Here She Lies

how people who didn’t really know us reacted when the second twin appeared and they were caught in their error. “Actually I’m not Mommy.” “Of course you are!” “No, I’m Aunt Julie. Mommy Annie is over there. ” But that was not what I heard.
    Julie laughed. “My adorable daughter’s sweatshirt got covered in food and it’s in the wash today.”
    “Oh? I’d worry the colors would fade with too much washing.”
    “I should have thought of that, but you know how it is. Half your brain cells go out the window with childbirth.”
    “Oh, I know. I have four children — all grown now. In fact, I’m off to meet my very first grandchild and I don’t want to miss my plane.” The woman hurried past me on her way out of the bookstore, turning to do a double take as she rushed for her gate.
    Julie and I had played many a trick on unwitting people over the years, pretending we were each other, but this was the first time I knew of that she had actually pretended to be my daughter’s mother. The second time, I reminded myself: when I came upon the malarm man in the yard, he’d thought he’d already met me with Lexy in the kitchen. The difference now was that I had witnessed Julie pretending and it botheredme. Yet I couldn’t begrudge her her deep love of my child; it was perfectly natural. I was leaving tonight for Manhattan and my sense of disquiet suddenly felt acute. But wasn’t it normal for a mother not to want to leave her child? Especially such a young baby? I took a deep breath and stopped the coil of anxiety, disciplining myself to view this next couple of days alone with Lexy as my gift to Julie. And then it would be back to reality.
    I walked around the bookshelf as if I had just that moment breezed into the store. Lexy reached for me. I bent down to unbuckle her and lifted her out of the stroller. Squeezing her close, I inhaled her luscious baby smell of powder and milk. “Yummy,” I cooed into her ear. “Yummy baby, all mine.”
    Neither Julie nor I mentioned the woman from Gatsby’s. Julie bought a magazine and we went back to the car. She drove us home. On the way we discussed my plan to catch the last evening bus to the city and she convinced me, instead, to take her car. We agreed that when my new license arrived in the mail tomorrow morning she would borrow it, along with my rental car, until I returned to Great Barrington and we could switch back.
    In no rush to leave, I played with Lexy after lunch and, during her afternoon nap, pumped some milk to leave behind. I packed my bags and then, after a simple pasta dinner, nursed Lexy once more before leaving. As I changed her diaper and zipped up her feetsy pajamas, I realized there was one thing I had neglected to pack: a photo of her to bring along with me.
    Once she was snuggled peacefully in her crib, almostasleep, I crept out of the room with my camera and went to the spare computer in the loft. I hadn’t downloaded in days and it took a few minutes for the nearly hundred images to scroll into the photo program. Here were the pictures from the other day when I had taken portraits of Julie and Lexy, separately and together, and Julie had taken a few of me and Lexy. It was one of those I wanted to print for my trip. As a quilt of thumbnail images began to fill the screen, miniature photos you could only roughly discern, even I couldn’t tell who was Julie and who was me. It was a strange, disturbing sensation. One by one I selected the images, assuming, hoping, that enlargement would show who was who.
    And it did. The images startled me, pleased me, in how clearly they showed Julie as Julie and me as me. The lens had revealed our essential difference. The photos of Julie and Lexy together were family shots, aunt and niece, not mother-daughter. I was surprised at how satisfying this was and understood instinctively that I mustn’t share the perception with Julie. She’s jealous, I thought, looking at a photograph of her and Lexy smiling at each other. Jealous that I can make children and she can’t. This hit me harder and more simply than ever before. I was tempted to delete the pictures from the hard drive and my camera’s memory card, wipe them out of existence along with envy (Julie’s), betrayal (Bobby’s) and death (Zara’s... and Mom’s... and Dad’s). Too many rough emotions had settled on this pastoral road. But what was the point? Erasing the images wouldn’t expunge the thought.
    I chose a photo of me