The Other Mother

by Carol Goodman

  BEN MARCUS TAKES me through the lobby, where I have to sign in at a security desk behind thick glass, and up an elevator that requires two sets of keys to operate. When we get off the elevator, the hallway is painted a perfectly pleasant shade of yellow. Framed paintings—modern abstracts with floating blobs of color—line the walls and the carpet is thick and clean. There’s nothing institutional about it at all, but still I feel as if I can’t breathe. “Don’t worry,” Marcus says, “the center of the building is only for administrative and doctors’ offices. The patients are in the wings, and the doors to the wings are locked and guarded.”

  “What makes you think I’m worried?” I ask.

  “You look a little green,” he says, not unkindly. “Everybody does their first time.”

  “Yeah,” I admit, “it feels . . . claustrophobic somehow.”

  “It took me a while to get used to it too.”

  I shudder at the thought of getting used to such a place and turn my attention to the paintings lining the wall so he won’t notice my reaction. The paintings are no comfort, though. What had first looked like abstract blobs of color I see now are pieces of a face rearranged in random patterns: a nose floating beside an ear, a lock of hair curled like a seashell beside closed lips. Each picture by itself would be disconcerting enough, but viewed together they create the effect of a body splintered into a million pieces. As if the artist had been trying to reassemble the features of someone he had lost.

  “One of the patients did those.”

  “What?” I ask, startled by Ben’s voice.

  “The paintings. They were done by a painter who was here in the sixties. He was famous. I guess that’s why Bennett keeps them, but I’ve always thought they were kind of creepy.”

  I turn away from an eye staring up from a breast. “Did he end up here because of these paintings?” I ask.

  “Oh no,” Marcus answers. “He painted rather ordinary portraits before he got here. Maybe this was always inside him or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  “Or maybe he went crazy after he came here. I’ve always thought that if a person wasn’t crazy when they got here, they would be soon enough.”

  Before I can think of a response to that, Ben Marcus knocks on the door at the end of the corridor and opens it. “I’ll be out here to take you back,” he says as I step through the door.

  I almost say, Thank God! and Please don’t leave me here! but instead I say thank you and walk in.

  Dr. Hancock, a white-haired, tan man in his sixties, rises from his desk to greet me. “Ah, Miss Hobbes, so nice to meet you. Sky has been singing your praises.” He shakes my hand and shows me to a comfortable chair in front of his desk. “Would you like something to drink? Tea? Coffee?” He waves to a sideboard set with a water carafe and an electric kettle.

  “Some water would be nice,” I say, sinking into the plush chair. “I walked over.”

  “Did you?” he asks, his eyebrows shooting up. “Good for you. I’ve always envied Dr. Bennett that commute. I drive from Garrison every day.”

  I flinch. Garrison is only a few towns north of where I live. What if Dr. Hancock knows Laurel or Stan? Crantham feels so isolated that I’d forgotten how close the real world is. “That’s a long commute,” I say to cover up my reaction. “You must be very dedicated.”

  He shrugs. “My wife wasn’t willing to give up the amenities of the suburbs and the proximity of our grandchildren. After what happened to Mrs. Bennett I thought it was better to yield to her needs.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, I thought you knew . . .” He looks at me suspiciously as if my not knowing about this means I’m not a real archivist.

  Remember, you’re here to ask the questions, I hear Laurel’s voice say in my head. Don’t let this officious prick rattle you.

  “Sky hasn’t talked much about her mother,” I say, hoping my use of my employer’s first name will put me back on better footing. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “I’m not surprised Sky doesn’t talk about it. She was only seventeen when her mother killed herself. Hanged herself. It was a terrible thing.”

  “That is terrible,” I say, thinking that at least my mother had the good grace to die in a drunken car accident that left a little wriggle room as to her intentions. “Did you know the family then?”

