The Life You Longed For (16 page)

She glanced at Stephen. His jaw was scratchy when she reached to touch his face. If she hadn't been “a great pretender” before, if she hadn't been “an imposter mom”—
her skills could match those of a veteran actor
—she certainly would become this. But not tonight. Not just yet. “I know I'd probably feel better if I had dinner with you guys, but I just…The kids will be okay, won't they?”

Stephen leaned over and kissed her forehead. “The kids will be fine.”

 

She dozed off and on to the sounds of her family talking in the kitchen. Tears leaked onto her pillow as she slept. She had read once that by age sixty-five, the body produces only 60 percent of the tears it did at twenty-five, and by age eighty only 30 percent—as if each person had a finite supply of tears. Shouldn't it have been the opposite, she wondered, the older you get the more there is to grieve? Or is it that you cry less about the small things? Maybe the later griefs simply can't ever hurt as badly as the first ones.

She woke when Stephen climbed into bed with the report and turned on the reading light, a martini on the night table next to him. She watched him, her eyes locked onto his face. Now and then, he reached to touch her cheek with the back of his hand, to squeeze her shoulder or stroke her hair. She watched as he took a sip of his martini, shaking his head in disgust, his brow furrowed. And then, abruptly, furiously, he flung the report across the room, the pages fluttering wildly like a wounded bird.

She sat up. “What?”

“This whole thing makes me sick. Jesus. I can't believe they brought up my DUI from twenty goddamn years ago. And this bullshit, this absolute bullshit, about you having an affair. No proof, no nothing. A goddamn guess.”

She dug her fingernails into her palms, so afraid she could barely breathe. “I knew that would infuriate you.” Her eyes were on his face.

“
That
? Hell, you think I'm upset about that?” He laughed bitterly, then slammed out of bed, stomped across the room and grabbed the report. “This,” he said, turning the pages roughly. “This is unconscionable. Here—” He read out loud: “ ‘Copies of child's chest X-ray were sent to—'” He glanced up, furious. “The name's blacked out, but it was sent to some cardiologist who…” He read again from the report: “ ‘felt that a mitochondrial cardiomyopathy would be consistent with the level of deterioration. Case was also sent to”—he glanced at her—“another crossed out name, but a psychiatrist who is apparently an expert in Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy cases. ‘Said expert reported that Mother doesn't fit typical Munchausen's profile. Expert cautioned, however, that ‘this does not rule possibility out.'”

He looked up, breathing heavily. “What the hell does that mean? What
does
rule it out?” He climbed back into bed. “I'm starting to think your friend Kempley is right.” He shook his head, and took another sip of his martini. “It's a goddamn witch hunt.”

 

Without turning on the lights, she could see that the kitchen was immaculate. Moonlight edged the long arm of the faucet, the teakettle, a foil-covered plate. The countertops gleamed. She filled a glass with water and drank it in one long gulp as she stood before the open refrigerator. She'd sweated through her T-shirt. She filled the glass a second time, drank more slowly, then let the door fall shut. She thought of how, in the 1940s, mothers of autistic children were called “refrigerator mothers,” their coldness, doctors said, was the cause of their children's retreat from the world.

In the laundry room, she pulled off her damp T-shirt and tossed it into the dryer, then sat, a towel draped around her shoulders, her back against the warm machine. Her shirt made a soft thumping sound. She had carried the cordless phone in from the kitchen and now she dialed Noah's number. It was after three. His voice was thick with sleep.

“Hey, you,” she said, and could hear him smile.

“I was just dreaming about you,” he whispered. “Are you okay?”

“No.” She rested her chin on her knees. “Was it a good dream?”

“You were with me.” She heard him roll onto his back. “What can I do, Grace?”

She shook her head. “I have to end this, Noah. I don't want to, but—”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Of course.”

Her eyes filled. “I was afraid you'd hate me.”

“
Hate
you? I'm going to miss you like crazy, Grace but
hate
you? Why would you even think that?”

“I'm leaving you again,” she whispered.

