Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,2

a town where she had no friends.

I’m your friend, Andrew said.

Husbands don’t count.

He hadn’t made friends either, but he at least had coworkers and the odd amusing story to tell.

Most days, Elisabeth took Gil for a walk after lunch and passed a playground where mothers stood in a cluster, gossiping, laughing.

Jesus, you’re not the new kid at middle school, she chided herself. Go over and say hello.

They were grown women. They had to be nice, at least to her face. But she couldn’t do it. Some mix of self-consciousness and fatigue stopped her. That, and the fear that she wouldn’t like them anyway.

Even as she talked herself out of wanting to know them, she hoped they might notice her and wave her over, but they never did.

* * *

—

The baby drank himself drunk and closed his eyes, his head an anchor seeking the bottom. Elisabeth carried him upstairs and lowered him gently, deliberately, into the bassinet, as if he was a bomb that might detonate if handled improperly.

In the hours before he woke again, she lay in bed unable to sleep. She knew she should find a way, that the day would be hectic. An interview with a potential babysitter, emails to answer, those stretches of time with an infant that got eaten up by she couldn’t say what. But she kept looking at the phone, eager to see how the BK Mamas were weighing in on the blonde woman’s emotional affair.

Violet, her therapist, would say that Elisabeth was trying to distract herself—from the secret she was keeping from her husband, from her father-in-law’s recent struggles, and from her relationship with her own parents, which had always been a mess, but had become more painful of late.

Elisabeth had gone to see Violet in the first place with no intention of returning week after week. She wanted someone to tell her she was clinically depressed, or anxious, or else that her worries, her spinning thoughts, could be explained by a protein deficiency. She wanted a clear diagnosis and a simple treatment she could buy at a pharmacy or a health-food store and feel working immediately.

That is so not how therapy works, Nomi said.

“Postpartum depression is real,” Violet said.

“I know it is, but no,” Elisabeth said. “I’ve always been like this.”

She was only addressing it now because of Gil. She had an urge to fix herself before he became aware of all the ways in which she was broken.

Violet said to remember that thoughts are vapor. She said to read Eckhart Tolle.

When Elisabeth googled Violet, she came across an essay she’d written years earlier for an anthology about mothers and daughters, so she knew that Violet had no children, that her mother had died, that her dear old father was lost to Alzheimer’s.

Sometimes, when she complained about her family during a session, Elisabeth wondered if Violet was suppressing an urge to scream, My perfect mother dies, my dad doesn’t know who I am, while your shitty parents go on and on. How is this fair?

Violet yawned a lot, which hurt Elisabeth’s feelings.

* * *

—

Her eyes opened. She woke up. This was how Elisabeth could be certain she had slept. For ten minutes? An hour? Impossible to say.

It was five o’clock in the morning. In a moment, the baby would wake. She wondered how long their bodies would remain in sync like this, hers anticipating what his was about to do.

She checked BK Mamas on her phone while she waited.

A woman named Heather had posted around four, asking if, after two glasses of wine, it was necessary to pump and dump. The replies came swift, a resounding chorus of nos. Heather thanked them, then admitted that she was feeling guilty. About not getting enough vitamins, about having an Oreo when she had sworn to eat organic for the baby’s sake.

Guilt was their common bond.

Stop overthinking it, someone wrote. Multivariate regression analysis on the impact of that Oreo is a dangerous path.

Elisabeth considered this, amused.

The baby cried. The day began.

2

THE SUMMER HEAT HAD LINGERED into the second week of September, but early mornings were pleasant. A crisp breeze hinted at the cool days to come.

Before Andrew left for work, they walked around the pond at the nearby college, an approximation of their old routine. In Brooklyn, they had strolled together to get coffee each morning, peering into the windows of new restaurants, greeting neighbors out walking their dogs. Here, there were no coffee shops or restaurants within a mile. Elisabeth reminded herself