When You Were Mine

The man watches me, still frowning, but as I head inside I hear him jog off. No one cares that much, really.

Inside, I walk around the apartment in a daze. My mind skitters like a pinball in a machine, going nowhere. I can’t think; I can barely breathe. How am I going to survive this?

At some point, I stop wandering and start cleaning. It’s the only thing I can think to do that is actually useful. My hands shake as I clear the breakfast dishes off the table and then wash them in the sink. Then I strip the sheets off the bed and bundle them into the washer in the kitchen, even though part of me resists even that. They needed a wash, but they’ll smell of Tide, and not of Dylan.

When the apartment is clean, I go to my craft table in the corner of the living room, where I make jewelry. I have a couple of orders that need packaging and mailing, and so I work on those, and then I answer two emails inquiring about custom-made pieces. I’m no artistic genius; I twist wire and set small, semi-precious stones. I make necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and rings, but they’re all pretty basic and I sell them for really cheap.

I had a dream once, of setting up a craft shop, a place where kids could come and make jewelry, where I’d have bins of colorful beads and flower murals on the wall, and maybe a funky little café in the back, selling coffee and cake. It would be a place for people to hang out and have fun, a creative safe space for the young and old together.

Of course, I never got anywhere with that dream, with everything that I’ve had to deal with. The closest I’ve come to it is this: my little page on Shopify, a card table in the corner of my living room and a jewelry-making craft kit that cost forty bucks on Amazon.

After I package up the orders, I decide to head to the UPS store on Boulevard. I can’t believe how productive I’m being, but I know if I stop and think, I’ll fall apart. It’s only as I’m about to leave that I realize it’s after six, and the store will be closed.

I stand at the door, my arms full of packages, and feel despair flood me. All the determined focus I’d dredged up over the last few hours drains away, and I am left with nothing. The whole evening stretches ahead of me, empty and endless. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone, with nothing left to do to keep my grief at bay.

Normally I’d spend the evening with Dylan. We’d eat dinner together, and then I’d give him a bath, which he loves. I’d kneel by the tub and scoop up soapy water and pour it over his back while he played with his bath toys—a set of plastic farm animals I bought at the dollar store. I forgot to pack them in his backpack, and he plays with them every night. How will he manage without them? Should I call Susan? Am I even allowed? It hits me all over again that Dylan is gone, that I don’t know where he is.

I won’t give him a bath tonight. We won’t curl up on the sofa and read stories until he is sleepy, and I won’t sing lullabies as I lie next to him in bed until he finally drops off. None of that will happen now.

Without Dylan, my evening has no shape, no purpose. The hours feel like they’re going to stretch on and on and I have no idea how to fill them. I feel like I can’t.

Slowly, I walk back to the table and dump the packages on top of it. I’ll have to mail them tomorrow, which already feels like a lifetime away.

In the ensuing emptiness, I can’t keep from thinking about Dylan. Wondering how he is. It’s been a couple of hours already, so he must be in the foster parents’ house by now. What is it like? Is he crying? Screaming? If he’s melting down, how will they manage him? Love him?

I sink onto the sofa, my head in my hands. I can’t bear to think of Dylan in some strange place, sad and scared, with only strangers to comfort him. I imagine two brisk, stern-looking parents who tell him to settle down or ignore him because they think he’s just spoiled. How could Susan have taken him? How could she possibly think that kind of scenario is better than him being here with me?

A sob esc

apes me, like a hiccup. I can’t do this. I can’t do this for one night, never mind however long Susan thinks Dylan and I both need before we can be together. Before we can thrive. Who is she to decide what that even means?

I want to talk to someone, to tell them what has happened, but I don’t know who that person would be. My mom? She’s the most likely person, but her disinterest is always evident, audible in the tiny sighs she gives, her distracted tone of voice whenever I call her. She left my dad—left me—when I was seventeen, in my last semester of high school. If I felt like it, which I sometimes do, I could blame her for all my problems, or at least the start of them.

Her departure was so abrupt, so absolute, while she explained to me, somewhat tearfully but with a certain sense of purpose, that she needed to find her own happiness before looking to mine. She insisted that I’d be a better person for it, that no child thrived with a miserable mother. She was sure I would understand. I didn’t.

I started to do badly in school, and then, the May before I graduated, I received a DUI while driving home from my job at The Gap. How that happened is another story, but it led to a whole lot of things that led to me meeting Marco, which of course led to Dylan.

So, really, my mom caused me to have Dylan, and so I don’t want to blame her for anything.

But who else could I call? My dad will care even less than my mom; we haven’t actually spoken in over a year. During my childhood, he was gruff but there, and after my mom left, our relationship fell apart completely. We never see each other now, and we rarely speak.

As for my friends from high school, or the ones I made while volunteering at the nursing home where I met Marco—the one hundred hours of community service I had to do as part of my sentencing—they have all long gone. I haven’t been in touch with any of them for years.

It occurs to me I should call Marco, and let him know what has happened, but he won’t care as much as I want him to—he never does—and I can’t make that call now, when I am feeling so alone and broken.

So who? The answer, of course, is obvious. Nobody.

With no one to call, and nothing else to do, I warm up some soup because I can’t be bothered to make anything else, and although my stomach feels empty, I’m not hungry. Still, I force it down, for form’s sake, even though, of course, no one is watching. But already, in my head, I’m making a log of all the ways I can show Susan I’m a fit parent. A good mother. See, Susan? I made myself some dinner.

Later, I try to work on some jewelry, but my fingers fumble and I can’t concentrate, so I end up watching trash TV for a couple of hours, trying to keep my mind blank, before stumbling to bed.

I know there are a lot of people who would think it is weird for me to sleep with my seven-year-old son, but without Dylan’s warmth next to me the bed feels empty and cold.

Surprisingly, though, I sleep, deeply and dreamlessly, which is a blessed relief. When I wake up, I don’t feel refreshed, but at least I feel clear-headed. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. A trite phrase, but I want to make things matter. I need to get started on getting Dylan back.

So I shower and dress, force myself to eat breakfast, and then, just after nine, I head out to the UPS store to mail my packages.

It’s a beautiful autumn day, crisp and clear, everything in sharp focus, the leaves just starting to turn, as I walk to Boulevard with purposeful steps. The treacherous thought of how easy this is without Dylan slips into my mind, and I push it away. That feels like a such a betrayal of him, and even of who I am, that I won’t let myself think it for one second.