by Aimee Molloy
Francie shows them the next pages, printouts of an online article.
Gwendolyn Ross Arrested in the Disappearance of Her Son
Lachlan Raine Admits Affair with State Dept. Intern Ellen Aberdeen
Francie flips again. It’s the e-mail from Nell. The Jolly Llama. 8:00 on July 4. Everyone come, and especially Winnie. We won’t take no for an answer.
Francie’s hands are trembling as she holds open a notebook, and they read the page together.
What if they don’t believe me? I finally spoke that question out loud last night. What if they see through the story we’ve created? What if I go to jail?
But Joshua just turned away from me. I know even the mention of it terrifies him.
Francie flips to the next page, and a handful of folded papers falls onto the floor at their feet. Nell picks them up and unfolds them.
Token’s mug shot. Three copies of it.
Colette closes her eyes, hearing only the sound of the rain pulsing against the skylight above them.
“Oh my god,” Nell says under her breath.
Colette opens her eyes. Go, Francie mouths.
Scarlett is standing by the door. The baby is crying harder.
“He sounds hungry,” Francie says. “Can I do something to help?”
“You can leave,” she says. “My husband is parking the car and will be back any second. Trust me, he’s not going to be so understanding.”
Colette walks toward Scarlett. She pictures herself running down the stairs, out on to the sidewalk, sprinting through the rain, back to Charlie and Poppy, none of this real. But then her gaze meets Nell’s and then Francie’s, and she feels herself taking a few steps toward Scarlett.
“What are you doing?” Scarlett says, her hands at the baby’s head.
Colette reaches for the rain hood. Scarlett pulls away, but Colette catches a glimpse of his hair, and then his face.
“Midas,” Francie says from behind Colette as Scarlett walks brusquely into the kitchen. Colette follows, her legs weak.
His screams grow louder as Colette reaches Scarlett. She forces her hands inside the carrier and hooks them around the baby. She feels Scarlett pitching toward the sink, and sees the knife locked in her fist.
In an instant, she becomes aware of a searing flash of pain in her side. She hears the sound of Nell’s voice. She sees Poppy’s face.
And then it all goes black.
I place the knife on the table.
Francie is standing motionless. Nell is kneeling beside Colette, who has fallen to the floor. The baby is screaming at my chest. “Now look what you’ve done,” I say, gazing down at him. “You’ve upset Joshua.”
“Scarlett, what have you—” Francie is walking closer to me. “Give him to me. Give me Midas.”
“Midas? Midas is dead. This is Joshua.” I see the terrified look in his eyes, and whisper into his ear. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’re going to be all right.”
The room begins to twist. The air glistens with dust. They’re here to visit.
I’m hosting a May Mothers Meeting.
Nell is crying and holding her phone to her ear. I have to think quickly. I walk over and snatch it from her hand.
“No! Give that to me.” She’s frantic. “We have to get her help.”
I calmly place her phone in the sink, turning on the faucet. “No phone calls during our meetings, ladies. It’s rude.” I turn to Francie. “You too.”
“Me too?”
“Yes.” I hold out my hand. “Give me your phone.”
Francie reaches for the back pocket of her shorts, the same, pea-green, milk-stained, ill-fitting Old Navy shorts she wears to every meeting, the poor girl. “My phone? I didn’t—”
I step over Colette and spin Francie around, my nails digging into her soft bicep, and grab the phone from her pocket. I toss it in the sink next to Nell’s and squeeze a stream of blue gel over the phones, watching them disappear under a cloud of bubbles. I catch my reflection in the cabinet glass, noting the dark bags under my eyes, the state of my hair. I look awful.
I pinch pink into my cheeks and fluff up my hair. I really should have put more effort into looking good for this meeting. I know how much these women care about that.
“I’m sorry,” I say, turning back to Francie. “I don’t mean to be rude. Joshua has been a little moody and it’s starting to get to me. But you guys know how that is, right?”
I walk to the apartment door, twisting the dead bolt into place, stringing the chain lock. Kneeling down, I summon the strength to slide a stack of packing boxes in front of the door. I’m a little dizzy when I stand. “No point in going to the park in this rain,” I say, walking to the refrigerator. “Let’s just meet here. It’s more comfortable. And I have to feed this baby.”
