When You Were Mine: An utterly heartbreaking page-turner Read online

  So when Susan gave all her well-meaning and totally improbable suggestions, I just smiled and murmured something vaguely affirmative, all the while knowing she wasn’t going to be able to help me at all.

  And she didn’t. She just put us back on the hamster wheel of appointments with therapists and psychologists that were impossible to get to. I tried once, at least. I took Dylan to the pediatrician for a well visit, since he hadn’t been since he was two. He was seen by a junior associate who had never met him before, which could have been horrendous but actually wasn’t.

  The doctor was young and friendly, and fortunately seemed unfazed by Dylan’s behavior—sitting on my lap the whole time, not saying a word, and burrowing his head in my chest whenever the doctor tried to talk to him.

  But, amazingly, Dylan still passed all the usual checks—his hearing and eyesight were perfect, he could point to an object or arrange things in order, and in the end the doctor said he didn’t see any cause for concern regarding developmental delay—code word for autism—and he sent us on our way with some ridiculous but well-meant advice on children developing at different rates in terms of social behavior.

  It was enough, thank goodness, for Susan to leave us alone, saying she’d check up on us in six months.

  Sure enough, she came back six months later, when Dylan had just turned six.

  I hadn’t taken him to any other appointments, of course, which she already knew, and she walked around the apartment and made little notes and ticks on her clipboard which made me want to scream. What did she see? What was so wrong?

  “You share a bedroom?” she asked in a neutral tone that didn’t feel neutral at all.

  “There’s only one bedroom in the apartment.” I didn’t think it was as weird as it might have seemed—the only way Dylan went to sleep is if I was lying next to him. So yes, we slept in the same bed. It’s easier. And anyway, what about all those people in the Middle Ages who slept, like, six to a bed? That wasn’t weird, was it?

  Susan came into the kitchen, which was messy, I knew. I usually saved doing the dishes till the end of the day, when Dylan was asleep. I cringed at the way she looked at everything—the dirty dishes piled in the sink, the spilled cereal on the table. All of it made me feel so guilty, but surely I wasn’t the only mom in the world whose kitchen wasn’t sparkling?

  “How is your work going?” she asked in a kindly voice, and I said it was fine, even though it was hard to find the time to make beaded bangles and whatnot when Dylan so often needed my attention.

  “And you’re homeschooling Dylan?” she continued in that same neutral tone as she came back into the living room, which was also messy. Dylan had got a puzzle out and was putting it together by himself, which I hoped counted for something. He loved puzzles, and fortunately I could usually pick them up for cheap at tag sales.

  “Yes, I am.” Which I thought she must already know, because I’d filed an intent to homeschool with the education authority right after her last visit. Not that I actually was homeschooling. Dylan was only six and I figured puzzles and books were enough to occupy him at that age. He knew some letters, and he could write his name. I read him stories and sometimes we colored pictures together. What more did a little boy need?

  Susan nodded slowly. She talked a bit about the missed appointments, and encouraged me to go to that support group, and then she smiled at Dylan and said that, despite some challenges, he seemed happy. And then, thank goodness, she left.

  That was a year ago. And now I’m sitting in a stale-smelling little room at the police station, the kind of room reserved for suspected criminals, with Dylan asleep on my lap because this whole situation has completely exhausted him. At least he’s not screaming anymore. I’ve seen the side-eye the desk sergeant gave me, that silent, judgmental look which I have become so used to. Usually I get it when Dylan melts down in public, and people assume I’m some lame, lax parent who has no sense of discipline, but getting it from a police officer in the station feels a whole lot worse.

  He gave me a look like he thought I beat my child, or neglected him in some awful way, when nothing could be further from the truth. My entire life revolves around Dylan. Whether that’s a good or bad thing might be up for debate, but the truth is I’d do anything for my son, and I’ve sacrificed my whole life for his happiness—gladly.

