The Life You Longed For

by Maribeth Fischer

  She nodded, shivering as the snow fell around them like consequences, those tiny fragile truths.

  Nine

  Grace pushed open the door to Jack’s room. Immediately, she smelled the ammonialike odor of his urine. Light from the hallway glinted on the metal oxygen canister next to his bed. The CPAP machine that monitored the rate and flow of air whirred softly like a rewinding cassette tape. Grace leaned over Jack’s crib, her palm against his back, and felt the dampness of his pajamas. At least the diuretic was working, but like everything connected to this illness it was a double-edged sword. He needed the diuretic to rid his lungs of the fluid that was backing up in them, but if he lost too much, his potassium levels would plummet, which in turn would raise his blood pressure.

  She pulled off his soaked clothes, repositioning him away from the damp part of the sheet, which she covered with a cotton baby blanket. She slid one of Erin’s old Sesame Street T-shirts over his head, easing it past the tangle of tubes. “No, Mama,” he whimpered, angry at being disturbed.

  “Mama’s just going to check your blood pressure, Jack,” Grace whispered, maneuvering the cuff over his arm. He began to cry, and she shushed him, stroking his damp hair. “It’s okay. Mama’s almost done.” Across the room, the red numbers on his pulse oximeter flashed his heartrate and oxygen intake. His blood pressure was borderline. She’d check it again in a little bit. “I love you,” she whispered. Jack stopped sucking on his pacifier to mumble, “Wuv too, Mama,” and she understood again the sheer impossibility that she could ever harm him. Tears burned her eyes as she felt her lips shape the word, and then the phrase, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. The sound was like the snow falling outside, melting as soon as it touched anything substantial. It meant nothing next to her love for this child. Nothing.

  Downstairs, the house felt chilly. She pulled the sash of her robe tight as if to somehow hold her fear inside.

  Grace sat at the computer, waiting for it to connect to the internet. Her desk was covered with unread medical articles, one of Jack’s Matchbox cars, a half-naked Barbie, a leatherbound edition of Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body, one of the few books she had read, beginning to end, purely for pleasure.

  Even as a child, she had never liked stories as much as facts, regardless of how odd or fantastic those facts were. The longest distance ever walked by hand: 870 miles. From Vienna to Paris; 1900. It took fifty-five days of ten-hour stints. The smallest church: located in Málaga, Spain, and measuring 2.1 square feet. On special occasions when Mass is held, there is room for only one person to pray in it at a time. Her favorite book had been Wonders of Nature: A Child’s First Book About Our Wonderful World, as if a part of her had always understood, even when she couldn’t have been more than five or six, that nothing in her life would ever be as certain as those simple statements printed in bold ink: The sun is 93 million miles from the earth. Sunlight takes eight minutes and twenty seconds to reach us. Snowflakes have six sides. A raindrop is shaped more like a doughnut than a pear.

  In high school, she excelled in science, but brought home Cs in English and history. It was her father who gave her the leather-bound edition of Gray’s Anatomy for her sixteenth birthday. She was fascinated by it, the human body like a vast and foreign landscape with its intercoastal veins, Haversian Canal and Capsule of Tenon. Hensen’s stripe, Cartilage of Wrisberg, Jacob’s membrane.

  Now, Grace tucked her feet onto the rung of the ladder-back chair and began typing. Munchausen’s would be no different from any other disease, she told herself. There had to be causes and symptoms and treatments. Case studies and research. Etiology. Prevalence.

  Facts, as unbreakable as stone.

  She moved the cursor down the screen, the clicking of the mouse the only occasional sound. She scanned the sites: an investigator specializing in Munchausen by Proxy cases, the International Munchausen by Proxy Network, National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abusers, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Goosebumps rose on her arm. She hadn’t seen this one before.

