The Life You Longed For

by Maribeth Fischer

  Bennett only smiled at this and stood, buttoning his suit jacket calmly as he did. “This is pure conjecture, Your Honor,” he said.

  “I agree, Mr. Marsh, so why don’t you go ahead? The sooner we clear this up, the sooner you can all return to your lives and to ensuring the health of the child.”

  Grace jerked her head up, the force of her longing for just that, to return to your lives, like an electric shock.

  And then Bennett was speaking, his tone measured and sure. He talked about the mercurial and often confusing nature of mitochondrial disease. He read statements attesting to Grace’s character from half a dozen doctors and nurses. His voice was steady and lulling. “Many of the county’s concerns,” he said, “appear to be based on something my client either said or didn’t say.” He casually picked up the report. “If I can just quote a few of the things that CPS apparently found alarming?” He glanced over the edges of his eyeglasses at the judge, who made a motion with her hand to hurry it along.

  Bennett adjusted his glasses “First example,” he said, and began to read: “ ‘Following a routine catheterization, mother-perpetrator expressed displeasure when son was dismissed from the hospital before mother felt he was ready.’” Bennett paused. “Second example: ‘Mom refers to hospital as “home away from home.” Third, ‘Mother expressed relief upon learning of child’s diagnosis.’” Bennett glanced up, arms spread as if to suggest how at a loss he was. “Relief, Your Honor.”

  “My hearing is just fine, Mr. Marsh.”

  “My point is that feeling relief is not a crime and, in fact—” He picked up a xeroxed article. “I quote: Relief is a normal reaction in parents of sick children when given a diagnosis, no matter how bad, for what was previously an unknown or unnamed condition.” He set the paper down, and picked up the CPS report again. “My fourth example,” he continued. “ ‘Mother seems to enjoy hospital atmosphere, befriending several nurses and going so far as to ask about their personal lives.’” His tone turned angry, and Grace wondered if he was really upset or if this was just for effect. She found herself again watching the judge, whose eyes met hers, briefly, before shifting back to Bennett. “Fifth: ‘Mom enjoys peppering conversations with medical vocabulary.’” He looked up. “She has a master’s degree in epidemiology, for God’s sake!” He tossed the report onto the desk and took off his glasses. “I could go on. And on. But the bottom line is that none of these statements suggests that Grace is a danger to her child or that her child is at risk or even that she is a less-than-adequate parent. Not one of them! And the last time I checked, this was not Iran or Chile or some other country where people are penalized for what they say.”

  The judge turned to Kate, and raised her eyebrows. “Do you want to respond, Ms. Helverson?”

  “Yes. We…the…” She looked down at her notes, then said. “The fact that Mr. Marsh refuses to accept the legitimacy of this disease concerns the state—”

  “What?” Bennett laughed. “Am I now on trial for what I’ve said?” he asked Kate.

  Kate’s neck and ears turned pink. “This kind of unwillingness to even acknowledge the disease is a hallmark of the pathology, Your Honor.”

  “Ahh,” Bennett interrupted. “So now trusting someone is part of the disease?”

  Kate ignored him. “The mother fits the Munchausen’s profile,” she said to the judge and rattled off the warning signs that applied to Grace. “This so-called disease has a mortality rate of nine percent,” she added when she had finished.

  Bennett stood, pushing himself up wearily this time, as if he were bored. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But this accusation borders on silly. Yes, Grace has medical knowledge, and yes, she knows a lot about her son’s disease, maybe more than many doctors, and yes, she has ‘doctor-shopped’ as the so-called experts want to call it, though others might say this is just being smart. We shop around when looking for houses and cars and washing machines, don’t we?” He sighed. “None of the claims made by Child Protective Services suggest a psychiatric illness much less a crime, Your Honor. If anything, these characteristics—intelligence, medical knowledge—only make my client and other women like her that much stronger, that much more willing to ask questions, and yes, that much more willing to complain, and my take, quite frankly”—he tossed his pencil onto the desk—“is that someone just doesn’t like this.”

