The Other Mother

by Gwendolen Gross

  Caius went to work for a few hours, but he was home by mid-afternoon, spraying Iris with the hose on the lawn. She wore her first-ever two-piece, her baby belly already thinned. She shrieked with pleasure as he soaked her and she ran: approach, avoidance, approach. I couldn’t bear it. I brought out a towel.

  “Too much sun,” I said, standing beside my husband. “She’ll get burned.”

  “I put on a gallon of sunscreen,” said Caius. His nose was red; I was sure he only meant on Iris. The day was too bright and the lawn was too green. We were both ready to fight about something; maybe we needed it.

  “No,” I said, “between ten and three a half hour is more than enough.” Iris pouted but relented. I gave her cheese and crackers and she shivered at the kitchen table in a terry cover-up. Then Caius switched on the TV for her, something I’d never have done unless there was dinner to make.

  “You’re done with this suing them thing, I hope,” he said, once Iris was consumed by Dora the Explorer.

  “I’m still thinking about it,” I said.

  “I just don’t understand what you have against the woman—besides the fact that she left her things on the couch when she stayed here,” said Caius. He picked up a bag of veggie chips and tugged at the top. He was going to open it, eat a few, and let the rest go stale.

  “And that evil postcard,” I said.

  “Well, they were angry. We were kind of over the top with our letter, I think. I shouldn’t have gotten so territorial.” If I were honest with myself, I knew he hadn’t wanted to write that letter. He’d written it for me. My protector. And in retrospect I wish he hadn’t done it, an awkward, formal thing. I wasn’t sure what I wanted from him these days.

  “She should have fixed the window,” I said, each word a stone. Caius assumed his most irritating mask of emotionlessness.

  “I’m going to call them,” said Caius. “I’m going to thank him. And her. He went in the ambulance, and she waited at the hospital with the baby until we got there. I know you didn’t see her in the waiting room, but she was waiting there, and Malena was crying, and all she wanted to know is whether we still needed her there, whether she could do anything.”

  “He helped her, I know,” I said.

  “So stop it,” said Caius.

  I had gone straight into the room; I’d missed Malena climbing around on the waiting-room furniture, I’d missed Amanda’s heavy form hovering around my moment of fear and grief. I could imagine her sitting on the chair with her leg up on another, her lushness itself a provocation.

  “I kissed her,” I told my husband. “Or she kissed me.”

  He looked up but didn’t relinquish his poker face. He walked over to the phone.

  “What’s their number?” he asked me.

  “On the mouth,” I said.

  Then he smiled, enigmatic. I would hate him if this turned him on.

  “Okay,” he said. “Are you telling me something I don’t know? About you, about her? Or just that you kissed her?”

  “Just that we kissed. It was a stressful moment. I mean…what I mean is, I don’t hate her. Not that I love her. I worked for her. She was impossible.” I felt like I was going to throw up. What had I thought this would resolve?

  “So you kissed her,” he said again, and he smiled again, and I could see he was having an autonomic response to this information, that he was unable not to like the idea. Boys were disgusting.

  “Or she kissed you,” he said. “And she was your boss, so that’s sexual harassment.” Now he was baiting me. It hurt, but he was right, I was being absurd. I wanted it to be someone else’s fault Carra had almost bled out in the green of July.

  “We should file a lawsuit.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said, angry for my damaged daughter, for myself because I couldn’t protect her.

  Everyone was at work over there, so we waited until evening to call. Caius dialed the kitchen phone, and I stood beside him holding the phone from the living room. When Amanda answered I imagined, for a moment, that nothing had happened between us, that there had been no letters, no blood, no shame.

  Caius thanked her for both of us, his voice calm, serious, charming.

  “Let me get Aaron,” she said.

  “But first,” my husband said, “I want you to know she shouldn’t have been in your yard, and I apologize. And if any repairs are necessary—”

  “Oh, we needed to fix that window anyway,” she said, opening the loophole once again. “The pane was loose.”

  “I wish you had,” I blurted out.

  “Thea?” she said. “You were listening in?”

