“For God’s sake, Joan,” Tim says. “You know what she told them wasn’t true. She’ll tell you that herself. She was trying to stir things up.”
“This is so typical,” she says. “The rapist blames his victim.”
“What are you talking about?” he says. “I didn’t do anything to her.”
Joan has got down on her knees now. Ursula is sitting on Joan’s lap, a little awkwardly since she is so big and Joan’s so small. Ursula is talking baby talk.
“I have a Bend ’N Stretch Barbie now,” she says. “Also Stacie, and Aerobics Barbie, and Pretty Pal Skipper. I’m going to be a witch for Halloween.”
“Just look at this place,” says Joan. “Candy wrappers on the floor. If I had any idea I would have done something long ago.”
Tim has finally cleaned up his apartment for the home visit of the social worker. He has bought a bookshelf and throw pillows. He has put all his estuary notes into the plastic filing crates Claire was always urging him to buy. He has put leftovers into Tupperware and set out the vase of freesia Claire has yet to pick up on their kitchen table. Tim hasn’t seen her in days. They are like two people who have fallen overboard, caught up in their separate swirling eddies of current and pulled in different directions, too busy simply keeping their heads above water to search for each other.
Ursula has even tidied her room nicely for once. Tim hasn’t explained to her everything that’s been going on, but he could tell when she came back from dinner with her mother that first night that Ursula understands plenty. For the last two days Joan has been staying with Ursula out at the Days Inn on the highway. She and Ursula eat room service and swim in the pool.
“My mom says girls need to be with their mothers at a certain age because certain things happen to their bodies that men don’t understand,” Ursula told him. “Blood starts dripping out their tinkler. And pretty soon it’s going to happen to me.
“I told my mom it was really just an accident when you slammed the door on my finger,” she says. “But she said there’s no such thing as accidents. Everything is meant to be.”
Joan took Ursula clothes shopping yesterday. She bought her a black velvet dress and a prism. “Whenever you see a rainbow I want you to think of me,” Joan told her.
“My mom says there’s tons of baby lambs in New Zealand,” Ursula says. “Her and Elliott have this place they go where you get cookies in the shape of stars.”
“You are not going to New Zealand,” Tim says. “Not now, anyway.”
“I told my mom that,” says Ursula. “I told her I have to stick around and play soccer with the Puffballs.”
“And what did she say then?” Tim asks.
“ ‘We’ll see.’ ”
The new social worker’s name is Ed. “I don’t want you to feel like I’m judging you or anything,” he says as he shakes Tim’s hand.
“Although you are,” says Tim. He leads Ed inside the apartment. He has sprayed room deodorizer, but you can still tell that Sandy and Jeff must have had fish sticks again yesterday.
“All we try to do is look out for the interests of the child,” he says. “As a parent you can understand that.”
“Right,” says Tim. He is thinking about Brianne’s fake father, over on Leverett Street, throwing the cigarette lighter at his fake son. Why isn’t Ed over there?
“I understand you’re an environmental nut,” says Ed.
“Not a nut,” says Tim. “Just environmental.”
“Right-o. Thank goodness we have people like you looking out for the rainforest and everything,” he says. “And that hole in the ozone layer. That’s what’s got me sweating bullets.”
“My dad and me go bike riding all the time,” Ursula tells him. “He gets me tadpoles and crayfish and cocoons.”
“That sounds like a lot of fun,” says Ed.
“One time my dad made me this jar of fireflies for my room,” she tells him. “We let them out after a while, though, so they wouldn’t die.”
“Maybe you’d like to show me your room, Ursula,” Ed says to her. “Maybe we could talk privately for a little bit.”
“You wouldn’t believe how nice my dad is,” Ursula says. “He reads me Charlotte’s Web every single night. He made pumpkin cupcakes for my whole class. He makes the best macaroni and cheese.”
“On the issue of the sexual allegations,” Ed is saying to Tim. Ursula is watching television now. (“Usually we just watch educational” Ursula has told him. “Never the violent stuff”)
“Your daughter asserted in her earlier statement to the guidance counselor that you and Mrs. Temple engaged in sexual acts while she was present,” he says.
