“Do all foster kids have issues around food?”
“You can’t even give them time-outs…”
Once, I broached the subject of Nick’s childhood. “Do you think all of this affects you more,” I asked cautiously, “because of your childhood?”
He’d given me a look of blank incomprehension. “My childhood?”
“I just mean… you know… because it was so tough.”
Nick drew back as if I’d said something offensive. Perhaps I had. “Ally, my childhood was nothing like what we’ve been hearing about. Nothing.” There was such a vehement note in his voice that I felt I had to drop it.
And now I’m here, standing in the same place as I was all those months ago, on the phone with Monica, who is telling me she has a placement for us. This is really happening.
“A boy, aged seven, who is from West Hartford, as well. I don’t know much more about the situation, only that this is his first placement and that it’s likely to be short-term with reunification with his mother the most likely and desired outcome, hopefully within months or even weeks.”
“Okay…” My mind is spinning. Somehow, even after ten weeks of preparing for this moment, I don’t feel ready. We are going to have a child in our home. A stranger. “When would this begin?”
“As soon as possible. I can drop him off this afternoon, ideally.”
“This afternoon…” So soon? I swallow the words down, because they don’t feel fair to say. But I have to pick Josh up in twenty minutes, and I haven’t gone grocery shopping in several days, and the guest bedroom isn’t actually made up for a child yet because none of it had ever felt truly real. Now it does.
“Is that a problem for you?” Monica speaks matter-of-factly, but I sense a faint coolness in her tone, as if she is expecting me to say it is, and I imagine how many times she’s had to deal with disappointment and endless excuses. Sorry, we’re not in a good place right now… maybe next time… we’re really more interested in children under the age of one, but not crack babies.
I heard it all during the course, and I don’t want to be one of those people, who only wants something easy.
“No, it’s not a problem,” I say, my voice just a tiny bit wooden. “Of course not.” Yet I really should talk to Nick, and Josh too. He’d been nonplussed about the whole thing when we told him we were going on the course, but we get little more than grunts out of him these days, anyway, so I’m not sure what reaction was reasonable to expect.
“Perhaps you should talk to Nick?” Monica suggests patiently, echoing my thoughts. “We need both foster parents to be on board with a potential placement before we proceed.”
“Oh, yes, of—of course.”
“Why don’t you call me back after you’ve spoken to him? Preferably in the next hour?”
“Yes, will do.”
Monica ends the call, and I stare into space for a moment, my mind racing with things I need to do. Clean sheets on the guest bedroom. Empty the dresser drawers of Nick’s summer clothes. Grocery shop, because I don’t think I have anything in the fridge for dinner.
But first I call Nick, who is at the office today.
“Already?” He sounds as surprised as I was. “It’s only been a couple of weeks…”
“I know, and I don’t think it will be for that long. This is his first placement and Monica said it will be short-term.”
Nick is silent, so I can hear him breathing over the phone. I wait, not sure what I want him to say. Now that the moment has arrived, I feel apprehensive. Unprepared.
“What do you think?” I ask, because I realize I want him to make the decision.
Another beat passes before Nick replies. “I say we do it,” he states firmly. “This is what we did the course for, isn’t it? So we could actually be foster parents. There’s no real reason to turn down our very first placement.”
“No, there isn’t,” I agree. Some part of me still feels reluctant, or maybe just nervous.
“So you’ll call Monica back?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“I’ll try to come home from work early.”
“Josh needs to be picked up—”
“I’ll do it.”
Nick is springing into action, but I feel strangely numb. “Okay,” I say. “Then I can whip around Whole Foods before Monica brings him here.” I realize I don’t even know this child’s name. “We’re doing this,” I say, and Nick sounds almost cheerful as he answers.
“Yes, we are.”
3
BETH
So they take Dylan away from me. Susan, with her sympathetic smile, gently suggests that I need a break, just as I said a year earlier. She makes it sound like she is giving me a Snickers or booking me a spa day, not taking away my only child.
I sit in that stuffy little room, with Dylan warm and heavy on my lap, and stare at her in disbelief.
“I never meant it like that.” My voice is shaking.
Susan is placid, her hands folded on the table in front of her, her smile so very sympathetic, and yet I hear a matter-of-fact flintiness in her tone that fills me with a surreal terror. This can’t be happening. All I did was shout and grab his wrist. I love him!
“I’m recommending this course of action for your benefit as much as Dylan’s,” Susan says. “You need support, Beth. Support you’re not able to access while you remain Dylan’s primary caregiver.”
“I’m his mother.” My voice trembles.
Susan nods in agreement, still unruffled. “We want you to be the best mother you can be to Dylan, and we also need to make sure Dylan is safe and well, with his needs attended to—”
“Of course he’s safe and well!” He is asleep on my lap.
Susan cocks her head as she gives me one of her sorrowful smiles. “You know this isn’t the first call to the Department of Children and Families that has been made on Dylan’s behalf.”
“Yes, the other one was made by Dylan’s father,” I practically spit. Indignation feels like a stronger response than cringing fear. “Against my wishes. He’s not even in the picture anymore, as you already know, so—”
“And another by the elementary school, where Dylan should currently be attending.”
“I’m allowed to homeschool.”
“Yes, you are.” Susan lets out a little sigh before resuming. “Over the course of my association with you and Dylan,” she says, choosing each word with irritating care, “I’ve spoken to various people, and they have registered some concerns.”
“People? What people?” This is the first I’ve heard of any such people and their concerns, and I quiver with anger and outrage—as well as fear. Who could possibly know about my life? Who is ratting on me? “My neighbors, I suppose,” I state flatly, because who else could it be? It’s not like I have friends.
“I’m not at liberty to disclose who has made the complaints, but I have heard about some incidents of shouting.”