Three days later, Zac was sitting at Dan and Nora’s kitchen table, a bowl of cereal in front of him. He poked at it with the tip of his spoon. He didn’t feel hungry.
"Eat," Dan urged, absently patting the air around the top of Zac’s head. "Eat!"
Everyone was a little distracted this morning. The visit with the boys’ mother had been rescheduled as soon as possible, which turned out to be ten thirty-five on Thursday morning. It was a big deal; Isaac and Taylor were skipping school (for the second time that week) and Dan had made all three of them take showers that morning. He’d made them take showers the night before, too.
"Are you nervous?" Taylor, dressed only in a towel, had been trailing Dan around the house all morning, chattering away. "You seem nervous. I’m not nervous. I’m really not nervous at all. It’s my mommy. I used to see her at home a lot, when I was at home, but I haven’t seen her for a long time. Sometimes I have dreams about her. She was pretty. Do you think she’ll come today? I’m sure there’s some reason that she didn’t come last time. I know that there was. I was thinking that maybe there was some kind of window into the room that let her see us, but we couldn’t see her. Do you think that’s what it was? Maybe that’s what it was."
"Do you ever stop to take a breath?" Dan asked him, finally.
Taylor considered this. "Before I went in the hospital, I couldn’t breathe. Now I can breathe. So now I can take breaths. When I was in the hospital, there was this boy there. I told you about him. Allen? He was a butthead. He was really, really dumb. And mean. I only cried in the hospital once, and I had to get a bunch of shots. Nora said I was brave anyway. Even though I cried. Can I tell my mommy about Gallagher? Do you think she could see Gallagher? I think maybe she likes cats. Maybe she’d like Gallagher."
Isaac’s nerves were frayed. He was sitting across from Zac at the table, his head buried in his arms. "Taylor, hasn’t anyone ever told you that you talk too much?" he wailed, finally.
Taylor didn’t skip a beat. "Yeah, people telled me that before. Dan, do you think my mommy will think I talk too much? I could try not to talk so much. I could be quiet..."
Dan ruffled Isaac’s hair as he passed him, then turned to raise an eyebrow at Taylor. "Why don’t you draw your mommy a picture of Gallagher, to show her what he looks like?"
"That’s a good idea!" Taylor exclaimed. "Maybe I should draw her a bunch of pictures. One of Gallagher, and one of you, and one of Nora, and maybe one of us, too. I don’t think she has a picture of us. And then I’ll. . ."
"That’s nice." Dan handed Taylor a few pieces of paper and a pack of crayons. "Go draw."
"Okay." Taylor climbed into a chair at the kitchen table and turned to his older brother. "It won’t be so bad, Ike. You’ll see."
"Yeah right," Dan heard Isaac murmur into the table. "It’s going to be terrible."
The scene in the social worker’s office was becoming all too familiar. Five minutes passed, and then ten minutes. It was a quarter to eleven. Ten to eleven. Five to eleven.
Isaac was sitting as rigidly as if someone had paid him not to move. He kept his eyes riveted on his hands. He’d gotten a paper cut on his index finger the other day. It still hurt when he pressed it. Isaac put as much pressure on it as he could. When his finger hurt, he didn’t have to think about his mother. Because thinking about her hurt more.
Zac hadn’t climbed out of Dan’s lap since they’d arrived. He looked tired; it wasn’t as if he’d expected his mother to come, anyway. "Let’s just go, Dan. She’s not here."
Dan looked down at Isaac after Zac said that, meeting his eyes. Isaac couldn’t hide the tremendous pain that had welled up in the middle of his chest as soon as he heard his brother open his mouth. "She’s not coming," Isaac agreed, sounding, for a moment, dangerously close to crying.
Dan put an arm around him. "She’s not that late yet."
Taylor was a bundle of nervous energy, darting in and out of the room so that he could peer down the hall to see if his mother had arrived yet. And for the past twenty minutes, everyone had been his mother.
"I think that’s her!" he’d exclaim, causing everyone in the room to jump. Then he’d sigh, folding his arms dejectedly. "No it’s not. It’s some guy carrying a box." After twenty minutes, Taylor did not seem discouraged. Dan watched him through the glass wall of the office. You had to admire that kind of faith.
Still, Dan thought, he wasn’t going to put the kids through this again. The next time a visit was arranged, he wouldn’t bring them down until their mother was actually there. She’d made them wait enough, Dan decided. They could make her wait twenty minutes.
On a higher level of maturity, he didn’t want to keep getting the boys’ hopes up about something that was unlikely to happen. They were dealing with enough already. Making them show up for these visits was like taking them to be executed, over and over, and there was no way Dan was going to continue to let it happen.