“She was asleep,” Tim says. “The door was always closed. It wasn’t any different from what any other couple does in the night. None of us would have children if we didn’t have sex now and then, right?” He has tried to bring a little lightness into this conversation, but his remark falls flat. He doesn’t even amuse his own self.
“Your daughter seems to know a great deal about the nature of these sexual encounters, for a child who was sleeping,” Ed says. “She gave us very specific—I might even say graphic—descriptions of certain sounds she heard, certain language. It’s a little hard to imagine how an eight-year-old child would know to make up a line like—excuse my language, Tim—‘Never stop fucking me, baby.’ ”
Tim is beyond embarrassment. “Maybe she heard something one time,” Tim says. “You know the sort of things people say when they’re making love. Any one of us could sound pretty stupid if you put a tape recorder under the mattress.” From the look on Ed’s face, he guesses this might not be true for Ed and his wife.
“What you say in the privacy of your bedroom may be your business, Tim,” says Ed. “The issue here is the traumatizing effect on an impressionable child. In particular what concerns us is an episode involving Mrs. Temple being tied to the washing machine while you performed an act I can only surmise to have been anal intercourse.”
“It wasn’t even Claire,” says Tim. “It was somebody else. A long time ago. Ursula and I talked about it afterwards. It was all right.” The more he says, the deeper he gets.
“And then there are the allegations of substance abuse on the part of yourself and Mrs. Temple,” Ed is saying. “I understand Mrs. Temple comes from an alcoholic family. Also that she has been evaluated by a guardian ad litem in the past for instances of possible instability and abuse in her parenting.”
Suddenly Tim feels so weary it’s hard even keeping his eyes open. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for him to remember how it was that he ever thought things could be all right. He knows he used to have such large hopes for his life with Claire. He knows he used to believe that Ursula would love and accept Claire, and Claire’s children would accept Ursula, and he and Claire could sleep in the same bed together every night and that they would all be a happy family one day. How could he have been such a fool? The whole thing is so clearly a disaster. Tim’s life looks to him now like the closet in his bedroom, where he threw all the unsorted laundry and papers and toys and game pieces and shoes he didn’t have time to put away this morning, before the social worker’s visit. Rubble.
The thought of Claire’s pregnancy comes to him now. He realizes with shock that it has been a whole day since he has thought about this thing he wanted more than any other. Their dream drifts away from him like Moses in his bulrush basket, floating down the Nile and disappearing from sight. Tim wants to dive in and swim after him. But the water is thick as mud. Tim is so tangled in the reeds, he can’t move.
In the Village Room of the children’s museum Claire is arranging the little wooden houses on the banks of a felt lake. She sets a boat by the edge of the lake and a tiny wooden duck beside it. She places a little wooden family in the boat. Mother, father, sister, brother. This is the way the families come when she orders them for the museum. Sometimes there’s a baby, too.
Even during times less difficult than the one
she’s going through at the moment, Claire has always enjoyed these moments in the museum when the place is empty or nearly empty and she is setting up the toys. Lining up the buildings along the roadways and linking the pieces of wooden Brio track, Claire gets a small good sense of being in control. Here’s the church. Here’s the school. Here’s the store. Here’s the hospital. Here’s the playground.
Claire is so absorbed in doing this that she doesn’t notice the woman come into the room. She simply looks up and sees a small, dark figure with dark maroon lipstick and the palest skin she has ever seen. Paler than Ursula’s, even—almost transparent. Her hair is cut very close, like a bathing cap. She wears a pair of work boots heavy as a marine sergeant’s. She’s carrying a very large shoulder bag.
At first Claire is surprised to see a woman like this at the children’s museum. Maybe she’s an artist come to offer her services as an exhibit designer. She doesn’t look like anybody’s mother.
Except Ursula’s. Tim has told her that Joan’s in town, come to investigate for herself Ursula’s charges of child abuse. Now Claire recognizes her from the picture Ursula keeps in her treasure box.
