“Why didn’t anyone tell us that Brynn was failing?” my mother demanded angrily. “This is absolutely unacceptable.”
“Mrs. Glenn,” Mrs. Buckley said. “We did send letters. We called. There was no response.”
My mother sent me a searing look. “I didn’t see any letters. I didn’t get any phone calls. Did you?” she asked my father, and he shook his head wearily.
“We are all very worried about you, Brynn,” Mrs. Buckley said, addressing me for the first time. “We know this has been a very difficult time for you and your family and we want to help you.” I slunk lower into my chair and didn’t say anything. “If you’d like to talk to someone, we can certainly arrange that.”
“She doesn’t need to talk to someone,” my mother said impatiently. “She needs to get focused and start studying.”
“We’ll get Brynn a tutor,” my father added. “We’ll get things turned around. It has been a difficult time, but nothing we can’t handle.”
“Sometimes,” Mrs. Buckley began carefully, “having an outside resource to help work—”
“We don’t need an outside resource,” my mother said sharply, standing. “From now on, I’d like weekly reports from each of Brynn’s teachers on her progress. We’ll arrange for a tutor for her. Thank you for your time.” She turned on her heel and stormed out of Mrs. Buckley’s office, with my father and me following behind.
As promised, I did get a tutor. Every day after school, for ninety minutes, a local college student from St. Anne’s came over to our house and we would sit at the kitchen table, reviewing algebra equations and Spanish vocabulary. My tutor, a boring philosophy major with zero personality, was relentless. While she was very good at explaining things so I could understand them, she was impatient, clucking her tongue and snapping her fingers at me when my mind wandered.
Eventually, my grades improved to all Bs and a C in gym. I graduated smack-dab in the middle of my class and the day after graduation my mother enrolled me for summer courses at St. Anne’s College.
I tried, I really did. But whenever I stepped into the classroom an overwhelming feeling of dread would wash over me. My chest would tighten and the pounding of my heart would thump in my ears. I rarely lasted more than five minutes in the classroom and then I would run.
I had been so hopeful the day I turned eighteen. I had planned on telling my parents that I was going to drop out of St. Anne’s and get a job working with a local veterinarian. It didn’t pay much, but it was a start. We had just come home from celebrating my birthday with dinner at a restaurant and were eating cake and ice cream when I saw the letter on the kitchen counter. My pleasure at having a halfway nice evening with my parents dissolved. It had been more than two years since Allison was arrested and even though my parents rarely spoke of her, there were always reminders. Her beautiful face beamed at me from photos that still held a major spot in the house. Allison’s letter stared up at me and my earlier resolve left me. It didn’t matter that Allison was in jail; it didn’t matter that she would be locked up for eight more years. She was always there.
I left my plate of cake and ice cream on the table, next to the letter from Allison, and went upstairs to my bedroom. I stared at my mother’s bottle of sleeping pills for several hours until I finally got up the nerve to twist off the cap and pour the capsules into my hand. They were smaller than I thought they would be, and I had to smile at the thought that something so lightweight could end the pain. I left no note. What would I say? I’m sorry I’m not my sister? That I was tired of tiptoeing around the edges of my world trying to please everyone, but pleasing no one, especially myself? That I still couldn’t get the vision of that baby girl’s soft bluish skin out of my mind, of her tiny fingers and toes, and that haunted me more than anything?
I swallowed the pills one by one. As I laid each one on my tongue it was like a communion of the wrongs I felt were done against me. Never smart enough, never pretty enough, never athletic enough—never, ever enough. I buried myself under my covers to die. Briefly, before I drifted off to sleep, I wondered if my parents would miss me. I didn’t think so. Their grief in losing Allison had consumed them.
I think I would have been successful in killing myself if my mother hadn’t come in search of her sleeping pills. She found me unconscious in bed, the pill bottle next to me. When I awoke I was in the emergency room, having my stomach pumped. After a few days I was on my way to New Amery to live with my grandmother.
A year later, I thought that things were going so much better. That all I needed to do was to keep Allison away from me, my parents away from me, forget the past, focus on the future. I was wrong.
