The Other Mother

by Gwendolen Gross

  “Right,” I said, “your hunky husband thought it up all on his own.”

  It flashed for a second in her face, doubt. She pressed her hands against the things in her trunk. She was waiting for me to leave.

  “Did you get the postcard?” I asked, finally, because I wanted to see the wound I’d aimed to inflict.

  “No?” she said. For a second I wondered whether it had been lost, wedged into a catalogue, glued to the bottom of the mailbox with moisture; perhaps it went the way of a million other missing pieces of paper, or flew from her box to the street, the sewer, on the damp breeze of accident. But then I knew she was lying. Maybe she hadn’t figured out it was from me. Maybe she had other things to regret.

  “Really,” I said. “Well, you should be ashamed anyway.” I wanted to smile. I wanted to be satisfied, but my hands were shaking slightly, even as I told myself I had only done what was necessary.

  “Fine,” said Thea, fiddling with a strap, then heaving the trunk shut. “I’m sorry. It was silly of me, the whole thing. Quitting like that, too. Do you know, I went to visit Mrs. Larkspur yesterday—she believed she was rescuing them, like babies left for adoption at the castle door of the barren queen.”

  “Ha!” I couldn’t help laughing. I wanted to release her, a little anyway. She had said she was sorry. She had read my note, she had taken shame into her house, and I knew it. And it didn’t make the wound go away, but something about her would always look innocent and redeeming to me. Something about her was the good neighbor, despite her absurd accusation. “You sound like my sister,” I said, relenting just a little.

  “You have a sister?”

  “You knew that,” I said, wondering how she could’ve forgotten. Maybe she had never listened to me; she’d just tolerated me. I thought of how vulnerable I’d been then—and how kind she was. How lovely she seemed. I’d wanted to be like her, how could that be?

  “Yuck, look,” she said, pointing to a shifty silver cat that was gliding through my rhododendrons with a bird in its mouth. “I think that’s the Martins’ new cat.”

  I nodded, not ready to change the subject.

  “They’re really so wasteful—predators who don’t need to hunt—and here it’s after the little brown songbird. Eating up our music.”

  “Wow. Poetry of the suburbs,” I said, meaning it but not forgiving her. “You should write children’s books.” Don’t blame me for everything, I thought, trying to hold on to my anger in the face of her stoicism.

  “Really?” she said, but she wasn’t asking, she was already looking away, discarding my compliment. I could see her correspondence file with Neethi: Oh, you wouldn’t believe my glorious garden! on scented, lilac-colored stationery. Neethi would expense her ridiculous bouquets in round-bellied vases and packets of testicular poppy seeds when her book went back for a second printing. I gagged at the thought, but then, I was pregnant. I was pregnant.

  “How’s Carra?” I meant it. It wasn’t a dig. Carra had sent Aaron a letter. She’d come by once since she’d been out of the hospital; she’d brought the signature Thea brownies on a paper party plate, but it had felt awkward, as though her father had told her to go, and told her mother to send the silent chocolate gesture. She smiled a lot and said little. We were old, I realized. She was so complex and stunning. I wasn’t going to let myself be intimidated by her youth, but I didn’t really know what to say to her. She’d shown us her scars, great welts, the stitch marks like notations on a musical score. After she left I had a brownie, which tasted strange—and then I noticed the tiny note in Thea’s writing: Fat-free. Enjoy!

  “She’s better, thank you,” she said, looking down. We’d fixed the window. Aaron had thrown out his bloodied T-shirt, his favorite from law school, because the stains would never come out. We had a new living room rug.

  “Well,” said Thea, turning toward her house.

  “Nice trip,” I said, wanting to make it to my own door first, so much that I tripped on a flagstone and righted myself without allowing a little yelp for the pain in my toe. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, I thought, but my polite banter exposed me. I still wanted her to like me, how pathetic was that?

