The Dark Side Read online

  Zoe was furious when she saw the already installed gate on the stairs, got out a screwdriver, and took it down, which made Austin even angrier, and led to a fight. The first bad one they’d had in a while, maybe the worst one yet.

  “If she falls down the stairs and gets hurt, you’ll be calling me crying from the emergency room. We don’t even have carpeting on those stairs, she could really get hurt. And God knows what she’ll do if she gets out of her room before we get up. She could cut herself, or bang her head, or anything.”

  “I’ve childproofed the house,” she said confidently.

  “Not entirely. You can’t, she could knock a lamp down on herself by pulling on the cord. We can’t live in an empty bomb shelter, Zoe, the gate makes sense.”

  “They’re offensive, they disrespect our daughter,” she said fiercely. “I’ll get carpeting, if you want.”

  “Until you do, I want that gate up,” he said angrily. “She’s my daughter too.”

  “Then treat her like one, and not your dog. I won’t have those things in my home.”

  They went to bed angry at each other that night, after she called him abusive, insensitive, and disrespectful, and he called her unreasonable and nuts. But he didn’t put the gate up again, he knew she’d just take it down. And they were chilly with each other when they left for work on Monday. The battle of the gate had been a bad one, and neither of them had recovered yet.

  Fiona called Zoe at eleven-thirty, while she was in a finance meeting with a city official. Fiona sounded flustered at first, which Zoe had never heard before. Zoe was surprised and Fiona cut to the chase, knowing she was busy. “Jaime’s all right, nothing serious, but she got hurt. I was putting the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, and she ran away from me. I went to find her immediately. I think she was looking for you. She got up your bedroom stairs, and before I could get there, she fell. She’s cut her lip, and I think she hurt her arm. The lip might need a stitch, though. I’m going to take her to the hospital now. I called Dr. Clark first, she’s meeting me there in five minutes. I just wanted to let you know.” By the end of her recital of events, Fiona sounded cool and efficient again, although apologetic. Knowing how extreme Zoe’s reactions were, she hated having to report an accident to her, even a minor one.

  “I’ll get there as soon as I can,” Zoe promised, feeling terrible. Austin was right, the stairs were dangerous for her, more so than Zoe had realized, or had wanted to admit to him. Being right had seemed more important at the time. But she’d been wrong and now Jaime was injured.

  Zoe excused herself from the meeting, explaining that her daughter had had a minor accident. They’d almost concluded their business and agreed to finish without her. She rushed outside to hail a cab.

  Fiona had called Austin too. He got to the hospital before Zoe and Cathy Clark was already there, with Jaime and Fiona. Jaime had been crying, Fiona was holding an ice pack to her lip, and Jaime held her arms out to her father and started crying again.

  “We have a busy young lady here.” Cathy smiled sympathetically at him. “I’ve called in a plastic surgeon for her lip, and we need an X-ray for her arm.”

  “A plastic surgeon? Why? Is it that bad?” He hadn’t seen the cut yet, and Cathy reassured him.

  “Just a few stitches, but a good rule to follow: Always get a plastic surgeon for injuries to lips and ears, especially lips. You don’t want a scar there later, lips and ears are funny that way. Once you interrupt the lip line, it always leaves a scar. And we don’t want her beautiful smile affected later on. He said he’d be here in a few minutes. And I have a feeling her arm is broken.” Austin looked crushed, it brought to mind his argument with Zoe all weekend, and he was angry at her again. He looked like a storm cloud when Zoe walked in ten minutes later, and he explained the situation to his wife. They both knew it could have been avoided with the gate he had put up and she had taken down. Zoe looked sick at the thought.

  Cathy took Jaime to get the X-ray then, and she was right, Jaime’s arm was broken, it was a clean break, but needed a cast for the next six weeks.

  “She’s so young to have broken a bone. I didn’t do that till I played football in college,” he said sadly.

