The gabled redbrick mansions of Fitzjohn’s Avenue were built in the late nineteenth century for the great and the good of Hampstead—spreading gothic piles with grand staircases at their hearts, down which the bustled daughters of shipowners and silk magnates and wine merchants could sweep toward waiting carriages. Now, the great and the good of Hampstead trudge up these stairs to try to understand their own unhappiness, for these palaces have been carved into a warren of magnolia consulting rooms for Freudians and Jungians and Kleinians and, in the case of number 88, for three Independents, two marriage guidance counselors, and one Dr. Rhoda Frankel, clinical psychologist, family therapist, Wesleyan graduate, and grandmother, she’d said on the phone, of seven. Her voice was warm, her accent broad Long Island, and upon learning that Julia’s sixteen-year-old daughter had recently been impregnated by a newly acquired de facto stepson, Dr. Frankel had not offered a noncommittal, therapeutic “mmm” but instead whistled through her teeth and said, “Well, that’s not easy.” Her photograph on the Internet was of a bright-eyed woman in her middle sixties, broad chested, with a sharply cut bob of caramel hair that fell neatly either side of a pair of cherry-red plastic-framed glasses. She was all in navy, except for a long chain of complicated, interlocking Lucite squares of neon green slung round her neck. Julia had looked into the eyes of this facsimile while on the phone to the original and, speaking as calmly as she could manage, yearned to collapse and weep like a baby in Dr. Frankel’s comfortably substantial arms.
Julia sat beside Gwen in the waiting room on a low, sagging buttercup-yellow sofa before a glass coffee table tattooed with fingerprints, its stacks of curling National Geographics long neglected now that passing patients instead hid their faces in their phones, busily online, resolutely pretending to be elsewhere. A spider plant cascaded dustily from a hanging basket in the window, above a vibrant aspidistra that was, on closer inspection, plastic. Gwen sat with her hands retracted into her sleeves and clamped between denim thighs. Her brows were knitted into a frown, her lips pushed out, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere in her lap. Her posture, her expression, her every movement conveyed, megaphone loud, that she had come on sufferance. You are detestable, Julia thought, and you have ruined and continue to ruin my life; I should have had cats instead. She noted with an anxious pang that Gwen looked woefully drawn and pallid—almost gray.
Julia found she was unable to break from the constant repetitions of her own case. The prosecution, or was she the defense? In planning this session she had appointed Dr. Frankel as their savior but was gripped by a new fear that the kindly American woman was to be her judge; that they were to receive not arbitration but a verdict, and sentence. Gwen had gone back into their shared and precious past and had set fire to every room. She’s too young, she rehearsed, she has her whole life ahead of her. And, without knowing for what she pleaded she returned to it over and over. I fought with every breath to be two parents for you. Why are you so angry? And—Please. Please. Please.
• • •
AS SHE HAD BEEN in her photograph online, Dr. Frankel was all in navy blue, stouter than her image, her hair the same resolutely expensive caramel, her crimson glasses replaced with frameless ovals resting on the very end of her nose. She greeted them warmly by name, “Gwen, Julia, do come in,” and gestured to a pair of narrow biscuit-colored armchairs. She herself squeezed into an upright wooden chair opposite them, a ring-bound notebook on her crossed legs, an expectant smile for them as they settled. Gwen surprised Julia by arranging herself bolt upright, her hands neatly on her knees, an expression of anticipation on her face. Her head was cocked slightly to one side, as if listening for instructions. Dr. Frankel turned to her.
“I’m sure you know, Gwen, that Mom and I had a brief chat on the phone when we set up this meeting, and so she’s had a chance to tell me a little bit about what she feels has been happening, but I’m really interested to hear from you. I take it for granted that each of us has a different perspective, right?” Julia thought she saw Gwen offer the ghost of a nod. “And I’m here to listen, and maybe to help everyone else find a way to listen, too, in a way that might feel easier than when you’re at home together. I’d like to hear why you’re here, and what you hope to achieve. How did you make the decision to come today?”
“My mum wanted me to come.”
“Okay.”
There was a long silence. Julia’s hope wavered.
“I understand. So it wasn’t your plan to be here.”
Gwen shook her head.
“So then I’m thinking”—Dr. Frankel leaned back and considered a point above their heads for a moment—“I’m thinking then that it was quite a decision you made to show up, in that case.” Her gaze returned to Gwen. “After all, you’re here now. Our moms ask us to do a lot of things, and would you agree it’s fair to say, as teenagers, we don’t always do them?”
“I came today because you asked me to.” Gwen then turned to address Dr. Frankel. “I came because she asked me to because it would show that I don’t just not do stuff . . .” She blinked several times and cleared her throat but lapsed once again into silence.
Julia had not yet given her prepared speech. There had been so much she’d wanted to say in this hour—to Gwen, to Dr. Frankel, perhaps also to herself. But something passed across Gwen’s face that made her suddenly ask, “Would you prefer to talk to Dr. Frankel alone? I can wait outside?”
Gwen glanced up and met her mother’s eyes for a moment. She nodded.