I take a bottle of breast milk from the freezer, nearly the last of the stash I was able to pump before my supply dried up. I know I should have been more disciplined about it, setting my alarm for the middle of the night to keep pumping, taking more herbs, drinking that awful lactation tea. Once again, I’ve failed.
“Sit down,” I tell Francie, sticking the bottle into the microwave. “And please don’t tell me microwaving breast milk destroys all its good properties. I am aware of that. I’ve read the same books. And I’m choosing to adhere to my own parenting philosophy. It’s called Mothers: Fuck All of You.” I laugh and glance down at Colette, who is leaving a pool of blood on the kitchen tiles. “Maybe you should ghostwrite a book about that,” I tell her.
I take the bottle to the couch and look at the others, noticing something. “Wait,” I say. “Where are your babies?”
Francie is silent, but then something changes in her expression. She seems to compose herself. “It’s girls’ day,” she says, sitting down beside me, her eyes on Joshua. “Remember? We said no babies. Right, Nell?”
“Girls’ day?” I tug down the fabric of the baby carrier and prod the nipple into Joshua’s mouth. “Sounds fun. I must have missed that e-mail. I just hope you’re not hungry. This meeting is unexpected.”
Colette moans from the kitchen floor, and I see that Nell is pressing one of my good hand towels into the wound at her side. “Did you bring your muffins?” I ask Colette.
Nell’s face is chalky. “Her muffins?”
“Isn’t that her thing? She brings the muffins, the rest of us bring the ennui.” Joshua squirms at my chest, and I pull the bottle from his mouth. He lets out a burp. Barely a burp, but it will do. I stand to make a note of it in my notebook but then decide to sit back down. I’ll do it later, after they leave.
“Well, how about some coffee?” Francie asks.
“Coffee? What about the clogged duct? I told you caffeine just makes it worse.”
“I know. I gave up. Formula feeding now.”
“Formula? Really? That’s too bad.” Joshua is watching me, and I know there’s no use in continuing to avoid his eyes. Right away I see the scolding look, the anger. He so resembles his father right now. Asking me how I let this happen, why I haven’t done a better job of avoiding this, like I promised I would. I look away. “Coffee? Let’s see.”
I walk back into the narrow kitchen and open the cupboards. “Nope. I’ve already packed the coffeepot. Lactation tea will have to do. Now where are the mugs?”
I start the water and rifle through a box in front of the door, spotting the tacky Cape Cod Is for Lovers cup Dr. H bought me as a joke at a rest stop during our first weekend away together two years ago. The first time we had sex somewhere other than the floor of his office, the white noise machine turned as high as possible, in case his next patient arrived early. The weekend he first said he was in love with me, and long before I discovered what a monster he could be.
I unearth a jar of unopened pickles and a can of black beans in the back of the cupboard. I pop open the pickles, pour the beans into a clean bowl, and when the water is ready, I carry them to the coffee table with the tea.
“Looks grea
t,” Francie says, but her face doesn’t register appreciation for my efforts. Knowing her, she’s judging me for not having baked something. She takes her tea. “Now, as you know, we have a certain way of starting these meetings,” she says.
“You mean my birth story?” I laugh. “That was my idea, wasn’t it?”
Francie nods. “And since you’re hosting, you should go.”
I urge Joshua to accept the pacifier clipped to his shirt. “Well, I delivered on Mother’s Day. I lay down for a nap—”
“No,” Francie interrupts. “Before that. Start with the pregnancy.”
“Oh, okay. Let’s see. So, Dr. H didn’t want any more kids. He claims I tricked him, but I was on the pill. I’m the one percent.” I laugh. “Not that one percent. The other one. The one the birth control package warns you about.”
“Dr. H?”
“My psychiatrist. Joshua’s dad. I called him my boyfriend once.” I cringe, remembering that moment at the bar in Queens, next to the hotel where we’d sometimes meet. “My boyfriend will have another whiskey sour,” I told the bartender, a woman in her seventies, plastic earrings dangling from her stretched lobes, a Styrofoam cup swimming with cigarette butts between the dusty bottles of flavored vodka behind her.
