by Kate Ledger
Simon had tried to argue with the directors. Emily, who’d had a critical meeting first thing the next morning with the director of an Italian company, couldn’t make the trip, but she didn’t have to witness the scene to know exactly how it went. First came his logical appeal, in which he reiterated Jamie’s side of the story. Then he resorted to yelling at the directors for their incompetence and their bone-headed policies and their lack of sensitivity to children. Once he’d returned home, Simon continued to believe the whole event was a misunderstanding—Jamie wasn’t stealing, she was just borrowing. Miscommunications happened, and there was nothing to do but “suck it up,” as he put it, and get on with the summer. But Emily just didn’t get it, and she couldn’t tell if she and Simon should be worried—what did all of this mean? If Jamie had stolen something of value, for instance, or taken items from other campers, Emily might have understood her daughter to be jealous or insecure. But arts and crafts seemed like a paltry payoff.
But Jamie insisted otherwise: “I was working on something.”
“Well,” Emily probed, “you must’ve thought on some level that there’d be consequences. If they found out?” She searched her daughter’s face for clues, but Jamie, under the crisp edge of her bangs, produced an expression as bare as a stone. How was it possible for any parent to ferret out what a child hid beneath the surface?
“I told you,” Jamie said. “I wasn’t thinking that far ahead.” Then came real disgust. “Why don’t you listen? It’s like you have some kind of image of how things are, and that’s all you’re willing to see.”
Even when Emily kept her theories and suggestions to herself and uttered only the most Pollyanna comments, she still came out the villain. When she suggested that Jamie figure out an alternative activity for the summer, anything, a morning program at the Aquarium, for instance, where she could learn about fish or even sharks, Jamie retorted, “So you can assure your friends—ooh, the Aquarium, I’m so proud?” Jamie’s acerbic moods wearied Emily, but even more, they made her sad. Other people—Betsy Ebberly, for instance, who always, infuriatingly, inserted her guidance-counselor knowledge of children, giving advice and plati tudes so that it was almost impossible to be friends with her—assured her that “stealing” sounded like the spontaneous, poor decision-making typical of underprocessed, adolescent thinking patterns. And the angry moods were age-appropriate, too. Betsy added, in words too cavalier for Emily, such family tensions were par for the course: “It’s the price of being mother to a girl.” But Emily knew otherwise. She was well aware how deep the strife between her and Jamie ran. She wanted to be close with her daughter, but the strain in their relationship was years old. By now, Emily felt damn near powerless to change it.
She pushed open the door to Jamie’s room. “Jamie?” No answer. She glanced at the unmade bed, the walls crowded with posters of South Park and that sour-looking Avril Lavigne and Simon Cowell, of all people, on the wall and even on the ceiling. On the slanted corner of the room, Jamie had tacked a collection of bumper stickers, the majority of which Simon had bought for her, as if they shared some private joke. Most were appalling, and old-and-jaded sounding, one-dollar-ninety-five-cent banalities. She half-believed that Jamie didn’t understand most of them. DON’T VOTE. IT ONLY ENCOURAGES THEM, read one. I ♥ MY ATTITUDE PROBLEM. PINK SHEEP OF THE FAMILY. And, in glaring neon, MEAN PEOPLE SUCK. The last was a generic message, she knew, but somehow she felt it was directed at her.
She did not often think about Caleb, but now and then she found herself wondering if her relationship with him would have been tender. He was a difficult baby, colicky and hard to please. It was unfair to speculate—she felt like she was betraying Jamie even to imagine what he would have been like, but sometimes she imagined that if his colic had ended, she would have hit her stride as mother, and—what? Would they all have lived happily ever after? Each interaction with Jamie managed to show her the dead end of her power. She wanted to help Jamie, but she couldn’t get her daughter’s compliance. And then, when she put her foot down for something larger, like a principle or a necessary lesson Jamie should learn, she was the one who suffered consequences. Years back, she’d gotten into a scrape with Jamie over a toy, some hideous, hard-plastic pony thing with pink hair. They went back and forth, Jamie constructing one argument after the next—but I’ve never had one, but I like horses, but Daddy would buy it for me. He was a father who believed in big, expensive presents and was unstoppable in his excesses. But Emily couldn’t bring herself to spoil Jamie. First of all, even the child knew materialistic doting was a kind of apology. And what was the message anyway? Jamie begged for the pony, but Emily held back, insisting that Jamie could wait until her birthday. “You don’t want me to love you,” Jamie had accused finally, folding her body into a dark sulk. It was a comment that hadn’t even made sense, but Emily had never forgotten it.
