She drops me off a few minutes later, after arranging a meeting tomorrow morning to go over my “action plan,” which makes me sound like a CEO or a superhero, I’m not sure which. Obviously I’m not remotely close to either.
I trudge towards my apartment, my heart feeling as heavy as my feet, everything hard to move. I don’t want this to be my pathetic reality. I just don’t.
“Beth… Beth!”
As I’m unlocking my door, I see my upstairs neighbor Angela, waving from her doorway with a slightly vacant smile.
“Hi, Angela,” I say dutifully, but my heart’s not in it. She’s going to ask me where Dylan is, except she’ll forget his name, and I really don’t want to explain everything to another person right now.
“How are you, dear? How is…” Her forehead wrinkles and I fill in,
“Dylan.”
“Yes, Dylan! How is he? Such a sweet boy. So quiet.”
“He’s out with his dad at the moment,” I lie, and I don’t feel guilty about it at all. I can’t face the painful awkwardness of the truth, not right now.
“Oh, is he?” For some reason, this makes Angela brighten. I realize why when she asks, “Why don’t you come upstairs for a cup of tea, then?”
I know she’s only asking because Dylan isn’t here; he doesn’t like her apartment, with all its fragile knickknacks and the stuffy, medicine-laced smell it has. I want to refuse, because I’m exhausted and sad and fragile, but the naked hopefulness on Angela’s face makes me pause. I think she is about as alone as I am. She doesn’t have any family to visit, as far as I can tell, and the only person who ever comes to her apartment is a gum-chewing care worker who helps her with some errands and housework, and is paid by the hour.
“Sure,” I say, pitching my voice loud enough for her to hear, as she’s a little deaf. “That would be nice. Thanks.”
Upstairs, I follow Angela into her apartment—a shrine to decor circa 1981. Clashing floral patterns and lace doilies feature heavily, along with porcelain figures of shepherdesses and milkmaids. It’s the same configuration as my apartment downstairs—a long, narrow living room, the kitchen in the back, a bedroom and bathroom to the side—but it feels completely different.
“Hasn’t it gotten cold?” Angela remarks as she bustles back to the kitchen on slippered feet. “There was a frost this morning.”
“Yes, funny to think it’s almost November.” And it will be almost February before I can get Dylan back. That feels ages away—and what about Thanksgiving and Christmas? Where will he be for the important days, the family ones? All of it—the uncertainty along with the knowledge--gives me a physical ache in my middle, a sharp pain that feels like a drill burrowing into me.
Angela gives me a sympathetic look, although she can hardly guess what I’m thinking. “It’s hard, isn’t it?” she says as she puts the kettle on the stovetop. I stare at her blankly; she can’t know what I’m going through… unless she was the neighbor who said something to Susan? Looking at her now, smiling so benignly, I can’t believe it of her. It has to be Mr. GT5 from the top floor.
“Yes,” I finally say, because it’s the only response I can give. “It is hard.”
“I was a single mother, you know,” Angela continues. “My husband left me when I was only twenty-four. It was the early sixties then. Single mothers weren’t looked at all that kindly, I can tell you.”
I try not to gape. “I didn’t know…”
“No, I never like to say.” She lets out a little sigh. “People make assumptions, don’t they?”
“Yes.” I know that much is true. I just didn’t think they made those kinds of assumptions about people like Angela—gentle old ladies with china shepherdesses and lace doilies everywhere.
“Anyway, it can be difficult, when it’s just you, making all the decisions, shouldering all the responsibility. Second-guessing yourself, and there’s never anyone to ask if you’re doing it right.” She smiles and shakes her head.
She’s captured my feelings so accurately, I struggle to find something to say. I want to thank her for understanding, for stating it so simply, yet I can’t quite find the words. “Where is your daughter now?” I ask. Angela is around eighty, so her daughter must at least be in her fifties, yet I haven’t seen anyone come by in the four years I’ve lived below her.
Angela’s face crumples into sadness. “She lives out in California now. She won’t visit.” The kettle boils and she pours hot water into a floral-patterned teapot.
“Why won’t she visit?” I ask as Angela shuffles to the fridge to get milk.
“We had an argument a long time ago. Twenty or twenty-five years ago now, I’d say.” She squints, smiling sorrowfully, as she shrugs her bony shoulders. “Do you know, I can’t even remember what it was about? But I must have done something, mustn’t I?”
I stare at her for a few seconds, overwhelmed with sadness for her as well as for myself. How can her daughter be so estranged, for something Angela can’t even remember? How can she leave Angela to get by on her own, when she’s so ill and frail and obviously lonely?
“Here you are, dear.” Angela smiles at me as she hands me a porcelain cup of very milky, very weak tea.
“Thank you, Angela.”
As she sits down across from me at the little round table, a sudden horrible thought occurs to me. I’ve been so focused on getting Dylan back, and dealing with DCF, that I haven’t really considered how he’ll react when he’s back home with me. What if he’s angry with me? What if he resents me now or later in life, for abandoning him? I think of how tightly he held me earlier and I want to be reassured, but three months is a long time, and I only get to see him for one hour a week, at least for the next month. What if, like Angela’s daughter, Dylan ends up estranged from me, bitter and angry, refusing to visit?