The School for Good Mothers(14)

The smell of mothballs is giving her a headache. She hasn’t worn her black suit since her last round of job interviews. She’s wearing extra blush and rosy lipstick, hair in a low bun, her grandmother’s pearls. Disgraceful to wear them here. Her late grandmother’s greatest wish had been for her to get married and have a baby.

On the psychologist’s desk, a palm-size video camera on a tripod is balanced awkwardly on a stack of manila file folders.

“Ms. Liu, before we begin, is English your first language?”

Frida flinches. “I was born here.”

“My mistake.” The psychologist fumbles with the camera. “Ah, here it is.” A red light goes on. He flips his legal pad open to a fresh page, uncaps his fountain pen. They begin with Frida’s family history.

Her parents are retired economics professors. Immigrants. Her father from Guangzhou, her mother from Nanjing. They came to the States in their twenties and met in grad school. Married for forty-four years. Frida was born in Ann Arbor, grew up in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago. Their only child. Her family is comfortable now, but her parents came from nothing. Her father was dirt-poor. When she was a child, all her grandparents lived with them at various points. Her aunt too. Then another aunt. Cousins. Her parents supported all the relatives, sponsored their visas.

“Back when that was possible,” she says.

The psychologist nods. “And how do they feel about the incident?”

“I haven’t told them yet.” She looks down at her nails, painted shell pink, the cuticles neatly trimmed and healing. She’s been ignoring their calls. They think she’s busy at work. A full week without speaking to Harriet must feel like torture. But Frida doesn’t want to hear their questions, about Harriet, about anything. Every call begins with the same questions in Mandarin: Have you eaten yet? Are you full? Their way of saying, I love you. This morning, she had coffee and a fig bar. Her stomach is churning. If her parents knew what happened, they’d fly here. Try to fix things. But they can’t see her empty house and the cameras, can’t know that they escaped Communism and a daughter like her is all they get.

The child’s father is white? Were there any cultural issues?

“I think, like all Chinese parents, they wanted me to go to Stanford and meet a nice neurosurgeon. Another ABC—you know, American-born Chinese—but they loved Gust. He got along well with them. They thought he was good for me. They were very upset about our divorce. Everyone was. We had a newborn.”

Only tell them what’s necessary, Renee said. The psychologist doesn’t need to know that until Frida and Gust, there was only one divorce on either side of her family. That it was bad enough to marry a white man, let alone lose him, let alone lose custody of their child.

All the grandparents, she says, have a hard time with the distance. Gust’s parents in Santa Cruz, California, hers in Evanston, watching Harriet grow up over FaceTime and Zoom.

“This country is too big,” she says, recalling her last flight to Chicago, when she had Harriet sit on the tray table, facing the other passengers. The thought of her parents knowing makes her want to take a knife to her cheek, but she doesn’t need to tell them yet. Daughters are allowed to have secrets in this new world.

Catching sight of the camera, she asks how today’s footage will be used. Why is this being filmed if he’s going to submit a report?

“Are you going to analyze my feelings?”

“There’s no need to be paranoid, Ms. Liu.”

“I’m not being paranoid. I’m just trying to understand… the rubrics by which I’m being judged.”

“Rubrics?” The psychologist chuckles. “Aren’t you a smart cookie.”

Frida’s shoulders creep upward as he continues to laugh.

“Let’s talk about why you’re here.”

Renee told her to be contrite. She’s a single working mother, normal and frazzled. Harmless.

She lists the combination of destabilizing forces: her insomnia, Harriet’s ear infection, five sleepless nights, her frayed nerves. “I’m not trying to make excuses. I know what I did is completely unacceptable. Believe me, I couldn’t be more ashamed. I know I put my daughter in danger. But what happened last week, what I did, doesn’t represent who I am. What kind of mother I am.”

The psychologist chews his pen.

“The last time I had to function on so little sleep was when she was a newborn. You know how delirious new parents are. And I wasn’t working then. Taking care of her was my only job. And my husband, my ex-husband, was still with us. I was supposed to stay home with her for the first two years. That was our plan. I’m still figuring out how to juggle everything. I promise, this will never, ever happen again. It was a terrible lapse in judgment.”

“What were you doing on the day of the incident, before you left the house?”

“Working. I write and edit a faculty publication. At Wharton.”

“So you telecommute?”

“Only on the days I have Harriet. I took a lower-paying position so I could do this. So I could have more flex time. I wanted to be able to work from home more. How else am I going to see her? A lot of my job is stupid busywork. Emails. Nagging professors to approve drafts. Most of them treat me like a secretary. It’s not ideal, but Harriet and I have a system. I work for a while, then take a break to feed her and play, work some more, put her down for a nap, get some stuff done during her nap. I work late after she goes to bed. She’s good at playing by herself. She’s not as needy as other toddlers.”