“You in here?” She tried the door of the bathroom, and was surprised as she twisted the doorknob to find it unlocked. The light was on.
Her daughter stood in front of the sink wearing nothing but a long T-shirt. Blue-green, tattered around the collar from age, the shirt was an adult size that still dwarfed Jamie’s frame. Simon had given it to her years ago after having made a large donation to an ocean conservation organization. The faded stencil showed a finned creature leaping above the waves as the arching print below read, MY LIFE’S PORPOISE. “Why would I want this?” Jamie had demanded at the breakfast table when Simon handed it over. It was clear to everyone, especially Jamie, the shirt was a give-away he was passing along. “You’re my porpoise,” he told her, grinning. They had both stared at him, trying to gauge his sincerity against his blatant love of the pun. Standing in the bathroom, Emily’s first thought was about the now-ratty gift, which had obviously meant something to Jamie, who’d incorporated it into her wardrobe as a nightshirt. A nightshirt? Was it later than she thought? But something in her clenched at once at the chalky pallor of Jamie’s skin, slightly gray under the eyes, though the tip of her daughter’s nose was pink.
“Hey!” Jamie exclaimed, scowling.
Emily stood for a second trying to figure out the scene, aware from the hush that she had walked in on something of significance. On the floor lay a stainless-steel mixing bowl from the kitchen and a scattering of ice, knocked over. Her brain was trying to make sense of the array of items that didn’t seem to belong on the bathroom floor. She was also struggling to think of the most diplomatic way to be parental, but all that came clear was the one fact she knew. “The door was open,” she said.
She looked from the floor to Jamie’s face, framed by her long, straight hair. The overall shape of her face was round, with narrow, chocolate eyes and astounding lashes. It occurred to her that the familiar mousy brown had disappeared, and even the color of Jamie’s hair was slowly becoming darker and more defiant-looking. A fleeting memory of Caleb flickered through her mind, the feathery fringe on his head in those first weeks—how it had amazed her, that ducklike softness—so fine, you almost couldn’t feel it with your fingertips. She checked herself, swallowing, feeling her insides churning, not sure what had unsettled her, the intrusion of memory or the sense that Jamie was already angry. She steadied herself again, not wanting to ignite a feud. “Need a towel?” she offered.
But Jamie quickly rebuffed her. “I got it.”
You don’t want me to love you.
But I do, she thought back, if you’ll just stop fighting. She couldn’t think of anything more to say. “Did you eat?”
“Does anybody eat in this house?” Jamie replied. “It’s more like food magically appears and then disappears.”
Emily was about to say something rational and reasonable and chastising, something about the demands of the jobs that made them able to buy food in the first place, when she noticed a capless bottle of rubbing alcohol on the edge of the sink. Her curiosity won out. “What exactly are you doing?”
“What’s this, an interrogation? I knocked over a
bowl. I’ll clean it up. What’s the big deal?”
Then she happened to notice the way Jamie was holding the edge of the long T-shirt, tenting the fabric away from her body. She took three steps toward Jamie and, with a single gesture, lifted the hem of the shirt. A large red welt encircled the top of Jamie’s navel. At the center of the welt, a narrow, silver stud with a ball on either end staked a translucent web of skin. The sight of the injured skin around Jamie’s freshly pierced navel sickened Emily, the raised and whitened ridge surrounding the stud, the offended bull’s-eye of inflammation. Emily swallowed against a moment of feeling ill.
