We can’t go to Indonesia. Joshua can’t get a passport, obviously. I should have realized this from the beginning—it’s exactly the type of thing Dr. H would have helped me with in the past. Seeing the holes in my logic, my inability to make sense of even simple things. So we’re back in Brooklyn, back in the bubble, figuring out a new plan, laying low, getting things in order to get out of here.
The May Mothers are everywhere. Sometimes I stand at the window, peering out from behind the curtain, trying to get a bit of sunlight on my face, and I see them. A few hours ago it was Yuko, walking on the shady side of the street, a yoga mat under her arm, earbuds in her ears. Then, not twenty minutes later, Colette. She was with a guy I assumed to be Charlie. Big-time writer Charlie. Poppy was strapped to his chest and he and Colette were holding hands, laughing about something, passing an iced coffee back and forth, her arms heavy with flowers from the farmers’ market. The ideal Brooklyn family. So good at making perfect look easy.
What people like them don’t get is what seeing scenes like that does to people like me. To people who don’t have what she does. Joshua and I went for a drive yesterday, and I was looking out the window at a stoplight. I watched this mom in the next car. She was in the front seat, facing forward, her arm reaching into the back seat, holding hands with a little girl strapped into her car seat. It was so simple and beautiful. Little did she know she was breaking my heart. In the city you can feel it, the rhythm of children. The burst of yells and laughter early in the morning, little bodies gathered, running in sprinklers in backyards invisible from the street, arguing over the swings at the playground. Then the lull around noon, when they return home to wash their hands, eat their lunch, and then sleep, quietly, peacefully, slack-jawed and wheezy until they wake a few hours later, springing to life again.
I can’t bear to stay inside for much longer, but nor can I bear the idea of running into one of them on the street, of having to make conversation about how I am, where I’ve been. Having to hear the inevitable question: My god, what happened to Midas?
Oh no. Joshua is up. I must go. He really hates to see me cry.
Chapter Sixteen
Day Nine
To: May Mothers
From: Your friends at The Village
Date: July 13
Subject: Today’s advice
Your baby: Day 60
Let’s talk about . . . sex. Chances are, you’ve been too tired these last few weeks to give the topic much thought. While it’s common to have a low libido after giving birth, there’s a good chance things are beginning to feel back to normal in that department. And it’s important us new moms don’t forget we’re also wives. So, it might be time to break open a bottle of wine, turn on some music, and see what happens. (But remember, ladies: BIRTH CONTROL IS YOUR BFF.)
Francie sits on the hot, rough stoop of a brownstone, sucking on a chocolate-covered pretzel, pressing the soft rise of a blister on her heel, her camera resting on her lap.
It makes so much sense, she thinks, once again.
The way he looked at Winnie during the meetings, whispering in her ear, saving her a seat beside him on his blanket. It was like he was obsessed with her. And where did he go, after disappearing so abruptly from the Jolly Llama? Francie should have been focused on this from the beginning, not getting derailed by false leads. Archie Andersen, who somehow seemed to vanish into thin air. Fake Archie Andersen. The thought of that guy repulsed her—his hands on her body, the stench of his breath. She’s felt disgusted ever since she excused herself from that couch, telling him she had to use the bathroom and then hightailing it out of the bar.
She hadn’t told Nell or Colette she’d met him, or the things he’d said. There was no need to. The guy was a liar. She could tell, the minute she saw him. Maybe he was telling the truth about some of it. Maybe they had hooked up. And so what? Winnie was single, she could do whatever she wanted. Francie had never slept with anyone other than Lowell (the science teacher didn’t count), but she’s aware of how things work in the real world. Especially these days, especially in New York, and most certainly for a woman as beautiful as Winnie. But say those things about Midas? About not wanting her own child?
No.
Francie knew women who didn’t like their own kids. She grew up with one of them. Winnie was nothing like that.
A door slams across the street. She picks up her camera, zooming in on a woman in yoga pants and a tank top skipping down the stairs of No. 584, the address Nell copied from Token’s profile at May Mothers. The woman stops to stretch her hamstrings on the steps and then turns toward the park, breaking into a jog a few buildings down. Francie is growing impatient. She’s been sitting on this stoop for more than an hour, and people are beginning to arrive for appointments at the chiropractor’s office on the ground floor. Lowell’s mother, Barbara, made a hair appointment for noon, and Francie said she’d be back to take the baby long before then. She picks up the camera, promising herself she’ll stay just ten more minutes, scrolling through the photos stored on her camera—the babies from the May Mothers get-together five days earlier she still hasn’t done anything with, the images of Hector Quimby, wearing the light-yellow golf shirt, standing outside Winnie’s building.
Francie closes her eyes, seeing Hector as she watched him from her spot on the bench, his hands clasped behind his back, pacing slowly in front of Winnie’s building. Who was he? According to Patricia Faith, Hector’s body was discovered after his wife called the local police, saying her husband had gone to take care of a few things at the Ross property and hadn’t come home. They had been married for fifty-two years. Ten grandkids. A volunteer driver for Meals on Wheels. He’d been working for the Ross family for nearly thirty years, thought of Winnie like a daughter. The forensic evidence suggests he was killed and then his body dragged to the woods, that it had been doused in gasoline and lit on fire.
Francie stands up, returning the camera to her bag, knowing it’s time to call it a day and go home. It’s too hot to sit here any longer. One good thing about Barbara visiting is that Lowell came home last night with a brand-new air conditioner, after his mother complained about the used one. Francie will go home and turn it on and play with Will for a few hours in the cool apartment. Her stomach rumbles as she trudges down the stairs and turns to walk down the hill back to her apartment, but then she hears something: the door of Token’s building closing once again.
It’s him.
Autumn is in the sling, and he’s putting on a pair of sunglasses, walking down the stairs, turning west toward the park. Francie drapes her bag across her chest and follows him up the hill, trying to ignore the painful rub of the blister, careful to keep a half block behind him. He turns north on Eighth Avenue and walks two blocks, into the Spot. She crosses the street and crouches behind a Volvo station wagon, peeping through the car’s windows. When he takes a seat on a bar stool at the window, Francie lifts her camera and watches through the viewfinder as he pages through a newspaper left behind on the counter and stirs his coffee—the double shot of espresso with a touch of steamed milk that he used to bring with him to every meeting.
He drinks his coffee in three smooth sips, makes a phone call, and then heads toward the door. Francie steps behind another car and holds her phone to her ear, pretending to speak to someone. She turns cautiously, seeing him walking up the hill, and follows from the opposite side of the street, trying to remain out of view behind the parked cars between them. It appears he’s going to make a right, to head away from his apartment, and Francie begins to cross the street. But suddenly he stops and turns around. She’s in the middle of the street, in his line of sight. She pivots and runs back to the sidewalk, but she trips on the curb, trying to protect her camera, feeling the sting on the heels of both hands and a pain in her knee where she hit the pavement.