When You Were Mine

I scramble out of bed and race into the bathroom.

“She’s not coming,” I tell Nick and he pokes his head out of the shower.

“What?”

“Beth’s not going to show up to the court hearing!”

He frowns. “She told you that?”

“No. I just know.”

“Ally…”

“I know,” I say, and then I rush back into the bedroom to get dressed.

31

BETH

So how do I get from a hopeful there to a dead-end here? From fighting tooth and nail, heart and soul, for my child, to being willing to give him up completely, without looking back, like the most heartless of mothers? I’m no better than Diane or Angelica or even the worst bleary-eyed, skinny-wristed druggie of a mother that I saw skulking around the Juvenile Court back in October.

It happened by increments, but it also happened all at once. A realization that crept in so slowly, and yet then seemed to emerge fully formed in both my head and heart, carved into my consciousness with painful letters. He’s better off without me.

It hurts more than I can bear to think that, to know it, but it’s an idea that started when Susan first took him away, and it is fully borne now, as I sit on my sofa, clutching a pillow to my chest, and watch the clock tick its minutes towards the court hearing I’m not going to show up for. Again. But this time I mean it.

So many things have led to this moment—Dylan’s brushed hair, the sewn-up ear on his rabbit, the way he hugged Ally or held Emma’s hand. The pure sound of his laughter as he played with Josh. All of them together presented a picture I couldn’t ignore, an achingly beautiful picture that hurt me like no other and led me to realize with an inevitable sense of certainty: He’s better off without me.

But more than any of that, so much more, was the realization I had when I received the psychiatrist’s observations in the mail a week ago. I unfolded those typewritten sheets and realized that not only was Dylan better with Ally, but he was worse with me. Much worse than I’d ever even feared to think.

Dylan is a quiet child who is friendly but shy. However, when in the presence of his mother, he sometimes demonstrates serious signs of anxiety that I believe could stem in part from the intense and possibly unhelpful nature of their relationship.

That one summing-up sentence felt like a fist to my gut, a knife to my heart.

I read on, dazed and reeling, as James the psychiatrist seemed to point the finger at me for just about everything Dylan had ever suffered from. His selective mutism was, according to James’s theory, because I filled in his sentences, and I never let him talk. His fears emerged from my own, born, James seemed to think, from my lack of stability and abandonment by my parents, for his safety and well-being. His shyness was because I hovered incessantly. On and on it went, connecting the dots relentlessly. Everything was my fault, although he never said that in so many words. He certainly implied it.

And the worst thing about it was, as I read the evaluation, part of me wasn’t even surprised. Part of me had been coming to this realization myself for the last three months, and having it so starkly there in black and white just confirmed what I’d been starting to both feel and fear. Dylan was better off without me. Better off with the Fieldings.

Every time I went over there, I saw it. Ally clearly loved him, Nick too. Emma and Josh would love a little brother, and Dylan would do so much better with siblings—a whole family, a beautiful house, a room of his own, toys, clothes, opportunities. Security and safety in a way I’d never been able to give him. It made so much sense, I knew I couldn’t possibly resist it.

I also knew Ally wouldn’t accept him like some sort of birthday present or consolation prize. I couldn’t ask her to adopt my child, just like that. But if I didn’t show up at the court hearing, she’d have him for at least another three months—three months where I wouldn’t jump through any more damned hoops. By that time, I thought, all the Fieldings would be ready to consider adoption, and Dylan would be happy. So happy. He was already forgetting me; I saw it in the wary look on his face every time I went there. Even when we were together in New Hampshire, he seemed distant, as if he would have rather been somewhere else. He would have rather been with Ally. This was the best way for everyone… except me.

Sitting on the sofa in my pajamas as it turns eight o’clock the morning of the hearing—I’m meant to meet my attorney in half an hour—feels cowardly, like the worst kind of defeat, but I don’t know what else to do. I want to call Susan and tell her I’m not just being a deadbeat, but that would defeat the purpose. If I tell her I want to give up my parental rights, Dylan would find out one day, and I can’t stand the thought. Besides, I’m not brave enough to make that complete cut. This—a deliberate no-show—is about as much as I can take, and even it feels like too much.

It’s been devastating, coming to this decision, and since Christmas, when I started to think properly about it, I’ve been walking around in a fog, as if I’m only half in this world. I’ve even been avoiding Mike, because I can’t see the relationship—if that’s even what we have—going anywhere now. What will he think of me, when he knows I’ve given away my own child? So I haven’t answered his calls or responded to his texts since New Year’s Eve, when he asked me to go some party and I said no, I was having an early night. He’s stopped trying to be in touch in the last week, so I suppose he got the message.

Once again I’m completely alone, but I’m not going to feel sorry for myself. I chose this. It’s no more than what I deserve. It’s what Dylan deserves.

I clutch the pillow more tightly to my chest, just as someone hammers on the front door.

“Beth! Beth! I know you’re in there.”

I stiffen in shock, because it sounds like Ally, but it can’t be. She’s meant to be at court, and she doesn’t even know where I live.

“Beth!” She’s shrieking my name, and I hear Angela’s door open upstairs.

“Is everything all right?” she calls down in her wavery voice, and I get up from the sofa.

When I open my door, Ally is on the landing, explaining to Angela that she needs to talk to me. Angela is, predictably, looking confused, but she brightens when she sees me.