  A new normal, I thought; it was starting all over for me. I wanted to feel that I was wrong and she was right, but I didn’t. My new normal meant having things to give up, like this fight with my neighbor. It meant having inexplicable impulses and longings and the terrifying, exquisite current of another person’s pulse inside my skin. Maybe our choices were only enormous because we made them. Thea’s mouth on mine, perhaps, was a kiss of her choices meeting mine. Of course I felt guilty; of course she got bored. Perhaps it didn’t matter who was doing motherhood the right way—though of course it was I. I leaned my briefcase by the back door and went to look for Carole and Malena. The house smelled of vanilla and the laundry was folded in a basket on the couch: a ladybug dress, Aaron’s work socks. Maybe it would all be over so fast and maybe it was just beginning. All the little mountains of decisions—of leaving Malena and coming home, of all the things that would diverge now that there was someone else entering our lives—maybe they were all the quiet music of beginning.

  I was on my way home from another doctor’s appointment when I saw it from Route 17 South. In the morning I’d had a little bleeding, and I was afraid, less than a week after I knew for sure she or he was real, of losing this child I’d already begun to plan for, to throw up for, to include in my imagination of the future. It was okay, I was okay, she or he was okay. The doctor checked with ultrasound and told me to take the day off and to try to put my feet up on the train—right—but that everything was fine. My hands smelled from the antibacterial soap at the office, strange chemical pear. Then I got back in my car and called the office from my cell phone. I’d miss a meeting with Neethi about the annual reviews; she was asking me to do three of them this year. “A little extra responsibility we can make official after your own review,” she’d hinted.

  I called Aaron and left a message that everything was fine. He had a breakfast meeting downtown and wasn’t answering his cell phone. I was thinking about the rest of the day, about being home with both Malena and Carole, how I’d try to stay upstairs in my own bed with the manuscript I’d brought home and not listen for them out the windows, through the walls. I didn’t like being around while someone else took care of Malena now; I could hear her small sounds, her complaints, even Carole’s delight as she came closer to walking, balancing against the coffee table, pulling up on a chair. She probably wouldn’t walk for a little while, she was only ten months, but she could be early, and I didn’t want to miss that particular birth of independence if I didn’t have to. Half of me hoped Carole wouldn’t tell me if she did walk when I wasn’t there. I was thinking about the air conditioner, which rattled, that perhaps today was cool enough not to use it. I was hot at night again; everything about pregnancy was familiar and still new. I hadn’t rinsed off all the soap, and my hands stuck to the steering wheel.

  Perhaps I’d stop at the supermarket, I was thinking, I could actually cook for dinner, though I wasn’t sure I could stomach the meat aisle. Parsley would be nice. Perhaps a parsley pesto. I could manage angel-hair pasta. I thought of stirring it to keep it from sticking. I drove down the hill and saw the skyline of Manhattan and saw the strange smear of smoke rising. Saw that the skyline had been battered, that something was wrong with the city. Something was wrong because one of the towers was missing. I wasn’t the only one who pulled over. I stood on the side of the highway with other puzzled strangers, a woman in a red denim jacket with a wretched cough, a tall man with white hair who was sobbing already, a student who had just started classes at Ramapo College today, she told us, psychology was going to be hard, as if we knew her, as if this mattered, until someone told us what had happened. I listened to the radio, but it didn’t seem real. This was a dream, this was someone else’s life, this was not something that happened to New York, to America, to us. I could still smell the antibact
erial pear soap. I tried Aaron’s phone again and again, and his office, where no one answered, and then I drove home, slow and unsure as a student driver, feeling like a student, less than a student. Feeling as if I’d forgotten how to manage the small responsibilities of life, feeling as if I wouldn’t be able to breathe until I knew he was safe.

  25

  Thea

  On the airplane to Maine, I was nervous about being alone. Here I’d wanted this, even imagined the plane ride itself, the buffer between me and the rest of the world, the space, pure and elegant, of not being responsible for anyone else. But it left me with too much time to think about the kids—whether they were angry I’d left, whether Iris was crying and crying, and though I knew it wouldn’t hurt her to be without me for a few days, I felt anticipatory empathy. I hurt a little for her powerlessness. And, I supposed, for my own.

