The Perfect Mother (21 page)

E
mma’s initial euphoria about her upcoming release was short-lived. In spite of everything she now knew about Paco, she worried obsessively about what would become of him. Her parents had little patience with her concern.

“What difference does it make?” Jennifer asked.

“Do you think he spent much time worrying about what would become of you when you were questioned and arrested and he skipped town?” Mark asked.

They were visiting Emma for what they hoped was the last time in the prison. They had been given one of the private visiting rooms, leaving José alone in the waiting area. Emma, seeming very tense, said she needed to speak to him. Mark left to ask the guard if Emma’s lawyer could be called in and returned with him after a few minutes. José entered, probably expecting a tearful Emma to thank him for his help in securing her release. Instead, he found her pale and worried, brushing aside his congratulations with a request that he sit down so she could talk to him.

Mark and Jennifer stood awkwardly in the doorway, not sure whether to go or stay as José pulled out a chair and sat at the table in the visiting room, waiting for her to explain herself. She didn’t ask her parents to leave, so they remained standing, leaning against the wall, worried that something dangerous and unexpected would be revealed. Emma sat next to José and leaned forward, speaking softly, her breath shallow and her eyes wide.

“He’ll be very angry,” she said.

Jennifer was puzzled, but José understood immediately.

“Yes. And so?” he answered.

She looked bewildered. “I don’t understand.”

“I mean, so what if he’s angry? Why does it matter? He can’t hurt you.”

He paused and patted Emma’s hand, continuing in a fatherly tone, “I worry that you are still . . .” He hesitated, looking for the right English expression. “How do you say it? Under his thumb.”

“You don’t understand,” she insisted, breathing in and exhaling in a thin stream. “He
can
hurt me. If he doesn’t like this deal, he can still stop mine.”

José shook his head to disagree, understanding her drift.

“Not anymore, Emma. He has made his deal. If he hadn’t, yours wouldn’t have gone through and he might have been charged with premeditated murder. He knows that. He has admitted to all that you set forth in your statement in exchange for a sentence of five years. It’s over. You can relax.”

She nodded, biting her upper lip. “Okay. Thank you. I hope you’re right.”

After that, the delight in the outcome was followed by bureaucratic confusion. Looking back on it later, from the safety of their home in Philadelphia, none of them could really remember the exact sequence of events after they got the news that Emma would be free. It all blurred into a single sharp sense of relief mixed with eagerness to be done with the formalities and board the plane home. There had been that first, congratulatory visit to the prison followed by the frustration of having to leave without her when they were so close to seeing her walk free. There was a flurry of activity—meetings with the warden and other prison officials, a closed-door session with José and the magistrate in charge of Emma’s case, and finally, a brief appearance in court, where the charges were officially dropped and Emma was released. The session was closed to the media, but Jennifer and Mark were there, seated, holding hands in the front row. Mark squeezed her hand so tightly that her wedding ring dug into her fingers. She caught a glimpse of Paco in court, a disheveled-looking, stocky man with a thick black beard and bushy black eyebrows. He kept his head down until he saw Emma enter, and then he turned to look at her, his angry regard so intense it seemed to scorch the air. Jennifer turned quickly to see Emma’s reaction and noticed Emma’s resolute stare straight in front of her, as though she had determined not even to look in his direction.

Then there was the family’s appearance outside the courthouse, surrounded by a horde of journalists. Jennifer remembered Emma blinking into the camera lights, pale and frightened as questions were fired at all of them. Roberto had told them to make no comment and they obeyed. In response to the questions, both congratulatory from the Americans and hostile from the Spaniards, Roberto spoke for the family, making a short, predictable statement thanking the Spanish judicial system for its fair handling of the case and expressing the family’s eagerness to return home. Then he ushered them into a waiting car. And at last, bags packed, fees paid, they took their final trip to the airport, escorted by José and Roberto.

Through it all, Jennifer and Roberto hadn’t had any time together. She longed to talk to him but didn’t know how to get him alone. He mostly behaved in a controlled, businesslike manner, but once, as they got into the car after Emma’s release, he caught her eye and smiled. It was a crooked smile, half-affectionate, half-rueful, and she took it as an intimate gesture, the best he could do under the circumstances. She smiled back.

