The Perfect Mother(26)

“How’d it go?” Colette asks Nell.

Nell drops heavily onto the couch. “Awful.” She e-mailed them yesterday, saying she’d fired Alma and was dropping Beatrice off at her first day at Happy Baby Daycare, to get her used to it for a few hours today before starting there full-time in two days, when she returns to work. “Hysterical crying. It was a total scene. All the other moms were staring.”

“Did they know how to comfort Beatrice?” Francie asks.

“Not Beatrice,” Nell says. “Me.” She wipes her nose with the wet, crumpled Kleenex in her fist. “I made a bloody fool of myself.”

Colette sits beside Nell and puts an arm around her, but Francie feels frozen in place. How can Nell do this? Leave her baby, all day, in the care of total strangers? The best thing you can do, for at least the first six months, is to hold the baby as much as possible. A day-care worker or nanny isn’t going to do that. Sometimes, while feeding Will, Francie will get on her phone and read the most recent posts at isawyournanny.com, a forum for parents to post sightings of the things they witness nannies doing to children—ignoring them, yelling at them, talking on their phone while the child plays alone.

“It’s going to be fine, right?” Nell asks, digging in her purse for a clean tissue. “They won’t break her?”

“Of course it’ll be fine,” Colette says. “Millions of women do this every day.”

“I know.” Nell nods. “And for what we’re paying at that place, I expect I’ll return later this afternoon to find her with buffed nails, cucumber slices on her eyes, a chalice of milk at her elbow.” She wipes her eyes, leaving a smear of black mascara along her right cheek. “I feel so bad about firing Alma, but what was I supposed to do? She’s being hounded by journalists. I don’t want Beatrice around that.”

“It’s disgusting,” Colette says. “Charlie brought home the paper this morning. There’s a photo of her at the playground with her daughter. They ran her out of the place.”

“I’m a wreck,” Nell says. “I’m at Sebastian’s throat all day. Everything he says annoys me. And the baby’s waking every few hours again.”

Colette goes to the kitchen, taking a paper dessert box from the counter. “Not much help, but I got chocolate-chip muffins today. Thought you could use one of these.” She puts the muffins on a plate and sets them on the coffee table before heading down the hall toward the bedrooms in the back. “I need to find a shirt. Coffee’s made, if you want it.”

Nell takes a seat on the couch. “Not me. I’ve had four cups already.”

Francie walks into the kitchen, which is separated from the living room by a large butcher’s-block island. She slides her hand along the smooth wood and the spotless white countertop to the double farmhouse sink. She pauses before opening the refrigerator, examining the array of Polaroids stuck to the door. Poppy, lying on a soft pink bedspread, propped up on a nursing pillow. Colette and a tall, handsome man Francie assumes is Charlie, their tan, toned arms clasped around each other’s waists, Colette’s long auburn hair beach-blown and wild, her face spattered with a map of fresh freckles. A note in male handwriting, curled and paled by the sunlight streaming in the large window nearby:

Attention all kitchen utensils, unfinished books, “useless childhood artifacts,” and general household objects: take heed. Colette Yates is nesting. None of you are safe.



Colette appears in a man’s white T-shirt that swallows her. “You know her?” Nell asks Colette. Nell’s standing in front of a bookshelf, holding a framed photograph in her hand.

Colette glances at Nell and then walks into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee. “Yes.”

“How?”

“She’s my mom.”

“You’re joking.”

“Who?” Francie says. Nell turns the photograph, and Francie walks to take a closer look. It’s an image of an older woman with a crisp white bob, standing on a paddleboard, her arms raised triumphantly overhead.

“Rosemary Carpenter.” By the stunned look on Nell’s face, it’s apparent Francie is supposed to know who that is.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know her.”

“She started WFE,” Nell says.

Francie is shocked. “The wrestling organization?”

Colette and Nell laugh, and Francie’s face warms with embarrassment.

“No,” Nell says. “Women for Equality. The feminist organization.”

“Actually, it is kind of like a wrestling organization,” Colette says.

Nell puts the photograph back. “My mom gave me a signed copy of her book for my high school graduation.”

“Funny,” Colette says. “So did mine.”

Francie is unsure of what she’s supposed to say, wondering why it is that everyone in New York City seems either to be a famous person or know one. Winnie. Colette’s mother. The only famous person Francie ever met before moving to New York was the owner of the largest chain of car dealerships in western Tennessee, whose family portrait she assisted with at the photography studio where she worked.

“What was that like?” Nell asks Colette.

“You mean, being the daughter of the woman known to coin the phrase ‘The only thing worse for a woman than making herself dependent on a man—’”