The Good Girl (19 page)

Eve
Before

In the days after Thanksgiving a woman microwaves her three-week-old infant and another slashes her three-year-old’s throat. It’s not fair. Why have these ungrateful women been blessed with children when mine has been taken from me? Have I been that bad of a mother?

The weather on Thanksgiving was like spring: temperatures in the sixties, plenty of sun. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were more of the same, though even as we ate the last bites of leftover mashed potatoes and stuffing, the makings of a typical Chicago winter were in the works. The weathermen warn us for days of the impending snowstorm that’s to arrive Thursday night. The grocery stores have run out of bottled water as people prepare to take shelter in their homes; my God, I think, it’s winter, an annual certainty, not the atomic bomb.

I take advantage of the warm weather to decorate the home. I’m certainly not in the cheery holiday spirit, but I do it nonetheless—to stave off boredom and the dreadful thoughts that fill my mind. To enliven the home, not that James or I will notice, but just in case. Just in case Mia is here for Christmas to enjoy it, the tree and the lights and her aging, childhood stocking with the embroidered angel whose hair is beginning to fall off.

There’s a knock at the door. I start, as I always do, and a thought crosses my mind: Mia?

I’m entangled in white Italian lights, testing them in the electric socket and attempting to unravel twelve months of knots. I’m never quite sure how the knots are able to form inside the plastic bins in the attic, and yet every year, as certain as the unmerciful Chicago winter, they do. Celtic Christmas music spews forth from the stereo: “Carol of the Bells.” I’m still in my pajamas, a striped silk set—a button-front shirt and drawstring pants. It’s approaching ten o’clock and so the pajamas, in my mind, are considered acceptable though my coffee has gone lukewarm, the milk drifting toward sour. The home is a mess: red and green plastic storage bins sprinkled here and there, lids removed and tossed where they won’t be in the way. There are branches of the artificial Christmas tree we’ve assembled every year since James and I rented an apartment in Evanston while he was finishing up his law degree. They’re stacked in piles across the living room. I’ve looked through the boxes of ornaments we’ve collected over the years, everything from Baby’s 1st Christmas to those beaded candy canes the girls made in third grade. But these are the ornaments that rarely make it to the tree, forced to remain in the box and collect dust. I was always insistent upon a lavish tree for others to admire at holiday parties. I hated the chintzy clutter that filled other homes on Christmas, the snowmen and bric-a-brac that people collected over the years.

But this year, I vow, the girls’ ornaments will be the first I hang.

I rise from the floor, leaving the lights behind. I can see Detective Hoffman peering through the beveled glass. I open the door and welcome a gust of cool air that rushes in to greet me.

“Good morning, Mrs. Dennett,” he says, welcoming himself into my home.

“Good morning, Detective.” I run a hand though my uncombed hair.

His eyes peek around the house. “Doing some decorating, I see,” he says.

“Trying to,” I respond, “but the lights are all tangled.”

“Well,” he begins, removing a light jacket and setting it on the floor beside his shoes, “I am an expert at untangling Christmas lights. Do you mind?” he asks and with a sweeping hand I tell him to help himself, grateful that someone is here to finish the burdensome task.

I offer the detective coffee, knowing he will accept because he always does, certain that he takes his with cream and sugar and a lot of it. I rinse out my own cup and refill it, returning to the living room with a mug in each hand. He’s kneeling on the floor, delicately prying the string of lights apart with the tips of his fingers. I set his coffee on a coaster on the end table and sit on the floor to give him a hand. He’s come to talk about Mia. He’s asking about some town in Minnesota: Have I been there, or Mia? I tell him no.

“Why?” I ask and he shrugs.

“Just curious.” He says that he saw some photographs of the town; it looks beautiful. A harbor town about forty miles from the Canadian border.

“Does it have something to do with Mia?” I ask and though he tries to elude the question, he finds he can’t. “What is it?” I persist.

“Just a hunch,” he says, and then admits, “I don’t know anything. But I’m looking into it,” and when my eyes beg desperately for more information, he vows, “You’ll be the first to know.”

“Okay,” I concede after a moment of hesitation, knowing that Detective Hoffman is the only one who cares about my daughter nearly as much as me.

