“I called your friend’s babysitter. She’s going to come with you to your next group meeting. If you like her, maybe we could see about having her come a few days a week.”
For a moment I just stared at him, wondering if he’d called the babysitter because he knows that there’s something really wrong with me and he doesn’t want to leave me alone with Chloe. But then I realized I was just being paranoid. He was trying to do something nice for me, to take off some of the pressure of being a new mother. And a babysitter will help. I won’t have to worry about being on my own with Chloe and I can spend time with Laurel. I need a friend—another mother—to talk to. Which reminds me—I should set up that playdate!
LATER.
Like I said, this afternoon has been a real roller coaster. I went from being so scared when I saw Peter on the stairs to being angry at him that he left Chloe to cry, to ashamed that I’d left him without bottles. Esta says it’s normal to feel these emotional swings postpartum. It’s just hormones. Well, hormones or not, now I feel really happy. I texted Laurel to thank her for recommending the babysitter. I added (casually) that I hoped we could hang out after group next week. She texted me right back with three emojis: a crying baby, a glass of wine, and a happy face. I think that means yes!
Chapter Three
We both sleep through the night. It’s the longest I can remember sleeping since giving birth—since months before, actually. I’d started having trouble sleeping when I was pregnant. The books said that was normal; pressure on the bladder, hormone surges, anxiety about the birth could all be causes. But the books hadn’t said anything about feeling invaded, as if an alien vampire were sipping the blood from my veins. And I didn’t feel comfortable saying that to my obstetrician, who’d already prescribed me antidepressants when Peter told him I cried all the time.
After Chloe was born I was afraid if I really gave myself up to sleep I would wake to find her dead. That’s how all the stories I read on the Internet went—I had my first good sleep since the baby was born and when I went into the nursery she wasn’t breathing—
Shouldn’t I be worried about that now?
But I’m not. Even though in the dim light I can’t really see her color, or hear her breathing over the patter of rain on the windows, I believe that Chloe is breathing. She seems . . . heartier to me, less vulnerable, and I suddenly realize why. It’s because I’m thinking of her as Laurel’s Chloë and I don’t think anything bad could happen to her.
Chloe stirs and opens her eyes, blinking at me as if I’m the stranger, her mouth working. Before she can cry—I don’t want Sky Bennett awoken the first morning to a crying baby—I snatch her up. “It’s all right, baby, let’s get you changed.”
She seems startled to be swept up into the air. I sway-walk her into the sitting room and balance her on my hip while I mix the formula and microwave her bottle. While the bottle is warming I take her on a tour of the sitting room. There’s not much to see: a faded overstuffed chintz couch, a rocking chair, a coffee table strewn with a few local magazines with names like Cabin and Country clearly meant for weekenders from the city. I try to sit down in the rocking chair but abandon it as Chloe begins to squirm. This room is suffocating; she needs fresh air.
I grab the bottle out of the microwave and open the door—and am startled as the facing door swings open at the same time.
The first thing I notice about the woman in the doorway is her size. She’s easily six feet tall and well over two hundred pounds. In her plaid flannel shirt and jeans she could be a lumberjack, but no lumberjack on the planet would have that haircut. It’s a horrible cut for a woman of her size—or for any woman over six years old, for that matter. Chopped to a point that falls between chin and ears, fanning to the sides like the pages of a waterlogged book, and clipped back in two strips that show gray streaks and dark roots beneath a cheap orangey dye. She is not what I would have imagined when Sky said she had a housekeeper named Mrs. Williams, but that must be who she is because she’s stretching out her arms toward Chloe while making a high-pitched sound meant, I think, to be encouraging.
I tighten my grip on Chloe and remember an image from a dream. Not my dream, but one Laurel said she had repeatedly when Chloë (her Chloë) was born. I’m in a mental hospital and they’ve come to take Chloë away from me. A nurse stretches out her arms and they keep growing, moving toward me even as the nurse herself stays perfectly still, it’s just those awful rubbery arms coming to snatch Chloë away from me. And I know once they do, I’ll never see her again.
The woman has the air and capable, no-nonsense manner of a nurse, and I have the horrible thought that she has come from the mental hospital to take Chloe away from me because I am unfit. It’s all I can do to keep myself from backing away and slamming the door in the woman’s face. Instead I say, “She’s a little shy of strangers.”
“Oh, she won’t be shy of Billie,” the woman—Billie, I’m guessing—croons. She comes closer and scoops Chloe right out of my arms. I brace myself for a
