“I quit, Caius. That wasn’t nice.”
“I know you quit. What did you expect, that you’d stay with Malena until college?” he asked. He was picking at a toenail. It was yellowish and cracked and made me sad because it looked like an old person’s toenail. I wasn’t ready for any part of us to be old. I thought again about the Outward Bound trip. I hadn’t told him yet—hadn’t told anyone yet—though I had suggested Caius might take his vacation time then. I wrote the dates on the back of a receipt from the A&P and asked him to put them in his work calendar. He didn’t ask about the plans, which was a little disappointing. I’d imagined myself answering both ways, truthfully and then with evasion, and got a chance to test neither.
“I expected that it wouldn’t be for so long, I guess. I expected that she’d hire someone else.” I leafed through the pages of a novel I’d had on my bedside table for months. My sketchbook with its pages of thrush mommy and thrush babies I’d made for Iris. Maybe I could sketch mountains and wildflowers on this theoretical trip.
“Or that she’d quit her job? Because I have this sneaking suspicion you expected her to join the other side.”
“The other side?” I knew what he meant, but I was surprised. I’d make him articulate it.
“You know. That she’d stay at home like you do.”
“No I didn’t.”
“It’s not bad, Thee.” He stopped picking and put his arm around me. I tried not to think about the toenail-y finger when he started playing with my hair. It wasn’t as if my own hands were pristine. I’d helped Iris wipe her nose just before bed and the tissue wasn’t quite in the right place. Had I washed my hands? I couldn’t remember.
“Do you think you wanted her to be around, to be your friend? You were sort of friends, anyway.”
“Sort of,” I said. “But not everyone has to be a stay-at-home mom.”
“Which ‘leads to an overwhelming question…’”
“Ha. Since when do you quote T. S. Eliot in bed?” Maybe he didn’t mean to patronize.
“‘Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit,’” he continued. “No, really. I was thinking you might be thinking about doing some of the other things that used to interest you now. I mean, won’t Iris be in day care, too, in the fall?”
“Our kids go to preschool, not day care.”
“Whatever. I was just thinking you might want to take a class or something. Don’t get mad at me. I’m just thinking of you.”
Me, too, I thought. That’s why I want to go away, without you, without any of you. Only you don’t know yet, and I’m not sure I’m really going to do it.
“That’s very kind. I’ll think about it.” This should have been wonderful. This should have been my chance to make my trip his idea after all, even if that wasn’t exactly what he meant. And even if we didn’t operate that way—secrets and surprises. Not this kind, anyway. But I couldn’t tell him yet. It was still only mine, a long way off, the way the children moving in my belly at night, before they were born, belonged to me. Except he knew about every one of them. It wasn’t his fault I needed to get out. Or maybe it was.
“I might even have some ideas,” I began, anxious with the possibility of revealing myself. But then he started on his toenail again, under the sheets this time. It was a tiny bit his fault.
It was April by the time Tia’s visit plans solidified. Iris and I picked violets and drew them, coloring in the charcoal images with pastels and crayons. My own plans were still quite liquid—I’d received a packet from Outward Bound but hadn’t opened it. I imagined the list of gear in there, the arrangements. I imagined telling Caius and yet I didn’t. It was enough emotional turmoil to feel there must be fury over the fence at Amanda’s house. I thought about Malena—missed her with a physical longing—and wondered about her as I watched the new nanny come and go. I told Iris, who asked daily, that our baby was at home with her mommy, and then distracted her with something horrible, cookies, television, ruining her with my guilt. I still couldn’t decide what my family would feel when I told them I wanted to go away, so I kept myself in limbo. I could still get my deposit back from Outward Bound if I changed my mind.
Some days I considered walking over to her house just to say I was sorry, I didn’t mean to leave like that. Some days I couldn’t believe she’d stretched my hospitality so thin. I surreptitiously watched the house as it was resurrected from the inside out, the crash site patched, the gutters reattached, the windows rehung. The paint was unmatched, several different shades. I looked at the lights from my bedroom at night with my gaze aslant. Nothing was permanent.
