The Other Mother

by Carol Goodman

  At the sound of my step, Sky looks up. “There you are. I hope you slept well. You look worlds better. Billie says your baby is a treat. She’s taken her out for a walk in the stroller so we’ll have plenty of time. I hope you don’t mind if we get started right away. I’ve been up since dawn looking through old things. I thought we’d get the juvenilia out of the way. Tiresome as it may be, it’s the underpinning. It’s what makes us who we are, isn’t it?”

  I see, as I pull out a chair, that she’s really expecting an answer. What in the world am I supposed to say? I think of what my childhood and Peter’s made us into. Peter’s parents were so strict that he’s a bit of a perfectionist. And I grew up with an alcoholic single mother, so of course I’ve made a botch of being a mother myself. But then I remember a line from one of Sky’s books. “It’s the stories we tell about ourselves that make us who we are,” I say.

  Schuyler Bennett’s face lights up. “Oh, I did know you were the right one for the job! Sit down and let me tell you a story.”

  Daphne’s Journal, June 25, 20—

  I am in love!

  A few years ago the object of my affection would have been the latest in the string of underemployed actor/bartender/losers I dated before I met Peter, but today it’s the nineteen-year-old sophomore Vanessa Lieb, whom Laurel recommended to babysit. She’s made everything so much easier. First of all, she immediately reorganized Chloe’s diaper bag.

  “You should get one like Laurel’s,” she told me. “It has all the right pockets.”

  The right pockets! Who knew that was all I needed to make motherhood manageable!

  Then she changed Chloe and got her in her car seat so I could “get myself ready” for group. I’d actually thought I was ready, but I used those ten minutes to brush my hair and change the shirt Chloe had spit up on for something a little nicer—a floaty gauze top I ordered last week from Anthropologie. I hid the package from Peter when it came because he’s been going on about money again, but really, I need some new clothes. I still don’t fit into my pre-pregnancy stuff and I’m sick to death of my maternity clothes. Anyway, the top was on sale and Laurel was wearing something like it last week, so . . .

  I felt so much better freshened up and I didn’t have to worry about getting spit up on again because Vanessa got Chloe out of the car seat too. She knows Laurel’s babysitter, so she waved at her in the parking lot and they went to take the babies to the park while Laurel and I went into group.

  The other mothers were talking about how forgetful they’ve been and I was going to tell the story about forgetting the bottles last week, but I felt a little embarrassed. But Laurel talked about how forgetful she’d been lately and I thought if someone as put-together as Laurel could admit to being “a little out of it” I could tell the story of the bottles. And then another mother told about how she sat through a whole luncheon with her nursing flaps unbuttoned and her tits hanging out and we all laughed. “It’s mommy brain,” Esta said. “A perfectly natural response to fluctuations in hormones.” What a relief it was to hear her say that!

  It really helps to hear other moms’ stories so I don’t feel so crazy and alone. There was even a mother who said that she heard voices sometimes, telling her things. You could have heard a pin drop in the room.

  “Well, what do the voices say?” Esta finally asked.

  “Don’t forget to sterilize the baby bottles; don’t drink coffee before you nurse, those kind of things.”

  We all breathed a sigh of relief. “Well,” Esta said, “it sounds like a very sensible sort of voice.”

  “Sure,” Laurel whispered in my ear. “All the voices sound sensible at the time.”

  I had to keep myself from laughing!

  Afterward we all piled into Laurel’s Lexus SUV and went back to her house and guess what? Laurel lives in our neighborhood. Her house even looks a lot like ours. When I commented on it she said, “Isn’t it awful? All these ticky-tacky suburban boxes. I never thought I’d end up living in Westchester.”

  “Me neither!” I said, not mentioning that it was a lot fancier than anyplace I thought I’d ever live. Her house is fixed up a lot nicer on the inside than ours is. Everything’s done in pale sand and bone colors. There’s even white carpeting, which I’d be terrified of getting dirty but maybe Chloë (I found out that Laurel spells it with an umlaut. I told her I’d thought about using one but I was afraid all her teachers would resent it) doesn’t spend much time in the living room. Laurel sent Vanessa and Simone (that’s Laurel’s nanny—she’s actually from France! Only Laurel would have an actual French au pair!) into the playroom, where there are a gazillion toys, most of which are way too old for our four-month-olds, so we could have some “mommy time” to ourselves.

  We sat on a big white couch and we talked about everything. It’s been so long since I talked to anyone like that—not since college, when we’d all stay up late in our dorm rooms talking about books and the meaning of life. Laurel and I didn’t talk about the meaning of life, though. We started by telling each other our labor stories. Laurel had a really bad time because she had morning sickness, then preeclampsia, and had to be on bed rest and they had to induce labor. I told her about how Chloe came early and how scary it was. When I told her how the doctor had said right in the middle of my labor that she might end up with cerebral palsy Laurel said, What an asshole! Which sort of shocked me because I hadn’t thought of it like that. I told her how guilty I felt because I’d worked through my pregnancy and I was on my feet a lot.

  “Well, whose fault was that?” she asked. “Whose decision was it to keep working?”