She turned to make the drink, and he seethed beside me. “Don’t ever call me that again,” he whispered in my ear, his hand gripping my thigh, leaving five purple dots I discovered later that night as I undressed for him. “We’re not a pair of fucking teenagers.”
“He’s married,” I tell Francie. “But we were together for two years.” I roll my eyes. “You know, on and off.”
Francie nods. “Is he the one parking the car right now? Your husband?”
“Hmmmm?” Oh right. I’d said that earlier. “No. I don’t have a husband.”
“So Dr. H—”
“We haven’t spoken in months, since I told him I was going to keep Joshua. He’s kind of nuts. Narcissistic personality disorder, if you ask me. It makes it hard for people to love others. I learned about it from him, in fact. The only person your father was capable of loving was himself. That’s what Dr. H always said, but swear to god, he could have been talking about himself.” I’m surprised to feel a lump growing in my throat. This isn’t easy to talk about.
“Anyway, my parents weren’t the best role models, and I wasn’t planning on kids. But then Joshua came along, and I never wanted anything more. From the minute he showed up as a pink plus sign between two thin sheets of plastic, I knew him.”
I rub Joshua’s back, thinking about those days, how joyful they were, feeling him growing inside me. Reading him books in the bathtub. Taking him for walks in the morning to the new playground, promising to bring him back one day. I’d walk barefoot through the sand pit, envisioning him collecting rocks, learning to climb trees. All the things kids are supposed to do. “He was such an active little guy. Such a kicker. Always telling me what he wanted.” I laugh as I tip another stream of sugar into my tea. “Remember how they talked to us from inside?”
I can see by the empty expression on Francie’s face that I’ve veered off topic. “Sorry. Dr. H always said I talk too much and risk boring people to death.” I press my fingers to my temples, trying to huddle my thoughts into order, to concentrate on what I’m saying, and not on the way Joshua is looking at me.
“Stay focused, Scarlett,” I say. I smile at Francie. “I had a very specific birth plan. You know, no epidural, skin-to-skin contact, sprinkle him with organic fairy dust but don’t clean him off before giving him to me. The thing is, nobody seemed to care about my plan. Before I could even hold him, they’d taken him away to that little table thing, with all the lights and wires.
“I can’t remember the doctor’s name, but I can hear her yelling something—barking orders at people. Then she was attaching wires, wheeling him out of the room, not even letting me see his face—to see if he looked the way I’d been imagining he would.” The other doctor was there then, telling me I needed to be stitched up where I’d torn. You need to lie down, Mom. We need to take care of you first.
“Would you like a pickle?” I extend the jar to Francie. “No? Nell?” Nell’s eyes are swollen. She shakes her head. “Anyway, hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy. That’s what a doctor told me. In other words, he suffocated during the delivery. Or, in even other words, fetal demise. Fetal demise. Doesn’t that sound like it should be the name of a female punk band?” I begin to laugh and find that I have a hard time stopping. “Sorry,” I eventually say. “I don’t think this is funny at all. To be honest, I’m so racked with guilt. I was so careful during my pregnancy. I did everything I could to keep him safe. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t mean to hurt him—”
Francie touches my leg. “Scarlett. It wasn’t anything you—”
“Anyway,” I say, standing up and walking away from the pity in her face. “Another woman came in to ask me if I wanted to hold my son before they took him away. I didn’t know if I wanted to hold him. ‘Is that what people do?’ I asked her. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Closure.’ That’s the word she used. Someone had thought to put a hat on him, before they brought him to me. As if we still had the luxury of worrying that he might be cold.”
I pause to finger a hill of cold beans into my mouth, aware of how famished I am. I can no longer remember the last time I ate.
“They told me I had forty-eight hours to register his death. I never did it. To be honest, it’s making me a little nervous. Do you think that might be a crime?” I bounce Joshua to the balcony door, opening it. I need some fresh air. I reach for the binoculars on the bookshelf and look across the wet backyards, into Winnie’s home, wondering what she’s doing. I haven’t seen her in two days, since Daniel was there, when I watched him open the curtains and then make her dinner, sitting beside her on the couch, handing her tissues from the box in his lap, her plate untouched on the coffee table.
