The Life You Longed For (14 page)

“But you
know
that doesn't make sense.”

“It doesn't have to. The one thing a mother is supposed to do is keep her children safe, and I failed. Hell, if someone had accused
me
of Munchausen's when Carrie died, I probably would have believed it. Which is what's so insidious about the allegation. It preys on a woman's worst fears about herself, that deep down she's selfish or she's a liar or she's not really as smart as everyone thinks or she's a bad mother or whatever. And yeah, it
should
be a huge leap from thinking you've made mistakes to thinking that you're capable of harming your own kid, but it's not because we've been blaming ourselves anyway and have been for years.”

“I want to believe you,” Grace said.

“Then do. Come on: Can you name one mom in the mito group who
doesn't
feel guilty because her child is sick? Who doesn't blame herself somehow, some way?”

 

Grace lifted the pot of boiling pasta from the stove and poured it into a colander in the sink. Steam fogged the window, momentarily erasing the world. “It was good to talk to her,” she said over her shoulder to Stephen. “She was so rational.”

“Well, you sound better.”

She nodded. The kitchen was warm and smelled of tomato sauce and garlic bread. “Anyway, she seems to think the whole notion of Munchausen's is bogus.”

“Bogus how?” Stephen handed her a glass of red wine.

She smiled and took a sip, then set the glass on the windowsill over the sink. Rain beaded against the dark glass, making it look swollen. Grace tried to sound casual, indifferent. “Oh, she was just comparing Munchausen's accusations to what happened during the Salem Witch Trials.” She ran cold water onto the steaming noodles. “She thinks the accusation is a way to silence women who advocate for their kids.” She shut off the water and glanced quickly towards his face, then away. Don't make fun of it, she thought. I know it's farfetched, I know it doesn't change anything, but at least it's an answer, at least it's something.

He was smiling but not in mirth so much as in discomfort.

“Go ahead,” she sighed, staring towards the lake, which the township had drained two weeks before for cleaning, something it did every five years. In its place was a hole the size of three football fields.

“Well, what do
you
think?” Stephen's voice was careful.

She shrugged. “It sort of made sense.” She looked at him.

He raised one eyebrow. “Does Kempley know that you wear black all the time?”

“Ha ha,” she tried to joke as she turned back to the sink. Her face was burning, and she felt like a fool. For wanting him to believe this, needing him to, maybe so that she could. And for feeling hurt that he didn't, when she knew, she
knew
, that if the accusation hadn't been directed at her, she would have been the one rolling her eyes and making fun of the whole idea.

“Hey.” Stephen touched her shoulder. “Come on, baby. I'm not making fun of you.”

“I know.”

“It just seems kind of extreme, that's all.”

More so than accusing otherwise normal women of making their kids sick
solely
to get attention? she wondered. But she didn't say anything.

S
he couldn't see Stephen, only the shape of him. She knew he was lying on his back because he was snoring. Usually, she nudged him and he'd roll over and grow quiet. Tonight she simply watched him, his arms at his sides, the pale comforter pushed to the foot of the bed and only the sheet covering him.
The way you sleep reveals your true self,
she thought. He was so open. And how different from her, always curled into her own tight ball, clutching the heating pad to her chest for warmth, hoarding it like her secrets. She was selfish. She knew that. Was this why she'd been accused?

Now, in the kitchen, Grace filled a thick mug with boiling water, poured in the envelope of instant cocoa, then carried the mug with both hands to the butcher block. She held it up to her face and blew on the scalding liquid as she stood in the half-darkness, the tiled floor freezing against her bare feet. Soon the sky would begin to lighten. Noah had returned from Michigan late the night before. She hadn't slept, aware of each hour, rehearsing what she would say to him.
I can't see you anymore,
and
It's over,
and
I'm sorry
. Words. Tiny capsules filled with pain. She felt her chest constrict and thought of how a muscle can't contract halfway. To stop an action in its midst is simply to use different muscles. And the heart was no different. Another muscle. Contracting, then letting go. All or nothing.

He would phone her later in the day, she knew, all energy and manic eagerness, wanting to tell her about his Christmas and his mom's cooking and the late-night card games with his brothers, and how he'd “camped” in a sleeping bag on the dining room floor with his nieces and nephews, making “forts” beneath the table with his mother's Christmas linens. His joy would be like a fast-moving river washing over her before she could say what she had to.
I brought you
cinnamon rolls,
he would tell her,
and when do I get to see you, and tell me everything—How's Jack and did Max like the skates and God, did I ask you already—did you answer? When do I get to see you?

