The Other Mother

by Carol Goodman

  Leave it, I tell myself. Now is not the right time. If Sky comes back I have to look like I’ve made a start. I have to look like I know what I’m doing. I have to look like Laurel.

  I haul the first box onto the table. It’s sealed with packing tape, and scrawled across the top is Crantham Retreat 1948. I stare at the old name for several moments thinking that’s what I’ve found here—a retreat. Then I go to find a knife.

  The first box is full of bound notebooks all with the same leather covers, stamped with an insignia of a tower that resembles this tower. When I flip through them I find that they’re all full of the same old-fashioned script.

  I select one to read more carefully. The date on the first page is August 21, 1951.

  M.E. responding quite well to E.C.T. therapy. Plan to continue course of treatment for six more weeks.

  H.J. exhibiting signs of paranoia again. Delusion that he is being held in a German concentration camp persists. Query: Better to play along with delusion or confront patient with reality?

  Dinner of roast beef, asparagus, and potatoes. B. continues to complain of isolation. If only she had as much to engage her as I do! Suggestion that she run a knitting circle with the patients met with scorn. “Do you want me to end up with a needle in my eye?” she asked. Suggested basket weaving but she responded she’d rather stick a needle in her own eye. Query: Why do women make everything so difficult?

  So Morris Bennett had his own difficulties at home. “B.” must be Sky’s mother (I make a note to look up her full name). The dry, amused tone corresponds to the picture Sky drew of him, as does the unhappy wife. I couldn’t help but sympathize with her, being relocated to a new home all while trying to please a finicky husband. I remember when we first moved in together Peter picked at everything I did, from how I folded towels to how I put glasses away in the cabinet, but he would always phrase it as a suggestion.

  Don’t you think these towels would look neater if you folded them in thirds? Wouldn’t you spend less time rewashing glasses if you put them back top down so they don’t get dusty? If Dr. Bennett was anything like that, I don’t blame her for thinking about putting a needle in someone’s eye!

  I begin ordering the books by date, writing the date of the first entry and the last on a slip of paper that I insert in each one. I catch stray remarks as I do, observations on the progress and regression of Dr. Bennett’s patients (always designated by initials), dinner menus, weather reports (a lot of blizzards), and the continued sparring of husband and wife—which the doctor hoped would be solved by the birth of their first child.

  I can only hope that B. will find the occupation and comfort in a child that she has failed to find in me.

  I flip through to find the entry for Sky’s birth and find it on December 28, 1953, the final entry of that journal.

  After twenty hours of difficult labor B. was delivered of a baby girl. Mother and child are doing well, although B. understandably much exhausted and confused from the sedation. Have suggested we christen the child with B.’s name in the hope it will endear the child to her.

  What a strange thing to say, I think. Why was he afraid that his wife wouldn’t love their new baby? And why did he think giving her the same name would help? It must be a male thing. Peter said that if we had a boy he’d like to name him Peter, but I never in a million years wanted another Daphne. It would have felt like the baby had taken everything from me, including my name!

  Abandoning my record keeping, I search through the journals for the next one, curious to know if Morris Bennett’s fears were grounded. But there’s no journal that begins in January 1954. The next in chronology I find begins in March of 1954. Either one’s been lost or Dr. Bennett took a pause in writing. That’s surprising after the years of regular entries but not as shocking as the first entry. Gone is the dry, reserved tone.

  B. continues to worsen. She has become obsessed with the notion that the baby is not her own. She believes that I have switched our child with one belonging to one of my patients. I can only conclude that these delusions are a result of puerperal insanity. I’ve engaged a nurse in the village to take care of the child and another to watch B. when I am not able to. I am afraid that if this goes on I will have to admit B. to the hospital, but I am reluctant to because of how it will reflect on my authority. Even though it is clear that she is raving I do not relish the thought of my staff hearing her accusations that I have impregnated one of my patients and foisted it upon her. I can only hope that this delusion is a temporary one and that B. will accept our child as her own. Meanwhile, the child’s piteous wailing seems to follow me everywhere I go in the house, even to the top of the tower, which seems to act as a funnel for the sound.

