The Perfect Mother

CAROL MEYER stared at her reflection and adjusted her pearl necklace. At fifty-five, thanks to a strict antiaging regimen, she could pass for thirty-five. Her nails were ragged after chewing them one after the other. She glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes before the parent-teacher conference. She pulled an emery board from her purse and restored her nails to perfection.

Arriving early at the school should have made a difference, but, as usual, the prospect of meeting with her son's teacher made Carol nervous. She leaned toward the restroom mirror, searching her face for any blemish that might have appeared since she left home. Finding none, she applied a fresh coat of lipstick, and smiled at her reflection before heading for the door.

Carol was by far the oldest mother of the children in Mrs. Sanderson's first-grade class. Despite the enormous age gap between her and the other moms, she got along great with them. Her son, Ethan, was easily the most well-liked kid by the other moms and constantly received invitations for playdates with classmates of both genders. She was happy when the other moms praised her for raising such a wonderful boy. But when other mothers asked Carol what was the secret to raising a well-mannered child, she often downplayed all the effort she put into raising her son. She learned to smile at other moms and say she was just lucky to be blessed with such a wonderful boy.

What Carol was loath to admit was that this was her third attempt at raising Ethan. Not even her closest friends knew of her previous parenting attempts. Almost all the mothers had started families in their early twenties. Despite having access to all the new-fangled parenting tools, rarely, if ever, did they choose to do more than raise their children in the naturalistic way parents had raised children for generations.

Carol had convinced herself that it would offend the sensibilities of her fellow townspeople to admit that modern technology and the do-over it provided played a hand in Ethan's impeccable manners. So she told no one that she had previously pushed the reset button, twice sending the teenage versions of Ethan back to being babies. She was surprised no one in the small Ohio town had bothered to ask Carol about her age. If they had, she was prepared to pass Ethan off as a miracle baby born of in vitro fertilization treatments to an older mother. But Carol seemed to have located one of the few small towns in America where the townsfolk had no trouble staying out of other people's business.

Carol was barely out of high school when she became pregnant for the first and only time in her life. Her boyfriend, Greg, despite objections from his family, did marry her, but neither of them was up for the challenge of parenting. It was New York City. She felt she was missing some of the best days of her life. As a result, Ethan was allowed to run a little on the wild side. His teenage years were tough on Carol. Ethan smoked, drank, and there were rumors that he experimented with pills. What kind of life awaited a boy like that?

When Ethan turned sixteen, she met with a consultant who walked her through the ins and outs of the technology that allowed parents to transform their unruly teens back into the sweet bundles of joy they had been at birth. With Greg's approval, Carol hit the reset button and got the chance to raise Ethan a second time.

A fresh start was essential. Carol and Greg moved far away from everyone they knew, to an upscale suburb outside of Ohio's largest city. Being a little older and wiser, Carol took more time with Ethan. She read to him long before he took solid foods. When he became a toddler, she filled his days with one structured activity after the next. But Ethan's teen years in their bedroom community' at least as far as Carol was concerned, weren't much better than the ones in the city. When Carol tried to clamp down on his behavior, Ethan rebelled in a way that felt eerily familiar to her.

Many nights Carol cried herself to sleep. She would set a curfew and Ethan would break it. It all came to a head the night Ethan crept into their home at three o'clock in the morning. When he tiptoed into the kitchen, she leapt from the family-room sofa and charged at him. "Where have you been?" She crossed her arms, glaring as she waited for his reply.

"Out with friends," Ethan said. He smirked at his mother. "We were playing board games and I lost track of time. "

"Do you think I'm stupid or something?" she asked her son.

"Are you?" he asked, laughing as he wobbled drunkenly toward his bedroom.

The next morning, Carol dug the crib and baby clothes out of storage. Baby Ethan would need a place to sleep again. That night, when Greg laid eyes on the crib and baby clothes, he shook his head in disgust.

"I refuse to do this again, Carol," he said, gesturing toward the crib. "I've reached my limit. We're too old to raise a baby. And besides, Ethan's just a typical teenager. He'll outgrow this nonsense soon enough."

"You're never too old to be a good parent," she said.

"I have to do this."

"I think that's a horrible idea," he said, pushing the crib across the room.

Carol marched over to the crib. She placed her hands on the side rails and rolled it back. She straightened the mattress and smiled at Greg. They stood facing each other, the crib separating them.

