The Perfect Mother (17 page)

S
he called Mark as soon as she got back to her apartment. It was early morning in Philadelphia and he was still groggy but was jolted awake by her urgent tone. She told him, despondently, what had happened and begged him to come right away. She needed him. She had failed Emma, and now Emma wouldn’t speak to her. He was their only hope.

He promised to clean up a few things, make some necessary arrangements, and come by the end of the week. He tried to console her, but she didn’t think he sounded completely sincere. He wanted to put Lily and Eric on the phone to say hello, but it was clear that she wasn’t up to it. Once again, he urged her to come home, at least for a visit, to help their two younger children and to derive some comfort and sustenance from the normalcy of their lives and their eager love for their missing mother. She would, she said, very soon, and she’d call them later when she had regained some equanimity. She was convinced, she said, that although they missed her it was good for them to see that when one of them was in trouble, she was there for her and would retain that commitment no matter what happened for however long it took. They would know that they too would receive that kind of dedication if anything bad happened to them, and in the long run, that would make them feel secure. His voice sounded skeptical—she remembered sadly how in the past her word on child-rearing psychology was taken without question, as if she were the acknowledged expert—but after a small pause, he said he understood. Still, he reminded her again to call them later. There was a slight uncomfortable silence and then, repeating that he would be there in a few days and mechanically urging her to hang on until then, he signed off.

When she hung up, she felt relieved that he was coming, but the churning anxiety didn’t abate and even seemed to increase, now augmented by worry and guilt about her other children as well as the awkwardness between her and Mark. His response was dutiful, she acknowledged, but not loving. Mark used to always be able to calm her, she thought. Now she was alone.

She hung up by holding the phone’s disconnect button down with her finger, and without pausing long enough to make a decision, she punched in Roberto’s cell phone number. He picked up on the first ring and, having seen that the call came from her, started talking in an uncharacteristically exuberant voice before saying hello.

“Jennifer,” he said. “I was just going to call you. I have some news for you that I think will help us.”

She could hear his excitement and felt a slight smile begin to cross her lips in spite of herself. She took a deep breath and exhaled. “I could use some good news. Can you tell me on the phone?”

He laughed. “How suspicious you are becoming. And yes, I can, but I won’t. I think this is something I will show as well as tell. I’m on my way back. I should be there by around nine. Meet me for dinner?”

She agreed, and he said he’d pick her up at her apartment. She took her time getting ready, choosing a dress that she knew flattered her, fixing her hair and her makeup. She told herself she just needed to feel attractive again, to think of herself as an independent person and not just an unhappy mother. But the truth was deeper. Her guilt was turning to anger. She was attracted to Roberto. He was closer to her now than anyone else in her life. But she hadn’t acted on it for many reasons—her attachment to Mark, for one thing; her sense of propriety, for another; but especially because it would complicate Emma’s case and her ability to help her. But Emma had become so hard, so estranged from her, that when she saw a picture that looked suspicious—that might, if there had been enough goodwill, have caused her simply to ask for an explanation—she leapt immediately to the most damning conclusion. It felt so unfair, so unloving, so opposite of what Jennifer had been trying to do in support of her daughter, which was to reject any evidence that differed from Emma’s story, to stick by her at all costs. Part of her thought she might as well have done what Emma had accused her of, since Emma believed it anyway. But that thought, born of anger and hurt, wasn’t long lasting. She knew that would be the worst thing she could do right now.

She was waiting downstairs when Roberto arrived, and he noticed immediately the care she had taken with her appearance. He also noticed the slowness of her step as they walked toward the taxi stand, and the sadness in her eyes. He didn’t comment until they got to the restaurant, but once they had been ushered to their table and ordered drinks (he a Scotch, she a vodka tonic), he gave her an opportunity to tell him what was wrong.

“I have some good news for you,” he said. “But perhaps before I give it to you, you would like to tell me why you are so sad.”

She looked down, refusing to meet his eyes. “Maybe not. Maybe it would be better if you told me the good news. Maybe it will cheer me up.”

He took a swig of his drink. “Maybe,” he said. “I will if you want me to. But I think you would be happier if you told me what has happened.”

She so yearned for a sympathetic ear. “It’s Emma,” she blurted. “I saw her today. I visited her in prison. We had an awful confrontation. I lost my temper and behaved terribly and she left crying. We both left crying, actually.” She looked up now and saw that Roberto looked genuinely worried and upset. This kindness, this caring, brought tears again to her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed, wiping them away with her hand and reaching for the napkin to blot her cheeks. The tears had made thin black lines under her eyes where her mascara had run.

He reached out and put his hand on hers, but she nervously jerked her hand back, looking around to see if anyone had noticed. Once the accusation had been made, every gesture, even innocent ones of friendship or compassion, seemed wrong.

