The Perfect Mother

by Aimee Molloy

  “What on earth will we talk about, then?” Token asks dryly. “Our own interests?”

  “What are those?” Yuko asks.

  “Anyone reading any good books?”

  “I just got that new sleep-training book,” says Francie. “Twelve Weeks to Peace.”

  “Have you guys read that other one everyone’s talking about?” Gemma asks. “The French Approach, or something?”

  “I don’t think this counts as not talking about the babies,” Nell says. “Colette, help us out here. What are you reading?”

  “Nothing. I can’t read when I’m writing a book. It messes with my head too much.”

  “You’re writing a book?”

  Colette glances away from Nell, as if she hadn’t intended to disclose that information.

  “Wait,” Nell says. “We’ve been friends for four months, and you’re just coming around to sharing this news now?”

  Colette shrugs. “Talk of our work hasn’t really come up.”

  “What kind of book?” asks a woman toward the end of the table, her nails painted neon orange—the one, Nell believes, who has twins.

  “A memoir.”

  “At your age? Impressive.”

  Colette rolls her eyes. “Not really. The memoir’s not mine. I’m a ghostwriter.”

  “What do you mean?” Francie asks. “Like, you’re writing a famous person’s book?”

  “Sort of. I wish I could say who, but—” Colette waves her hand and looks toward Winnie who, Nell has noticed, has been staring down at her phone since sitting down. “Everything okay?” Colette asks her.

  Winnie clicks off the screen. “Yes, fine.”

  Nell takes note of Winnie’s fingernails, bitten to the quick, and the thinly veiled look of concern under her smile. Even before Scarlett told them Winnie had admitted to feeling overwhelmed, Nell was aware how distracted Winnie often appeared, how down she seemed on occasion, how she was beginning to miss so many meetings.

  A waiter with a shaved head and a line of stud earrings above one eyebrow approaches the table. “Table service is open, ladies. What’ll it be?”

  Nell rests her hand on Winnie’s arm. “What are you drinking? This round’s on me.”

  Winnie smiles. “Iced tea.”

  Nell sits back in her chair. “Iced tea?”

  “Yeah. They have good iced tea. Unsweetened.”

  “Good unsweetened iced tea? There’s not even such a thing.” She raises her eyebrows. “I don’t want to get all before-the-tenth-grade-school-dance on you, but tonight is about getting a proper drink.”

  “I’m fine,” Winnie says, glancing at the waiter. “Just the iced tea.”

  “Suit yourself,” Nell says, raising her glass. “Another gin and tonic for me. Who knows when I’ll be able to get another night out like this.”

  “I don’t know how you’re going to do it,” Francie says after the waiter finishes taking orders and leaves. “Go back to work next week.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” Nell says. “It’ll be fine. I’m antsy to get back to work, in fact.” She looks away, hoping nobody can sense the truth: she’s sick about the thought of cutting short her maternity leave in just five more days. She’s not ready to leave the baby, not yet, but she doesn’t have a choice. Her company, the Simon French Corporation, the nation’s largest magazine publisher, is forcing her back.

  “Of course, we’re not forcing you back, Nell,” Ian said when he called from the office three weeks ago to “check in” on things. “It’s just that well, you’re the chief technology officer, and this switch to the new security system is the entire reason we hired you.” He paused. “You’re the only person who can do this. The timing is bad, but this is important.”

  Important? Nell wanted to ask Ian, her cowlicked cartoon character of a boss. Ian of the ironically preppy belts—navy blue with pink whales, bright green with woven pineapples. What was important? Making sure nobody hacked into their secure files? Keeping away the shadowy Russian operatives intent on gaining access to the painfully dull interview with Catherine Ferris, some reality television star, uncovering her heavily guarded top secret tips to clear skin (two tablespoons of fish oil every morning, a cup of jasmine tea each night)?