  I started out telling her how Peter and I had both agreed it was best I work until my delivery so I wouldn’t be dipping into my maternity leave, but then she asked me what Peter did for a living and when I told her he managed a hedge fund she laughed. I started explaining about “low fees” and it being a small fund, and how Peter had had such a strict upbringing he was really nervous about money, but she just shook her head and said, “Bullshit, he just sounds cheap. I’m sure there’s plenty of money. You have to stand up for yourself. Look at where giving in got you.”

  Which made me cry a little. But she was really, really nice about it and gave me another glass of wine. It turns out we have so much in common! We’re both orphans, for instance. Of course, I never knew my father and my mother died driving home drunk from the Dew Drop Inn on Route 9 and her parents died when their private jet crashed into the Alps as they were returning from a ski trip to Gstaad, but still the end results were the same. As Laurel said, We were both alone in the world so we latched onto men who promised security.

  Of course, her parents left her a gazillion-dollar trust fund and my mother left me a closet full of tacky dresses and her collection of feathered roach clips, but still . . . we even both went to library school. I got my library degree at SUNY Albany and worked at a school library and she got her undergraduate degree at St. Andrews and her archival degree at the University of Edinburgh, then interned at the National Library of Scotland. But as Laurel put it: Quelle surprise! We both wanted to put the world in order after it had fallen to pieces.

  We’re practically the same person! We even look a little alike—at least, Laurel thinks so. I mean, I’m not as tall or thin and my hair isn’t as blond, but when I pointed all that out Laurel said, “So the only difference between us is heels, a good colorist, and a couple of baby pounds?” Which made me laugh.

  I even told her the story about the bird that got trapped in Chloe’s nursery and she said, “Well, of course you freaked out! It made you realize how trapped you feel being saddled with a baby!”

  We had so much to talk about, we totally lost track of time and Vanessa had to remind me that she had to get back. Laurel called a taxi for us and while we were waiting for it her husband, Stan, came back. And that’s something else we have in common; we both married older men. I think Stan might even be older than Peter—he certainly looks older but maybe that’s b
ecause he dresses more old-fashioned. He seemed nice and he didn’t get mad that we were sitting around drinking wine in the middle of the day while the sitters took care of the babies. He seemed to find it funny and he even offered to give Chloë her bath.

  I had the taxi drop Vanessa off at her apartment first so it was really late by the time we got home. When I saw Peter’s car in the driveway I was worried that he was going to be mad that I’d left the car in the church lot and that I was late and dinner wasn’t ready and the house was a mess. And sure enough the minute I walked in he started in with Why are you late? and Where’s the car? I was about to say I was sorry but then I thought about what Laurel said about it being Peter’s fault I’d worked through my pregnancy and about men being cheap so instead of apologizing I said, “This is the first friend I’ve made since Chloe was born and I really like her, so please don’t ruin it.”

  His eyes got big and I thought he was going to explode, but instead he said, “I was just afraid something had happened to you and Chloe. I’ve been sitting here imagining you driving off the road or driving onto the train tracks like that woman in Valhalla last year. I’ve had the news on to listen for any traffic accidents. Then when the I saw the taxi pull up . . .” He turned away.

  So then I felt really bad. It must have been scary for Peter when I got so depressed after Chloe was born and now to see me so forgetful. And it was a terrible story about that poor woman who drove onto the train tracks by mistake—not half an hour from where we lived!

  I told him I was sorry and that I’d never forget to call him if I was late again. I also made a mental note to myself to avoid train crossings from now on.

  Chapter Four

  At first I am so worried about Billie finding those papers in the diaper bag that I can barely pay attention to what Sky Bennett is telling me, but as she launches into the story of her childhood I get so caught up in it that I forget all about Billie finding my ID and exposing me as Daphne Marist. I forget all about Daphne Marist and Laurel Hobbes altogether. I guess that’s what a really good story does—it makes you forget about yourself for a while.

  And Sky’s is such an amazing story—like something out of Dickens! Her father was the director of Crantham from the late forties through the early seventies. They moved here from New York City.

  “Imagine what a shock that must have been for my mother! One minute swanning through teas and dinner parties on the Upper East Side and the next stuck up here in the wilderness.”

  I’m having a harder time imagining living on the Upper East Side, but I don’t say so.

  “But in those days a wife went where her husband’s job took her, and this was an important opportunity for my father. It’s hard to remember now that everyone’s on Prozac that in those days the only place for the mentally ill was in the big hospitals—many of which were just awful. Little more than prison workhouses! But Crantham was different. It was founded in the 1870s on the principles of ‘moral treatment’ for the mentally ill. Have you seen the grounds yet?”

  The question startles me and for a minute I think she’s trying to catch me out in a lie—that I’m not who I say I am—but then I remember the view from the tower. “I went up to the tower last night and saw the grounds from there. It looks like a college campus . . . or a country club.”

  “Exactly!” she says, clearly pleased. “The grounds were designed by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted.” She pauses, as if waiting to see if I recognize the names. I recognize Olmsted, but it takes me a moment to realize that the person she is calling Calvert Vox was the one I’d always thought of as Calvert Voe.

  “Didn’t they design Central Park?” I say, thinking this is something Laurel would know.

