The Other Mother Page 14

  “No,” I say quickly. Too quickly. There’d be no harm in admitting that the idea frightened me. Meeting a mental patient might make anyone upset. But Dr. Hancock is already getting out his keys, opening the door, barking orders to his secretary to hold his calls and let the on-call supervisor on C Ward know we’re on our way over, and striding down the hall. I have to hurry to keep up with him. I feel like all the disembodied body parts that line the wall are watching me. What a gruesome assemblage for a mental hospital. It wouldn’t surprise me if Dr. Hancock selected them. Right now, he’s tapping the green file against his leg, like a treat he’s using to lure me along. Bastard. He’s doing this to punish me for getting special privileges. I wonder how he gets back at his patients.

  He has to wait for me at the elevator. I watch him turn the two keys to operate it and then we go down, passing the first floor. The wards must connect in the basement.

  When we get off the elevator it’s as if we’re in a different building. No plush carpet or framed pictures. The floor is water-stained linoleum and the bare walls are painted a noxious green. The doors of the rooms we pass have small frosted-glass windows that are covered over with metal mesh.

  “We see some patients here.” Dr. Hancock taps the corner of the folder on the windows as we pass by. I try to peer through the frosted glass and catch glimpses of shadowy shapes, like fish swimming in an aquarium. I feel like we’re underwater.

  We turn a corner and another. The floor seems to slope down. By the time we come to a door I’m completely turned around. I have no idea what side of the building we’re on or how many floors beneath the ground. Dr. Hancock uses another key for this door and a slide card attached to a lanyard around his neck for the next one. How in the world did Edith get out of here? Perhaps I’ll ask her—if we ever get to her.

  At last Dr. Hancock opens the door to a small windowless room. “Here,” he says, laying the file folder on a spare wooden table in the middle of the room. “Why don’t you read this while I go get Edith.” Before I can object, he leaves the room, locking the door behind him. The click of the lock echoes loud against the cinderblock walls. It’s to protect you, I tell myself, sitting down at the table. But still I am besieged by claustrophobia, locked in this small windowless room. I open the folder as if it’s a window that might let in some air, and begin to read.

  The first thing I notice is that the page is full of black rectangles. Parts of the text have been blacked out by heavily inked boxes. Redacted. I flip the pages and see that the entire file has been altered in this way. As I begin to read, I see that the black boxes cover all references to the patient’s name and any other identifying information. But why? I already know her name is Edith Sharp. The action seems hostile and unnecessary. Well, so be it; I don’t need Edith’s name. I can easily fill it in myself.

  XX is a young woman from an affluent background who appeared to be a functioning young adult until the onset of severe dissociative symptoms in her early twenties. The one traumatic event of her childhood was the death of her parents in her early teens, but since she had already been in boarding school their deaths did not represent a major change in day-to-day life. She saw a school therapist and maintained a high grade point average and gained entrance to an elite college. To all outward appearances she seemed to be an organized, productive, well-adjusted young woman.

  I look up from the page, hearing Laurel’s voice in my head: We tried to impose order on a world that had been torn apart. No wonder I felt a kinship with Edith; her story had echoes in my own . . . well, except for the fancy boarding school. Still, the similarities make the next bit painful to read.

  The first symptoms of concern occurred in college. She formed an attachment with her college roommate that went beyond ordinary friendship. They shared clothes and began to dress alike. XX’s roommate changed her major to XX’s major. To outward appearances, it seemed that XX’s roommate was the one who was emulating XX, but when the roommate requested a room change in their sophomore year, XX became violently disturbed. She accused her roommate of betraying her and began spreading rumors about her around campus, accusing her of being obsessed with XX and stalking her. Because XX had no history of mental illness, and because of her charm, intelligence, and persuasive nature, the campus counselors believed XX’s account of the situation. This may have been XX’s first dissociative episode. She transferred her own emotions onto the roommate and began to “mirror” her roommate’s repulsion about XX’s obsessive behavior. The identification with her roommate reached a crisis when she discovered—

  I turn the page and read:

  The worst crisis was precipitated by giving birth.

