The Other Mother

by Carol Goodman

  I could hardly believe she would say such a thing. I told her I wasn’t pregnant and then she asked me why I hadn’t used any of the tampons I’d brought with me, and I had to explain that my periods had always been irregular.

  “So how do you know you’re not pregnant?”

  I didn’t have an answer to that.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  In the light of day I see that we’re not far from the house. I can see the top of the tower over the tree line. I’m sorry now that I didn’t come at night and climb to the tower to retrieve Laurel’s will, Peter’s picture, and my ID. I try to suggest to Edith that we come back later but she shakes me off. “We have to get to the baby now. Can’t you hear it crying?”

  I sigh, but then I do hear it. Faint at first. It might be a blue jay or a mockingbird, but as I follow Edith toward the house the sound grows louder and it tugs at something inside of me the way Chloe’s cries used to tug at my womb. I can feel that pull now, like the cry is a red thread reeling me in. Even if I could convince Edith to turn back now I couldn’t do it myself.

  When we get to the edge of the trees I see we’re only a few yards from the north end of the terrace. The tower is to our right. To our left the terrace wraps around the back of the house. That’s where the sound of the baby is coming from, the area where I ate dinner with Sky and Billie and where Chloe would sit in her bouncy chair or portable crib. But it’s not Chloe; Chloe is in Westchester with Peter. This must be one of Billie’s grandchildren. Instead of going there I should go into the tower and up to the top room where I hid my ID, the picture of Peter, and Laurel’s will.

  I lay my hand on Edith’s arm. It’s as rigid as steel, tensed against the sound of the baby crying. As much as she’s drawn to the sound she’s also terrified by it. I wonder what she is reliving. I remember how Chloe’s cries would grate against my skin and imagine a lifetime of hearing that without being able to do anything to comfort that poor baby.

  But now I’m going to use that fear. “Edith,” I say, willing my voice firm and steady, “we have to go into the tower before we can go to the baby.” I wait to see if she’ll question my shaky dictum but she turns her tear-stained face to me and nods. Poor Edith, I think as I lead her around the base of the tower, she must have been a very tractable young woman, easy to influence, easy to lead. First some boy got her pregnant, then her upper-class snoot of a roommate convinced her to hide her pregnancy and get rid of the baby when it was born. Now she’s blindly following me. She follows whoever has the strongest voice, the most convincing story—

  Just as I fell into Peter’s stories of someday riches and let him bully me. Just as I eagerly copied Laurel’s clothes and carped with her about the indignities of motherhood. What I wouldn’t do to suffer those indignities now. To go back in time—

  When we come around the tower I think for a moment I have gone back in time. Parked in the driveway is my Ford Focus, the car I arrived in. Why hasn’t Peter taken it back? Is it too shabby for him now that he’s gotten Laurel’s money? Maybe he sold it to Billie or gave it to Sky in thanks for sheltering his errant wife. Whatever the reason, it’s the first stroke of luck I’ve had, because along with my ID, Laurel’s will, and Peter’s picture, I hid a spare car key in the tower because the fob had my initial on it. All I have to do is get to the top of the tower and reclaim it. Then I can drive home. Find Chloe. Find someone to confirm my identity.

  The next stroke of luck is that the door to the tower apartment is unlocked. I’d been afraid that Sky might have hired another archivist, but she must have been too reluctant after her last one turned out to be crazy. Still, I open the door to the apartment warily in case someone has taken up residence.

  At first I think no one is staying there. Nothing is out of place, no mug on the kitchen counter, no book on the coffee table, not even a dent in the couch cushions. In the bedroom, though, a suitcase sits on the bench at the foot of the bed. A Louis Vuitton roller bag. It takes me a second to recognize it as the one I arrived with—

  Because it was never yours.

  I run my hand over the embossed leather surface. I have never owned anything so fancy. Why didn’t I question where I had gotten it?

  But I can picture it now, sitting at the bottom of the stairs, all packed and ready to go. I’d simply picked it up on my way out. I open the suitcase and see the neatly folded clothes. Laurel’s clothes. Why hadn’t I wondered how I’d ended up with them?