"Are you happy with a kid who behaves like this?" she asked calmly.

"We're better parents than our parents were," he said, shaking a finger in her face.

54She moved his hand out of her face. She took in a deep breath and exhaled loudly.

"When the bar is set so low, that's not something to be proud of," she said. "We can do better. Why not take advantage of this opportunity?"

He nudged the crib aside and leaned in close. She smelled beer on his breath.

"One day, we'll look back on these days and laugh," he said, cocking his head to the side and giving her a hard stare. "It will all blow over."

"I don't share your optimistic view of the future," she said, averting his gaze. "I'm going to do another reset."

When Greg came home a week later, he found Carol in the living room of their four-bedroom colonial. She held baby Ethan in her arms, feeding him formula from a bottle. She sniffed the top of his head.

"He smells so nice." She held the baby toward her husband. "Would you like to smell him?"

Greg stared at Carol, turned, and walked upstairs. He had almost emptied his chest of drawers into a suitcase by the time she entered the room, Ethan in her arms. She sat on the edge of the bed.

"So, you're going to walk out on your baby? What kind of man are you?"

"Really, that's how you want to position this?" he asked, shaking his head. "You want me to appear to be a deadbeat father?"

Carol shrugged her shoulders. "That's what you'll be if you leave us."

Greg threw up his arms. "Well, I guess I'm a deadbeat dad because I'm sure as hell not staying." Once in the hallway, he stuck his head back into the room. "Give me a week and I'll have all my stuff out of here. I'm moving back to New York."

"I don't need you, Greg," Carol shouted. She waved him off with the back of her hand, as if shooing away a fly. "Run away if you will. I'll be fine on my own."

She looked down into Ethan's cute little face and smiled at him. "We'll be fine without that deadbeat, won't we? It will be Mommy and Ethan against the world."

Carol eventually put the house up for sale, selling it for more than three times what they had paid for it years earlier. She used part of the proceeds from the sale to pay cash for a home in the town of Fairport, fifty miles away. Fairport looked like something out of a Rockwell painting. Main Street was lined with two-story red brick buildings. People were friendly. It was the perfect place to raise a child without worrying about the social problems that she attributed to larger cities and their suburbs.

If repeated practice in mothering had taught Carol anything, it was how to hover over Ethan like a helicopter. She didn't want to leave anything to chance. No detail was too small to fret over. This was her last chance at mothering and Carol didn't just want to be a good mother. She wanted the impossible. She wanted to be the perfect mom of a perfect child.

She read anything and everything that purported to help parents raise good children. Not a moment in Ethan's day went by without Carol having planned some activity intended to make him smarter, kinder, more loving or caring. Ethan was a good kid, but still Carol worried that he wasn't the product of perfect mothering. Every time she looked at him, she wondered if she was doing enough to get the outcome she craved.

Carol Meyer took a seat in one of the dozen empty wooden chairs lined up in the hallway outside Mrs. Sanderson's classroom door. She folded her hands in her lap, sat up straight, and smiled. A mother Carol had seen around school, but whose name escaped her, slid into the chair two down from Carol's. The woman smiled and Carol returned her smile.

"This is so nerve-racking, isn't it?" the woman asked. "I never look forward to parent-teacher conferences." 56

"I can think of so many things I'd rather do." Carol exhaled hard. "Have a root canal, stick a needle in my eyes, or even walk on hot coals."

A tall leggy blonde in her late twenties exited the classroom. She was the mother of a girl Ethan talked about often. Carol watched as the young mother and the teacher exchanged pleasantries. As the woman sashayed down the hallway, Mrs. Sanderson turned to Carol and said, "Hello, Ms. Meyer. You're next."

Carol stood and followed the teacher. Before she crossed the threshold, she turned back toward the mother sitting in the row of chairs and crossed the fingers on both hands. The other mother held up her crossed fingers, wishing Carol a silent good luck.

Carol slid into the small chair across from Sanderson's desk. She wiped her damp palms on her knees as she waited for the teacher to begin.

"I think Ethan might be the brightest kid I have ever taught," Mrs. Sanderson said. "It's a joy to have him in the class."

"Thank you," Carol said.

"If all kids were as well-behaved as Ethan, I'm not sure what I would say to them each day. You've done one hell of a job as a mother."