  As if she needed to have private moments with my husband. “No, I was on all along. Not listening in. Calling. You. I wish you had fixed it.”

  “But we can pay for the repairs now,” Caius said, holding up his arm, his hand, a basketball defensive posture. He was blocking me. I seethed but said no more.

  “Right, then,” said Amanda. “That won’t be necessary.”

  “But thanking your husband will,” said Caius. “I think he may’ve saved our daughter from much greater harm.”

  “He did,” she said, and then she put down the phone. I couldn’t stay on to talk to Aaron. He needed to be thanked, but Caius clearly had enough for both of us. Enough thanks and enough forgiveness for us both.

  September

  2001

  23

  Thea

  “I guess I can call Jasmine to help out in the afternoons?” It was early; the kids were just getting dressed, and Caius was hovering while I packed. I filled a duffel and the internal frame pack, which belonged to my friend Vicky’s older son; he’d bought it when he was planning to become an Eagle Scout, before he decided he’d rather spend all his resources on his grunge band and a motorcycle she wouldn’t let him ride.

  “I made a list for you already,” I said. He sighed and went to take a shower.

  I had also cooked and frozen dinners. And talked with Iris about it every night, that Mommy was going away but only for a few days, that I’d be back soon, that Daddy could take care of her. She’d been having trouble adjusting to preschool, the same preschool her brother and sister hadn’t wanted to leave at pickup, the same bubbly Miss Leigh who made the same adorable tissue-paper butterflies and sand-art projects every fall. When I left Iris, I had to peel her from my leg. When I picked her up, she ran crying to me, as if I’d been gone for months. I resented it, as if she was trying to keep me from going on my trip after all, and I needed my trip. I needed to separate from her for more than two hours. I needed to separate from my house and the sound of the garbage truck every Tuesday at eight-fifteen and Carra’s physical therapy appointments reminding me I hadn’t been vigilant enough, and the impatiens still expressing their summer exuberance under the dogwood, and my neighbors’ houses staring at me, fat on their frames, the same place, the same place, year after year. I needed different air, and my family didn’t want to let me go. I was selfish for it, greedy, but if I didn’t go soon, I might not be able to see anything clearly anymore. I was so heated up, I started to believe in all those urban myths—self-immolations, alien abduction, and my mother’s least favorite idea, mental breakdown.

  “People can always control their actions,” she’d say, “unless they are impaired. Breakdown means losing control, and you can always maintain control if you just try hard enough.”

  The long underwear would help me stay in control. The bug spray, the waterproof matches, the compass, the wool socks, the hiking boots I’d been breaking in by walking them around the neighborhood. Caius called them my clodhoppers. I think he may’ve been worried I was leaving him. And a small, mean part of me liked his worry. I was going away, and when I came back I could forgive everyone for taking me for granted, for letting me cram myself into the small spaces between them, a paste, a grout, a mother and wife in semiliquid form. Of course it wasn’t their fault, it was mine. The rain pants would help me stay in control. The wicking T-shirt. The maps. Maybe I wou
ldn’t come back.

  Carra still wore a brace for her healing wrist and the welts were noticeable, plum blooms. She said they tingled, and her writing was cramped, but she could write. She wasn’t swimming this fall, but she said she didn’t want to, anyway.

  “I’m doing theater instead,” she’d told me. I knew this was because Mitch loved theater; my girl could barely memorize the poems she needed to learn for English class, let alone a collection of lines. It would’ve been hard to imagine her playing a character—until this summer, when she had been someone new almost every day. I was afraid to leave her for this long, and I was also relieved. I made her promise not to change too much, and she’d winced when she said, “Okay, I promise, Mommy, promise.” She’d also invited Mitch to dinner, twice. He made excellent eye contact with the silverware and answered questions in single syllables, while my daughter beamed at him and thought we didn’t know she was holding his hand under the table. I wasn’t sure what he did in theater—did he play the furniture onstage? I’d just have to wait for a performance.

  “Going!” called Caius from downstairs. “I’ll drop the kids!” It was as though he was practicing, and I thanked him aloud.

