That Kind of Mother

by Rumaan Alam

  In the end, Rebecca said nothing, because she couldn’t think how to tender an apology she was sure Elizabeth would not have offered. She began to watch more closely. Elizabeth would leave her empty cup on the table beside her favored chair in the living room. Naturally, it wouldn’t stay there long; Priscilla would ferry it to the kitchen, where it belonged. Elizabeth would hold hands outstretched to receive the baby, but in a particular way—gripping the baby under his armpits, as you might lift a puppy from his mother’s teat—that limited her contact with Priscilla’s body. Or so Rebecca thought. She noted the odd triangulation of the conversation; Rebecca might begin with a general observation, Elizabeth would respond to her, specifically, sometimes even using her name, for emphasis, while Priscilla took it in, rarely interjecting.

  Rebecca could not talk to Elizabeth, certainly not to rebuke her. The law made her a daughter to Elizabeth, but Rebecca was not the sort of daughter to speak directly even to her own mother.

  At some point toward the end of December, Elizabeth began to wander, over dinner. Perhaps it was the wine.

  “You remember we had a nurse?” Elizabeth studied her only son from across the table. “When you were small. So small, I wonder when memory actually begins. It seems to be different, for different people, though I think sometimes people lie.”

  “A nurse?” Christopher chewed. “I’m not sure I do remember. I recall wanting a dog.” He grinned at his wife. “We had cats. Terrible things that ignored me utterly.”

  “I’ve a friend who swears she remembers her nursery, seen through the bars of her crib.” Elizabeth’s smile was near a grimace. “It can’t be possible. I myself can barely remember last year. Maybe it was the shock of losing your father.”

  “A nurse.” Christopher again, this time not a question but the beginning of a reminiscence, though it could have been an act. He was dutiful. “Vaguely. Maybe.”

  “A sweet girl. Catherine, or Charlotte. Or. Something with a C. No, Charlotte was your father’s cousin. You wouldn’t remember, she died when you were small. Catherine. Or Kate.” Elizabeth swirled the wine in her glass, which made her look villainous, but also made her look small, elderly, frail, regretful.

  “It’s good to have help, when they’re young.” Rebecca intended a barb: Elizabeth had never had a career. Rebecca needed help because she had things to do. If she’d been a painter, or a sculptor, or an engineer, or a composer, this would have been a given. You need to stretch canvases, mix clay, sketch plans, feel out notes on a piano. Poets did the same stuff, but no one saw. What had she done, Elizabeth; whatever well-bred London wives did during the day. Rebecca kept going into that office. It had been only pretend, initially, then it had become something else. Rebecca made herself a poet the only way she knew how: by being one.

  “I’ve noticed your girl sits with you. When you’re having your lunch.” Elizabeth’s smile was inscrutable. “That wouldn’t have been done, in my day.”

  “A lot of things wouldn’t have.” Rebecca looked at the napkin on her lap.

  “Times have changed.” Christopher, the diplomat, sounded as though this was both a good thing and something to lament. “And of course, America is its own place, Mum.”

  “They certainly have.” Elizabeth smiled. “And it certainly is. America. I’ll never get used to it, myself. Christopher, I don’t know how you do it. I couldn’t imagine coming in from a walk and finding a servant napping, as an example.”

  “Priscilla isn’t a servant.” Rebecca was understated. Dramatic flourish never seemed wise in hindsight, however tempting. “She’s not a servant,” she said again.

  “Oh, yes, I’ve noticed.” Elizabeth sliced into her chicken. “This is quite good.”

  “Priscilla is . . .” Rebecca wasn’t sure how she was going to finish the sentence. Christopher changed the subject. Two weeks later, Elizabeth went back to London.