Carol smiled, feeling good about the praise. "Thank you for your kind words," she said, and waited to hear more about Ethan. She glanced at her nails and wondered why she had been nervous in the first place.

"Then again, you've had plenty of practice, haven't you, Ms. Meyer?" the teacher asked.

Carol frowned. She scrunched her eyes and studied the teacher's face, hoping to make sense of the accusation. Although she didn't have a clue how the teacher found out, she could tell by the look in Mrs. Sanderson's eyes that she knew the truth. Even so, what did this teacher know about Ethan or the number of times she spent raising him? Carol gulped. A heavy feeling settled in her stomach as if she had swallowed a bag of marbles.

"What is that supposed to mean exactly, Mrs. Sanderson?"

The clock on the wall ticked as the women quietly regarded each other. Carol averted her gaze. Sanderson reached into her desk and withdrew an old snapshot, sliding it across the desk. Carol instantly recognized the face in the picture. She jerked back her head. She picked up the photo and held it in her outstretched hand before slowly pulling it closer to her eyes. There was no doubt in her mind. This was the first version of Ethan. She remembered that sweatshirt.

"Is this Ethan?" Carol asked. Where had Sanderson gotten this?

"I was his girlfriend," Sanderson said, crossing her arms and sitting back into her seat. "At least until you hit the reset button."

Carol stared at the teacher as she tried to figure out what age her son would be had she allowed him to grow up in the most natural way possible. The teacher looked normal enough. Had she underestimated her own son's ability to grow into a responsible adult? No, she decided. That couldn't be the case. She slammed the snapshot on the teacher's desk, crossed her arms, and sank into her chair.

"I did what was best for my family. I shouldn't have to apologize for anything. Ethan was bad. He smoked and drank. I heard he was on drugs. Was I supposed to sit still and watch him become a horrible person?"

"He was a teenager," Sanderson said. "I was a teenager. I smoked cigarettes. I drank alcohol." She gritted her teeth, clenched her fists, and lifted her shoulders as she took a deep breath. She exhaled loudly. "We never hurt anyone!"

"You!" Carol pursed her lips. "You led him down the wrong path. Did you do drugs with him, too?"

Mrs. Sanderson rolled her eyes. "We didn't do drugs. I made teenage mistakes and learned from them. My parents had faith in me."

"Your parents had faith in you. Is that what you think it was?" Carol laughed as she shook her head and gave Sanderson a look of haughty disdain. "Maybe they just didn't care enough. Not everyone can strive to do right by their kids."

"I loved him and he loved me," Sanderson said. "We wanted to get married. You took that away from us."

"I don't have to listen to your lies." Carol stood and turned toward the door.

"He knew you were upset with him," Sanderson called out. "And he wanted to change to please you. But you denied him that opportunity."

Carol whipped her body around and faced the teacher. "I'm a better mother now than I was then," Carol said. "This Ethan is perfect. Can you imagine the life he's going to have? It's going to be perfect."

"Perfect?" Sanderson asked. "Sorry to break the news to you, but Ethan isn't perfect."

"Really? You just finished telling me how wonderful he is. How bright he is. What a joy he is." The teacher closed her eyes.

"He doesn't do anything wrong, but no one is perfect, Ms. Meyer. I would expect you to realize that by now."

Carol put up her hand to stop the teacher from talking. "A good mother knows when it's time to start over. She knows when the best thing she can do for her child is to start anew."

Mrs. Sanderson laughed. "All you've ever done was for yourself. "

Carol gave Sanderson a hard look. This woman knew nothing about children or motherhood. Not one damn thing! Yet she had the nerve to lecture as if she knew what it was like to walk a mile in Carol's shoes.

"Well, I didn't come here to listen to your nonsense. You have a nice day, Mrs. Sanderson." She headed for the door, shaking her head at the misinformed teacher.

Carol sat in her car in the parking lot of Fairport Elementary, her breathing heavy. This teacher was dangerous and capable of exposing her secret to all the moms who admired her mothering skills. The thought of selling her home and seeking out another town crossed her mind, making her bang her fists against the steering wheel while she let out a scream. She then repeated the words that had become her mantra. "I'm a good mother! I'm a great mother! I'm the greatest mother!"

First published in Fault Zone Uplift 2017