It’s Susan who steps in, removing Dylan with a calm forcefulness as she explains the whole process. “Your mom has to go now, Dylan, but she’ll see you next week. You’re going to stay here with Ally. Maybe you can have some lemonade and a cookie?” She gives me a pointed look and I rush in.
“Yes, yes, a cookie, Dylan. Let’s have a cookie.”
Susan hands him to me and I find my arms full of flailing boy; I haven’t actually held Dylan since he’s been with us, and I feel as if I’m trying to catch hold of a giant grasshopper, or a writhing snake. Susan takes Beth by the elbow and steers her towards the front door; she is crying now, one fist to her mouth. Dylan elbows me in the eye and I bite my tongue to keep from swearing out loud.
Then I hear the front door close, and I put him down, only to have him sprint for the door, which, of course, is unlocked this time, since they’ve both just left.
I rush after him, nearly falling in my haste, and manage to close the door with the flat of my hand before he’s gotten out. Thank God I didn’t trap his fingers or worse.
“Mama!” Dylan starts pounding on the window, hard enough to make the pane rattle, as Susan reverses the car out of the driveway.
I lock the door.
“Mama!”
We both watch the car disappear down the street, and then Dylan starts to scream. I want to cover my ears; I want to scream myself. Three more months, I think. Three more endless months.
13
BETH
“I know that was hard, but it will get better.”
Susan sounds offensively calm as we drive away from Ally’s house. From my son. I can’t reply, because my throat is clogged with emotion and tears are trickling down my cheeks. How many times will I fall apart in front of this woman? I really do want to be stronger than that.
And so I take a breath, and wipe my face, and will my voice to sound even. “I don’t know how you can see how much he misses me and still think you’re doing the right thing.”
“Doing the right thing isn’t always easy, Beth,” Susan says. “And it isn’t always clear. But I still believe Dylan needs this time away from you.”
I don’t bother asking why, because I know she’ll blather on about support, and I really don’t want to hear that now. I want to remember how Dylan felt when I was holding him, his arms wrapped around me, his heart beating against mine, his body as fragile as a bird’s.
He was so glad to see me, so wonderfully happy, and it filled me with equal parts joy and grief. I remember his stricken expression as I left and I nearly double over. How could I leave him like that? Again?
I almost didn’t. There was a moment, when I was holding him and Susan and Ally had gone upstairs, that I thought about leaving the house. Running away with him. I could go back to my apartment—it really isn’t that far—pack a bag of clothes and then just go. We’d take the bus, like I did this morning. We’d find somewhere safe, out of state, where DCF wouldn’t bother looking for us. It would be just the two of us again, the way it always was.
I was so close to actually doing it—not just the wistful what-if you know you’re never really going to act on, but actually doing it. I felt my heart start to pound and I half-rose from the sofa, Dylan clinging to me. It was five seconds to the door. Five seconds.
But even as I thought that, I heard the creak of the stairs and I knew they were coming back down. I sat back on the sofa and my heart rate slowed and, as I hugged Dylan, I wondered how I could have seriously thought about it at all.
What if I’d been caught? They would have taken Dylan away from me forever. Now, as we drive back towards my apartment, I feel something in me harden.
I’m not going to fight Susan anymore. I’m not going to rage against the heartless machine that is the Department of Children and Families, because it’s futile. The judge has decided, the deed is done. Dylan will be living in that house, with that woman, for the next three months. I need to focus on getting myself into a position where they have no choice but to give him back to me. Where it’s obvious. I have to do everything right.
“Ally seems nice, doesn’t she?” Susan says, and I force myself to respond levelly.
“Yes, she does.”
Actually, I hate Ally. I hate her instinctively and utterly, because she has my son, and because I could tell from the moment I set eyes on her that she was surprised by me. She’d been expecting some druggie, no doubt, some pathetic loser of a mother who doesn’t deserve to have her child. She’d made assumptions about me and I could tell she wasn’t ready to let go of them. She
kept looking at me as if I were a puzzle she had to solve, as if the pieces of me didn’t fit.
And as for puzzles…! The way she talked about them—as if I wouldn’t know what they were, as if she’d discovered this great interest of Dylan’s that I had no clue about, because I clearly didn’t care about my son. It made me furious, along with the lemonade and the stupid cookies, Dylan’s big bedroom, the smell of air freshener, even the ear stitched on his beloved bunny—I resented all of it. Who does she think she is, June Cleaver? Betty Crocker? She stood there like she thought she was the perfect mom, as if I should be taking notes, and she had my son.
I will always hate Ally, but I know I need to be nice to her, because right now she is taking care of Dylan, and his well-being is the most important thing. I can never forget that. So I swallow my vitriol and give Susan what I hope looks like a smile.
“She seems really nice,” I say. I have to force each word out, but I think I sound as if I mean it.
Susan smiles back, but I can’t tell what she is really thinking. I never can.