  “Only slightly. I’d met Dr. Bennett when I was doing my residency at the Hudson Valley Psychiatric Center over in Poughkeepsie. Dr. Bennett was a consulting psychiatrist there. When he retired he personally recommended me for his replacement. He was quite the imposing figure. I’ve always hoped Sky would write about him. I gather that you’re assisting her in her memoir?”

  “Yes,” I say, gratified that Sky has mentioned this to him. But of course she would have to explain my interest in E.S.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re here to help. I worry about Sky all alone up there in that big old house.”

  “She’s got Billie,” I say, looking up at the doctor. Instead of going back around behind his desk he’s perched on its edge. I suppose he means it to be informal but I feel like he’s hovering over me.

  “Ah, the inestimable Billie! Loyal to a fault. Did you know they’ve known each other since they were children? Dr. Bennett hired Billie’s mother to look after Sky’s mother when she was suffering postpartum depression, and she would bring along Billie. They practically grew up together. Billie would lay down her life for Sky, but she doesn’t exactly provide intellectual companionship. But you! St. Andrews and the University of Edinburgh! Quite impressive! What made you decide to go to school abroad?”

  I’m still trying to parse Billie’s history—she’d mentioned that Dr. Bennett helped her through nursing school but not that she and Sky had grown up together—so the question about my history catches me off guard. Luckily, Laurel’s answer pops out of my mouth. “Edinburgh had the best archives program . . . and after my parents died I wanted to start over where no one knew me.” Just exactly how Laurel had said it. She always had two reasons for everything, and when she gave you the second one she also gave you the feeling that she was confiding in you.

  “Eminently sensible,” Dr. Hancock said, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. “One of my son’s friends did the program at Edinburgh. Maybe you knew him . . . Todd Walsh?”

  I pretend to consider whether I know Todd Walsh before shaking my head. “I had my nose stuck in my books,” I say, and then, to ward off any more biographical questions: “I’m afraid I’m a bit of a workaholic. Right now, I’m totally engrossed in Dr. Bennett’s journals and his accounts of his patients. Sky said you might be able to help me with that?” I end with a little lilt in my voice and cross my legs. Which is what Laurel would do.

  I see Dr. Hancock pretend to not look at my legs and then he smiles. “I can’t actually give you a patient’s file, but, for an old friend like Sky, I think I can bend the rules a little bit and . . . er . . . give you some information. Who was it you were interested in?”

  “A patient with the initials E.S. Admitted 1971, suffering from postpartum mood disorder, possibly postpartum psychosis. She may have tried to kill herself. Dr. Bennett’s journals end in 1973.”

  “Hm.” Dr. Bennett rubs his chin. “I came on in 1973. I think I do remember . . . hold on . . .” He goes to a file cabinet and opens a drawer. While I wait, I look at the books on his shelves: thick volumes of the DSM editions one through five bound journals of the American Psychiatric Association, and, looking out of place amid the scholarly tomes, The Collected Stories of Schuyler Bennett.

  “Here she is. Edith Sharp. Nineteen years old when admitted. She had a breakdown her sophomore year at Vassar. She gave birth to a baby in her dorm.”

  “Yes, that must be her. Dr. Bennett said she gave birth in her dorm room.”

  “The dorm bathroom actually. Her roommate found her in the bathtub nearly bled out.”

  I wince and close my eyes as if I could protect myself from the
image, but instead my brain is flooded by a wash of red. I see a woman in a bathtub full of blood, the blood seeping over the white porcelain rim. Leave it, I tell myself.

  I open my eyes to banish the image. “That’s awful,” I say, blinking to clear the red film that still clings to my eyes. “But I thought . . . from Dr. Bennett’s notes . . . that she abandoned her baby in a dumpster. He doesn’t mention anything about a roommate.”

  “Yes, well, apparently the roommate went to get help and while she was gone Edith dragged herself out of the tub and—in the middle of a snowstorm, no less—carried the baby to a dumpster.”

  “Why?” I ask. Dr. Hancock looks confused, so I try to clarify. “I mean . . . she knew her roommate had gone for help. She must have known she’d be found out.”

