by Minka Kent
I fling his hand off me. “Don’t.”
I wanted to save this; I wanted to save us. I wanted to believe all was not lost.
“Daphne.” He laughs. He thinks this is a joke. “Is this about dinner? I’m sorry I didn’t have much to say. We’re working on this acquisition at work, and it’s stressful. It’s like a game of chess. I shouldn’t have been preoccupied when you planned this little date night for us. I’m sorry.”
Graham pulls into the honking, chaotic Manhattan traffic, veering around the corner and leading us back to our hotel.
The thought of sleeping next to him, his duplicitous hands caressing my body, his greedy fingers slipping down my panties as his lips claim my flesh, makes me nauseous.
“Night is still young. Let me make it up to you,” he says.
I don’t think he can.
Fifteen
Daphne
When Grace was born she had thick, dark hair and wide, round eyes like two endless black holes. They turned a shade of ordinary brown after a while, but looking at her was slightly unnerving at first. She wasn’t one of those babies who garnered comments from complete strangers. No one stopped us to tell us how beautiful she was. No one offered to babysit, and no one fawned over her for very long. It was as if she gave off this force-field that kept anyone from getting too close.
For the first three months, she was fussy and cranky. The doctors said she had colic, but she was never like that when Graham was holding her. Just me.
In a desperate attempt to bond, I took her to Mommy-and-Me classes that first year. Music. Yoga. Baby signing. Anything I could get my hands on, I signed us up for. All the other moms seemed so effortless with their babies. All the other babies cooed and laughed, reaching for their moms.
Clinging to their moms with their sticky hands and grinning their drooling smiles.
Not Grace.
She’d crawl off every chance she got, and when she wasn’t curiously exploring, she was having the mother of all meltdowns. Somewhere along the line, I lost track of how many classes Grace had disrupted, how many times I had to sneak out with her and get her home where she could continue on with her hissy fit.
Every day was a struggle.
And then Graham would come home.
Grace would light up and giggle, and Graham would smother me in kisses, unable to keep his hands off me, telling me motherhood looked gorgeous on me, and how he couldn’t wait to get home to his little family every night. He’d scoop Grace up in his arms, kiss her tiny forehead, and carry her off to the family room while I fixed us dinner.
I could hear him counting her fingers and toes from the next room, all the while I was counting down the minutes until her bedtime so I could breath again . . .
So I could have Graham to myself again.
So I could feel normal again.
Everything about motherhood felt unnatural. It was a polyester suit I could never remove. Scratchy. Uncomfortable. It pulled in all the wrong places and looked horrible on me, I was sure.
It didn’t help that Graham moved us to Monarch Falls, where I knew not a single soul. My days were Grace. My nights were Graham. I existed solely as a wife and a mother. My hope was always that I’d meet some other mommy friends, but it never happened. Those women stayed away from me the way everyone else stayed away from Gracie.
There were days, that first year, that I wasn’t sure I could do it. I’d page through various mommy blogs all day, convinced these women knew what they were doing because they looked ridiculously happy all the time with their exuberant grins and Eskimo kiss photos. I studied their recipes, their discipline methods, bought the clothes they bought, and followed the trends they raved about. For a period in my life, it was an obsession.
For all intents and purposes, I became one of them, and I imagined a whole nation of moms, all faking it until they made it, all trying to get through each and every parenting tribulation with smiles plastered on their faces and gentle, silent reminders that nothing lasts forever.
And then I came across a defunct blog. A woman and her husband had a beautiful baby girl, chronicling the first two years of her life, and I could see that they weren’t trying to be some kind of picture perfect family. They genuinely loved and adored each other. They genuinely loved life. Their daughter had a contagious smile, white-blonde curls, and big blue eyes. They called her Emmy, and like Grace, she was adopted.
As the blog posts progressed, I almost clicked away until something in the side bar caught my eye. It was a link to a post simply titled, “Funeral.”
My heart sank, and I found myself poring over a dozen or so posts detailing the accidental choking death of their sweet Emmy. Her mother had taken her to a park one afternoon, feeding her sliced strawberries when one piece got lodged in her throat. When she couldn’t get it out, other park patrons tried, and 911 was called. Emmy was unconscious, and after a few days at the hospital, she was pronounced brain dead.
The blog posts stopped after “Funeral.”
I cried for hours after reading about Emmy and her parents.
And I looked at Grace differently from there on, reminding myself every single day that we were lucky to have her. That she was given to us for a reason. Those parents will never get to tuck sweet Emmy to bed again, and I get to spend every waking minute of my day with my daughter.
Things were a little better when Grace turned eighteen months and began to talk more. Word by word, we could communicate. We could see eye to eye. She became fascinated by everything I did, shadowing me, suddenly inseparable.
With each day that passed, I felt more at ease in my role, and Graham noticed. He called me a natural, said he’d never loved me as much as he did when he watched me with her.
It felt good to see him happy, to feel his appreciation and admiration. So when Grace turned two and Graham insisted we try for one of our own again, I didn’t say “no.”
