Mother May I(17)

All these things were true, but when Betsy died, I’d lost my strongest tie to the girl I’d been before my marriage. I had no reason to visit my old neighborhood since my mom’s move. Perhaps I’d gotten soft, spoiled. These days Marshall sure treated me as if he thought I was an overpampered deb. But I hoped she’d see the girl I used to be. That girl was likely not too different from her own child. I waited, barely breathing, until she answered.

“I did that Goodwill trick, too. When my daughter was small.”

I felt the cord of connection thicken between us.





I sat back down at the vanity, the bracelet chafing me. The haunted rag doll I had picked up off the floor was gone, replaced by a pretty woman with high cheekbones and a glossy, pale mouth.

Trey loved me in a short dress and heels. If he were here, ready to take me to the party in his tuxedo, if everything were normal, he would dance me around, singing “Wonderful Tonight.” How was it that my baby was missing and yet I could still make this woman in the mirror smile? It even lit her eyes.

Theatre, I thought, though I’d gotten married less than a year after college graduation. I’d been in exactly one professional play, at Actor’s Express in Atlanta, winning the role of Syl in Traps over pros with Equity and SAG cards. I’d done it to prove that marrying Trey instead of going to New York was my actual choice, not simply fear that I didn’t have what it took. Now I was grateful for every play I’d ever done, every class I’d taken, every workshop, because they let me be two things at once: a howling mother-monster, mad with fear, and this bold-eyed, smiling woman.

Or maybe the training and the practice didn’t matter. This was my child. Tiny little women picked cars up off their babies. They sold their bodies. They killed. They died. I could smile at a goddamn party and get a spiked drink down a man who loved a cocktail.

“You sure look like you belong. I seen your car. Your shoes. You walk like you own everything you see.” As she talked, Robert woke up. All at once it became so hard to concentrate. I heard him sigh, and then the little noises he made while stretching. “Just a minute.”

I heard the clunk of the phone onto a hard surface. A dashboard? Robert fussed, and she was talking to him in a comforting murmur that ebbed and flowed as she rustled around. Then, in a place far from me, off a highway in a car that I could not imagine, I could hear Robert eating.

Listening to his happy smacks and grunts, I thought, He doesn’t know enough to be afraid. As long as she feeds him and cuddles him and keeps him dry and warm, this could be no different for him than that night exactly six weeks after his birth, when he stayed with his sisters at my mom’s place, so Trey and I could have a romantic overnight at the St. Regis.

I was grateful then, so grateful that it wasn’t Peyton or Anna-Claire. Peyton had been born so anxious. I had a flash of her in a dark room, curled into a fetal ball, picking her fingernails bloody. Anna-Claire chose fight over flight every time. I saw her hurling her body against a locked door, screaming until someone came to drug her or hurt her or gag her. My body shuddered with a thousand feelings. Hate and rage and helplessness, but also this strange gratitude that Robert was so young. I could get him back undamaged, just himself.





I put the Bluetooth in my ear. I transferred my wallet, some cash, and the cheap cell phone into a black beaded bag. It was a little large for evening, but I had a lot to carry.

I reached for my own iPhone, and it felt like reaching for Trey. As my fingers closed around it, I was swamped again with that desperate need to call him. I wanted his arms around me so damn bad. I’d call Trey first, then the police, my father-in-law with his political connections and his money. Or I’d call Marshall, who was so gruff with me these days, but surely all our history could trump that. He had guns and understood crimes. Marshall could find her.

A picture flashed in my head. Me, peering through a crack in her drapes. I would shoot her right between her eyes with one of Marshall’s pistols, then run in to pluck my baby out of her dead arms.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” I said out loud, apologizing as if she could feel the ripples of my imaginary rebellion. I couldn’t stop seeing my son’s small head, round and covered in a floss of pale hair, resting in her gnarled hands. His neck was such a slender stem, still wobbly when he held his head up. One twist. It would be so fast. So final. My own head shook back and forth in a silent, involuntary no.

I shoved the bracelet up higher on my arm, feeling the good bite of it into my flesh. I wasn’t going to call anyone. I was going to follow the rules.

I grabbed the evening bag and headed toward the kitchen, careful not to turn my head as I passed the nursery. The animal inside me howled, but outside I was Betsy, bold and cool and street-smart, and the room through that open door was still an office. No giraffe wallpaper. No black hole like some essential organ missing from my middle.

Back in the kitchen, I picked up the capsule that had rolled away, dropping it back into the bottle.

I needed to leave, but I didn’t trust myself to drive. I got my own phone out and opened the Lyft app. I could have a Lux Black here in ten minutes. Good enough. I hit the button to confirm.

Then I went to Google and typed in “Hypnodorm.” I scanned the entry, reading about dosage and side effects. Roofies lowered inhibitions, made people suggestible, and stole their memory. I was going to feed them to the lawyer who worked with my husband on multimillion-dollar cases. Spence held the secrets of a host of rich and powerful people. People who made even Trey’s father look like small potatoes.