The Other Mother

by Gwendolen Gross

  The podiums all smelled of lemon furniture wax. My eyes stung by the end of the night from straining to watch the speakers in the lights. I had been part of a team that won awards—I’d sat holding an author’s hand as she waited to give her speech, and then I applauded and even whistled, low, when she didn’t get the medal but at least got an award. But I’d never been this directly involved before. My best-selling author, Ethel Vera—whose first book I’d acquired against the recommendation of four out of seven editorial committee members—was up for the Caldecott Medal for Wild Aunt Safari, her book about a girl who goes on a nature walk in the Bronx. Ethel’s great depth of silly humor spilled out of her quick bright manuscripts with no space wasted—her acrostics had been popular, her silly snow day book had been big, and her getting-dressed story, Bess Dressed Heifer, had surprised everyone when it was both a Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winner and got a Golden Kite. Wild Aunt Safari was somewhat autobiographical, and it had been very rough. We’d revised and tinkered for five years before we finally found the right balance of humor and clarity and action. Most surprisingly, she had dedicated the book to me.

  “To Amanda, who sees the life in small things,” read the inscription. Seventy-two-year-old Ethel, with her almost lavender hair and surprising collection of scarves from street fairs—black women dancing on white silk, tiny red knitted squares with a purple background, cardinals made of sequins on a filmy flutter of polyester—couldn’t be at the awards ceremony because her husband had fallen on a hike in the Adirondacks (Ethel had stayed at the campsite catching fish and working on a new manuscript) and was in the hospital for hip surgery. She wanted me there in her place, and it felt more important than any hand-holding. I was as nervous as I might have been if I’d written the book. My palms were sticky, my feet sweat in their hose and adhered to the new black pumps I’d bought for more than I wanted to spend at Nine West on the corner by my office, because the black pumps I kept in my drawer for events didn’t fit me anymore.

  Big feet, big boobs—I sat at the table and worried I’d leak through my breast pads. I swirled the tepid orange two-squash soup around in its bowl. My breasts hurt with milk, and I willed myself not to think about Malena while the author-and-illustrator husband-and-wife team for Baby, Baby, Mama’s Home, a book about a stay-at-home daddy and a working mom and a big-eyed baby with a bottle—the book jacket was being shown up on the screen—delivered a talk about the marriage of art and words. The book was great, but I looked around the room at the authors in their tastefully original, deep blue, peacock-sequined blouses with slim black skirts, and the editors with tastefully decorous suits and silver scarves (the editorial director of Penguin was leaning a little too close to her soup, and an assistant tapped her sleeve to alert the executive to this potential disaster) and thought none of it had anything to do with children. If Malena were here, I thought, I would have spit-up on my shoulder. I wished I could drink the wine the server had poured, though I had held my hand over the glass to tell him no. If the editorial director had had a baby with a leaky diaper in her lap, I imagined, she’d leap up and hand the offending little one to the assistant.

  I made it to dessert, poured cream in my coffee, and told myself, Don’t think about milk, don’t think about milk. I could smell it a little, almost a baby smell. I went to the rest room, though Ethel’s book was up in a few minutes, and squeezed a tiny bit of milk out of each nipple in a panic, to release the pressure. I changed my bra pads. I sat on the toilet and noticed a rusty smell, then saw there was a little blood on the pad I wore in my nylons. If I sneezed, and peed a little, I prayed it wouldn’t leak down my legs. “What a wreck,” I mumbled to myself, realizing I was getting my period for the first time since Malena was born. My body was getting prepared for another siege. “Right,” I said, also aloud, though I didn’t realize it until someone said, “You okay in there?” and I knew from the voice it was Jessica Gravitas.

  “Fine!” I chirped. “Just nerves!”

  “You haven’t won the Caldecott by now?” asked Jessica.

  It was the convention to say we had won the medal if an author’s book won. In my first year at the company, I said, “I didn’t know you were also an author!” to Karen Woller, a kind woman with long white hair, when a book of hers was named. “Ha!” She laughed. “No, my author won it. We say we won it, though.” I was glad it was her and not someone who would’ve deposited the coin of my naiveté in her piggy bank for future expenditure.