“Oh, honey, it's not the same. I know you don't have any other choice right now.”

Right now
.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the dryer. Its steady thump was like a heartbeat.

“Grace?”

“I'm here,” she whispered. Her name, he'd told her once, was his flight song. He was referring to the notes birds called across the sky as they were migrating. It had been a wintry morning, and they'd been walking along the ocean, the low sky puffy with clouds like a goose-down comforter. As if to prove his point, he'd handed her the thermos of coffee he'd been carrying, then cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted her name into the wind. Its echo carried across the gray sand: “Grace! Grace! Grace!” As if in answer, a Bonaparte gull lifted off from a nearby dune.

It was how the loss lifted inside of her now: suddenly, as if in answer to something. “I'm not going anywhere,” he was saying. “I'll still be here in two weeks or two months or two years. Hell, I've waited twenty already—”

“Don't, Noah.”
His
name: the first half of it was the word
no
. “I can't promise—I might—” she stopped.

“—not come back? I know.”

“Do you?”

He didn't say anything. “I don't know,” he said after a minute. “Maybe I don't really believe that. It seems crazy that after all this, we wouldn't end up together.”

“I can't jeopardize my kids, Noah. Already…I'll never forgive myself if something happens.” She started to cry. “This accusation isn't just going to go away, even if Bennett can get the case closed…”

“What're you telling me, Grace? Am I even going to see you again?”

She didn't answer.

“Jesus,” he said.

“Please understand,” she sobbed. “I never wanted—”

“Do you still love me?” he interrupted.

“Oh, Noah, my God, of course I love you.”

“Shush. Then it's okay. I'll be okay.”

“How?” She shook her head, listening to the rhythmic pulse of the dryer. “Because I'm not sure I will be.” And again, she could
hear
him smile. Was that even possible? She thought of birds and of how they could hear surf crashing on a shore hundreds of miles from they where they were flying.

“I want to see you one more time, though.” His voice cracked. “I think I deserve that much from you, Grace.”

“Don't you think I want to see you too?” She was sobbing again. “But I can't, Noah. I can't take that chance. I was so stupid to think I ever could.”

L
ook—” Stephen sat forward on the edge of the sofa. “I understand the need to report suspected abuse, but you're telling me that anyone can say absolutely anything without proof or evidence, and we have no recourse? None?”

“If the report is made in good faith—”

“Good faith?
What does a DUI from twenty years ago have to do with good faith? Or questions about Grace's humor?” He didn't mention the comment about her infidelity.

Bennett glanced sympathetically at Grace, but she couldn't meet his eyes.

“Unfortunately these accusations, at times, take on a life of their own.” Bennett sighed. “I know it feels like a witch hunt, but it's important to keep this in perspective. The DUI, for example. I doubt anyone went looking for it, Stephen. And I agree, it's not relevant, but it was there. It's public record, it's a fact.”

“Fine, but what about the comments—”

“Please,” Grace interrupted. “I just want to know what happens next.”

Nothing, Bennett explained. Even if the case was closed today, by law, it would remain in Child Protective Services records until ten years after the child—in this case, Jack—turned eighteen. Bennett had the grace to blush when he said this. Jack wouldn't ever be eighteen. The law had been named after six-year-old Eliza Izquierdo, who was beaten to death in New York in 1995. Prior to her death there were numerous accusations of her abuse, but because they were never substantiated, the records were destroyed. Had they not been, someone might have gotten to her in time.

“Believe me, I've tried before to get reports of an accusation expunged, and I've never succeeded. It's the same old reasoning—if the parent is innocent, nothing will come of the file anyway. If she isn't, that file might save a child's life.”

Expunged
. Grace thought of how a word, like a virus, is most lethal when first encountered and how, after a while, it becomes less virulent—or maybe we simply learn to accommodate it, altering our lives so that both can survive. Words like
terminal
and
end-stage
. Words like
mitochondrial disease
. And now, words like
mother-perpetrator
and
child-victim
and
expunged.