  The description of a baby’s cries funneled through the tower is so eerie that I can almost hear it. I look up from Morris Bennett’s journal and realize I do hear it—the sound of a baby crying as if it had been preserved in the tower over the years—

  Or Chloe is somewhere in the house crying for me. How long have I been here?

  I look at my watch and see it’s after noon. Two hours that I’ve dreamed away over Morris Bennett’s journals, not even once thinking about Chloe. It feels like a disloyalty. After all, how much do I know about Mrs. Williams? What kind of a mother gives her child over to a woman she’s met for all of five minutes? How do I even know that the woman who showed up at my door this morning is Mrs. Williams? Maybe she’s an escaped patient with a fixation on babies.

  The crying grows louder. I can’t tell where it’s coming from. Morris Bennett was right—the tower is like a funnel for sound. I get up and turn in a circle, not sure what direction to go in. Down the stairs to my apartment? But as I approach the spiral stairs the sound grows fainter. It must be coming from the main house.

  I push open the door and find myself in a long book-lined corridor that stretches into the shadows, like a corridor in bad dreams that goes on forever. That’s another of Laurel’s dreams. In this one she’s put Chloë down in a room in an enormous house and then forgets where the room is. She wanders down the long corridors, hearing her crying, unable to find her. Just as I do now, groping my way down the dim hallway, trailing my hand along the ribbed book spines until I reach a wide staircase. The crying is definitely coming from downstairs. I head down, the wooden steps creaking under my feet. The stairwell is paneled entirely in the same dark honey-colored wood, as if it had been carved out of the surrounding forests. It smells like pine and woodsmoke.

  I pause at the foot of the stairs, listening for the sound of crying, but it has become unnaturally quiet, as if the house is holding its breath. I look into a parlor full of faded chintz settees and divans drowsing in mote-filled patches of sunlight like big cats. This must be the parlor I’m “welcome to use” but it doesn’t look like anyone has used it for years. Even the faces looking out of the framed photographs on the tables and the oil portraits on the walls look as if they’re uncomfortable. As if they are patients waiting for a doctor. One face in particular draws me over the threshold. It’s a portrait hanging over the mantel of a young woman painted in bright primary colors. It’s jarringly modern for this old-fashioned room. The face, while beautiful, is painted in broad, primitive strokes of green, yellow, red, and blue, each feature somehow separate from the rest as if they might fly apart into a dozen separate pieces. At the bottom someone has written “For Elizabeth, my girl of many faces.” Elizabeth, I recall, is Sky’s mother’s name. Perhaps this was done by a family friend, which explains its place of pride over the mantel. The woman in it does look familiar—

  The cry wrenches my attention away from the painted face and all the faces in the framed photographs look at me reprovingly, as if to say, Why are you dillydallying here while your baby cries?

  I follow the cry down another hall and through a swinging door into a bright, modern kitchen. Billie is standing at the counter straining carrots through a sieve and Chloe is ensconced in a bouncy chair. She waves her arms in the air
at the sight of me and I go straight to her, feeling a queasy mixture of relief and guilt. “Mommy’s here,” I say, scooping her into my arms and pressing her to my chest. “Don’t cry, Mommy’s here.” But there’s no need to tell her that; she isn’t crying, at least not now. To Billie I add, “You should have come and gotten me if she was crying.” As soon as I say it I hear the echo of Laurel’s voice chiding Simone in the parking lot.

  But Billie doesn’t look offended by my sharp tone, she only looks confused. “I would have,” she says, “but she hasn’t cried all morning.”