  Because, actually, I wasn’t always like this. A lifetime ago—well, about ten years—I was your normal teenaged girl, from a middle-class family—well, almost—planning to go to Connecticut State, working weekends at the Gap in West Farms Mall, being all cute and chirpy as I folded sweaters. I was a quiet girl, not as shy as Dylan, but definitely not the life of any party, but I had a few friends, and a family, and life felt normal.

  How I got from that to this is another story, a pointless one since it happened and some of it was my fault and there is nothing I can do about it now.

  Now I just want to get through this and go home with Dylan. I want to curl up on the sofa with him, his head on my shoulder, my arm around him, and read Dinosaurs Before Dark to him three times in a row. And the longer I wait here, the more I’m afraid that isn’t going to happen, at least not anytime soon.

  I’ve been waiting in the room for about half an hour when Susan comes in, with her kindly smile and a cup of tea for me. She even remembers how I like it, milky and sweet. I tense automatically, because this all feels just a little too sympathetic, like she’s bringing bad news.

  “So, Beth,” she says, and her voice is full of compassionate sorrow.

  Oh, no.

  I don’t reply, because I feel like anything I say could and would be used against me, but as it turns out, I don’t need to reply, because Susan just shakes her head and says, “As I’m sure you realize, this isn’t working.”

  And I don’t ask what she means, because of course I know it already. She means me. Me and Dylan. We’re not working, and for the first time, it seems like DCF is going to actually do something, and I can’t stand the thought, even as I feel a treacherous little flicker of relief. Finally, finally someone is going to help me.

  Little did I know.

  2

  ALLY

  Three weeks after we finish our training to become foster parents, the checks and references finally complete, we get our first call.

  I am standing at the kitchen island, gazing out at the backyard, which is full of burgeoning autumn color—russets and scarlets and gold. It is a beautiful, crisp fall day in mid-October, the kind of day where the air looks crystalline and feels drinkable. I spent the morning working from home, and then I had lunch with a friend, and in twenty minutes I am due to pick Josh up from cross-country practice. I’m feeling benevolent and contented, even though I am missing Emma, who started college in Boston just six weeks ago. Her absence continues to give me a certain, melancholy restlessness.

  This is a similar feeling—in fact, I was standing in the exact same place—to when I first broached the idea of becoming foster parents to Nick, back in April. He was on the sofa, kicking back with a glass of wine, and Josh and Emma were upstairs in their rooms, working or socializing via their phones, probably both. They had the uncanny ability to simultaneously write an essay and take a Snapchat selfie approximately every three seconds. It boggled my mind, but I couldn’t complain, because they were both straight-A students and Emma had just been accepted to Harvard, something that Nick and I were absolutely thrilled about but felt we had to downplay. You can’t go running around to your neighbors boasting about your kid being accepted to the best college in the country, at least not in West Hartford, where everyone is politely cutthroat about college admissions. We’d been saying she was going to Boston for college instead, but weighing the word Boston with a mysteriously significant emphasis. Sometimes people asked, sometimes they just looked a bit miffed, because they already knew.

  Perhaps it was because I knew Emma would be leaving soon, and at sixteen Josh didn’t seem to need us at all, except to drive him
places, that I thought of fostering in the first place. I’d seen a documentary on my laptop, a few minutes of a clip on Facebook about the foster care crisis in America, and I listened to how there are almost half a million children in care in the United States, many of them waiting for placements or adoption.

  It was the kind of thing that was meant to tug at your heartstrings, with traumatized, teary-eyed children looking straight at the camera, and it worked. I looked around our house, with the gleaming granite kitchen we’d renovated and expanded a couple of years ago, a pottery jug of tulips unfurling their blossoms in the middle of the island, the photos on the walls of our happy family hiking in the Berkshires, taking the inevitable trip to Orlando, in front of the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon, and of course the ubiquitous portrait of us all in white T-shirts and jeans, goofing around self-consciously for the camera.