  “Momma,” said Iris, coming in from her bedroom. Her face was still lined from the pillowcase; she wore the special silvery fairy ballet slippers we’d bought her as a first-day-of-preschool present. When she was home, they were on her feet. They were already stained with chocolate pudding and bathwater and grass from their one unsanctioned trip onto the lawn.

  “It’s not a school day,” she said.

  “I’m afraid it is, my love. But I know you’re going to have fun. You’re going to do the water tables with Miss Leigh today. And after school, I’ll take you to the grocery store, okay?” I’d meant to do the shopping while I had my childless hours, but already I was conceding, bargaining. If she didn’t cry when I dropped her off, it would be worth it to buy six extra items she picked out, to have to take her in and out of the cart six or seven times, to forget half my coupons because she wanted to play with the credit-card machine at the checkout. I was going away.

  “Can I wear that?” She picked up the wool shirt I’d borrowed from Caius. He never wore it, but he’d had it since the day I met him at Lakes of the Clouds. It came down to the floor on Iris, a checkered dress.

  “I think it’s a little hot for today,” I said, trying to pry it from her.

  “No!” cried Iris. “It’s beautiful!”

  I’d almost allowed myself to forget the letter, the postcard, the police interview until the doorbell rang, and it was James McBean, who graduated from the high school two years before I did, played soccer, hung out in the halls with a crowd who never smoked but stuck chewed cinnamon gum on the lockers, who took turns shouting rude bleats at passing freshmen for kicks. Now he had four kids of his own and he sat in his car by the speed-measuring sign—SPEED LIMIT: 25; YOUR SPEED: 00—with a Starbucks cup and his cell phone. He was in the local free paper, commended for special service to seniors. He sounded tired but kind. Four kids could do that to you.

  “I wanted to report back to you, Mrs. Caldwell,” he said, smiling reflexively at Iris in her nightgown, slippers, and the wool shirt.

  “Right, the animals!” I said, and I realized I was holding a bottle of water-purification tablets in my hand, gripping them in the hope of concealing them from Iris’s interest. I opened the door to Officer McBean, to Jimmy, but he held up his hand.

  “Don’t need to come in. It’s been a bit of a misunderstanding, Ma’am,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. It was going to be hot, that choice September made daily—fall or summer still. Summer. The lawn hissed with the last of the cicadas.

  “The apprehended individual—okay, just between you and me, it was your old neighbor, that Tia Larkspur’s mother. D’you know what ever happened to Tia? She was a nice girl. Anyway, the mother seems to be mentally altered. Senile. So I don’t think it’s intentional. She seems to think she’s saving the animals. The other victim—same thing happened at someone else’s house, anyway—isn’t pressing charges. It’s up to you. We don’t know for sure if it was her every time, of course—”

  “Of course I don’t want to press charges,” I said.

  As I closed the door, I felt a mixture of recognition and shock. And I thought of Tia calling her mother batty. And as I cajoled Iris out of the wool and into her dress, I decided it wasn’t senility only that made Mrs. Larkspur leave the animals, or rescue, but beneath it a gold vein of contempt for my mother—perhaps for me—all those flowers and children, a bit too perfect. Wasn’t this the same contempt and competition we all carried, small eggs, when we watched other people and their children?

  I’d let myself forget it until now, the letter, like purposely forgetting a worrisome mole. I never saw Amanda anymore, or if I did, I pretended not to. I realized the letter was my own dead squirrel, that maybe I should apologize; that I had been far too mean and too afraid, that I still believed deep down she’d started it. She’d degraded my way of life. She’d said she’d be so bored. She’d moved into Tia’s house. And my house. And I missed Malena again, wishing I could be done with it, or that maybe I could do it over. I bundled Iris and her special toy frog into the car so I could drop her off, come home, finish packing. Shame, I thought. It sat on my heart like a tick, drinking and clutching. I would have to wait until it had its fill and let me go.