“I’m sorry,” she said when she saw his hurt expression.

He nodded sadly. “Did Emma see the photo in the paper today?”

Jennifer told him what had happened, how their conversation had deteriorated, what each had said. He told her that he was sure Emma had many regrets too, that she had spoken in anger and frustration just as Jennifer had, and hadn’t said what she really felt, only what she knew would hurt. But Jennifer thought differently. She started to try to explain, but it was hard to talk without breaking down and she didn’t know how deep she should go, how personal.

“I think that I realized maybe for the first time that Emma is not just acting strangely because of this situation but that she isn’t, maybe never was, what I had thought,” she said. She gave a rueful smile. “Of course, I suppose that’s obvious, but I mean I think she is damaged in some way, and if that’s true, I have to take some of the responsibility for it.”

He tried to contradict her, but she couldn’t stop. She felt something well up inside her, words and feelings that needed to spill out because there was simply no room for them anymore. He tried again to say something, but she interrupted him and continued to talk, slowly and softly, not looking at him.

“It’s very hard to admit, to accept. I mean, you know what they say about facing the fact that you have a deadly disease? They say this back home; I don’t know if they say it here. They say it happens in stages. First, there’s denial, then anger, and finally acceptance. I think it’s meant to be a universal reaction. Well, I’ve been experiencing the same thing since I got here in my reaction to Emma. Except that in the case of recognizing a serious flaw in your child, something else enters in. Somewhere after anger and before real acceptance, you experience guilt.”

Roberto interrupted forcefully. “You have nothing to feel guilty about, Jennifer. Nothing that happened here is your fault.”

She kept talking, as if to herself, without acknowledging his interruption. “The thing is, before long, you realize that you’re not even just worried about your child. You’re worried about yourself.”

He looked puzzled. She put her hand on her chest and rubbed it lightly with her fingers as she spoke. “There’s this terrible emptiness where your pride used to be. There’s this pathetic realization that you failed, that you made some terrible mistake that caused this.”

Once again he tried to interrupt but she stopped him. “Please,” she said, “I need to say this.” He let her continue.

“And then you feel a second wave of guilt, this time because you are turning your child’s crisis into a story about yourself.” She paused. “Like I’m doing right now,” she said with a self-effacing shrug.

He shook his head in disagreement but she ignored it.

“And you worry that maybe that’s what you always did and that’s why she’s so messed up. I mean, I used to think that the love you have for your children is the one pure unselfish love there is. But now I’m not sure. Maybe it’s like everything else. Maybe it’s also about your own self-image and maybe the anger you feel when you discover how messed up your daughter is comes from the fact that she’s ruined your perfect image of yourself. That’s what Emma thinks. And I think there’s some truth to it. And it’s so, so hard to overcome that and go on.” She was talking louder now and trying unsuccessfully not to cry.

He got up and moved to the banquette so he could sit next to her.

They both noticed that others in the restaurant were looking at them.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I am embarrassing both of us.”

He assured her it wasn’t an embarrassment. “Although perhaps you’d better stop. That muscular man behind us thinks I have hurt you and has been giving me threatening looks.” She smiled through her tears, wiped them away yet again, and sniffled. He handed her a white handkerchief from his pocket.

“Thank you,” she said, accepting it. “I haven’t been given a hankie to wipe my tears since my dad did it when I was a little girl.” She returned the handkerchief and he used it to wipe a smudge off her cheek before putting it away.

“Now listen, Jennifer,” he began. “I have heard you. I am going to talk now and you are going to give me the same courtesy, de acuerdo?”

“Sí,” she said. “De acuerdo.”

“You are much too hard on yourself. The situation isn’t as black-and-white as you are making it. You can’t accept all the responsibility for everything your daughter does or thinks or becomes. Your children can get into trouble without it having anything to do with you. I have seen this many times in my work. It’s even overly self-important to think it all comes down to mistakes you made. There are many influences on children, especially after they go off and make friends or take lovers you don’t even know.”

“But why do they take those lovers?” she began, but now it was his turn to barrel on without letting her interrupt.

“In a minute, okay? I want to say something else about all these accusations you’ve hurled at yourself. Of course you were proud and of course you feel terrible that the daughter you thought you knew so well has disappointed you in such a major way, but wanting your children to do well in life, to succeed, to excel, doesn’t mean you are trying to live through them or are pushing them for your own self-interest. It’s what we all want for our children. We’d be poor parents if we didn’t want the best for them.”

She sighed. She thought about what had happened to his daughter and felt sorry for him and ashamed that she was acting as if her crisis was more important. He hadn’t had the chance to even try to be a good parent. Was that worse or better?

“I don’t know, Roberto. What in the end is the best for them? Maybe I should have just wanted her to be happy.”