  Carra pretended not to need me as she recovered, but I still needed to see it, her scar, the wound of separation. I was just going hiking for five days. Backpacking. I ate a roll of Tums on the plane. Pretended to read a book. Stared out the window and hoped I could let New Jersey go, let my family go, let myself have what I needed instead of feeling tethered during my short release from house arrest.

  After our flights, we met in the park and ride, six women over thirty, dragging gear off buses and shuttles and out of cars, piling our goods, careful as eggs in a crate, into the back of a big rattly van that smelled of peanut butter and wet wool. We stuck nametags on our chests.

  “Memorize,” said our leader, a leathery, grinning woman with watery blue eyes and a powerful stance. Only her face was open. “I’m Dora, which should be easy to remember, since you’re mostly moms and you’ve all seen Dora the Explorer.”

  The woman next to me, Roberta, smiled. “Nope,” she whispered. “My youngest is thirty.”

  I gulped, making the polite you’re-too-young-to-have-such-an-old-kid face.

  “Memorize the names. It’s a small group. It won’t take long. Tonight you’ll set up camp together. Tomorrow you’ll trust each other with your lives on the ropes. Then you’ll navigate, hike, cook, eat, breathe, and dig toilet holes together. I am being polite today. Tomorrow I will call them shit spots.”

  The women were here for real reasons: a year since breast cancer surgery, parenting autistic twins, one’s divorce was final, one had graduated from the University of Maine with her BA at age forty-six. Beside them I felt small in some ways, a midlife-crisis excuse, but also smart, smart for finally finding this for myself.

  We set up tents at dusk at a wide flat campground near a lake. The air smelled piney and I had trouble with the poles, embarrassing myself. I knew how to set up a tent, only these were newer models, not the classic A-frame two-person I’d used on the trail with Tia.

  This was the time I’d been aching for, this time alone in the world again, and I couldn’t stop thinking of what happened the first time I’d left my family, not just for the safe containment of college, but for the great expanses of the world.

  I had boyfriends in college, but I never fell in love. Tia did, in serial, regular, and absolute passions that she wrote of so earnestly I was surprised when they ended and a new name graced her pages. It was because of her southern Californian boyfriend, Burton, who’d been rock climbing and surfing and hiking since before he could speak, that we started planning our trip along the Appalachian Trail for after graduation.

  By the time we graduated, Burton was moving to Las Vegas with his new girlfriend, but Tia and I had all our maps, our training logs to compare, miles of jogging and old-style calisthenics.

  It was June when we got a ride up to Maine from a man Tia met in a bar in the city. We started with fat packs and soft feet. By the end of the week, my blisters had blisters, but I felt hardened, capable, and vaguely satisfied with the map’s-inch of distance behind, with yards and yards to go. The post offices in towns along the way held letters for us, and my mother, true to form, sent care packages of dried roses and chocolate bars and short letters with her artist’s angular writing.

  By the time we made it to New York, I didn’t mind them visiting us, my baby brother Oren and my mother in her old silver Peugeot at the Bear Mountain Bridge. Oren looked tired. It was July, and he said he had the flu. Blithely, I believed him. I didn’t know what lies he held beneath his skin.

  On the first day of Outward Bound, I had little time to worry about what I was missing at home. We left camp and took a day hike to Table Rock, carrying only lunch and climbing equipment. We reached the big slab of granite, smooth as a new cheek. I set down my pack and thought, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this. I was already sore from sleeping on the ground. And I felt this strange resistance—almost as though all the hoping for change wasn’t going to help me change, as though my desire to be here was artificial, unearned.

  “Daunting, isn’t it,” said Adrienne. She was short and plump, and had chocolate brown eyes. She’d taken on the heaviest things for her pack—two ropes, a water sack—and had walked quietly behind me without complaining for our three miles in.

  “Yeah, I haven’t done this before,” I said.

