The School for Good Mothers(9)

She turns on her side and faces the window. She lifts a hand to her mouth, then stops. She looks up at the blinking red light. Is she giving them enough? Is she sorry enough? Afraid enough? In her twenties, she had a therapist who made her list her fears, a tedious process that only revealed that her fears were random and boundless. Whoever is watching now should know that she’s afraid of forests and large bodies of water, stems and seaweed. Long-distance swimmers, people who know how to breathe underwater generally. She’s afraid of people who know how to dance. She’s afraid of nudists and Scandinavian furnishings. Television shows that begin with a dead girl. Too much sunlight and too little. Once, she was afraid of the baby growing inside her, afraid that it might stop growing, afraid that the dead baby would have to be suctioned out, that if this happened and she didn’t want to try again, Gust might leave her. She was afraid that she might succumb to her second thoughts, take herself to a clinic, claim that the bleeding happened naturally.

Tonight she’s afraid of the cameras, the social worker, the judge, the waiting. What Gust and Susanna might be telling people. The daughter who might love her less already. How devastated her parents will be when they find out.

In her head, she repeats the new fears, trying to leach the words of meaning. Her heart is beating too fast. Her back is coated with cold sweat. Perhaps, instead of being monitored, a bad mother should be thrown into a ravine.



* * *



Frida discovered the photos last year. It was early May, the middle of the night, insomnia striking again. She went to check the time, grabbed Gust’s phone from the nightstand. There was a text sent just after 3:00 a.m. Come over tomorrow.

She found the girl in an album marked “Work.” There was Susanna in a sun-filled living room, holding a meringue pie. Susanna smashing the pie onto Gust’s crotch. Susanna licking the pie off his body. The photos were taken that February, when Frida was nine months pregnant. She didn’t understand how Gust had time to meet this girl, why he’d pursued her, but there were late nights at the office and weekends with friends, and she was on bed rest and trying not to be the kind of wife who dug her nails into his sleeve.

She sat in the kitchen for hours, studying Susanna’s naughty grin, her messy face, Gust’s penis in her hands, her little wet mouth. The girl had pre-Raphaelite coloring and a pale, freckled body with heavy breasts and boyish hips. Her arms and legs were finely muscled, her collarbones and ribs protruded. She thought Gust hated bony women. She thought he loved her pregnant body.

She didn’t wake him or yell, just waited until sunrise, then took a selfie, however awful she looked, and texted it to the girl.

That morning, after nursing Harriet and settling her back into her crib, Frida crawled on top of Gust and rubbed her hips against him until he became hard. They’d only had sex twice since the doctor cleared her for intercourse, each time shockingly painful. She hoped he used condoms with the girl, that the girl was fickle. Maybe she wasn’t deterred by wedding rings or infants, but the girl would surely tire of him. Frida had seen this happen with friends in New York who dated girls in their twenties. There would be a passionate affair, rekindled vigor, a sudden engagement followed by the girl deciding to flee to the Galápagos Islands. Adventure travel was often the excuse, as were spiritual awakenings.

After they made love, she told him, “Get rid of her.”

He sobbed and apologized, and for a few weeks, it seemed as if they could save their marriage. But he refused to give her up. He claimed to be in love.

“I have to follow my heart,” he said. He began talking about co-parenting before Frida was ready to concede.

He said, “I still love you. I’ll always love you. We’ll always be a family.”

Frida came to understand that Susanna was the barnacle and Gust was the tall ship, though she never thought Susanna would win, not when Frida had the baby. If only she’d had the chance to prove herself as a mother, she likes to think. Harriet had just started smiling, was only sleeping for three-hour stretches. Frida’s days were spent covered in spit-up and drool, rushing to clean the house or cook or do laundry between rounds of nursing and diaper changes. She wasn’t done losing the baby weight. The wound on her belly still felt fresh.

She assumed that Susanna was feral, might have let Gust come on her face. Might have offered him anal. Frida said no to the face and no to anal, though she regrets it now. The thought that she should have opened her ass for Gust preoccupies her, as do all the things she should have done to make him stay.

If she’d been healthier. Easier to live with. If she’d stayed on Zoloft, hadn’t relapsed. If he hadn’t experienced her hysterical crying spells, her anxiety spirals. If she’d never shouted at him. But nothing was 100 percent safe, her doctor said. Did Frida really want to take that risk? Her OB warned her about links between maternal antidepressant use and adolescent depression in children, links with autism. The baby might be jittery. The baby might have trouble nursing. The baby might have a low birth weight, a lower Apgar score.

Gust was so proud of her for going off medication. He seemed to respect her more. “Our baby should know the real you,” he said.

Her need for antidepressants always made her parents feel like they’d failed her. She doesn’t talk about it with them. Even now, she hasn’t asked her doctor for a new prescription, hasn’t tried to find a psychiatrist or therapist, doesn’t want anyone to know how badly the house of her mind functions on its own.