I have a class at noon but I climb back into my car and drive back home. My grandma isn’t around. Milo looks at me hopefully, wanting to go for a walk. Instead, I go to the cabinet above the refrigerator where my grandmother keeps her alcohol. I know it’s stupid, I know I shouldn’t do it, but I pull down a bottle, grab a tall glass and fill it to the rim with the sweet-smelling red wine. My stomach is still upset from last night’s drinking, but I don’t care. I want to go back to those few wonderful minutes when I thought I was just another college girl with friends, with the possibility of a cute boy being interested in me, when no one knew my past.
I take the bottle and go into my bedroom. I sit on my bed, take a big swallow of wine from the glass and wait. Wait for the effect of the alcohol’s smooth warmth to spread to my legs, my fingertips. Wait for it to numb my thoughts. It was stupid, really. To think that I could start over.
Claire
As Claire watches Allison leave after the interview, she is struck at the lightness in her step. When she had first entered the store, Allison looked downtrodden and weighted with her history, though she was trying to stand tall and appear confident. Allison Glenn seems like a nice girl, despite her past. Everyone needs a second chance. Claire firmly believes this. If she and Jonathan had been given only one chance at parenthood, Joshua would never have come into their lives.
It was a bitter cold January night seven years earlier, just one week after they had received their foster parent license, when Dana had called Jonathan and Claire. A three-year-old girl had been found wandering down on Drake Street at midnight. She wasn’t wearing a hat or coat, couldn’t tell the group of college boys who found her outside the bar nearby where her home was, whom she belonged to. The boys called the police and the Department of Human Services stepped in and called them. “We’ll be right there,” Jonathan told Dana. He didn’t ask Claire if she wanted to take in a child. He knew. Claire wanted a child more than anything. It didn’t matter if the child was a boy or girl, how old she was, where she came from, the color of her skin. It didn’t matter. And Claire knew that Jonathan just wanted to hold a small beating heart next to his and tell the child over and over that everything was going to be all right.
It was right for a long time and then it wasn’t. Ella’s mother, Nicki, a twenty-year-old part-time college student, had been drinking and doing drugs in her apartment with her friends the night that Ella wandered away. Nicki didn’t even know that Ella was missing until nearly twelve hours later, when she had sobered up enough to realize that Ella wasn’t in the apartment.
That morning when Claire and Jonathan went to the hospital where Ella was being checked over for any signs of frostbite or abuse, Dana explained to Ella that she would be coming home with the Kelbys for a while. Ella just looked up at them in confusion. “Where’s my mom?” she asked over and over again. “I want my mom.” She didn’t throw a fit when she was placed in their car but looked out the window, twisting her head as they passed people walking along the street, as if she was looking for someone. Once they pulled up to the front of the house, Ella seemed to figure out that she wasn’t going home anytime soon. Her tired eyes filled with tears and she began to shake and shiver so much that her teeth kept clanking together. She just couldn’t seem to get warm.
“It’s okay, Ella,” Claire told her as she
wrapped her in a big blanket and set her on the sofa. “Are you hungry?”
Ella didn’t say anything at first, her eyes fixed on the strangers’ puppy, who was snuffling at her feet.
“That’s Truman,” Jonathan told Ella. “He’s a bulldog. We just got him last week.”
“He bite me?” she asked in her surprisingly gruff voice.
“No,” Claire reassured her. “He’s a good dog. Do you want to pet him?”
Ella pinched her lips together and closed her eyes as if deep in thought. After a moment she opened her eyes and looked up at Claire and took a deep breath, as if mustering all her courage.
“He won’t bite,” Jonathan promised as he lifted Truman onto the cushion beside her. “He might slobber on you, but he won’t bite.”
She tentatively reached out a plump little hand and swept it quickly across Truman’s head and giggled. She did this over and over, a fast pat and a laugh, until Jonathan and Claire were laughing with her. Truman looked at each of them in turn with an expression that let it be known he was simply tolerating the lot of them. Twenty minutes later, Ella had fallen asleep, her face buried in Truman’s neck. Jonathan and Claire just sat there watching, falling in love with her.