  Daphne’s Journal, July 7, 20—

  Laurel was right that all I had to do was be more honest with Peter; everything has been much better since I told him how important Laurel’s friendship is to me. Really, it was all my fault. Peter’s been nothing but loving and supportive since Chloe was born; how could I expect him to know what I wanted when I didn’t know myself? I can’t even blame him for not hiring a babysitter, because I’d told him I hadn’t wanted one. I mean, that was because when he first suggested it I thought he was criticizing me for not being able to take care of Chloe myself. But now I see how paranoid that sounds and how much better it is to have some help. Peter even said I could have Vanessa watch Chloe so I could go out to lunch with Laurel. And he wasn’t mad when Laurel suggested I join her health club, even though it’s way more expensive than the gym I used to belong to.

  “It’s important you look and feel your best,” Peter said.

  Which made me realize I’ve really let myself go. I still haven’t lost all the weight I gained while I was pregnant. Peter hasn’t said anything about it, except once when he said he was just a little disappointed because I’d been so fit when we met. When I told Laurel that, she said that was a really passive-aggressive thing for him to say and what did he expect? Pregnancy is like having an alien take up residence in your body. But then I told her it wasn’t really Peter’s fault because I had never told him how hard I used to work to stay thin, running three miles a day, counting calories, measuring portions. I had to give up running when I started spotting in my second trimester and my OB/GYN said I had to eat more. I still feel guilty that my running and being underweight might have caused Chloe to be premature. But once I stopped counting and measuring everything I kind of went a little overboard. And then after Chloe was born I just felt so overwhelmed and the medication the doctor gave me makes me feel so bloated and groggy.

  “What you need is to feel in control again,” Laurel told me.

  So we’ve been going to Laurel’s health club every morning. It’s so relaxing! We take a yoga class and then run on the treadmills and get massages from this dreamy guy named Bjorn and then have lunch in the café. I always order exactly what Laurel is having because I figure, hey, it’s working for her! At first I was a little shocked at how little she ate—kale salad with sunflower seeds and plain hot water with lemon juice—but then she told me that the antidepressants she’s on actually suppress her appetite. She gave me a bottle so I could ask my doctor about prescribing them and left a few in it so I could try them. Now I don’t feel hungry at all! I’ve lost 5.2 pounds and I have so much more energy! I don’t even mind when Chloe wakes me up at night, it’s like I really don’t need that much sleep anymore.

  We usually go straight back to Laurel’s house after the gym to play with “the two Chloes” as Laurel calls them, but today Laurel took me to her hair salon. She said I needed a new haircut to go with my new figure. She spent a lot of time talking to the stylist and colorist about what would look good on me. I’d always just gotten a blunt cut because I don’t like the feeling of hair hanging around my face, but Laurel said a little layering would give me a lift and I would get used to it. “Just you wait,” she said, “a good haircut is better than an antidepressant.”

  And she was right! The minute I saw myself I felt like a new person.

  She was right about something else too. We really do look alike. Especially with my new haircut. We could be twins!

  Chapter Five

  I search Billie’s bland and guileless face for any sign of deception and find none. Then I look at Chloe. She has the kind of fair skin that blotches when she cries, but her plump cheeks are as smooth and unblemished as a porcelain doll’s face.

  “I thought I heard . . .” I begin.

  “Were you in the tower?” Billie asks, filling a spoon with bright-orange strained carrots. I’m so distraught that I don’t even mention that I haven’t started giving Chloe solid food yet.

  “Y-yes,” I answer. Where else would I be? Wasn’t that where I was supposed to be?

  Billie nods and holds the spoon to Chloe’s lips. Chloe purses her mouth like a baby bird. “There are strange sounds in the tower. When the wind blows it plays those spiral stairs like a xylophone.”

  “I heard a baby crying, not a xylophone.”

  Billie smiles at Chloe and makes a chirping sound that makes Chloe chortle. “It can sound like a baby. Dr. Bennett saw a patient there once—a poor distracted soul—who said she could hear her lost baby crying. She was sure they were keeping her baby in the tower. One night she escaped—”

  “Escaped? How?” I demand, alarmed that my vision of an escaped lunatic might be a real possibility.

  “Don’t worry,” Billie says, hearing the panic in my voice, “this was back in the seventies; they’ve improved security since then. And this woman was crafty. She waited for the guard at the back gate to turn around and she clobbered him over the head.”