  Nell peers down the table at the crowd of women, their faces slack with pity. “Oh, come on, ladies,” she says. “It’s good for babies to see their mothers going off to work. It makes them self-reliant.” And what am I supposed to do? she wants to ask. She can’t risk being replaced, not with how much it costs to live in New York, not with the rent on their two-bedroom apartment two blocks from the park, not with their student loans. She makes more than twice what Sebastian earns as an assistant curator at MoMA, and it’s her salary that allows them a life in New York. She can’t jeopardize everything for four more weeks of unpaid maternity leave.

  “I went to Whole Foods yesterday,” Colette says, her stack of gold bracelets catching the light. “The cashier told me she was given just four weeks off after having her baby. Unpaid, of course.”

  “That’s against the law,” Yuko says. “They have to hold her job for three months.”

  “I told her that. But she just shrugged.”

  “I have a friend who lives in Copenhagen,” Gemma says. “She got eighteen months of leave after she had her son. Paid.”

  “In Canada,” Colette says, “they have to hold a woman’s job for a year. In fact, the US is the only country besides Papua New Guinea that doesn’t mandate paid leave. The United States. The country of family values.”

  Nell takes a drink, feeling the alcohol going to work on her muscles. “Do you think if we remind people that babies were fetuses not so long ago, more will be inclined to support maternity leave?”

  “Listen to this,” Yuko says, reading aloud from her phone. “Finland: seventeen weeks paid leave. Australia: eighteen weeks. Japan: fourteen weeks. America: zero weeks.”

  The song changes, Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” blasts from the speakers. Nell points a finger in the air and sings along. “She don’t like slavery. She won’t sit and beg. But when I’m tired and lonely, she sees me to bed. This should be the anthem of motherhood,” she says. “Our fight song. I walked the ward with you, babe. A thousand miles with you. I dried your tears of pain, babe. A million times for you.”

  Nell notices Winnie looking at the phone in her lap again and reaches down, takes it from her hands, and places it on the table.

  “Come on, dance with me,” she says, standing up and tugging Winnie to her feet. “I’d give you all and have none babe, justa justa justa just to have you here by me, because— Here we go!” Nell clutches Winnie’s hand as the volume surges, as every woman at the table explodes into song at the refrain. “In the midnight hour, we need more, more, more. With a rebel yell, we cry more, more, more.”

  Nell laughs and raises her glass. “Slash the patriarchy!” she yells.

  Winnie smiles and then gently pulls her hand from Nell’s and looks away from the table, past Nell, beyond the crowd pressing around them, as the flash of someone’s camera, for just a moment, lights the features of her perfect face.

  9:17 p.m.

  At the bar, Colette has to holler twice to be heard—a whiskey on the rocks—thinking about making it a double, her hips moving to the music. The bartender slides the drink toward her, and she takes a long sip. It’s been months since she’s been out like this, enjoying a drink with friends, neither tending to Poppy nor worrying about the book and its quickly approaching deadline. Most nights at this time she’d be sitting with her laptop in bed (the room she envisioned as her home office when Charlie’s parents bought them the apartment two years earlier has since become the nursery), staring at a blank page, feeling exhausted and inept. How did I used to write? she wonders. She completed an entire book—the memoir of Emmanuel Dubois, the aging supermodel—in sixteen weeks, but since she had Poppy, words have become like wisps of air, outpacing her brain’s ability to capture them.

&nb
sp; She takes another sip, savoring the warmth of the whiskey in her throat, and feels a hand on her lower back. She turns to see Token.

  “Hey,” he says. She moves aside, and he slips between her and a woman in a straw cowboy hat who is vying for the bartender’s attention. “It’s a million degrees out there.”

  “No kidding. You want a drink?”

  “Sorry, what?”

  She leans in closer to him. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “I’m good.” He holds up his glass, half full. “I saw you come inside. Thought I’d say hi, take in the air-conditioning.”

  She smiles and then looks away. She’s been with Charlie for fifteen years, an entire lifetime it seems, but Token is just the type of guy she would have once been attracted to: quiet, unassuming, and probably surprisingly good in bed. Nell is sure he’s gay (“I heard it myself,” Nell said. “He used the word partner.”), but Colette doubts it. She’s been watching him these past several weeks, since he arrived at a May Mothers meeting alongside Winnie. Colette can tell by the way Token looks at Winnie sometimes, his tendency to touch her arm when they speak, that he’s unquestionably straight.