  Dr. Bennett smiles. “You’re reasoning like a rational person, Ms. Hobbes, and Edith Sharp was anything but rational at that point. In fact, when she was discovered putting the baby in the dumpster she maintained that the baby was her roommate’s baby, a delusion she maintained for some time. I’m surprised that Dr. Bennett doesn’t write about that in his journal. It’s all here in her files, and it’s by far the most interesting element of the case—a true case of BPD mirroring, although it wasn’t called that at the time.”

  “BPD?” I ask, remembering that this is what Stan had said Laurel had.

  “Yes, she had what would be diagnosed today as a borderline personality disorder—a difficult disorder to diagnose precisely because the patient may present with wildly different affects at different times. Someone with BPD has no stable sense of self. He or she will latch onto others and mimic their personalities. And that can lead to dissociative episodes during which the ill person may believe himself or herself to be someone else—even having no memory of the episode afterwards. The shock of giving birth triggered a dissociative episode in Edith. She may have experienced a blackout. When she came to, she believed it was her roommate who had had the baby.”

  The idea of being so far gone as to imagine yourself another person is so unsettling that for a moment I’m silenced. Then it reminds me of something Stan said about Laurel being a totally different person when she was sick.

  “You . . . you mean she started impersonating her roommate?”

  Dr. Hancock stares at me a moment before answering. “I wouldn’t have put it like that, but I suppose you could say it was a form of impersonation. Only it was entirely unconscious. Someone suffering from BPD may not be aware that they’ve adopted another person’s personality. They don’t recognize that they’ve changed, because they don’t recognize who they are.”

  I’m thinking about what Stan told me about Laurel, but Dr. Hancock misinterprets my expression. “I know it’s hard to grasp. Picture it like this.” He holds his hands up, thumbs extended, making a frame in front of my face. “Imagine looking into a mirror and seeing a total stranger. Edith had no self to cling to. The traumatic episode made her ‘mirror’ her roommate’s experience. She came here fixed in the delusion that her roommate had given birth, and that the roommate had disposed of the baby because there was something wrong with it, an impression no doubt born, if you’ll forgive the pun, from the memory of what the newborn premature baby had looked like.”

  I shudder, picturing Chloe when she was born—tiny and shriveled and bloody. “And what happened to Edith?”

  “She tried to kill herself by jumping from a window in Dr. Bennett’s study.” He shakes his head. “Of course, it was foolish of him to see a patient off-site. It was lucky she survived.”

  “And was she better after that?” I ask, my voice betraying how desperate I am for a happy ending. Dr. Hancock stares at me. He must see that my interest is no longer academic. When he answers, his voice is gentle, though, as if breaking the news to a child that there is no Santa Claus. “There is no cure for BPD,” he says, “but the dissociative episode was finally ended. The patient was able to accept that she was the one who had given birth . . . or at least . . .” Dr. Hancock hesitates.

  “At least what?” I ask.

  “At least she was able to convince her doctors she had given up the delusion. Patients with BPD are notorious for ‘tricking’ their doctors. It may be that Edith Sharp simply adopted another imposture.”

  I don’t understand. “Of who?”

  “Of herself,” Dr. Hancock answers, “but herself cured.”

  Daphne’s Journal, August 1, 20—

  I’m waiting for Peter to get off the phone so he’ll watch Chloe so I can go over to Laurel’s and I think it’s a good idea to write down what’s been going on to get it clear in my head.

  I still haven’t heard from Laurel since we had the fight. At first I was so angry I didn’t care. All I had done was tell her there was nothing wrong with her baby and suggest she get some more sleep and she’d jumped down my throat. I assumed she’d apologize—send me a text with a sorry-face emoji and a cocktail glass and act like it was no big deal. I assumed I’d forgive her. But she didn’t text or email or call. I even checked my spam to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. Nada. Zilch. Not even a sorry-face emoji.

