The Life You Longed For (30 page)

G
race spoke softly: “My son, Jack—he was three, he died of a genetic disease thirty days ago tonight. The state had custody, and I—” She focused on her hands. “I wasn't there until the very end.” Even as she took her turn, awkwardly introducing herself to the six women and four men who comprised the Mother's Against Munchausen Accusations Support Group, Grace wasn't sure why she had come.

Thirty days. One month. She couldn't think of it like that. A month. It seemed too whole, too complete. She thought of how children's ages were often measured in smaller increments—twelve months instead of one year, twenty-four months instead of two years, and she wondered if this came from the time when children often died at a young age and so their parents chose the larger number, the number with more weight—not
two
months but
eight
weeks—as if this could help anchor the child to the earth. Grace measured the time since Jack's death in a similar way. It was incomprehensible that she would
not
mark each day, like one of those white crosses at Normandy. When you saw them all stretched out, row after endless row, the magnitude of the loss was impossible to ignore.

Her days were like those crosses now.

She stared numbly at the worn beige carpet of this living room in some stranger's house. “You think any school or church in the state would let
us
hold a support meeting on their premises?” Martha, the woman who was hosting the group had asked her over the phone when Grace called to find out where the meetings were held. That the location might be a problem hadn't occurred to her, though of course, it made perfect sense. It didn't matter if these women had been falsely accused. Why would
anyone
want to be associated with them?

The mental state of the Munchausen Mom is very much akin to the sociopathic mind-set. The only difference is that instead of killing for financial gain, the Munchausen Mom injures or kills for no real reason at all.

The man seated next to her was talking now, his voice barely audible, his eyes brimming. “My daughter, Lindsay, was taken by CPS two months ago,” he said, “and unless we admit to this thing…” He squeezed the hand of the round-faced woman sitting next to him, who was staring at her lap, twisting a Kleenex into shreds.

Without looking up, she said, “We thought that if we got a legal separation, the state would give Hal custody, but our lawyer thinks they might use that against me.”

“Oh, Candy,” Martha said.

Earlier, Grace had sat in her car a few houses away, trying to force herself to actually get out and walk up the flagstone path to the door of this small modular home, its tiny porch crowded with tricycles and plastic toys. In the side yard was a bright yellow slide and jungle gym, swings that moved ghostlike in the March breeze.

Across the street, a car door had slammed, and a man in a suit exited a black Mercedes, dropping his cell phone on the asphalt, the back breaking off, the battery flying beneath the tires. It was early evening, the sun just sinking below the tree line, bathing everything in a harsh pink light. A woman arrived, wearing running shorts despite the cold, ace bandages around both her knees. A few minutes later, an overweight woman with a run in the back of her pale stockings carried a tinfoil-covered plate of something up the path and handed it to whoever opened the door. Watching them, Grace felt a stab of recognition. The subconscious need to break things, to make the damage in their lives somehow visible: torn stockings, bandaged legs, broken cell phones. Like those indigenous cultures where people literally cut themselves to mark the loss of a child, the idea of remaining whole unbearable.

Thirty days
.

Since Jack died, Grace too had become error-prone and clumsy, some part of her needing, perhaps, this outward proof that the world had been damaged. She shattered a glass while clearing the table, slipped last week getting out of the tub. She found herself tripping over rugs, stubbing her toe, bumping into furniture she had moved effortlessly around for years. Like Alice in Wonderland, she was suddenly too big or too small in this altered world. Nothing fit, nothing was the right size, the right shape, the right distance.

A couple pulled up in a beat-up station wagon with an empty child seat in the back and a “baby on board” sticker in the window. Grace felt her stomach tighten with recognition.

Jack's child seat was still in Grace's car.

Inside the cramped house, Grace immediately noticed the empty IV stand in the corner of the living room. She felt the blood drain from face. But then Martha—it must have been Martha—was walking towards her, hand outstretched. “Grace?” she asked. “I'm so glad you came.” She led Grace into the living room, already jammed with people chatting in groups of twos and threes. A green lawn chair, a white rocking chair that looked as if it belonged in a baby's room, and two mismatched ladder-back chairs were mixed in with the rest of the living room furniture to form a tight circle. On the coffee table were stacks of papers listing Web sites of defense lawyers, names and addresses of congressmen and legislators involved in child abuse laws, the address for the Department of Health and Human Services, sample letters asking for congressional inquiries into child protection agencies. A fan of pastel-colored fact sheets listed
Key Risks of Having Your Child Removed by the State,
and
The Social Worker at Your Door: Ten Hints to Help You Protect Your Children.
Brochures from VOCAL: Victims of Child Abuse Laws, and the National Child Abuse Defense and Resource Center.

Except for Grace and another woman, a young girl with bad skin in ripped jeans and a sweatshirt, the other members already knew one another. The young woman hadn't been formally accused, she said, but her child's doctor had been acting hostile and twice had suggested that she was the one needing help, not her son. Grace thought of John Bartholomew suggesting something similar when she wanted to bring Jack to his clinic in San Diego, of Eric Markind's belief that a child's family
aggravated
his pain.