He leaned forward, rolling his eyes in an exasperated gesture. “Sí, claro. You wanted her to be successful
because
you wanted her to be happy.”

She took a sip of wine. “Yeah. That’s what I told myself. It didn’t work out that way. You know, I’ve been thinking about the mothers I know who I had judged to be cold, or neglectful, or overly strict with their children, and you know what? Their children seem to be doing better. Certainly none of them are in jail suspected of being involved in a murder.”

“That is an accident of circumstance.”

“They even seem to like their mothers more,” she mused. Neither spoke for a few seconds. Jennifer finally broke the silence.

“If I’m honest, Roberto, I have to admit that Emma doesn’t seem to like me very much.”

Once again, he started to object but she cut him off.

“No, it’s true. And it’s weird. I have lots of friends, you know, and they all seem to like me a lot. That’s even true of my kids’ friends. I’m their favorite. In fact, I’ve never even known anyone who didn’t like me. I guess acceptance has been important to me and I’ve always tried to be liked.” She uttered a single syllable of self-deprecating laughter. “But here it is; there’s no denying it—the cringe when I try to hug her, the complaints about my behavior, the criticism, the coldness, the holding back, the lies, the refusal to share either the facts or her feelings about what is happening to her, the lack of trust of me, her mother, who has loved her so much for so long.” Once again her eyes filled with tears. “I’m selfish, I’m pushy, I’m too optimistic, or I’m overly dramatic, or I’m too blind, or I’m naive or I see only what I want to see. . . .” She stopped to catch her breath. “It’s not only her. My husband actually doesn’t seem to like me very much either, come to think of it.” She laughed through her tears at that last statement and wiped her eyes one last time. They were red and puffy, but the flood, finally, had ebbed.

Roberto placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her toward him.

“I like you,” he said.

I
t was late when they left the restaurant, but the streets were, as usual, crowded with people, and Jennifer could hear their chatter and laughter as they walked past. She noticed too that the outdoor tables still had many patrons around them, although the crowd was thinner than when they had arrived. It was a beautiful night. The heat had subsided, eased by a soft breeze that brought with it that familiar sweet scent of jasmine that soothed Jennifer’s raw nerves. It was hard to believe this country, and even more, this beautiful city, was in the throes of a huge economic crisis. She knew it was true—she read about it daily—but looking at the number of people in the restaurants and the seemingly festive atmosphere on the streets, she wondered if it was as deep as had been reported. She mentioned this to Roberto, but he told her she was mistaken. She was in a major tourist center, he said. Many of the people she saw were just there for a few days or weeks. She didn’t see the suffering, but he assured her it was there. One day, when all this trouble with Emma was over, he said, he would take her to some of the villages and show her a part of Spain she didn’t know. She sighed and said that when all this was over, she wanted to leave and never come back.

He stopped short. “Ah, Jennifer, don’t blame Spain for this.”

She shook her head. “I don’t. It’s not that. It’s just that I will always associate the place with what happened here. I would rather that you let me show you around Pennsylvania—we could go to New York too. Have you ever been?”

“Yes. But not with you. I would enjoy that.”

They continued in silence. She was glad they were walking and that, for now, they weren’t talking. She didn’t know where they were going, but Roberto seemed to have a destination in mind and she followed him, grateful to leave the decision in his hands.

They passed a bench on which a discarded copy of the day’s tabloid caught her eye.

“I do hate the Spanish press,” she said. “They have tried their best to destroy Emma’s reputation, to treat her as if she were a degenerate and as if that is typical of American students. And now they have begun to attack me as well. Not you, of course. I’m the femme fatale who dared to give you a friendly kiss in public and had to pay for it.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.

He didn’t answer for a while. “Have you seen the American tabloids recently?” he asked softly.

“No. Mark doesn’t send them. I think he doesn’t want to upset me.”

They turned off the street they were on, cut through a cobblestone alleyway, and emerged onto a wider avenue that led them to a car park.

“I have my car here,” he said. “Let’s take a ride.”

She followed him down the ramp to a Honda sedan. She got in, pleased he had not suggested he’d take her home. She didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts just yet.

“Well, I’ve seen some of them,” he said as he pulled out of the garage.

“Seen what?”

“Your American tabloids.”

“They’re not mine, Roberto. What do they say?”

“They defend Emma by attacking Spain, making this a case of national hostility instead of a straightforward crime investigation. They use anything they can find. They are bringing up the Spanish Inquisition, if you can believe it. They imply Emma is being held and punished because of anti-Semitism. They even suggest that you are living in a Jewish ghetto, forgetting to mention that it hasn’t been used that way for over five hundred years.

Jennifer laughed, dumbfounded.

“It isn’t a joke, Jennifer.”