  “So,” he says. “You can’t tell us whose book you’re writing, but can you tell me how it’s going? I can’t imagine having to write a book and manage a newborn.”

  Colette considers lying and telling him the story she’s been telling Charlie—it’s fine, I’m managing—but she decides, instead, to admit the truth. “It’s awful. I accepted the job two weeks before discovering I was pregnant.” She grimaces playfully. “The baby wasn’t exactly planned.”

  He holds her gaze and nods. “You going to pull it off?”

  Colette shrugs, and her hair comes loose from its knot, spilling over her shoulders and down her back. “When I’m writing, I feel a need to be with Poppy. And when I’m with her, all I think about is that I need to be writing. But I assured the editor and the mayor that the baby isn’t going to interfere with meeting the deadline in four weeks. Wanna know the truth? I’m at least a month behind.”

  He raises his eyebrows. “The mayor? As in Mayor Teb Shepherd?”

  Colette feels a hot stitch of regret. “I’m usually good at keeping secrets. Blame it on this dark, delicious whiskey. But yeah, I’m writing his second memoir.”

  Token nods. “Like everyone else in the world, I read his first.” He takes a slow drink of his beer. “You write that one, too?”

  She nods.

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Don’t tell the others, okay? I don’t even know why I mentioned it back there. This is a pretty hard-core stay-at-home-mom crowd. My situation is complicated.”

  “Don’t worry.” He leans in. “I’m good at keeping secrets, too.” A man behind him pushes forward, pressing Token up against Colette. He nods toward the deck. “Shall we?”

  They walk back outside and take their seats just as Francie starts to ding her glass with a knife. “I hate to break up the conversation,” Francie says. “But it’s time.”

  “For what?” Nell asks.

  Francie turns toward Winnie. “Winnie?”

  Winnie lifts her gaze from the phone in her lap. “Yes?”

  “It’s your turn.”

  “My turn?” She seems caught off guard by the attention of the table. “For what?”

  “To tell your birth story.” Colette likes Francie. She’s so good-natured and young—from the looks of it, probably not yet thirty—a triple exclamation point of a woman. But Colette wishes she’d let up on this ritual. It was Scarlett’s idea, back when they were all still pregnant, to start each meeting with someone sharing their birth plan. After the babies were born, the practice morphed into long, detailed stories of people’s birth experiences, and there is very little point in denying what it really is. A competition. Who performed their opening act of motherhood best? Who was the fiercest? Who among them (the C-section moms) had failed? Colette has been hoping the group might soon drop the whole thing, and yet she can’t deny feeling curious to hear what Winnie has to say.

  But Winnie just glances around the table. “You know what? I’m going to take Nell’s advice. I’m going to get a drink. A proper one.” She nods at Token’s empty glass. “Want to join me?”

  “Sure,” Token says.

  Colette watches them leave and then turns to catch some of the conversations happening around her—doing her best to stay engaged, surprised at how quickly she’s finished her second drink, wondering if she should get one more. She rises to use the restroom. On the way, she catches sight of Winnie standing at the bar. She’s speaking to a guy—an astonishingly handsome one. He’s wearing a bright red baseball cap, and he’s leaning in, talking into her ear. Token is nowhere to be seen. Colette senses that she should avert her eyes, that she’s witnessing something she isn’t supposed to see. But she doesn’t look away. Instead, she steps around a couple in front of her to get a better look. The guy’s hand is on Winnie’s waist and he’s fingering the tie of her dress. He whispers something, and she pulls back, staring him in the eye, annoyed. Something about him, the way he’s positioning his body so close to hers, something about her expression—

  “You good?” Nell asks. She’s appeared in front of Colette, blocking her view of Winnie, a menu in her hand.

  “Fine. On my way to the bathroom.”

  “I mean, are you hungry? I can order you something.”

  “No, thanks,” Colette says. “I ate.” Nell walks toward the waitress station, and Colette looks back at the bar.