  “She was able to overpower him?”

  “Madwomen have surprising strength,” Billie answers placidly, all the while smiling at Chloe and making encouraging faces to keep her eating. “Especially a woman who thinks her baby’s life is at stake. See, she’d developed the delusion that Dr. Bennett was experimenting on her baby—ridiculous, of course; Dr. Bennett was a saint!—but you can see where the idea came from. Imagine if you were surrounded by men in white coats always probing, asking questions, dispensing drugs and electric shock—”

  “Electric shock? They gave that to women who—”

  “Had the baby blues?” Billie says, her face still arranged in the cheerful expression she’d assumed for Chloe’s benefit. It makes her seem as if she thinks electric shock was a treat. “When I worked at the hospital . . .”

  “Wait. You worked at the hospital?”

  “Why, yes,” she says, looking surprised I didn’t know. “Didn’t Sky tell you? I was a volunteer there before I went to nursing school. Dr. Bennett noticed me and helped me pay for nursing school and then to get my first job . . . anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, the way they treated the patients back then . . . it wasn’t always a pretty sight. Especially what happened to this poor soul. They gave her so many electric shock treatments she forgot her own name. No wonder she became deranged and began to imagine that they were experimenting on her baby.”

  I shudder. In my worst moments I hadn’t imagined anything so diabolical—only now I do imagine it: a helpless infant strapped to an operating table, a white-coated doctor approaching with a scalpel—

  Leave it!

  I shake myself to get rid of the awful picture but it has lodged there now, a piece of grit that will grow inside my brain.

  Billie smiles at my expression. “So you see how she was driven to get out and search the tower. She hit the guard over the head—poor old Herb Marcus, he was never the same afterward—and made her way up the back path to the house . . .”

  I see it as Billie tells the story: the madwoman from my imaginings last night, unkempt, hair loose and matted, wild eyes, bare feet—surely they gave them shoes in the asylum, a reproving voice points out—creeping up the hill toward the tower, all the while hearing her baby’s cries. I see her finding her way in through the downstairs apartment where Chloe and I are living and climbing the spiral stairs, turning around and around in a tight coil as convoluted as her own mad delusions, hearing her baby’s cries all around her in the wind and the
creak of the spiral stairs. And when she got to the top of the tower and didn’t find her baby—

  “What did she do?” I cry so sharply that Chloe stops mouthing her carrots and lets some dribble out of her mouth. “When she didn’t find her baby?”

  Billie grimaces. “Ah well, she found a doll the doctor kept for some kind of demonstrations he did, a model, like, the kind that came apart.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Yes.” Billie nods. “The poor woman thought they’d taken apart her own babe. She gathered it up and jumped from the top of the tower.”

  I stare at Billie, horrified, while she cleans Chloe’s face off with a washcloth as placidly as if we’d been talking about the weather. “That was the end of the doctor seeing patients in the tower. And the end, really, of the doctor. He never was the same. And the poor woman—”

  “Didn’t she die?” I ask, somehow more appalled at the thought of surviving such an episode than of her dying.

  “No, she broke her leg in the fall and was crippled but she survived. In fact . . .” Billie looked up at me, a strange light in her eyes. Something almost . . . triumphant. “She was much better after that, as if the shock of falling shook some sense into her.”

  “Oh,” I say. It’s not the ending I was expecting. “And her baby?”

  “What baby?” Billie asks. “The poor soul gave her baby up at birth. The baby in the tower was all in her head.”

  EVEN THOUGH IT’S time for lunch, I don’t have much of an appetite after Billie’s story. I change Chloe myself and rock her until she’s ready to go down for her nap. Billie has set up a cot in the kitchen where she can watch her while she cooks dinner so I can go back to work. “Unless you need a rest yourself,” she says.

  “No,” I say, thinking I’m unlikely to ever rest again with that awful story revolving in my brain. “I want to make some notes on the journals I indexed this morning.” On my way out of the kitchen, I shoulder the diaper bag. “I’ll just go refill the diapers.”