From upstairs she heard the staccato buzzer on Max's alarm clock. They'd kept the kids home from school for the past three days, but today they were going back. She and Stephen had met with the school principals and Stephen had talked to the kids last night. If any adults whom they didn't know tried to approach them, they were to go immediately to the principal's office and call either Grace or Stephen.

“Why?”
Max demanded. “Who do you think is going to come to our schools?”

“Hopefully no one,” Stephen said. “But there are some problems your mom and I are taking care of and until we do, we're just being careful.”

Erin had started to cry. “I don't want to go to school.”

“No, no, sweetie,” Grace comforted her. “You love school, and Mrs. Turner is going to take good care of you.”

“Can I still play hockey?” Max had asked.

“
If
you stay with the coach.” Stephen looked at him hard. “I mean this, Max. No riding to games with friends or friends' parents. You stay on the team buses, you come straight home afterwards. If you need a ride, you ask your mother or me.”

“But what if you can't?”

“Either we can or you don't go. It's not negotiable.”

Outside, the January sky grew pink with morning light. Grace scanned the mail Stephen had left out for her, smiling when she saw the manila envelope from Queens College in Charlotte, North Carolina. Kempley. Grace set her mug down and inserted her thumbnail beneath the flap. A book. Arthur Miller's
The Crucible.
A yellow Post-it was stuck to the cover.

 

Grace opened the book to the first page, and began to read. The Reverend Parris is praying at his daughter Betty's bed. A child enters the sickroom to inform the Reverend that the doctor can't find a cure. “
He bid me come and tell you, Reverend Sir, that he cannot discover no medicine for it in his books.”

“Then he must search on.”

“Aye, sir, he have been searching his books since we left you, Sir. But he bid me tell you that you might look to unnatural things for the cause of it.”

Unnatural things. Grace frowned and looked up from the book. The words echoed. She thought of that woman in Missouri she'd read about on the M.A.M.A. site. A sentence from one of the Munchausen's books she'd read flickered through her mind: “When cures cannot be found for a sick child or when the apparent disease does not follow the expected course, physicians must consider Munchausen by Proxy.” Grace dog-eared the page and closed the book. She felt a scratching in her chest as if a tiny animal were trying to get out. Unnatural Things.

 

The phone was ringing when Grace walked in the door after dropping Erin off at school. Heart in her throat, already she was praying,
Please don't let anything be wrong, please let the kids be okay, please, please, please.
She unzipped Jack's coat, yanked off his hat, then left him sitting on the floor in the foyer in his red plastic fireman boots. Her own coat still on, she hopped over her purse to grab the phone before the answering machine picked up. “Hello?” she said breathlessly.

It was Bennett. He'd FedEx'd the report from Child Protective Services. A guaranteed ten o'clock delivery for today.

She sank into one of the kitchen chairs. “Was it what you expected?” she asked, turning to make a silly face at Jack.

He didn't answer right away. And then, “It's more serious than I thought, Grace.”

Her smile froze. She turned towards the window, the bright sedative of sunlight, and leaned her head against the glass. “Are—are the kids in danger?” She bit her lip to keep from crying.

“Don't take them out of school, but I would keep them close for a while.” His voice was gentle. Too gentle, she thought, trying to take deep breaths. Beyond the window, the pale branches of the oak trees stretched like severed nerve endings toward the amputated January sky.

After a moment, Bennett asked, “How's Jack?”

She swallowed hard. “Not great.” She felt her voice fray with fear.

“I'm sorry to hear that.” He paused. “We'll get this straightened out, Grace.”

How?
she wanted to ask, as she slowly hung up.
How can we possibly?

 

Now, she moved her finger down the page like someone just learning to read. Case #12090509—twenty-four pages. An official-looking stamp in the top right corner of the first page: Philadelphia Department of Health and Human Services.

