The Other Mother Read online

  “Oh, she’s all right,” Laurel said. “Besides, it’s the other women who make the group valuable. Look at how great I’ve felt since I met Daphne.”

  That made me feel so good I almost cried! And I instantly forgave Laurel for stealing my story—because of course that’s what she’d done. She’d taken the story I told her about what Esta said to me and made it her own. Only she’d given it a better ending. She added what I should have said back to Esta, which, if you think about it, was her way of defending me.

  “Yeah,” I said, “Esta doesn’t matter; the group’s been good because I’ve met Laurel through it.”

  “So,” said Peter, “maybe now that you two are friends you don’t need the group—or Esta—anymore.”

  This really surprised me, especially after the whole talk we’d had about me being too young for the responsibility of taking care of a baby. But Laurel loved it. “I’ll drink to that,” she said, holding up her glass. “We’ll have more time for the gym.” She winked at me and mouthed, And massages.

  I smiled back at her and then looked at Peter. He was smiling too. I thought that seeing me give this party had made him realize how much better I am. I glanced at Stan, but he was looking down at his phone. “Sorry,” he said, “there’s a crisis in the Asia office.”

  Peter said Stan could use his computer if he wanted, which really surprised me because Peter never likes anyone to get anywhere near his things. He must really like Stan. Laurel and I stayed out on the deck drinking Prosecco while Peter and Stan went into Peter’s study. It kind of surprised me that Peter wasn’t leaving Stan alone to make his call, but afterward Peter told me Stan asked him to stay to give him advice on some financial point, which I could tell made Peter feel good.

  Anyway, while the men were away Laurel and I drank more than we should have. Thank goodness we had Vanessa there in case the babies woke up. I wouldn’t have trusted myself to pick Chloe up. And I really didn’t want to do anything to change Peter’s mind about how well I was doing.

  At ten P.M. I sent Vanessa home in a taxi and offered to get Stan and Laurel one but Stan said he’d only had two beers. While I was talking to Stan, Laurel went in to get Chloë. I should have realized she was too drunk and made Stan do it but I wasn’t thinking—I’d really had too much myself!—so when Laurel came back out carrying the car seat, I didn’t realize at first what was wrong. I almost let her go but then I noticed that the baby blanket was about to slip off and when I went to tuck it in I saw it was one of Chloe’s. I knew because it was pink and had her name on it without the umlaut and Laurel always makes sure no one ever forgets the goddamned umlaut! I was going to let it slide but then I looked more closely at the baby in the car seat and realized it was my Chloe!

  I think Laurel saw it at the same time because she tried to make a joke out of it. “Whoops! Wrong baby!” she said, taking Chloe—my Chloe!—back to the nursery. “Just checking to see if you would notice the difference.”

  Stan and Peter were too busy talking by the door to notice what had happened. Which was good, because I don’t think it was a mistake or that she was testing me. I think that for a moment—just a moment—she had decided that she wanted my baby instead of hers.

  Chapter Seven

  For the next few days I try to put that blinking light out of my mind. I resist the urge to go to the top of the tower and signal back. I do not ask Billie or Sky if they see flashing lights coming from the mental hospital. I am aware of how crazy it sounds to think that a mental patient is trying to hail me from her cell. And if I know how crazy it sounds that means I’m not crazy. Right?

  Instead I work hard on sorting through Sky’s papers. Although all I really want to do is read Dr. Bennett’s journals I spend the bulk of each day ordering Sky’s journals, making up files in acid-free folders, which I’d asked Sky to order in advance, for manuscripts, drafts of early stories, and correspondence. There are decades’ worth of letters from 1975 to the present, letters to and from her agent, her editor, and her hundreds of fans (she kept carbon copies of her own). I notice, though, that there’s no personal correspondence. No friends. And that all the paperwork—journals and letters—dates from 1975. There’s nothing from her boarding-school or college days, which I suppose makes some sense as far as archiving her professional papers, but since she’s asked me to assist her in writing her memoir I ask her if she has any material from this period.

