Several times I’ve had to drive away from Emily’s house (I still think of it that way) with my child’s sobs echoing in my ears. But I know Miles will be fine. He’ll have fun. And the reason I know this is because of the closeness and trust I have felt, over these difficult weeks, with Nicky’s dad. Do you think I would leave my child with a credible suspect in a murder investigation?
Anyhow, there’s been no murder. What keeps destroying the police’s nonexistent case is the absence of a body or any evidence of foul play. First Emily was driving in Pennsylvania; then she wasn’t. There’s no indication that she didn’t wake up one day and decide she’d had enough of motherhood, enough of the fashion industry, of Connecticut, of Sean. Of the whole package. Even Nicky. It’s possible that she took off to start a new life under an assumed name. The cops say it happens all the time.
This wasn’t the friend I thought knew! But if Sean has turned out to be the opposite of what I’d thought, couldn’t Emily as well? It’s crazy-making to find out that you could have been so wrong about someone. It’s hard to know what to feel. Should I be angry at her? At myself? Should I feel betrayed? Tricked? Honestly, I just feel very sad.
To end this post on a less gloomy note, I’m linking to the post in which I talk about my friendship with Emily. I wrote it when I was still calling her E. But by now you know who I mean, even as I begin to think that maybe I never really knew who she was or what I meant to her. Or whether she really was my best friend, after all.
It’s going to make me cry to read this.
But I’m posting it anyway.
Love,
Stephanie
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Stephanie's Blog
(Blog Post Link)
Friends for Life
What is it that keeps us moms from becoming true friends? Do we resent other moms because we always wind up talking about our kids, as if we no longer have our own needs and hopes and desires? Do other mothers make us feel guilty for thinking about anything besides our kids? Or are we too competitive with other moms? How can we be friends with someone who tells us that her nine-month-old is walking when our ten-month-old hasn’t started to crawl?
I won’t lie about how lonely I was, staying home and taking care of my son. Until I had Miles, we lived in the city. I had a job at a woman’s magazine writing copy about new designs in furniture and decor, about household hints and shortcuts, storage tricks, spot removal, that sort of thing. Now that I have a household, I can’t remember one helpful hint.
My husband insisted that the city was no place to raise a child. It took a lot of persuading, but in the end I saw his point. I thought that living in the suburbs—the country, actually—would be fun, and it has been. The minute my husband saw our house, he fell in love with it, though I couldn’t see the potential, at first. But again, he convinced me, and now I love it more than I can say.
I went through a bit of a crazy time right after we moved. I forgot who I was. The only thing I cared about was being a superwife and supermom. I was living a nightmare from the 1950s. I made all my own baby food from scratch. I cooked elaborate dinners for my husband that he was too tired to eat when he got home from work, or else he was too full because he’d been taken to some fancy lunch while I snacked on the leftovers from last night’s dinner. And though I tried to be understanding and patient, we’d bicker.
As soon as my son was old enough, I enrolled him in all sorts of classes and programs. Toddler yoga. Baby dance. Swimming lessons. I was doing it so he would learn and have fun and meet other kids. But I also wanted to meet other moms, make friends, find caring women who were having the same mixed feelings, the same rewards and challenges, that I was.
But I could never get anything going with the Connecticut moms. They all seemed to have closed ranks, circled the wagons, and turned back into the mean girls they’d been in junior high. When I tried to start conversations, they’d look at each other and practically roll their eyes. They’d stare at me just long enough to be polite, then go back to talking to each other.
That’s why I started this blog—to reach out to other women who feel isolated, mothers everywhere dealing with the demands of parenting. Some of you may find it strange that a mom who can’t make friends in the real world would start a blog and give advice and share with friends in the virtual world. But what helped me get past my self-doubt was realizing that I couldn’t be the only mom feeling friendless and alone.
Being a widow makes everything—including motherhood—harder. My husband is gone. He’s the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning, the last thing I think of before I go to bed. Wait—no, not the first thing. There are always a few blissful seconds when I wake up and forget and feel almost okay—and then I notice that his side of the bed is empty.
For months after the accident, I thought I was going to die of grief. And maybe I would have done something stupid—self-harming and irreversible—if I hadn’t had my little boy throwing me the life preserver of his love, keeping me from going under.
My brother was gone too, so I couldn’t rely on him. And that was a whole other kind of sorrow. I became an expert on the different varieties of pain.
My mother had died, not long after my dad. And I didn’t want to go like she did: dead of a broken heart. There was no one I could talk to. My friends in the city had moved on with their own lives, and I sometimes thought they looked down on me for getting married and having a child—for caving in and moving to the suburbs.
Everyone in our town knew about the accident that killed my husband and brother. I would have gained fifty pounds if I’d eaten all the casseroles and sandwich platters my neighbors brought over, all the cakes they left on my doorstep. But after a while, it was as if some kind of rebound effect set in. People began to avoid me, as if tragedy was contagious.
I got through it. Blogging helped a lot, as did the wonderful responses I got from moms all over the country and eventually the world: smart, brave, together women. I even heard from a few widows, and we poured our hearts out online. What did moms do before the internet?
And then, a few months after my son started pre-K, I met E.
It was a drizzly, unseasonably warm Friday afternoon in October. We’d come to pick up the kids at school. I’d forgotten my umbrella and was waiting in the rain—unlike the other moms, who wouldn’t get out of their cars if they thought a cloud might threaten their salon blowouts. E. beckoned me over to where she was standing, under the oak tree where she always waited for her son on Fridays. She had a huge umbrella, more than big enough to keep the two of us dry. It was a very distinctive umbrella, clear plastic over a layer of some kind of liquid in which happy yellow cartoon ducks swam around.
I’d seen her there before. I’d noticed because she always looked more natural and real than a woman you’d expect to be wearing such obviously expensive clothes.
She said her name was E. before she said that she was N.’s mom. Her son was in school with my son; they were friends. So right away we had that in common. The boys had worked that out.
Unlike the other shifty-eyed mothers, she looked straight at me. And I felt that she saw me.
I said, “Maybe I should blog about how we should always remember to bring an umbrella.” I could see that she was interested in the fact that I blogged.
She said, “Take this one. Keep it. It was a one-off. A prototype. My boss had it made by the franchise people, and then he didn’t like it and canceled the order.”
“I couldn’t,” I said. “Especially if it’s the only one like it.”
“Please,” she said. “Take it. Look . . . are you busy this afternoon? Why don’t you come to our place. It’s nearby. The boys can play. I can make them hot chocolate. We could have a glass of wine. My husband won’t be home for a couple of hours.”