The school secretary wrung her hands. Mrs. Lipmann made a point of having an “open door” policy for school parents and was flexible about people dropping in without an appointment. The secretary had no experience with a situation like this. “Is it possible you could come back another time?” she said pleadingly to Renata.
“Not really,” said Renata. “Anyway, I assume we’re all here to discuss the same topic, aren’t we?”
Mrs. Lipmann hurried out from behind her desk. “Mrs. Klein, I really think it would be better—”
“This is fortuitous, in fact!” Renata strode past the secretary and straight into the office, followed by a pale, stocky, ginger-haired man in a suit and tie, who was presumably Geoff. Jane hadn’t met him before. Most of the fathers were still strangers to her.
Jane got to her feet and held her arms protectively across her body, her hands clutching at her clothes as if they were about to be ripped off. The Kleins were about to expose her and lay her ugly, shameful secrets bare for all the other parents to see. Ziggy wasn’t the result of nice, normal, loving sex. He was the result of the shameful actions of a young, silly, fat, ugly girl.
Ziggy was not right, and he was not right because Jane had let that man be his father. She knew it was illogical, because Ziggy wouldn’t otherwise exist, but it felt logical, because Ziggy was always going to be her son, of course he was, how could she not be his mother? But he was meant to be born later, when Jane had found him a proper daddy and a proper life. If she’d done everything properly he wouldn’t be marked by this terrible genetic stain. He wouldn’t be behaving this way.
She thought of the first time she’d seen him. He was so upset to be born, screaming with his whole body, tiny limbs flailing as if he were falling, and her first thought was, I’m so sorry, little baby. I’m so sorry for putting you through this. The exquisitely painful feeling that flooded her body reminded her of grief—even though she would have called it “joy,” it felt the same. She had thought the raging torrent of her love for this funny-looking, little red-faced creature would surely wash away the dirty little memory of that night. But the memory stayed, clinging to the walls of her mind like a slimy black leech.
“You need to get that son of yours under control.” Renata stepped directly in front of Jane. Her finger stabbed at the air near Jane’s chest. Her eyes were bloodshot behind her glasses. Her anger was so palpable and righteous in the face of Jane’s doubts.
“Renata,” remonstrated Geoff. He held out a hand to Jane. “Geoff Klein. Please excuse Renata. She’s very upset.”
Jane shook his hand. “Jane Chapman.”
“All right, well perhaps then, if we are all here together, perhaps we could have a constructive chat,” said Mrs. Lipmann with a tinkle of nerves in her cut-glass voice. “Can I offer anyone tea or coffee? Water?”
“I don’t want refreshments,” said Renata. Jane saw with something like sick fascination that Renata’s entire body was trembling. She looked away. Seeing the evidence of Renata’s raw emotions was like seeing her naked.
“Renata.” Geoff held his arm diagonally across his wife’s body, as if she were about to step in front of a car.
“I’ll tell you what I want,” said Renata to Mrs. Lipmann. “I want her child to stay the hell away from my daughter.”
37.
Madeline pulled open the sliding door from the backyard and saw Abigail sitting on the couch, looking at something on her laptop. “Hey there!” she said, and winced at the fake cheer in her voice.
She couldn’t speak naturally to her own daughter. Now that Abigail only came on weekends, it felt like Madeline was the host and Abigail was an important guest. She felt like she had to offer her drinks and check on her comfort. It was ridiculous. Whenever Madeline caught herself behaving this way, she got so angry, she went too far the other way and brusquely demanded that Abigail perform some domestic chore, like hanging out a basket of washing. The worst part was that Abigail behaved exactly like the good-mannered guest that Madeline had brought her up to be and picked up the laundry basket without comment, and then Madeline was guilty and confused. How could she ask Abigail to hang out washing when Abigail didn’t bring any washing home with her? It was like asking your guest to hang out your laundry. So then she’d rush out to help put the clothes on the line and make stilted chitchat while all the words she couldn’t say poured through her head: Just come back home, Abigail, come back home and stop this. He left us. He left you. You were my reward. Missing out on you was his punishment. How could you choose him?
“Whatcha doing?” Madeline plonked herself on the couch next to Abigail and peered at the laptop screen. “Is that America’s Next Top Model?”
She didn’t know how to be around Abigail anymore. It reminded her of trying to be friends with an ex-boyfriend. That studied casualness of your interactions. The fragility of your feelings, the awareness that the little quirks of your personality were no longer so adorable; they might even be just plain annoying.
Madeline had always played up to her role in the family as the comically crazy mother. She got overly excited and overly angry about things. When the children wouldn’t do as they were told, she huffed and she puffed. She sang silly songs while she stood at the pantry door: “Where, oh where, are the tinned tomatoes? Tomatoes, wherefore art thou?!” The kids and Ed loved making fun of her, teasing her about everything from her celebrity obsessions to her glittery eye shadow.
But now, when Abigail was visiting, Madeline felt like a parody of herself. She was determined not to pretend to be someone she wasn’t. She was forty! It was too late to be changing her personality. But she kept seeing herself through Abigail’s eyes and assuming that she was being compared unfavorably to Bonnie. Because she’d chosen Bonnie, hadn’t she? Bonnie was the mother Abigail would prefer. It actually had nothing to do with Nathan. The mother set the tone of the household. Every secret fear that Madeline had ever had about her own flaws (she was obviously too quick to anger, often too quick to judge, overly interested in clothes, spent far too much money on shoes, thought she was cute and funny when perhaps she was just annoying and tacky) was now at the forefront of her mind. Grow up, she told herself. Don’t take this so personally. Your daughter still loves you. She’s just chosen to live with her father. It’s no big deal. But every interaction with Abigail was a constant battle between “This is who I am, Abigail, take it or leave it” and “Be better, Madeline, be calmer, be kinder, be more like Bonnie.”