  “The trunk I shipped back from Europe was lost,” Sky explained when I asked her about it. “Which I always took as a sign that I was starting a new life when I came back here. That’s when I started writing. Who needs a past when you have an imagination?”

  I thought the answer was a little glib, the kind of aphorism she used to fob off reporters—and I suspected the truth lay in her father’s journals. I’ve organized them chronologically now and bookmarked all the sections that mention E.S. so that I can reread them. I save them for late in the day and read them in the cool of the study on the second floor of the tower.

  E.S. still fixated in her delusion that her baby was taken from her because something was wrong with him. She believes she is responsible for the child’s congenital abnormalities. I asked her if she was afraid the child was mentally unfit because of her current mental instability. She laughed and replied, “That’s rather a Catch-22, isn’t it? You think I’m crazy because I think my baby had something wrong with it, but the only sane explanation for my belief involves admitting that I’m crazy.”

  I laughed myself over E.’s response. It was clever and obviously the product of an educated woman (at least one who had read Joseph Heller’s Catch-22). But I stopped laughing when I read Dr. Bennett’s next lines.

  E.S. is always at great pains to demonstrate her intelligence and education to me but I fear her native craftiness impairs our progress. She is always looking for a way out of our discussions instead of a way into her problems. I have moved our meetings to my home office in the tower in the hope that the more informal setting will make her lower her guard and engaged a private nurse to accompany her to and from the hospital.

  I imagine E. as she is being brought up the hill. She’d be wearing the shapeless pajamas and canvas shoes I’ve seen in pictures of the asylum from the seventies, accompanied by a private nurse like a lady-in-waiting, ushered into a medieval-looking tower. She must have felt like a peasant girl being brought before the feudal lord to be punished for stealing a crust of bread. I admire her for maintaining her composure.

  Today E. asked me why I didn’t just show her that her baby hadn’t been damaged. I asked how I could do that without producing the child and she responded that I could show her medical records, adoption forms, pictures.

  “What makes you think I have those?” I asked. She responded by waving her hands around in the air. “Look!” she cried. “Look at all these books and papers you’ve assembled. You’ve built a fortress of paper to keep the world out!”

  I looked at the books and files lining the eight walls of the study—even the door leading to the main house was behind a bookcase. E. was right; Dr. Bennett had erected a fortress of paper. What had he said to that? I looked down at the journal for his response.

  I waited until she had calmed down and lowered her arms. “And yet, I invited you in.”

  But E. had an answer to that too. “Only as a prisoner.” She picked at her hospital clothes with her fingertips. Her nails are chewed to the quick, her cuticles ragged and bloody.

  “And if I let you wear your own clothes?” I asked. “Would you feel less like a prisoner then?”

  “A little,” she replied, “and even less if we could meet up above, where at least I could see the sky.”

  I conceded to both of her requests. I instructed the matron that she was to have her own clothes to wear—belts and shoelaces excepted. I granted, too, her request to have a bit of red ribbon to tie up her hair, although I made sure it wasn’t long enough to constitute a strangulation risk. I confess I am curious to
see what she does with the ribbon. She seems to have an obsession with it.

  I thought of the pink ribbon I’d found in the hiding place. Might it have been red once? Had E. put it there? Did it have some connection in her mind with the baby she lost? I remember one of the mothers in the group saying it was an old-fashioned custom to tie a red ribbon on the baby’s crib to ward off the evil eye. Had E. hidden the ribbon in the place she thought her baby was being kept?

  I promised E. we would meet on the top floor of the tower from now on. I am hopeful that both concessions will give her a sense of control again and that she won’t be as compelled to hold on to her delusions about the child. I will, of course, have locks installed on the tower room windows. The nurse will remain in the study below us, available at a summons to come to my aid should it be necessary.