  We were so lucky. Hashtag blessed, and I didn’t even mean it ironically. I knew it, and I thanked something—God, maybe, or perhaps a more comfortably nebulous idea of fate—for how much we had. Wasn’t it time to pay it forward? Wouldn’t that be a good use of my extra time, now that Emma was leaving home, and I was only working twenty hours a week?

  I was only forty-six, young for an almost empty-nester, at least in this part of Connecticut. Most of my friends with children Emma’s age were well into their fifties. I felt young, and Emma’s leaving felt like a new chapter not just for her, but for all of us. I wanted to do something different and meaningful with my life.

  So I broached the idea to Nick, who looked startled and a bit nonplussed, which was understandable since I’d never once mentioned it before in our twenty-two years of marriage.

  “Foster? But we’re finally getting our lives back.” He spoke jokingly, but I knew he was serious, at least somewhat.

  “We’ve had our lives back for years,” I returned lightly. “It’s not as if Josh and Emma are toddlers.” They’d not been needing us since they were thirteen, more or less, except as a taxi service and a listening ear for the occasional emotional outburst from Emma.

  “Yeah, but… with Emma gone, and Josh sixteen… we could go away on our own.” He waggled his eyebrows enticingly. “A romantic weekend in New York…”

  “I can’t really see us leaving Josh at home.” I trusted him, but not quite that much. “And the placements don’t last forever.”

  “I don’t know, Ally…” Nick’s gaze flickered towards the television, which he’d muted when I first spoke.

  “All I’m asking is that you think about it, Nick. We have so much, and there are kids out there who are in desperate situations.” My throat closed a little at the memory of some of the harrowing stories I’d seen on that clip. Kids who had nothing but Twinkies for breakfast or wore clothes three sizes too small, never mind the truly horrific cases of abuse that I couldn’t bear to think about.

  “Yes, but…” He paused, his wine glass halfway to his lips. “They’re all really difficult, aren’t they?”

  I drew back a little at that; I didn’t think he meant to sound so selfish. “You’d be difficult too if you’d grown up the way those kids did.” Admittedly, it might have seemed as if I’d positioned myself as an expert after watching something on Facebook for five minutes, but actually I’d done some more research than that. The ad had led me to the website for Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families, and I’d read numerous articles on fostering, the training you did, the references you needed, how rewarding it all was. I didn’t know much, not yet, but I knew something.

  “I know, I know,” Nick assured me. “That’s what I’m saying. They all have issues. And I don’t really think we’re equipped to deal with that sort of thing.”

  “Equipped? How are we not equipped?” I looked pointedly around our spacious kitchen, the French windows we’d had put in a couple of years ago leading out to a cedarwood deck with a huge, gleaming grill. Our house wasn’t enormous, but it worked, and I loved it for all it represented, all the memories it had promised and then contained.

  A couple of years ago, Nick had floated the idea of moving to one of those big brick monstrosities on Mountain Road, but I couldn’t stomach the idea. We’d bought our 1920s four-bedroom house off Farmington Avenue fifteen years ago, and then done it up slowly until we’d got it exactly the way we liked. We’d fallen in love with the street, which looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting or an episode of Leave it to Beaver—porches with window boxes and rocking chairs, kids riding bikes down the sidewalk or playing kick-the-can on summer nights as the fireflies come out like low-lying stars. It was exactly the sort of childhood I’d wanted for my kids, and we gave it to them. Why not offer it to someone else, even if just for a short time, if we could?

  “We’re plenty equipped,” I said when Nick seemed as if he wasn’t going to answer me. “We’ve raised two children successfully”—Emma’s Harvard admission seemed to hover purposefully in the air—“and I work from home part-time. So do you, some of the time.” Last year, he’d redone the bonus room over the garage as a home office, complete with skylight and Nespresso machine. “We could do this.” But not if Nick wasn’t as committed as I was, although I was sure he could be, given time and a little carefully applied pressure.

