A second was not a soul mate. A second was not the one he’d waited and longed for until the perfect one-and-only came along. A second was the woman you met by chance after you deserted and divorced a hopeless case.

In those early days, Nina had held her tongue. She was determined to be cool about the turn of events that had ruined her plans for a child-free life. She took on the burden of another woman’s child without letting her husband know how angry she was.

“Put out” was the expression Nina’s mother would have used for such a moment, an expression Nina hated. But it was exactly right. She was put out by the new requirements of her marriage. She was put out by Jason’s automatic acceptance of parenthood. But she would never let him see how she felt. She would meet the challenge with her usual self-confidence. Grim smiles and the promise of future trouble.

Poor, poor Griffin. Her sloppy, lazy mother Caroline slowly poisoning herself with cheap red wine and sedatives. Drifting from job to job. Escaping into a between-world, a warm haze where she could almost, almost forget the way Jason’s eyes had changed when he stopped loving her. The way his eyes drifted away from Caroline’s stretch marks and moth-wing tattoos and bulging thighs…

To Nina. To a lace thong. To Nina’s fragrance, lush, floral, rich with amber and saffron. To BJs in elevators.

Just like a movie, one of those hetero thrillers where pets die and children are shocked but not traumatized. In movies the child grows stronger, she is not broken by knowing the two people who made her and who live inside her, two halves of one soul, hate one another.

The open floor plan downstairs. Did Nina imagine herself as the hostess of magical, unforgettable parties with so many guests she couldn’t limit the available space with walls?

The kitchen island with a black and gray marble top. Perfect for someone who lives to cook. Not Nina. She has trouble remembering how to operate the microwave.

The floating staircase where a previous owner tumbled to her spine-cracking death on the polished concrete. A bit of information reluctantly disclosed to the homebuyer, Jason. A fact he’s never shared with Nina.

I’ve forgotten the realtor’s name. Her face is plastered on posters at every bus stop for two miles. A moustache added with Magic Marker. Not a different one every time. The same moustache, same style, curling at the ends. I like to think she has a neglected child of her own, a budding artist who follows his busy mom to a showing in a faraway suburb and then takes the bus home, getting off the bus at every stop to deface another picture of her big smile.

So. The real estate maven and the other working mom. Smiling and talking, wandering across the lawn, up the steps to the porch. A faux Victorian eyesore. Probably owned by hippies fifty years ago. That house was the one falling-down mess left on our street. We always thought a young couple might buy it and tear the place down. No such luck.

The girl watched her mother, the prospective buyer, follow the realtor indoors. The girl started panting like a dog and drooling on the closed window. Not kidding. Drooling. And while I watched she started writing in it, in the drool, etching letters with one fingertip. S. E. A. N.

That was the first time I saw her.

Every group has a legend, and that’s you, Nina.

Nina

Oh, now!

Clara

No, it’s true. You’re an inspiration. I don’t know how you do it.

Jessica

Coping with a special needs stepdaughter, planning your husband’s business trips, plus all of your volunteer work, and remember how you took time out of your busy schedule to help organize that poor girl’s memorial? You’re an angel, Nina.

Nina

Well, I knew Gwen would be overwhelmed. Who wouldn’t be, under the circumstances?

Marcie

Not that anybody said thanks.

Nina

Oh well.

Clara

She doesn’t even mention you on the acknowledgements page of her book, Nina.

Nina

I didn’t expect anything.

Jessica

Have you read it?

Nina

Gwen’s little pamphlet? No.

Clara

She describes it as a memoir of grief.

Marcie

Only six months after her child’s death? When did she have time to grieve?

Jessica

I’m sure everyone mourns in their own way, but she seems very—uh—resilient.

Nina

I don’t want to criticize the woman, who knows what I would do, God forbid, am I right?

Jessica

100%.

Marcie

So sad.

Clara

Sure, of course, but would any of us forget to at least give a nod to another woman who stepped in to help at a terrible moment?

“Remind me how you helped Sean’s mother?”

Nina jumped and closed the laptop.

“Griffin, what the hell are you doing?” she asked. “You know you’re forbidden to read over my shoulder. How long were you standing there?”

A long time. Taking in the hero worship Nina had drawn around her like a winter shawl. The kind she would buy from the buy-my-homemade-stuff channel she watches when Jason’s away.

“Leave,” Nina commanded. “Close the door behind you.”