  I put down the journal and look up, as if I expect to hear the doctor and his patient in the room above me, as if I am the private nurse listening for a summons. Instead I see only sunlight pouring down the spiral staircase and hear only the creak and groan of the metal stairs when the wind blows. I get up and climb up the stairs. It hadn’t occurred to me to open the windows—hadn’t one been open the first night?—so I’d never noticed if they had locks on them.

  When I get up to the top floor I’m startled to see that the sun is already low in the sky. I’ve lost track of time reading in the room below without windows. It was a fortress of paper, obliterating the outside world. But up here the world opens up; there’s so much light and air! And yes, a window is open, the one over the makeshift desk. I lean over the desk to inspect it. The window opens by pushing out at the bottom. Heavy copper locks are on the top sash of each window and a metal rod is attached between the sill and the bottom sash to keep it from opening more than ten inches. I look around the room. All the windows have similar protective measures. How could E. have gotten out?

  Maybe Billie made up the whole story. I’ve learned over my first week here that Billie has a taste for the sensational and macabre. She delights in following tabloid news stories about domestic violence, prison breaks, and alien abductions. I caught her one afternoon reading aloud to Chloe a story about a woman in Queens who drowned her five-year-old son. She doesn’t understand a word of it, she assured me when I objected.

  I’d thought of mentioning it to Sky, but I didn’t like to complain when Billie was so helpful with Chloe. Besides, Chloe obviously adores her.

  Still, I can imagine Billie inventing a story about an escaped patient throwing herself from the tower. All the ingredients are there—lunatics, mental hospital, medieval-looking tower—like flour, eggs, and butter laid out on a kitchen counter. Who could blame her for mixing them together and making a cake? It wasn’t her fault if the story has lodged in my brain. There’s no Esta here to warn her about impressionable types.

  The more I think about the story the more improbable it seems, especially that part about the woman surviving and being cured. I’m glad I didn’t tell Sky that Billie’s story was what inspired me to read her father’s journals. I’m not sure why I’ve kept this from her except that I suspect it makes me seem less like a serious archivist and not the kind of person she would want assisting with her memoir.

  I push the window as wide as it can go and look down. Below is the flagstone terrace where we ate dinner. A person landing on that hard stone would do more than break her leg. I pull my head in—but something yanks me back as if a hand has grabbed my hair and is dragging me out the window. But of course it’s only my hair caught on the edge of the window frame. Still, I feel the blind panic of being trapped. I’ve always been a little claustrophobic.

  I jerk my head back but my hair is too entangled. Fighting back hysteria, I wriggle my hand out the window and feel along the window frame to where my hair is caught. I think it must be snagged on the rod or the lock but it’s tangled in the wood itself, which feels rough and sharp-edged. As if the window had grown teeth.

  Don’t think about teeth, I tell myself as I untangle my hair from the sharp, splintery wood.

  One of the mothers from group had shared this dream: I dreamed I was pregnant and my baby died inside me. Only it turned into a zombie and started eating its way out of me.

  That’s absurd, Laurel had scoffed, babies don’t have teeth in the womb.

  Which did nothing to stop that image of a fetus gnawing its way out of my womb from haunting my dreams.

  My hands are bloody and sweat-slicked by the time I free myself (I think of Dr. Bennett’s withering observation of E.’s hands—as if she could have had a manicure while in the asylum!), my face streaked with tears. I’ve lost a handful of expensively colored and highlighted hair showing brown at the roots. There are splinters under my fingernails and a long scratch across my cheek. My reflection in the window shows someone who’s been through a street fight. I look like the lunatic of my imaginings.

  I glance away from that frightful apparition, down at the offending window. Strands of my hair still hang from the splintered wood. Peter would never have tolerated such shoddy workmanship. And even though Sky doesn’t come up here—can’t come up here—I hurriedly pull my stray hairs from the wood. As I do, I see how my hair got caught. There’s a long crack in the wood that looks like it was once repaired with wood putty. The putty shows white against the wood where the paint has worn away. I can clearly trace the crack back to where the rod is clamped into the window. There’s a deep hole just to the side that’s been filled with putty, as if the rod had been ripped out once and then reaffixed to the unbroken wood. As if someone had shoved the window open and broken the restraining rod in order to jump out.