  “You were lucky,” Cathy said kindly. “She’s a busy bee, some kids are adventuresome. She’ll keep you busy now that she’s walking.” He didn’t tell her that he had put up a gate that would have avoided the whole thing. He kept silent out of loyalty to his wife, but he was furious with Zoe. The X-ray confirmed that the arm was broken just as the plastic surgeon arrived. Austin held her while they numbed her lip and sewed it up. It only took two stitches, but was traumatic nonetheless.

  After that, the attending orthopedist put on a fluorescent orange waterproof cast. Cathy stayed with them the entire time, and appeared not to notice that Jaime’s parents hadn’t spoken to each other since they arrived. They thanked Cathy when they left, and went back to the apartment. Fiona made Jaime lunch, and Austin and Zoe went to their bedroom to talk.

  “I’m sure you know what I’m thinking,” he said coldly. “If you’d left the goddamn gate up, this wouldn’t have happened. You have to run everything and decide everything, with all your goddamn theories about respecting a one-year-old, so now she has two stitches in her lip and a broken arm. I hope you’re satisfied.”

  Zoe just sat on the bed and cried. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I just don’t like gates for kids,” she said meekly. He felt terrible for shouting at her, and sat down next to her on the bed and put his arm around her.

  “I’m sorry too. Sometimes I’m right, though. We’re in this together, Zoe. You can’t always call the shots. She’s my daughter too.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I feel terrible. I can’t believe she broke her arm and cut her lip.”

  “At least it wasn’t worse,” he said generously, calming down. He could see how awful Zoe felt.

  They both had to get back to work and left together after kissing Jaime, and thanking Fiona for handling it so well. At least the war between them was over, as they shared a cab uptown. He kissed her when she dropped him off.

  He told his mother about the incident the next day when she called him to say hello and she was shocked.

  “Why didn’t you put gates up now that she’s walking?”

  “I didn’t have the time,” Austin said, covering for his wife. He’d rather look like an idiot to his mother than have her know that Zoe opposed him and took it down, particularly since Jaime had gotten hurt.

  “I thought Zoe was careful about those things.” She sounded surprised. She sensed that something was off, but she couldn’t tell what. She knew him well.

  “We both misjudged it. We’ll be more careful from now on.”

  “I hope so,” she said and they hung up a few minutes later.

  That night, he and Zoe made love for the first time in months. He felt closer to her than he had in a long time, and she seemed so vulnerable and so sad. He wanted to make it better, for both of them, but he wasn’t sure how.

  * * *

  —

  Once Jaime was walking, the next few months were hard on her. She constantly had a scrape or a bruise, or a “boo-boo” somewhere. She’d had a hard time teething, with pain and fevers that Zoe had reported to Cathy Clark. And with all the minor injuries from walking and falling on unsteady one-year-old legs, Austin said she looked like a child abuse victim when he gave her a bath one day. But her broken arm had healed well, and there was no scar from the cut on her lip.

  Zoe took her to the playground one Saturday afternoon and had fun with her. Austin was playing tennis with a friend, and Zoe swung Jaime in a circle around her, holding firmly to her hands as Jaime squealed with pleasure, and then let out a blood-curdling scream, let go of her mother’s hands, and clutched her elbow. Jaime was crying as Zoe dropped to her knees in the sand beside her, trying
to figure out what had happened. She was alone with Jaime, Fiona was off on the weekends, and not knowing what else to do, Zoe left the playground with Jaime and headed to the emergency room. It was the opposite arm of the one she’d broken, so she hadn’t reinjured that. She was sobbing and hiccupping in the cab on the way to the hospital, as Zoe held her. She paid the fare and carried Jaime into the hospital, running with her. And as they walked in, one of the nurses smiled and waved at them.

  “Hi, Jaime,” she said with a warm look. “How’ve you been?”

  “She just hurt her arm at the playground,” Zoe explained, looking stressed.

  “Same one she broke?” the nurse inquired, and Zoe shook her head. “I’ll get the pediatric attending,” she said, heading for the desk, as Zoe went to sign in. They were in the computer so it didn’t take long, and the nurse put them in an exam room five minutes later. Jaime was still crying when the doctor walked in. He remembered Jaime from last time too, as soon as he looked at the chart.

