Frida tries to apologize, but Colin cuts her off. “Save it,” he says. He has to prepare for his next partner, Linda.
Parents who’ve completed their evaluations are allowed to take their dolls outside to the playground on the quad. Tucker is already there with Jeremy. Emmanuelle races ahead when she sees him. Jeremy races toward her. They miss their intended hug by several feet and continue running in opposite directions. Frida and Tucker laugh. Tucker waits until their dolls are out of earshot, then calls Frida’s name.
Frida jogs over to Emmanuelle and takes her to the slide. They won’t find out the results until tomorrow. What would she give to finish second? She’d say goodbye to all the other parts of her life to get her daughter back. No men. No dating. No romance. No other love.
Jeremy and Tucker are playing in the sandbox. Tucker sends Jeremy running to them with a message. “Daddy wants you to come play. Come play with us.”
The dolls walk to the sandbox holding hands. Frida hesitates, then follows. She sits with Tucker at the edge. No other parents are nearby. The women in pink lab coats watch from a distance. Frida keeps her body language closed and chaste. She wants to grab Tucker’s hand. She wants to sit in his lap.
“I know you like me.”
Frida shoves her boots deeper into the sand. She watches Emmanuelle and Jeremy dig with plastic shovels. She secretly thrills when Tucker brings up the fall, but says, “We can’t.”
“I’m going to.” Tucker nods toward Jeremy. “He’s not listening. She’s not listening.”
He wants to talk about the places he’ll take her when they get out. Has she ever eaten at Zahav? What about Barbuzzo? He loves Barbuzzo. He wants her to know that he loves cooking and hiking.
“The one good thing about this place is meeting you.” He looks like he wants to kiss her. If they were anywhere else. If they already had their children.
“Frida, we’re going to get them back,” he says, his voice full of certainty.
15.
THE MOTHERS AREN’T SUPPOSED TO celebrate their birthdays. They can only talk about themselves in relation to their children. When they first arrived, some got in trouble for making cards for their classmates or singing in the dining hall or discussing their birthdays with their dolls. In early August, on the day Frida turns forty, she doesn’t tell anyone. Not Roxanne or Meryl. Not Emmanuelle.
Emmanuelle is playing under the table. If Frida could, she’d talk to Emmanuelle about time and aging, what it means to age, how her body would change if she were real, what society expects of mothers and daughters, how they’re expected to fight, how she fought with her own mother and now regrets every cruel word. Last year, when she turned thirty-nine, she called her mother and finally said, “Thank you.”
It’s hard to hear over all the shouting in the fathers’ cafeteria, a windowless room in the hospital basement with a linoleum floor and fluorescent lights. Unit 7: Communication Skills is underway. The first lessons are on mood regulation and anger management.
Frida opens her binder to the latest script. She and Linda are taking turns playing a mother demanding more child support. They’re practicing with a white father named Eric, who has an adolescent’s starter mustache and nails chewed down to painful-looking nubs.
“B-I-T-C-H. I’m not giving you any more money,” Eric says.
“M-O-T-H-E-R-F-U-C-K-E-R, you are a lazy piece of crap,” Frida replies.
Following the example set by the instructors, they continue in this fashion until they’re red-faced and breathless. Then, after a minute of deep-breathing exercises, they begin again, practicing the same lines in a calmer tone, taking the aggression down down down until they’re speaking in the lilting tones of yogis. They transition to scripts that model ideal interactions, with no name-calling or swearing. They speak to each other as they do their dolls: I notice you’re upset. I notice you’re frustrated. Tell me what you need from me. How can I better support you? Groups switch throughout the day. A fight becomes a discussion. Blame is diffused. Barbs lose their sting. Arguments become opportunities for empathy.
The shouting upsets and confuses the dolls. After each session, the parents must reflect with their group and discuss how it felt to respond to hostility with patience and love. Eric says it feels smooth. He’s been imagining his anger as a piece of paper that he folds into a tiny square and hides in his pocket. Linda says she’s been thinking of her dad. She takes after him. She doesn’t want her kids to grow up hearing so much shouting. Frida says she and Gust don’t speak this way, that they tend not to fight about money, that Gust’s problem is avoiding confrontation, while hers is apologizing too much, but she appreciates knowing what to do if this dynamic ever changes.