Even as I walked the girls home from the bus stop, asking how they liked their new teacher, even as we waited at the diner for Spencer’s bus, I was half expecting Annabelle to show up and whisk the kids away. When she didn’t, the tiny ember of hope I’d been cupping my hands around all afternoon momentarily flared. Because if she really thought I was capable of harming the kids, she’d take them immediately, wouldn’t she? That’s what I kept promising myself as we made pizzas for dinner, the twins kneeling on stools at the counter, helping with the toppings, Spencer rolling dough. Please give me a chance to explain, I pleaded in my head.
When the clock started inching toward six and she hadn’t called, my panic ratcheted back up. We tried her cell and the house phone, and Hazel left messages: “Where are you, Mommy? We have to tell you about our day.” Her chin wobbled as she handed me the phone.
“She’ll probably come for dessert and surprise us,” Phoebe informed her sister nonchalantly. “I hope she brings ice cream cake.”
“I’m not sure about that, Phoebs,” I said, amazed at how quickly the mind creates stories to make the world feel safe. “She’ll call, though. I know she can’t wait to hear about your day.”
I let the twins put on the TV in the family room, which we didn’t usually allow before dinner, let Spencer watch the Weather Channel in our bed. I sat beside him, staring blankly at the screen. I wanted nothing more than to watch the weather swirl in different colors across the country, wanted to be in Boston, where it was raining, or northern Montana, where there was already snow.
And then finally, Erik walked in the door, handing me pints of frozen custard, our special first-day-of-school dessert. “Has she phoned?” He draped his jacket over the banister. “I went by the house, but she wasn’t there.”
“She hasn’t even called the girls. We left messages.”
“I don’t like this, Claire.” He set a folder of papers on the hall table and eased out of his tasseled loafers. “Let me visit with them for a minute.” He gestured toward the family room, where the girls were sprawled on the couch watching a rerun of Full House.
I watched as he plopped down between them. “Jeez Louise! You guys look like real third graders!”
Hazel immediately climbed onto his lap, facing him, palms on each side of his face. An eye-roll from Phoebe. He nudged her and whispered, “I heard eye-rolling starts in the third grade. Did you have a special lesson?”
Phoebe started to roll her eyes again, then stopped and let herself grin. “Daddy!”
“What about you, Haze? Have you started eye-rolling too?”
But Hazel just launched into the animated spiel I’d gotten earlier, patting her dad’s cheeks as she talked: Her teacher, Mrs. Hoyer, had blue eyes and really glittery lipstick, and everyone got to choose a sticker from her big sticker book.
In the kitchen, I put away the custard and preheated the oven, then stood at the sink and stared outside, seeing nothing. I was so relieved Erik was home. I hadn’t realized how afraid I’d been.
A few minutes later, he walked into the kitchen, pulled out a stool, and sat at the counter. “I don’t trust her, Claire.”
“What do you mean?” I’d never heard this before. Even when he was irritated with her micromanaging, trust had never been an issue.
He stood and pulled a beer from the refrigerator, then rummaged in the utensil drawer for the bottle opener. “I was buying the custard for tonight, and I actually started second-guessing if part of her fury has to do with the fact that the kids were with us on their first day of school.”
“Erik, come on. She has a reason to be upset.”
“I know, believe me. It’s just, how fucked up is it that I’d wonder that? And then I started thinking of how she completely runs the show when it comes to the kids and we just roll over and let her. I know that’s not the issue right now, but it’s not not the issue either.” His shoulders slumped. “Do we have a bottle opener in this house?”
“Here.” I reached across the counter and handed it to him, thinking of how we did give in to her—constantly. She wanted the kids to have the same bedtimes in both houses regardless of our schedule—fine; she wanted the kids saying prayers before meals, never mind that Erik was agnostic, but again, we figured, why not? She wanted the girls in the same class, even though we thought Hazel might do better if she weren’t in Phoebe’s shadow. But we gave in on that too. And had Erik not put his foot down on the first-day-of-school issue, the kids would have been at her house instead of with us. I felt again the fear I’d felt earlier. When had this gotten so out of balance? I thought of how opening gifts on Christmas morning was always at her house; ditto for Thanksgiving and the kids’ birthdays, even when they landed during our weeks. We would have loved to celebrate in our house, but even when I offered, it never happened. It would upset Spencer to change things, Annabelle would insist, making a sad face, as if she too wished it were otherwise. And it’s not as if she didn’t include us in the plans, phoning weeks ahead of time to ask what we thought of an ice cream cake for the girls this year or to tell us she’d found a place that did “chocolate volcanoes with carob! Wouldn’t Spencer love that?” Always, we capitulated. And okay, yes, it was easier. Or was it more than that? Was it compensation for the secret we were keeping from her?
Outside, the rain that had threatened earlier began to fall, silent under the hum of the AC. “So, will you try to go over there later? I have those articles about postpartum, and I was thinking—”
He was shaking his head.
“Why? Those articles helped you.”
“I think it’s too late.” He took a swig of beer, then set the bottle down, not meeting my eyes. “I’m pretty sure she was at her lawyer’s this afternoon.” When he finally looked at me, I saw that he was frightened. “I hoped it was just her rage talking, but the fact that we haven’t heard anything—”
“But what can a lawyer do?”
“She’s petitioning for full custody.”
And just like that, whatever anger or resentment I’d been trying desperately to muster crumbled, and the panic I’d felt earlier pounded so hard at my chest I felt sick. “Can you call Gabe? Can he—”
“I already did. He gave me the name of someone who does family law.” He drained the last of his beer, set the bottle on the counter, then opened the fridge for another. “We fucked up, Claire,” he said quietly, staring into the bright shelves. “The fact that we never told her—”
“Wait. What do you mean that we never told her? Even when I wanted to, you’ve been adamant that she’d never understand. And you were right!”
