A modern Rashomon

 THE PARENT’S ANTI-ADVICE BOOK

   The ex-best friend’s chicken soup for the spleen

MOTHERHOOD

CONFIDENTIAL

The Strange Disappearance of My Best Friend

Linda Cohen and Joan Bechtel  

A     C  O  N   S  P  I  R  A  C  Y     O  F     V  A  L  I  D  A  T  I  O  N

13.95 in stores Friendship Day August 7, 2005.

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EXCERPT

     A back brace eased the physical agony, but what about the pain in that little bit of mind I had left? I didn't want to fall into the trap of resentment and blame. But I did resent. I did blame. I did fall over in a heap.

     Pretty soon I was not a person who had raw nerves. I was a raw nerve with a person buried underneath. 

         Every time I tried to comfort Graham and he would not be comforted, I felt afraid. What if I hit him? I had hit my first son once. It happened the night before I gave birth to my daughter. I was working one of my thirteen hour shifts as the nanny of another toddler, raking in eight bucks a day.

          The two boys were in the bath tub. There was screaming, a few polite warnings and then swift as God's own wrath came the whap of motherly palm against cherubic flesh. The red "turkey" palm imprint on Timmys cheek looked like a sadistic Thanksgiving art project.

     Now with Graham I seemed to be coming to a breaking point every night. It took all the emotional energy I had left over from caring for him to keep myself from quelling his neediness with brute force. What would the authorities recommend? A shopping spree? I was ready for a shooting spree.

     Well then, how about the perennial wisdom of my European ancestors? Those billions and billions of mothers who'd gone before. When all else failed in those primitive villages and nomadic encampments--as it must have on a regular basis--necessity drove morality. Back then, infanticide wore a friendlier face. Everyone knew demons could steal your infant and replace it with a soulless facsimile, which then, of course, had to be disposed of. I could imagine the weary waves of peasantry surging up those windy plateaus to surrender their changelings. And I felt the tugging undertow of tradition.

     I had always believed the difference between me and the woman serving a life term for killing her child were my opportunities for respite, mental health care and a support network. Now, as I paced the floor, locked in a duet of despair with this mocking miniature of my own helplessness, I realized the only thing that could keep me off death row would be pure dumb luck.

     My self-esteem was so low I couldn't bring myself to call a child abuse hotline for fear "They" would come haul Graham away--probably at my insistence. So I called Linda. Linda the Validator, who wouldn't judge or tell me what to do, who could pull me out of a downward spiral with a flash of her liberating offbeat perspective.

     But Linda had just moved to New York and we'd been out of touch. I felt guilty calling just to use her. I never called to say Hi or to ask how she was. I never called her at all.

     I wondered why that nurturing hormone, Oxytocin, that was supposed to make girlfriends supportive and caring, wasn't helping me in that regard. I certainly had a Spanish Fly concentration racing through my veins. In fact, I was probably Oxy-toxic, but it was all channeled into my child. Not a drop left over for anyone else. I hadn't spoken to Linda in almost a year.

     I swallowed my guilt; I was desperate. So reminding myself how Linda yearned to be needed, I punched in her number. When she picked up the phone, she spoke as if I hadn't neglected her for months. I babbled out my predicament and she went to work, proclaiming her confidence in me: "You are not going to hit that baby." I argued with her through my tears, but she was adamant in her reassurance.

     After a long silence, I told her, "I don't feel any better."

     "You don't?"

     "No, I feel worse."

     "Worse?"

     "Yeah. I'm sorry, Linda, but I do. I'm putting a lot of energy into not choosing an option you don't think I have."

     "What?"

     "I feel like you think I'm not capable of murder, so there should be no problem. Hitting the baby is an option, and I'm working very hard not to choose it!" This was a tactic Linda had taught me, to spell out what you want, including exactly what you want other people to say to you. We used it on our husbands all the time.

     "Oh," she perked up with the thrill of discovery, "you're scared you're going to do something awful!"

     "Yes." I sobbed now, grateful shed picked up her cue. "Why don't you go out?"

     Oh, God, now shes got to solve it for me. "Thom's not here." I tried to get her back on the sympathy track.

     "Well, just take Graham next door."

     "They don't speak English."

     "So much the better. Go over there with your tear-streaked face and mime that your husband has just been in a car--no. No, he's had a mild heart attack in a bar. And--oh! Of course, in the arms of another woman! But, no. Not a bar. A hotel! Yeah, The Claremont Hotel! Then you say you gotta pick him up, and see? You get to go there and have yourself a nice Brandy Alexander!"

     I didn't, but I was still laughing after we hung up. I bounced Graham till he fell asleep. Okay, so the Validator couldnt validate my angst. My struggle to get Linda to say what I needed to hear at least helped me give voice to it.

     I made it through that night and all the rest without becoming the latest talk show Pariah. Linda was right. (Damn her!) I never hit Graham, but until he was three that nightly psychic battle raged between the Donna Reed and the Joan Crawford inside me.

     As if my own tiny corner of suffering wasn't enough, there lay beyond my doorstep a world of disapproval.

     While a baby on your hip may seem normal in tribal communities, here it's more common to carry one around by the handle of its infant seat. In some cultures a child doesn't cry more than six seconds before it's picked up, but in mainstream American culture the watchword is independence.

     A "proper" mother weans her child away from her as early as possible. Why couldn't I make my do anything without my participation? Was I lazy? Over-possessive? Maybe too insecure myself? All I needed was a dingy sideshow platform and a carnie: See the Amazing Spineless Lady! People looked at me like I had a social disease. And everyone had a cure.

     Advice came pouring in from therapists, teachers and people behind me in lunch lines. "You can't just pick him up every time! You're creating his dependency," or "That sippy cup is depleting his will forces--you're turning him into a smoker." Wherever I went I was dished up another helping of well-intentioned shaming. Like a progressive dinner of intervention.