been easy, but it hasn’t been terrible. About what I expected.” And yet so not.
Julie nods and sips her wine. “So why was he taken into care?”
“I don’t know.” I called Monica once, hoping for a little more information about Dylan, but she didn’t answer. I left a voicemail but she hasn’t called back, so I’m as in the dark as ever.
“Do you think he was abused?”
“I really don’t know, Julie.” I love my friend, but I find her questions, this unabashed digging for details, unpleasant and distasteful. She’s treating Dylan as if he is a guest on The Jerry Springer Show, his life offered up as fair game to be analyzed and dissected, and then discarded.
“And you haven’t met the mom?” She has either not registered my discouraging tone or chosen to ignore it.
“Not yet.” Monica did text me that the planned visit had been postponed, which I was fine with.
“But you will?”
“At some point, yes, I think so.”
Julie finally seems to register my unwillingness to talk about it, for she sighs and sits back. “Well, I admire you, Ally, I really do. There aren’t many people who would do what you’re doing.”
“Which is part of the problem.” I take a sip of my wine, closing my eyes briefly as I enjoy its velvety warmth. In the last few days, the Indian summer has given way to a more seasonable chill. This morning, there was a thick white frost on the ground, the maple leaves that had fallen from the big tree in our backyard scarlet rimmed in white.
“Yes, of course. I know more people should volunteer, but it is a big commitment, isn’t it? You look tired.”
I am exhausted. I’ve spent the last three nights sleeping next to Dylan. He starts off alone, but inevitably he wakes up in the middle of the night and I go in and sleep next to him. Whether it is allowed or not, I can’t care about. It’s what works.
Nick has told me I should just let him scream, that I have to set boundaries, but his well-meaning advice only annoys me. Somehow in the last three days, Dylan has become primarily my responsibility, which I realized is something I probably should have expected, yet still resent.
Nick and I have always had a fairly stereotypical division of labor—he takes care of the trash and the yard, the cars and our taxes, and I manage household stuff, laundry, cooking, and the minute details of kids’ schedules, along with birthdays and Christmases and family vacations. And now I add Dylan to that list, while Nick satisfies himself with supervising bath time and the occasional “Okay, buddy?” It doesn’t exactly feel fair.
Even tonight has been, on some level, Nick letting me go out, acting all magnanimous because he’s going to stay in and babysit. Dylan was already asleep when I left, so it was hardly an onerous task, and it didn’t have to be mine alone.
I don’t feel like explaining any of that to Julie, though, even though we’ve compared and complained about our husbands on plenty of occasions, complicit in our understanding that we actually loved our spouses, that we knew how good our lives were. This feels different—too new, too raw, and I already feel as if I am being judged. I am judging myself.
The truth is, taking care of Dylan has forced me to start to reassess my own life, my own home. Having his silent gaze constantly on every aspect of both is nerve-wracking and deeply uncomfortable, and it makes me start picking holes in what I thought was a smooth, blameless blanket of privilege and blessing.
Dylan’s presence makes me realize how little Josh talks to us, how his bedtime and phone use has somehow slipped out of my control without me even realizing it. It makes me see that Nick and I often exist day to day on a superficial plane of banal exchanges, and how we generally spend our evenings apart, on our laptops in separate rooms, not because we don’t like spending time with one another, but because it just feels easier to surf the internet alone than make an effort with another person. It makes me count the days and realize that Emma hasn’t called me in over a week. My happy, “#blessed” family seems to have lost a little of its glossy shine, and all without Dylan having to say a word.
I say none of that to Julie. As much as I love her, admitting so