  Because you didn’t want to remember I was dead.

  The red veil begins to fall but I blink it away. I see myself walking up the stairs, my feet sinking into the wet carpet. I can feel myself going back in time, to the moment when I woke in the tub with Peter’s hands on my shoulders. I shy away from it—

  Because he tried to kill you.

  Yes. I force myself not to retreat from the thought now. I watch myself walk up the stairs and into the bathroom. There’s blood everywhere, pouring over the rim of the tub, staining the bath mat and the baby blanket—

  The baby blanket.

  It’s lying on the floor and Chloë is lying on top of it. She’s crying. I pick her up. Her playsuit is soaked. The blanket is soaked. I hold her to me and look down into the tub and see—

  Myself.

  Because you thought you were back in the moment when Peter tried to kill you.

  I blink and my face becomes Laurel’s face. Her eyes are open, staring sightlessly at me, her lacerated hands float palms up in the water as if she were holding her arms out for the baby I hold in my arms. She doesn’t want me to give her the baby, though. She wants me take her, to save her. She’s telling me that if I have to think of her as my Chloe to save her, then that is what I should do.

  “That’s why I took her,” I say, turning to Edith. “That’s how I could think of her as my own. I had to in order to save her.”

  But Edith isn’t looking at me. She’s looking past me to the doorway, her green eyes wide as if she too has been confronted by a ghost from her past. I turn around and find Sky Bennett in the doorway.

  “I thought you’d show up,” she says. But she’s not talking to me, she’s talking to Edith.

  Edith steps forward with a smile on her face. “Of course I came back to you!” she says. “I always come back to you, Libby.”

  Edith’s Journal, November 7, 1971

  Libby says if I go to Nurse Landry at the infirmary she’ll have to call my parents. “And besides,” she adds, “it’s probably too late to do anything about it. When was the last time you were with Cal?”

  I think back to that night at the lake—our “last” and only time—and tell Libby the date in June.

  “Over five months,” she says. “That’s too late. They’ll send you home to have the baby. Will your parents be cool with that? Aren’t they kind of religious?”

  I tell her no, they will not be cool with me having a baby out of wedlock. And yes, they are religious. Papa is a Baptist preacher. Mama teaches Sunday school.

  “So they’ll probably ship you off to some home for fallen women,” Libby says. “Then they’ll give the baby away. Maybe your fella, Cal, could help out.”

  I started to cry then because in my last letter to Cal I told him I was thinking I might want to go to Europe after college and I hadn’t heard back from him since.

  “What a wet blanket,” Libby said. “But don’t worry. We’ll go away somewhere where you can have the baby and then we’ll find some nice people to raise it. You don’t want it, do you? I mean, we can’t very well travel to Europe with a baby.”

  I told her I didn’t want it. It made me feel sick saying it, like the baby might hear me, but I could tell that’s what Libby wanted me to say and I need Libby to help me. And she does want to help me. When I asked her why, she said a true friend helped you when you didn’t even know you needed help.

  She says we have to wait for Christmas break so she can go home and get some money hidden at her house. She’s says she’s got some money hidde
n away up in the old tower. We’ll go get it and then we’ll hide out in the Catskills until I have the baby. There’s an old cabin on the property where we can stay. She’s friends with some of the guards at the hospital, who will bring us food. When I asked her if she wasn’t afraid of living so close to a mental hospital she said that was a very close-minded question. A lot of people in mental hospitals were just misunderstood creative geniuses. Hadn’t I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? She was friends with a lot of the patients and many of them were great artists who simply didn’t fit into bourgeois society.

  That’s when I guessed that her “artist” must be one of the patients. No wonder she didn’t want to marry him.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I wait for Sky to deny that she’s Libby but instead she opens up her arms. Edith rushes into them and they embrace. There are tears in Sky’s eyes when she lets Edith go. “I’m so glad you came to visit, Edie. Your room is all ready for you.” Then she looks at me. “I see you’ve brought a friend.”

  Edith looks nervously between me and Sky. “Is that all right? She knows all about the baby.”