  “Oh,” I said, “my authors have won some honors, but never the medal.”

  “Oh,” Jessica said. I could see slices of her through the space between the stall wall and door. “I think Dr. Stevens has a thing for you.” She mentioned the art director from Harper, who was barely thirty and had a Ph.D. in art history, so everyone called him doctor. Wunderkind. Unmarried, with a reputation for frequent on-the-job dating.

  I smiled to myself and mumbled, “Pull yourself together,” as I adjusted pads and seams and zippers and tried not to gasp as I squeezed back into all my clothes. If Dr. Stevens had a thing for me, I could get out of the bathroom and on with this award ceremony. I had no interest in Dr. Stevens, though he had dazzling sapphire eyes and one very compelling crooked tooth. But having Jessica think I might be the object of Dr. Stevens’s desire was enough to remind me of the big game I was playing here. And that I was just about to buy two hotels on Boardwalk if Ethel’s book won the award. My book.

  “I don’t think so,” I said to Jessica in the mirror. She looked earnest and beautiful and young, and smelled of a perfume that reminded me of sweet peas, though I could see where her roots were vague brown before the gold-blond began. I wondered why I’d ever felt threatened by Jessica. Sweet peas. She was someone’s baby.

  After I gave the speech I’d prepared with Ethel over the phone, and we had all clapped and raised our glasses (mine was water, at the podium) to the cover of Wild Aunt Safari, and the rest of the awards were over, Dr. Stevens came up to me in the lobby, where I was collecting good wishes for Ethel, feeling flush with our accomplishment, feeling as though I owned this award, too.

  “Some of us are going to Downtown for a drink,” he said. “Will you be one of some of us? Oh, and congratulations.” He winked. A grown man winked at me. He was very good-looking, even if he wasn’t my type. He was over six feet tall and I could tell he was looking down in the general direction of my cleavage. Which was rather impressive, though mostly I thought it was only supposed to be impressive to a two-month-old with an enormous appetite.

  “Yes, I believe I will be some of us,” I said. Not one ounce of me would ever be unfaithful to my family—and now it felt like my family, not just Aaron but the unit of home, even if we were sleeping in a hotel—but nonetheless, it was delicious to be the object of vaguely lustful attention.

  Perhaps, I thought as I stood at the bar at Downtown and shouted a bit about my career to Dr. Stevens, and made a phone call to Ethel, whose husband was going to be fine and who congratulated me as if, once again, I’d won, perhaps no one even knows I’m lactating. Perhaps it’s time to wean.

  On the late train home, I called Aaron, though I’d told him to turn off the ringer if he was tired after he picked up Malena from Thea’s. I squeezed my knees together, cramping slightly, letting mommyhood flow back into my shut-off brain. I’d had two glasses of wine after all, and one sip of Dr. Stevens’s—“Mike, please,” he’d told me, “the Dr. Stevens thing is getting old”—chocolate martini, which tasted medicinal but delightfully clandestine, as if I were underage again, and I was a bit foggy and high. The train was nearly empty and it was arid inside. My hands and lips both felt chapped; I was thirsty. At the front of the car a man in a dove gray suit snored so loudly I heard him over the rattle of the tracks.

  “Hi,” I was prepared to say into Aaron’s cell phone voice mail. “I know it’s really late.” I looked at my watch as I thought it. One thirty-three A.M. I hadn’t been out this late in a hundred years. I was suddenly sad
Aaron wasn’t with me.

  There was a click, then a fumbling noise, as Aaron picked up on one of the last rings.

  “Hi,” he said, voice crackly with sleep. “Went late, eh? You win?”

  “We won!” I said, a little louder than I’d intended. The snoring man shifted in his seat. “It was great! Some of us went to a bar afterward. Not that I’m really drinking—”

  “Great, Panda, great,” he said. He sounded distracted, breathing like a sleeping man, and then I heard a strange cough in the background. It was too loud and deep to be my baby.

