Chapter 3 - Six Days of Small Cruelties
I returned to Park Slope at 2:40 in the morning.
Eleanor was sitting in the living room with her coat on.
“You let her take the baby?”
“Maya is his mother.”
“She’s unwell.”
“Give me her phone.”
My mother folded her hands around her purse.
“She misplaced it.”
I opened the security app.
The first clip was from December 26, the morning after I flew to Germany.
Maya sat on the couch nursing Liam while Eleanor stood over her with a legal pad. My mother asked what time Maya had last eaten, then answered her own question by writing, “Refused breakfast.”
The kitchen camera showed breakfast still inside the refrigerator.
At noon, a delivery driver brought soup, bread, fruit, and prepared meals ordered by Maya’s obstetric clinic. Eleanor accepted the bags.
She carried them downstairs ten minutes later.
The building’s hallway camera recorded Chloe arriving and leaving with the groceries.
On December 27, the visiting nurse rang the buzzer.
Eleanor spoke through the intercom.
“Maya canceled. The baby’s sleeping.”
Maya was visible in the nursery, trying to stand while holding the bassinet.
On December 28, Eleanor adjusted the thermostat from seventy-two to fifty-eight degrees.
Maya raised it.
Eleanor lowered it again and removed the control batteries.
On December 29, Maya searched the apartment for her phone. Chloe sat at the kitchen table photographing dirty bottles and unfolded laundry.
After each photograph, Chloe moved another object into the frame.
My mother poured milk into the sink, placed the empty container back in the refrigerator, and photographed the bare shelves.
On December 30, Maya tried to leave with Liam.
Eleanor blocked the front door.
The camera did not capture every word, but it caught enough.
“David asked me to monitor you,” my mother said.
“He asked you to help me.”
“He said to do what I think is best.”
Maya backed away from the door because she could not carry Liam and push past a sixty-two-year-old woman without risking a fall.
The final clip from that evening showed Chloe entering my office.
She opened the drawer where Maya and I kept bank records.
She removed a folder and handed it to Eleanor.
My mother finally stood.
“You’re watching a woman do what she had to do in a crisis.”
“You turned off the heat.”
“To reduce the bill. Your wife had it running with windows cracked.”
“You stole her food.”
“She wouldn’t eat properly.”
“You kept a nurse out.”
“The nurse would’ve upset her.”
I paused the video on the image of Maya sitting on the nursery floor, crying while my mother photographed her.
“What were those pictures for?”
Eleanor looked toward the hallway.
“You need to understand the condition your wife was in.”
I stepped closer.
“What were they for?”
She reached for her suitcase.
I took her building keys from the bowl beside the door.
“You’re leaving.”
“David, I have nowhere to go tonight.”
“You have an apartment in Queens.”
She looked at me for one second too long.
“What happened to your apartment?”
Before she could answer, my phone rang.
It was Chloe.
“Don’t throw Mom out,” she said. “You don’t know what Maya was about to do to us.”
The word us again.
My wife had been starved and isolated while my mother and sister talked as if they were the endangered family.
May you like
I opened the office drawer.
The folder from the recording was gone.
