The Perfect Mother

by Aimee Molloy

  Francie hears Lowell’s heavy footfall on the stairs as she scrapes the last bits of tuna fish from the can into the bowl. She wipes her hands on her shorts and hurries to the bathroom to check herself in the mirror, tame the frizz from her hair, and apply a spritz of floral body spray to each wrist. Before Lowell even has a chance to insert his key, she’s opening the door—“Guess what? Winnie was on the news. She’s a famous actress—”

  But then she notices the dark stubble on the man’s face, the wide girth of his waist, the bulge of a gun at his hip. Francie stops, her words hanging in the air as she looks up into the gray eyes of this stranger, blank under the brim of an NYPD hat.

  “Nell.” Nell feels a hand on her arm. “You need to wake up.”

  Nell, the police are here.

  It’s fifteen years earlier, and she’s standing in her apartment in DC, opening the curtains, seeing the dark sedan parked across the street, a man in a black T-shirt and sunglasses leaning against it, lighting a cigarette, his eyes trained on her window.

  “Nell.” Sebastian is jostling her shoulder, dissolving the memory. “Wake up.”

  Her mouth is sour, and she tries to sit up but her head is pounding. Sebastian sets a mug of coffee on the bedside table and strokes the hair from her eyes.

  “The police are here.”

  She sits up. “Are you serious? Why?”

  “They want to talk to you. About last night.”

  Last night.

  It comes flooding back to her. Winnie. Midas. Walking home, waking Sebastian, telling him what happened before falling into a sporadic, tortured sleep.

  “They’re waiting in the living room.”

  She eases out of bed, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the dresser, still in the shirt she wore the night before. Mascara is smeared under her eyes, and her lips are like raisins, crusted with dried lipstick. “Where’s the baby?”

  “Asleep.”

  Nell picks up the mug. The coffee singes the back of her throat. “Okay. I’m coming.”

  The room twists as she walks into the master bathroom. She turns on the faucet, waiting for the water to get as cold as possible, and splashes it onto her face. She presses her eyes closed.

  What happened?

  The beginning of the night she can remember. Sipping a glass of wine while getting ready to go out. Arriving and sitting out back. The heat from the bodies around her, the conversations. She can feel the fizz of the first drink, the gin in her mouth. Billy Idol. She held Winnie’s phone, slid it into her purse. And then—Nell can’t recall the details. Only that Francie and Colette were worried about Winnie. They didn’t know where she was. Nell looked for Winnie’s phone. It was gone.

  Sebastian is setting a plate of chocolate digestives his mother had sent from England on the coffee table in front of the detective when Nell walks into the living room, wearing yoga pants and a thin cotton tunic she took from the top of the laundry basket. The detective is in his early forties and handsome, with soulful brown eyes, the dark shadow of a new beard on his face, a faint resemblance to Tom Cruise. He has a large tattoo of an eagle on his right forearm, the number 1775.

  “Marine Corps,” he says, turning his arm so she can see it better. “The year we were founded. Served for six years.” He nods at her right shoulder. “A hummingbird?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice is like gravel. “A calliope hummingbird, to be exact. Represents escape. And freedom.”

  His palm is clammy against hers. “Detective Mark Hoyt. Sorry to bother you at home.” Behind him stands a man with unruly gray eyebrows, and it comes back to her. Stephen Schwartz. He was the one talking to Alma at Winnie’s apartment. Hoyt reaches for a cookie from the armchair and then lifts the plate to Schwartz, who takes three.

  “Sorry,” Schwartz says. “Busy night. Missed my breakfast.”

  “We’re trying to get a picture of what happened last night,” Hoyt says, setting the plate back on the table before meeting Nell’s eyes. “Talking to some of you who were with Winnie Ross.”

  Nell takes a seat on the couch, her head throbbing. “Okay.” She notices the camera set up on a spindly tripod. Schwartz steps behind it and presses a button. “You okay with us recording this?” Hoyt asks. “It’s the new protocol at the department.”