  “Is that a dog?” I asked. “Or did you bring a tubercular lover to the hotel?”

  “Oh, it’s Malena, Panda,” said Aaron. He didn’t even have a quick comeback for my joke. “She’s okay, though. Thea took her to her pediatrician—Dr. Goodberg. Just croup. They all get it.”

  “They all get it? Croup?” My stomach was so tight, I thought I might throw up. I reached in my pocket out of habit, looking for a plastic bag. “She took her to the doctor? Why not Bergen Pediatric? How come she didn’t call me? Will insurance even cover some other doctor? Are you sure she’s okay? Who the hell gave her croup?”

  “Honey, don’t worry. We have a nebulizer—”

  “A nebulizer? Does she need to go to the hospital? Jesus, one night, I go out one night—” I started to cry, my mouth and nose welling with phlegmy regret and fear.

  “She’s really okay, Panda, just—I have to go now, you’ll be back soon.” There was more barking, and he hung up.

  A part of me knew croup was nothing to be worried about, that croup was common, that a nebulizer was not an iron lung, but a part of me felt punished for my sins—wanting the award, basking in my silly speech, and most of all, celebrating at a bar, flirting for even ten minutes with a man other than my daughter’s father. It was too self-indulgent to cry. I stared at my hands, the hands of a mother who held her own daughter far too little, who’d assigned Thea the task of guarding Malena’s health solely by not being there. Every time I picked her up after work, I felt so guilty and awkward that I asked a thousand questions. I knew that some sounded like blame. It wasn’t blame, just guilt.

  I took over for Aaron as soon as I got back to the hotel. I held and nursed my poor baby seal in the hotel bathroom with the shower on for steam without a break to change my clothes until Saturday at ten A.M., when Aaron finally woke up and I gave her to him so I could finally peel off my horrible panty hose.

  February

  14

  Thea

  On the eighth Friday of my tenure as nanny, Amanda was late, as usual. She was working full-time now, and their house was supposed to be habitable in a few days—but those few days kept racing ahead of the current days like a road-runner. It was early February, and the kids had started to bring home Valentine’s Day projects, or in Carra’s case, Valentine’s Day angst.

  I wanted things to be simple, the way they once were: I’d make heart-shaped cookies and doily valentines for each child, and they’d smile with the plain innocence of the loved. I was weary of the naked twigs of oaks poking the sky. I was tired of dry heat and dry skin and Malena’s cradle cap, which I wanted to wash out gently, with olive oil and a comb, but Amanda didn’t want me to bathe her. The one time I’d tried without a bath, Amanda had looked shocked by the slightly flattened hairdo and had asked me, please, not to “mess with her hair.” I messed with her needs, with her food, with her poop, with her hard-felt work on her first tooth, so why not the condition of her scalp? But surely I’d be protective if I were the one leaving my child—not that I ever would, even if I was jealous, sometimes, of her suits and departures. Amanda relinquished all the responsibility and rode with empty arms on the train.

  I had cleaned out the basement, changed the sheets for Tia, and then she’d postponed her visit until spring. Hurry up and wait, I thought, as I told her, “That’s fine, no problem,” on the phone. I had baked and frozen spanikopita, two pies, supplies for our nights of staying up late, talking. I served them to my family with a silent grudge. I was tired of waiting.

  Fridays were especially intense mommy-chauffeur days. Today I had to pick up Oliver from a friend’s house, shuttle Carra from a swim meet to a sleepover, and then go back to Oliver’s friend’s house because he forgot his backpack. Usually, I would have noticed whether or not he had his backpack. Usually, I paid more attention. But Malena was fussing in the car seat, and I had started a bottle at the high school when I picked up Carra. Oliver held the bottle for her to finish, but she began crying as soon as she was done, and I knew she probably needed burping, but it had to wait until we got home.

