The Other Mother

by Gwendolen Gross

  “No power in the police station,” called the walnut-faced man from his bike.

  “Cool,” said a boy on a skateboard to another on a low-slung, neon green bike, who was riding too close to his friend. “The whole football field is underwater.”

  “Did you see that tree across Sycamore?” said the bike boy as they started to leave.

  “My dad had to drive over three lawns to get home last night,” I heard as they rode away.

  I watched Aaron call work repeatedly—until at last his cell phone ran out of juice. He slid around the side of their house as if meeting a lover up against the shaded clapboards. He phoned in the bathroom while I stood outside, bladder burning. I’d knock and he’d emerge with one hand up, a policeman—halt, silence, back off—the phone clamped to his ear, too precious.

  I detested that phone. And his work. He called again from the bed, rousing a sleeping Malena. I wouldn’t speak to him; despite his dullard drive to make those idiotic phone calls, he should be smart enough to glean my displeasure through silence. But he didn’t. I sulked for several hours and he just went about his business, hanging his suit carefully to release the wrinkles, rubbing at a spot on the collar of his shirt with cold water, taking out the plastic stays and smoothing them flat like a boy readying a grass blade to whistle.

  “Why do you have to keep doing that?” I snapped. I was lying on the bed, nursing.

  “What?” Aaron looked at my breasts first.

  “Calling the goddamn office,” I hollered. Malena coughed and spat up a wad of half-digested milk onto the sheet. I tucked her into the crib that they had brought down from the attic, settling her safely away from my wrath.

  “I was just checking in,” he said. “I really have to go back. This is killing my billables. And there are cases that really need me, I can’t ask Leslie to do it.”

  I had never heard of Leslie. Who was Leslie?

  “No one else is out,” he grunted. What right did he have to be irritable? “One vacation day is all I can manage right now, Mango.”

  “This was vacation?”

  “Mango,” he said. He smiled that impossible smile. His teeth were even in the gray basement light. He still had a slight accent, from his long-ago years in Africa where he learned to speak. He sounded different and captivating and infuriatingly ordinary beneath it all. “I can’t take infinite time off.”

  “Time off? It isn’t time off, it isn’t vacation. It’s a fucking disaster.”

  “Honey,” said Aaron. He made a mock-shocked face over my expletive in front of the baby. Then he held out his arms.

  “Okay, I know. But I can’t stand it.” I started to cry. This wasn’t me. I didn’t sob like a scared little girl over accidents that hadn’t happened.

  “I could have lost you when the tree fell. I can’t lose you. I need you. I need our house, too. I have never been so squeezed in all my life, and I feel as if I should never go to sleep again in order to keep her safe, to keep you safe.” I looked up at his face, steady as always, almost happy with my need. “Never mind,” I snuffled, calming down. I looked at his clothes. “Maybe you could’ve borrowed a suit from Caius.”

  Aaron kissed my ear as I agreed to slip into his arms. Caius was tall and broad and Aaron wasn’t. It would be like the house jacket at a restaurant, the 48 extra long that dwarfed your average patron.

  Malena complained from the crib, but as soon as I picked her up she fell asleep again, her face squashed against my shoulder, her breath warm.

  “I know you’re still recovering,” he said later, as he traced the line of my jaw. I shivered. Despite everything I wanted sex, but I wasn’t sure my body was ready. Still, being in their basement—arguing, making up, the danger elapsed—made it feel urgent and possible. We were naughty guests. I wondered how much they could hear upstairs, what they were doing upstairs. Caius’s office was closed, so he’d been home, too, all of us crammed in their house. The basement was our only privacy, although the kids ran down often to get some forgotten toy or implement of destruction, or simply to stake their claim on the space. They acted both more excited and more put out by the arrangement than their parents. The older girl, Carra, was on the cusp of teenhood—she looked so sulky and gangly and big, not to mention about to be sexual, maybe already sexual, that it made me nervous to see her long limbs, her big feet, and sensuous mouth. Malena would never be that big.