  9

  FROM THE KITCHEN SINK, YOU COULD SEE OUTSIDE. Winter, hands warm and soapy, Rebecca could watch the snow collect on the deck, and in the summer she could see this: Priscilla, the plastic swimming pool slack between her legs, the woman and her summertime brownness, the Adirondack chairs and their seashore whitewash, and Jacob, pink as a koi, urgent and nude, a child’s impatient calisthenics. It was beastly hot outside but Christopher set the thermostat so low she kept a scratchy shawl (a gift from him; his work entailed the occasional trek to Islamabad) flung over her chair. She was taken in by the sight of the boy, her flesh remade into that bulge of tummy, the swell of his bottom. He was young, still, so she knew, over time, it would fade, this sense of awe at his physical being, his astonishing beauty, the simple fact that he’d been made of her body. Love faded, that was its nature, but the half-life of maternal love was an eternity compared to anything else Rebecca knew.

  She needed to shower, needed to dress, needed to be ready because Christopher needed her, but Rebecca slid the glass door open and stepped into the evening, which shimmered with heat.

  “This darn pool.” Priscilla puffed. “It’ll be worth it.”

  The grass felt damp under her bare feet. “It makes me wish we had a real pool. I’d get in.” The money would not be an issue, but it was dangerous, Jacob was still so young.

  “You should be going.” Priscilla put the pool on the ground and twisted the nozzle on the hose.

  Jacob squealed, satisfied, and stepped into the pool, unable to wait, scooting his bottom around on the damp plastic.

  “Careful.” Rebecca handed the boy a toy truck. “I should.”

  She did not move, though. Somehow the thought of putting makeup on made her feel tired. “I don’t want to go.” Maybe it was an off-the-cuff admission, or maybe Rebecca was trying to bait Priscilla, wanted an invitation to unburden herself.

  “I have something I need to tell you.” It was probably impossible to say such a thing and not sound strained.

  “What is it?” Rebecca paused. “You’re not quitting?” There was always that chance. Only weeks ago, Cheryl had married. Ian was a salesman at a luxury car dealership: midlife crises and year-end bonuses. Christopher had been pleased to learn about Ian and had months ago bought from him a navy blue BMW; Rebecca had been pleased to learn about Ian and had sent the couple two hundred dollars as a wedding present. Rebecca knew that Cheryl was pregnant, and Rebecca worried that Priscilla would want to give up work to be a full-time grandmother.

  “I’m not quitting.” Priscilla was as serious as she was capable of being, or as she’d ever been, with Rebecca. Their intimacy was lived, not spoken. Almost actual friendship, though what of the neat stack of twenty-dollar bills Rebecca left on the demilune in the foyer every Friday afternoon? “I am pregnant.”

  The pool had filled an inch, two, three. Jacob pushed at the water with his palm, examined the spouting hose. Rebecca lifted it out, twisted the nozzle, and the yard was quiet. There was that metal in the mouth: adrenaline. She couldn’t say why this was her response. Priscilla’s body looked the same, that familiar soft hardness, that compact power, that unfussy grace. Priscilla’s femininity was more like utility. She was able to do so much, even inflating that stupid pool. “You’re pregnant!” Rebecca forced in a note of joy, because that was warranted.

  Priscilla laughed, nerves not humor. “I didn’t think it was possible, but seems like it is.” She waved her hands at her side, brought them up to rest on her belly.

  “But . . .” Rebecca couldn’t ask the question she wanted to, and let the conjunction hang. But: you’re old/you’re not married/you’re forty-two or forty-three/you work for me/what about Jacob/what about us/what about Cheryl. That last was the way to go. “Cheryl.”

  Priscilla’s abashed smile said that she knew the absurdity of the situation. “She’s going to have a brother, I guess. And he’s going to have a niece or nephew.”

  Rebecca felt joy, more real, now. She took Priscilla’s hand, which did not seem any bigger. During her pregnancy, her hands had swelled. “Congratulations.”
/>
  “Don’t sound so final about it.” Priscilla said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “We’ll figure things out.” A vision of Jacob and a new baby, then the same age, by some magic, best friends, black limbs and white limbs splashing in that very pool while she and Priscilla looked on. A fantasy, that was all.

  She kissed her son and went inside and showered. Christopher came home and they drove to Great Falls in the BMW he’d bought from Priscilla’s son-in-law.

  “I have some news.” She wasn’t sure how to frame it, but he needed to know.

  “What’s that?”

