother’s withdrawal, and by her having to work more.”

  “I’ve said that already, yes. But that’s no reason to abandon her more . . .”

  “All right, Doctor, fine. Let me ask you this, Doctor. Isn’t it the case that Mrs. Dunlap is consenting to give up Mr. Cutter just to improve her chances of getting her daughter back?”

  “Well, not just There are other complicated aspects . . .”

  “In part, then, to improve her chances?”

  “Well, I suppose so. Otherwise, I assume she might not.”

  “So, if the court had not intervened, at the instigation of my client, it would not have occurred to her to give up Mr. Cutter, is that correct?”

  “It might not have.”

  “Or to change her sexual behavior in her home?”

  “I can’t know that.”

  “Yet you say the child is not at risk in this home.”

  “That’s right.”

  Mr. Fine stared for a moment at Payne. Then he looked up at the judge. “That’s all,” he said, after a pause.

  Muth got up again and asked Payne to speculate on the damage to Molly if Brian got custody. Payne grew expansive again as he talked about her need for stability, for the continuation of her close tie with me, her most important tie.

  “So in this sense, Mrs. Dunlap has been a reliable figure in the child’s life?”

  “Absolutely. And in some sense Molly’s sense of herself is premised on Mrs. Dunlap’s continuing presence in her life.” He leaned forward. “Now I’m not saying that she couldn’t survive. But it’d be like deliberately, say, breaking her arm, knowing it would heal, but that some treatment would be necessary, some long or short period of recovery, certainly some excruciating pain. What I’m saying is that to move her to her father’s care now would be to wound her, scar her again. I’m saying you have to take this into account.”

  Muth nodded. “And you’re saying this, in spite of Mrs. Dunlap’s present busier schedule, and the increased hours of childcare?”

  “Yes,” Payne said firmly. “I realize that no parent can spend every minute with a child, and it would be harmful to a child if a parent did. Now it may be, and I think it is the case, in this case, that neither parent really has an ideal amount of time to spend with this child. For different reasons each of them has to spend more hours away from the child than I’d recommend. But there is no ideal home. And the fact is that Molly’s relationship with her mother, with Anna, is a strong one, that she has Anna as an internal parent, that Anna has done that . . . homework with her, as it were.” He smiled. “And that’s why she’s been able to withstand as much separation as she has, because her mother is part of her, she has enough experience of her mother coming back, over and over, even when she goes to day care. Having her mother is like an inner strength she carries with her, that enables her to step towards independence, that independence we all want for our kids. But it’s because Anna’s like a piece of her. What I’m suggesting is we not compromise that now, not say to her: ‘Here, you’ve stood all this so well, we’re going to test you even further—by taking the person who’s given you that strength away.’ That’s putting her at risk, in my book.”

  Muth, nodding steadily, slowly through this, waited a moment to let it all sink in before he said, “Well, thank you. Thank you, Doctor.”

  The last person Muth called was one of Molly’s day-care teachers. Not Maggie, the one I’d seen in the restaurant. This was a woman named Pat. Molly had been in her group the year before Brian and I split up, and Pat knew the teachers who’d had Molly last year. She testified that while she’d been Molly’s teacher, I was the one who’d brought Molly to school, picked her up, came to parent conferences, helped at the center. That when Molly cried during the day, mine was the name she called. That Molly was a happy child who’d had a few adjustment problems since the divorce, but seemed normal to her, seemed very attached to me.

  Fine declined to cross-examine, “In view of the hour,” he said.

  Then each lawyer stood and presented his case once again, using their elaborate language of blame and justification. While they talked I had the sense, suddenly, that what they were saying had nothing to do with me. Muth was ingenuous, shocked at the preposterous nature of the motion; Fine was sarcastic, appalled at our attempt to excuse my behavior. Watching them, I remembered their muted, somehow conspiratorial greeting in the echoing courthouse hall, their laughter coming out of Mrs. Harkessian’s office together. They were acting now, I realized; as I had acted, in my fancy dress and my repudiation of Leo; as Brian had acted, in his indignation; as Leo had acted in his haircut, his new jacket. Only Payne had been himself, had escaped playing some part. The rest was all a kind of elaborate charade, it had nothing to do with who we really were or what really ought to happen.

  But when I looked at Brian, he was alert, interested. He nodded his agreement with Fine’s points as though that were my life up there, and his, and Molly’s. I felt an impulse to stand up and shout out some truth, to begin this again from the start, to change the vo
cabulary.

  But the pipes hissed. The judge listened carefully. The lawyers made their pitches. And then it was over.

  “All over but the waiting,” Muth said to me, smiling, as he bent to shut the car door after me. I smiled back at him through the thick glass, and started the car.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IT WAS AN ODDLY WARM DAY FOR OCTOBER. The sun was shining brightly, though the shadows were long. The streets were full of people. I drove Leo home in silence. On the sidewalk in front of the Cambridge Street projects, three women lay on cheap webbed chairs, wearing shorts, smoking and talking. Donna Summer blared from a box on the concrete next to them. I was amazed at this, amazed that everything was the same. A man I accidentally cut off at an intersection gave me the finger, and I stared at him, unsure of how this connected with me. Leo turned to me at the stoplight in front of Sears. “What are you going to do now?” he asked. His voice was hoarse, as though he hadn’t spoken in a long time. He cleared his throat.

  I looked back at him. I didn’t understand what he meant.

  He waited, looking at me. Then he said, “I mean, do you want me to come home with you? Or to come to my place?”

  The car behind me honked. I looked up. The light was green. My foot pushed the accelerator. “Or do you want to be alone?”

  I nodded. “Alone,” I said.

  After a moment he said, “I’ll walk from your house then. You don’t have to go out of your way.”

  “O.K.,” I answered.

  He’d come down to Muth’s office with me and waited in the car while I went up. The secretary had called at about ten that morning, said that Mr. Muth wondered if I could get in today, was there a possibility? One of the piano students I had had to cancel was Ursula, and she had called Leo. I hadn’t wanted his company, but he was ardent, determined to help, to comfort me if it was bad, to be the one celebrating with me if it was good. He pointed out that his coming along would mean I wouldn’t have to worry about parking, I could just run in quickly and find out. I had picked him up at his corner at two-thirty.