  I didn’t know what Thea felt about our presence. At first, I was sure she wanted us there. She was a consummate hostess, making tea on a camp stove and bringing us extra towels. But I wasn’t sure what she felt; it wasn’t obvious from the motions of what she did.

  Aaron reached inside my shirt, but I didn’t like his hands on my breasts. They hurt, and they belonged to Malena, and though I wanted to please him and wanted to enjoy his touch the way I always had, I stopped him.

  “Too much? They’re really marvelous,” he said.

  “And really sore.” I sighed.

  “Can I touch you here instead?” I slid my hand inside his waist-band. I wanted desire to overtake my body, the way it always had. But nothing was as it always had been. I kissed him hard, tasting his mouth, unfortunately aware of going through the motions.

  “I’m not ready for, you know—,” I said. It wasn’t true, I was ready, it was the shell I lived in that wasn’t cooperating. I was still wearing the same sweatpants and T-shirt with one of Caius’s sweaters on top. I felt the opposite of leggy, the opposite of lithe. Not entirely unsexy, though, as I tongued the trail from Aaron’s belly button downward. It made him feel better, and it made me want more, and I wished I could borrow someone else’s skin for a while, not to mention someone else’s unbattered insides. Still, I was proud of us, lying on the borrowed couch afterward, and I wondered again if they’d heard anything upstairs. I started to giggle.

  “What?” Aaron sighed from his sleepy state and smiled.

  “Just remembering what it was like at my mother’s house,” I said. I knew I would come close to sleep now, so close, but that the fear would eventually wake me.

  “This,” said Aaron, in a voice I didn’t entirely believe, “was even better.”

  That night, Thea and Caius staged what they called an “eat it before it rots” party in their backyard. Neighbors I hadn’t yet met came over with the contents of their freezers and refrigerators: turkey cutlets, ostrich burgers, steaks, and the ordinary burgers and chicken breasts. Caius presided over their giant chrome grill, wielding tongs and spreading marinades that sizzled, the oilier ones goading flames to fly up from the burners below.

  “You need this,” said Aaron, handing me a paper cup and taking the sleeping Malena into his arms. She was wrapped in one of Thea’s beautiful crocheted blankets, quiet amid the din of neighbors chatting and laughing and eating in the dark. Lanterns dotted the yard, and I worried about the open flames but let it go. I needed to let more go.

  I breathed in the wine and drank, though of course I was trying to stay away from alcohol because of the nursing. I felt like a clown in the mismatched clothes I’d borrowed, but still I managed to feel festive. Children wove in and out of the shrubbery, shrieking and eating grilled pineapple and cup after cup of too-soft ice cream.

  “You really know how to have a party,” I said to Thea, who was feeding Iris corn from her plate.

  Thea laughed, a stage laugh, head back, eyes lit. “We haven’t had a party in ages,” she said. “We used to do it all the time. Are you cold?” She put down the plate and rubbed her hands against my shoulders, as if I were one of her children.

  “Mom!” Iris yelled, pointing to her brother, who was spooning chocolate soup, his mouth mustached with whipped cream. “Bazerrt!”

  “Might as well,” Thea said to her youngest. She took her hands from my shoulders as if she’d just realized she was touching me, an almost stranger. Maybe it was a little weird, but it had felt good, after all that had happened. She had warmed me.

  “Might as well,” I said. “
I want some, too.” I started off toward the ice cream.

  “I’ll get it,” said Thea.

  “No,” I said. “Let me get it for you—my hands are free.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I can do it.” It was awkward, one counter too many. We both started toward the table where Mrs. Chen was manning the myriad containers of storm-stranded frozen treats. We bumped arms on the narrow walkway, miscalculating the distance in the dark, and both lost our balance. Teetering, we started to laugh.

  “You’ve had enough, then, Mango?” Aaron might have been joking, but I couldn’t see his face.

  “Not really,” I said, but I was speaking to Thea. “I’m just starting.” Thea laughed harder, but I straightened up and let Aaron hand me the baby, who was making hungry noises. “Time to get you home,” I said to Malena, without thinking. “I mean, not home…”

  “Now I can get ice cream for you,” said Thea, starting off again.