At the airport, after their bags had been checked and just before they were about to enter the security zone for passengers, they said their good-byes. Mark thanked José and Roberto effusively, crediting them with brilliant engineering of the favorable outcome. He shook each man’s hand. Then it was Jennifer’s turn. She turned first to José and thanked him, saying, for Mark’s benefit as well as his, that he had helped in so many ways that she could never adequately express her gratitude. He demurred graciously, saying he was just doing his job and was, happily, well paid for his efforts. Then she turned to Roberto. She realized that her heartbeat seemed too fast and too loud, and she feared they would all hear it. Not knowing what was appropriate, she thrust out her hand to shake his. He raised his eyebrows and smiled, as he took her hand. Hers was sweating and clammy to the touch, but his was cool and dry and comforting. She couldn’t bear to look at him, so she thanked him awkwardly, her eyes focused somewhere to his right. As he started to leave, her body tensed and she took a deep breath before turning to Mark and starting to walk away with him. Mark stopped her, bent down, and whispered something in her ear, and she looked up, surprised. She squeezed his hand in thanks and ran after Roberto, shouting his name to get his attention as he was about to disappear around a corner. He turned and she ran to him.

“What are you doing?” he asked sharply.

“No, Roberto. It’s okay. Mark asked me if I would like to have a few private words with you to say good-bye. That’s all. I think we deserve that.”

He nodded solemnly. “It doesn’t make it easier, but it is perhaps better.”

She was nervous and spoke quickly, running the sentences together. “I don’t even know what to say. I just wanted somehow to tell you how grateful I am—not only for your help with Emma, but for your friendship. I hope we might correspond from time to time. Remember when I offered to show you around New York? That still stands.”

He smiled. “No, cariño,” he said. “I am not that strong. You must go back to your life and I to mine. But I thank you too, for everything.”

She glanced over her shoulder and saw Mark and Emma in the distance, waiting. Emma was shifting from foot to foot. Mark stood firm. He lifted his hand to acknowledge he’d seen her.

“Will you at least promise to tell me if you find your daughter?” she asked, turning abruptly back to Roberto.

“Yes, I will. I’ll let you know if anything important happens.”

“You promise?”

His mouth wrinkled into another crooked half-smile. “Sí. Te prometo.”

Unable to say all the things she wanted to, not even sure what they were, she repeated a simple but insufficient “Thank you,” and hoped he understood.

She walked back slowly to rejoin her family. Mark studied her face for a few seconds, then hugged her, pulling her close. She picked up her carry-on bag, and the three of them passed through security.

She didn’t look back.

A
t first it seemed like every day at home was a holiday. Lily and Eric, of course, were happy to have Emma home and thrilled to have their mother back, at first vying for time with her like three-year-olds, and then plunging back into their everyday concerns of friends and activities as though nothing had ever happened. Jennifer’s parents wanted to hear everything, were delighted that it had all worked out and, she was sure, very relieved to be able to return to their own lives. And of course there were their friends. Jennifer and Mark were invited to many dinner parties, which were clearly built around them and their recent crisis, their dubious star power adding some vicarious drama to the otherwise predictable suburban scene.

And Emma? Emma was treated like a conquering hero. The
New York Times
,
The New Yorker
,
Charlie Rose
, the
Today
show, all asked for and were granted interviews, arranged and managed through the public-relations company that had been working for them all along. The company continued to position Emma as an innocent American, bullied and victimized by the Spanish legal system, which was deeply disturbing to Jennifer because she knew that wasn’t the case. She read Emma’s interviews and watched her on television with a troubled heart. Emma was beautiful, articulate, and likable. She spoke movingly of the random violence that had touched her life, the pain and fear during her imprisonment, and the love and support of her family, “without which I couldn’t have survived,” she said. The stories sent a chill into the hearts of junior-year-abroad applicants and their parents everywhere and made her a sought-after talk show guest. But the fanfare left a bad taste in Jennifer’s mouth. Worse, she thought it was bad for Emma. There were many references by both Emma and her interviewers to the trauma she had endured—a stranger forcing her into her apartment and trying to rape her and then being stabbed to death in front of her—and of course Jennifer had long suffered whenever she imagined how devastating that must have been for her daughter. But everyone glossed over the fact that Emma had been living with, loving, and protecting a criminal and that together they were responsible for the death of a young man, no matter how reprehensible that young man was. She was eager for Emma to start therapy, to try to understand why she had allowed herself to be so dominated by Paco that she could abandon the values she had grown up with and embraced all her life. But, she realized, it was hard for Emma to realize the seriousness of her problems when she was being turned into a celebrity.

Emma was almost always on the phone, speaking, texting, or tweeting, but Jennifer had hoped that they could sit together this morning and discuss a way forward that included getting Emma to start therapy. Emma had managed to avoid any discussions with her mother since she’d come home, kissing her breezily on the cheek before going out and coming home so late Jennifer was already in bed. Whenever Jennifer tried to corral her, asking her a question or suggesting they have a family dinner together, Emma found a way to wriggle out of it. Jennifer knew that Emma had arranged to return to Princeton in the fall, but they had never discussed it.

