Mother May I(45)



“We’re not reporters,” Marshall said.

“Okay, then,” she said, pulling us inside a huge, vaulted foyer with a gaudy chandelier. “Adam says hiring a publicist is going to make us look more guilty, but it’s what people do now. Because of Twitter. We’ll be crucified on Twitter if they actually charge us. We have to get our side of the story out, but our stupid lawyer says we aren’t allowed to talk to reporters, not at all, for any reason, and the police keep coming back to question us, and no one’s looking for Geoff. That’s the main thing. They won’t look for Geoff because they think I did something to my own baby. Nobody believes me.”

So I was a publicist. I felt my expression warming as I sank into the role. It helped that I, of all people, knew that the cops had it so very wrong. When I told her, “I believe you,” it rang with truth.

Marshall said, “Is your husband home? We’d like to talk to both of you if we could.”

“He went to the store. He said. To get bread and milk, like if a hurricane was coming.” She snorted and passed a hand over her eyes. She was answering Marshall’s question, but as her hand dropped, her gaze settled on me. Her eyes were bruise-blue and shiny as glass. They didn’t belong in a living being’s face. “That’s some bullshit right there. Is it bad to lie to your publicist? Because I’m pretty sure he’s actually off screwing his wife. Ex-wife. The other wife.” She laughed, an abrupt and ugly sound. “He wouldn’t want that in the press release, huh? But I don’t care. You can put it right in. Say that while the police are circling me like sharks and not looking for my son, my husband is off finding comfort in the big fat bosom of his ex.”

I was glad my job was to be quiet then, because I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe. Was I looking at the person I would become if we didn’t get Robert back? She was feral and simmering, either drunk or high on something. Whatever she’d taken, it was not enough to push down her quaking fury at her husband, at the police, at the awful state of not-knowing she’d been left in for six weeks.

I had a strong maternal urge to pull her into my arms, as if she were one of my own girls. I wanted to rock her and let her scream out her rage. I wanted to scream with her. It was all I could do to keep my face in the plain, interested shape of Potential Publicist, trying to get hired.

“Do you think he’ll be back soon?” Marshall asked. Her husband was the one we most wanted to talk to. He was a law professor, likely an ex-lawyer, and closer to Spencer’s age.

“Sure. I mean, how long can that particular errand possibly take?” She snorted at her own joke, then extended one arm in a parody of gracious welcome. “Shall we await him in the living room?”

The foyer had wide arches on either side, showing me a dining room with a formal living room across from it. They looked like stage sets for an updated production of A Doll’s House. Everything matched, perfectly. It was as if she’d gone to some upscale Rooms To Go and had them pack up entire staged areas for her, even the oversize stone vase and the painted wall fan and the mirror.

She started toward the living room but then paused, staring at her sofa and the matchy-matched floral chairs as if she’d never seen the room before.

“No. Let’s go back to the kitchen. I could use a drink. You want a drink?” She didn’t wait for an answer, though a drink was the very last thing she needed. As we followed her deeper into the house, Marshall shot me a warning look, though what he was warning me against, I could not fathom. “I hate that couch. I was pregnant when I picked it out. The house, too. It was the second house we looked at, and I said, ‘This one, please,’ like I was picking out an ice-cream flavor, and he bought it for me, just like that. His wife still lives in his real house. She got most of his real furniture, too.”

“I’m very sorry,” Marshall said, grave and truthful. I knew him well enough to recognize that for these three words at least, he was not in character.

We came into a huge kitchen with a dining nook and an open keeping room behind it. On the back wall was a stone fireplace with a large flat-screen TV over the mantel.

This room felt realer than the others, as if people actually lived here. At the same time, it looked gutted. The walls were bare, and a leather sectional sofa and a low coffee table were the only pieces of furniture in the large space. There was a faint smell of rot in the air, treacle-sweet and cloying.

“Maybe you could answer a few questions while we wait for him?” Marshall said.

“Drinks!” she said, ignoring this.

She was already pulling open a white cabinet. The whole kitchen was white-on-white, but right now it was filthy. Dishes were piled up in the farmhouse sink and along the counter. Three or four disposable aluminum casserole pans were in a stack, the sides encrusted with dried food. Beside me there was a set of stainless-steel flour and sugar canisters with a small army of prescription pill bottles standing in an amber row in front of them. A dozen or so fresh peaches were rotting down to sludge in a crystal bowl. A cloud of tiny fruit flies hovered around them.

“Do you have coffee?” I asked her.

She could use some, and I spotted a fancy Nespresso machine on the other side of the sink. She shook her head, though, dragging out a bottle of Hendrick’s.

“I have room-temp gin or fuck off. Which would you prefer?”

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