When You Were Mine

She makes a “mmm” noise and I stop outside our front gate, frowning, counting the windows. There is a light on upstairs and I’m afraid it’s coming from Dylan’s room.

“Well, let me know either way,” Emma says, “because if he comes, he’ll need a ticket.”

“Okay, will do.” The light is definitely coming from Dylan’s bedroom’s window, and my heart leaps unpleasantly in my chest. “I’m sorry, honey, but I need to go. Can I call you back tomorrow?”

“I have class.” Emma sounds the tiniest bit sulky, and I know she’s hurt. I never cut short our calls.

“Text me a good time. I really want to hear what you’ve been up to, how everything is going. Please.” She makes another “mmm” noise and I strain my ears, but I can’t hear any screaming. “I love you,” I say, too quickly. “Talk to you soon. Bye.” And then I am throwing open the gate and jogging inside, to find out what has happened while I’ve been gone.

9

BETH

On Friday, three days after they take Dylan away from me, I get a letter in the mail, from the state. The court hearing is set for Tuesday, and I am relieved it is so soon, even as the days feel as if they pass endlessly. Still, one week from the time they took him, I could have my son back. I will have him back.

When I told Susan I was going to fight, she informed me that I could now have that lawyer I’d wanted. Dylan would have one, too. But when I met with mine, a nasal-sounding woman who droned on about the legalities of my case without seeming sympathetic to my cause at all, I felt worse off than before, as well as suspicious.

I ended up emailing Bruce, the webmaster of the CONNspiracy site, and he sent me a long, informative email telling me I shouldn’t trust any court-appointed lawyer, that they were all part of the failed system. He directed me to websites with information about representing myself in court—in fact, the Connecticut judicial site even has a page about it, and it’s perfectly legal.

So I’ve spent my days preparing to represent myself in the court hearing for custody of my son. I’ve amassed all the information I can about how trustworthy and stable I am—printouts of my bank statements, my filed taxes, even my high-school report cards. Anything to show I am able to have the care of my son.

I know DCF will be amassing information too, and I can imagine what some of it is—missed appointments, Susan’s previous visits, the testimony of neighbors, maybe even a statement from the preschool teacher Dylan barely met. All of it makes me burn with anger, because it is so unfair. There are so, so many worse parents out there than me, even just in West Hartford. Why has DCF—why has Susan—decided to go after me so hard?

It’s not a question worth pursuing, and so I do my best to focus on my case. I’ve spent hours on the CONNspiracy website, scrolling through pages of legalese that make my brain hurt but are necessary for me to know. I’ve written down everything I can remember about Susan’s visits, and what she did or didn’t do that she should or shouldn’t have. I’ve copied out laws that I struggle to understand but am determined to mention in court—even if the thought of standing up and speaking in front of a stern-faced judge is terrifying to me.

I’ve gone to the UPS store a couple of times to talk to Mike, because I need a friend and he’s the only one I have. He’s been encouraging, telling me he’s sure I’ll win, that the next time I come in I’ll have Dylan back with me. I so want to believe him, but I’m not so desperate that I can pretend he has any idea what he’s talking about. He has no experience of DCF, and I do.

I’ve also called Marco, to tell him what has happened. I didn’t want to, but I felt he deserved to know, even if he hasn’t seen Dylan since his sixth birthday, when he stopped by for fifteen minutes with a box of drugstore chocolates and a Matchbox car for Dylan.

“So how long are they going to take him for?” he asked when I phoned to tell him about the episode in CVS, and Susan. He sounded irritatingly unfazed that his son is being looked after by strangers.

“I don’t know. I’m contesting it, though.”

“Oh, Beth. Why?”

“Why? Because I want my son back.”

“Don’t you want a break?”

“This isn’t a break, Marco.” I couldn’t believe he would phrase it like that, even as I remained completely unsurprised. All Marco has ever wanted is a break

—an easy out, an easy life. He’s been like that since I met him nine years ago.

In the spring of my senior year, when I was eighteen, a few months after my mom had just upped and left, I did something very stupid. I finished my shift at The Gap on a balmy Friday night in May, feeling lonely and adrift and also a little bit reckless. I was angry with my mom for leaving the way she did, for deciding that her life was so much more important than mine. And I was angry with my father for acting as if I no longer existed, working his shifts and spending every night in front of the TV with a six-pack of beer, utterly indifferent to me and my comings and goings.

So when a couple of guys in a beat-up Toyota Camry, parked in the corner of one of the empty West Farms Mall lots, the windows down and all the doors open, invited me over to have a beer with them, I said sure. Why not?

Normally, I wouldn’t have ever done something like that, but life hadn’t felt normal since my mom had gone. My dad was monosyllabic at the best of times, and now he was acting as if I was invisible, or if not that, then an irritation. My friends didn’t know what to do with me; they’d sympathized for a while, but it had been months since Mom had left and they were over it, even if I wasn’t. I felt angry and misunderstood and alone, and so I shrugged as if I did this all the time, and took the can of Bud Light they offered me as though it were no big deal.

If it sounds sketchy, it wasn’t as much as even I’d originally thought, with guys calling me over as I walked across the hot tarmac. They were actually in my year at high school, and after exchanging hellos we realized we very vaguely knew each other. They were underage, yes, but the driver wasn’t drinking and all they wanted to do was sit and shoot the breeze. We were all destined for college in September—me to Connecticut State, two of them to UConn, another guy to one of the SUNYs.

It was warm and balmy, the evening sunlight shimmering off the tarmac, a spring breeze blowing over us, the sounds of muted traffic in the distance. Sitting with them on the hood of the car, watching the sun set over Farmington Avenue, Avon Mountain silhouetted in the distance, I felt as if I almost had a future again. I just had to wait out the summer with my dad, get through a couple more months, and then I was free. I would go to college and I wouldn’t come back. It wasn’t what I had wanted originally, but now it seemed like a way out. I felt, for the first time since my mom had left, almost hopeful.

How wrong that feeling was. I drank three beers—I know—and then, assuring my newfound friends that I was fine, I drove home. I felt a little loopy but not actually drunk, although I didn’t really know what drunk felt like. I hadn’t been to many parties during my quiet high-school years, had never done anything wild or reckless… until then.

Because I was drunk. I was over the limit, in fact, and I was, according to reports, weaving all over Route 44 as I headed back to our split-level in Bloomfield. A police car pulled me over, made me take a breathalyzer test right there, and I was booked for a DUI.

The knock-on effect of that one careless—and yes, stupid, dangerous, idiotic, irresponsible, et cetera—choice was that I basically lost everything. I lost my license for a year and was sentenced to one hundred hours of community service in a local nursing home; Connecticut State withdrew their offer of admission, and my dad more or less threw me out of the house—although, to be fair to him, I wanted to go.