The Other Mother

by Gwendolen Gross

  “Love, wait,” said Thea. “Chocolate chip? Banana nut? Oatmeal raisin? Spider fly?”

  She had had one glass of wine with dinner; I’d had none, but I started to feel drunk with her silliness.

  “I make!” Iris tipped the container, loosing the lid, and flour clouded the kitchen.

  “I make!” yelled Oliver, waving his hands like a conductor through the airborne powder.

  “I make!” yelled Thea, not yet bothering to rescue the flour from her daughter. Iris clapped hands full of flour into the room, a concert of mess.

  “I make!” I yelled, too, waving a dish towel through the air.

  “I make!” howled Oliver, lost in the invented absurdity.

  “Lard special!” cried Thea.

  “Ants and beans cookies!” I said.

  “Ha! Ants and beans! Ants and larvae! Stumps and grubs!” Thea was laughing so hard her eyes produced a tear or two, or perhaps it was the flying flour.

  It took at least five minutes to settle down from laughing. Thea sent Oliver upstairs with his dusted sister, who couldn’t let go of her desire to bake and whimpered all the way to the bath.

  “I think I’ll take you up on that,” said Thea, surprising me.

  “On cleaning up?” I asked, mopping a gummy mixture of water and flour from the counter.

  “On baking cookies,” she said. Maybe it was a dare. “Here.” She placed an index card on the counter, tugged the Mixmaster forth, brought eggs and butter and sugar and chocolate chips to me as I wiped.

  “I’ll just sit here and you can tell me how you met Aaron. Or you can tell me all about your first date. Or I can just close my floury eyes while you bake. Do you mind? All that laughing tired me out.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t mind at all.”

  But she didn’t just sit back, she cracked eggs with me, she scooped with a second tablespoon. She counted out chips as she ate them, licked batter from the bowl saying, “Who cares about salmonella?” It reminded me of an afternoon with Jane when we were kids, almost any afternoon we chose each other for company, a choice not entirely of accommodation and lack of options, but partly because we found ourselves fond of each other, if only for a short stretch of hours.

  On the morning of our last day bunking with the Caldwells, after the men and half the children had left, Thea went over colors with Iris at the table, brandishing crayons and naming them before her daughter fisted them to mark a coloring book. I sat with Malena on my lap, opening the post-office-must-scented boxes of gifts Aaron had picked up from their holding bin in town. The gifts had started just before Malena was born and they continued, a tiny nightgown in yellow eyelet after fleece pajamas and impractical white tulle dresses, cot shoes that fell off before they were ever fully put on, toys Malena wouldn’t play with for at least a year. I loved them all, loved the attention they represented, loved that other people were considering our girl from afar. And I was sorry to have to open them on someone else’s couch, but I was too greedy to wait.

  “I love the girl clothes,” said Thea from the table. “The boy stuff is perfectly nice, overalls and blue boats, but the girl stuff is irresistible.”

  “You know,” I said, wondering whether we could just agree to disagree about child care and move on. We didn’t have to be friends, but we ought to be able to manage civility. “I never thought I’d be excited by girly things, but the socks just kill me. Pink ones. Flowers. It’s absurd. I wasn’t a huge clothes hound myself as a kid or anything.” I thought of my mother’s dresses, the way her closet smelled of Chanel, the way Jane had accidentally lost a lollipop to the lining of a blue crepe suit jacket.

  “I wasn’t either,” said Thea.

  “Actually, maybe I was,” I said. “I loved my mother’s things.”

  “My mother’s things were pretty plain,” said Thea. “Green,” she said to Iris. “No, it’s green.” Somehow, it sounded like a judgment. I could just hear her thinking that I was going to hire someone else to teach my daughter her colors. No matter what, I would forgive Malena her lollipops on my hems. I wanted to tell Thea to just let her daughter draw, but each time Iris reached for a crayon, she held it back, naming it didactically.

  “Hm, pretty plain,” I said. Not voicing, Big surprise.

  “Would you like me to stay upstairs while you finish up your interviews?” asked Thea. I could hardly ask her to hide in her own house, and Aaron wasn’t there yet. I actually sort of wanted her company, or at least the safety of her presence.