  “Sure. Can I get a glass of water before we start?”

  Hoyt examines her and smirks. “Rough night?”

  She doesn’t return the smile. “Every night with a newborn is a rough night.”

  “I’ll get water for you,” Sebastian says.

  “So, this May Mothers group,” Hoyt says. “Can you tell us a little bit about it?”

  She clears the rasp from her throat and focuses. “It’s, you know, a mum’s group. We all have babies the same age. We’ve been meeting for about four months, since we were pregnant.”

  “At this bar? The Jolly Llama?”

  A shallow laugh escapes her. “No. We meet at the park.”

  “And whose idea was all this? To meet.”

  “Francie’s.”

  Schwartz glances at his notebook. “Mary Frances Givens?”

  “Yes. Well, not to start the group. We all signed up for it through The Village, the parent website. But Francie suggested the regular meetings.” The thought of going into the kitchen to pour a glass of red wine flashes through her mind—it’s the only thing that might stop the room from spinning—and she presses her palms hard against the coffee mug in her hands.

  “Uh-huh.” Hoyt nods. “And what do you do at these meetings?”

  “Oh, you know. New mum stuff.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “Like?”

  “Obsess about the babies. Look adoringly upon the babies. Obsess more about the babies.”

  Hoyt smiles. “Ms. Ross come to all of these meetings?”

  “A lot of them. Mostly in the beginning.” Nell pictures Winnie walking toward the circle, usually fifteen minutes late, taking her seat, enveloping them in the scent of soft, expensive perfume—exactly the way one would imagine a woman who looks like her would smell.

  “Did she talk much about herself?”

  “Not really.”

  Hoyt grins. “You know she was an actress?”

  Nell stops the mug inches from her mouth. “She’s an actress?”

  “She was. Star of a big cult television show twenty-some years ago. Bluebird?”

  “I had no idea.”

  “You ever watch it?”

  She remembers the girls at her high school talking about that show, always gushing about how cutting-edge it was, the risks it took—a gay character, a teenage pregnancy. “I heard of it, but I never watched it. More into math than TV at that age, to be honest.”

  Schwartz steps forward for another cookie. “And you’re the one who hired Alma Romero to babysit that night.”

  It hadn’t come out as a question. “Yes.”

  Hoyt takes a sip of his coffee and nods at Sebastian, who has returned with Nell’s water. “Very good, thanks.” He keeps the mug in his hands. “You insisted Mrs. Romero watch Midas so Ms. Ross could go out?”

  “I don’t know if I insisted—”

  “Couldn’t she have found her own sitter?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And also, in an e-mail you sent, you offered to pay Alma, if Winnie agreed to come out?”

  Nell takes the water and swallows half of it. “It’s silly now,” she says. “But at the time, none of us knew about Winnie’s money.”

  “Uh-huh. Where did you find Mrs. Romero?”

  “I got her name in the classified section of The Village.”

  “And how long did you know her before offering her the job of caring for your baby?”

  Nell thought the interview would last no more than an hour—Alma was, in fact, the sixth potential nanny Nell had spoken to. None of the other women were right, and then Alma arrived, all sunshine and laughter. She stayed nearly the entire afternoon, sitting with Nell in the living room, d
rinking tea, sharing the big bag of M&Ms Alma kept in her purse, passing Beatrice back and forth. Alma told Nell about her village in Honduras, where she’d been a midwife, delivering her first baby at the age of twelve. About coming to the United States three years earlier, slipping alone into the United States, across a shallow stretch of the Rio Grande, six months pregnant, doing whatever it would take to give her son a better life.

  Before leaving, Alma offered to take Beatrice while Nell showered and enjoyed a few minutes to herself. When Nell lay down on the bed, her legs clean-shaven for the first time since giving birth, she could hear Alma over the monitor, singing to the baby in Spanish. She woke with a start two hours later and rushed down the hall to the nursery. Beatrice was fast asleep on Alma’s chest, her tiny fingers grasping Alma’s thumb, Alma’s romance novel forgotten on her knee. “Five hours or so,” Nell says to Hoyt.

