The Perfect Mother(17)
Francie shouldn’t be surprised. She knew the moment she saw Winnie at the first May Mothers meeting four months earlier that there was something special about her. Francie can still picture it. Gemma was telling the group she’d paid to bank her son’s umbilical cord blood—a process Francie had never heard of. “It’s expensive, but it can save their life if they ever, knock on wood, have a life-threatening disease,” Gemma was saying when people began to shift their attention to a spot across the lawn, to the woman walking toward them, the bump of her pregnancy rising under her short turquoise dress, a wide silver bracelet on each wrist. Everyone scooted aside to make room for her, adjusting blankets, shifting babies, and she took the spot right next to Francie. Francie tugged at her shorts and the damp cotton that clung to her midsection as she watched Winnie settle into place, folding her long legs underneath her.
“I’m Winnie,” she said, her fingers resting on the slope of her belly, just below her breasts. “Sorry to be so late.”
Francie had a hard time keeping her eyes off her, taking in just how beautiful she was. The face of magazine covers and catwalks: the splatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the faultless olive skin that had no need for the concealer Francie has been swearing by for the last decade or so.
And then the moment the two of them shared at the coffee shop. Francie was deeply embarrassed by Will’s sudden outburst, conscious of the judging stares of the two young men working on laptops near the window, the scowl from the girl behind the counter, waiting for Francie, too frazzled to choose her drink. Winnie seemed to appear from nowhere, unfazed by Will’s crying, lifting him from Francie’s arms and walking figure eights around the tables, patting his bottom, whispering into his ear, getting him to settle.
“How did you do that?” Francie asked, after joining her at a table in the corner. “I feel like I’m the only one who has no idea what I’m doing.”
“Don’t be silly,” Winnie said. “These May Mothers try very hard to make it look easy, but don’t let them fool you.” She had a sly look in her eyes, as if she and Francie were lifelong friends, sharing a secret. “This isn’t easy for any of them. Trust me.”
It’s more than an hour later, after Will has finally fallen asleep in the cosleeper, the vacuum cleaner running nearby, upright and stationary, to calm him, that Francie comes across the obituary of Audrey Ross, Winnie’s mother. She was killed on Winnie’s eighteenth birthday, on her way to the store for ice cream. Her death was written up in several national newspapers, for not only was Audrey Ross the mother of Gwendolyn Ross, the famous young actress, she was also an heir to her father’s multimillion-dollar real estate business, one of the largest in the nation.
It makes so much sense. Winnie’s house. Her clothes. The expensive stroller Francie envied; the same one she examined with longing at Babies “R” Us, until she saw it cost nearly as much as what Lowell and she pay in a month’s rent. She finds one photo of the funeral: Winnie and her father walking into a country church near their weekend house in upstate New York, not far from where Audrey Ross was killed. It was a freak accident. The brakes had failed, without explanation. Audrey’s car careened down a hill, through a guardrail, plunging eighty feet into a ravine below. Winnie quit Bluebird a few months later. That show was canceled soon after.
Francie can’t believe it when she hears the distant church bells chiming the arrival of noon, rousing her from the computer. She closes the laptop, wincing at the sight of the untouched pile of laundry, and goes to the kitchen to start lunch. Drained and bleary-eyed, she knows she needs to get into the right frame of mind for Lowell’s return. He’ll be exhausted and hungry, eager to see her. But she can’t deny the heaviness in the pit of her stomach, thinking about all Winnie has lost, everything she has accomplished—a successful acting career, the star of her own show, a happy relationship with a musician, who she mentioned in the one interview she granted after her mother’s death.
“I’ve been relying on Daniel,” she said, referring to her boyfriend, when a reporter asked how she was dealing with everything. “He’s the only thing getting me through the grief.”
And all by seventeen.
Francie starts the water for the macaroni and can’t help but picture what she, herself, was doing at that age: singing in the church choir, teaching Sunday school, allowing Mr. Colburn, the science teacher, to lift her skirt and put his fingers inside her in the lab during study hall. At least that was how it started. It didn’t take long before he was doing it in his car after school, parked behind the former Payless shoe store in the strip mall, and then in his house, a dingy one-bedroom the volunteer program paid for. It was some Catholic thing. Ivy Leaguers spend the year after graduation teaching at an underprivileged high school, somewhere in the sticks of America, like Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Francie’s high school in Estherville, Tennessee. It was in that apartment that she had her first taste of red wine, her first hit of marijuana. It was also there that Mr. Colburn—James, as she dared to call him when they were alone—held her down and removed her volleyball uniform despite her protests.
Francie hears Lowell’s heavy footfall on the stairs as she scrapes the last bits of tuna fish from the can into the bowl. She wipes her hands on her shorts and hurries to the bathroom to check herself in the mirror, tame the frizz from her hair, and apply a spritz of floral body spray to each wrist. Before Lowell even has a chance to insert his key, she’s opening the door—“Guess what? Winnie was on the news. She’s a famous actress—”