  They’re gone.

  She scans the crowd and then moves toward the bathroom, snaking through the people at the bocce ball court to take her place in line behind a trio of young women wearing nearly identical outfits, texting on their phones. Colette shakes her head. He’s someone Winnie knows, she decides. The uneasiness she feels is the result of the whiskey and exhaustion; just her mind playing a trick, like it has a few times these last few days, like this morning, when she absentmindedly poured coffee into one of Poppy’s bottles.

  She finishes in the bathroom and goes outside to the sidewalk to call Charlie, who tells her Poppy is asleep and he’s working on the latest revisions to his novel. “Take your time,” he says. “Everything’s under control here.” Returning to the table, she sits down beside Francie and sees the phone, tucked next to the sticky mason jars of hot sauce in front of where Token had been sitting.

  “Where’s Token?” she asks Francie, who is putting her own phone into her bag.

  “He left.”

  “You’re kidding. When?”

  “A minute ago. It was weird. He rushed out. Said something came up at home.”

  “That’s odd. I was outside, calling Charlie. I didn’t see him.” Colette reaches for the phone. “He left this.”

  Nell returns, balancing two plates of steaming french fries. “What kind of bar doesn’t serve vinegar with their fries?” she asks, taking her seat. “That would be a federal offense in England.” Nell notices Colette. “Seriously? First Winnie and now you, glued to your phone. Did we come out tonight for the sole purpose of staring at our mobiles?”

  “It’s not hers,” Francie says, pushing away the plate of french fries and reaching for her water. “It’s Token’s. He left it.”

  “Actually, no. It’s Winnie’s.” Colette flips the phone around, showing them the photo of Midas wallpapering the screen. “There’s a key here, too. Inside the case.”

  “Where is she?” Francie asks. “She hasn’t come back from getting that drink.”

  Colette swipes the screen, which lights up with a fuzzy video, glowing bright algae-green. “Wait, what is this?” She turns the phone toward Nell and Francie again. “Is that Midas’s bedroom?”

  Francie snatches the phone from Colette’s hand. “It’s a video. That’s his crib.”

  “Lemme see,” Nell says. Francie hesitates. “Francie, let me see it. I think it’s that app.” Nell licks the salt from her fingers and takes the p
hone from Francie. “It is. I know the person who developed this.”

  “You do?” Francie asks. “How?”

  “I worked with him in DC after college, doing data security. It’s a good idea. You can watch the baby monitor on your phone, as long as you’re on Wi-Fi.”

  “I’ve heard of this,” Francie says. “Peek-a-Boo! I was thinking of getting it, but it’s like twenty-five bucks or something. For an app? That’s insane.”

  “What’s insane is that this is what she’s been looking at,” Nell says. “A grainy video of Midas’s crib.”

  “I don’t see what’s wrong with that,” Francie says.

  “What’s the point of paying a babysitter if you’re going to watch the baby all night?” Nell asks.

  “It’s her first time leaving him. Give her a break,” Francie says. “Really though, where is she?”

  “She was talking to some guy,” Colette says. “A ridiculously hot one.”

  “I saw that too,” says Francie. “He walked right up to her, when she went to the bar. But that was like fifteen minutes ago.” Francie cranes her neck to scan the crowd. “He was a little forward. Did you see how he was touching her? I’m going to go find her. She probably wants to have her phone with her.”

  Francie reaches out her hand, but Nell cradles the phone to her chest. “She’s a single mom, away from her baby for the first time. Let the woman have some fun.”

  “Nell,” Colette says, glancing at the glass in front of Nell, wondering how many drinks she’s had. “Don’t be weird. She’s going to want her phone.”

  “Just a sec.” Nell swipes the screen.

  “What are you doing?” Francie asks.

  “Having what I’m sure is a wholly terrible idea.”

  “What?” Colette asks.

  Nell is silent as she swipes, presses, and then turns off the screen. “Done.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I deleted the app. The Peek-a-Boo! thing. It’s gone.”

  “Nell!” says Francie, covering her mouth.