  The site contained a “profile” of the typical Munchausen mother. Grace read it quickly, then again, slowly. “Mother-perpetrator ‘doctor shops’ until given attention she is desperate to receive; consequently, child-victim has often been to numerous care-givers…”

  She heard again Anju’s words: Why, in God’s name, would you want to put him through that, Grace? And Jenn’s: Oh, Grace, are you sure? And her own, shouted amid sobs to Stephen the night they returned from Hopkins:I don’t care about quality of life! I want quantity , Goddamnit! I want him to live!

  Mother-perpetrator.

  Child-victim.

  It took a moment for the phrases to register. Was this how she and Jack had been described in that Child Protective Services report that Mandy had supposedly seen? Mother-perpetrator. Child-victim. The words were like thieves, stealing into her life without her knowing it, taking everything of value.

  “Mother-perpetrator is willing to have child undergo numerous procedures and tests that often come back normal.”

  Oh, Grace are you sure?

  Why in God’s name would you even consider…

  “Mother-perpetrator is medically knowledgeable and typically has a background in medicine.”

  You’re so wrapped up in the medical stuff.

  “Mother-perpetrator is unusually friendly with hospital staff and other parents of sick children.”

  “Father is typically absent during the child-victim’s hospitalizations.”

  “Child-victim’s disease is often described as rare and multisymptomed.”

  She sat back, holding her palm over her mouth. She fit the profile. She tried to let that thought settle. It was like trying to balance a bowling ball on a pin. She fit the profile. But it didn’t make sense. Because Jack’s disease was rare? Because she, not Stephen, stayed with Jack in the hospital? Because she had a medical background? Had “doctor-shopped,” when there wasn’t a diagnosis? She thought again of all those letters she had sent to various experts, asking for help.

  “What was I supposed to do?” Her voice sounded scratchy and out of place in the silence. She heard the furnace kick in, the rush of warm air from the heating vents fluttering the Christmas cards pinned to the bulletin board above her computer. Light caught in the metallic red letters of the “Season’s Greetings” on one card. She glanced at it, her fingers stilled on the keyboard. She thought of robins, of red-winged blackbirds, of Noah.

  It wasn’t until March that they made love for the first time. She was a wreck the entire drive there, her turtleneck drenched with sweat beneath her sweater, her legs trembling. She must have applied her lipstick a dozen times in the rearview mirror. And then she was knocking on the door of his condo, and he was there, enveloping her in his arms, whispering into her hair, “Oh, thank God. I was afraid you would change your mind.”

  His mouth was on hers then, and her hands were in his hair and he was holding the back of her head, then lifting her off her feet, kicking the door closed behind him, carrying her inside. His hands were on her shoulders then, her hip bones, and it felt as if he were touching every part of her simultaneously, her nerve endings ringing, her entire body like a bell vibrating beneath his touch.

  In his bedroom doorway, he lifted her sweater and turtleneck over her head and let them fall to the floor, as he led her to the bed. They didn’t speak, didn’t stop looking at each other. She lay down, still wearing her jeans and socks, and he knelt next to her, pinning her arms over her head, the sunlight falling across her like a crocheted blanket. He brushed his free hand down her arm, trailed his fingers over and around her breasts. And then, still pinning her arms, refusing to let her touch him—“Not yet,” he whispered—he leaned over her, kissed her forehead as gently as she kissed her children’s. And then her mouth and her chin and the place where her heart pulsed at her throat. With his tongue, he drew a slow line down her middle, cut her open, until he reached the hollow between her hip bones, just above the top of
her low-rise jeans. “I want to taste every inch of you,” he said, looking up. And then he rolled over next to her, pulling her with him so that she was lying on him now, her hair in his eyes and his mouth, his fingers brushing it away as he told her, “You are so beautiful, Grace. I had no idea you were this beautiful.”

  Later, after she came again and again, her entire body trembling with the force of it so that it felt almost as if she were sobbing, he’d rocked her in his arms and blown tiny breaths against her neck and her throat, cooling her off. And then she was sobbing for real, and when he asked what was wrong, she said, “Oh Noah, I haven’t been this happy in so long.”

  Oh Noah, she thought now, but there was no thought after that. He was so far away. He had no idea what was happening in her life.