  “Your Honor,” Kate said. “All the county is asking for is more time to review the evidence. Statistics from Health and Human Services show that forty-six percent of children who die from abuse have been reported at least once to Child Protective Services, but nothing was done because the evidence wasn’t found to be adequate. It is in this case, however. Mrs. Connolly scores high on half of the indices indicating that the child is at high risk of further abuse.” She ticked them off on her fingers: history of depression, previous reports of abuse, a multitude of stresses in dealing with the child’s illness, large periods of time when Grace was alone with the child, the child’s age—under five—which put him in the group of children who accounted for seventy-eight percent of all deaths due to abuse and neglect in the last year for which there were statistics. “In light of this—”

  “Objection.” Bennett stood.

  “That’s fine, Mr. Marsh,” the judge said evenly, gesturing for him to sit. “I object as well. I object, in fact, to this entire hearing.” Again, her eyes briefly met Grace’s before she turned to the county attorney and social worker. Vaguely, Grace was aware of Stephen squeezing her hand, but she was afraid to look at him. She was afraid to hope, afraid to breathe almost, as if to move at all might somehow change the judge’s mind. She focused on a scuff mark on the floor just in front of her. Was it possible that this really would be no more than the misunderstanding everyone said it was?

  “I’m not one bit pleased that this case is in front of me,” the judge was saying. “The information is conflicting, it is based on circumstance”—she nodded at Bennett—“and I’m holding a sheaf of letters”—she held them up—“from friends and family, not to mention doctors and nurses from a number of renowned institutions, Ms. Helverson, who not only attest to the severity and unpredictability of the child’s illness, but also to Mrs. Connolly’s attributes as a devoted mother.” The judge paused. “I am considering this case at all only because of the fact that two accusations were made independently of one another within a short time frame.”

  Grace glanced hesitantly at Kate, who was leaning towards the county attorney, her cheeks flushed, nodding her head, and in that second, Grace felt a prickling sensation in her chest, and knew something was wrong. It was not going to be a misunderstanding. The judge paused to take a breath, and somehow, in that space, the interval between heartbeats, everything changed. The county lawyer, not Kate, was standing, saying that he had hoped he could have avoided this, and the judge, looking irritated, was nodding.

  “This supposedly devoted mother,” the lawyer was saying, and there was something in the way he said it: s upposedly. The rest of the words came in waves, crashing forward, then retreating, pulling her life out from under her. “Might not seem relevant…” and “surely the state has no intention…” and “clearly established pattern of deception,” and Bennett was interjecting that this had nothing to with the case and Stephen’s hand in hers was freezing, and Grace felt as if her bones had dissolved, as if nothing was holding her intact.

  Adultery. The word echoed.

  “Nobody denies that the child has a serious illness, so serious, in fact, that for all his mother knew, it was to be his last Christmas. And yet…and yet…this supposedly devoted mother—” If he said it again, Grace thought, she would scream. “Chose to spend Christmas Eve sneaking off with her lover rather than…”

  The room went still. She felt Stephen turn to her. Christmas Eve?

  Stop looking at me, she wanted to sob.

  “Clearly, this woman is quite adept at appearing to be one thing when she is actually another.”

  The
words were like shiny marbles on which she tried to run, but there was nothing to hold on to, nothing to keep her from falling, even though Stephen was still squeezing her hand so hard that her fingers felt bruised.

  This isn’t my life, Grace was thinking, and nearly choked on the bitter realization that every parent who had ever sat in this room and faced the possibility of losing their child had probably thought the same thing. How quickly it all spins away from you. But when had that really happened? With the first e-mail to Noah—Is that you? Or the second or the fourth or the fifteenth—I’ve never stopped— or was it before that, the day they found out about Jack’s illness or the summer twenty years ago when she met Noah or the autumn she stopped returning his calls?

  She stared at her shoes, her face burning with shame. She was going to lose Jack for the reason she’d known all along that she would: punishment for having been with Noah. A lover. How dare she?

  It didn’t make sense to me either, she wanted to protest.