The week before Tia arrived, all the doors in our house seemed to open and shut at random. There were chirrups and whirs and the furrowing of small animals in my garden, groundhogs and chipmunks, squirrels and skunks and deer at night, searching for roots and shoots. I’d discovered two dead squirrels the week before—then twice in as many days, some cat had deposited a house finch, then an expired mouse, on our doorstep. Iris found an owl pellet in the backyard. It was a little unusual, but there was no time to sketch anything, just time for cleaning up, always cleaning up. Everyone in the house was in constant motion. Carra was busier without us than she’d ever been in her life—always at practices and at friends’ houses after school. On weekends the house was empty of her particular clacking footsteps, her special shuffle up the carpeted stairs, her energy of staying and of waiting to go.
I wondered about her best friends; Carra had started to keep things to herself, though I insisted on names of companions and parents and destinations. I didn’t press her for who she loved most, to whom she was telling her secrets. She was often down the street at Vivian’s house, but she hardly talked about her friend anymore. I remembered myself at twelve going on thirteen; Tia and I told each other everything, when there began to be things to tell that didn’t issue from the realm of parents and pure imagination.
A few weeks before, I’d found Carra sitting by the washing machine at night, waiting to rescue her bathing suit before the spin cycle. I couldn’t leave it any longer, my question list, my strong desire to know my daughter, though now I wondered whether I’d ever known her, even when she had relied on me for food and contentment. Her mouth was the same as it had always been, wide and tender, my husband’s mouth, revealing judgments with expression instead of words.
“So, Carra-my-faira,” I started, using an old pet name, Caius’s pet name, in fact.
“Mom, I’m kind of busy,” she said.
I looked at her posture. She looked the opposite of busy; she looked like she was simply waiting, storing all her possibilities and necessities, ready to pounce on that bathing suit and escape to her room, her phone conversations, her books and music and whatever else sustained her at nine P.M. on a Thursday night.
“Well, while you’re busy, I thought we might catch up a little.” I cringed even as I said it. My mother’s voice issuing from my mouth, my mother’s needy questions.
The first time I’d ever lied to my mother that I remembered, besides perhaps a preschooler’s transparent experimentation with truth, I was twelve years old. She asked where I’d been all day. She had said it with a tone much like mine with Carra, wobbly with want. And I don’t know why—I’d been in the woods with Tia, casting a spell against a girl we hated, with a leaf gall and a cottony clump of spiderweb—but I told her Tia and I had been at the library, reading and doing homework. It mattered to me that I keep my day secret, and it felt awful and delicious knowing I’d fooled her, knowing she wasn’t able to keep me attached, attended to, once I’d passed our house’s threshold without her.
“I mean,” I said to Carra’s silent pout, her mouth saying she wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or released, “I mean what do you care about these days? Is swim team good? Or—” I stopped myself. Let the last word drown in the sound of the washer’s chug. It was unbearable to ask and unbearable not to know.
“Everything’s fine,” she said, t
he pout changing into a vulnerable, minuscule smile. “I’m doing the relay now, because Jill broke her ankle so she can’t do backstroke. And”—here she paused and opened the washer to stop the new spinning and fish for her suit—“I totally hate Hailey, because she told everybody I like Mitch.”
I remembered Hailey from a play group when Carra was less than one year old, still sitting on a mat. Hailey had no hair then, just an egg-shaped head and blond lashes and no eyebrows. Her mother always brought Entenmann’s brownies and sang “Everyone loves Entenmann’s!” and regaled us with stories of Hailey’s newest words, how she was counting when she gazed at her fingers, how she was definitely gifted.
“Gotta go,” Carra said, storming up the steps, her suit trailing soap-scented water. I stayed downstairs for a while, my hands on the washer, feeling the spin and trying to let it be enough.
One morning Iris wouldn’t play with anything for more than ten minutes without me.
“No more sandbox!” she cried, flinging a handful of sand and desiccated bugs and dirt from the ground into my legs.