  The acronym M.A.M.A. appeared now on the computer screen: Mothers Against Munchausen Allegations. The house felt cold again, and she held her robe closed at her chest with one hand as she clicked the computer mouse onto the site with her other.

  A color photograph filled the screen. A blond woman was laughing and nuzzling her nose into her child’s chubby face. The baby was laughing as well, a huge toothless grin. […] died a horrifying death…a false Munchausen by Proxy diagnosis…

  Grace scrolled down to the next page, to the Sears-type portrait of a brown-haired woman and her three preschool-age children, dressed in matching pale blue polo shirts and khakis. They looked happy. Normal. Kelsey, Davis, and Bethany, confiscated from home by Broward County, Florida, Child Protective Services, July 13, 2000; 166 days.

  Her hands were shaking. Another photo of a young couple holding a blond girl with long braids. “Samantha Nicole, never forget that we love you. We are fighting every day to get you home.” Taken by Lancaster County, California, Department of Child and Family Services, March 10, 2000; 287 days.

  She kept looking. Names, locations, and the number of days since they’d been taken. Not weeks or months. A refusal, Grace understood, to package the number into something smaller, less horrific, more manageable. Or maybe an inability.

  Ryan Michael, taken by Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Department of Social Services, January 21, 2000; 339 days.

  Natasha, taken by Kenosha County, Wisconsin, Child Protective Services; 38 days.

  Ashley and Megan, abducted by Jacksonville, Florida, Department of Child Protective Services; 104 days.

  Alexander, Bucks County, Pennsylvania; 19 days.

  Trevor, Henrico County, Virginia; 43 days.

  Tucker, Jason, Anna. Ohio, New Jersey, Texas. Taken. Confiscated. Abducted.

  My God, what had happened to Marie Noe? That was Munchausen’s. Ten children in one family dying mysteriously. But this? These were normal families. Families with kids who were sick, maybe; families with mothers who were overprotective maybe; but not, not families who deserved to have their children taken, confiscated, abducted.

  Grace flicked off the screen. A horrible panicked cry was coming from her mouth. And then she was standing, moving through the darkened kitchen, bumping her hip on the edge of the table, racing up the stairs.

  She shook Stephen awake. She couldn’t stop the horrible jerking sounds coming from her mouth. Stephen woke immediately. “What?” Then he was out of bed, racing into Jack’s room before she could explain that Jack was okay. For some reason, this made her cry harder, painful sobs that felt as if they were being wrenched from deep inside her. She lay on her side, face in the pillow, rocking herself back and forth. How, how, could this have happened? How could she have let it? She would lose her children.

  Taken. Confiscated. Abducted.

  Stephen’s hand was on her shoulder. “You scared the hell out of me,” he said. He was out of breath. “I thought—” He stopped and sat next to her, pulled her head against his chest. “What? What happened?” She could feel his racing heartbeat.

  She told him about the Web site. All those children taken.

  “You aren’t like those other women,” he told her

  “You don’t know that,” she sobbed. “They’re normal mothers, Stephen.”

  “It doesn’t matter if they are, Grace. Listen to me.” He tugged her hands from her face, forced her to meet his gaze. “Children are not just taken from families for no reason. Maybe in some other country, but not here. There had to be something.”

  “But don’t you see?” She lifted her head from his chest. “That’s what people are going to say about me.”

  Ten

  Jack tried forcing the misaligned puzzle piece into place. “Turn it, honey.” Grace leaned forward to show him, but he snatched his hand away.

  “No,” he whined. “You can’t help me.”

  “Okay, but you have to turn it, or it won’t fit.”

  “It will too,” he said, trying again, dislodging other pieces.

  “Yo, cut it out, Jack,” Max said.

  “No you cut out, Max,” Jack laughed.

  Grace sat back, letting them be. The four of them, Grace and the three kids, had been working on the Christmas puzzle since breakfast, trying to finish it by dusk, the time New Year’s Eve officially began in their house. Jack was more hindrance than help, but none of them really cared. He was so thrilled to be included with the “big kids.”