  She listened to the judge and the court attorney and Bennett talking around her. She was desperate to remember that day at the beach, the surf pounding in her chest now, the roar of wind making it difficult to breathe. She heard how it sounded, the words like a fast-moving river overflowing its banks, flooding everything: sneaking off, lover, Christmas Eve. The phrases floated before her face. All she knew was that a year ago, had she been hearing this story about someone else, she too would have questioned just how devoted this mother really was.

  It wasn’t how it sounded. But it never was, was it? A walk on the beach. What the hell are you doing here? Laughter, coffee.

  The judge was asking her something and Grace looked up, begging with her eyes, please understand. She was asked if the relationship was over and she nodded. “Yes.” She was asked when she had last spoken to Noah. The sound in the room disappeared, and she reached for the edge of the table. The force of her answer was like a blow to her chest. The judge repeated the question.

  “The night before last,” Grace said. It was a whisper. But everyone heard.

  The court would reconvene in two weeks, at which time a dispositional hearing would be held to determine a further course of action. The child would remain in the hospital in state custody. Mother was to be evaluated by a court-appointed psychologist specializing in fictitious disorders. Parents were to be granted four supervised visits per week lasting no more than one hour per visit.

  Stephen’s face like an abandoned building set on fire and crumpling in upon itself.

  “We will take the very best care of him,” Anju assured her.

  Jenn hugged Grace. She started to cry. “I can’t believe they’re doing this to you.”

  “Why don’t you leave Max and Erin with us for the night?” her dad said.

  Jeff and Mandy gave her a hug.

  Nobody looked her in the eye.

  They drove in silence through the city. Eyes closed, Grace was aware only of the shifting light and heat on her face and neck as they moved under the shadows of high-rises, then back into sunshine, under an overpass—rumbling echoes overhead—back to open road. And then the thrum of bridge struts vibrating under the wheels, the dark beneath her closed eyes turning orange with light. She opened them to green water the color of bottle glass. “Can you close the window?” she asked, shivering.

  “I need the air,” he said. “Just—here.” He started shrugging off his sport coat. She held the wheel for him, then took his jacket and wrapped it over her legs like a blanket.

  “Stephen?” she said after a few minutes. Her voice sounded hollow. “Please talk to me.”

  “And say what, Grace?”

  “I don’t know. Just, where are you?”

  “In the hospital with Jack, in the courtroom.” His voice tightened. “Sitting in bed with you on Christmas Eve, joking about how you got windburn walking across the mall parking lot.”

  Her face burned. “I know what you’re thinking, but I was walking outside.”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Grace.”

  “I know there’s nothing I can say—”

  “Then don’t, okay?” The gentleness in his tone undid her.

  She began crying. “I am so so sorry.”

  “I know.” He reached to cover her hand with his. “I really do.”

  They drove again in silence. An airplane cut like a scalpel through the layers of pale clouds, and she thought for some reason of that TWA flight that had crashed off Long Island Sound the summer before Erin was born, of the newspaper photos she’d seen nearly a year later of the pieced-together airplane. Over a million pieces of wreckage retrieved from the debris field: a burned seat belt, a Timberland boot, an engagement ring, a child’s stuffed Tweety Bird. Now, she wondered, what is the debris field of a life, of a marriage? How many miles, how many years, how many pieces of wreckage?

  In the end, the crash detectives determined that the explosion that sent the plane spinning into the Atlantic was caused not by a bomb or an errant government test missile, not by some gross mechanical or human failure, but by a spark no bigger than that needed to light a cigarette. Something that small. But what caused the spark, for none of the plane’s 150 miles’ worth of wiring was frayed or worn. The experts explained how sometimes, in the space between two wires that run parallel to each other, not touching, neither of them damaged, electricity will arc outward, migrating. That was the word they used: migrating. It was how she often thought of her love for Noah, a migration to a place she remembered beneath the level of consciousness almost, in her bones and cells, and she knew that no matter what she said to Stephen and no matter how many times in the coming days and weeks she would try to explain what happened, it all began just that simply, just that easily, one tiny negative spark—hey you—migrating into tragedy.