It wasn’t long before Claire considered Ella hers. She knew it was dangerous, thinking this way. Knew that she really had no true claim to call Ella her own. But she loved that little girl. Loved her as if she had been the one to carry her in her own, scarred womb for nine months. Ella was the most beautiful child she had ever seen, with her big brown eyes that could in one minute be full of mischief and in the next be filled with tears. She called Jonathan “Dad” right away, although she seemed to miss her mother terribly.
It was obvious that Nicki wanted her daughter back, but didn’t quite have the skills to pull it all together. She was defiant and argumentative with her caseworker, showed up late to supervised visits and case facilitation meetings. She kept blowing it, and try as she might, Claire couldn’t understand it. How, how could someone possibly not move heaven and earth to be with this amazing miracle of a child? Still, during supervised visits, Nicki got right down on the floor with Ella and insinuated herself seamlessly back into her life. Seeing Nicki with Ella filled Claire with jealousy, although she was ashamed to admit it. They would look at each other and smile and touch like they’d been together forever. Claire would watch Nicki cup her palm gently around Ella’s plump cheek and Claire imagined that Nicki once cradled her swollen belly the same way when she was pregnant. It was such an intimate, protective, possessive gesture that Claire would have to turn away; it hurt to look at them.
Jonathan and Claire had Ella with them for just over a year. Jonathan didn’t think that Nicki would be able to make the necessary changes to actually earn Ella back, but she did. Claire still remembers the stark, naked look of disbelief on his face when they made the final handoff that February. It was a frigid afternoon, much like the night when Ella had come to them, but now she was more than adequately dressed in the puffy lavender parka with matching hat and gloves that they had bought her. Her brown eyes flashed excitedly up at them. “I get to go see Mommy?” Ella asked over and over.
“Yes, Bella Ella,” Claire said, using their pet name for her. Beautiful Ella. “But this time you get to stay with your mommy for…” She couldn’t bring herself to say forever. Who knew, Claire thought, she might make another mistake and Ella might return to them, though she didn’t truly believe that. Nicki really wanted Ella back. “For a very long time,” Claire finished. Ella carefully thought about this before responding.
“Dad is coming,” she stated. It wasn’t a question. A soft hitch erupted from Jonathan’s throat and Claire bit back her own tears.
“No, Dad’s not coming,” Claire told her, trying to keep her voice cheerful. It was the least she could do, she thought. Why send her own distress along on this journey with Ella? “You get to go live with your mommy, Ella,” Claire said for perhaps the hundredth time. “Isn’t that exciting?”
“Yessirree, it is,” Ella agreed. “But Dad’s coming, and you, too, Mama Claire,” she insisted.
“No, Ella. Not this time,” Claire said. Next to her in the driver’s seat, she heard Jonathan sniff and she placed her hand on his knee. When they arrived at Dana’s office, Jonathan unhooked Ella from the car seat and emerged from the car holding her tightly to his chest, trying to protect her from the cold wind. Claire realized then what a mistake this had been. She thought they would be able to handle the transition. They had done what they had said they would. For one year she and Jonathan sheltered, clothed, fed and showed genuine affection for Ella. Loved her. And now they had to give her back. Back to a woman who had allowed her little girl to wander the streets all alone in the middle of the night, who would rather drink and party with her friends than spend hours reveling in the glory that was Ella, as they had. The cold air scoured at Claire’s cheeks as they made their way inside the Department of Human Services building, the place they had always brought Ella to visit with her mother.
“Ella, you get on over here and give me a kiss goodbye.” Claire forced a light note into her voice.
“Goodbye, Mama Claire,” Ella chirped as she trotted over. She kissed her stoutly on the lips and Claire gathered her up into a tight hug.
“I love you, Bella Ella,” Claire squeaked, tears falling freely.
“Bye, Dad,” Ella said as she slipped from her grip toward Jonathan. “See you later, alligator,” she quipped as she held tight to Jonathan’s leg. Jonathan stood still for a moment and Claire watched helplessly as he struggled with what to do next, his chest rising and falling heavily.
“See you later, alligator,” Ella repeated forcefully.