“Was I, though?” He let the door fall shut without turning. “I mean, I knew she’d go ballistic, but I never really considered that she had the right to know this.” Finally, he looked at me. “It honestly never crossed my mind.”
“Because there was no reason for it to! I don’t care what she says, Erik. What happened with Lucy had nothing to do with her or the kids, and it still doesn’t. As long as I didn’t get pregnant…” I dropped my arms to my sides. “Why am I telling you this?”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. She’s got me so upside down. It just scares the hell out of me that she could use my not telling her as leverage or proof—or something!—that I wasn’t being responsible or…I don’t know.” He set the beer on the counter but didn’t move to open it. “I just don’t understand why you—” He drew in a breath, then slowly blew it out. “Her biggest fear,” he said, “her biggest fucking fear is that she’s not a good mother—you heard her two nights ago. She’s constantly afraid of messing up, not paying enough attention, and wham! You tell her this?”
“You think I had a choice today?”
“But did you have to tell them everything?”
I felt as if a line of gasoline had just been lighted. One second, the flick of a match, and I felt the world go up in flames, my own face burning with the realization of how badly I had screwed up. He was right. I could have stalled. Confirmed what Kelly said without getting into the details. Isn’t that what I’d imagined countless times? What I’d wanted? To just tell them about Lucy, to acknowledge her? That was all. I have a daughter.
I pushed my stool away from the counter and walked to the oven, my back to Erik as if I could block his anger. I didn’t know how to explain. There was no shape to what had happened, no clear beginning, no clear end. Did it start the day she was born or that night on the Ferris wheel or the afternoon I put her in the tub? Everything was connected to everything else! And why bother to only tell part of it? That’s what I’d been doing for six years, parceling out bits and pieces of myself and my story, and somehow it had seemed that if I kept doing this…what would I have left that was whole?
But even more than not knowing how to tell the version of the story Erik wanted me to tell, I hadn’t understood why I needed to. Annabelle was my friend. She knew me.
I mean it, Claire. You are not alone. You have us.
The room had turned gray, and I flipped on the overhead lights, then started setting the table, pulling plates from the cabinet by the sink. Erik got up to help me. The rain was falling faster, silvery drops sluicing across the windows, turning the world blurry, like something from a cartoon. Our lives felt that way, exaggerated and out of proportion, everything in bold outlines, flattened into two dimensions.
By the time we were tucking the girls in, after again trying Annabelle’s cell, then Scott’s, the girls were distraught, and Spencer was agitated. How could she not call the twins on their first day of school? Moving in and out of their rooms—braiding hair, laying out clothes for the morning—Erik and I were numb and furious. I couldn’t get my heart to stop racing.
Finally, Erik’s phone rang. He was with Spencer; I was with the girls. Immediately they went racing into his room, screaming, “Mommy! Mommy!”
“Hey,” Erik said into the phone, “I bet you want to—” He stopped. “Are you sure? They’re right—” And then: “Whoa…Wait, wait, give me a second.” He raised his eyebrows to me in bewilderment and took the phone downstairs. Hazel started to whimper, and I scooped her up and said, “Mommy’s going to talk to you in a minute, but Daddy needs to talk to her first.”
“Why?” Phoebe demanded. “It wasn’t his first day of school!”
Erik was standing at the kitchen counter, holding the phone, his back to me. Quietly, I sat at the table, still littered with crumbs from our pizza.
“No, no, would you—look—would you— No, Annabelle, I don’t. We had a right.” He turned and gave me a helpless look. “Of course, of course, you did.” He nodded, mouth pinched, then said, “That’s not fair.” My eyes were glued to his face, nails digging into my palms, willing him to somehow get through to her.
But then he straightened his shoulders, turned around, and said, “On what grounds?” and I felt my heart spike with adrenaline. The lawyer.
A volley of broken sentences followed, their ends snapped off before he could finish: “Why would—” and “I can’t believe—” and “What lawyer would even—” and “Please calm—” and “For God’s sake, Annabelle, they’re in bed!”
He didn’t turn to face me, but I understood the entire conversation by watching his back, straight at first, then bowed over as he leaned his elbows on the counter. Early in his career, Alfred Lunt had turned his back to the audience, something never before done in American theaters, something he was told he couldn’t do, something for which he was criticized. “A back can sometimes express as much or more than a face,” he had insisted, and that night, watching Erik on the phone with Annabelle, I understood what Lunt had meant.
Erik’s shoulders sagged and his head went down, and finally, he snapped his phone shut and turned. “She’s on her way over.” A muscle jumped in his clenched jaw.
“Why?”
“She doesn’t…” He glanced at me. “She doesn’t want the kids in the same house with you.”
For a moment, I couldn’t move, talk, swallow. When I did speak, my voice came out in a whisper. “Why are you allowing this?”
“Allowing? You think that’s what I’m doing? Jesus.” He pulled out the chair opposite me, sat at the table. “Her lawyer told her to file a complaint with child protection if we didn’t let her take the kids tonight.”
“For something that happened sixteen years ago?” I was reeling.
“Apparently, it’s enough reasonable cause to say the kids are in imminent danger. Child protection would have no choice but to remove them.”
“And you’re taking her word for this? How do we know—”
“We don’t!” He slammed his hand on the table. “We fucking don’t. But she’s on a rampage, and you and I both know arguing with her when she’s like this is futile.” He squeezed shut his eyes, his hands in fists as if it was all he could do not to throw something. After a minute, he pushed himself up. “Can you get Spencer ready? I’ll get the girls.”