  I turn back and forth twice trying to match the end of the page to the beginning of the next and then I check the page numbers. Page 3, page 5. There’s a missing page. I rifle though the pages looking for page 4 but it’s not in the folder.

  “Goddamn you, Hancock!” I say out loud. He has deliberately removed a page. He’s playing tricks with me. I’ll complain to Sky.

  In the meantime, I go on to read the rest of the file.

  The worst crisis was precipitated by giving birth. Soon after an uneventful pregnancy and childbirth XX began to show signs of dissociation. She was not interested in caring for the child, claiming at one point that the baby was not hers.

  I’m confused for a moment. This doesn’t sound like the story I heard of Edith having a baby in college. Could she have had another child later? Perhaps after she was let out of Crantham? She was cured by the fall from the tower but she ended back at Crantham later after she had her own child. It makes sense, sort of. Her first crisis—her dissociative episode—was brought on by the shock of giving birth without any preparation and her second was brought on by having another child.

  She later denied that statement and said that she only meant that the baby felt like a stranger—

  Once again I hear Laurel’s voice in my head: We’re supposed to fall in love with this total stranger. That’s who E. sounds like, I realize. Laurel.

  XX was sent home with her baby but her husband reported continuing problems: lack of interest in taking care of the child, periods of forgetfulness, leaving the baby in inappropriate places, including a laundry basket, an empty bathtub, the backseat of the car. XX’s husband eventually urged XX to see a psychologist and to attend a mothers’ support group. She seemed to make some progress, but then she formed an attachment to one of the women in the group that mirrored her relationship to the college roommate. Once again, it appeared from the outside that this woman was the one trying to emulate XX. She began wearing similar clothes and had her hair dyed the same shade as XX’s.

  I feel a prickle on the back of my neck as if someone is standing behind me, even though the door is in front of me. Edith’s story is beginning to sound familiar—too familiar. It sounds like Laurel and me. Has Dr. Hancock altered Edith’s file to mirror my own life? But to what purpose? And how would he even get those details?

  I remember, though, Esta’s warning about reading myself into other women’s stories. Maybe that’s all I’m doing.

  XX even complained to her husband that the woman from the group was becoming too clingy—

  I cringe, but then tell myself that this is not about me and Laurel.

  —but when her husband suggested she spend less time with the woman, XX objected, saying the woman was her only friend and the only one who understood her. When XX’s husband expressed concern over the intensity of the relationship, XX accused him of trying to isolate her. She then became paranoid that her husband was trying to have her declared incompetent so that he could gain control over her money, which was tied up in a trust.

  I no longer think I am reading about Edith Sharp. This is Laurel’s story. It’s Hancock’s way of telling me that he knows I’m not Laurel. I’ve been found out.

  In attempting to deal with her paranoia, XX’s husband offered to have legal papers drawn up excluding him from any benefits from the
trust, but this only aggravated XX’s delusions further. When she attempted to voice her fears to her friend, her friend rejected her claims, and XX withdrew into a depressed state, refusing to get dressed, wash herself, or care for her baby. She began to say that she’d be better off if she had no money, like her friend. She began letting her hair grow out to its natural color and said she was going to take a job as a school librarian (which had been her friend’s profession). Her husband became most concerned when she said that her friend was a better mother, that at least her friend’s baby was not brain damaged as she had begun to believe about her own child, and that she wished that she was her friend.

  When her husband brought her to see a psychiatrist, XX admitted that she’d had thoughts of harming her child and that she had suicidal thoughts. She ascribed the suicidal thoughts to another personality, one that she identified with her own name. To test the theory that she now identified with her friend, the doctor called her by her friend’s name, to which she raised no objection. When he called her by her own name, she accused the doctor of forgetting her name and questioned his reputation. She then left the office abruptly—

  The words blur in front of me and I feel so dizzy I have to close my eyes and rest my head on the table. The report describes my visit to Dr. Gruener’s office. But if this file is about Laurel, why is my visit to Dr. Gruener here? I remember Dr. Gruener calling me Laurel and then I had left abruptly, but that was because I was sure Peter was trying to steal Chloe, not because I was confused about who I was. I’d rushed home . . . no, I’d gone to Laurel’s house first. But I hadn’t gone in . . .