  “Oh, no, you can stay,” I said. It seemed like she wasn’t really asking, she was pointing out that I was making her a fugitive in her own house. Ah well, it was almost over. And I was too nervous to cope, anyway.

  “Why are husbands always late at the exact wrong times?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Thea. “And they’re never late leaving on the day the car won’t start and you’re driving carpool and the gas guy comes to read the meter and someone suddenly develops a stomach virus and throws up scrambled eggs.”

  There she was again, the friendly Thea. I did appreciate her clearing out in the morning for my interviews. Why was Aaron so late? He’d said he was on the train in time to be home fifteen minutes before the interviewee arrived, and now there were only six minutes left.

  I’d interviewed four women all on my own that morning, one so old and frail I couldn’t imagine she could hold Malena without dropping her, one so sharp I thought she might smack me for impertinence, one sweet faced but so late and flustered I didn’t trust her, and one who smelled, frankly, of garlic and farts, which she’d tried to mask with a brutally floral perfume. My first afternoon interview had canceled, and now I was waiting for the last hope of the day.

  “And they’re never late when you are busy conducting an affair in the bathroom with the boyfriend you had in high school who you met at the Stop & Shop by the frozen burritos and couldn’t do without. Oh, or the UPS guy. I hate to say it, but he really is pretty wonderful looking.”

  “What?” I asked Thea. “What did you say?”

  “Just kidding,” she said. “Caius is home.” She had a dog’s hearing when it came to tires in the driveway. Thea shepherded a whiney Iris upstairs with the promise of a bubble bath “with bath paints, yes, yes, yes, with paints.”

  Before Malena was born, I had planned to go back to work the minute my leave was up; I couldn’t let someone else take over the big angels book and the board-book series with the frisky ducklings and the cranky illustrator. Now part of me was impatient for selfish reasons. When I went back, during the day, I’d only have a boss, colleagues, deadlines, and work—all suddenly insignificant demands, all suddenly absurdly manageable. It would be easier. My life would be easier than it was right now, and I’d love every minute with my daughter and feel less like sobbing in the middle of the night, because being needed entirely for part of the time would be so much easier than being needed entirely all the time.

  If I hired a nanny today, I could sleep on the train. I could go to the gym, every day, and though it wouldn’t be normal again—it would never be normal again—I would have some sliver of self back. Not to mention my work. They needed me, my books, my authors. Without me there were quiet corruptions, diversions of the smooth stream of creation I’d built, stone by stone and drop by drop. Or worse, they might be getting along without me. I’d tried to make a greased machine, something that could flow on while I was gone but only barely manage until I came back in the glory of having completed my reproductive task.

  But as much as I’d planned my quick getaway before the baby, it was different now. To be honest, I hardly thought about the books the way I had when I was forced to wait at home at the end. Then my nighttime worries had been about Marvin Mouse and the art for the story about stones. Now the questioning was not just because my house had been crushed by a tree, not just because I was woozy with sleep deprivation, not just because of Malena’s exquisite, staring eyes, but also because of Thea. Because of what she had, tha
t peace and evenness, that mother love like a dazzling light on her skin.

  The last chance was here to interview. Her name was Prissy, a name subject to unavoidable judgment, and she arrived twenty minutes early and stood in front of the door with her hand poised over the bell, not ringing. I saw her from the living room window; I was trying to get Malena to nurse on the left side, because she’d been favoring the right, and I felt lopsided. There were hard, hot lumps in my right breast, and I didn’t feel like doing anything about them, a hot weak-streamed basement shower or massage or self-expression.

  “Self-expression!” Aaron had laughed the first time I’d had to follow the breast-feeding hotline’s advice about engorgement. The lactation consultant had asked, “Do you have large bosoms?” To which I almost laughed, which was rare, because since when do lactation consultants have a hard time saying “breast”?

  “I like your self-expression,” said Aaron. “Can I watch?” I’d allowed his entertainment that time without complaint, because he held Malena while I showered, letting the water stain my skin with heat, letting the warmth mask the awful hurt of the milk lumps.