  “Where did this even come from?” he asked. “Because this is the first I’ve ever heard about it. You’re talking as if this is the tenth time we’ve had this discussion. What’s going on, Ally?”

  I ducked my head, a bit abashed, because it was out of the blue. Last week, I’d been talking about renting a house in Provence for the summer, after seeing a magazine spread of fields of lavender and sunflowers, the sea an azure sparkle in the distance.

  I’m a bit like that—I get seized by an idea and then I can’t help but run away with it, at least in my mind. Nick tethers me to earth, grounds me in reality. Sometimes it feels like a wet blanket, and other times it’s a relief.

  Yet right then, watching him sip his wine and glance at the baseball game on TV, just as he did every other night, thinking how easy our lives had become, it didn’t feel like either. It felt like a disappointment. I wanted him to want it. I wanted his eyes to light up as he leaned forward, the Red Sox forgotten for a second, and say, You know what, Al? That sounds like a wonderful idea. In fact, I’ve been thinking along the same lines…

  “I know we haven’t discussed this before,” I said. “But can’t we think about it now? I want to do something more with my life. Something that matters.” I heard the throb of feeling in my voice and it surprised me a little, because I hadn’t realized just how much I felt that way. This might have started as an idea to run away with, but now it felt real.

  “What?” The single word was gently scoffing. “You’re, like, PTA queen. You volunteer for everything…”

  “That’s different.” I had done my time on a variety of PTAs, from elementary school class parties and gift-wrap fundraisers, where you’re fending off all the overeager parents, to the barren tundra of the middle and high school PTA, where no parent is interested in joining, and you have to do everything yourself. “I want to do something more,” I told Nick. “Something that isn’t just ameliorating our lives.”

  “Ameliorating?” He raised his eyebrows, giving me that lopsided, rakish grin I loved. “Now you’re using fancy words.”

  I folded my arms and tried to give him a stern look, but I ended up laughing, as I always did, and Nick held up his hands in surrender.

  “Fine, fine. I’ll look into it. What should I watch? The Facebook ad that got you going?”

  “Nick.” I shook my head, but I was still laughing. He knew me so well. “Look up some statistics on foster care in the US, or even just in Connecticut.” After seeing the clip, I’d done that much, at least. I’d gone on several websites that had given faces and voices to those soulless stats—photos of children, interviews with them.

  It had been both heart-breaking and horrible, to scroll through photos of these kids with their
bite-sized captions—There is nothing Jenny wants more than a family. Juan would do better in a home without any other children. Drew needs a patient family who can help guide his choices.

  It reminded me of when we’d been looking for a dog on the SPCA website—we never got one—only this was so much worse. These were people, children, and they wanted families. Safe homes where people loved them and tucked them in at night. Where they didn’t need to cringe or cower or feel afraid.

  My heart ached for every single one of those kids, and I was sure if Nick went on that page, or any page like it, he’d feel the same.

  “I know it’s out of the blue,” I said, “but give it a chance. Give a child a chance.”

  “I’ll put that on a T-shirt, or maybe a mug.” I knew Nick was making light of it on purpose, because it was his default setting when it came to talking about anything emotionally serious. It occurred to me for the first time then, although it should have earlier, that this might have been all a bit too close to home for Nick.

  I didn’t actually know that much about his upbringing, because he didn’t like to talk about it, except in broad strokes, and even then with great reluctance. What I knew was that he’d grown up poor in upstate New York, and that his father had disappeared when he was still a child and his mother had, more or less, been a semi-functioning drunk.

  I met her once, when we got engaged at the end of our last year at Cornell, two optimistic math majors who felt we had the whole world shimmering before us. We’d been dating for two years but I’d never met his family; he’d always shrugged them off, said I wouldn’t want to meet them, and I hadn’t minded much because we’d spent time with my family—my mom and dad and sister in New Jersey. I’d been quietly proud to return to my hometown as the new and improved version of myself—the math geek of Moorestown High coming back with a new haircut, a new style, and best of all, a new boyfriend.