It’s been nearly two months since Gabe Hoffman started showing up unexpectedly at my home. He comes whenever he has the urge: a quick question about Mia, some thought that hit him in the middle of the night. He hates it when I call him
Detective
just as I hate it when he calls me
Mrs. Dennett
and yet we keep up the semblance of formality when, after weeks of discussing the private details of Mia’s life, first names should be routine. He’s a master at the art of small talk and beating around the bush. James isn’t yet convinced that the man is not an idiot. But I think he’s sweet.

He pauses in his work, reaches for the mug of coffee and takes a sip. “They say we’re supposed to get a lot of snow,” he responds, changing the subject. But still, my mind is lost on this harbor town. Grand Marais.

“A foot,” I agree. “Maybe more.”

“It would be nice if we had snow on Christmas.”

“It would,” I say, “but it never happens. Maybe it should be a blessing. With all the travel and errands that we have to do around Christmastime, maybe it’s a good thing it doesn’t snow.”

“I’m sure you’ll have all your shopping done long before Christmas.”

“You think so?” I ask, a bit surprised by the assumption, adding, “I don’t have many people to shop for. Just James and Grace and—” I hesitate “—Mia.”

He pauses and between us a moment of silence passes in respect for Mia. It could be uncomfortable and yet it’s happened nearly a million times in the past few months, anytime her name is so much as mentioned. “You don’t seem like a procrastinator,” the detective says after a moment.

I laugh. “I have too much time on my hands to procrastinate,” I say and it’s true. With James at work all day, what else do I have to do besides shop for holiday gifts?

“Have you always been a homemaker?” he asks then and, sitting up straighter, uncomfortable, I have to wonder, how did we get from Christmas décor and the weather to this? I hate the word
homemaker
. It’s very 1950s and outdated. It has a negative connotation now, something that it didn’t necessarily have fifty-some years ago.

“And by homemaker you mean?” I ask, adding, “We have a cleaning lady, you know. And I cook, sometimes, but usually James is late and I end up eating by myself. So I don’t think you can really say I
make
the home. If you mean have I always been
unemployed—
”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” he interrupts. He looks embarrassed, sitting beside me on the floor, prying the lights apart. He is making significant headway, much better than me. A strand of lights lies nearly untangled before him and as he leans over to test them in the socket, I’m astonished that they all work.

“Bravo,” I say, and then a lie: “I’m not offended.” I pat his hand, which is something I’ve never done before, any sort of gesture that intruded upon our three feet of physical space.

“I worked in interior design for a while,” I say.

He eyes the room, taking in the details. I did decorate our home myself, one of the few things I’m proud of, my job as a mother falling short. It was something that made me feel accomplished, something I hadn’t experienced in a long, long time, since before the girls were born and my life became equated with changing soaked diapers and wiping tossed mashed potatoes off my hardwood floors.

“You didn’t like it?” Detective Hoffman asks.

“Oh, no. I loved it.”

“What happened? If you don’t mind me prying...” I think to myself: he has a handsome smile. It’s sweet, juvenile.

“Children happened, Detective,” I say casually. “They change everything.”

“Did you always want kids?”

“I guess so. I dreamed of children since I was a child—it’s something every woman thinks about.”

“Is motherhood a calling, as they say? Something a woman is instinctively programmed to do?”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t ecstatic when I found out I was carrying Grace. I loved being pregnant, feeling her move inside me.” He blushes, embarrassed with this sudden personal revelation.

“When she was born, it was a wake-up call. I had dreamed of rocking my child to sleep, soothing her with the sound of my voice. What I faced was sleepless nights, utter delirium from lack of sleep, intense crying that couldn’t be soothed by anything. There were food fights and temper tantrums and for years I didn’t have the time to file my own nails or wear makeup. James stayed at the office late and when he did come home, he wanted little to do with Grace anyway—he wiped his hands of any child-rearing. That was my job—the all-day, all-night, exhausting, thankless job, and at the end of the day he always seemed confused when I didn’t have time to pick up his dry cleaning or fold a load of laundry.”