While Dan was lost in thought, there came a moment when Taylor’s eyes grew as wide as saucers and his mouth dropped open. "Mommy?" Dan heard him whisper. Taylor dashed back into the room "It‘s her! This time it‘s definitely her! I swear!" He was bouncing on the balls of his feet in his excitement. "That’s her, coming down the hall!"
Isaac swallowed hard and buried his head in his hands for a moment. Zac’s eyes shifted warily from the door to Dan and back again. He wriggled off Dan’s lap and stood in front of him, looking serious.
"Don’t let her take me," he whispered.
"She won’t," Dan promised. "It’s just a visit."
"Don’t let her," Zac cautioned him again. "I won’t go with her."
It took a moment for Kathleen to appear in the doorway, but when she did it was almost without fanfare. She wasn’t an especially arresting person by anyone’s measure, small and frail, her thin frame enveloped in a sweater so baggy three or four of her could scarcely have filled it out. Her blond hair was shoulder length and stringy, lusterless bangs falling over a pair of red rimmed, dubious brown eyes. There were bruised looking purple half moons beneath them; she looked older than twenty-five.
Twenty five, Dan thought. God. . . she’d had Isaac when she was seventeen, Taylor before she was twenty. She would have been twenty two when the boys’ father walked out, twenty two with three kids under five. It was awe inspiring.
Dan wondered about his presence in the room, if he was making the situation more uncomfortable for everyone. He wondered if he should leave, go down the hall and wait for awhile.
He didn’t have much of a choice though. As soon as he’d seen his mother, Zac had jumped into Dan’s lap and turned his face to the wall. Taylor had fallen back, his excitement evaporating into stunned silence at actually seeing his mother for the first time. Isaac hadn’t said anything. His jaw set tightly and his hands clenched so tightly together that his knuckles were white, he was watching his mother closely to see what she would do.
"Hello, Kathleen," Mary smiled. "We’re glad to see you’ve made it. Why don’t you have a seat?"
Kathleen sank into a chair. She didn’t move after that, keeping her eyes trained on the floor and her hands folded in her lap. "This is Dan Conway," Mary continued, cheerfully. "He and his wife have been taking care of the boys."
Dan smiled, wondering how he appeared to this woman. He knew she probably felt as if he were inching in on her territory, capturing her sons’ affections with no regard for her feelings for them. Maybe he’d feel violated, Dan thought, if he were Kathleen. He really should leave. "Hi," he said, trying to appear unintimidating, relaxed. "They’re really good kids."
"Oh." Kathleen retreated back into herself, silent.
"Mom?" Isaac ventured, feeling obligated to act, somehow, "Hi."
"Hi." She glanced over at him and nodded, turning away too quickly.
Isaac sighed, almost inaudibly. He didn’t know if he’d expected her to change, but this was his mother, all right.
Taylor was inching across the room at a snails pace. He stopped directly in front of his mother, about an arms length away. "Mommy," he whispered, "I drew you a picture."
"That’s nice," Kathleen murmured, taking the piece of paper out of his hand and giving it a perfunctory glance.
"Don’t you want to know what it is?" Taylor prompted, a hopeful expression in his eyes.
"What is it?" Kathleen told him. Her voice was low, expressionless.
"A cat," Taylor told her, earnestly. "A big old cat named Gallagher."
"That’s nice," Kathleen repeated, the tone of her voice scarely above a whisper. "I guess."
She’s better than she usually is, Isaac thought. He decided to try to talk to her one more time. "How are you doing?"
Again, she scarcely acknowledged him. "Fine."
Dan met Mary’s eyes. "I should go," he mouthed.
"Maybe that would be a good idea," Mary mouthed back. "I’ll be leaving, and so will Dan," she announced. "This isn’t a supervised visit." She walked over to the door, her high heels making a gentle brushing sound against the thick carpet. "We’ll both be back soon."
Dan stood up, Zac still clinging to him with all his might. "I’m going to let you guys visit with your mommy now," he said. "Zac, I’m going to put you down."
Zac looked terrified, but knew better than to cry out. He knew what happened when you crossed his mother, if that lady in the chair actually was his mother. Instead he stuck his thumb in his mouth and clung to Isaac’s wrist, a wary expression in his eyes. Dan glanced back at him a few times as he made his way down the hall, feeling guilty. He found a small waiting area, a few sticky tables flanked by vending machines and sat down, staring morosely past the sheen of oil that slicked the top of his scalding black coffee.
What could he have done, he asked himself. If he’d stayed, he would have complicated matters. It would have been wrong for him to stay.
But now that he’d made the decision to leave, Dan felt as if he’d deserted the boys all over again.
"Mommy, did I tell you I went to the hospital?" Taylor was chattering away like there was no tomorrow. "And they stuck a big long needle in my arm?"
Kathleen grimaced, feeling shaky. "Please don’t tell me that, Zac. It makes me feel sick."