  Or had I? I remember feeling dizzy, putting my head down . . . then I see myself getting out of the car and going up the front path, and letting myself into the house. But is it my house or Laurel’s? I smell something metallic and hear the sound of water. The sound and the smell are coming from upstairs. Then I hear a baby crying. I begin to go up the stairs. My feet feel heavy—as if I’m in one of those dreams where you’re trying to run and it’s like you’re swimming through molasses—only then I realize it’s because the carpet on the stairs is wet. And it’s a different color. Laurel’s carpets are white, but this carpet is red—

  The red seeps over everything, drenching my vision, blocking out the stairs and the open bathroom door at the top of the stairs. I don’t want to see what’s inside.

  I open my eyes and I’m back in the green room at Crantham, clutching the folder. The door in front of me is open. Dr. Hancock fills the frame, watching me.

  “Why do you have this?” I demand, shaking the file at him. “What happened to Laurel?”

  Instead of answering, he steps in and to the side so another man can enter: Peter, his face square with barely suppressed rage.

  “I know what you did!” I scream. “You and Stan! You murdered Laurel to get her money!” I turn to Dr. Hancock. “I can prove it. I’ve got a copy of Laurel’s will that I found taped to the bottom of Peter’s drawer. Why would he have her will unless they were planning to kill her for her money? There was a photograph with the will, a picture of Peter as a boy, but with another name. He’s not even Peter Marist!” I jump to my feet just as a third man comes into the room. Stan Hobbes. “You killed her!” I scream. “You killed Laurel!”

  Stan’s eyes fill with tears. Perhaps he feels remorse, but I don’t care. It’s too late for Laurel. I can see her face now, looking up from the blood-filled tub, her sightless eyes staring at me. He opens his mouth and I steel myself for a lie—he will tell me that she killed herself—but I am unprepared for what he says.

  “How can that be true,” he asks, “when you’re standing right in front of me, Laurel?”

  And then Peter adds, “It’s my wife, Daphne, who’s dead.”

  Part II

  Laurel’s Journal, June 11, 20—

  First meeting of the mothers’ support group today. Stan insisted. Said it was either this or the hospital and I’d rather die than go back to the loony bin—even one of the posh ones.

  Although this may be worse.

  The leader is a gormless idiot. Esta—or Estrogena as I have dubbed her because she clearly has a serious case of estrogen poisoning. The women aren’t much better, which I blame completely on Westfuckingchester. I’m sure there’s a better class of loonies in Manhattan, but Stan also insisted that the city’s too stressful for my poor delicate nerves, as if it wasn’t stressful to be stuck out here with a bunch of lactating cows. One followed me out to the car like a fawning puppy, wanting to bond over our shared motherhood. What a doormat! She let her hedge-fund-manager husband bully her into not hiring a babysitter. Please.

  Then I remembered that I’m supposed to be bonding with the locals, so I suggested a playdate. I thought she was going to jump in my lap. Seriously, you would have thought I asked her to a weekend in Paris. At least Doormat Daphne will be easy to schlep around, like that hideous diaper bag Stan bought for me. I mean, seriously, KatefuckingSpade.

  Chapter Twelve

  I died.

  That’s the part I understood, the part I believed. The idea that I was Laurel—beautiful, accomplished Laurel—was not believable. But that Daphne had died and that this last week of leave-taking, driving through a dark forest, and starting a new life was all a kind of afterlife, that I could believe. Hadn’t it felt unreal all along? I could feel the pieces of my reconstructed life flying apart like a broken mirror. Only one of those shards pierced my heart.

  “Chloe!” I cried. “What did I do to Chloe?”

  Stan and Peter looked at each other. Only Dr. Hancock kept his eyes on me. “Which Chloe?” he asked.