  “It’s going to take a lot of ice cream to get over my house,” I said, deflated. For just a minute, in the jovial dark of the party, I’d forgotten I didn’t have a home to go to.

  On the second day, Aaron went back to work. Though the electricity still wasn’t on consistently, there were sporadic minutes of power, waking the electronic objects in the house and eliciting cheers from the children, but they never lasted more than an hour at a time.

  Two hours after Aaron left, I was sitting with Malena on my lap on the living room couch, where I’d been when he left and where I imagined I might stay until he came home. Whatever room I was in, I felt unsettled. I didn’t want to be settled; I didn’t belong here.

  “Muffin?” asked Thea, handing me a plate with a corn muffin and a little white ramekin with butter and strawberry jam. I didn’t ask how she managed to have butter, or why she was giving me a real plate instead of paper. I was ravenous, and I ate the muffin spilling crumbs on Malena’s toes and all over the couch. I waved my hand at them, as if that might help, then I tried to get up, because the crumbs looked like they were oiling up the pretty upholstery.

  “Oh, just stay there, don’t worry,” said Thea. Didn’t she ever get tired of being so helpful? Of caring for everyone? Malena opened her eyes as I lifted her onto my shoulder like a baby doll: baby up, eyes open.

  “Really,” said Thea, but now I was wandering around her kitchen hoping for a paper towel. She beat me to it, snapping a Dustbuster from under the sink.

  “It still has power?” I stood back while she cleaned.

  “Oh, I have hardly had to use it,” she said. I couldn’t let her do everything. For the first time, I noticed how adamantly she opposed help of any kind. Maybe she liked things a certain way—maybe it was her way of maintaining control—but it was almost hostile.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, putting my hands up in surrender. I tried to smile. It was her house, after all.

  “By the way,” I said, sitting again. “I’ve made a reservation at the Marriott. They don’t have anything until Friday night, but they said they’d call if someone cancels—”

  “Friday,” said Thea, shutting off the Dustbuster and neatly tipping the crumb-filled container into the trash. “Two days from now? Oh, really, I really don’t want you to go. I can’t let you. Caius would think we’d turned you out—it’s against his religion, you know.”

  “Really?” Malena felt heavy against my shoulder, then she emitted the telltale squirt sounds of an impending stinky diaper. I’m out of wipes, I thought. And almost out of the entire four pack of double-roll toilet paper you gave us. I didn’t enjoy feeling beholden; I’d wait before I asked for more. Or maybe I could make it to the store with Malena by myself somehow.

  “No, not really,” said Thea. “Not really his religion, just his innermost Episcopalian psyche. He feels righting the injustices of the world are too much for one man, but helping your neighbors daily will help make up for your spiritual inadequacies.”

  “Really?” was all I could say again. What do I know, I’m a Jew. Malena’s diaper was already starting to reek, and I felt a dangerous wet spot under my hand where I held her back.

  “Want me to change the baby?” Thea asked.

  “Oh, no, thank you!” I said too quickly, and much, much too loud. What did she think of me, that I was an incompetent new mother? No, I told myself, it was just her way of trying to help.

  After I changed Malena, I came back up from the basement, hungry again and hoping for something to eat but too nervous about disrupting the kitchen’s extreme order to help myself. Malena was hungry, too, so I sat back down on the site of my crumb crime, settling in to nurse again, again, again.

  The back door slammed, and the boy, Oliver, came flying into the room like an untethered kite. He smiled, then bounced beside me on the sofa and stared.

  “Does she eat anything else?” he asked. Then he flew into the kitchen and came back eating an apple. It looked good. I almost asked whether he could get me one.

  “What does that feel like?” he continued, without waiting for an answer to his first question.

  Malena fussed and wouldn’t latch on and I felt like I was waving my nipple at this prepubescent child. He had an unnervingly beautiful face, open, innocent. Something about his eyes, that blue, and his lashes was arresting; you couldn’t help looking. Which I did, for a second, while the baby cried.

  “She just eats this, for now,” I said. “But I’m sure she’ll be up for a Big Mac shortly.”