“Iris, that’s very rude,” I said, but I could see she was about to turn down the street that led to a tantrum.
“Do you want to do something inside?” I sighed. I’d been weeding. That is, I’d taken out my gloves and the lawn refuse bin, and I’d picked a single clump of crabgrass, not getting to the roots.
“Maaamaaa,” said Iris.
“How about a video?” I sighed again. I was wanton, and I didn’t even have the excuse of bad weather. The breeze was sweet with the first lilacs from the edge of the lawn; the sun striped the walkway. We should have been happy.
“No,” said Iris, sprinting toward the front yard. “I wanna visit baby,” she said.
“Iris!” I yelled. “I think baby’s sleeping.”
We were coming home from the preschool open-house when the next carrion appeared. Iris bounded up the steps to get the mail.
“What’s that?” she reached to pick something up. It wasn’t another mouse; it was much bigger.
“We don’t have a cat, damnit,” I said out loud. I never swore. Why was I swearing? I’d had enough of Iris’s recalcitrance, enough of trying to keep the porch clean. I felt like I had when I was first pregnant, unreasonable, unable to bear the most trivial of details. But a dead groundhog on my front porch. It was too much, too much death, too suspicious, too horrible.
Iris didn’t appear to hear my expletive. She was reaching for the bloody flank.
“Don’t touch!” I yelled, which made her turn to me and cry.
“Don’t yell at me, Mama!” yelled Iris. She flopped to the floor of the porch, weeping as I scooped her up, hoping to avoid whatever foul germs the rotting thing could spread on her soft, vulnerable fingers.
“Mom!” yelled Oliver, coming up the walkway. “I’m going to ride my bike to Kevin’s house!”
“Fine,” I said, collecting my angry girl, who had scraped her knee on the step. “Don’t you have homework?” At that minute, I didn’t care about the homework. I could see the groundhog from where I sat. Crushed, a tire print on the flank. The center was wet, and I imagined the motion of maggots. It was so foul, I wanted to do something, scream at someone, hit something. I gagged and brought Iris inside.
“I’m going, okay?” said Oliver. “And we’re going to the movies later.” I let him go, instead of inspecting his backpack, offering him a snack, asking him about his day. I let him leave me, wanted him to go.
Once I had wiped her hands with antibacterial wipes, taken off her shoes in case they were contaminated, cleaned up her scraped knee, and given my daughter a cookie she shouldn’t have before dinner, I settled her in front of the television. Then I went outside with a blue bag from the New York Times, which Caius hadn’t been reading and neither had I, and bagged the groundhog. I still felt angrier than I should have, almost feverish, unreasonable. It occurred to me, a grain of thought working against my mind the way a grain of sand irritates an oyster to pearl, that someone had put the dead thing there, along with the others. Not a cat but a person, someone with a grudge against me.
There was only one person like that: Amanda. I remembered how casually she’d told me she put hot sauce on her sister’s toothbrush—not that this was in the same league, but still. I tried to remember what I had said to her when I quit. Had I told her off, or had I made it about me? Suddenly I couldn’t remember it exactly; suddenly history was rewriting itself the way it always did after a breakup. And it had been a breakup. But it wasn’t her, it was me. Or maybe it was her. She’d always been nagging me, always complaining about how I took care of Malena. About hand washing and honey and how many diapers were filled. About all the things a mother is obsessed by. I tried to imagine just how angry she was with me, just how vengeful she might feel. What would Amanda’s face look like, hoarding carrion, smuggling it to my doorstep when she knew I was gone?
I peered out the window, disgusted and afraid—and disgusted with myself for being afraid. What right did someone have to terrorize me in my own home? Should I call the police? Should I march over there and tell her to stop it? Was I imagining things? Was it possible that someone could be this disgusting, this mean?
I steamed all evening, burning my finger on the frying pan at dinner, spilling Iris’s juice, which made her cry. But I couldn’t say anything until the children were safely in bed; I couldn’t explode with my fearful theory, not even with Caius. He had to find it credible, had to be willing to join with me rather than soothe and smooth me. I didn’t want to be soothed; I wanted company in my outrage, so my approach to Caius would have to be gentle. I told him about the groundhog.