“You're right to be concerned,” the man who had dropped his cell phone said. He mentioned something about his own child's feeding tube, which the young woman's son also had. The man shook his head. “We hear our son is totally off tube feedings now, which is just more proof to the state that my wife was the one keeping him on it unnecessarily, but ask anyone who saw us try to feed him. It was heartbreaking how much pain he was in. It was at the point where he would just refuse to eat at all.”

Grace wondered where his wife was now and what had happened to his son. It sounded as if they hadn't seen him in a long time. As if he'd read her mind, the man looked at her, his eyes unbearably sad, and said, “My wife decided two weeks ago to just admit that she'd been faking Jake's problems. It was the only way she thought we had a prayer of ever getting him back.”

For a moment, they were silent, the man staring down and twisting his wedding band. Grace's shirt felt plastered to her back despite the cool temperatures outside. The room was too crowded for this many people. For a moment, she felt such an overwhelming sense of despair that it seemed she was drowning, her heart bobbing in her chest like an empty life preserver. After a moment, she said to the man, “I would have done the same thing as your wife, if it meant that I could have been with my son.” She glanced at Martha. “This probably isn't the right thing to be saying, but—”

The woman with the ace bandages on her knees, who was sitting next to Grace, touched her arm. “Don't worry about right or wrong. I read your story in the papers, and…after what you've been through…it's unconscionable.”

A few of the others were nodding, but Grace could barely meet their eyes. She felt shattered inside, the pain unspooling inside her. It had been three weeks since Stephen had left, three weeks since anyone aside from her kids had touched her, three weeks since anyone—including her parents, who were too locked into their own confusion and grief—had spoken to her with such kindness.

She left Martha's with a sheaf of papers and brochures. It was cold now, the sun gone. Down the street, where she had parked, an American flag fluttered from the porch of a single-story house that had obviously just been built, the ground around it still dirt, a huge metal Dumpster at the end of the drive. The night was quiet but for the flapping sound of that cloth against the darkened sky. Such a different night from the frigid gray of the one, not even three months ago, when Stephen came home, his fist bruised, and told her of the accusation. It seemed another life, another woman who had been sitting in bed, laughing almost, at the absurdity that anyone would accuse
her
.

 

“What are you working on?” she asked Max. She was still wearing her coat.

“History.” He didn't look up.

“Well, how about a break? I was thinking of having some ice cream.”

“No thanks.”

Wearily, she sat on his bed, watching him move a highlighter over his history text. Orange light from the lava lamp on his dresser undulated over the walls. His fourteenth birthday was in two weeks. In the fall, he'd start high school.

After a while, she joked, “Hey, I'm getting kind of scared by all this studying,” but it wasn't as much of a joke as she wanted it to be. Ever since Jack had died, this was all he did. And his room was immaculate, his desk was organized, his textbooks neatly lined up in front of him between metal bookends.

He still didn't answer.

“Well. I'll let you be then.” She stood, reaching to tousle his hair as she left the room. At the door, she glanced down and saw in the overflowing trashcan a crumpled paper with a red A+ and “Great report, Max!” scrawled along the margin. “Sweetie?” she asked. “What's this?” She stooped to retrieve it. “Can I see?”

He shrugged. “It's old,” he said by way of explanation.

It was the report on mitochondrial disease that he'd done for his biology class in January. Two months ago. Two months ago Jack had still been home, and they'd taken him and Erin to see the Muppets on Ice. “
My brother Jack has mitochondrial disease
,” she read now. “
This means that he has lots of problems in his major organs that require a lot of energy
.” Six weeks ago, she had finally sent in the Make-A-Wish Foundation request, her New Year's resolution, and the whole family sat around the table one night with the kids' school calendars and Max's sports schedule and tried to settle on a date for the trip. “
But sometimes I think Jack's biggest problem is that a lot of people don't even know what mitochondrial disease is. Even some doctors have never heard of it.
” Grace looked up, tears stinging her eyes, then returned to the paper. “
So what exactly
is
mitochondrial disease
?”

“This is great, Max,” she said when she finished. “Why did you throw it out?”

He glanced at her, then grinned. “Because,” he said, “I
knew
you'd do
that
.”

“But these are good tears,” she protested.

So she still cries at the drop of a hat, huh?

You mean she was like that way back then too?

Max rolled his eyes, then returned to his book.

 

Downstairs, Grace stood in front of the open refrigerator, which was mostly empty. She shopped daily now, as if she lived in a foreign country, buying just what she needed each morning. She'd been cooking again, not because she was hungry, but because there was something reassuring in following a recipe. In not having to think. In completing simple directions, exact measurements.

Now, she pulled a container of Thai noodles and beef from the top shelf and picked out a chunk of beef with her fingers. She'd made it the night before. Stephen had come for dinner.

“This looks fantastic,” he said, spooning some onto his plate. He didn't look at her. He never did. “But you don't have to go to all this trouble.”