  “Many of you have never climbed,” announced Dora. “And some of you will like this more than others. Just remember, this is about learning to trust your partners, and to trust yourself. When you hear someone say they can’t do it, remind her that it’s just another handhold, just another step. And also, I’ve been taking groups here for fifteen years, and there was only one person who actually couldn’t do it. She had multiple sclerosis. She did the hike in. She did twenty feet ascending, but then her legs let out. None of you have that excuse. Your only obstacle is yourselves—the rock has nothing on your personal self-doubt.”

  “Wow,” said Adrienne, turning to me. “Will you be my partner? I think it’d be easy to trust you. Trusting myself is another story.” She giggled. She had a happy giggle, reminding me of a duckling bobbing her head.

  “It’s going to be fun,” I lied. In fact, it felt awkward. I kept imagining I wouldn’t mind being a beginner, if only our climb was really for beginners. It was a long, smooth rock that went straight up in the air. I wasn’t twenty-one, and my knees were stiff. Adrienne clambered up the rock like a spider, asking me for help once or twice, but only to tighten the rope. Dora coached me, telling me only to say something when she asked or faltered. Then it was my turn to rope in—clips and straps and harnesses—and after watching Adrienne, I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t. I scraped both knees and my legs started to shake only halfway up.

  “Crap!” I yelled, as I slipped the first time.

  “You can step right there,” said Adrienne. “Just above your left foot.”

  “Let her find her own holds,” Dora said. I hated Dora. I hated rock climbing. This was humiliating and I was ready to come down. But first I had to finish going up. I gripped with sore fingers, I pulled up farther than I should have and lost my balance again.

  “Crap!” I yelled again. I’d wrenched my arm.

  “Um, just another handhold?” said Adrienne. She was too darn perky.

  Still, when I made it to the top, I did feel satisfied. Battered, but satisfied.

  “I…am…not…tired,” chanted Roberta, one word per step. I had forgotten what real discomfort was. Sure, I remembered artificial discomforts, the house just slightly too cold, wet toes for an hour before you change your socks, hunger that didn’t really count, hunger in the ordinary world. It was raining, and we were moving into backcountry, covering ground, and now it did feel like an accomplishment, like just doing this was more important than anything else. I loved that we relied on one another for navigation and cooking and encouragement. I loved the differentness of the days, even though I was so exhausted I wanted to sit on a rock and let my muscles stop, let go of the tearing sensation I felt with every step. My pack was ridiculously large; I was a turtle plodding along with a too-big shell. Rainwater made everything heavier. My toes were pruned and my heels were blis
tering. My arm still throbbed from our first day’s climb. No one else complained, so I kept it in.

  There were distractions; we talked and talked, the way women do, but for some of the time we let the conversation wane, watching heat rise in bands from the greenery. At least it was a sun shower. I trudged behind Roberta, with Susan behind me, feeling the weight of my pack, irritated by a rivulet of warm water that was working its way through my raincoat. I was sore but happy of it, and of the strange way we’d gathered. There was the excitement of the group, the giddy sense of escape we all shared. There were the brilliant green ferns on the forest floor between the silver birches; there was the crackling sound of rain on my pack; and most of all, there was the pleasure of missing them, missing Iris’s face, missing the sensation of largeness as she hid behind my legs when I answered the doorbell. I missed Caius and remembered the way his forehead made lines like an empty musical score when he smiled. I missed my older children for the noises of their presence and absence. Here there were just birds announcing the arrival of drowned worms, the clatter of cooking utensils tied to the outsides of packs, the swishing of gaitered calves, boots against the mossy drum of ground.

  “I miss them,” I said aloud.

  “But I don’t miss the dishwasher!” called Adrienne.

  “I don’t miss the laundry!” said Beth.

  “I don’t miss the crack in my car windshield I need to get fixed!” Adrienne was giggling.

  “I don’t miss being in charge of every meal!” Susan called. “What about you, Roberta?”

  “Hm,” she said. “I don’t miss chewing grape gum in the chemo waiting room trying not to barf.”

  “I don’t miss feeling both essential and unimportant,” I said quietly. Then Roberta stopped and I bumped into her, and we fell and muddied our knees.