“Do you think Amanda might be giving us those, um, dead animal gifts?” Caius was flossing his teeth in the bedroom doorway; I was in the bathroom, washing my face. I could feel the repulsion sneaking into my limbs like adrenaline.
“Are you serious, Thea?” he asked, sounded parental.
“No. I don’t know. I guess I was just thinking if I were really mad, I don’t know, if she were really mad—do you think? I don’t know,” I said.
“Do you think she could do something like that?”
“Maybe it was just a cat,” I lied.
“If it happens again, we should tell the police,” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t. I was afraid I could be wrong. The police seemed so drastic, so confrontational. If we called them, it would be real.
“It’s not such a big deal,” I said.
“You’re the one who thinks she’s doing it. Which would be harassment. Maybe it’s her husband.”
“Never mind,” I said. Half of me wanted him to say, No, you do mind, and I’ll phone the police this instant! The other half of me regretted sharing my suspicion. I had no proof.
“Your call.” He pushed in front of me to spit in the sink. I didn’t want it to be my call. I wanted it all to go away. I had small secrets, and I wanted to relinquish them.
It was a good time for Tia to be coming. I didn’t want to be this way; I needed to put my suspicion to bed for a while. I wanted everything to be usual again, normal. I tried to stop thinking about the little corpses and concentrate on Tia’s visit. The trip was officially to see her mother, now that Mrs. Larkspur had moved to the home, but I imagined our days and nights together nonetheless, eager as a girl planning a sleepover party. It was partly the company I was hungry for. Although I had always told Caius pretty much everything, lately he didn’t listen well. Or he listened the same way he always had and suddenly that wasn’t enough for me. And maybe, just maybe, Amanda had been a little bit of a friend. And then we’d broken up over my employment, which would have been a stretch for any friendship, or even just for neighbors. Maybe at the same time I suspected her, I missed her a little bit.
Since she was finally coming, my friend, I wanted to tell Tia everything, to tell her things I didn’t know yet. The day before Tia arrived, Caius trundled through the back door in t
he middle of dinner. Iris was flinging bits of carrot and turkey burger from her high chair, Carra had already excused herself to go out with a friend, and I hadn’t caught the friend’s name and worried, and Oliver was trying to tell me about his project for school, on Hawaii. Just the week before I’d thought we were ready to put the high chair in the attic, but Iris clearly wasn’t there yet.
“Can we go to Hawaii, did you ever hear of slack-key guitar playing, could I get a guitar?” Oliver asked.
Caius walked in and his look said he was surprised by all the mess. Iris’s flung food and coats puddled about the kitchen and pots sat on the counters. He also seemed surprised we hadn’t waited, even though he’d called in the afternoon and said he might be late. Some days “he might be late” meant go ahead without him, though once upon a time it had meant could we wait a little extra in case he managed to make it home in time to eat with us. But now wasn’t once upon a time. When she was hungry, Iris wrapped herself around my legs, and Oliver got a little zany with questions and ideas and snacked on anything he could reach. So I’d given in to dinner, and now I had ketchup on my white sweater, the one I knew I shouldn’t wear within a mile’s radius of my children, but it was thick and the house was chilly. I was tired of waiting for it to be safe to wear white.
“Hey,” said Caius. “I see we’ve started without me.”
“And I see you’re late as usual,” I snapped.
“Daddy, can I get a guitar?” Oliver asked, waving his burger for punctuation.
“Where’s Carra?” Caius hung his coat on his hook and reached across the table to pick up a sautéed onion with his fingers. I wanted to say, Did you wash your hands? Did I say you could sit down yet? Where are your manners? I wanted him to go away and let me deal with my chaos in my own way.
“She’s out.”
“We could go to Hawaii,” said Oliver. “It’s got rainbows and they grow sugar and pineapples. There’s a movie set in Hawaii, but it’s rated R, so I can’t see it.”
The Other Mother Page 19