  I watched Prissy from the couch. I was leaving this house tonight. Reservations aside, I needed a nanny now, because otherwise I’d have to ask for extended leave, and with extended leave, only a position was guaranteed when I returned, not my position.

  She was the only white nanny I’d interviewed so far—not that I was any more likely to hire her because of her skin color. I kept wondering what kind of person could possibly want this kind of work. Sure, it was nicer to be with a baby all day than cleaning houses. But it was also bone-wearying work, and constant; you couldn’t even be sure how long a nap would last. And not belonging to the baby, how could you suffer being needed so? Not to mention being told how to parent by a parent who wouldn’t be there. Maybe you chose it because you had no choice. Maybe you were a pedophile. I wrung my hands, feeling old. I had to stop thinking that way. I reminded myself that I wanted to go back to work; I needed my work.

  It was not abandonment.

  Malena twisted her head and fussed, and Caius and Oliver fumbled around in the kitchen, having offered to clean up for Thea so she could have a break. Her break consisted of reading Iris another story, giving Iris a bath, getting Iris a glass of milk. Well, it was her fault I was so nervous, her fault her children relied on her too much.

  Malena wasn’t going to cooperate. I put her over my shoulder and patted and swayed. Out the window, Prissy was wearing a velvet hat. She had an ample wool poncho and I couldn’t see her face, but her body looked nervous, lost, and tentative. I wasn’t going to hire her.

  When the doorbell finally rang, Caius answered it and let Prissy in with a courteous sweep of his hand. Malena was asleep on my arm, which was tingling, and Iris came running down the stairs yelling, “No bedtime! No bedtime!”

  “I’ll take her,” said Oliver, proudly grasping Iris’s wrist. She howled, and they started up the stairs.

  “Am I in the right place?” said Prissy. “There’s just one charge?” She had an accent, or possibly a lisp, and I sat still on the couch with my sleeping baby and a head full of unfair judgments.

  “Yes,” said Caius. He held his hand open toward me. I wanted Aaron to be there. I wanted Aaron to be courteous and calm like this, to have a small puff of dishwashing soap bubbles on his exposed elbow, his sleeve pushed up and his arms gold despite the short span of early winter’s sunlight.

  I started the interview in a whisper, asking simple questions about experience and abilities. Why she liked children, how long she’d lived in New Jersey. Prissy looked about twenty-five, though gray hair wound through her brown ponytail. Beneath the poncho she wore a red velour dress with small stains near the neck. They were pasty smears that could have been baby oatmeal or could have been some caustic substance from a drug habit or bleach spillage.

  “Why are you looking for this sort of work?”

  “Oh, loans. A little debt. It wasn’t actually my fault—oh, and I love kids.” Prissy answered in a loud, wavery voice. When she spoke Malena shifted, but never enough to relieve my arm’s squashed state.

  “Okay, uh, what do you do when the baby’s crying?”

  “Hm. Feed him, I think? Check the diaper?”

  Her, I thought, her. More likely she’d turn her upside down and shake her for change.

  Prissy and I looked at the coffee table. Cork coasters sat in a neat pile on one end. We were done, I thought.

  I was thirsty and the room smelled delicious, buttery, like shortbread. Living at Thea’s was making me fat, or at least keeping me in my maternity clothes, the one set I had with me. I had also borrowed three of Caius’s shirts and had a pair of sweatpants Aaron bought for me on one of his lunch breaks.

  Where was he?

  “Would you like a cookie?” Thea appeared with a tray. She had tea, too, though she kept it on the far side of the coffee table, so it wouldn’t be sipped or poured close to Malena’s fragile skin.

  “Aren’t you a blessing.” Prissy sighed. She took a cookie and leaned back on the couch.

  “I’ve had nothing for hours. Actually, I’ve had nothing since breakfast. I’m kind of short on funds,” she said. “Would I get paid at the beginning of the week?”

  I didn’t answer, and she didn’t ask again. I thought of Aaron trying to quell my fears about the nanny interviews, explaining, “You only need one good one.” So where was she, my one good one? And why had he said I needed one good one, instead of we?