There’s silence. This time, uncomfortable silence. I’ve said too much, been too candid. I stand from my perch, begin poking Christmas-tree branches into their place on the center pole. The detective attempts to ignore my admission, laying the finished strands of lights in parallel rows. There’s more than enough to decorate the tree and so he asks if I’d like a hand and I say sure.

We’re nearly halfway finished with the tree when he says to me, “But then you had Mia. You must have got the knack of motherhood somewhere along the way.”

I know he means well, a compliment, but I’m struck by the fact that what he’s taken from my earlier admission was not that motherhood is a tough job, but that I didn’t have what it took to be a good mother.

“We tried for years to conceive Grace. We nearly gave up. Afterwards, well, I guess we were naive. We thought Grace was our miracle baby. Certainly it wouldn’t happen again. And so we weren’t cautious with Mia. And then, one day it happened—the morning sickness, the fatigue. I knew right away that I was pregnant. I didn’t tell James for days. I wasn’t sure how he’d react.”

“How did he react?”

I take the next branch from the detective’s hand, thrust it into the tree. “Denial, I suppose. He thought I was wrong, that I misread the signs.”

“He didn’t want another child?”

“I don’t think he wanted the first one,” I admit.

Gabe Hoffman stands before me in a camel-hair blazer that I’m certain cost him an arm and a leg. He wears a sweater beneath that and a dress shirt beneath that and it’s beyond me how he’s not sweating. “You’re very formal today,” I say, standing before the Christmas tree, sporting my silk pajamas. I can taste morning breath on my tongue. In that moment, the sunlight pouring in the living room windows and obscuring my view, he looks chic and suave.

“Court. This afternoon” is all he manages to say and then we silently stare.

“I love my daughter,” I say to the detective.

“I know you do,” he responds. “And your husband? Does he love her, too?”

I’m overcome by the brashness. But what should offend and turn me away, somehow pulls me closer. I’m fascinated by this no-nonsense Gabe Hoffman, one who doesn’t beat around the bush.

He stares and my eyes drop to the ground. “James loves James,” I admit. On the far wall is a framed photograph: James and me on our wedding day. We were married in an old cathedral in the city. James’s parents covered the extravagant cost, though according to tradition, it should have been my father who footed the bill. The Dennetts wouldn’t have it. Not because they were trying to be nice; rather, they believed James and my wedding might be chintzy otherwise, a humiliation in front of their affluent friends.

“This just isn’t the life I envisioned when I was a child.” I let the Christmas tree branches drop to the ground. “Who am I kidding? We’ll have no Christmas this year. James will maintain he has to work, though I’m certain work is not what he’ll be doing, and Grace will be with the parents of this man she’s apparently begun to date, though we have yet to meet. We’ll have a meal, James and me, Christmas day, as we do many other days of the year, and it will be as mundane as it can possibly be. We’ll sit in silence and choke down a meal so we can retire to separate rooms for the night. I’ll call my parents but James will encourage me to
hurry up
because of the cost of the international call. It doesn’t matter anyway,” I conclude. “All they’d want to know about was Mia, and I’d be reminded as I am every waking minute of every single day...” I try to catch my breath. I hold up a hand: enough. I shake my head, turn my back to the man who is staring with such pity in his eyes, I’m ashamed. I can’t go on. I can’t finish.

I feel my heart race. My flesh is clammy; my arms begin to perspire. I can’t breathe. There’s an overwhelming need to scream.

Is this what a panic attack feels like?

But as Detective Hoffman’s arms close around me, every bit of it fades. His arms wrap around me from behind, and my heart rhythm slows to a steady jog. His chin rests on the top of my head, and my breath comes back to me, oxygen filling my lungs.

He doesn’t say that it’s going to be okay, because maybe it’s not.

He doesn’t promise to find Mia, because maybe he won’t.

But he holds me so tightly that for a moment, the emotions are at bay. The sadness and fear, the regret and the loathing. He bottles them up inside his arms so that for a split second I don’t have to be the one carrying the weight of them. For this moment, the burden is his.

I turn to him and bury my face against his chest. His arms hesitate, and then they wrap around my silk pajamas. He smells of shaving cream.

I find my feet rising to my tiptoes and my arms reaching up to pull his face to me.