One evening Jennifer called Emma to dinner and she shouted back curtly that she wasn’t hungry. Jennifer looked at Mark and shook her head, trying to get him to share her exasperation, but he urged her to back off, saying the time in jail had forced Emma to grow up faster and that she was simply exercising her independence.

“The last time she exercised her independence she ended up in jail, Mark. Don’t you think she needs to see someone, to work this out? She can’t just go on as though she doesn’t need help.”

Mark agreed but said he thought she needed more space for a while. They ate together in silence until he gave her a peck on the cheek and, picking up his book, walked into the living room, and settled into his favorite chair.

Lily and Eric had gone off to summer camp—Lily was a junior counselor this year. Both were eager to reconnect with the friends they had made the summer before. Jennifer marveled at how well her parents had taken care of the preparations—the name tags on their clothes, the permission slips and doctor’s reports, everything. In fact, there wasn’t much for her to do. So it should have been easy to fit back into her previous pattern. In the past, Jennifer would have filled her days with community projects as well as finding worthwhile activities for the children when they returned from camp and planning in delicious detail the wonderful, two-week family vacation they always took together at the end of the summer. But she couldn’t seem to work up the energy for it. On most days, Mark was at work, Emma was at a part-time job with an international justice foundation she had gotten as a result of her interviews, and Jennifer spent most of her time reading magazines and watching repeat episodes of
Law & Order
on television. Friends called and she occasionally met one for lunch, but she neglected to shop or make dinner as she once had, and Mark often came home to find her in their bedroom, the shades drawn and the only light coming from the television set. He begged her to get some help—even told her to forget the couples counselor and just go into therapy herself—and she promised she would, wanted to, but didn’t seem to be able to arrange it. But when he reminded her that Eric and Lily were expected home, she forced herself to swing into action to welcome them, buying the treats each preferred and planning their favorite meals.

A week later Eric and Lily arrived. Jennifer marveled at how quickly they fell back into their old routine. She tried too, but something was missing. When Lily showed her the eleventh-grade summer reading list and asked her to help her choose which book to write her essay on, she glanced at it, commented on how interesting it seemed, and suggested that Lily choose it herself. When, annoyed at what she took as a brush-off, Lily asked for help writing the essay, Jennifer said she hadn’t read the book and thought it would be best if her teacher saw Lily’s unedited work to better help her progress. Lily looked confused, then angry. “You don’t care about anyone but Emma,” she said as she stalked off to her room.

“That’s not true, Lily,” she called after her.

Eric spent his days skateboarding, catching balls from his pitch-back in the yard, and playing video games, and Jennifer found that it wouldn’t actually destroy his chances for success if she allowed him a few more hours of downtime doing what he liked instead of ferrying him around to lessons to keep him busy. She even let go her restrictions on his use of video games, allowing him much more playing time than she ever would have in the past. She backed off and found that nothing fell apart.

She called Suzie and asked her to visit. The two women spent many hours together walking through the nature reserve and talking. When Suzie left a week later, Jennifer was up and the television was off. For the first time in years, she asked herself what she needed, and she knew the answer immediately. She needed a job.

It took time and thought and lots of conversations with Mark, her friends, and even a career counselor before she settled on what had been obvious to everyone but her from the start: the theater. She didn’t think she wanted to try acting again, but she had heard of a local private school that needed a teacher of English in the upper school who would also run the theater department and direct school plays. She had applied and, given her excellent education and professional experience, thought she had a shot, even though she’d been out of the job market for a long time. She checked the mail every day, awaiting a reply.

One sunny morning two weeks later, Jennifer was alone in the house with Emma. Lily had spent the night before at a friend’s home and Eric had finished breakfast and was shooting hoops in the backyard. It was getting late and, as usual, Jennifer knocked on Emma’s door to see if she wanted breakfast.

“Thanks, Mom,” Emma said. “You don’t have to make me breakfast.” She smiled sweetly at her mother on the way to the shower. “But I’m glad you do that for me.”

Jennifer was delighted at her daughter’s kind words and she returned to the kitchen to prepare the food and wait for the mail. Emma was in a good mood. Maybe this would be the right time for them to talk, she thought.

She felt a surge of optimism. She mused that as terrible as this Spanish experience had been, some good had come from it. After all, Emma was going to be fine. She would be back at school in the fall and all this publicity would calm down and everyone’s life would resume in a normal way. Even the distance between them would be bridged, she thought. They would become close in a new way, like two adults instead of a mother and dependent child. And she recognized the part she had played in creating Emma’s need to submit to a controlling man who manipulated her into thinking he had all the answers. She wouldn’t make the same mistakes with Lily and Eric.