Julia stood. “Okay,” she said, brightly. To Dr. Frankel, in her thoughts she whispered, She’s a baby, and then one final time, Please. She slipped out.
• • •
UP FITZJOHN’S AVENUE on a late-spring afternoon, beneath the heavy spreading sycamores and horse chestnuts, several academies are spaced at regular intervals; this is where north London’s most privileged three-year-olds learn to read and write, are taught computer code and Mandarin in striped winter caps, or, in summer, beneath ribboned straw hats. Today the little girls were in deep blue gingham dresses, woolen cardigans, and navy elastic purse belts; the boys, in miniature blazers and gray tailored trousers. Many emerged skipping, as yet unencumbered by their parents’ weighty expectations. The pavements thronged with mothers and nannies. Where Gwen and Julia crossed, two black Range Rovers and a black Jeep were double-parked, badly, the traffic crawling up the hill behind this presidential convoy in their variously armored vehicles. And babies were everywhere. In buggies and in slings, or toddling on reins attached to tiny backpacks, greeting older siblings at the school gates. Julia averted her eyes from this sea of tiny creatures, but as they walked she reached for Gwen’s arm. This school uniform was royal blue. At primary school Gwen’s had been red, almost, but not quite, as bright as her hair.
• • •
THEY WERE TOILING UP the hill toward the art supply shop. Gwen had not known if her mother would agree to this extension of their outing, but she did not feel ready to go straight home, where nowadays they could never be alone. It had been Dr. Frankel who’d suggested (in desperation, Gwen felt, after several other conversational dead ends) that mother and daughter spend more time together on activities that made them happy, and there was nowhere that brought Gwen as much joy as this paradise of pristine dyes and clay, and the promise of future projects. She did not know with any certainty which activities made her mother happy. Maybe playing the piano? A knot tightened in her stomach. Until recently, she had always believed that Julia’s happiness lay simply in spending time with her, regardless of what they did—certainly that was what she’d always said. But in the last few days, Julia could barely look at her.
The remainder of the therapy session had not been an enormous success. Initially she’d felt her mother’s presence hampered her ability to defend herself with any eloquence, but after Julia had gone Gwen felt a sudden tender homesickness, and a longing to rush out to the waiting room and beg forgiveness for dismissing her. She hadn’t wanted Julia herself to go away, only Julia’s disapproval and disappointment. After that, guilt had stifled her and made her feel hot and snappish, and she had shut down the rest of Dr. Frankel’s valiant approaches. She had not deserved the professional kindness palpable in that room.
Now mother and daughter walked up the hill in silence. As they crossed Prince Arthur Road, Julia reached out for her and they walked the rest of the way arm in arm, and though neither spoke, Gwen began to feel a slight easing of the pressure in her chest. She shuffled a little, shortening her gait to keep pace. On the threshold of the shop they separated. Gwen held the door open, shy, chivalrous. They made their way through Painting and Drawing, over to the temple’s inner sanctum, Casting and Modeling.
“So what are we looking for?”
Gwen shrugged. “Dunno. Just browsing.” She frowned over a package of “skin tones” polymer clay with professional interest. She had been mixing her own flesh tones for years—this overpriced multipack was for amateurs. But next to it stood a tray of wire-tipped modeling tools with sleek wooden handles, and on one of these she pounced, turning it over and over between her fingers as if rolling a cigar. It was sixteen pounds, an enormous sum. But it was double ended and one tip, the needle, would be useful every day. Future promise lay in all these wares, the world a bit less lonely when she could sculpt and share it. She fished in the pocket of her cardigan for her purse.
“Mum.”
“Yes?”
“Do you still hate me?”
Julia looked stricken and Gwen felt fractionally heartened. Hope unfurled and blossomed when her mother reached to stroke her cheek.
“I could never hate you, my darling; you’re the most precious thing in my world. You know that.”
Gwen nodded uncertainly, the cuticle of her little finger between her front teeth. After a moment she fingered a packet of frog-green modeling clay. “I’m going to use this to make that massive green cactus thing in her office. I mean, that was so weird. It was like this giant looming thing.”
Julia smiled. “It was rather phallic.”
Gwen began to giggle. “And it had massive spikes!”
“I wonder what a Freudian would make of that.”
Laughter overtook them both, drawing looks of disapproval from the checkout girl. Julia covered her mouth, then turned away. A sob rose in her chest and she swallowed it down. Enough. For healing and for sanity, all that would have to end. She wiped her eyes, took a breath, and turned back, resolute. Gwen’s giggles petered out, uncertain.
Julia took Gwen’s hand between her own. She raised it to her lips and kissed her daughter’s dry knuckles, above the mulberry-colored hearts and black stars that Gwen had idly inked upon the back of each finger.
“My darling, what do you really want? What does your gut tell you?”
Gwen looked down at her mother and blinked, steadily. She said, no longer confrontational, but as calmly as she knew how, “I have to keep my baby,” and her all-powerful condemning possessive made possible no other answer. Julia put her arms around her hunched, gangling little girl.