Jamie wavered for a second, ever so slightly leaning away from her mother to avoid being touched. Though Emily said nothing, Jamie’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not taking it out.”
Brisk clouds moved in. A dozen arguments crowded her mind, reshaping themselves, dissolving and re-forming. The piercing was too sexual. It was too declarative. It made her look like a child who’d already rejected parenting. Emily shook her head. “I can’t even look at it,” she said finally.
“So don’t,” Jamie replied. “It’s my body.”
Yours, Emily thought. She swallowed again. She was not a stupid woman, and she didn’t need a Betsy Ebberly to help her interpret. There was nothing innocent in the piercing, a small act of violence, intended to engage a battle. How primitive. Even the dropped bowl had been intentional, a trumpet call to the troops. Perhaps another mother would have taken a stand. That mother would have insisted Jamie remove the jewelry. That mother would have lectured. Once, a very long time ago, she’d read a parenting magazine that recommended every disciplinary injunction begin with, “I love you, and . . .” like a mantra. “I love you, and you’re not allowed to stay out until eleven.” Or, “I love you, and you must finish your homework.” “I love you’s” until they didn’t mean anything anymore, functioning like a public relations campaign. Her jaw tightened. The experience of parenting had become one of constant abuse—three months ago, she’d been surprised by Jamie’s insistence on signing up for camp, as Jamie shunned suggestions and packed up by herself as though she were fleeing. Then Jamie bestowed another surprise, suddenly sent home, as if nobody would care. Now this: primal torture performed in the bathroom. What did Jamie expect her to do? Each encounter was like a jolt to the senses. You’re the one, she thought, who doesn’t want to be loved by me. She turned, composed, and left the bathroom. A few steps down the hallway, she turned back again as a thought occurred to her. Evenly she said, “I hope at least whatever you used was clean.”
She walked down the hall to her bedroom, but as she sat on the corner of her bed, her hands shook like a woman with palsy. Jamie had come into the world watching Emily and testing her, and Emily continued to fail. Now Jamie was trying to anger her, and the only thing to do was to refuse to succumb. What she couldn’t stop was the sensation in her rattling hands.
She’d been an awkward mother when Caleb was born, unsure from the start she had the necessary nurturing instincts. It was one thing to be pregnant, all ripe with anticipation. It was another to look at a newborn in a bassinet next to your hospital bed and realize the moment had come to perform. He was on the small side, barely six pounds, which all the maternity nurses found humorous, considering that she and Simon were so tall. His eyes were wide set, the pumpkin-seed shape of them pleasant to her. They reminded her vaguely of her sister, Aileen, and they were so filled with the copper brown of his irises that you almost couldn’t see any white around them. Old soul eyes, she thought. They looked like they were already familiar with everything, even the details of her own face, though everyone said he couldn’t possibly focus yet. Here we are, they seemed to say, with consuming intensity, me and you. It was a moment, she knew, to feel an overspilling of love and attachment. To feel the desire to give with a kind of joyful craziness. Instead, she felt slightly sick to her stomach. Maybe she’d made a big mistake having a child. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. Had her own mother, who loved a clean house above all things, ever enjoyed parenting? The sensation of doubt was so alarming that she fought against it, smiling for the nurses and forcing herself to cradle Caleb without moving until her arms cramped and her wrists ached.
He was a difficult baby, and she struggled. She felt frustrated most of the time, and worn-out tired, and all she could do was hope something would kick in that felt like maternal euphoria. She yearned for a heart-swelling sense of pleasure, a sense of pride, a shred of the competence she felt when she was at work. But mostly her ears were filled with the sound of his unhappiness as he cried, urging her to do something. Every moment, to do something, and every moment to figure out what that something was. At the very least, she longed for time to pass more quickly to put the phase of unending crying behind her. At four weeks, between all the jags of colic, amid all the fretful hours he refused to be calmed, he began to smile, a tiny, lopsided upcurling of his lips. That tiny smile and the eyes that locked onto hers, me and you, and she experienced a glimmer of relief. Within two weeks of that moment, he was gone. Barely sick one day, and then—it was incomprehensible. Whatever in her being that had been available to the world, exposed to its elements, testing and trying, pulled back like a finger touched to flame. There was anguish initially, the feeling that she couldn’t breathe. The air caught in her lungs. Her eyelashes hurt. The follicles of hair in her scalp ached. The surfaces of her eyes felt turned inside out. Her body seemed slow and cowlike. There was a period of insomnia to endure, in which she was always tired yet never able to sleep more than an hour or two at a stretch. But even as she lay awake in the night, she couldn’t hold a clear thought in her head. I am—sad? I am—broken?