  I took a cookie, too, and leaned back against the couch. Malena stirred, and my arm went from numb to pins and needles. Butter in my mouth, I could think of nothing else to ask the nanny, whom I was certainly not going to hire. My baby woke up, and Prissy put out her hands. “I can try to calm her,” she said.

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  “You could have tea,” said Thea. She poured me a cup, on a tray, like an ordinary hostess.

  “Oh,” I said.

  Thea nodded her head toward Prissy. Let her hold the baby. Of course Thea knew what to do. Though I wasn’t sure. She nodded again and held out the teacup.

  I stood and laid Malena in Prissy’s arms, feeling the wrongness of it in my chest, not at all interested in seeing her succeed.

  Malena’s fuss escalated, but it probably would have even if I’d passed her to Aaron. I thought of how my mother had held Malena during her visit, like a fragile object, lacking the necessary firmness. I knew she’d been able to hold me properly, but somehow, she was pretending she’d forgotten how.

  “Oh,” said Prissy, “she smells nice.” She snuffled her nose into Malena’s hair tuft.

  “Good, fine,” said Thea. I sat down and took my tea in my hands, but I didn’t commit to drinking, and I didn’t stop watching.

  “May I?” said Thea. She reached for Malena. A dozen times since we’d stayed with her, she’d offered to hold Malena. Once or twice I’d let her, but only for a second. I’d taken her back before her weight was entirely in Thea’s arms, and I’d seen that flash of loss in Thea’s expression, the quick eyes at half-mast, her mouth opened slightly.

  “Oh,” I said, starting to stand. It was one thing to see my baby held by a potential nanny, it was another for Thea to take over. She smiled, so pretty, even with that quirky mole by her mouth. I knew I’d have to let Malena go sometime, that the whole point of hiring a nanny was to lighten my arms so I could take them off to the city, take them to work.

  Still holding Malena, Thea led Prissy to the door. Prissy gripped a cookie in her hand like a three-year-old with a party favor as she redonned the poncho and left.

  “She wasn’t right,” said Thea. She supported Malena with expertise, with both strength and yield in her arms. It was all right, and I was empty and exhausted.

  “I agree,” I said, sighing.

  “I never expected to move into my mother’s house,” said Thea, a non sequitur. I was fingering the molding by the window where
I sat. “Never expected to come back to where I started.”

  Was she trying to excuse something? I smiled to show my interest, or maybe because she had my baby in her arms.

  “After we married, Caius and I lived in Manhattan for a year—that’s when I worked at the Museum—and I also took art classes. We used to think we’d move to Riverdale or Park Slope or something.”

  “But you didn’t,” I said, thinking of my own ideas of what it meant to settle down. That I wouldn’t have guessed I’d end up in New Jersey. That it wasn’t as unglamorous as I’d thought. That it wasn’t about glamour anymore.

  “My mother died of cancer, my father moved to California, and Clark—one of my brothers—suggested Caius and I buy all the brothers out. I was pregnant. I was scared, actually, of coming back here—it was so clean here, so orderly…”

  I wasn’t sure this was entirely addressed to me. Was I supposed to agree or dissent?

  “Remember how the subway always smelled in the summer? Cabbage and sour milk?”

  I laughed. “Yes. And I’ll be back on it soon enough. Too soon. Sorry about your mother.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “So, I could do it,” said Thea.

  “You could do…what?” I wondered whether she meant the hiring, or that Malena needed a diaper change. I felt the pull of my child in someone else’s arms but resisted taking her back just yet. I sipped tea, which didn’t calm me but tasted good. There was honey stirred in.

  “I can be her sitter for a while.”

  I shivered, part fear and part relief. This was perfect, this was what I wanted, this was terrifying. Did she mean it? Maybe I could breathe easier with her caring for Malena. But wasn’t she against the whole business of my going back to work?

  “We’d have to pay you,” I said. I’d meant to ask if she really wanted to, if she wasn’t just being necessarily kind again, but I was afraid she’d change her mind.