  Oliver laughed and a tiny bit of apple flew out of his mouth and onto Malena’s leg. By the time I brushed it off, he’d vanished.

  I took an apple, feeling a little like a thief, and moved downstairs for a while to rest my eyes while Malena napped. Two days felt like forever. In the unfinished basement bathroom, the door didn’t lock, so it was hard to relax enough even to pee when footsteps thumped on the steps. I missed my own shower and my bed. I should just be grateful, I thought, and fell asleep.

  I woke up because someone was touching my foot. Someone small, with cold fingers. It was late afternoon, and the toddler, Iris, was gripping my instep.

  “Hello?” I whispered, but Malena woke up anyway, her cries like a bark.

  Iris wandered around the room while I bounced Malena to calm her.

  “Whazzat?” she asked, fingering the few remaining diapers.

  “Diapers!” I said, reaching over to save them from falling on the floor. Just that morning I’d ripped two from the dwindling pile, their little Velcro tabs tearing off in my hands. Defective! Too expensive! So annoying!

  Now Iris was opening and touching the diapers, tasting the pacifier, squeezing the rattle, grabbing Malena’s little onesies to test against her face. Innocent though she looked, I wanted to shoo her, to tell her to keep her germs away. Her curiosity was exhausting, invasive, and blameless.

  Instead I herded Iris upstairs, and Thea brought me a cranberry-grape juice box she had chilled in a giant cooler with the butter and eggs. I sucked down the juice, desperate for sugar and liquid, feeling terribly selfish. Iris took my open juice when I wasn’t looking and pulled the straw out of the hole, spilling bright purple onto the couch. She took sneaky touches of Malena’s fuzzy head.

  “Iris!” Thea called from the kitchen, where she was making something inventive for us to eat using only the camp stove. It smelled good. I had to pee. I couldn’t possibly go back downstairs, too much effort.

  “Go get your pretend baby from your room. The real baby’s sleepy. As is her mommy. Leave them alone.”

  “I wanna juice!”

  “You had two, love, let’s wait for dinner.”

  “Milk! Milk! Milk!”

  “Sorry, love, we don’t have any.” She peeked out at me. “If we don’t get our power soon, I might have to send the kids out to the woods to hunt for berries and nuts.”

  “Berry! Mama, can I watch TV?”

  “Sorry Iris,” she said.

  “Juice?”

  “She’s going to be a politician,” she sai
d, handing Iris a juice box after all.

  “She has spunk,” I said, trying not to say something wrong, wishing I didn’t have to say anything.

  It was Aaron’s first day back at work, and he had said he might come home late, but it was even later than I’d expected, after ten, by the old silver watch Caius had given us to tell time downstairs.

  I hadn’t seen Thea for hours. I was in the basement, trying not to use up all the batteries in her emergency lantern but unable to turn it off entirely and leave Malena in the pure, soil-scented dark. So I had it on low while Malena was sleeping. I knew I wouldn’t sleep and no one had made any noise in ages—the peace I’d coveted earlier made me nervous. I went upstairs.

  The kitchen was hushed and dark. I carried a penlight as I wandered around. It felt like a haunted house—I didn’t know when something would appear in my grainy spot of light. I looked at the photos on the fridge: smiling child after smiling child, maybe relatives, certainly friends. I looked at the calendar, reading out doctor’s appointments, soccer games, dinner parties, symbols and notes I didn’t understand, envying them their solid lives, their stable state. All three children born and already speaking, doing, almost all of them even dressing themselves. Aaron and I had talked about wanting two after I’d convinced him to whittle down his original plan of a dozen or so, but at the moment the idea of ever going through pregnancy again, let alone the incredible trauma of birth, was too awful to imagine.

  I opened the cabinets, not knowing exactly what I was looking for, some secret stash of diet shakes, tattletale prescription drugs, something unseemly for their perfect bodies, their perfect routines. I wanted to find something to help me understand what kept this house standing. I straightened a tipped-over, open box of crackers. But nothing was unusual in my circle of investigatory light. The juice boxes Aaron had bought for me were stocked, almost lovingly, in rows beside the hot chocolate mix and cans of crushed tomatoes.