Safe in My Arms

by Sara Shepard

  Lauren was embarrassed by her outbursts, always, but she hadn’t known that Graham was just as embarrassed. When they met, he’d struck her as the kind of guy who didn’t give a shit what people thought of him. But maybe Graham had developed some self-awareness since Ketchup. Maybe it had something to do with Gracie’s opinions. Or maybe it had always been there and Lauren was just now seeing his true colors. They’d only been together two years. She often worried they hadn’t had enough time together as just a couple before the baby came. She’d asked him about that lately: Did he regret having kids so quickly with her? What about his past girlfriends? Graham had mentioned a few long-term relationships, but he said they were nothing much. A woman who now lived in Florida came up. A trip to Italy with another girlfriend to take pasta-making classes was mentioned, then dropped. Did he fantasize about these women now? Did he think about how much fun he used to have with these women, all the outings, all the sex, none of the baby, none of the crazy?

  The note in the backpack clearly wasn’t helping her mental state. If only Lauren had someone to bounce theories off of. Her first instinct was to call her mother . . . but say what? Her mother’s lack of phone calls felt pointed, though Lauren wasn’t sure why. Oh, that one, she doesn’t need our help, maybe. She wondered, sometimes, if Joanne judged her for waiting so long, or moving to California, or having a career—who the hell knew? She was in a little cabal with Lauren’s sisters—they traded recipes and baby clothes and holiday schedules, and Lauren always thought they were gossiping about her. She wanted to think her mom would keep something like this to herself, but honestly, she really wasn’t sure.

  After Graham left the spa, Lauren let the receptionist guide her into the dressing area. “Lockers are here.” She handed Lauren a terry robe. “And feel free to use our eucalyptus room.”

  “Thanks.” Lauren whipped open a locker, shoved in the box of bath bombs Graham insisted she accept, and kicked off her clogs. Her resentment felt childish. She should be grateful to have time to herself. She knotted the robe around her waist and padded into the waiting area, which offered lemon-and-cucumber-infused tea and mixed nuts in contained little cups. A few women were already lounging on chairs spaced widely apart. Lauren avoided making eye contact. She didn’t quite feel like she deserved to be here.

  “Mrs. Smith?”

  A tall, bald man stood in the doorway. He wore maroon medical scrubs and had a smile so kind that Lauren felt her body unclench. That her massage therapist was a man surprised her—she’d pegged Gracie as an I-only-like-women-to-massage-me kind of gal. She looked at the man’s hands again. They were big and looked strong.

  “Clancy,” he said. He gestured for her to follow. At the end of the hallway, he opened the door to a treatment room and ushered her in. “Undress, and then lie facedown under the sheet.” He bowed and exited.

  Lauren untied the robe, staring down at her nakedness in the dimly lit mirror. Besides the fact that her belly button had changed shape, her body had bounced back after childbirth—not that she’d been spectacular beforehand, but she hadn’t gotten any worse. Still, those other mothers from the breakfast popped into her head. How slender most of them were. How they looked like they all did sixty minutes of cardio every day. She wouldn’t be getting a note for her appearance, would she? That would be some real internalized-misogyny bullshit.

  So why would someone stick that note in her child’s backpack, then?

  “Lauren?” There was a knock on the door as she was settling under the sheet. “You ready?”

  “Yep!” Lauren tried to sound chipper. “Thank you!”

  The door opened. She could hear Clancy bustling around, turning on the tap. Then came the slurping sound of the man rubbing oil between his hands. Lauren wriggled on the mattress, trying to get comfortable.

  Clancy took a breath, then pressed his hands to her shoulders. Lauren shut her eyes, waiting for that gooey, unraveling feeling to spread through her body—she always wanted that to happen when she got a massage, but it never did. Clancy’s touch felt good, but she could feel her body resist whenever his fingers dug in.

  “You’re very muscular,” he said after a minute of rubbing.

  “Oh.” Lauren felt a thrill. “I can’t really credit that to working out.”

  “. . . But you’re also really, really tense.”