In this Paris Review essay from 2019 Sabrina Orah Mark explores the poetic and mundane aspects of step-motherhood. Both mother and stepmother, her perspective on the traditional role and literary trope of the stepmother is lively and specific, and ties in nicely with the themes of my serialized story here at SubStack.

Happy reading!

FRANZ JUTTNER, ILLUSTRATION FROM SNOW WHITE, C.1905

Of all the words one might use to describe Nina, the one she would hate most is “aberration.” She would accept “unique.” Tolerate “unusual.” But to be known as a creature unable to perform the ubiquitous role of mother? She’d rather kill someone.

Nina tilted the screen of her iPad and Jason squinted at it while munching toast slathered with rosemary chia jam. He grunted in that pleasant, dismissive way she hated. Patronizing. The same sound he made when he wandered through the room while she was shopping online or watching Real Housewives.

“Hmph.”

“Did you read it?” she asked.

“Is it…?”

“It’s Gwen,” Nina told him. “She’s written this tiny book, this memoir of her life as a mother. Can you believe that? The audacity?”

Jason gave her a bemused grin and pinched her kneecap. He wasn’t listening at all.

“This is an act of pure narcissism,” she said. “I have to tell the group.”

“That mommy thing on Facebook?”

He understood this part immediately. Nina was spending half of every day online, six months after Sean’s memorial, talking with the moms.

They all agreed with her about Gwen’s negligence, Gwen’s selfishness, Gwen’s failure to understand her duty as a mother. And now Gwen had written a self-published memoir about the trials and challenges of motherhood!

“This underscores every single thing I’ve said about the woman. She raised a child who couldn’t thrive…”

“Oh, has the group decided on nurture over nature, this week?”

Jason watched his angry wife glide upstairs. Thong sandals flapping, fuchsia silk robe fanning out like wings behind her slender frame.

She was heading to the bedroom alcove where she kept her laptop. Where she would disappear into that metaphorical cloud, that tangle of electrical impulses where her friends seemed to be waiting for her at all hours.

She wasn’t rejected. Other children tried to play with her. She didn’t like them very much. Children offered her toys and invited her to sit with them. She seemed, I don’t know, sort of suspicious of their generosity. If one of the kids offered to include Sean in a game or if anyone took her hand or spoke to her, she nodded and then walked away.

I read some self-help books. I wasn’t worried but I thought it was crucial to take note of any red flags. The pediatrician assured me she was physically healthy with above average intelligence. Her behavior was a little unusual, most children her age wanted to belong to a group, to take part in activities. Sean understood what was asked of her, socially. She simply wasn’t interested in doing what other children did.

For the first few years I was running on optimism.

We got through preschool, and I patted myself on the back. My daughter was going to be fine, just fine.

The elementary school was highly regarded. I fell into a common trap, believing a good education could fix anything.

I didn’t know her classmates called her “the robot.” This is one of the many things I learned years later, not from my daughter but from Nina, my neighbor.

— from Motherly: A Memoir by Gwen Harmon

She was reading at the third grade level when she started first grade. We discussed placing her in a more advanced class. Her mother refused. She didn’t want Sean to be out of her depth socially. I’m afraid she was being optimistic.

There were a few issues but nothing serious. No violent incidents between Sean and the other students. Nothing I was aware of, but this was a long time ago.

She got along with her teachers, but I don’t recall any particular attachment. By that I mean she didn’t have a mentor, someone she admired and emulated. Maybe there was a gap there, a need we failed to recognize.

- Voluntary statement by Helen Coover, Vice Principal at Lambert Elementary School

Two of Sean’s classmates sang a children’s song a Capella and off-key. Her homeroom teacher read a tribute that sounded like she’d written it in the car on the way over. Something about children and promises and lost potential. As if she barely knew Sean but she knew what people wanted to hear.

Afterward Nina Mears plucked an unopened bud from the floral arrangement she and Jason had contributed. She stuck the flower in her silk handbag, and joined the line to offer condolences to Sean’s mother.

“We’re shattered,” she mumbled, cradling Gwen Harmon’s hands in her own. “Simply devastated for you.”

Gwen shifted her weight. She looked tired and drugged.

“Thank you,” she replied robotically.

“I really can’t imagine,” Nina continued, holding up the line and turning toward her stepdaughter. “If anything ever happened to Griffin, I can’t imagine how Jason and I would get through it.”

She threw a scalding glance at the spot where Gwen’s husband would have stood if he existed. Then she said something her Facebook friends would have called “a Nina.”