  “Did you check her references?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Run a criminal background check?”

  “No.”

  “No? That’s a little surprising.”

  “Is it?”

  “My wife thought about hiring a nanny once.” He shoots Schwartz a haughty look. “Man, she did so many background checks on those women, I told her I should stay home and she should go to work for the FBI.” He looks back at Nell. “But who can blame her? It can be terrifying. The things you read.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” Nell says. “I’ve never known a criminal to perform ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ in two languages. But maybe that’s just me.”

  “And what is your understanding of her immigration status?” Hoyt asks.

  “Her immigration status?” Nell pauses, careful to keep her eyes off Sebastian. “We didn’t discuss it.”

  Sebastian takes a seat beside Nell on the sofa, and the movement of the cushion sets off a wave of nausea. “I don’t understand,” Sebastian says, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “Why are you asking these questions? You can’t think Alma had anything to do with this.”

  “Just trying to dot our t’s. Cross our eyes.” Hoyt chuckles at the blunder and consults his notebook. “What about when you got to the bar? Notice anything strange? People coming or going that seemed out of the ordinary?”

  “No, we mostly kept to ourselves. We were out back, on the patio.”

  “And Winnie stayed with the group the whole time?”

  Suddenly, Nell sees herself. She’s standing at the sink of the women’s bathroom, breathing in the fetid smell of urine and bleach, drinking water from her cupped hands, her vision cloudy. Darkness crosses behind her in the mirror.

  “Ms. Mackey?”

  “We’d been there for about an hour, I think, when Winnie went to the bar.” The words echo in her ears. “Token went with her. That was the last anyone saw of her.”

  “There’s a mom in your group named Token?”

  “No. He’s a man. A dad.”

  She can feel someone’s hands on her, pulling at her shirt, fingers digging into her shoulder. Hot breath at her neck.

  Schwartz’s eyebrows rise again. “A dad? In your mommy group?”

  “Yes. I think he’s gay.”

  He nods, and Hoyt marks something in his notebook. “Token. What is that? An Indian name?”

  “No. He’s white. It’s a nickname. I called him that at one of the first meetings because he was the only bloke—you know, the token male. It stuck. I don’t even remember his real name, to be honest. I’m not sure anyone does.”

  Sebastian laughs nervously and reaches for Nell’s hand. “She’s notoriously bad with names.”

  “Can you give me a minute? I have to use the loo.” Nell stands, her hand on Sebastian’s shoulder to steady herself, and walks down the hall to their bedroom and then into the bathroom, closing the door behind her, looking into the mirror. It was just a dream. It had to be.

  She crouches on the floor in front of the toilet. It’s been a few years since she’s had one of those nightmares—the kind that once jarred her awake on a nearly nightly basis. Being followed. People waiting for her around the next corner. It has to be that. She would have remembered if someone had been with her in the bathroom, touching her.

  She hears Beatrice crying, and then a knock at the door. It’s Sebastian. “Nell. You okay?” She sees her shirt from the night before, in a ball on the floor where she left it. Sebastian knocks harder. “Nell.”

  “Be right out.” She picks up the shirt. It’s ripped along the seam of her right shoulder.

  She apologizes to Hoyt when she returns to the living room.

  “No problem. Just a few more, and then we can get out of your hair. What do you know about the father?”

  “Winnie’s father?” Nell asks, glancing at the video camera. “Nothing.”

  “No, ma’am. Midas’s father.”

  “Oh. Nothing. I only recently found out she was single.” The heat is building around her. “I had Winnie’s phone for a while, but then I couldn’t find it. Her key was in the phone case.” She swallows. “Did someone find it? Is that how they got in?”

  “That’s all part of what we’re trying to figure out,” Hoyt says.

  “How much did you have to drink last night?”

  She looks at Schwartz, who asked the question. “How much?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know. Two drinks, maybe? I hardly touched the second.”

  “Were you drunk?”