Over the year that followed, Grace was a sweet little angel. She picked flowers, skipped down sidewalks, accompanied me to baby yoga, and twirled in the frilly dresses I picked out for her. We shopped and lunched and made friends with the neighbors. Grace smiled more than she cried, and complete strangers would stop me to rave about how well-behaved my child was.
Life was grand.
And then Rose came along. Conceived after a single try, Graham never once questioned my earlier “infertility diagnosis,” but he did push for me to see a doctor as soon as possible, just to make sure everything was normal.
The day I gave birth to Rose, I saw that darkness in Grace’s eyes again. The smiles stopped. The tantrums started. The doctor said it was a phase, that she was jealous of the baby. But as a mother who knew my daughter, I could sense it went far beyond any of that.
And I was right because seven years later, nothing has changed. If anything, she’s only become worse.
My house is quiet on this Monday morning, and it gets like this toward the end of the school year. The kids know summer break is just around the corner, and they lose all desire to get moving in the morning, even little Rose.
Graham left before the sun came up this morning, saying he had an early conference call with London.
He still doesn’t know I know about the mystery blonde, and I’m not sure when I’m going to spring it on him. Besides, I want to have my facts straight. I can only imagine him laughing at me when I tell him his liaisons were casually exposed by a bathroom attendant. By the end of the night, he’d have me convinced the woman didn’t know what she was talking about, and then he’d probably call and have her fired.
I was thankful for the dark of the hotel room that night, but hurt and simultaneously relieved when Graham didn’t initiate love-making. We spent the better part of Saturday doing our own thing; me at the spa and him catching a televised Royals game at his favorite Manhattan sports bar.
Saturday night, we attended our Broadway show, each of us ignoring our awkward, stilted conversation during the intermission, and I let him hold
my hand when he reached for it during the second act. Graham yawned and checked his phone throughout the night, but he never complained.
Then later in the hotel room, out of absolutely nowhere, he held me in his arms and told me he loved me. We were lying in bed, the glow of the TV flickering on our faces. He apologized for working so much, promising me the deal he was working on would allay that. Graham gave me his word that he’d be home more, saying his kids were growing up and he felt like he had a birds-eye view when he really wanted a front row seat.
I’d closed my eyes and listened to the gentle softness of his voice in the dark, breathing him in and trying not to lose it against his chest. Never had my husband felt so physically close, yet so emotionally far away, and it was a kind of pain that seared straight through me.
This life – this beautiful life – we’ve built together means nothing if he isn’t a part of it. I can’t be a single mother. I can hardly be a married mother. I can’t do this without him. I can’t do it on my own.
But I also can’t stick around like some doormat while he’s taking his little whore to our restaurant, sneaking around, coming home late, and filling my head with a million different plausible excuses like I’m too dimwitted to question him.
To be honest, I’m shocked that I’m not completely falling apart at the seams. If anything, I’m numb.
I’m in survival mode.
If the kids were in school today, I’d have time to think on this. I need to make a decision. I’m well aware of the fact that I need to figure things out. I can’t flounder around in this murky gray area forever, straddling the lines of two very different existences.
My head pounds despite the two cups of coffee I’ve already inhaled this morning. Two thumps are heard from above followed by the creak and whoosh of a bedroom door opening.
Grace is finally up.
I wait for her footsteps to trail down the stairs, pouring myself another cup of coffee in the interim. After a couple minutes go by, I head to the bottom of the stairs to check on her, repeating her name in a yelled whisper.
Nothing.
Taking the steps as carefully and quietly as I can, I see her open door at the end of the hall, and then my gaze travels to the double doors to the master suite, which are wide open.
I know I closed them this morning.
Tiptoeing to my room, I don’t see Grace, so I duck my head into the master bath, freezing and drawing in a long breath when I see her sitting on the counter, a tube of toothpaste in one hand and her other smearing it all over the mirror and faucets.
“Grace McMullen.” I say her name through clenched teeth. “Why?”
“I’m making a design!” she says, brows furrowed as if I have no right to be upset with her right now.
I storm to her side, hooking my hands under her arms and pulling her off the counter. She laughs, eyes dead and lifeless, and reaches like she’s going to smear her sticky hands all over my hair and face. Yanking her to the tub, I draw a bath and begin peeling her clothes off.
“Stop it! Don’t touch me!” She struggles against me, jerking her arms away.
And then she strikes me, her hand sticking to my face.
I pull her close again, and this time her little chubby face is red hot, twisted, looking at me like she hates me. Like I’m the worst mother in the world.
Reaching for me, she grabs a clump of my hair and tugs me toward her. I lose my balance and fall into the tub of running water, wondering how I ever doubted her strength and watching her take off running.
“Get off me,” she screams, frantic and crying. She’s in another one of her moods, and I haven’t the slightest clue how to fix this because I can’t understand it. Sebastian and Rose don’t behave this way, and I’ve raised them all the same. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”
“Grace! Get back here.” I climb out of the water, my pajamas drenched, and chase her down the hall, my feet slipping every which way when I hit the hardwood floor. She’s already thundering down the stairs, skipping steps and jumping off the bottom.