  “Priscilla is pregnant.”

  Christopher let out an impressed whistle. “That’s something.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Medical marvel, I rather think. But good for her.” Christopher chuckled. “I didn’t know she had a—well, is she married? I don’t know, I guess?”

  “You’d know if she was married.” Rebecca was not sure that he would, though.

  “I thought I knew that she wasn’t. But—well, the one doesn’t have to do with the other, I suppose. She’s happy about it?”

  Rebecca thought she’d seen in the woman a shadow of worry, but she nodded.

  “Jim and his wife, they used a service to find their nanny. We can ask Molly tonight. I remember him saying they liked her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They pay her on the books. He takes the long view. You can’t say Jim’s not confident. In his imagination, a decade from now he’s the attorney general. What does Molly do? I can’t remember.”

  Rebecca couldn’t picture Molly—she got as far as brown hair, lots of turtlenecks. “I don’t know.”

  “I have the strangest feeling that she has something to do with BCCI. I heard the name Molly and it must be the same Molly. It has to be. I forgot that she was an analyst—you remember, she was so hugely pregnant when we first met them.”

  Rebecca had a vague memory, Molly, majestic, mammary, forgotten because other people did not interest her, and somehow in the years they’d been together Christopher had not realized this. “Priscilla is pregnant, but she’s not quitting.”

  Christopher glanced at her, then back at the road. “What?” He frowned. “What was the exit again?”

  Rebecca consulted the directions she’d scrawled on an envelope. “Forty-four. And just to clarify, we won’t need a service. Priscilla is pregnant, but she’s not quitting.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Rebecca. The woman’s going to have a baby of her own and then come over every day and look after our baby?”

  “We haven’t got that far yet.”

  “Keep your eyes open for that liquor store—there’s one just as we get off.”

  “I just wish you wouldn’t imply that we need to replace Priscilla.”

  “Why are we still talking about this, Rebecca?”

  “You’re the one who said we should talk to Molly about her nanny service.”

  “You’re the one who said our nanny is fucking pregnant.”

  “But that doesn’t mean—”

  “I can’t tell you how uninteresting I find this as a topic of conversation.”

  Rebecca looked out of the window. “Well, that’s too bad. Because it interests me. Priscilla is—I mean, because of her—” She’d just finished it. A book! It was the promise she’d made herself, so many years before. It was a bit late but it was there nonetheless, unruly stack on her desk.

  “I know that for some reason you’ve decided you owe this woman your every success. As if I haven’t been paying her, week after week. A small fortune.”

  “For your son. Not that it matters. You told me to hire her! You told me it was a good idea, to return to my work.”

  “And it was, wasn’t it? Not that I need any thanks.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just—it’s sensitive. You don’t know. You’re out of the house, at the office, but I need things to run smoothly, and Priscilla has brought order to everything. And I like her, is that wrong, that I like being around her, that I feel better?”

  “I think you’re being naive. If you think that her having a baby won’t make things more complex for her. Just as it did for you.”

  “She won’t leave us. I’m sure of it. We’ll work something out.”

  “You’re an optimist, then, Rebecca? After all your poems about Orpheus looking back to hell.”

  “Hades isn’t hell. There’s the liquor store.” She pointed out the window, and he slowed the car. They never rightly determined, that night, whether she was an optimist or he a pessimist. They bought two bottles of rosé. Christopher spent much of the night talking to Molly, who was the analyst Molly he had heard tell of, while Rebecca looked at their ugly abstract paintings and made immediately forgotten small talk. Then they drove in not exactly companionable silence to their own home, which was so cold, the air-conditioning humming the way a heart beats, ceaselessly, reliably.

  10

  THANKSGIVING THAT YEAR WAS A CATERED AFFAIR AT JUDITH AND Steven’s baronial table, a crew of smooth-cheeked boys in black button-down shirts called in for the night. Rebecca slipped each a twenty-dollar bill—surely their mothers missed them. The day coincided with Jacob’s birthday, so that was put off to Saturday, and after all this together, the clan went their separate ways. One of those Sundays: knocking against one another in the confines of the cold house, tripping up and down stairs, listening to A Prairie Home Companion, brewing pots of tea, eating snacks they didn’t want, switching on the television, taking an early bath, changing the bed linens, making a grocery list, until Cheryl telephoned.