Jack lay on the couch with his silver race car, watching a Blue's Clues video. Grace sat at the table where she could keep an eye on him, the report spread out in front of her. She felt as she had years ago learning to water-ski: each time she'd stay up a little longer—ten seconds, fifteen, half a minute—before plunging into the frigid Lake Erie water. So it was reading the report. She struggled to hold on, to comprehend what exactly it meant.
Department unable to justify further investigation at this time. However, case should remain open
without
contacting family as contact could cause further harm to child, and CPS currently does not have enough basis to remove child from parental custody.
She kept going under at certain words and phrases, feeling as if she were going to drown:
cause further harm, remove child from parental custody
.
Criminal background check,
she read, and
county police notified.
A quote from Jack's neurologist: “extremely vigilant,” he had described Grace. Was this bad? She no longer knew the meanings of basic words.

Mother appears quite angry. Constantly second-guessing medical staff.
The name of whoever had said this was blacked out. Like wartime correspondence.

Mother refuses to consider family counseling.

Mother overly focused on technical/medical aspects of child's illness. Obsessive documentation of child's medical history.

She kept flipping through the report. It included a “Family Needs Assessment,” a “Risk Assessment of Future Abuse.” Two points against Grace for having “unrealistic expectations” of Jack.
Why in God's name would you want to put him through this?
And yet, MSBP was supposedly based on the fact that she
didn't
have expectations,
didn't
want him to get well. Two more points against her because she was female, two more because Jack had special needs. The names of Jack's doctors were included, the dates they'd been contacted: “3/17, 10:55 am: phone call, Dr. M.. 4/21: letter to Dr. M. requesting records.”

Mother always well-groomed,
one of the doctors had said;
extremely conscious of external appearance.
Was this good or bad? She felt as if she were hearing only one half of a conversation or staring at a photograph with the faces of certain people cut out.

At times mother displays inappropriate sense of humor.

She swallowed wrong and coughed. Everything was out of context. Her elbows on the table seemed sharp. She thought of how just this morning, as she walked naked across the bedroom to grab her robe, Stephen told her, “You're starting to get too thin, baby,” and without missing a beat, she joked, “The Munchausen Accusation Diet. I don't think I've ever lost weight over the holidays before.”

Inappropriate.

Or Sunday morning when Jack started howling after Erin accidentally stepped on his foot, and Grace leaned over to Stephen and whispered, “If anyone in the family fakes illness to get attention, it's this one.” Stephen lifted Jack high over head, stopping him mid-bawl, and said, “What are you up to, you little Munchausen?”

It probably was inappropriate, but she—they—
were simply trying to make something terrifying less so.

Mother refers to hospital as “home away from home.”
Grace leaned forward, holding onto herself, more hurt than she thought she could be. Why had Rebecca repeated this? Grace's chest felt tight, her heart siphoning the blood from the rest of her. It didn't matter that the name had been blocked out. She
had
said this to Rebecca last year after the surgery to implant a port into Jack's chest. Less than a day after his discharge, he spiked a fever and had to be readmitted, and Rebecca was teasing Grace about how she couldn't bear to stay away, and maybe the hospital should charge her rent, and yes, Grace had joked that the hospital was her “home away from home.” But in the next breath, she also said, “What's sad is that it's starting to be true. I wish it were a joke.” Why wasn't that in the report? Was Rebecca the one who had called CPS?

And then on page sixteen the word “adultery,” followed by a question mark, girlish handwriting in the margin:
Check if adultery part of Munch profile.

But by now the words were like rain. You're cold and you're soaked, and after a while it doesn't matter that you're wet, you can't feel it anymore. Grace knew her affair with Noah wasn't the sole reason for the accusation—there was too much else that was damning: her apparent love of hospital life, her
inappropriate
sense of humor. She wanted to cry. Did they think, did they really think that Jack's illness was a joke to her?

She tried to imagine what Stephen would think when he saw the word
adultery
, and felt a cold wave of fear wash over her, even though she knew he wouldn't believe it, wouldn't allow himself to even consider it. It wasn't in his nature. It would only make him that much more furious. “Jesus, do these people even have a fucking clue? Like you have time to breathe much less have an affair.” His eyes would be hard and angry, and nothing, if she ended up confessing to him the truth, would allow him to understand or forgive. That wasn't in his nature either. He saw the world in black and white. And she'd long since given up trying to understand why. Perhaps it was connected to his dad's walking out. Perhaps it was connected to his job in finance—numbers were unequivocal. Either a client could pay off a loan or he couldn't. And maybe this was how it should be. Maybe morality was as unequivocal as arithmetic, and maybe there were some things that should never have to be understood. A child's dying. A wife's betrayal.