He shakes his head and keeps shrieking as he grabs the ear of his bunny.
“Dylan, don’t, you’ll rip it—”
Too late, the bunny’s right ear tears off, and several wads of cotton stuffing fall to the ground gently, like snow. Dylan stops shrieking for a single second as he stares at the terrible destruction we’ve both caused and then he flings himself on the floor.
When Susan comes in, he is banging his head against the floor and we are right back where we were this morning in CVS, and I struggle not to sob out loud.
“Dylan.” I kneel down next to him, knowing not to touch him when he’s like this because he hates that. I have to wait till he’s calmed down, and then he wants the best and biggest cuddle in the world, but will he this time? When will I hug him again, and be able never to let go?
I push the thoughts away as I try to take control of the situation. I won’t grab his arm, either, the way I did this morning. I’m going to show Susan what a gentle, caring, consistent parent I really am.
Except I can’t, because Dylan won’t stop and this is all so awful, and I can’t help but feel he’s right to cry. I want to cry.
In fact, I am crying, tears streaming down my face, my voice too garbled now to get the words out that might comfort him, and of course my reaction just makes everything worse.
“I think,” Susan says in a quiet, firm voice, “it might be better if I take Dylan to his placement now.”
“What?” I stare at her blearily, my face covered in snot and tears, strange hiccuppy sounds coming from me. “No. I need to explain first.”
“I think it’s too late for that, Beth. Sometimes a quick, clean break is easier.”
A quick, clean break? She’s talking about my child. “No,” I say again, but I can barely get the word out because I am crying so hard, and I realize then Susan might be right. I’m no help to Dylan when I’m like this, and I’m too far gone to pull myself together.
Besides, I’m not sure I even want to see where he’s going just yet. Not when I’m like this, so raw and broken and obviously deficient. I don’t want to see the bigger house, the better people he’ll be with. Or, if it’s not like that, if it’s something else, something worse—I can’t bear to see that, either. Not yet.
“Take him,” I manage to choke out. I am gasping and sobbing, my arms wrapped around my waist as if I have to hold myself together. “Just take him.”
Susan moves with such brisk efficiency, I know she’s done this many, many times before. She speaks in a low, firm voice, telling Dylan exactly what she’s doing, as she scoops him up in a secure hold so he can’t kick or hit her.
“The backpacks,” she instructs me, and numbly, still crying, I pick them up. I take the rabbit Dylan has hurled onto the floor and try to put its ear back together, but it’s useless. I stuff some of the wadding back in and then I put it on top of the other stuff in the Cars backpack before zipping it up. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I am now complicit.
I am still weeping as I follow Susan and Dylan out to the car. Susan is speaking to Dylan the whole time, heedless of his shrieks, telling him what she is doing as she opens the back door and buckles him into the booster seat. And, amazingly, as she puts him in the car, Dylan suddenly stops fighting.
I watch in shock as he goes limp and his expression turns vacant, all the fight drained out of him, his body seeming soft and boneless. And although I know it must be easier for Susan, it feels worse than if he kept fighting. He’s either given up or he’s in shock.
“Dylan…” I croak, but my little boy doesn’t even look at me. “Dylan,” I say again, my voice breaking now, and Susan gives me a reproving look. I’m not helping, but I don’t care. “Dylan.”
She closes the door before I can reach him, and I end up banging my fists against the window, hard enough to hurt. I want them to hurt.
“Dylan!” I scream his name this time, a roar that tears at my throat. It feels primal, a maternal instinct that is absolutely necessary in this moment.
Susan gives me a quelling look, worse than the one before. “Beth, stop, please. I know you’re upset, but this isn't helping.”
She’s opened the door on the driver’s side. She’s going to leave.
I pound the window again. “Dylan!”
Finally Dylan turns to look at me. His face is pale and ghostlike from behind the window; the glass is smeared from my hands. His expression is blank, as if he can’t even see me, as if he’s gone somewhere else in his head because this reality is too much for him to deal with.
“I’ll be in touch soon, I promise,” Susan says. “We’ll talk, and I’ll explain everything that is going on.”
I drop my bruised and stinging hands and step back, utterly defeated, as Susan closes the car door and starts the engine. My gaze stays locked with my son’s as she pulls away from the curb and drives away, taking my very life with her.
4
ALLY
Every sense is on high alert as I stand by the front door, waiting, too jumped up to do something useful like start dinner or tidy up. Since I returned Monica’s call an hour and a half ago, I’ve been flying around like a demented bird, first cleaning the guest room, then putting fresh sheets on the bed and emptying the drawers. Why didn’t we have the room ready?
It’s a very nice room—spacious, with a closet and a view of the backyard and trees and houses beyond—but as I got everything ready I couldn’t help but think it looked a little bland, even sterile, like a room in the Holiday Inn. I could have bought some toys or books or stuffed animals to make it more age-appropriate, but as we had no idea what age or gender children we might eventually be getting, it seemed like a potential waste. Still, some homey touch would have been nice. Anything.
After I cleaned the room, I dashed out to Whole Foods, throwing things in my shopping cart with wild abandon—ready-made meals and organic yogurt and bags of carrot sticks and bunches of grapes. I threw in some pediatric natural medicine too—Rescue Remedy and some essential oils and some homeopathic stuff I would normally never even look at.
It was only as I was paying for it all that I remembered I might not even be able to give it to him, not without the parent’s permission.
Him. I don’t even know his name. All I know is he’s seven years old, and he’s just been removed from his mother—why? I have no idea.
All these thoughts are flashing through my mind as I stand by the door, waiting for this anonymous little boy to show up.
Nick texted to say he’d be late, stuck in traffic on the south side of town with Josh, after picking him up from practice. I’m doing this first bit on my own, and I feel both excited and terrified, everything I learned in that ten-week course seeming to fall right out of my head. I thought I’d been paying attention, but right now I can’t remember a single relevant detail.
A few tense and endless minutes later, a beat-up Ford Focus cruises slowly down the street before pulling into our driveway. Monica is driving and there is a woman I don’t recognize in the passenger seat, a fiftyish grandmotherly type with a neat bob and a kind, tired face. I can’t see anyone in the back, but he—this little boy—must be seated there.