Stephanie is as transparent as Sean turns out to be opaque. What is he doing with her? He’s the one I never knew. Now I wonder: Who is this guy who creeps up behind my “friend” as she’s doing the dishes and nuzzles the back of her neck and acts like they’d be having sex on the kitchen counter if the kids weren’t in the next room? How could I not be enraged? Has Sean fallen in love with her? Lost his mind? In my opinion, that would amount to the same thing.
We’d agreed that for six months we’d stay out of touch. By then the interest in our case would have diminished. For six months, I would be dead. A suicide, some people would think. A drunken, pill-addled accident, Sean’s lawyers would insist. And they would prevail.
But our separation wasn’t supposed to be permanent. We weren’t supposed to find someone else. That is a serious departure from our plan, and it changes everything.
One perk of working in the fashion industry is that everyone is about fifteen years old. They pride themselves on knowing how to use burner phones and open fake credit card accounts and set up phony email addresses and get bogus IDs—skills implying that being young and single in New York is the equivalent of being a criminal. A rebel. If they don’t know how to do something illegal, they know someone who knows someone who does, usually in Bushwick.
We got a passport for Nicky. I got a fake passport, for when I would need it. I wore a wig and glasses, changed my appearance for the photo. I would use that look when we traveled. After I had my picture taken, it took me about ten seconds to lose the wig and glasses and go back to my “natural” look. What a relief—to look like myself again.
Sean and I each got a sworn affidavit giving the other permission to leave the country alone with Nicky. I was going be a stranger that Sean met in Europe and remarried after a suitable period of mourning for his wife—for me. And we would live on the insurance money from the accidental death of his first wife. Also me. Strangers would assume that we were an appealing, independently wealthy American expat couple.
I told the kids at work that I was having an affair and needed a fake identity for calling and renting hotel rooms. They loved it that the middle-aged head of publicity and bourgeois suburban supermom was cheating on her hunky Brit husband. They were delighted to help. They swore to keep their mouths shut. I was afraid they would tell, but they didn’t. They liked the secrecy, the romance.
When my death was announced, they were genuinely sad. But they also liked knowing the inside gossip. They liked being privy to the fact that I was having an affair. They assumed my secret romance had something to do with the pills and booze, the suicide or accident. How tragic.
I figured out how to keep hidden. For a while I stayed in our family cabin, on the lake up in northern Michigan. Then I ditched the rental and took my mother’s car. I moved to a house in the Adirondacks that belonged to friends of my parents. I’d gone there as a child. I knew it would be empty. I even knew where the key was. Neither the lake house nor the Adirondack cabin had a TV or internet connection. It was great to go off the grid. People find it hard, but I loved it. I didn’t miss anything about my life—except Nicky.
It wasn’t till later that I began to read Stephanie’s blog and figure out what was going on. What she and Sean were doing. How Nicky was, or how another woman thought he was.
It is putting it mildly to say that I was appalled. It took a while for me to admit: I should have seen it coming.
It was all about Nicky. I couldn’t stay away. I couldn’t not see him. I missed him too much.
For once, I wasn’t lying when I agreed with Stephanie: Motherhood had been a shock. The force of my love for the baby kicked in the first time I held him. I was lucky, I knew. It takes longer for some women. Even now, every time I see film footage of a birth, any birth, tears well in my eyes. And I am not a weeper—or a sentimental person.
Becoming a mother is like getting hit over the head, which I suppose is Stephanie’s idiotic blog boiled down to one absurd sentence.
When I was hiding out, pretending to be dead, I dreamed about Nicky. I thought about him all the time. I wondered what he was doing.
I reached the point at which I felt that I couldn’t live another day without seeing my son. I didn’t know how I’d imagined that I could bear it. It had been insanity to try. Being without Nicky for six months was like being without an arm. Without a heart. I noted that I didn’t feel anything like that about Sean—and that was even before I knew about him and Stephanie.
I stationed myself outside the school yard where the kids played during recess. I made sure Nicky saw me and the teachers didn’t. Just seeing him was pure joy. I waved to him. I put my finger to my lips. The fact that I was alive was our little secret.
I decided to stay in the area. Mainly because I couldn’t stand not to see Nicky.
I registered at the Hospitality Suites motel in Danbury. I was taking a risk, being so near home when I was supposed to be dead. But it was worth it if I could see my son. Besides, I liked taking risks. That was the part I liked best.
There was a chance, a small chance, that I was putting our plan in danger. Except that it was my plan now. That plan was all about Nicky.
I told the clerk that yes, I’d pay an additional fee to his cheapskate extortionist corporation for the use of the internet. I checked in and logged on and started reading Stephanie’s blog: all the posts I’d missed since I left Nicky at her house.
When I read the posts that Stephanie started writing when I didn’t show up to get Nicky, I thought, This is as real as Stephanie is ever going to be. The poor thing was terrified. It was touching to read her pleas to the stressed-out, isolated mothers. As if those overworked women had nothing to do but cruise the streets, searching for the missing friend Stephanie couldn’t even describe. As if they weren’t busy enough changing diapers, making grilled cheese, filling sippy cups with milk.
I was curious to see what Stephanie had to say about my disappearance. Her theories, her analyses of my character and my motives, her laments for our lost friendship. When all that time she was planning to seduce my husband and try to take my place. As if she could.
I will never forgive them.
I never would have predicted that Sean and Stephanie would do this. Now I have to watch them, keep them in my sights until I decide what to do.
During our friendship I read her blog and paid just enough attention to talk about the subjects (motherhood and herself, mostly herself) that she blogged about. But her drivel was nothing I would have chosen to read. The self-delusion, the posing. The madness of seeing your child as the epicenter of the universe.
It was after I read her posts about Sean that I became really enraged. The self-serving, delusional lies! That was my husband! My son with whom she was trying to replace me, whom she wanted to forget me. I’d chosen her because I thought she was someone who could take care of Nicky, not someone who wanted another child. She was like those sad crazy women who steal newborns from the neonatal ward. You want a kid, you take someone else’s. But Stephanie wasn’t that crazy. And the child she was stealing was mine.
*
I like the Hospitality Suites. My room is clean, and the bland beige decor is soothing. I’ve made my peace with the ineradicable stains on the carpet. The sheets and blankets are clean. Nothing smells bad, and everything is where it’s supposed to be. It’s quiet; it feels safe. It’s got none of the downsides of motels. I don’t have to improvise a bathtub stopper. I’ve stayed in worse when I traveled for Dennis Nylon.
I take a lot of baths. I bought halfway decent bath gel and shampoo at Target.