A Good Mother

description of anger. It isn’t inward, as she described. It’s outward, in the way she speaks and describes Sergeant Hollis, particularly when it comes to the infidelity. And it isn’t a burning fury, either. Based on observing her and reviewing these test results, I think it is more probable than not that what she felt toward him, more than anything, was a high level of contempt.”
In the car ride back to the office, Abby and Will tear into each other just like the unhappy couple Will had imagined them to be when they were sitting on Dr. Cartwright’s couch.
“Fuck fuck fuck.” Abby is trying unsuccessfully to back the car out of a tight space in the parking garage.
“Watch it,” he yells. “You just friggin’ sideswiped that BMW.” He opens his door, looks at the other car, and starts to get out.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving a note on the guy’s dashboard. There’s a huge scratch on the driver’s-side door.”
She revs the engine.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
“No.” He shuts his door and turns to her but her eyes are firmly on the rearview mirror. She finishes backing up and heads down the twisting ramp, the parking ticket on the dashboard.
“You can’t leave the scene of an accident, Abby. That’s a crime.”
She continues to speed toward the exit.
Will tries speaking calmly, like he’s addressing a tantrumming child. “Just stop the car when we get to the next level so I can get out, leave a note, and then I’ll take over driving. You’re too excitable right now to think clearly.”
She brakes hard, mid-descent, and Will jerks forward in his seat, the tight belt across his chest the only thing keeping his head from hitting the windshield.
“Excitable? What is wrong with you? It’s like you’re some kind of relic, transplanted from the 1850s. And yes, I am sure you are all too happy to take over, Mr. JAG-thirteen-trials-Captain America. You’ve been trying to fucking take over from the beginning. Guess what? That is not going to happen.”
“Trying to take over—are you kidding me? You think I would ask for this? To have to—” He stops himself, trying again to be matter-of-fact, but firmer. “The only reason I am on this case is because Paul asked me. You were on maternity leave, remember?”
“Which you still think I should be.”
The car behind them is now honking continuously. Abby finishes descending, then speeds toward the ticket machine, lowering her window. They are several feet away from the machine and she can’t reach the slot to insert the ticket. “Jesus.” She motions at the driver to back up, reverses, and tries again. And again. Finally the ticket is jabbed into the slot, then Abby’s credit card, and the safety bar releases, allowing them to exit.
“Third time’s the charm.”
Abby ignores him, making a series of turns until they pick up the freeway on Robertson and join a line of cars backed up as far as the eye can see.
Will slides down in his seat, rests his cheek against the glass. “You should have taken Beverly Boulevard instead of the 10. Even I know that and I’ve lived in LA for five minutes.”
“Fuck off.”
Will stares at her, speechless, then turns to look out the passenger-side window. In addition to being a bitch, Abby is a terrible driver. She has no judgment, no sense of direction, and no sense of space between her car and other cars. Or objects. Even objects that aren’t moving. But responding, he knows, will only make an unsafe situation worse.
Abby’s phone rings and she reaches into the back seat to pick up her purse, rooting through it unsuccessfully with one hand. The car swerves into the other lane.
Will grabs the purse, locates her phone, and holds up the screen so she can read it, then, gratuitously, reads it himself. It’s from Nic. A missed call followed by a text. When are you coming home? They crawl forward, stop, crawl forward again. The minutes on the dashboard tick by.
Abby keeps her eyes on the road. “We need to have a sit-down with Luz. A real come-to-Jesus moment. We are going to have to lay out the stakes and make her answer for herself.”
“What about all the race and patriarchy talk back in Cartwright’s office? Are you going to take some kind of sensitivity class on white privilege before we do this?”
“No. Marinating in it isn’t going to get us anywhere. The fact that Luz may feel that way doesn’t change the fact that if she doesn’t talk to us she is going down.”
Will feels his heart beating fast. Abby is going to run over Luz like a train. She is going to ruin her. The grilling, the lack of empathy, the demand for a legally satisfying explanation from a traumatized girl. He thinks again of the French Lieutenant’s Woman, which he had picked back up the other night and started to reread. Charles, the protagonist, had made it his mission to understand the perpetually misunderstood Sarah. He had ignored the judgments—whore, witch, evildoer—heaped upon her by a society that could not understand why a woman would behave as she had. And the answer, that Sarah was truly broken through no fault of her own, was something that Charles was ultimately able to draw out of her. It was Charles who freed Sarah to show that truth, and her remarkable resilience, to others. Luz was the same. Like a good stone in a cheap ring she could be removed, reset, restored.
Will shakes his head as his certainty crystalizes. “You don’t know how to connect with her. It would be better if it were me.”
Abby snorts.
“The two of you are so far apart,” Will says, “especially when it comes to being mothers.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Abruptly, Abby’s tone changes and she is practically hissing at him.
Will feels his own anger surge. “Just look at her choices compared to yours. Her baby is her whole life, you heard Dr. Cartwright. She would do anything to be with Cristina.