When You Were Mine

“I’m not sure I even know. I left quickly. It seemed as if they wanted me to.”

“Okay, then,” Nick says, as if that proves he didn’t actually need to ask, and maybe he didn’t. I feel as if I’ve been trying to pick a fight, but I don’t want to. I just want him to care.

“So back to work?” I say, trying for a light tone.

“I’ve got a meeting at eleven.”

“Wow, this was a quick one.”

He flashes me a quick smile. “But definitely worth it.” He leans over and kisses me, and I close my eyes, wanting to savor it. “Love you.”

“I love you, too.” No matter what tensions have been between us lately, I mean it.

“See you tonight. Text me when you pick up Dylan and let me know how his day went.”

“I will.” I stay in bed as I hear Nick jog down the stairs and then the front door close. This wasn’t how I planned my morning at all, but now that I’m in bed I feel like I could just curl up and go to sleep. I’m tempted to do just that, but necessity compels me to get up.

I take a quick shower and dress again, and then, not ready to face work, I decide to do some housework. I have, strangely enough, always enjoyed cleaning—the satisfaction of seeing the results, of putting some elbow grease into something and making it shine. I blitz the downstairs with cleaning spray and then vacuum, and then I decide to brave the pit of despair that is Josh’s room.

Once upon a time it was a cute, boyish bedroom with a solar system theme, a wicker basket full of Legos, and framed pictures that Josh had drawn in elementary school. When Josh started junior high, sports trophies—the kind all the kids got—decorated the top of the dresser.

At some point—four or five years ago—all that went into a storage bin and was replaced by a plain black duvet, a black varnished desk from IKEA, and a laptop. Josh’s baseball and cross-country trophies are in Nick’s study. I think he’s prouder of them than Josh is.

Now I open the door, take a deep breath, and step inside. The curtains are drawn, the duvet a rumpled lump on the bed, clothes in dirty heaps on the floor. The room holds a stale, sweaty smell of unwashed clothes and cheap deodorant. I push the curtains open and crack the window, grateful for the cold, fresh breeze that blows over me.

First, I strip the bed, bundling the sheets into the laundry basket I’ve brought with me. Then I quickly spray the dresser and desktop with furniture polish and wipe them down. Lastly, I start sorting through the piles of clothes on the floor to try to determine which are actually dirty and which are clean but never made it into the drawers. It requires the unenviable sniff test, and I wince every time I get it wrong, before hurling the offending item into the laundry basket.

I am refolding the clean clothes and putting them in the drawers, thinking about how I need to get started on my own work, when I feel something lumpy and solid underneath Josh’s boxers.

At first, I’m just naïvely curious, wondering what made it into his underwear drawer, until my hand closes around the object and I take it out. It’s money—a wad of bills tightly rolled and held together with a dirty rubber band. I blink at it, not understanding, because Josh has a bank account and a debit card. He gets an allowance of fifty bucks a month, and he made some money from his summer job of mowing lawns, but it all goes into his bank account.

I remember when he was about eight, and Nick and I took him into Webster Bank and helped him fill out the form for a junior savings account. We were so proud, watching our young son achieve this little milestone of maturity.

I take off the rubber band and start smoothing the bills, feeling as if I am outside of myself, watching this unfold. It’s mostly tens and twenties, but there are a lot. When I finish counting, it’s over six hundred dollars. Six hundred and fifty-four, to be exact. There’s no way my son has this sort of money… except he does.

Not knowing what else to do, I roll the bills back up and fit the rubber band around them, my fingers shaking. It’s not an easy task at the best of times; there are a lot of bills and they’re crumpled now.

I stand there for a moment, the money in my hand, my mind spinning. What should I do—take the money? Call Nick? I feel frozen, my mind skating off to various possibilities and then scurrying back. There has to be

a reasonable explanation. Plenty of reasonable explanations.

It’s not his money; he’s keeping it for a friend. He withdrew all his money from his account—but why? My mind continues to skate and scurry, and then, because I really have no idea what to do, I shove the money back under my son’s boxers. I’ll leave it there until I’ve talked to Nick, until we figure out how to approach this. But as I go downstairs, I push thoughts of that money out of mind. I can’t think about it now. Not on top of everything else. Not on top of Dylan.

And so I pour myself the cup of coffee I forgot about earlier, and heat it up in the microwave, and take it to my office. I open my laptop and try to focus on bookkeeping, and other people’s money, and not the six hundred and fifty-four dollars fairly pulsing with malicious purpose upstairs in my son’s underwear drawer.

15

BETH

The Positive Parenting Program that Susan signs me up for is in Wethersfield, which is an hour by bus from West Hartford. It was the only one with space available, and she asks if I mind taking the class with two other people. Apparently, because this is a Level Four class, I’m meant to take it one-on-one with the instructor, but there aren’t enough instructors, or maybe just too many crap parents. I don’t even know how many levels there are, or whether four is good, bad, or in the middle.

In any case, I say I don’t mind, both because I hate the thought of some sanctimonious teacher spending a hundred percent of her time scrutinizing me, and because I am determined to be agreeable to everything Susan says. I’ve also consented to see a counselor, over in Simsbury, because it’s the only one with space who works with DCF. By the end of these three months, I’ll have travelled all over the state by bus just to satisfy Susan.

But I don’t complain; I didn’t protest a single point when Susan went through her action plan—all the things both Dylan and I need to do to be reunited.

“So counselling and a parenting class,” I said, trying to keep my tone positive even though I could feel my hands curling into claws in my lap. “Anything else?”

Susan folded her hands on my kitchen table as she gave me one of her smiling looks. “I’d like to see you developing some community support, Beth. Maybe a local parenting group or even a religious community?”