But she thought too of how a word, like a virus, can live on long after the person it infected has died. Those women in Salem, nothing left of their lives but the words
witch
or
accused
.

Grace's name was listed now in a central registry of child abusers: “
Accused but unsubstantiated.
” Her name was there with men convicted of raping little girls, with the woman whose son had been covered with inexplicable sores that never seemed to heal—until it was discovered that she'd been scrubbing his back with oven cleaner.
Accused but unsubstantiated.
One day would these words be all that someone knew of her?

She thought of how plant fossils still carried traces of fungal infections, of how ancient jellyfish still bore signs of the parasites that had lived within them thousands of years before, of how in the bones of long-extinct mastodons and dinosaurs millions of years old there remained evidence of bacterial infection. And not long ago, in a nine-hundred-year-old Peruvian mummy, scientists found the DNA of tuberculosis. She thought of how after an organism dies, all that survives sometimes is the evidence of what it had suffered, what damaged it, what hurt—as if in the end, these were the things that mattered most.

Grace looked up, hands clenched so tightly in her lap that her knuckles were white. “What if they find something else?” Her voice broke. “Can they really take the kids?”

“They can. Which is why you need to have someone with you at doctor's appointments, why it would be helpful if you could get letters from friends and family members who have seen for themselves times when Jack was in pain and needed morphine and who have seen you give him morphine—” He looked up.

“
Why
is this happening?” Grace said. “I don't understand.”

I
t was the first thing Grace noticed when she found Jenn at the bar at City Scapes, already sipping a martini: the red cowboy boots.

“Are you serious?” Grace nodded at the boots and hugged her friend all at once. She had phoned her as soon as she got in the car after leaving Bennett's. “I need to talk to you,” was all she said, afraid that if she spoke another word, she'd start crying. That had been two days ago.

Now Jenn stuck out her leg, showing off the boots. “Aren't they great?” She grinned, though her eyes were serious, scanning Grace's face. “Christmas present from Diane.” Her partner of nearly fifteen years. Jenn laughed. “I swear, I feel like a teenager, like I could go lasso up some young lad…”

Grace rolled her eyes as she slid onto the high bar stool. “I don't think you wanted to lasso up the lads even when you were a teenager.”

 

“It's horrible
and
wonderful all at once,” Jenn was saying now. “It's the neatest thing in the world to watch your own child falling in love, but I can't bear how vulnerable he is. I'm terrified she'll hurt him.” Tyler, Jenn's oldest boy, was in love for the first time.

“Do you like the girl?” asked Grace, trying to picture Max falling in love.

“She's great, but…” Jenn set down her drink. “Why are we talking about this, Grace? Come on. What's up?” She nodded at the Diet Coke Grace had ordered. “You're not—are you pregnant? Is that it?”

Grace glanced at her drink in surprise. “Oh, my God, no.” She tried to laugh, but her eyes immediately filled. She'd been afraid to order a drink. What if someone was watching her? Could this be used against her too? She shook her head. “Give me a minute, okay?” She smiled shakily. “I just…I just want to talk about something normal first.”

Jenn looked at her, then squeezed her hand. “Okay then,” she said. “Tyler's girlfriend. She's smart, she's gorgeous, she's athletic, and it makes me crazy: they're
so
perfect for each other, but they're
sixteen
. Why couldn't he have met her ten years from now?”

“You think that would make a difference?”

“You don't?”

 

She'd asked Noah once, “So if we'd stayed together…”

“We probably wouldn't have—”

She looked at him in mock indignation. “What happened to ‘you never got over me'? What happened to ‘I was the love of your life'?”

“Simple.” He grinned. “I wasn't the love of yours.”

She stopped dead, a few feet away from him. As usual, they had been walking along the beach. “Why do you always do that?”

“Do what?” He reached for her, but she backed up.

“I'm serious. Why did you say that? That you weren't the love of my life?”

“Was I, Grace?”

She gave him a look, and he threw up his hands, still grinning, and said, “Okay then.”