She poured herself a bowl of granola, adding skim milk and trying to concentrate on the
Times
as she ate. But the paper couldn’t hold her attention. Her mind shifted to Mark. She knew her relationship with him had suffered a big blow and needed to be repaired. But she felt optimistic that they would work it out. Hadn’t they always managed? She would find a couples counselor, she resolved, as Mark had suggested, and she would start paying more attention to him and his needs. She felt that she had dodged a bullet and she took a deep, cleansing breath.

The mail arrived, and still Emma hadn’t appeared. Jennifer sifted through it quickly to see if the letter from the school, the one she hoped would tell her she was hired, had arrived. A lot of mail had been delivered that day—magazines, catalogs, bills—and she sorted it into piles, as was her habit. There was no letter from the school, but before she could register disappointment, her eyes fell on another letter, addressed by hand in a fountain pen and with a Spanish postmark. She glanced at the upper left-hand corner for a return address but found none. Her heart lurched and sped up, and for a few seconds she felt afraid, but then stopped herself with the realization that they were home and Emma had been released and no one could harm them. But she didn’t calm down, because now her fear was replaced by excitement, a suspicion that she knew whom the letter was from and the hope that she was right.

She deliberately didn’t open it right away. She poured herself another cup of coffee, took it to her bedroom, and closed and locked the door. Then she sat on her bed and carefully opened the letter.

She pulled out a single piece of folded stationery. When she opened it, a photograph dropped out. Even before looking at it, she checked the signature on the letter and saw, as she had hoped, that it was from Roberto. Then she picked up the photograph. In it, Emma, Paco, and another boy are all dancing together. Or maybe not dancing, maybe just hugging, their arms around each other. They are laughing. Emma’s hair is wild and partially covering her face. Paco doesn’t have the beard he had in court, but his dark bushy eyebrows dominate his craggy face. The third boy has light brown hair and an open, handsome face. He is on the other side of Emma. The shot has caught him as he is leaning on her, the side of his face resting against her shoulder. There is something strange about their expressions. Their eyes look glazed. They are probably drunk or stoned, Jennifer thought.

She put the photograph down and picked up the letter, refusing to allow herself to imagine what it meant or why Roberto had sent it, though her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry.

Dear Jennifer,

I thought very long and hard about sending this to you. I hope I have made the right decision. I am guilty of having kept it a secret for a long time, since before Emma was released—you will understand why. But I believe it is a secret that needs to be revealed, if only to you.

Perhaps you don’t recognize the third person in this photograph. You never met him. Neither did I. We believed that Emma never met him either until, as she has repeatedly avowed, his attempt to rape her resulted in his death. He is Rodrigo Pérez. It appears the photo was taken in the apartment Emma shared with Paco. Notice, if you will, the poster on the far wall and you will perhaps remember having seen it there when you visited Emma’s bedroom.

The camera that took this picture had a time setting. The date is on the bottom in the right-hand corner. Look at it.

This is the only copy of this photograph. I have destroyed the negative, which also came into my possession, for a fee.

I do not send this to bring you grief, but in hopes your knowledge will help you to prevent more pain to yourself and others.

I remain your devoted friend,

It was signed simply, without a flourish, with his name: Roberto.

She picked up the photo again and found the time stamp. February 2012, two months before the murder.

She sat frozen on her bed. There was no copy. Roberto was telling her she could destroy the photo and be completely safe. She stared at it for a while, especially at the drunken face of the dead boy. She remembered his parents and their television interview swearing that he would never have tried to rape anyone. She started to tear it up, but stopped herself. Instead, she put the photo back in the envelope with the letter and opened the bottom drawer of her dresser. She placed the envelope in a zippered makeup pouch and put that under a pile of her nightclothes. She climbed back into bed and pulled the covers up over her head.

“Mom,” she heard Emma shout. “Where are you? I thought you said you were making breakfast.”

Jennifer got up slowly and went to the bathroom to wash her face. Then she walked into the kitchen. Emma was sitting at the kitchen table drinking orange juice. Jennifer stared at her, her mind spinning but tossing out bits of remembered information that when pieced together with this latest revelation created a likely narrative. The Spanish cops had been right. Emma had known Rodrigo Pérez. She and Paco had set him up. He hadn’t tried to rape her; she had seduced him. Paco had come in, and they had robbed him. Maybe they had planned it. Maybe Emma even helped kill him. Her fingerprints were on the knife. Maybe she handed it to him when it dropped.