Harriet would be safe in the ExerSaucer, she thought. It couldn’t go anywhere. What could happen in an hour?
Under the harsh lights of the interrogation room, Frida bites her cuticles, pulling off bits of skin. Her contacts are killing her. She takes a compact from her purse and examines the gray rings under her eyes. She used to be considered lovely. She is petite and slender, and with her round face and bangs and porcelain-doll features, people used to assume she was still in her twenties. But at thirty-nine, she has deep creases between her brows and bracketing her mouth, lines that appeared postpartum, becoming more pronounced after Gust left her for Susanna when Harriet was three months old.
This morning, she didn’t shower or wash her face. She worried the neighbors would complain about the crying. She should have closed the back door. She should have come home right away. She should never have left. She should have remembered the file in the first place. Or gone in over the weekend to grab it. She should have met her original deadline.
She should have told the officers that she can’t lose this job. That Gust hired a mediator to determine child support. He didn’t want to waste money on legal fees. With Gust’s rewarding but poorly paid position, his student-loan debt, and her earning potential, and the fact that custody would be shared, the mediator suggested that Gust give her $500 a month, not nearly enough to support her and Harriet, especially since she gave up her job in New York. She couldn’t bring herself to ask him for more. She didn’t ask for alimony. Her parents would help her if she asked, but she can’t ask, would hate herself if she did. They already funded her entire life during the separation.
It’s four fifteen. Hearing voices in the hall, she opens the door and finds Gust and Susanna conferring with the officers. Susanna approaches and embraces Frida, keeps holding on as Frida stiffens, enveloped in Susanna’s lush red hair and sandalwood perfume.
Susanna rubs Frida’s back as if they’re friends. The girl is on a mission to nice her to death. A war of attrition. Susanna is only twenty-eight, a former dancer. Before Susanna appeared in her life, Frida hadn’t understood that the gap between twenty-eight and thirty-nine could be so potent and deadly. The girl has a fine-boned elfin face, with huge blue eyes that give her a fragile, storybook quality. Even on days when she does nothing but childcare, she wears black winged eyeliner and dresses like a teenager, carrying herself with a confidence that Frida never possessed.
Gust is shaking hands with the other men. Frida stares at the ground and waits. Old Gust would yell. As he did on the nights she hid in the bathroom and wept instead of holding the baby. But this is New Gust, the one who hugs her tenderly despite her delinquency, who’s been made placid by Susanna’s love and toxin-free lifestyle.
“Gust, I’m so sorry.”
He asks Susanna to wait outside, then takes Frida’s arm and leads her back into the mint-green room, where he sits beside her, cradling her hands. It’s been months since they were alone together. She feels ashamed for wanting a kiss even now. He’s more beautiful than she ever deserved, tall and lean and muscular. At forty-two, his angular face is lined from too much sun, his sandy, graying waves grown longer to please Susanna. He now resembles the surfer he’d been in his youth.
Gust squeezes her hands tighter, hurting her. “Obviously, what happened today…”
“I haven’t been sleeping. I wasn’t thinking. I know that’s no excuse. I thought she’d be fine for an hour. I was just going to go in and come right back.”
“Why would you do that? That’s not okay. You’re not raising her alone, you know. You could have called me. Either of us. Susanna could have helped you.” Gust grips her wrists. “She’s coming home with us tonight. Look at me. Are you listening, Frida? This is serious. The cops said you might lose custody.”
“No.” She pulls her hands away. The room spins.
“Temporarily,” he says. “Sweetie, you’re not breathing.” He shakes her shoulder and tells her to take a breath, but she can’t. If she does, she might vomit.
On the other side of the door, she hears crying. “Can I?”
Gust nods.
Susanna is holding Harriet. She’s given her some apple slices. It always kills Frida to see Harriet’s ease with Susanna, her ease even now, after a day of illness and fear and strangers. This morning, Frida dressed Harriet in a purple dinosaur T-shirt and striped leggings and moccasins, but now she’s in a raggedy pink sweater and jeans that are much too big, socks, but no shoes.