The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

read minds.But it was Jane’s own bandaged hand that Carolyn was pointing to.

“Oh, this—it’s nothing. I caught it in the door . . .” Jane said.

Carolyn nodded, eyes wide, lips pressed together significantly. “I judge no one who comes here, though I do invite them to judge me,” she said. “Because no one failed like I did at putting myself first. When my boys were four and six, when we hit that first wall after I adopted them out of foster care, I lived on Hershey’s bars and Wonder bread. Literally, when I was hungry I would take a piece of bread out of the wrapper and ball it up in my fist, like I was returning it to its primordial dough state, and take bites off it, or if one of my boys was about to light the other one on fire I would cram the whole lump into my mouth at once and start yelling at them with my mouth full. I mean, sell the movie rights, right? I wore the same grubby sweatpants for days. I didn’t leave the house except for therapy appointments—not appointments for me, God forbid I do something for me, only for my sons. Sometimes I didn’t bother brushing my teeth. I thought that I didn’t have time for me to matter, which isthe same as saying that I didn’t matter. And if I didn’t matter, then how could I possibly matter to my boys? How can someone who doesn’t matter bea mother? You get to a point where you think, I’m a wreck because my boys need help, when it’s really My boys need help because I’m a wreck.”

Carolyn twirled a strand of iridescent beads around one finger. An artful tangle of gold and brass nestled against her chestunder the open collar of her silk blouse. “I took women’s studies in college. Bryn Mawr. I know, I know. The clothes, thejewelry, the dieting—it’s all a trap. I read the books. I know the theory. But I was also learning how to live in it. Youstart to see living in the prison as a form of rebellion. I mean, if you’re in jail, you must have done something transgressiveto get there, right? I used to only wear clothes I didn’t care about, dark machine-washable fabrics that didn’t stain—nowI wear creams and pastels. I wear white, for goodness’ sake.” She motioned to her blouse. “I wear stuff you only want the dry cleaner to mess with, because I now refuse to see myself as an object you can puke or piss or shit on, pardon my language. I wear a lot of jewelry because I now refuse to accept that someone is going to rip my earrings out of my ears or try to strangle me with my own necklace. I eat well and sparely because I refuse any longer to self-medicate with food, I refuse any longer to eat ice cream straight out of the pint over the sink for dinner because that’s all I have time for and that’s all I deserve, stuffing sugar and fat into my mouth like a pacifier, like a drug—shove it all in the garbage disposal that is me, grind it up, fill the empty hole inside.”

Carolyn patted her collar and smiled. “I hope none of this is shocking to you. I can speak to you like this because I am nolonger that person. She no longer exists, so I can’t hurt her feelings. And, again, none of what I have to say is a judgmenton others. Everyone should wear what they want and eat what they want. But whatever one does should be a conscious choice. What I’m saying is that every Arden mother needs to choose her own forms of resistance. Smart, tactical, self-affirmingresistance. You have biological children, yes?”

“Three,” Jane said.

Or four. Had or have. She was never sure which to say.

Two choices here

She had had four babies inside her.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t had four children.

Mirela is her fourth child.

Mirela was her fifth child.

With her good hand, Jane rummaged around in her own handbag for a mint or a stick of gum. Like the version of Carolyn thatno longer existed, Jane had not brushed her teeth that morning. Her fingers curled around something unfamiliar: the Bugs Bunnylighter. She couldn’t remember how it had gotten there. Had Mirela been playing with the lighter? Her eyes darted to one sideas if the girl would appear beside her, laughing and on fire. But no. Mirela was down the hall, in another room, in frontof another one-way mirror.

“You must have questions,” Carolyn said at last. “What are they?”

Jane stuck a piece of Juicy Fruit in her mouth with the hand that held the lighter. Carolyn’s eyebrows sat up. “Do you smoke?” she asked.

Jane smiled as she put Bugs Bunny away. “Maybe I should start,” she said. “So—your literature has prepared me well so far,and I recognize a lot in it—a lot of Mirela, a lot of myself—but can you explain the idea behind the holding therapy?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” Carolyn said. “We are in the process of trademarking holding therapy, in fact.”

“Oh, congratulations,” Jane said. “So is it like—like holding her down, like showing her who is boss, breaking down her ego?”

“That’s a way of putting it,” Carolyn said.

“Because that starts to feel like corporal punishment, and we don’t do that in our house, we don’t spank—”

“Oh my goodness—”

“—we wouldn’t ever use any kind of physical coercion with our kids—”

“Jane, please, do let me interrupt. Holding therapy is not corporal punishment, it’s not abuse or coercion; it couldn’t befurther from it. Holding therapy is also known as compression therapy, which, come to think of it, might be the preferableterm.”

“You could trademark that one, too.”

“A good idea. Think of applying pressure to a wound when a patient is bleeding. Under normal circumstances, pressing an arteryagainst bone is the last thing you’d want to do, because you’re keeping the artery from working properly. But in an emergency,your only option is to suppress