  “Does she?” Sky raises one eyebrow. “And does this friend have a name?”

  “Daphne,” I say, stepping forward. “Daphne Marist.”

  “Funny,” Sky says, “I could have sworn I knew you under a different name.”

  “And I could have sworn your name was Schuyler.”

  “Silly,” Edith jumps in. “Her middle name is Schuyler. That’s her mother’s maiden name but she hates it because it’s too . . . what did you always say, Libby?”

  “Too bourgeois,” Sky says with a wry smile. “Oh, the conceits of youth! I thought my first name, Elizabeth, was too snooty too, so I went by Libby.”

  “And you were Edith’s roommate, the one who—”

  “Let’s not rehash old history while the two of you are so clearly in need of baths and a good meal,” Sky interrupts.

  At the word bath Edith tenses. I imagine I do too.

  “We’ll start with lunch then,” Sky says, “which is being served on the terrace. Come along. There are some other guests I think you’ll be pleased to see.”

  WHEN I WALK onto the terrace and see Peter, I freeze. I want to turn and run. But then I hear a baby’s cry. It’s coming from a portable crib. An infant is standing up, holding the bars of the crib. I walk straight toward her, the world around me blurring. She’s wearing a pink-and-orange playsuit. Blond, wispy hair; blue eyes; wide, chubby face—the details don’t matter. They could belong to any baby of eight months. Even the strawberry mark on her nose could belong to any baby. And who am I to know my own baby when I took another woman’s?

  But when she holds up her arms, I pick her up. Her body feels stiff at first, resistant, but then I feel her muscles relax and she molds to me. Chloe, Chloe, Chloe. I know it’s her. The fact that she knew me first is only a little bit chastening.

  I feel a touch on my elbow and I spin around, tightening my hold, but it’s only Billie leading me to a chair. I sit down warily, holding on to Chloe so tightly she begins to squirm. Carefully, I place her on my lap. She looks up at me, waves her arms and smiles. I laugh, smile back, order myself not to cry.

  I feel another touch on my arm and look down to see Edith crouched on the flagstone, beaming up at me. “See, I told you we would find her.”

  I shake my head, unable to parse the delusional logic that led us here. I’m reminded of something my mother used to say: Even a broken clock is right twice a day. But was this just chance?

  I look around the circle of chairs on the terrace. Peter, stone-faced; Edith, beaming; Sky, looking at Edith, her face rapt with some strong emotion. I pick up that thread first. “You were Edith’s roommate. Is that how she ended up here after—”

  “After the incident,” she says quickly. Did she think I was going to blurt out after Edith tossed her baby in the trash? “I thought it was the best place for her, where she could best be taken care of. She always knows I’m here for her, right, Edith?”

  Edith tears her eyes away from me and Chloe to look at her friend. “We have secret signals,” she says. “Like in Nancy Drew.”

  “The light in the tower,” I say. “You use it to signal to Edith. But how . . .” I look down at Sky’s legs and notice now that she’s not using a cane. She’d walked from the tower to the terrace without one.

  “My arthritis comes and goes,” Sky says. “And if I can’t make it up to the tower myself, Billie sends a signal. I make sure that Edie is well taken care of, just as Peter wanted to make sure that you were well taken care of.”

  I laugh. Chloe looks up at me expectantly. I smile at her and temper my response. “I don’t think Peter’s motives were quite as altruistic.”

  “He was only trying to protect you and Chloe,” Sky says. “You have to admit you were acting erratically.”

  “You were going to take her from me,” Peter says. The first thing he’s said since I’ve arrived. “You were looking at jobs on the Internet.”

  “For Laurel,” I say.

  He laughs. “That may be what you told yourself, but you know the truth. You always meant to take the job yourself. You jumped at the chance when you saw the ad from Schuyler Bennett, your favorite author.”

  I look at Sky to see how she responds to his mocking tone, but she is staring at me with a grim expression. “Did you put the ad online for Peter?” I ask.