  “My Chloe!” I screamed. But already I wasn’t sure what that meant. I turned to Peter. “Your Chloe, then.”

  He flinched as if I’d hit him. “You took her,” he said spitefully.

  Stan stepped in. “But only because you were confused. We think you found Daphne drowned in the tub and Chloe there with her. Maybe in the tub.”

  The red-washed image floods my vision: a dead woman with a baby lying beside her—“No! She’s not dead!” I could accept that I was dead, even that I had killed myself, but not that I would have killed Chloe.

  “No, she’s not.” Dr. Hancock says almost regretfully. “You saved her. You rescued her from the tub and took her with you.”

  I want to scream that he’s lying but I can see myself lifting the baby out of the bloody water, her face streaked with blood.

  “Yes,” Peter says stiffly. “I suppose I should thank you for saving my child’s life, but it’s been hell this last week grieving for my wife and not knowing if my child was alive.” He’s lying. I can tell by the way he turns his glance sideways to me.

  Stan must see how transparent he appears. He steps between us. “But it’s all right now,” he says to Peter, his voice tight with suppressed anger. “Your child is fine. My wife, Laurel”—he looks at me—“took good care of her.” Then to me he says, “You didn’t want to hurt anyone. You were just confused.”

  Then it hits me. They are saying the baby I have been taking care of all week is not mine. They are saying that Peter is going to take her. “No,” I say to Peter, “you can’t have her.” I turn to Dr. Hancock. “This is all a plan that Peter and Stan have cooked up to take Laurel’s money.”

  “You mean your money?” Dr. Hancock asks.

  “Laurel’s money,” I tell him. “That wasn’t Daphne in the tub, it was Laurel. She told me she suspected something. She thought Stan was poisoning her. I should have listened to her but I thought she was crazy.”

  “You thought Laurel was crazy?” Dr. Hancock repeats. It’s maddening the way he keeps repeating Laurel’s name, like it’s going to jar something in my memory. And it does. Laurel’s will.

  “They’re both in on it,” I say, looking from Peter to Stan. “Peter must have agreed to help if Stan agreed to invest the money in his fund.”

  “So both of these men colluded to defraud both of their wives?” Dr. Ha
ncock asks with heavy irony.

  “Why is that so hard to believe?” I demand. “Stan married a rich woman for her money. Peter was always looking for money. Who knows what he’d do to get it . . . I don’t even know who he really is! His real name isn’t even Peter Marist! He’s someone named Thomas Pitt.”

  “And what about Stan?” Dr. Hancock asks. “Is he someone else as well?”

  I shake my head, dismissing the distraction. “How the hell should I know? I just know he wanted Laurel dead so he could get her money. He was putting something in her water. He must have drugged her and drowned her in the tub. Only he had to change the will first or it would have all gone to Chloë.”

  “Chloë?” Dr. Hancock echoes. “Who was also in the tub?”

  I splutter on this point, wanting to deny it, but I can see myself lifting a baby from the red water and wrapping her in a blanket—

  The wet blanket in the car when I arrived.

  “I don’t know!” I cry. “I don’t know how they planned to do it, but I have the will and the picture of Peter when he was Thomas Pitt. I hid them in the tower. I can show them to you.” I take a step forward but Dr. Hancock blocks my way.

  “In the tower where you think another mother plunged to her death?”

  “Is there another tower?” I snap impatiently, trying to sidestep around him. I can see now that there are two guards hovering just outside the door.

  “Where you’ve been working as an archivist? A job you applied for as Laurel Hobbes?”

  I can see where he’s going with this. “I applied for the job for Laurel, but then when she didn’t want it I took it . . .” I falter, trying to remember the moment I decided I would take the job.

  Dr. Hancock, smelling blood, dives in. “So you’re doing a job Laurel was qualified for, using Laurel’s credentials and her ID, which you showed at the gate—”

  “I have her ID because we switched diaper bags,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm. “I meant to give it back. I am not Laurel Hobbes. They killed Laurel Hobbes so they could get her money.”