  The sides of the face cradle pressed against Lauren’s cheeks. She opened her eyes but could only see the tiled floor. “Yeah, well. It’s been a tough year.”

  “Don’t I know it.” He sighed. “Do you know I never even got a stimulus check? Somehow the government skipped me.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Lauren murmured. She and Graham had received a stimulus check, accidentally. They earned too much money to technically qualify. For weeks she’d tried to figure out how to give it back but then eventually gave up.

  Then she said, “It’s also because I . . . had a baby. Seven months ago. It’s been stressful.”

  “Ah.”

  “The birth was sort of intense. My husband didn’t make it there in time.”

  “Ooh. Rough.”

  She could have ended it there. She should have, if it were up to Graham. But she couldn’t stop. “And I have this thing that happens to mothers sometimes. Postpartum rage.”

  “. . . Postpartum depression?”

  “No, rage.” Lauren tried to laugh, but it came out more like a hiccup. “They’re sort of linked. But rage is . . . you know, ragier.”

  “Oh.”

  For a while, she listened to the pan flute playing softly through the speakers. Clancy was probably judging her now. There was nothing less appealing than an angry woman. Depression was submissive. But rage made people think of Courtney Love. Frances Farmer. Lorena Bobbitt. Lock that crazy bitch up before she hurts someone.

  “It’s surprisingly common,” Dr. Landry had said during that first therapy visit she and Graham attended together. “It’s a postpartum condition, but not that many people talk about it. Everyone expects a mom to feel sad, anxious, grumpy, overwhelmed—the anger is a surprise.”

  “I’m just so worried,” Graham said. “There was even this time when . . .” He cleared his throat sheepishly, surely thinking of that night in the kitchen, then started over. “. . . We’ve hired a nanny so that Lauren is never alone with the baby.”

  “I would never intend to hurt him,” Lauren had jumped in.

  “Of course not,” Graham said quickly, but then looked away. “Still, it’s good to have someone else around, just in case you feel . . . overwhelmed.” Then he’d looked at Dr. Landry expectantly. “Don’t you think?”

  When Dr. Landry said that seemed prudent, Graham looked vindicated. “A lot of things are expected of mothers,” Dr. Landry then added. “And often, these feelings of rage—they’re actually masking other, scarier feelings.”

  “There are scarier feelings inside me?” Lauren cried. The fury she felt—and the way it came on, sneaking up on her like an orgasm—wasn’t that terrifying enough?

  “Anger is often a mask for feeling overwhelmed, or scared, or sad,” Dr. Landry said. “Even feeling guilty that you aren’t doing things right as a new mom.”

  Lauren thought she’d rock motherhood. She’d read all the right books, gone to the right classes. Granted, she didn’t intend on the game not selling, nor did she intend on Graham getting a job that kept him away from the house eighteen hours a day. And of course she didn’t count on birthing a baby without her husband in the fucking room. But those were the only glitches. The only complications. Where had this anger been hiding the other thirty-nine years of her life? What if she never went back to her old self? And the thing she’d done this summer in the kitchen—the thing she’d almost done, the thing Graham had reeled her in from, the thing she hated to think about—what if she did that again?

  “There’s nothing wrong with rage.”
/>   “What?” she asked groggily. Lauren hadn’t forgotten she was in the dark room, but she’d kind of zoned away from the now.

  “There’s nothing wrong with rage,” Clancy repeated. “It’s primal.”

  Lauren sniffed. “My doctor says it’s not even a real emotion.”

  “Of course it’s real.” He scoffed. “People just say that stuff to keep you down.”

  He was drumming on her back with the sides of his hands now. “Like, because women aren’t supposed to be angry?” Lauren asked experimentally.

  “Because people don’t want anyone to be angry. Anger is hate! Anger is guns! But anger is also real and therapeutic and sometimes feels good—sometimes, it gets to the root. You know?”

  “I think so,” Lauren said in a small voice.

  “Well.” Clancy slid the sheet over her back so she could turn over. “Personally, I feel like people should be talking about rage more, not less. It’s all this bottling up that’s making the whole country go nuts. Of course, as long as you aren’t hurting anybody, you know? Then I say be as mad as you want.”