Then reason kicked in, and a voice that seemed like clarity. Enough pitiful, pointless lazing. Enough suffering, when it couldn’t do anything to change what had happened. Even the pediatricians had missed the diagnosis. It was time to get on with it. She had a job. She had to function, as did Simon. There would be punishment, she was certain, some cosmic retribution for her self-interest, but she craved normalcy. When she woke up one morning less than a year after his death with a strange sense of change happening in her abdomen, a kind of acidy bloating with pressure, she thought, There’s my punishment: cancer. Ovarian. Uterine. Her stomach churned. Some deep organ was already rippling with ferocious cells. There would be all kinds of tests, and time in the hospital. She would be given glimpses of her innards on X-rays and suffer long, quiet periods of waiting. A terminal diagnosis would not have surprised her in the least. At the doctor’s, she was given a blood test, but she wasn’t prepared for the call the next morning conveying instead (in an absurdly singsong voice) that she was pregnant.
“Are you sure?” she burbled. Since she wasn’t dying, she forced herself to take a deep breath. She was a practical person, a problem solver, and she would handle this, too. She gathered herself for the course ahead, though she knew she wasn’t ready to have another child.
Now, staring at her trembling hands, she felt the urge to hold them under water. Like a machine, she went to the sink of the master bath. Cupping the flow that streamed from the faucet, she scooped handfuls of water against her face. Restorative drops fell from her chin, and she stared at herself. She’d been hypervigilant when Jamie was born, always watching for signs of distress or illness, trying to guard against disaster. Fortunately, Jamie turned out to be an easier baby than Caleb had been. As she grew, the sense of urgency and imminent danger that Emily felt wore off. Anyway, it was physically, humanly impossible to maintain that level of attention, especially when you were merely protecting against your own worries. But things became complicated just the same. Jamie was a defiant toddler, sharp-tongued and unwilling to behave. The terrible twos felt like they lasted for many multiples of two. Emily felt helpless and often annoyed, unable to control the child or make things right. She became guarded and apprehensive and afraid of being accosted. Jamie wasn’t fooled. It was like being with a dog that you knew was able to
smell your fears. At every turn, Jamie fought back, trying to incite her. Emily, holding her ground, became unable to spoil her daughter.
“Of course, it’s challenging. It’s the hardest job there is, and nobody ever warns you beforehand,” said the ever-reassuring Betsy Ebberly, who knew about Caleb, but who seemed to have no clue that a person could find herself one day, like Emily, with the will to mother all but drummed out of her.
Looking into the mirror at the water dripping off her chin, she felt sad for the ways her face had changed. Her eyes, which someone had once told her were merry, had lost their stars. A wrinkle of consternation had etched itself vertically into her forehead. Even her lips seemed to turn downward. Had they always been shaped in a pout, or was the damage she’d suffered becoming visible? Something white and hot rose in her field of vision, and before she composed a clear thought, she grabbed a hairbrush that was sitting on the edge of the counter. Bristles upward, she brought the backside down, hard, against the edge of the cream and gray granite countertop. There was a popping thwack as the brush broke, its porcupine head spinning in the air like a bottle cap. A semicircular piece of the countertop chipped off and scuttled across the tiled floor to a corner, as if it were afraid. The sound of what she had done startled her, and she stared at the counter edge in horror. The gap in the granite grinned back at her.
