Mother May I by Joshilyn Jackson

 

Mother May I by Joshilyn Jackson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First of all, the only person I could picture as Bree is Bree from Desperate Housewives.

Anyway! Bree is a happily married mother of three. She lives in an upscale neighborhood with her prestigious and wealthy husband, preteen daughters, and 10-week-old son. Then, one day, Bree looks away for just a second, and her son is gone. In his place is a note.

If you ever want to see your baby again, GO HOME.
Tell no one.
Do not call the police.
Do not call your husband.
Be at your house by 5:15 P.M.
Or he's gone for good.

Bree's character is well formed, as are all the characters in the book except for the kids, who are mostly background noise. I didn't enjoy the prose as much as I did with Jackson's other books. It seemed very different from her other novels. Somehow I just didn't really relate to Bree, and I can't even put my finger on why, when I usually deeply connect with her characters from other books. That's the reason for just three stars- the plot was excellent as were the characters.

Now here is where I'm going to stop recapping what you can read on the back of the book, and I'm going to start getting into some SPOILERS. Read at your own risk.




When Bree arrives home, she discovers a gift bag with a cell phone inside on her front door. The phone rings, and when Bree answers, she is told that she must drug her husband's cousin/friend/law partner at a cocktail hour that night. Although Bree doesn't want to do this, it's just rohypnol and Spencer, the target, should be fine. The woman on the phone tells Bree that she will kill the baby, Robert, if Bree does not comply. Bree even finds him cornering and hitting on a young woman who works for the law firm, and I felt like maybe Spencer deserved what was coming to him. 

But then it turns out that those drugs were POISON and Bree has killed Spencer! But does she get her son back? 

...Not yet. 

She is told to get her husband home by any means necessary, and that she can trade Trey's (husband) life for Robert's (baby). None of this is really making sense; what did Trey and Spence ever do to the Mother Witch for her to want to hurt them so badly?

Well, with the help of her friend Marshall and some clues from Mother Witch, Bree discovers that something bad happened when Spencer, Trey, and a third man, Adam, were in college. And this is where the story starts to get really good, and really real. 

From Trey's recollection, while he was in college, he had a threesome that involved Spencer and a girl named Lexie. Adam took pictures of it, unbeknownst to Trey. The pictures were spread around campus and ruined Lexie's academic career, despite Trey's heroic efforts. 

Now here is where I understand Bree. If my husband of 16 years told me this, I would likely believe every word of it. But then there's a whole bunch of investigative work, Robert is saved, the Mother Witch kills herself, etc, and then Bree receives pictures of that "threesome" in the mail. Most of them are harmless enough, but one picture shows Trey with his hand clamped over Lexie's face while Spencer holds her arms down.

Bree is absolutely horrified. She calls on Marshall to help her understand what she sees in this picture, even though she already understands it. Then she calls Trey out about it, first softly, then she uses the accurate, harsh word: rape.

First, Trey refuses to look at the picture. Then he rips it up, and says that Lexie was a shitty girl who brought it on herself. Bree tells Trey that she loves him and will stand by him, but he has to come clean and make amends to Lexie. Which, we need a mop, because that blew my mother effing brain. 

Your husband raped someone... but stand by your man? 

Of course, there's a reason Jackson writes this. This book is about rape culture, its apologists, its rapists, and its wives. Behind every Brett Kavanaugh, there is a wife who wants to believe the best about her husband, even in the face of accusations and evidence. I'm not sure if that's who Jackson was thinking of when she wrote this, but it's who came to mind for me. A privileged white male, who thinks that because his sins are so far in the past, they no longer matter. 

But it did matter, to Lexie Pine, his victim. Although we are all responsible for what happens in our lives, even after something tragic, Lexie was forever changed by what Trey and Spencer did to her. Jackson even shows that Trey hasn't really changed inside when Bree points out that what happened to Lexie could've happened to their own daughters. 

"Think if it was Anna-Claire in that photo. Think if it was Peyton." ....
"Neither of my girls would be buying drugs, inviting boys for threesomes. My daughters would never be in that room in the first goddamn place. This was her fucking idea, Bree, Lexie's. Her idea, her drugs, her choice. She wasn't raised like my girls have been raised."

He also completely diminishes what happened to Lexie.
"Are you actually fucking threatening to leave me? Over a thirty-year-old picture of a passing fucking gas pain some shitty girl felt for a fraction of a second in the middle of her own damn orgy?"

In the end, Trey is shot by Kelly Wilkerson, after she shoots her husband, Adam. All the perpetrators are dead. And Kelly is shot after shooting Trey. Marshall and Bree then get married and combine families. If this was an AITA post on Reddit, the answer would be ESH: Everyone sucks here, except Marshall and the kids. 

However, I still loved reading it anyway. Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

”I'd always thought of rapists, especially the college kind, in terms of serial criminals. Predators, with something black and broken at the heart of them. At Georgia State, Betsy and I had gone to dorm seminars where we learned how to not get raped. There we learned we must use the buddy system, open our own drinks, and never leave them unattended. They told us, Most men are nice. But there are a few bad apples out there who will hurt you. They come to parties specifically to find that girl who is alone and drunk and vulnerable. The one they can peel away from the edge of the herd. Don't be that girl."

“They never told us about other kinds of danger. Now I met my dear, sweet husband’s gaze, and I wondered how many perfectly nice men, grown up or grown old, had in their younger years lost a night, like Trey. Drunk or high or both. In packs or alone. And something happened. Once.”

“Betsy and I had understood that not getting raped was our job. We had to behave right. To stay safe from bad men, yes. But those seminars had also made it our job to protect nice boys from raping us.”

“There are so many of them out there. Boys who had mothers and sisters and sweethearts, who grew up to have wives and daughters and careers. They act as if this one thing never happened. They tell themselves the story in another way until they believe it. Or they don’t tell it at all, and they make themselves forget. But meanwhile they raped a real, live girl. She has to live with it. She sees them pop up in her Facebook feed when class reunions happen, sees their wedding and birth announcements in the paper. She has to eat it, this thing they did, and it eats at her. It’s wrong. It’s awful.”

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