“When will you get a court date?” Mike asks on Saturday night, when we’re eating burgers at a place in Blue Back Square, near the town center.
“Susan says in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully before Christmas.” I brighten a bit as I tell him, “I asked her if I could spend Christmas with Dylan, and she said she thought that was a good idea.”
“That’s great, Beth.”
“I just hope he likes it.” I glance down at my burger, my appetite disappearing as I recall my visit with Dylan that afternoon—two awkward hours spent at the library and then Whole Foods, our usual haunts that felt a bit empty and unexciting now. I’d thought about taking him to the Science Center, with all of its kid-friendly displays, a whole room devoted to Lego, but I was afraid of the unknowns, a potential meltdown. I wanted to stay safe.
Yet as Dylan walked ghostlike beside me, I wondered if that has been at least part of my problem all along.
“Of course he’ll like it,” Mike says, reaching for my hand and patting it a bit awkwardly before he picks up his burger again. “Why wouldn’t he?”
“You should see his foster family’s house. His bedroom is bigger than my kitchen and living room combined.”
“So?”
“And they’ve bought him all this stuff. Clothes. Toys.”
“Kids don’t care about all that.”
“I know, but…” I can’t say the real fear that’s licking at my insides like some poisonous acid, corroding me. The fear that Dylan might prefer the Fieldings—might prefer Ally—to me, not because of the things they give him, but the security they offer. The love.
I love him, more than they ever could, of course. Way, way more. But now I wonder—maybe too much. Maybe in a way he doesn’t like, even if he couldn’t articulate it, in a way that’s not good for him. Is that even possible? Or am I just being paranoid?
I’m not ready to say any of that to Mike, though, so I just smile and nod. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Look, Beth.” Mike leans forward, endearingly earnest. There is ketchup on his fingers. “Maybe it seems a little awkward between you and Dylan right now, because he’s not living with you, but once you’re together, everything will go back to the way it was. It’ll just take a little time.”
“But things can’t go back to the way they were,” I remind him. “That’s the whole point. They’ve got to change. I’ve got to.”
“Well, yeah, but not too much,” Mike says as he wipes his fingers on a napkin, getting most but not all of the ketchup off. “I mean, DCF’s been jerking you around.”
“The system definitely sucks, but I don’t think they’ve been as bad as I thought they were. I know Susan means well. She’s trying to help me.”
“Well, still.” Mike doesn’t look convinced, but more and more, I am.
“They haven’t been jerking me around, Mike,” I say slowly. “I’m not saying the way things happened was good or even fair, but on some level, I needed this. I couldn’t go on the way I was. The way Dylan was. He needs to go to school, we both need to get out more, and I don’t think that ever would have happened unless…” I swallow hard. “Unless they intervened.” I hate saying that. I hate admitting I’ve been such a screw-up as a mother that I needed someone to take away my child.
But Mike doesn’t see it like that. His face softens and he reaches for my hand, ketchupy fingers and all. I don’t mind. “You can change, Beth,” he says, sincerity blazing in his face, out of every pore. “You already are. You want to be a good mom, that’s the main thing.”
And I try to smile even as I think, is it?
Another week passes—two more unsatisfactory visits with Dylan, where we go to our usual places and feel adrift. Things seem a bit better in the Fieldings’ household, although I never stay long enough to see how they all are. I don’t really want to know. The kitchen is clean, at least, and Emma drifts around sometimes, giving me a vague smile when she sees me.
Ally seems hassled, though, and her face looks older, the lines from nose to mouth deeper than they were even two months ago, when Dylan first came to her, but she tries.
“How are you doing, Beth?” she asks me on a Tuesday in mid-December. It’s well below freezing