“I’m Joan Vine,” she says. Her last name is the same as Ursula’s on her birth certificate.
She doesn’t offer her hand. Claire can see the nails are bitten past the quick. “I know who you are.”
“Claire Temple,” Claire says anyway.
“I’ve heard about you from my daughter,” says Joan. “I decided I’d give you a chance to speak for yourself.”
Claire says maybe Joan would like to come into her office.
“Actually I’d rather not do this in your space,” Joan tells her. She moves in the direction of the Mineral Room. She sits, lotus position, against a piece of sandstone. She takes a notebook from her shoulder bag.
“I hope you don’t mind if I take a few notes,” she says.
“I don’t think we should view this as an interrogation,” says Claire. “I’d rather just talk woman to woman. One thing we have in common is concern for Ursula.”
“Really?” says Joan. “You have some odd ways of showing it.”
“You have a very gifted and sensitive daughter, Joan,” says Claire. “I understand you’ll always be her mother and nobody can take your place. I wouldn’t try. But I care about Ursula a lot.”
“My daughter and I have a very special relationship,” Joan says. “Just because I’m not always physically present in her space doesn’t mean we aren’t totally on the same wavelength. She and I are bonded in ways you couldn’t understand.”
Wavelengths may be fine for you. Claire wants to yell. But where was your aura at Ursula’s soccer games? I guess you were so damned tuned in you didn’t have to call her up Sunday nights? You figured she’d just know you were in her space?
“I guess you know I have two children myself,” Claire says.
“Yes, I heard,” says Joan. “I gather from my conversation with your former husband that you’ve had problems parenting in the past.”
Pyrite. Sandstone. Mica. Rose quartz. Focus on the minerals now, Claire tells herself. Become stone.
“You called Sam?” Claire says. “Then he must have told you that I was granted primary custody of our children. I’m a good mother to my children. I have tried to be good for your child too.”
“It sounds to me as if you’ve forgotten who Ursula’s mother is,” says Joan. “You didn’t give birth to her. You don’t know the pain I went through. You have no idea how I feel.”
Up until now Claire has sat almost motionless listening to this woman. Now she rises and takes several steps toward her. Claire looks down at her with more puzzlement than rage. She takes in the sight of Joan: her perfectly plucked brows, her exquisite black dress, the heavy silver choker wound, snakelike, around her thin neck, the row of gold studs lining her right earlobe. Claire shakes her head.
“Actually,” she says, “I do have some idea of what it’s like to give birth. What I can’t imagine is what it’s like to be a mother who lets the eighth anniversary of her daughter’s birth pass—not to mention a couple hundred days before that—without even a phone call. It’s true I have no idea what it must feel like to be you. But I wonder, do you have any idea what it feels like to be Ursula?”
For a second it almost looks as though Joan might cry, but she clears her throat and fingers her choker instead. “I suppose this museum is governed by a board of trustees?” she says.
Claire nods, barely hearing her. Her heart is still pounding.
“I have to assume this board isn’t aware of your record of child abuse or my daughter’s current charges of sexual misconduct,” Joan says. “Perhaps those are the people I should be speaking with.” She’s gone.
The woman’s a nut,” Nancy says. The two of them are sitting in Claire’s kitchen. Nancy has fixed them a pot of tea from the bag of tea leaves Sally has left out. “Jesus, where did you get this stuff?” she says, spitting a mouthful into the sink. “It tastes horrible.”
“Joan may be a nut,” Claire says, “but she’s going to speak to the museum board about me. I could lose my job over this.”
“And you actually think they’ll take this woman seriously?” Nancy says. “Look who we’re dealing with here: a woman who takes up with some guy a couple months after her kid’s born, and has her husband babysit while she’s off making sculptures of pussies and fucking. She lives in New Zealand, for Christ’s sake. She hasn’t seen her kid in two years. Who taught Ursula how to make corn-husk dolls? Who took her to Snow White? Where was Mrs. Clitoris then?”