  Billie’s story is true.

  At least the part about E. jumping. I’m not sure about the part where she survived and got better.

  WHEN I GET back downstairs I page through all the references to E. in the journals but I find no reference to her jump from the tower. Instead the journals abruptly end in 1973. The last entry is about E.

  E. much calmer today. Medication seems to be having good effect. I am optimistic that she is at last emerging from her mania.

  And then she hit Herb Marcus over the head, crept up the hill, and threw herself from the tower.

  It must have been a shock to Dr. Bennett, such a shock that he hadn’t been able to continue his journals. As if he couldn’t face his own smug assessment and how wrong he’d been. What had Billie said? It had been the end of the doctor.

  But had it been the end of E.? Was Billie right? Had she survived? Had she gotten better, perhaps gone on to live a full, rich life, recovered from her puerperal mania? I’ve been so tied up in her story that I feel an urgency to find out, as if my own fate were tied to hers.

  Or maybe I have postpartum OCD like Esta said and I’m so suggestible that I’ve tied E.’s story to my own. That I’m susceptible to her delusions—

  But I don’t think anything is wrong with Chloe—

  Although she has been sleeping a lot lately—

  Or that anyone is trying to steal her from me.

  Except Peter. Who was. Or Billie that first day. But I no longer think that.

  No. I’m drawn to E.’s story because of her intelligence and resilience. Who wouldn’t be? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to know what happened to her. In fact, it’s part of my job. I’m not just the archivist; I’m helping Sky write her memoir and I feel certain that this is a vital part of Sky’s history.

  I’ll tell Sky that I’d like that appointment with Dr. Hancock—and that I’d like permission to see the records of the patient E.S. whom Dr. Bennett treated from 1971 to 1973. I’ll also ask her if she remembers E.S. E.’s fall from the tower precipitated Dr. Bennett’s decline and subsequent retirement. Even if Sky was abroad she must have heard something about the incident. And when she came home to take care of her father, the house and hospital staff must have made reference to it. E. might even have still been a patient. Sky might have met her.

  I go down to my ap
artment to freshen up before dinner. I dress in navy capris and a white button-down shirt and put my hair up in a twist. The layers I got from Laurel’s stylist have begun to grow out and I can just scrape it all into a bun with the help of a handful of bobby pins. Pulled back, the brown roots show more. It makes me look more like my old self—less like Laurel. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe I don’t need her anymore.

  Or maybe I’ve incorporated all she had to teach me and I just don’t need to look like her anymore.

  The thought gives me confidence as I walk onto the terrace. Sky is sitting in the big wicker peacock chair facing the setting sun. Chloe is in her playpen batting at a new mobile Billie must have gotten for her. I pick her up and take a turn on the terrace with her until Billie hands me a gin and tonic. I put Chloe back and take the smaller wicker chair next to Sky as Billie sets the table. Although I’ve been here only a week the routine makes it feel as if I’ve been here months. I haven’t felt this at ease since . . . Well, I can’t remember ever feeling so at ease. So comfortable in my own skin.

  “How did your day go?” Sky asks.

  “I’ve made a lot of progress,” I tell Sky, “but I’ve hit a bit of a wall. Your father’s journals end in 1973.”

  Sky nods as if this is to be expected. “When he stopped seeing patients. He retired a few months later.”

  “I’d like to find out more about the patients he was seeing at the time. Do you think Dr. Hancock would give me access to their files if I met with him?”

  “Well, they are confidential, of course,” Sky says, taking a sip of her drink. “But if I gave my permission I think it might be possible. You’d have to read them there, though. Would you mind spending part of the day down at Crantham?”