Free The Life You Longed For by Maribeth Fischer

the disorder. She’d had no idea the disease was this prevalent, that so many women were capable of devising such horrible ways to hurt their children. The titles of the articles themselves had read like advertisements for horror movies:
    â€œSalvage or Sabotage: Munchausen’s and the Chronically Ill Child.”
    â€œThe Bacteriologically Battered Baby: Another Case of Munchausen by Proxy.”
    â€œSupermom or Super Monster.”
    Even the names of the journals in which the articles had been published seemed ominous: Archives of Disease in Childhood, Journal of Forensic Sciences, Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect. She couldn’t erase from her mind the description of the four children so severely abused by their mother that they were dwarfed. Locked in closets for weeks and months at a time and slowly starved. A sixteen-year-old boy had the height of an eight-year-old; an eight-year-old girl had a bone age of three years. She pictured bonsai trees, their roots constantly cut beneath the surface of dark soil, abused into minuscule perfection.
    None of it made sense.
    They were nicknamed “helicopter mothers” because they were always hovering over their distressed child. She thought of how she had never left Jack alone in the hospital. People told her all the time: “I don’t know how you do it, Grace” or “You’re a saint,” or “I’ve never met a parent as devoted as you.”
    Supermom or Child Abuser . The words echoed.
    She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. In cases of Munchausen by Proxy, termination of parental rights is the only absolute way of ensuring the victim’s safety. Erin and Jack watched videos, one after the other, though normally the rule was no more than one hour of TV a day. She imagined that years from now she would remember little of this time except for the odd lines of high-pitched Disney dialogue: I have come to seek the hand of the Princess Jasmine…. Take my advice, kid…Hakuna Matata .
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    â€œPlease don’t argue with me,” she had begged Max this morning, after reneging on her promise to let him go to the hockey rink with a bunch of kids from his team. “I wouldn’t ask you to stay home if it wasn’t important.”
    â€œYou said I could go, Mom.”
    â€œ Please , Max.” She was sitting on the stairs in her bathrobe. She was exhausted, and she needed a shower and the house was a mess. Uno cards lay scattered on the hallway floor. A puzzle piece. One of Jack’s socks. Already she felt defeated. “I can’t explain it to you right now, but—”
    â€œIt’s not fair!” Max exploded. “You always do this! Why’d you even buy me new skates if I can’t use them?”
    Stephen had intervened from the kitchen. “Max, you yell at your mother one more time and you can forget the rink altogether.” He strode into the hallway, a dishtowel over his shoulder, and told Max to go empty the dishwasher, swatting him with the towel as Max stomped off. Stephen squatted in front of Grace then. He hadn’t shaved in two days, and she knew he was exhausted too. He’d been doing everything—all of Jack’s medications, the cooking, laundry. “We can’t keep him in all week,” he said gently.
    â€œI’m just so afraid,” she sobbed.
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    She could feel Stephen watching her as he drove, though her eyes were closed. “What?” she asked without opening them.
    â€œYou look beautiful,” he said.
    She clenched her jaw against the irritation she felt. “I thought the whole point of this suit was to not look beautiful.” Tears pricked her eyes. “I feel ridiculous.” She wished she could have laughed at herself—trying on and discarding clothes for nearly an hour this morning, as if to prove to the lawyer that— what ? Being a good mother was a matter of wearing the right costume? It was