Grace disappears around the corner, and I’m standing at the top of the stairs, sopping wet, cold, hair sticky and white. Defeated.
I can’t keep doing this.
Something’s got to give.
Sixteen
Autumn
The big yellow bus rounds Magnolia Drive at a quarter to eight Monday morning. My hand grips Ginger’s leash, and we pick up our pace. A group of schoolchildren are gathered on the corner, jumping and giggling as they wait for their ride.
Keeping to the other side of the street, I watch the kids, searching for Grace’s dark hair and cherubic smile. My heart flutters when I see her, but I pull my baseball cap tight over my forehead and adjust my sunglasses. My hair is gathered beneath my hat, and I’m in one of Ben’s baggy sweatshirts and a pair of frumpy jogging pants. Each time I walk Ginger, I try to dress a little differently. I wear mostly grays and blues. I like to blend in. I want to be that nondescript neighbor taking her dog for a morning walk.
Practically invisible.
The bus comes to a squeaky halt and the doors creak open. From my perspective it looks as if the thing is swallowing them whole, one by one. Within seconds, they’re off to school, and a little boy with white-blond hair points at Ginger and waves to me.
In a flicker of a second, I try to imagine his parents. What they’re like. I bet they’re good people who teach him manners and self-sufficiency. I’ll bet he’s an only child. Friendly and intelligent.
But clearly his parents screwed up somewhere because he should know better than to interact with strangers.
Stranger danger.
“Sebastian, come back here.” A ball rolls into the street, followed by a running child, and it takes a moment before it fully registers that Sebastian McMullen is headed in my direction - and his mother is frantically, obliviously following after him.
Daphne is on her phone, one hand pressed against her ear and the other outstretched, hysterically screaming as she yells for her son to stop.
The ball rolls across the street, bumping against the curb and coming to a halt maybe ten feet ahead. Daphne is gravely unaware of everything else as she runs after her son, including the blue sedan that nearly clipped her when she ran out between two parked cars.
That’s a real mother for you, willing to put her life on the line and ignoring everything around her just to focus on the safety of her baby.
My heart pounds in my ears as I watch her calmly take Sebastian by the wrist and pull him back to their driveway where her SUV is parked neatly on her side, the right side, with the rear passenger door ajar just the way she left it.
“I don’t know,” she says, exhaling into the phone as she lifts Sebastian to her hip. She’s winded, I can see that from here, but whoever she’s talking to probably has no idea that seconds ago, she and little Sebastian McMullen were almost roadkill, and something tells me Daphne doesn’t intend to tell her. I don’t blame her though. I wouldn’t want to relive a terrifying moment for anything. “Graham mentioned hiring someone, but I feel like at this point all the good summer nannies are taken. We really need to hire someone. I’m going to make him handle it. I just don’t have the time.”
I walk straight ahead but keep my gaze fixed on the two of them as she fastens Sebastian into his car seat, shuts the door, then walks around the back. Within seconds, the brake lights flash to red for a moment and the car rolls down the driveway.
“Come on, Ginger, let’s go home,” I say as we round the corner past the McMullen’s house.
I have to admit I’m confused . . . Daphne has never once mentioned a nanny in the past. Is it a new thing? Has she always hired a nanny for the summer but kept it under wraps? I did always wonder how it was that she could keep a house spic and span, cook gourmet dinners each night, raise three healthy, happy children, and not have so much as a single dark circle under her sparkling blue eyes.
Of course.
Rich peop
le always have hired help!
I can’t believe I could be so naïve to think that the McMullens did it all themselves.
Ginger makes a pit stop by a mulberry bush, but the second we get home, I’m opening my laptop and pulling up every nanny agency in the area until I find their ad. All I need to do is become everything they’re looking for and the job is as good as mine. Then screw Instaface and living my life between snapshotted moments.
I’ll have access to the real thing.
Visions of helping Daphne in the kitchen and braiding Grace’s hair and chatting with Graham about the stock market and running errands in one of their luxury SUVs flood my mind all at once.
This is going to be laughably easy. I’ll be the best thing that’s ever happened to them.
And they’re going to love me.
Seventeen
Daphne
I’m shaking.
I did something I’ve never done before, and I don’t know if it makes me human or a monster or something in between.
Graham texted me earlier, saying he wouldn’t be home until after nine tonight. I slipped the kids each a dose of chewable melatonin and put them to bed at six o’clock so I could have a little bit of a breather.
After the toothpaste incident this morning, Rose and Sebastian woke up. I poured them all cold cereal for breakfast and spent the better part of the morning scrubbing down my bathroom and trying to get the paste out of my hair before I got them out the door.
When the kids got home from school today, I grounded Grace from everything she loves . . . her books, her CD player, her dolls, her tablet filled with educational games. Anything I could think of. I stripped her bedroom bare and made her stay up there all afternoon, alone, like a prisoner in solitary confinement. I even made her eat dinner in her room all by herself, which she probably enjoyed.