  For a moment, Rebecca didn’t know who Cheryl was. The emergency in her voice was explanatory. Christopher was adept enough at the bath and bedtime rituals, so Rebecca pulled on a sweater and drove to the hospital. Unsure what else she might offer Cheryl, Rebecca brought a sandwich, made of leftover, joyous turkey.

  Cheryl should have been beatific, with all that pregnant fat. She looked stoic. But she was a nurse: she’d seen it all. We’re doing our best for her, everyone kept saying, and it seemed to Rebecca to be true; this was Cheryl’s hospital, this had been Priscilla’s workplace. Special treatment! Rebecca squeezed Cheryl’s dry hand. This was where Jacob was born, surely nothing bad could happen here.

  They looked in the nursery window, because who could resist? Tiny, uncanny creatures in every hue: peach, salmon, mustard, cocoa. Looking at the babies made Rebecca hungry, a desire to eat that was maybe a desire to survive. Wake up wake up, she said to herself, the most common prayer, though on some level, Rebecca knew Priscilla would not. A woman of forty-three flying close to the sun on wings of wax, and the world a placid pastoral, barely registering her fall to sea. Rebecca was mad at her: Priscilla had tempted fate. She should never have had this child, but there he was, and he was a love.

  “There’s nothing to say.” Cheryl seemed to sense Rebecca’s desire to say something.

  Rebecca turned to her left, took Cheryl’s chin in her hand, and eased the woman’s head onto her own shoulder, and Cheryl was made a girl again. “I brought you a sandwich,” Rebecca said. They sat beside each other, then Cheryl was called away, and when she came back, it was to tell Rebecca that Priscilla was dead.

  The only telephone call they might have made was to Ian, who had only just left them, because it was late, and he had to work in the morning. “Let him be.” Cheryl held up a hand and Rebecca thought of Diana Ross, stopping someone in the name of love. It was an absurd thing to think, but it was an absurd situation.

  Cheryl wept, brief, dignified tears. She shook her head to dispel them. “You should go.”

  They sat in the cafeteria with waxed paper cups of tea and jelly doughnuts. Rebecca, never knowing what to do, had decided to buy something. “Your brother is beautiful.” They had taken turns holding him. The nurse had urged it but they both knew: the baby needed to be touched, a human needed to be touched.

  Cheryl took a bite of her pastry.
“He is.”

  Rebecca considered her doughnut, its rich gut of red. “How are you feeling?” She meant not the situation, but the pregnancy. How they felt about the situation was clear. “You sure you don’t want me to phone Ian?”

  She shook her head. “There’s no point ruining his night’s sleep.” Cheryl’s strong jaw (it was her mother’s strong jaw) made her look some mixture of resolute and resigned, the sort of woman depicted in art from the era of the Great Depression. “I know him. He’ll be up at five. He’ll come here before work.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “She’ll still be dead tomorrow morning.”

  Rebecca was not offended. Of course Cheryl had earned the right to snap. “Maybe you should come home with me. You don’t need to stay here.”

  “I know that.” Cheryl took another bite. “I’m going to stay here. Thank you.”

  Rebecca tried a different approach. “Cheryl, when are you due?” She pantomimed a hand over her belly. No matter what, the cells kept dividing. A baby (life!) was the only force as unstoppable as death.

  “Two weeks, give or take.” Cheryl was massive with it. “She’s moving all day. Seems like she never sleeps. Rebecca. I can’t do it.” Just a whisper.

  “Never mind, now.” Rebecca offered her hand. She was not sure that Cheryl liked her. It seemed fairly clear that Cheryl was unimpressed by her.

  “When, then?” Cheryl pushed away the food. “Shit.” This came out as a whisper, a reasoned judgment rather than impassioned utterance.

  “I’m so sorry.” The tears welled up in Rebecca’s eyes. She blinked them back, because they felt theatrical.