  “Yes,” Sky says, giving me an odd look. Maybe it’s so obvious that I shouldn’t have said anything. I’d noticed that with Laurel sometimes, like you were supposed to know that the Orbit stroller was the one to buy but you weren’t supposed to bring up the fact that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West had one. Maybe Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted were the Kimye of their day. “The founders of Crantham wanted their patients to enjoy the same restful environs as Central Park. There was a croquet lawn and dairy farm, a chapel and a little theater. It was like a quaint English village. I loved running around it.”

  “You had access to the grounds?” I ask. “Wasn’t that dangerous? I mean, they were still mental patients.”

  Sky gives me a reproving look. Should I not have said mental patients? What else am I supposed to call them? “My father felt very strongly about setting an example of trust and community. He actually wanted to live on the grounds, but my mother drew the line there so my father had this house renovated for us. My father had a path built that went directly down to the grounds and he installed a back gate—I’ll have Billie show it to you later; it’s been years since I was able to navigate it—and I would follow him down every day. When he was treating patients, I’d go see the cows in the dairy and talk to my favorite patients. There was a famous poet who left poems for me in secret hiding places and an old woman who believed she was Marie Antoinette, who taught me French, and an artist who painted my portrait . . .” Her eyes glaze over for a moment as if she is seeing her younger self, and then she jerks herself to attention and begins rifling through the papers. “Here—” She extracts a sepia-toned photo of a group of men and women decked out like Russian peasants dancing around a Maypole. “That’s from the Founder’s Day Fete and this”—she plucks a printed program from the pile—“is from the Annual Dance. As you can see it was a very fairy-tale atmosphere.”

  “And therefore important to your formation as a writer,” I say.

  She smiles, my Vaux-Olmsted gaffe forgiven. “So you see why I’d like all these documents included with my papers.” She waves a crabbed hand behind her and I take in the stack of file boxes that I hadn’t noticed when I came in. There must be at least twenty.

  I pause, confused. Hadn’t she said last night that she wanted her father’s papers to go to the hospital? I don’t recall her saying anything about organizing them as part of her papers. But then maybe I’ve misunderstood or forgotten something she said. I feel a flush of heat in my cheeks, followed by an icy prickling across my scalp. What if all those baby hormones have washed out all my brain cells, and I’m not actually capable of doing this job? I can feel her waiting for my response, the silence growing heavy.

  When in doubt, repeat what’s been said to you, Laurel once told me. People love to hear their own words.

  “You want me to include your father’s papers in yours?” I say, making it halfway between a question and a statement.

  “Yes,” she says, smiling.

  I return her smile, my equilibrium regained, and ask, “Is there anything in particular that you want me to focus on?”

  She sorts through the pages on the table and picks out a formal portrait of a middle-aged man wearing a dark suit and sitting stiffly at a desk with a bookshelf and a bust of Freud behind him. He has the same square face and light eyes as Sky, but on him the features look even more intimidating. “I would like my father’s legacy preserved,” she says. “People today . . . they hear ‘mental asylum’ and they picture One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest or something out of a Tennessee Williams play. They see the man who ran such a place as a soulless bureaucrat. I’d like to tell a different story about him.”

  “I understand completely,” I say. It’s the truth. I understand, better than I could say, wanting to rearrange the facts to tell a different story.

  WHEN SKY LEAVES I stare at the stacks of boxes and realize I have no idea what an archivist does. I was a school librarian. I specialized in knowing the titles of every Judy Blume book ever written, reshelving the Nancy Drews in series order, and retaping the bindings of the Twilight books. My Intro to Library Science class had covered the archiving of private libraries as a career option but our professor said such positions were rare so I didn’t take the follow-up class. There was nothing
rare about me.

  Not like Laurel, who had gone on from her archival degree at the University of Edinburgh to work as an assistant to the rare books librarian at the National Library of Scotland. She’d spent a summer cataloguing the private library of a laird in Perthshire . . . recording every boring letter his grandfather had written about fishing on the Tay, she had told me. I had to record what box it came from, what it said, if it mentioned anyone famous, then store it in an acid-free folder, and then make a directory . . .

  I try to remember more details, but I can’t. But I do recall Laurel saying she used a software package for archivists. Maybe I could download it.

  I take out my laptop and the first thing I see on my desktop is a program called ArchAngel: “A Complete Data Management Program for Archivists.” Eureka! I feel like shouting. Laurel told me about the program when I started asking her questions about what archivists did, but I’d forgotten that she had downloaded it for me. She’d even included her own files. All I have to do is follow the system she used for the laird in Perthshire.

  I make a new file for Schuyler Bennett. When I save it I look back at the desktop at the folder labeled “journal.” That’s the journal I’d started keeping in the mothers’ support group, as per Esta’s advice. I was so dutiful about keeping it, as if writing everything down could keep my fears at bay.

  I open the journal to the last entry I wrote, just yesterday. It seems so long ago that I was sitting in my driveway, typing furiously before I went in to collect Chloe and leave. I picture myself walking up the front path to my door and, just like last night in the car, my mind shies away from it. Like there was something I don’t want to remember—