  The jigsaw puzzle was a holiday tradition passed down through her dad’s family: they started the thousand-piece jigsaw on Christmas Day and had to finish it by New Year’s Eve.

  When Grace was a child, she and her dad would stay up until two or three in the morning, working on the puzzle. Her father’s parents came from Arizona to spend the holidays with them, and they stayed up as well, her grandfather drinking single-malt scotch in his old-fashioned striped pajamas, her grandmother, hair in rollers, trying not to yawn. Her dad attacked the puzzle as if in a battle. “Come on, now, get in there, you bastard,” he’d say to a puzzle piece. Or “Gotcha, ya little devil!” Whenever Grace got a piece in, her grandfather would grin, as if she had accomplished something wonderful. Her dad would slap her five, and tell his parents, “I think our girl’s got the puzzle gene.”

  The puzzle gene. Was there such a thing? She stared at this year’s puzzle, a Norman Rockwell scene of Santa with his feet in a metal tub of hot water. She leaned forward and lifted a piece, part of Santa’s white beard, and set it into place. And what would the puzzle gene mean, exactly? The ability to take something broken and piece it back together? She had wanted to believe that she’d done this with Noah, somehow fixed a part of herself that had been broken. And maybe she had, but at what cost? She felt her heart constrict, and tightened her grip on Jack, who only squirmed loose. “Mama, why you squeezing me?”

  “’Cause I love you, silly.” How could she possibly explain the love she felt for this child? She’d abduct him herself, go into hiding, before she would let anyone take him. She’d kill someone who tried. Adrenaline raced through her at the thought, her heart racing, arms shaking. How, how, could anyone imagine that she would hurt Jack? She glanced at Max as he set another piece into place. If she was guilty of harming any of her kids, it was him, she thought, this huge boy who towered over both of his parents. Six foot three. Size thirteen shoe. Where did he come from? Grace often laughed to Stephen.

  “I bet you don’t know the name of a single player on the Flyers,” Max had challenged her a few weeks ago. He had failed a science test, so Grace had grounded him: no hockey for three days.

  “You can’t!” he cried.

  “But I can,” she told him. “Hockey isn’t everything, Max, and—”

  “How would you even know!” he shouted. “You haven’t even been to a single game this year!”

  She looked at him hard. “And you are old enough to understand why.” Jack was too immune-compromised to take into a crowded gymnasium, and finding a qualified home care nurse to come in for only a few hours was all but impossible. “I’m sorry it’s hard on you, but—”

  “I bet you don’t know the name of a single player on the Flyers,” he inte
rrupted.

  She sighed. “Eric somebody.”

  “I’m serious, Mom.”

  “So am I.”

  “‘Eric somebody?’ That’s the best you can do?”

  “Okay, Gag or Gage.” She sighed again. “Something with a G.”

  “You don’t even care, do you?

  “If you want to talk about caring, then let’s talk about your science test.”

  “Lindros, Mom. Eric Lindros. He’s only one of the top scorers in the NHL, and—” His eyes filled. “Never mind.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “You bring home at least a B on your next science test, and I’ll learn anything you want me to about hockey.”

  And so the book, Hockey for Dummies, for Christmas.

  “Gotcha!” Max said now as he connected two large chunks of the puzzle. He held up his hand for Jack to slap him five. “Hit me, brother!”

  “Okay, brother!” His fingers were blue-tinged from lack of circulation. He’d been on oxygen all day, the clear tubing from the nasal canula hooked over his ears to keep it in place.

  “Wow, Max,” Grace said. “You’re going to finish before your dad gets back if you keep this up.” Stephen was still at the Y.

  The fire popped loudly, and Jack screamed in surprise, then burst out laughing at himself. “That scared me, Mama,” he said. “It scare you too?”

  “A little bit.” She kissed the top of his head. He was sitting on her lap.

  “It scare you, Max?”

  “No.” Max rolled his eyes.

  “Why?” Jack furrowed his brows and turned to Grace. “Why it not scare Max?”