Just Like Mother

6 It rained the following morning, torrents of it slashing against the living room windows and pattering atop the tin roof. It was the kind of day best spent indoors under the folds of a blanket or behind the pages of a novel, and that was exactly where I wanted to be, after my anxiety attack and subsequent embarrassment the previous night. ‘I am so sorry,’ Andrea said again, when Emily left for the kitchen in search of sparkling water. I noticed she was tacitly avoiding mention of the way my fear had manifested – the nursery rhyme that had guided them to me. I’d imagined it was Andrea singing to me, but she’d told me later that it had been me all along. They’d found me singing and muttering, curled in a ball on the ground. ‘We never should have done that while tipsy. Hell, I never should have brought you up there under any circumstances. Can you forgive me, Mae?’ ‘It’s okay.’ I set aside the manuscript I was reviewing and pulled the faux fur throw up to my chin, nestling deeper into the sofa cushions. ‘I’m so embarrassed. Your friends must think I’m a lunatic.’ ‘Absolutely not.’ Andrea’s tone was firm. ‘You crawled into a nest of spiders in some creepy old passages and lost your light source. That would have scared the bejesus out of anyone, claustrophobia or no.’ ‘Do you think we’ll be able to find my phone up there?’ It was somewhere in the passages. Possibly aglow with lewd texts from Ryan, possibly home to a nest of spiders. Possibly dead. ‘We’ll make one of the guys do it,’ Andrea assured me, cradling her new Olivia doll and taking notes in her computer. One hour per day, she’d explained. Our consulting psychologist says that’s all the time it takes to alleviate symptoms of grief. Kind of like what light therapy does for depression. ‘Make one of the guys do what?’ Rob asked, entering the room, with Emily trailing behind him, slightly favoring her right foot. ‘Rob,’ I said, grateful for the distraction. It was still a little disconcerting to watch Andrea with her therapy doll, crooning and rocking it like a real child. ‘Could you do me a huge favor?’ Emily sank to the sofa, where she propped her ankle on a stack of pillows before reaching for her laptop. ‘Depends on what it is.’ Rob winked at me. ‘Could you go into the hidden passageway and find my phone? I dropped it last night, when… Well. When I lost my shit.’ I laughed weakly, a strained sort of bray that fell flat. ‘Sure,’ he agreed. ‘No problem. I’ll go take a look in a minute.’ He approached Andrea, giving her a kiss on the forehead. ‘How’s my little bean?’ he asked her of Olivia. ‘Terrific,’ Andrea told him. ‘See? Falling asleep already.’ It was true that the doll’s lifelike eyes had begun to close. Andrea caught me staring and smiled. I smiled back at her, eager to be perceived as supportive. ‘Let me hold her.’ Emily reached for the doll when Rob left the room, bound for the passageways. Her expression was inscrutable. ‘I should probably reacquaint myself with caring for an infant,’ she explained, as Andrea handed her the doll. ‘Besides, Henry could stand to get used to the idea of having a sibling around.’ ‘How far along are you?’ I asked. ‘And how’s your ankle feeling?’ ‘Five months,’ she said. ‘And the ankle feels mostly fine. Thank you for asking, Maeve.’ ‘You’re five months?’ I’d had no idea. She’d favored oversized shirts and sweaters the few times I’d seen her, but she had a small frame and I’d assumed it was a style choice. She was hardly visible at all. Emily laughed. ‘I’m only showing a little,’ she confirmed, tightening her pullover against her torso to demonstrate. ‘It’s coming so soon,’ I remarked. I’d pegged Emily for the type to gush endlessly about a new baby – her due date, its s*x, everything she’d bought for the nursery. The timer on Andrea’s phone dinged. ‘The hour’s up,’ she told us. ‘We can put Olivia away now.’ ‘Why don’t I take her upstairs?’ Emily asked. ‘I’m going to lie down for a nap anyway, I think.’ ‘Really?’ Andrea looked surprised. ‘That’s not like you. Are you feeling okay?’ ‘Fine,’ Emily snapped. Then she looked contrite. ‘Sorry. I’m… still shaken up from my fall, I guess. What if I’d fallen harder and the baby had been hurt? Or I’d had to take time off work?’ ‘Well, thank god it was a twisted ankle,’ Andrea said. ‘No use catastrophizing.’ ‘I know.’ Emily worried her bottom lip with her teeth, biting off her deep red lipstick. ‘So, can I have Olivia?’ She reached for the doll. ‘Sure. And later today, why don’t we special order you one of your own? Then we can test both ends of the spectrum, expecting and –’ Here, Andrea grimaced slightly. ‘Recovering.’ Emily limped awkwardly to the door, cradling the doll in her arms. ‘How long have you known she was pregnant?’ I asked my cousin, after Emily had gone. ‘Since she was a few weeks along,’ Andrea replied. ‘The fact that she’s talking about it openly now is a good thing. She’s been anxious about the pregnancy, and the first few months were rough. She’s the face of NewLife, you know. Incredibly capable. Leads all our retreats and workshops and puts a lot of pressure on herself to be perfect and run the show. With Henry, she enjoyed being pregnant and embraced every aspect of it – the nursery decorating, that sort of thing. It was frankly hard to keep up with her. It’s been different this go-around. She’s usually such a ball of energy, never fazed by a challenge. I don’t know. She doesn’t seem quite herself.’ ‘Did she not want another child?’ I asked carefully. ‘Oh, of course she did,’ Andrea said, surprised by the question. Mistaking my silence for skepticism, she continued, ‘You heard her talking last night. She sees motherhood as a vocation. Probably even more than I do.’ Just then, Rob walked in, wielding my phone triumphantly, with Micah trailing him. ‘Got it,’ Rob said, handing it to me. ‘You can thank me later.’ ‘Oh. Amazing,’ I told him. ‘Thanks so much.’ I clicked the power button, but my phone was dead. ‘You should try one of those sweet external battery cases like I have,’ Micah suggested. ‘My smart case holds charge for like a day and a half, I swear.’ ‘Well, it’s not often I plan on losing my phone in a hidden corridor, so I think I’m set. I’m going to charge up and enjoy my reunion with my device for a few.’ ‘A few’ turned into a few hours of catching up with Ryan – who had sent no fewer than seven texts while my phone was lost – and continuing my edit in the bedroom. There was always work to be done on the weekends. Meetings and calls and emails consumed the weekdays, and so reading and editing were relegated to stolen hours. Sometimes it felt like a perverse luxury to spread out into the empty space of a weekend like that – at the very least, it provided me with purpose. And just now, in an unfamiliar setting, my familiar routine served as a buffer against the most socializing I’d done in years. Around six, we left for dinner at the local pizza spot. ‘Henry loves pizza,’ Andrea explained, once we were all settled around a broad, round table toward the center of the room. ‘But we have to be home before his bedtime.’ Henry was the focal point of dinner for Emily and Andrea. ‘Sweetheart, cut his slice for him,’ Emily commanded Micah several times, before finally doing it herself. Andrea was watchful, drawing my own eyes to Emily’s hands, which visibly trembled against the cutlery. For his part, Rob helped mop Henry’s spill when he tipped over his chocolate milk. ‘Party foul,’ he said. ‘No worries, kid.’ He dabbed sauce off Henry’s cheeks and held him while Emily focused on her own food. Rob would have made a good, dedicated father to Olivia. I hoped they would have another baby someday. It was clear how much joy it would bring them. ‘Maeve, stay put,’ Andrea said, when we returned to the house. ‘Keep an eye on Henry for a minute, will you? We have a surprise for you.’ She and Emily disappeared into the kitchen, trailed by Micah and Rob. I sank into a sofa in the small sitting area just off the foyer. Henry toddled over with his Hot Wheels cars and began making vroom, vroom noises. He handed me one of the toys. ‘Want to play crash?’ he said hopefully, then continued to make car noises, vibrating his lips so forcefully that flecks of spittle landed on my hands. ‘Crash?’ My hands went cold. Henry nodded, then powered his car into the one he’d handed me, hitting my fingers with so much force it stung, and I dropped my car with a shriek. ‘God damn it,’ I shouted. ‘Why would you do that, Henry?’ I wrung my right hand against my left, pressing out the sting. It hadn’t hurt so much as shocked me, but I was still trembling. Henry stared, his eyes wide. Then they crinkled in the corners and his lips pulled down. I took a breath. I was the adult. He was just a child. He hadn’t meant anything by it. Crash. Twisted metal. Broken glass. Blood all around me. ‘It’s okay,’ I told him, offering a ginger pat on the shoulder. ‘Please don’t cry. I was just a little startled.’ I’d made efforts to keep my distance from Henry, and it was as if my reticence had compelled him to try harder. He’d twice climbed into my lap at dinner, making Emily raise her eyebrows and grin, as if to insinuate that my inherent maternal prowess had tempted him over. But I’d toggled between the desire to wrap my arms around him and the overwhelming urge to scoot him off me as soon as possible. And the thought of being left alone with his tears caused a sharp ripple of panic to work its way from my gut to my chest. Luckily his shifting mood didn’t evolve into a full-blown tantrum, because a second later, Emily, Micah, Rob, and Andrea burst into the room, carrying an enormous chocolate cake ablaze with candles. ‘Happy birthday to you…’ Rob started, and the others joined in, Emily filming it with her iPhone. My throat tightened, and I blinked furiously against the surge of emotion. Andrea placed the cake on the coffee table in front of me. Happy 33, Maeve!, read the white frosted scrawl. ‘Make a wish!’ Emily exclaimed, beaming. For all her tiredness earlier, now Emily was hyperalert, almost manic. Maybe this was the ‘usual’ Emily, the one no one could keep up with. I hovered over the flames, which danced vigorously, casting shadows across the tiny, dimly lit room. I drew in a deep breath and made my wish – the same wish I’d been making most of my life, for the only thing I’d ever really wanted but had never seemed able to create: a place to belong, and people to belong to. I exhaled hard. Not a single flame of thirty-three remained. Later that night, when everyone else had gone to bed, Andrea and I sat wide awake on the living room floor, talking. ‘Floor party!’ she cheered, pouring us generous glasses of wine – sparkling, in honor of my birthday. ‘Doesn’t something about a picnic on the floor make you feel like we’re kids again?’