“But it’s ridiculous. Surely no one believes it.”

“No one sophisticated does. But it creates an atmosphere that is very bad for my country. I think your public-relations company thinks that the best way to defend Emma is to defame us.”

This line of conversation was so absurd that Jennifer hadn’t been taking it seriously, but now she wondered if what he said was true. She shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t think it could be them,” she said. “But I will find out, and if it is, I will stop it, I promise. It’s dishonest and stupid and it won’t help Emma anyway. Maybe it will even hurt her.”

“Would you stop it even if you thought it would help Emma?” He asked this very gravely.

“Yes,” she said without stopping to consider her answer. “Of course.”

She looked out the window. They were on a highway, passing modern apartment blocks and office buildings, leaving the city center. She noticed that many of the apartments were dark. It was 11:00
P.M
.

“It looks like a lot of people in Spain go to bed at a normal time after all,” she said.

He laughed. “Normal for Americans, you mean? But no. Those apartments are dark because no one lives in them. You are looking at the main reason for the economic crisis in Spain: too much construction. We borrowed money and built and built and now there are not enough people to live in these new apartments and the banks cannot collect the money they lent and the whole system is falling apart.”

She considered this. “We did the same thing in the States.”

“Yes. But not as much. You are beginning to emerge from it.”

She settled back in the seat and looked out the window at the night and the glare of headlights as the cars whizzed by.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To my place.”

She didn’t ask why because she thought she knew and she didn’t trust herself to discuss it.

When they arrived, she followed him nervously to the door of his apartment building, watched him punch in a security code, and joined him in the small elevator, which took them to the fourth floor. He opened the door to his apartment and was greeted by a very excited little schnauzer, who danced in circles of joy at his return. He flicked on the lights and led Jennifer into the living room, which was beautifully appointed, as she would have guessed, with handmade rugs and modern but comfortable furniture. He excused himself and she wandered around the room, noticing that he had several collections displayed in glass or in carved wooden boxes. She found a collection of wristwatches in one box and pens in another. The most curious was a glass table with a shelf under it upon which were crowded a dozen old-fashioned beaded evening bags. He came back into the room as she was looking at them and stood next to her. “These were my wife’s,” he said. “I somehow couldn’t bear to get rid of them.”

She turned to him. “Did you bring me here to show me the surprise you found?” she asked.

He breathed deeply and walked over to a cabinet, opening it and retrieving an album from the bottom shelf.

“No. I think that can wait one more day. I brought you here for a more selfish reason. I wanted to show you something else.” He sat on the couch and patted it for her to sit next to him, which she did. He opened the album, touching the pages gingerly, and came to one of himself, several years younger, pushing a swing for a little girl who looked to be about four years old. Jennifer knew at once who it was, of course.

“Your daughter?” she asked softly.

“Sí,” he said a bit crisply. “I wanted you to see her.”

She didn’t know what to say. “She’s beautiful,” she murmured, feeling it was a lame response.

“Have you spoken to your other children recently?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I need to call them.”

“Why not call now? Just to say hello. To remind them you are thinking about them.”

“They know that.”

“Call them anyway.” He handed her a cordless phone and walked out of the room. She punched in her home number. After three rings, Lily picked up.

“Hi, darling. It’s Mom. How are you?”

“Mom? Oh, Mom, I miss you so much. I was waiting for you to call. How is Emma? When are you coming home?”

Jennifer felt a pang of longing for her home and children, a reminder of everything she had forced herself to put aside during her obsession with Emma’s case. But she also felt a renewal of her determination to rescue not just Emma but their family, to return it to what it had been.

“I’ll come home soon, darling. Please hang on a little longer.”

“But when, Mom?” It sounded like a whine. “We need you too.”

“I’ll come home when I can bring Emma home with me,” Jennifer said, cutting off the conversation too late to avoid hearing the hurt in Lily’s voice. She forced herself to be strong. “Is Eric there?”

“He’s at a playdate. I’ll tell him you called. He misses you a lot.”

“I miss him too. And I miss you. I love you.”

She hung up just as Roberto was coming back to the room. “I think I should get home now,” she said, looking up.

“Of course.” He headed for the door but turned to face her before he opened it. “You see, Jennifer, you have many things to worry about and many people who need you. Not just Emma. Maybe it would be good to remember that.”

“I do remember it,” she snapped, then, hearing her own tone, repented. “Thank you for showing me the picture of your Isabel,” she said. “I shouldn’t be crying on your shoulder when you have so much trouble in your own life.”

“It helps me. It reminds me that I’m not the only one who has problems.” He stopped and opened the door, then turned back again. “Or remorse, or confusion, or guilt either, for that matter.”

She felt her heart swell with gratitude. “You’re very kind, Roberto. Thank you.”