  “It was my idea,” she says. “I didn’t want to believe that a mother would take her child away from its father, but Peter told me you were delusional, that you’d concocted a story of abuse that wasn’t based on reality. He was afraid you were going to run away with Chloe and then hurt yourself and Chloe. I said, Why don’t we see? I placed the ad where you’d see it and you jumped at it, using that poor Hobbes woman’s CV. I saw then that Peter was right and that the best thing I could do was make sure you had a safe place to come with Chloe. I didn’t know that your delusion was so developed you would lead your friend into suicide.”

  “I didn’t!” I object. “I don’t even think Laurel did kill herself. It was Stan and Peter’s plan to get Laurel’s money.”

  “But why would they kill Laurel when her money wouldn’t even go to Stan?” Sky asks reprovingly.

  I shake my head, confused and beginning to feel frightened. Chloe, sensing my fear, begins to fret in my lap. “Maybe they didn’t know until it was too late,” I say, wishing I sounded more sure of myself. The story had sounded more sensible when I worked it out in my head.

  All the voices sound sensible at the time.

  “And then you conveniently played into their plan by picking up Laurel’s baby and driving here?” Sky asks, one eyebrow raised, lip curled.

  “You didn’t even take the right baby,” Peter says. “What kind of a mother doesn’t know her own child? I would never not recognize my own child.”

  He’s staring fiercely at Chloe and I think, That’s true. Since she was born Peter has reveled in their similarities: the same square face, red-blond hair, blue eyes. I look from Chloe’s face to Peter’s. Then I look to Sky and, just like that, as if a key has turned in a lock, I understand.

  Edith’s Journal, December 9, 1971

  I just wish it would all be over. Every day I feel like I’m dragging an enormous weight. And I am. Libby said I might as well eat as much as I want since I’ll lose it all later. So that’s what I’ve been doing. She’s been buying boxes of the chewy chocolate chip cookies the bookstore sells and bags of candy bars. In the cafeteria I eat macaroni and cheese, slabs of meatloaf, pancakes, ice cream. I barely taste any of it. When I sit in the chairs in the art history library I feel my stomach pressing up against the fold-down desks. I can feel the other girls staring at me, whispering about me. The only class I go to is art history, where it’s dark and everyone’s eyes are on the slide screen. We’re up to the Renaissance. When I look at the rounded bellies of all those doleful Madonnas, I touch my own swollen belly.<
br />
  All finals week Libby and I haven’t gone out at all. It’s been snowing all week. The sky is white, like a blank canvas. The only class I’m studying for is art history. Libby has made up cards with all the art slides and quizzes me on them. With each card she tells me about the city the painting or church is in and describes what we’ll do when we go there. She tells stories so well it’s as if we’re there. When I look out our window I see us on that blank canvas, eating crepes at a café in Paris, wading through fields of sunflowers in the south of France, lying on beaches on Greek isles. There’s no baby in these stories, but sometimes I pencil him in, strapped in a backpack, toddling at the water’s edge, floating above us like an angel in a Renaissance painting.

  Tomorrow is the art history exam. Once I’ve taken it I’ll be done with this place. I’ve decided I’ll go to Nurse Landry and tell her about the baby. I know she’ll help me. It may mean getting in trouble, but I’m scared and I’m not sure that Libby really knows best anymore. I think she could use help too. I feel better now that I’ve made a decision. I’m going to go to bed now and try to get some sleep before the big exam.

  December 10

  So much has happened since last night and I don’t have long to write it all down, but I’ll do my best for Libby’s sake and for the baby’s sake.

  I had gone to sleep but something woke me up. I noticed that Libby’s bed was empty. I thought she must be in the bathroom, but when a half hour went by and she didn’t come back I started to worry. I put on my robe and slippers and went out into the hall. Our room is at the end of the hall, right next to the bathroom. Most of the girls on the hall use the bathroom at the other end because it has showers, but Libby likes the one at this end because it has a big old-fashioned bathtub and she likes to soak for hours. I thought she might be taking a bath. I opened the door to the bathroom and saw that the lights were off in the sink area, but there was a light under the stall with the bathtub. I heard water dripping. The room smelled like old copper pipes and tampons. I thought Libby had a bad period and was taking a bath for cramps.