  She knows she should just tell them the truth. She knows the risk of lying to the police. “No,” she says, her stomach in knots. “Of course I wasn’t drunk.”

  Sebastian appears in front of her, circling the coffee table, refilling everyone’s mug. She steals a look at him. At his cap of brown curls, his lean soccer boy’s body, imagining him the first time she saw him: sitting at the opposite end of a moody London bar, sipping a Guinness in the shifting light of late Sunday afternoon, sketching in a Moleskine notebook, the face of a man intent on his art. His eyes were kind when he approached her later, asking if the seat beside her was taken, if he might buy them another round.

  Nell clenches her palms in her lap as she tries to concentrate on Hoyt’s next question, but her gaze is drawn back to Sebastian as he slowly paces the living room, their daughter cradled in the nook of his arm, seeing an entirely different face than the one she remembers from that day six years earlier. The face of a man, terrified and worried.

  A man having the same panicked thought as she. Please. Not this. Not again.

  Chapter Five

  Day Two

  To: May Mothers

  From: Your friends at The Village

  Date: July 6

  Subject: Today’s advice

  Your baby: Day 53

  Thinking about co-sleeping? It’s not too late. While it may not be for everyone, the benefits are numerous. Co-sleeping babies tend to sleep more. It makes breastfeeding easier, helping to keep up mom’s milk supply. And most of all, co-sleeping creates a very special bond. Plus, who doesn’t love a good middle-of-the-night snuggle or two?

  It’s sweltering on the subway platform, and crowded—people lean out over the tracks, trying to spot the lights of an arriving train. The man to Colette’s left chews a soft stick of beef jerky, the expensive kind making its way into the grocery stores in the neighborhood. The two women to her right are speaking too loudly, oversize designer bags hanging from their elbows, their cell phones clutched in their hands.

  “I have a friend who swims with hers. Would you do that?”

  “In the ocean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Never.” The girl gazes at the splayed fingers of her left hand and adjusts the large, brilliant diamond ring. “I don’t even like to shower with mine, to be honest.”

  Colette wanders farther down the platform and stops at the newsstand, where a man in a turban stands, breathing in subway fumes all day, doling out bottled water and rattling containers of Tic Tacs. Winnie’s face looms from the
cover of the New York Post: a photo from years ago. She’s wearing a long coat and sunglasses, her face cast toward the street. Colette should probably be surprised to see it, but she’s not. The story is on the brink of becoming national news since Winnie released the video yesterday pleading for Midas’s return.

  Colette watched it at least a dozen times last night in bed, Poppy sleeping peacefully beside her. Charlie was working, and she’d given up on her own sleep after an hour of lying in the dark, her thoughts trapped in a hamster wheel of worry. In the video, Winnie sat on a gray upholstered armchair in front of her terrace windows. She looked so pretty: her pulled-back hair, the strong cut of her jaw, her long, thin neck against a simple black crepe blouse.

  “Please,” Winnie said, gazing into the camera, her voice breaking the word in two, “please don’t hurt my baby. Please, whoever you are, please give him back to me.”

  Colette hears the squeaking brakes of an approaching train and digs two quarters from the bottom of her bag. Inside the crowded car, she tries to keep her balance among the undulating throng of people pressing against her as she opens the paper to the article. The byline belongs to a reporter named Elliott Falk; the headline reads:

  Oh Ghosh!

  People are beginning to shake their heads about Police Commissioner Rohan Ghosh’s handling of the investigation of Midas Ross, seven weeks of age, who has been missing for two days. The baby’s disappearance on July 4 was first reported by his babysitter, Alma Romero. The Post has confirmed that it took officers more than twenty-three minutes to respond to Romero’s 911 call, which they blame on the department’s strain due to Fourth of July security, and an accident near the Brooklyn Bridge involving two city buses, in which dozens were injured, including two young children and a young mother, currently in critical condition. After arriving at the Ross residence, police failed to properly secure the crime scene, perhaps even allowing people who may have been inside the home to exit via a door left unattended.