“Mothering is hard enough with the support of a rock like my husband, I don’t know how you manage on your own.”

The line moved on. Gwen Harmon was left as before, dumbstruck, barely standing.

*

At home after the memorial Nina pulled off her black pumps and placed them on a shelf in the closet. Before undressing she dug from her purse the white rosebud she had pilfered from the memorial wreath. She refused to let the single unopened flower ruin an otherwise perfect arrangement.

She placed the rosebud on her vanity among the lipsticks and perfumes. Only if she left it in sight would she remember to slice it down the middle and press it as a keepsake before it shriveled and turned brown.

She ran her fingers over the makeup jars and ornate bottles—the opulent array of pinks and reds, the fuchsia and violet scarves draping an oval mirror. At the center of this fragrant mess lay the useless white bud, hard as a knuckle under its rubbery skin.

A shuffling noise outside the bedroom door caught her attention. She looked out and her gaze followed a series of damp footprints from the empty bathroom down the hall.

“Griffin,” she called out. “Cleaning up after yourself is the least you can do. Do you hear me?”

Her voice reverberated. The TV downstairs hummed with a football game and the long, low snoring of her husband on the sofa.

“Not testing boundaries tonight, kiddo,” she said to herself, or to no one.

As quietly as possible she edged down the hall. She stopped at her stepdaughter’s bedroom and gave the door a gentle shove.

Facedown in a mass of lilac bedding Griffin snored exactly like her father. Nina stepped closer, leaned down, and murmured.

“Are you really sleeping, you little bitch?”

Nina chuckled. Satisfied, she sauntered out of the room, leaving the door open. Only when she was halfway down the hall did she notice the footprints were gone.

Irritated by the buzz of activity and flashing lights outside, Jason Mears trudged bear-like down the floating staircase of his home. In the living room he yanked the vertical blinds apart and gazed across the street at the police officers and paramedics who had taken over the park. He gave them a fierce frown, as though his disapproval alone could scare them away.

“This is the safest neighborhood in North America,” Jason said to the room. “What the hell are they doing?”

“Maybe they’re practicing,” Nina said, sidling up next to him in her pink silk robe.

“Practicing?” Jason shook his head. His way of telling the world it was preposterous, all of it.

“The way firefighters torch condemned buildings,” Nina explained. “And then put them out. I need espresso now.”

“They’re not practicing,” Jason said. “Unless that’s a fake body.”

As if the words were a signal, a scream went up outside and the EMPs carrying a gurney to a waiting ambulance were forced to stop in their tracks. They stood by awkwardly, heads bowed, while the girl’s mother tore the blanket from her daughter’s face and cried.

Last January was wicked cold. By the second weekend the little pond in the park froze to a fist of solid ice. Chickadees and juncos kept skittering across the surface, pecking for water.

All over the street a breeze whistled in and out of square chimney tops in the dark. Icicles swayed like daggers over every doorstep.

On the ground next to the pond a veil of frost covered a dead girl’s face. Her mouth was coated soft violet and pink, the color of an unripe blueberry. Her lips were parted just the way they would be if she were having a conversation with an invisible friend.

[This is the last free section of YRMOM. To continue reading this serialized story you need to be a paid subscriber. I will post occasional flash fiction for free. Happy reading!]

—Thomas Carlyle

“The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness.”

—Ann Radcliffe

Nina’s hiding in her bedroom closet again. With the door locked, lights out, she’s crawling on her hands and knees. Doubled over against the floor, pushing her way forward like a slug.

Nina, Nina, Nina. Will she ever learn?

Last night she was frightened by the sound of a dog barking in the street. She sent her husband Jason outdoors to glare at the sidewalk and stare at the moon and then wander back inside shaking his head. Since then he’s been searching online, making a list of the early warning signs of dementia.

Nina would be so insulted by her husband’s research, but she doesn’t know what he’s up to these days. She doesn’t tell him what’s happening in their house. He won’t listen so she’s stopped trying to explain it.

She burrows deep into the darkest corner of the closet. Between the Gucci knockoffs and the crumbling Chanel tweed she inherited from her mother. She wills the dry-cleaning bags covering the vintage, unwearable wardrobe not to shimmy, not to make a soft chafing sound and give her away.

With her back flat against the wall and her feet drawn up beneath her, she thinks she will be safe inside. Only blinking, barely breathing. She hasn’t figured out yet: she isn’t safe anywhere.

- S.P.