  Home was chaos, because Iris had fallen asleep in the car and was furious when she woke up. This was left over from infancy, a resistance to sleep that was half excitement, half pure will. When she woke, she was angry that her body, or her mother, had tricked her into leaving her real world for the imaginary continuation in dreams. She hating waking almost as much as going to sleep, and she’d rail against the change in state for an hour or more. But she hadn’t been this furious about it since she turned two. She woke as we pulled into the driveway. Oliver was trying to hold Malena’s tiny hand, and Iris started to howl.

  I picked up Iris first, feeling guilty for letting Malena cry, and patted her twice. Her face was pressed with sleep lines, red and woeful; her eyes were still seeing the stuff of her dreams, and her voice rose in a wail, a crescendo, a fury.

  “Shush, Jitterbug,” I said, as if she could hear me inside her pure bad mood.

  “She’s burpy,” said Oliver, as Malena’s hands waved and she joined in Iris’s lament.

  “I’m burpy,” I said. Oliver laughed, a buoyant, happy sound over the wailing.

  Sometimes I thought I was biased, that I loved Oliver more for his happiness, for his beauty, for his ease. They each had infant names I kept for them, saved like first hair cuttings from when they were small, pure weights I could hold across my chest. Oliver was my angel, always my angel, while Carra was my little bear, and Iris was my jitterbug. Why weren’t they all angels? Carra was a bear because of her infant growling sounds; Iris was a jitterbug because even as an infant, she seemed to have that jerky, rhythmic dance in her body. Angel was no more endearment or less.

  Of course I didn’t love them unequally; each required a different way of expending attention. My mother would have had things to say about the three of them—things I wanted to hear about how I would appreciate them differently at different times. I didn’t even know whether I was a difficult baby or as easy as Malena, as golden as Oliver.

  I put Iris down on the lawn. She sat on the dead grass and wept and pounded the cold ground with her palms while I unstrapped Malena and burped her. Iris started to roll, her hair and coat decorated with wet patches and clumps of just-unfrozen leaves.

  Malena obligingly burped and stopped crying. I looked at the chilly burned blue sky, at the fading light, and tried to remind myself of the good parts of winter. I always looked forward to the lit fireplace, chilly nights under the down comforter, to wearing sweaters and to the clean start afforded by a few inches of snow. But fall was over in a few minutes, and winter shut the days before I ever felt fully awake; there were snowsuits and wet socks and the musty smell that grew in the house with the windows shut. And we hadn’t had a fire in the fireplace since I was pregnant with Iris, wading through the ease of days. The only good part of winter I could currently consider was its end.

  I trundled Malena inside and put her down in her bassinet. I sent Oliver out to get his backpack from the car, then to get the bottle I’d forgotten in the backseat. Finally I went out after Iris. She was still rolling, but her crying had changed to a little song to herself. I sat down beside her and felt the cold damp soak from the earth through my jeans.

  “Jitterbug,” I said, “I hope you don’t mind that I’m taking care of Malena. It’s just for a while.”

  “Love my baby,” said Iris, sitting up. Her face was bright an
d lucid.

  “You’re my baby, love,” I said.

  “Okay,” said Iris. She patted my leg as if it were a small and unsettled child, folding her fingers under as she stroked. Such sweetness—it temporarily erased all the frustration. The sky stripped from blanched blue to gray, and it was already night.

  Caius came home early and boiled water for spaghetti while we all took baths, including Malena. I wouldn’t tell. I wouldn’t mess with the scalp, but I wanted to warm and calm her. She’d be dry by the time Amanda came, and if she wasn’t, well, Amanda wasn’t following our agreement to the letter, either. She was later than late. I filled the infant tub and let the warm water thaw any winter from Malena’s tender flesh. Amanda didn’t call. Aaron didn’t call.

  “You’d think she might call. You’d think she might care to tell us when she’s coming back for her baby,” I said, sort of to Caius, sort of to myself.

  “It isn’t that bad,” said Caius. “You seem happier when she works late, anyway, Thee.”

  “I’m not,” I said, helping Caius set out the plates, but he was right. If she was late, pickups were abbreviated. We didn’t have to talk so much.

  “I read that suffragettes were sometimes called frigid,” said Oliver, who I’d thought wasn’t listening, from his homework site on the floor under the dining room table.