  “Yeah,” Lauren said softly.

  A butterfly stretched its wings inside her chest. This was the kind of permission she was looking for—not Gracie Lord’s self-aggrandizing self-care bullshit. Something else Clancy said made her feel better, too. Say this note she’d received in Matthew’s backpack did have something to do with her rage. Say someone had seen her lash out in public and took things the wrong way. Or say Lauren had had an outburst in a Silver Swans interview and then forgot about it, as Graham pointed out she was prone to doing lately. It was possible she’d dug her own grave and didn’t even know it! Hell, maybe that was what Piper’s lapdog assistant, Carson, had even been whispering to Piper about at the breakfast.

  Of course Piper was concerned. Of course they wouldn’t want an irrationally furious person in their midst. But that wasn’t what was going on with Lauren. Maybe if she just explained herself, if she came forward with her diagnosis, Piper would sympathize. Piper was a parent, too. She had hormones. And Lauren was trying really fucking hard.

  In fact, in fact! Maybe if Lauren wrote the email just right, Piper would be inspired . . . and she’d feature Lauren in the documentary. Think of all the people she could reach. The suffering mothers, angry and frustrated.

  After another hour, she was sliding her robe back on feeling just as motivated. Her fingers curled around her phone. On her lock screen was a picture of baby Matthew with a gleeful, gummy smile. Lauren’s fingers were a little oily, so it took a few tries to dial the Silver Swans main number. After a prompt, Lauren reached Piper Jovan’s office.

  “She’s in meetings,” Carson declared primly when he answered Piper’s line. “Who’s calling? Would you like to leave a voicemail?”

  Lauren took a deep breath. She was standing naked under a robe in a tiny, dark room. She was trembling with nerves and excitement and anxiety over whether this was the right choice.

  But then she relaxed. This was getting to the root of it. She had to dive in. “Yes,” she told the assistant. “Yes, I would.”

  Six

  Hummus, babe?” Lane’s hand caressed Ronnie’s bare shoulder, and she jumped. He pulled away, surprised. “You okay?”

  “Um, uh-huh.” Ronnie’s voice was high-pitched and strained. She glanced at the tub of hummus. This was a ritual of theirs: sitting on the balcony, watching the sunset, and eating healthy snacks Lane prepared. “I’m not really in a hummus mood, though.”

  “Wait till you’ve tried this, though. It’s organic. And the company is doing great things with vaccine funding in emerging-market countries.”

  “Okay, fine.” Ronnie reached for the bag of accompanying pita chips. “If it’s good for the vaccines.”

  Lane was political about every decision he made, whether it was which candidate to vote for or which types of biodegradable sandwich bags to buy. He wanted to leave the world a better place, he always said, and actions spoke louder than words. Ronnie tried to keep current with all his rules and choices and positions, but she hadn’t been raised with the luxury of options, so sometimes his rationale seemed frivolous. In Cobalt, everyone bought one brand of milk: the cheapest brand. No one gave a shit if the cows were mistreated. No one cared if the blueberries were organic. Actually, no one she knew from home ate blueberries because they were too expensive.

  Her phone beeped. Lauren had sent a text. It was a screenshot of Kiddo!, a message board for neighborhood moms; a parent was railing about the state of the baby slide at the local playground—someone had had the audacity to take a marker to the underside of the thing, marring its perfect appearance, and one of the scribbles kind of looked like a curse word. Don’t these people have better things to worry about? read Lauren’s text. God forbid our babies start swearing!

  Ronnie responded with an eye-roll emoji. This had become their thing in the past day—Ronnie, Lauren, and Andrea copying and pasting notes of ridiculous hysteria within the Raisin Beach mom community. Like the argument that exploded over the mom who’d posted on Nextdoor that she was charging cash for her extra breast milk. Or the fight that had broken out on a local mom Facebook group about who has it harder, working moms or stay-at-home moms? And then there was the constant one-upmanship—whose baby had already learned to walk, whose three-year-old could already ride a two-wheeler, whose five-year-old knew all his multiplication tables. If you believed everything you read, Raisin Beach was chock-full of baby savants.