  Then I started thinking about what Stan had told me about Laurel having BPD and trying to kill herself and I started worrying about her. I know how suicidal thoughts can get lodged in your brain, especially when you feel trapped. It had happened to me right after Chloe was born. I started hearing the words I want to die in my head, as if someone else was saying them. They were the first words I’d hear in my head when I woke up in the morning, the last when I lay down at night. No you don’t, I’d tell myself. You should be happy. You have a beautiful baby and a loving husband.

  I don’t deserve them, the voice would answer.

  You can’t leave Chloe, I would argue back.

  Maybe she would be better off without you, the voice would counter, or once, ominously, Then take her with you.

  One day Peter found me asleep in the bathtub. It scared me half to death, waking up in cold water, Peter’s hands on my shoulders. I was so startled, I thought he was trying to push me under the water when of course he was trying to do the opposite. I thrashed around and soaked the whole bathroom, and the carpet in the hallway. Peter was so upset. What kind of a mother kills herself, leaving a child behind? he shouted. I tried to tell him that it was just that I’d been so tired that I’d fallen asleep, but then Peter held up an empty bottle of sleeping pills. “Then why did you take these?” he asked. I didn’t remember taking the pills, but I must have because I felt so groggy. I must have finally succumbed to the voices.

  That’s when I started going to the mothers’ support group. I stopped taking baths too. I haven’t heard the voice since. But now, thinking about Laurel, I remember what it was like and I feel terrible about the way I acted. I told Peter about it and he surprised me by being really sensitive. “It sounds like she really can’t help the way she acts,” he said. “Maybe you’re being too hard on her. It’s a shame to let the friendship go when she’s been such a positive influence.”

  So of course that made me feel really bad. I even called up Esta and told her how Laurel was acting and she said that yes, Laurel might have BPD, but I should worry about myself and not “overproject.” Whatever that means. For a therapist she’s not very helpful! So I looked up BPD on the Internet and I was surprised to find all these blogs by people who have BPD talking about how hard it is to make and keep friends and advice pieces on how to cope if someone you love has BPD and I realized it was a sickness like alcoholism or postpartum depression and it really isn’t fair to judge Laurel, because Peter was right. She really can’t help the way she acts. No more than I could help listening to that voice that told me to take the pills.

  Also, I found out the reason Laurel reacted to me like she did. It’s because I’m her Favorite Person. That’s a special phrase for people in the BPD community and it means a person whom the BPD idealizes. I know that might sound a little vain, but I can see it now. Even though I admire Laurel so m
uch there’s a lot that Laurel envies in me—like the fact I put myself through school without a lot of money, and how I lived on my own before I met Peter. All her taking me to her gym and hair stylist and the stores where she shops was kind of her way of making me over in her image so that she could see herself in me. Even her being competitive with Chloe’s progress shows she really wanted to be like me. But the thing I learned from the blogs is that if a BPD’s Favorite Person disappoints them, if they fail to live up to expectations, then the BPD turns on the FP and gets really angry with them. They devalue them. That’s what Laurel is doing with me.

  Which is really sad when you think about it.

  I talked to Peter about it and he agreed I should go over and talk to her again. He even said he’d watch Chloe as soon as he got off the phone. So I’ve been writing this while I’ve been waiting for him. I’ve also been looking up archivist jobs on the Internet. I thought it might be good for Laurel to see that there were lots of options for her. And there were! I was surprised at how many I found and how interesting they sounded! Lots more glamorous than the school librarian job I’d had. There were a couple in the city and one in California at the Huntington Library and one in Philadelphia at a place called the Library Company. Of course, it would be hard for Laurel to do those, but still, with her money I guess she could up and move if she wanted to. There was even one in Vermont that I might be qualified for, but Peter would have a fit if I said I wanted to move to Vermont. I printed out the listings and put them in one of the pretty decorative folders Laurel and I had bought together at the fancy stationer’s in town and I’m all ready to go. . . .