Jonathan sank to his knees and, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, responded, “After a while, crocodile.”
Ella giggled at the familiar game. “See you soon, you big baboon.” She wrapped her arms around Jonathan and nuzzled her face into his neck.
“I love you, Ella. Always remember that, okay?” Jonathan croaked so piteously that Claire had to shut her eyes to it.
“Love you back.” Ella pulled away from Jonathan and turned back to Nicki. “Let’s go, Mommy. Let’s go. Bye, Mama Claire, bye, Dad.”
“Come on, Ella,” Dana said. “Let’s go put your bags in your mom’s car.” And before she could blink Ella had already left them behind.
Claire and Jonathan walked away from Ella, hand in hand, and drove home in silence. The house already seemed so empty, abandoned. Even Truman didn’t know what to make of it. He sniffed at corners and wandered warily from room to room, searching for Ella.
Claire remembered that they tried to make love that night. They undressed each other tentatively, a shirt pulled gently over a head, pants unzipped and lowered. They stood naked in the middle of their darkened bedroom, the frost on the windows, lacy shades concealing them from the street below, Jonathan’s calloused fingers catching on the tender skin on the inside of her thigh. Claire’s lips brushed his neck, lingering on the rough spot just below his chin that he missed shaving. In the end they stopped, grief and exhaustion dropping their hands to their sides. Claire laid her head on Jonathan’s shoulder and he rested his cheek on her head. The house was quiet, too quiet. The realization that they had nothing to listen for anymore. No worries that Ella might crawl from her bed and toddle to their bedroom door, standing on tiptoe to turn the burnished brass doorknob and throw the door open to Claire and Jonathan in various states of nakedness. Ella’s little cartoon voice would come from the shadows. “Whatcha doin? Can I come in?” And they would hastily pull themselves together and she would clamber in between them.
Standing there, the dark sitting heavily on their shoulders, Claire felt Jonathan’s first tear as it slid hotly down her temple and along her cheek. Claire resisted the urge to brush it away as she tracked its journey down the length of her body, from her collarbone, between the swell of her breasts, until it finally plopped onto h
er toes. Claire took Jonathan’s hand and led him to the bed. Gently, she pulled on his boxers and slid a thick pair of woolen socks onto each chilled foot. She drew an old T-shirt over his head and threaded his arms through each sleeve. All the while Jonathan cried silently. “I know,” Claire said over and over. “I know.” She pulled the covers up to his chin and crawled unclothed into bed next to him. Jonathan’s sleep was fitful and restless. Claire didn’t sleep at all.
For a long time Claire couldn’t talk about Ella. She would remember last Halloween, when they had Ella, and how she dressed up as a princess in a shimmery silver gown and little plastic high heels that she ditched after a block. “These things are killer bees,” she said, kicking them off her feet. Or how they would find her curled up alongside Truman on his round fleece dog bed, the two of them breathing heavily in sleep, foreheads touching. Sometimes she would see a wisp of a smile emerge on Jonathan’s face, just for a moment before it would fall away, and knew he was thinking of Ella, too.
They tried to start over, tried more fertility treatments and talked about beginning the process of trying to adopt. They had set their hopes on Ella. And there they were again, an empty womb and empty-handed. Childless.
But less than a year later, Joshua came to them. He’s ours, Claire thought. Forever. She was given a second chance at motherhood.
Now she feels the need to do the same for someone else. Claire will give Allison Glenn that second chance. A new start, a new beginning. A new life.
Charm
Charm is running late at the hospital. When she tries to call Gus to let him know she’ll be home as soon as she can, there is no answer. He seemed fine when she left him this morning. She had talked with him at noon and though he sounded tired, he requested mashed potatoes for supper. Charm keeps punching the redial button as she drives, but still there is no answer. She pulls up in front of the house and comes to a screeching stop, wrenches open the car door and finds a pile of Gus’s gardening tools lying on the ground next to his flower beds. “Gus!” she calls out in desperation as she opens the back door. “Gus! Are you okay?” Charm makes her way through the small house, throws open the door to his bedroom and there she finds him fast asleep in his bed. His chest rising and falling, rattling noisily.