“You know what Vivian’s like,” says Claire. “If she takes it into her head that the board should get rid of me, she’ll terminate my contract tomorrow and bring in some computer expert who’ll put the whole museum on the Internet and replace the teddy bear collection with monitors.”
“Hello?” says Nancy. “Remember who I’m talking to here? Claire Temple, Blue Hills’s answer to Betty Crocker. The only person I know who actually told me with a straight face one time that she thought babies’ dirty diapers smelled good. So long as they were breast-fed, if memory serves me right. Sound familiar?”
“You don’t know everything,” Claire tells her. “You don’t know how people can make you sound if they want to. You say you’re going to cut off your braids and they make you out to be suicidal. You lose your temper and slap your son and you’re a child abuser.”
“Don’t turn yourself into a victim,” says Nancy. “You can’t lose sight of who you are. You may have to fight for that job of yours.”
But Claire has been under siege for so long from so many different directions, she’s no longer sure what’s real. Maybe she really is an unfit mother. Maybe she has done something terrible to Ursula.
Sometimes Claire finds herself looking at Ursula, bent over her coloring book, humming that “Gilligan’s Island” theme song, and she things, Yes, this is good after all. She’s just a little girl, for goodness sake. I’m the grown-up here. I can love this child.
But then there are times when she’ll hear Ursula pounding at the door, wanting to bake or play in Claire’s dollhouse, or simply wanting, and just the sight of her round, hungry, perpetually disappointed face pressed up against the screen door makes Claire want to run in the opposite direction.
And something worse, too: Sometimes she looks for Ursula to fail. She wants to show her up in front of her father. “See,” she wants to say to him. “My children are better than yours. I have done a better job of raising them.” She is ashamed and sickened, but sometimes she even thinks she wants Tim to choose her over his daughter. Knowing this, Claire’s not even sure anymore that Joan doesn’t have a point, mounting whatever kind of crusade against Claire she has planned. She used to know as clearly as her own name that if she was nothing else in life, she was a good mother. Now she isn’t even sure what a good mother is. All she knows is her son may be going to live with his father and her daughter says she doesn’t care
what her mother does; she’ll be going off to college in a couple years, anyway. What kind of a lunatic is Claire that now she’s going to have another child?
Only She isn’t. She wakes to find her nightgown covered with blood and a cramping in her stomach as if there’s a hand wringing her insides out. She heads to the bathroom, bent over like an old woman. She sits down on the toilet, and when she gets up there’s something that looks like a blood clot floating in the water. She reaches her hand down and scoops it up. Nothing much to see: a little filmy tissue, a web of red. Somewhere in there she knows there was the beginnings of what might have become a baby, but what can she do—bury it in the garden, in a box like the one Ursula gave her that time?
She stands there for a moment holding it in her palm. She says a prayer. Then she places it back in the toilet and flushes. The water swirls like the curl of a wave, creating a hollow place in the middle that’s totally still. There’s a sucking noise, and then the water’s still again. It’s gone.
Later she will realize there is a certain horrible comedy to this moment:
“Tell us when it was that you came to understand the meaning of life, Ms. Temple,” the voice asks her. Does it belong to the judge they called the Marital Master back in domestic court perhaps? Is it the voice of Vivian, at a board meeting, or Sergeant Donohue of the Blue Hills Police? Unclear. Only her answer is.
“Well,” says Claire, “I’d have to say the truth was revealed to me when I was standing over the toilet bowl, watching my two-week-old fetus disappear down into my sewer pipes. Suddenly it was as if the mist lifted from over the water and I saw my life before me.”
It is right at this moment that Claire realizes she will never become Ursula’s stepmother. She will never marry Tim. She knows she will never shed another tear over Mickey or waste another breath complaining to Sam about child support or soccer cleats. Her son may go stay with his father for a month, or three months, or even six, but she knows he’ll be back. Her daughter may be getting her driver’s license, and she has almost certainly been having sex with her boyfriend, but she’s not done needing her mother. She may never have needed her mother more, in fact.
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