“No, not okay then.” They started walking again, though she kept her distance. “It was twenty years ago, Noah.
Twenty
years. And I'm here now, aren't I?”

“Yes,” he said. “You are. And I'm happy.” He held out his hand to her. “Come on. Finish your question.” They were trudging up the dunes to the observatory. “ ‘If we'd stayed together'…what?” He stopped and waited for her to complete the phrase. She had been going to ask if he thought they would have had kids together.

When she repeated the question, he responded, “Honestly? I don't know. I love kids, but full-time, twenty-four/seven?”

“You were right, then,” she told him. She couldn't remember ever
not
wanting kids, even as a teenager. “We wouldn't have stayed together.”

 

“So whatever happened to your first love?” Grace asked Jenn. “Do I even know who it was?”

“Eileen Cunningham. Long, gorgeous red hair and lots of freckles. We backpacked all over Spain the summer before junior year in college.” Jenn smiled wistfully. “I
still
dream about her.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, she decided she wasn't gay after all and got married.”

“She
decided
?”

Jenn shrugged. “I actually went to the wedding. One of the worst days of my life.”

“I can't believe you never told me this.”

“Well, I'd already met Diane by the time you and I got close.” She signaled the bartender for another drink. “And I'm not convinced that first loves
can
last. Sometimes I think their whole purpose is to give us something to dream about later.”

“
That's
depressing.”

Jenn glanced at her. “It is? Why?”

“The assumption that the person we end up with can't ever measure up.” But it's true, she thought with a sudden pang. Jenn was right.

Jenn tilted her head quizzically. “I never thought of it that way. It always seemed comforting, the idea of that one perfect love still out there somewhere. Didn't you ever imagine what life might have been like with what's-his-name?”

Sometimes I still do
, Grace thought. She'd never told Jenn about the affair with Noah, only that she had run into him again.
Run into him
. As if it had been an accident.

“What
was
his name, anyway? Something biblical.”

Grace smiled. “Noah.” Heat rose to her face.

Jenn narrowed her eyes. “Wait! You saw him again, didn't you?”

Grace started to protest, then stopped. “I never stopped seeing him; I talk to him every day…or I did.” Her voice broke.

Jenn sat back. “Are you in love with him?”

“Yes. No. I don't know, Jenn. It doesn't matter, though.” She took another sip of her Coke, avoiding Jenn's stare, aware suddenly of how this secret, maybe any secret, can make a person disappear. The woman her parents and Stephen and Jenn all thought they knew had been replaced with this other woman who had a whole other life that none of them could fathom. “It's all such a mess,” she said finally. “It's so much worse than you could ever imagine.”

“I wondered when you said nothing had happened with Noah.” Jenn lifted her martini glass in both hands, but paused before taking a sip. Light from the votive candle flickering on the bar between them caught in her dark eyes. “You were so nonchalant about your meeting him, and I kept thinking that I would have been devastated if I saw Eileen Cunningham after all these years and there was nothing there.”

“Trust me, you would have been a lot more devastated if there was something there. I mean, think about it. What if you did run into Eileen after all these years and she
was
everything you'd imagined, everything that was lacking in you and Diane? Would you really want that choice?” Grace shook her head. “It would ruin everything.”

Jenn looked at her. “Did Stephen find out? Is that it?”

“It's worse, Jenn.” She inhaled sharply. “I feel so stupid and foolish and ashamed.” She stared down as if to gather the words from a great depth. And then, “I've been accused of Munchausen's,” she blurted.

“What?”
Jenn's hand flew to her mouth.
“When? Who?”

“I have no idea. I found out the day after we got back from Hopkins. The accusation was made sometime last February or March, though.”

“And you think it's connected to Noah?”

Grace's face crumpled. “I don't know, but doesn't it seem odd that the accusation was made right when I started seeing him?”

“You don't think he was the one, do you?”

“No. And it's not that I didn't question it. I even asked him.”

“And you're sure?”