  “What happened? Did she fall?” he asked Zoe and she shook her head.

  “I was swinging her around by her arms, and all of a sudden, she screamed and grabbed her elbow.” The minute she said it, he nodded.

  “Easy one this time.” He looked at Jaime then. “This is going to be an owee for a minute, Jaime, but then it won’t hurt anymore.” As Zoe watched, wondering what he was going to do, he held Jaime’s small upper arm firmly with one hand, pulled on her lower arm with his other hand, turned it sharply, and moved the lower part of her arm upward, and suddenly Jaime stopped crying instantly, like magic. “Dislocated elbow,” he said to Zoe. “It happens to toddlers all the time. You’ll have to keep an eye on it, if she has a tendency toward that, it could happen again. Their joints are loose at this age. It can happen reaching for a spoon or putting on her pajamas. It doesn’t take much to pull an elbow out of a socket. No more swinging her by the arms after this.”

  “I promise,” Zoe said, looking subdued. What the doctor had done had hurt her, but he did it so quickly, Jaime didn’t have time to react, and the relief was total after he did, with her elbow back in place. Zoe’s stomach felt upside down, as the nurse walked into the room and he explained it to her.

  “You can give her some baby aspirin tonight if she needs it, but I don’t think she will. It’s back in place now. There should be no residual pain. Bye, Jaime, thanks for the visit, take care.” He waved at her as he left the room, and Jaime waved back with the arm that had been excruciating a minute before.

  “Well, that was quick,” the nurse said as she lifted Jaime off the table, and smiled at Zoe. “She keeps you on your toes, huh?” She could see that Zoe was a great mom, she always came to the hospital with her. They left a few minutes later and went home.

  Zoe gave Jaime some juice and cookies. She had just stopped nursing six weeks before at fourteen months. She had given it up on her own, and Zoe was sad about it, but it was time. Austin had been relieved, his mother kept telling him that Jaime was too old to be nursing, a message he did not pass on to his wife.

  “How was the park?” Austin asked when he got home, still wearing tennis shorts and a white Lacoste shirt. He looked tall and handsome, and his face was still flushed from the game he had won.

  “Not so good, I guess,” Zoe said as she kissed him. “We were playing and Jaime dislocated her elbow. We just got back from NYU, the doctor said it can happen easily at this age. He put it back in place and it was fine. She scared the hell out of me, she just started screaming. I was swinging her around when it happened.”

  “Jesus, I do that all the time. I’d better not anymore. I can’t believe how often she gets hurt,” he said, looking worried. “I wonder if all kids are like that. I don’t think my nephews were, and they play rough.”

  “Cathy says it’s all normal, she’s a lively little girl.”

  “I guess so,” he said and went to shower, still thinking about it. He got to see how easily it happened a month later, when Zoe was putting Jaime in her pajamas after a bath, and the same arm dislocated again, just as the doctor had warned Zoe it could. Austin watched in horror at Jaime’s extreme pain as she screamed. They made a quick trip to the ER, with Jaime in her pajamas, and the pediatrician on duty put it back in place again. Zoe didn’t look as upset this time, since she knew instantly what had happened and that it wasn’t serious. But Austin looked distraught seeing Jaime in such acute pain.

  The same nurse was on duty that night, and greeted Zoe and Jaime by name, which Austin commented on after they left. “I’m not sure it’s a good thing that half the staff in the ER know us by name. I think it means we’re there too often. Does that ever worry you, Zoe?”

  “I can’t put her arm back in place myself at home,” she said simply.

  “Of course not, but she gets hurt all the time.”

  “No, she doesn’t. We’ve had a few incidents, but that happens to all kids.” He didn’t think so, but he didn’t argue with her.

  He brought it up with Cathy Clark the next time he saw her, when Jaime was due for a vaccination, and Zoe didn’t have time to take her, so he said he would. He’d been wanting to talk to her for a while, without Zoe. The opportunity was perfect.

  Austin brought it up after the shot, Jaime only cried for a minute, and he lingered to talk to Cathy when she asked how Jaime was doing.

