The Perfect Mother(14)
Chapter Four
Day One
To: May Mothers
From: Your friends at The Village
Date: July 5
Subject: Today’s advice
Your baby: Day 52
How many times have you heard this advice: sleep when the baby sleeps. We know it might seem tiring (ha!) to hear it, but it’s true. Some moms find it difficult to relax when the little one does, so here are some tips: Avoid caffeine and sugary drinks. Practice some of the breathing exercises you perfected in preparation for giving birth. Try a glass of warm milk, a square of cheese, or even a little turkey breast before bed—these foods contain tryptophan, which will help encourage a good night’s sleep.
Francie stands in her tiny kitchen, lost in front of an open cupboard that’s shaded pink with the rising sun, resisting the urge to drink the errant Diet Coke she spotted in the fridge. She can’t have slept more than two hours last night, between finally falling asleep on Lowell’s shoulder, and waking up in a panic. She dreamed she’d left Will in the grocery store, asleep in his stroller by the yogurt case. It took her so long to choose from among the eight types of yogurts, all the different flavors, and by the time she realized what she’d done, she was halfway home. She raced back to the store, her muscles weak, her clothes damp with sweat. When she lifted the hood of the stroller, it was empty. Will was gone.
The dream jerked her upright, and she lurched toward the cosleeper. It was only after she pressed her palm to Will’s chest, feeling the soft rise and fall of his breath, that she could trust it was a dream. Will was still there, asleep beside her. But the commotion had startled him awake with a cry so desperate she doesn’t know how Lowell slept through it. It then took two hours of walking him around the living room, up and down the narrow hall, shushing him, rocking him, nursing him through the pain in her right breast, before he finally fell back asleep, rotating a slow circle in the baby swing, his fingers curled like parentheses around his eyes.
She, meanwhile, was wide awake. For the last two hours, she’s been pacing the living room, seven steps back and forth, ice cubes melting in one of the baby’s washcloths on the back of her neck, seeing Winnie’s face as she spoke to the detective the night before. Francie is still trying to piece together the events of the evening and make sense of what happened. Winnie arrived. She seemed quiet but not unhappy. Francie suggested she tell her birth story, and then she and Token went to the bar for a drink. Winnie was talking to that guy. And then, suddenly, she was gone.
Francie is plagued with guilt. If only she hadn’t lost sight of Winnie. If only she hadn’t handed Winnie’s phone to Nell. She’s furious with herself for trusting Nell with that phone—Nell, who was clearly drunk by the end of the night. Francie couldn’t have been the only one to notice the way she spilled the french fries on her lap, the cloudiness of her eyes, never mind the fact that she brought wine to the May Mothers meeting last week.
Francie opens the refrigerator for the eggs, and searches for the green pepper she swore she bought. Lowell is always telling her to stop with the what-ifs, but what if? What if she had insisted, like she’d wanted to, on keeping the phone? What if Nell hadn’t been able to delete the Peek-a-Boo! app? Francie would have kept the phone on the table, right in front of her—she’s sure that’s what she would have done. And then maybe the movement in Midas’s room would have sprung the screen to life, and she would have seen Midas in his crib, and then a person standing over him. She would have told Nell to call Alma, which would have woken her up. She would have called the police. Midas would still be—
She feels a hand on her waist, on the thick roll of flesh above the elastic of her pajamas, and she recoils so quickly she drops the eggs, emptying the entire carton onto her feet, the yolks leaking between her toes.
“Sorry,” Lowell says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
The scent of Irish Spring soap rises from his skin. “I didn’t hear you get up.” Three of the eggs have broken on the counter, and Francie wonders for a moment if she can salvage them, pick out the pieces of shell and scramble them with some milk. She can’t bear the idea of the grocery store. Not today. Not the narrow, crowded aisles or the endless checkout lines, not the long walk home in this heat with a baby strapped to her chest, her thighs chafing under her last clean skirt, shopping bags swinging painfully from both forearms. Lowell goes to the closet for the mop as she wipes the threads of egg yolk from her feet with a paper towel. It’s only then she notices he’s dressed for the office. “Are you leaving right now?”
“In a few minutes.”
“But it’s not even seven. I thought we could have breakfast together.”
He nudges her toes out of the way with the mop. “I’m sorry. I have to prepare for tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?”
He raises his eyebrows. “You’re kidding.”
Of course. The meeting. He’s been preoccupied with it for days—the final round of interviews; a renovation of a former church into a boutique hotel. How could she have forgotten? The job would be his biggest contract, more money than they’ve made since Lowell decided two years ago to quit the firm in Knoxville and move to New York—a city she had never even visited—to start a private practice with a friend from architecture school. She tried to get him to reconsider. (“They need buildings designed right here in Tennessee,” she kept telling him.) But this was his dream, he said, so of course she’d agreed to move. “Plus,” he reasoned, “the hospitals in New York are the best. Maybe the IVF thing will work better there.”