Oh right, I remember, putting the binoculars back in their place. She’s not home. She’s in jail.
I turn to Francie. “Anyway, that’s pretty much it.” I laugh. “My ‘birth story.’ I’m glad I got my turn. I wanted to volunteer to go that night, when Winnie declined. But I don’t know, I was feeling shy.”
“What night?” Nell asks.
“The fourth of July. At the Jolly Llama.”
“You were there?”
“Yes. I stayed inside at first, at the bar. Watching you guys. I was going to join the table, but it felt weird. I’ve never felt like I really fit in with this group. And then, of course, I met that guy.”
I see him, standing there, watching me. I knew what he wanted. I’d just witnessed him attempt the same thing with Winnie. The blatant eye contact from his place at the bar. The smile. The way he took in my body when he finally approached. Winnie rejected him immediately, but I couldn’t help myself. “I accepted his drink,” I tell Francie. “One thing led to another.” I feel his hands under my dress in the bathroom stall, begging me to go home with him. If only I’d said yes. I sigh and shake my head. “It had been a while.”
Francie is immobile. “Was he wearing a red hat?”
“He was hard to miss, right? So handsome. But yeah, that stupid red baseball hat.”
“I don’t understand,” Nell says. “How did you take the baby? With Alma—”
“Alma was lucky.”
“Lucky?” Nell says.
“Yes. After I left the bar with the key you gave me, I was sure I’d have to hurt her. But she saved me a lot of trouble. She was sound asleep.”
Tears collect at Nell’s chin. “I gave you the key?”
“Yes. We spoke that night, at the bar. You don’t remember?”
Nell squeezes her eyes shut. “I do—I thought I did. But everyone said you weren’t there. They said it was Gemma I spoke to.”
“Nope. Hang on.” I stand and walk to the small closet off the kitchen, taking out the blond wig and straw cowboy hat from the top shelf. I put the wig on, but it
sits awkwardly. I look inside, and Winnie’s phone falls to the floor at my feet. “Oh, there it is. I was wondering where I put that thing.” I put the wig back on and turn to Nell. “Look familiar?”
“It was you.”
“Yes. I couldn’t believe you recognized me. Colette and Daniel—sorry, Token—stood right next to me for like ten minutes and had no idea. Of course, they were too busy looking at each other all googly-eyed. Remember, Colette? You told Daniel about your job with the mayor, swearing him to keep your little secret between you.
“I eventually decided to push my luck, get closer, see what you guys were talking about. I stood at the railing, my face toward my phone. And then I took that photo of you, Nell, looking so wild and out-of-control.” I can’t help myself, and a laugh escapes me. “Sending that to Detective Hoyt worked out way better than I’d dreamed. I thought it was just going to lead Hoyt down your trail, buying me some time. Instead, it distracted everyone from the real issue. That the police had failed to find a baby.” I fish inside the jar for another pickle.
“I watched the whole thing. Winnie leaving her phone. You deleting that app. Putting her phone in your purse. Then you barged into me on my way out of the bathroom, just when I was about to go home. ‘Come on,’ you said. ‘Let’s bum a smoke. It’s been ages.’
“We went to the smoking patio where a very nice gentleman gave you one of his cigarettes. I had a glass of red wine, you had a Camel Light and a gin and tonic laced with my last four Xanax. Within the half hour, I had Winnie’s phone and key. Trust me. Me and Joshua, together in the end? I didn’t think for a second that was possible. I didn’t keep going to your meetings believing I’d actually get him back.”
“Our meetings,” Francie said. “You came. You had a baby.”
“No.” I raise my eyebrows. “I had a porcelain doll inside a stroller. Hello? Thanks for never asking to hold him, by the way. The level of self-absorption in this group really played to my advantage.”
“Oh my god. You—” Nell’s words break apart in a sob.
“Followed you into the bathroom. You tried to fight, but you were pretty out of it by then. Wait a second. Listen.” I hear a noise in the hallway. “Are others coming?”