  “It’s a little like The Perils of Pauline. I feel like she gets hurt every five minutes. She’s dislocated her elbow twice recently, the broken arm a few months ago, stitches in her lip, apnea, colic, teething. Zoe says it’s normal, but is it?” He looked harried and concerned and Cathy was sympathetic. She was a quiet, low-key, serious woman, with a wonderful way with children. She had mentioned at one of their meetings that she came from a medical family in Columbus, Ohio. Both of her parents were doctors, and her two brothers. Her grandfather had been a doctor married to a nurse. Austin liked her style. She had a down-to-earth, unpretentious manner. She was patient with Zoe’s many theories, and equally so with Austin’s concerns. She had said she didn’t have a husband, and was married to her job. She was attractive without artifice in a very natural Midwestern way.

  “They’re not serious injuries, fortunately,” she reminded him, “more like the perils of childhood. Some kids are more accident prone than others, just like some adults. She’s active and lively, and curious about the world around her. Usually, boys get into more mischief, but some girls do too. She’s delicate, but she’s also energetic and fearless. It’s a tough combination. She’ll stop falling and getting injured when she’s steadier on her feet.” She didn’t sound worried and Austin was relieved.

  “I’m glad to hear you say it. I have five nephews a little older than she is, and they’ve never had a stitch or a broken bone. And we can’t even blame our nanny, most of Jaime’s injuries have happened while we were with her, except for the fall down the stairs, and that was our fault, since we didn’t put up a gate fast enough.” He shared the blame with Zoe to be kind, and not out her to the pediatrician they both liked. Cathy liked them too. She could tell they were devoted parents, and she had no questions in her mind about abuse.

  “She’ll grow out of this stage,” Cathy assured him and he nodded. He felt more peaceful about it in the cab on the way home. He played with Jaime until Zoe arrived from work and asked how the shot went, and Austin said it was fine. He didn’t mention his conversation with Cathy but it rang in his ears a week later, when Zoe gave Jaime a bath, turned her back for an instant to reach for the shampoo, and Jaime slipped, hit her cheek on the side of the bath, and hurt her wrist, when she landed on it and it twisted. They made yet another trip to the ER where almost everyone recognized her this time. The wrist was only a sprain, and the doctor said she’d have a bruise on her cheek the next day, but none of her injuries were serious, and the pediatrician in the ER called her a slippery little fish. Austin looked embarrasse
d, and told Zoe they had to be more careful with her. She just got hurt too much.

  “Hell, Zoe, the whole ER knows her and us. What does that tell you?”

  “That I’m a rotten mother?” she asked him with tears in her eyes, and he felt terrible for mentioning it, but he had to.

  “Of course not. But it means we don’t watch her closely enough. She gets injured a lot.”

  “I can’t put her on a leash or lock her in her room. She’s still a baby, she falls down a lot. She’s a toddler. Do you think it’s my fault?” She looked crushed as she asked him, and Austin winced. He didn’t want to hurt Zoe’s feelings, but he was worried about Jaime. She was always getting hurt.

  Zoe was still crying when they got back to the apartment, and after they put Jaime to bed, he apologized to Zoe and told her he thought she was a wonderful mother. He didn’t know what else to say. The truth was that Jaime was getting injured too often, whatever the reason. His loyalties were divided between his daughter’s safety and his wife’s bruised feelings.

  The next day, Jaime had a noticeable black eye from the bathtub incident. It was a harsh reminder to Austin of what was at stake, Jaime’s well-being, or Zoe’s tender heart. And if it came to a choice between them, Jaime won, hands down.

  Chapter 6

  Austin was in Washington, D.C., speaking at a convention for child advocacy attorneys and chairing a panel, when Jaime came down with her first serious case of the flu at eighteen months. She had a high fever, an earache, a cold, and was miserable. Zoe was alone with her, and called Cathy Clark at midnight to tell her that Jaime had had a febrile seizure, with a fever of 104.2. The pediatrician wasn’t panicked about it and said it wasn’t unusual, but she told Zoe to bring her into the ER and she would meet her there. She wanted to see her after the seizure.