  Ronnie enjoyed the banter. Lauren and Andrea made her feel more normal, especially knowing that they found some of the things people worried about around here ridiculous, too. They were on their way to becoming friends, maybe.

  If she didn’t pull her kid out of Silver Swans first. It was very possible it was these very moms on the sites who wanted Ronnie out.

  Lane placed the hummus on the side table and settled into a chair, propping his long legs on the iron railing that circled the balcony and staring at the paltry strip of starry sky. Still, the view was a huge step up from the view of the dumpster she’d had in the shitbox she had lived in when she and Esme first arrived in Raisin Beach. That apartment had been attached to a mechanic’s shop—so it always smelled like diesel fuel—and had a two-burner stove, a minifridge, and only enough space for a double bed and a couch. After dating for a little while, Lane had visited Ronnie’s just once, when he’d said, “You know, I think you guys should just come stay with me. We’ve got a pool!” That was a year ago.

  What sort of man offered to find housing for a woman and her child after only a few weeks of dating? Well, maybe a man who came from a comfortable background and had two benevolent parents. Lane’s mother and father, Sarah and Martin, were always housing exchange students when Lane was young. There was one girl from Liberia, Lucia, who they’d put up for a whole year in high school—and then she came back to the US years later and had no one to turn to, and Lane’s parents took her in again, and not just her but her brand-new husband and their baby daughter. For almost a year!

  They had big hearts, and they’d passed that on to their son. Lane showed his generosity in other ways, too—he volunteered for a handful of organizations, including delivering meals to people going through chemo. Ronnie had gone with him on a few of the delivery runs, and she’d noticed that Lane didn’t just drop and go—he wanted to spend time with the people. Brighten their days. Like with Jerry whatever-his-name-was, the man who’d given Ronnie the cancer bracelet Andrea had also been wearing. Lane had stood on his porch and chatted with the old man and his wife about the Yankees for almost twenty minutes. Ronnie was pretty sure Lane didn’t even like baseball, yet he listened with rapt interest.

  In fact, at first, Ronnie worried that he only saw her and Esme as a kindness crusade, too. They were a mother and child fleeing from abuse, and Lane always called Ronnie brave, like she’d overcome some major adversity.
Little did he know it was more complicated than that. But as time went on, Lane did seem to love her for her. She taught him to bird-watch, which she’d done with her father when she was young. They enjoyed the same British mystery programs. They started a book club where they’d read the same novels and then discuss—Lane had better insights than Ronnie’s senior English teacher. They had joyful outings with Esme, who bonded with Lane easily. After a while, Ronnie began to relax into the relationship and enjoy loving Lane. Maybe she would actually get her happily ever after.

  And yet, there was so much unsaid. So much Lane didn’t know. Topless Maids was the tip of the iceberg. And now, that fucking note on Esme’s device.

  “Day two is in the books,” Lane said now, lacing his hands behind his head and looking out on the horizon. It was Tuesday evening. Most of the preschoolers started the following day, on an abbreviated “easing-in” schedule, but Lane’s kindergartners were pros, so they’d started today. Esme would have to go back Thursday, though, and it filled her with dread. “Feels like the year is getting off to a good start. Nobody’s melted down. Nobody’s been left out. Everyone loved the book I read about the superhero potato.” He grinned.

  “Well, that’s good,” Ronnie tried to sound cheerful as she crunched on a pita chip. “I’m so happy for you.”

  “And Esme, too. She’s excited to go again on Thursday, right?”

  “I think so.”

  She couldn’t look at him. She felt so ashamed about the upload on Esme’s device. She’d figured out how to delete it. The message had to be the work of some other child. Some smartass kid who could already write and spell and was doing her mother’s bidding—and who’d known to upload the artwork to Esme’s device. Had some self-righteous mother murmured to her child something about Ronnie before they’d even gotten into the classroom?