  24

  Amanda

  When I filled out the 450 forms for the new obstetrician, who was going to help me determine why my period, after being regular for seven months, had disappeared entirely, I had to be honest in filling out the line that read “Who may we thank for your referral?” and write Thea’s name. I almost left it blank. Then I imagined how it might feel when she came in next time, loitering in the waiting room among the boxes of well-drooled-upon stuffed bunnies and single pieces of puzzles and game parts, the few Highlights magazines and three racks of fresh Parenting and Fit Pregnancy. She would be trying not to think about the weigh-in, the finger stick to check sugar, the paper gown and the feel of metal stirrups on her heels, and the woman behind the glass, perhaps the same one with brittle blond hair and red-lined bright blue eyes, who might say, “Oh, thank you for sending us Amanda, by the way.” Then she would have to remember that she’d had her husband send us that ridiculous letter. That my husband had saved her daughter’s life. Then she would have to think of Malena and how she’d quit, and how she’d accused me of having the sort of wrath that inspired dead-animal deposits. And she’d see just how ridiculous she was being. I imagined how she had felt finding these gifts with regularity—disgusted, vaguely afraid. But I wasn’t afraid, just annoyed. Then the police called to tell us they’d apprehended an elderly woman. Mentally altered. In fact, the former inhabitant of our house. I’d long since let the annoyance about the animals go. I remembered the shoes lined up on the porch when we first visited the house; I could easily forgive those strange trespasses from her world into the ordinary one. But I couldn’t forgive Thea for thinking it was me.

  In the doctor’s office, I was too nervous to be angry. I knit a tissue, braided wound-up strands of worried cotton. I bit my cuticles, but that hurt. I was afraid in a sort of pleasant way, afraid because I’d used a pregnancy test kit after I was late, expecting it to be negative, and it had not been. And I had told Aaron and we’d both explained it away with readjusting hormones, because we’d been careful all along, at least most of the time. But who had time to remember a diaphragm every time there was a minute and enough energy for sex—the opportunity brief and occasional as an eclipse?

  And the nurse took my urine away and came back to the weigh-in with a knowing look. And on my way home I stopped at the Rite Aid for prenatal vitamins, thinking perhaps I felt a little nauseated, thinking perhaps it was better to go through this now, before I had time to think too much about it. I had no idea how I would ever have enough capacity in my heart to let something, someone, as
exquisitely necessary as my Malena in along with her.

  Of course she’d be the first person I saw when I got out of my car. Thea stood behind her husband’s silver sedan in her driveway, loading things into a huge backpack in the trunk. It was September fifth, too late for her kids to be going off to summer camp. And Thea was alone at the trunk. I realized I’d almost never seen her alone.

  “Hey,” I said, and louder, “Hey, Thea.” Like a girl in the school yard calling for friend or fight. It may’ve been aggressive, but I was a pregnant woman now.

  She looked up from her trunk but didn’t stop stuffing items into the backpack. A fluffy pink sweater. A box of granola bars. How dare she have ordinary comforts? She’d accused me.

  “Hey,” I said again, coming up to the fence. Of course you couldn’t tell yet, but I was still worried she might magically detect my pregnancy. Aaron didn’t know. He wouldn’t know until he came home.

  “I did not put dead animals on your doorstep!” I called out to her.

  Could this ever be patched over, or would the roots of conflict keep raising the sidewalk squares, making a gap for kids to trick on bikes and crash into concrete or soft lawns when they missed their landings? Her kids. My kid. My kids.

  “Oh,” said Thea. She looked up. “I’m going on a trip,” she said. “I’m going on Outward Bound, can you believe it?” As if we’d been conversing all along.

  “It had nothing to do with us, you know. I still can’t believe you wrote that letter.”

  “Oh, I didn’t. It was Caius’s idea. He thought—oh, never mind. Amanda, thank you for not pressing charges against Mrs. Larkspur.”

  Never mind? It wasn’t that easy. “Thank you for your rude letter.”

  “I said it wasn’t my idea.” Her hands were on her hips. This was it—we’d be enemies. I could live with that. I’d will the next tree to drop on her prissy Laura Ashley living room. I’d have parties and invite the other neighbors and not her. Yeah, the lime-sucking Martins could pass out their Christian-right newsletters to all my friends. We could start a heathen intervention program.