Mother of All Secrets(34)

Basically, I was doing great.

When I’d gotten home from my walk with Clara the night before, Tim had still been in our room, working. He cleared out so that I could put Clara down, and when I came back into the living room after getting her settled, he simply said, “I know you need a little distance right now, so I’m just going to put my headphones in and you can pretend I’m not here.”

I wanted to respond, “How do you know what I need? Why not let me tell you, instead of vice versa?” But I said nothing, and went on to ignore his presence for the rest of the night, as instructed. When he left in the morning, I pretended I was still asleep, though I wasn’t sure I’d actually slept a wink all night.

By midmorning, I was tired of stewing and was hoping some fresh air and a walk would clear my head. Clara fell asleep in her stroller pretty much as soon as we left, which was a bit unusual for her but a welcome surprise. She’d woken up a lot during the night, so it made sense that she was tired. I grabbed a latte and a cheddar scone at PlantShed, a hybrid coffee and flower shop on Eighty-Seventh Street (right around the corner from Isabel’s), to treat myself and combat my fatigue. It was sunny and cool, a perfect October day. A woman in line behind me peeked at Clara, whispering, “She’s so cute! Congratulations!” I thanked her and smiled graciously, for the moment enjoying playing the part of a mom who actually had it together. For a few minutes, as I sipped my coffee and walked along, I felt almost normal. Like myself, but a mom, the two blending together naturally in the way that I had wrongly assumed they would. This was what I had imagined maternity leave would look like: walks in the park, fancy coffee in the cup holder, peaceful sleeping baby in the stroller. Maybe if it had been more like this, I wouldn’t be such a basket case.

I saw other moms on the street, some solo but many in pairs, walking along, chatting in sweaters. Some had older children that they were taking to school, two seats in their strollers. They all smiled at me knowingly as we passed each other, like they understood just where I was in life, but I couldn’t help but think that there was no way they’d been like me when they were new moms, with these messy parts I was trying and failing to hide. Messy parts like the fact that every time Clara and I managed to leave the apartment, I immediately collected a list of terrifying and morbid worst-case scenarios in my mind: Clara’s stroller rolling into oncoming traffic and being instantly flattened by a FreshDirect truck while I obliviously fiddled with my diaper bag. Holding her near the ledge at Riverside Park to show her the view of the water and accidentally dropping her fifteen feet into the woods. Fumbling with a faulty lid and dumping hot coffee all over her face, giving her third-degree burns. One tiny mistake on my part could be disastrous, devastating. These suffocating fears made it difficult to function. My sense was that, despite the knowing, chummy looks they gave me, these moms I passed were not like me.

Maybe Isabel was, though, unbeknownst to me. And maybe Selena was right. Maybe it was all too much for her.

I took a left on Eighty-Eighth, resisting the urge to turn right and walk past Isabel’s, and instead headed down the hill toward Riverside Park. The leaves on the ground crunched under the stroller wheels: fall was here. Walking past Hippo Playground, I watched the toddlers running around, shrieking and laughing. I felt a rush of excitement for when Clara was old enough to go to the playground—I envisioned her climbing the ladder and going down the slide, or laughing as she swung on a swing while I made goofy faces at her. I could see it all, and despite how low I felt much of the time, I also felt grateful and fortunate that I’d be the one holding her hand, making her laugh, dusting her off if she fell. I’d be better, by then.

I grabbed a seat on a bench overlooking the Hudson, trying to relax and enjoy my coffee, despite—well, everything. Clara had already been sleeping for about forty minutes. I actually wished I had a book with me. I hadn’t been able to focus on a book since she was born, but I needed something else to occupy me besides obsessing about Isabel—what the hell had happened to her, seriously?—and my inexplicable Google Doc, my mom, Tim, Selena, all of it. I knew that Selena was right—I had no right to go nosing around in Isabel’s business by visiting her home again, and I especially shouldn’t have been trying to recruit Selena, or anyone else, to join me.

Two women pushing strollers were walking toward the bench I was sitting on; they were older, in their fifties maybe, so I assumed they were nannies. Both of their babies were sleeping in their strollers, with muslin blankets shading them from the sun. I should have thought to do so. Nannies always made it look so easy. Even the ones caring for multiple kids just seemed to intrinsically know how to make the kids do exactly what they were supposed to: nap in the stroller, take a bottle, play safely, wait quietly. I almost never saw babies screaming with their nannies, and if they did, it seemed they were calmed within seconds. I, on the other hand, took all Clara’s meltdowns personally, like criticisms. I felt her wails in my own chest, my own head. My obstetrician, a mom of three, had jokingly told me that kids are like dogs: they can smell fear. I’d thought she was kidding, but it made sense to me now, and I wondered if my stress and anxiety were contributing factors to Clara’s fussiness.

As the nannies got closer, I realized that one of them was pushing Vanessa’s daughter, Phoebe. I couldn’t actually see Phoebe, as she was ensconced in her bassinet, but I recognized Vanessa’s chic beige stroller, as it stood out from the huge, clunky black ones that most other moms, myself included, had.