I take a deep breath, willing myself to be calm. It’s a good thing that Dylan is in a place like this. I’d much rather he was in a place like this, warm and clean and comforting, than somewhere that was dirty or dangerous or just plain unwelcoming. Of course it is, and yet still, my hackles rise.
And then I see Dylan. He’s curled up on the sofa, watching Wild Kratts on PBS Kids. He’s holding his rabbit by its good ear, and he is absorbed in the show. He doesn’t even see me come in, unlike the last two weeks when he ran to give me a hug.
For a second, I stand there, feeling lost, rootless. I watch my son, looking like any other kid. He’s wearing clothes I don’t recognize—a striped polo shirt and khaki pants. His hair is brushed to the side in a way I never comb it. His gaze is on the screen. I can’t speak.
“Dylan,” Ally says, seeming to sense something of what I feel—although I’m not even sure what I feel. Am I happy or sad, resentful or thankful? It is as if my world is a snow globe that someone just turned upside down and shook hard, or a kaleidoscope whose image has just changed, so for a second it’s all brilliant colors and swirls that don’t make sense. I also feel rage—red-hot and real, coursing through me in a river, but I’m not even sure what I’m angry about.
“Dylan,” Ally says again, raising her voice, and finally my son looks at me. Our gazes lock and clash and for a second nothing happens. He just stares while Ally watches and again I feel as if the floor, the whole earth, is falling away from me. I reach out to the kitchen island to steady myself, my hand sliding across the slippery granite.
“Dylan,” I say, and it almost sounds like a whimper.
“Dylan, aren’t you so excited to see your mom?” Ally interjects in an overly cheerful voice, and I want to slap her. I don’t need her interference, well-intentioned though it might be.
Slowly, Dylan uncurls himself on the sofa, still clutching his rabbit.
I walk towards him, and all the while Ally watches, a spectator to our sad little drama.
“Hey, Dylan.” I sit next to him and touch his head briefly, messing up his child’s combover, so his hair springs back across his forehead and slides into his eyes. He looks more like my son now, but then he shakes his head and pushes the hair back, and somehow that stings. It’s only been a week since my last visit, and already he’s changed so much. How? Why?
“How have you been, Dyl?” I ask, unable to keep from touching him. My fingers skim his cheek and then I put my arm around his shoulders and draw him closer. He comes, but after a second’s hesitation that cuts deep, even though I am trying not to let it. I’m already losing him, after just a few weeks. What is it—he—going to be like after three months?
I swallow hard. I can feel Ally staring.
“Why don’t we go for a walk, Dylan?”
“Oh…” Ally trails off uncertainly. She is probably wondering if I’m allowed. But Susan suggested it, and in any case, I’m tired of feeling like I need permission from some stranger to simply be with my child.
“Would you like that, Dylan?” I ask as I reach for his hand. He lets me take it, lets me draw him up to standing. “Where’s your coat?”
“I’ll get it,” Ally says, and she comes back with a navy blue puffa parka that I’ve never seen before. I stare at it blankly before I look at her in silent accusation. “I bought him a coat,” she explains awkwardly. “The jacket he had was so thin…”
Thin? It was fine. Maybe it wasn’t one hundred percent down from Nike like this one, but it did the job. I take the parka without a word and help Dylan into it. He’s silent, but not in a way I understand. I usually know exactly how he’s feeling, I can translate every sigh or twitch, but right now I’m adrift. We both are. I feel an urgent need to get out of this house with its underlying and cloying, lemony scent, its smug neatness. Even the smell of the dinner cooking offends me somehow.
“You could walk down to the park by the elementary school,” Ally suggests. “Fernridge…”