  They passed an adult bookstore with a battered-looking sedan parked out front, a pawn shop with a neon LOTTERY barely visible in its sun-drenched window, a row of gas stations, a 7-Eleven. She glanced again at Stephen. “Can I tell you one thing?” she said.

  He flicked his eyes in her direction. His eyelashes were damp with tears.

  “That phone call two nights ago, I was panicked and I couldn’t—” She squeezed shut her eyes. “But I ended the affair the minute I found out about the report.”

  “I don’t want to know this, Grace.”

  “I wouldn’t have jeopardized the kids, Stephen.”

  “But you did.” His voice was gentle. He shook his head. “Look, I’m not trying to punish you because I know you’ll beat yourself up far more than I ever could, but I just don’t care right now what you did or why or when you ended it or any of that. Maybe at some point, I will, but right now, the only thing I care about is Jack and that we, that I”—he jabbed a finger at himself—“lost custody of him.” He glanced at her. “You having an affair isn’t even on the radar screen next to that.”

  She felt like a fool. He was right.

  “All I care about—all— is jumping through whatever hoops we have to to get Jack back. And beyond that?” His face tightened. “There is no beyond that.”

  As soon as they were home Grace walked upstairs to change out of her mother’s suit. Her legs felt heavy, leaden, as if she were wading through water. On Jack’s door was the yellow: WELCOME HOME JACK! poster that Erin had made only three days ago. The day Jack phoned her in the morning, laughing, all better. Why you not here, Mama? She flicked on the lights in his room, then stood for a moment in his doorway, inhaling the scent of talcum powder and floral room fresheners. She felt dead inside, absent from herself. A rocket-shaped sippy cup, half full with apple juice sat on Jack’s dresser and it occurred to her that it had probably been sitting there for three days and she should take it downstairs, but she didn’t have the energy to do even that.

  Standing in her closet in her underwear a few minutes later, her arms goose-bumped, she couldn’t decide what to wear. It was only midafternoon, bright sunlight crashing against the windows. But the day fel
t over. She pulled on the flannel pajamas the kids had given her for Christmas, and crawled into bed. She wanted to just get to tomorrow. Tomorrow, when she could visit Jack.

  From the kitchen, she heard the rush of water in the sink and a few minutes later, the loud burping of the coffeemaker. Fractured snippets of TV. Nothing would be on but talk shows and soap operas: betrayal and more betrayal. She thought of Noah, but there was no longer any feeling attached to his name, not even the smallest flicker of desire. She didn’t care. Whatever she’d felt for him was gone. All she wanted was for Jack to come home and Stephen to forgive her.

  She couldn’t sleep and finally gave up. In the bathroom, she pulled her hair into a tight ponytail, surprised by how wild her eyes looked, the pupils dilated as if she were in pain. A moon book of Jack’s was on the counter. When the Moon Broke Away, about how the moon was made. She picked it up and hugged it to her chest, willing herself to cry.

  Downstairs, Stephen was asleep on the couch, knees tucked to his chest, his suit jacket spread over his legs and feet. She moved around the kitchen quietly, glancing at the stack of mail without reading anything, then poured herself a cup of coffee and took it upstairs along with Jack’s moon book, holding the mug against her breastbone as she sat in bed, not sleeping or trying to sleep, just thinking Jack’s name over and over, as if by saying it she could keep him safe. Jenn and Rebecca and Anju would be with him tonight and she’d see him tomorrow. The song from Annie kept sounding stupidly in her head: Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya tomorrow! You’re always a day away! The colors in the room changed as the light fell, the sharp edges of the bureau and lampshade, the stack of books on the desk by the window growing indistinct, flattening into shape only, into color. Dark brown. Cream. Navy. Burgundy. And rectangle, circle, square. She’d been working on shapes with Jack lately. His favorite was a rocket shape, and she tried to show him how a rocket shape was really a rectangle with a triangle on top, but he had waved her away with disgust. “No, not rectangle and triangle. Rocket.”