“Absolutely.” She pushed her fingers against her upper lip to keep from crying. “I don't think anyone…” She paused and glanced away, then continued. “I don't think anyone has ever loved me as much as this man, Jenn. But—” She swallowed hard. “But if I had thought for a second that this…” Her throat tightened and she had to look away again, afraid that if she let herself cry, really cry, she wouldn't be able to stop.

Jenn squeezed her hand. “I know.” And she did. That being a mother was who Grace was and that no matter what she was doing or who she was with, she was never
not
a mother first. Even now. “So you don't know for sure that the accusation is connected to Noah, right?” she asked now.

“I don't know anything anymore.”
Even prosecutors may lose sight of the discrepancy between the seemingly normal mother the defendant appears to be and the monster mother the prosecutor must ask the jury to believe exists.
She told Jenn that she didn't know how to act anymore, what to do with her hands, with her face; she didn't know what was
appropriate
and what wasn't, didn't know if it was good to be
normal
or if
appearing
normal was just one more reason for someone to question who she really was. And she was terrified to take Jack to his doctors: what if it was one of them who had accused her? She'd been panicked last week when she let Erin stay home from school because of a sore throat—would someone accuse Grace of overreacting? She was hyper-aware of the other parents when she picked Erin up—had one of them said something? And she was unsure how to respond when one of the moms asked about Jack. If she said that he'd been having trouble with his breathing or they'd found out a few months ago that a transplant wasn't an option, would she be guilty of using Jack's illness to get sympathy? If she said that they'd had a great holiday, and Jack was hanging in there, he was actually doing pretty well (when he clearly wasn't), would they accuse her of
acting
the role of the devoted mother who
seemed too good to be true,
and who, according to the books,
wasn't so good at all?

The last few doctor visits she'd drilled Stephen about what to say and ask so that
she
could sit demurely by his side, a sweet, pained little smile on her face. And even when she did speak up, it was pathetic.
I'm sure I'm wrong about this, but…
or
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying…do you think you could explain what you mean about…
as if she didn't have a brain or an opinion or an advanced degree, for God's sake, in a
medical
discipline. As if she didn't know what she was talking about, as if she hadn't read every goddamn article on mitochondrial disease that was out there.

Her life felt like one of those Fabergé eggs, she told Jenn, beautiful on the outside maybe, but fragile, so fragile you didn't want to touch it, didn't want to breathe almost, because the slightest stir of air could cause an irreparable crack.
“The most striking aspect of the mother perpetrator is how normal she appears.”

She told Jenn too of how just yesterday when her mother was forty minutes late returning home after picking up Erin from school, Grace had simply fallen apart, pacing to the window and back, watching for her mother's car, chewing at her thumbnail.
Why wouldn't her mother have called?
She lifted the phone receiver and listened for the dial tone to make sure it was working. When a half-hour had passed, she was convinced that something had happened at school, that Child Protective Services had taken Erin away from her. It could—it
did—
happen every day. In one Munchausen's case, dozens of armed police and a SWAT team arrived to remove a child into protective custody. All it took was a school nurse or a teacher concerned about something a child had written or drawn or said that, out of context, might seem worrisome, and suddenly a social worker was involved, a social worker who, in this case, would see Grace's name in that CPS file, would see those words,
accused but unsubstantiated,
and think of six-year-old Eliza Izquierdo in New York and decide not to take any chances.

When Erin and her mom finally came in, their cheeks rosy, laughing, stamping the snow from their boots on the Oriental rug, bringing Grace a cappuccino from Starbucks, where they'd stopped on the way home for a snack, Grace fell apart. “Do you have any idea how worried I was?” she shouted at her mother after Erin had gone upstairs to change. “I thought something had—that someone—” and then she dissolved, sat on the stairs, head in her hands, the anger evaporating into a thick cloud of gray numbness that seemed to obliterate any possibility of seeing the world clearly. “I'm sorry,” she sobbed.

Her mother didn't say anything, just sat next to Grace on the stairs, put her arm around her daughter, and pulled Grace's head onto her shoulder. “Shush,” she whispered. “It's okay, honey. You're right. I should have called.”