Isaac scowled. "He’s Taylor."
"Right." Kathleen nodded, vacantly. "I mean him."
"Are you my mommy?" Zac asked, out of the blue.
Kathleen rolled her eyes. "Who else would I be?"
They were quiet for a moment. Taylor’s eyes were filling and his lower lip quivered. "Why didn’t you come?" he burst out.
"What do you mean?" Kathleen was exhausted, hazy. Nothing seemed to be sinking in.
"I missed you and I missed you," Taylor wailed, "and I thought you might come, or you might call."
"Oh, God," Kathleen murmured. "Taylor, I don’t have the energy for this."
At least you got his name right, Isaac thought, dourly.
"Taylor," Kathleen repeated, sounding faraway. "It was your father’s idea to name you that, you know. Jordan Taylor." She frowned. "I wanted to name you Jason. But he didn’t want to."
"Why didn‘t you name Zac Jason?" Taylor piped, drying his eyes with the back of his shirt-sleeve. "Daddy couldn’t have got mad at you. Daddy was gone by then."
"They named you at the social service office," Kathleen said. There was deadness in her voice. "I told them just to pick a name for you. It didn’t matter much."
"Well, did you like it?" Taylor persisted.
"It didn’t matter if I liked it," Kathleen told him. "We called him that anyway."
"Oh." Taylor smiled. "Oh, yeah."
"Mom?" Isaac tried to talk to his mother again. She must be so mad at him, he thought. She probably wanted to kill him. "Mom, I’m sorry about what I did. I’m sorry I got you in trouble."
Kathleen’s eyes hardened for a moment, then softened. "You did what you had to do," she said. "I was the one who was wrong. I’m getting help now."
"Do you love us?" Taylor asked, suddenly.
Kathleen looked taken aback. "Yes," she said. "I do."
"Because Allen says you don’t. He said that real mommies don’t leave."
Pain flashed in Kathleen’s eyes. "I’m trying to get myself clean," she said, her voice stronger than it had been all day. "It’s because of you three. You deserve a better mother than this."
"You’re a good mother," Taylor wailed, bursting into tears again.
"Please, Taylor, don’t do that," Kathleen told him again. "My nerves are completely shot."
The door opened. Mary was standing there, smiling apologetically. "I’m sorry to interrupt," she said, "but Kathleen, you only had until eleven thirty."
"Right," Kathleen murmured. She stood up.
Dan heard the yelling from down the hall, and it was all he could do to keep himself from running toward the source. If she did anything to any of them, he thought, I’m going to kill her. I’m going to. . .
But as he approached the room, he could hear what Zac was saying. "I WANNA GO! DON’T LEAVE! DON’T LEAVE! WE’LL NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN!" Inside the office, Mary, Isaac and Taylor were attempting to detach Zac from Kathleen’s leg. He’d thrown his arms around her thigh and was hanging on for dear life, sobbing. "We’ll never see you again. We’ll never, never, never see you again. You won’t come back. I wanna go with you! Take me with you, Mommy!"
"Zac, your mommy will be back to see you soon." Mary looked tired. "Go with Dan now, and you can visit with your mommy again later."
Meeting Kathleen’s eyes apologetically, Dan knelt down so that he was level with Zac. "Listen to what Mary’s saying, buddy. Your mommy’s coming back." Inwardly, he was thinking, ‘Five minutes ago you were terrified that your mother would take you. What’s going through your mind now?’
Zac kept one arm wrapped around his mother’s leg and stretched his other hand out to push Dan away. "She’ll leave," he was sobbing. "She’ll leave and we’ll never see her again! I can‘t go with you. I can‘t!"
Isaac took this opportunity to peel Zac off of his mother’s legs. The two of them struggled for a little while, Zac’s arms and legs flailing as he tried to break free of his brother’s grasp. Kathleen darted out the door, leaving while she still had a chance.
"Mommy!" Taylor yelled. "Mommy, Mommy. . . Bye!" He waved frantically, but she didn’t turn around and see him. His eyes grew watery again. He swallowed hard.
"Let me go!" Zac sunk his teeth into Isaac’s arm. Isaac winced in pain but he kept his hold. "LET ME GO!"
"Don’t do that, Zac." Dan lifted Zac into a chair and held him still. "Listen, buddy. Don’t bite people, okay? Tetanus shots aren’t fun for anyone, and people won’t like us if we spread rabies."
Mary, the social worker, looked a bit concerned at that statement. "Maybe it would be best if. . ."
Suddenly, Zac wrapped his arms around Dan’s neck. "She’s always leaving! Why does she always have to go?"
Dan looked down. Isaac was contemplating the floor again, absently rubbing at the bright red tooth marks indented on his arm. Taylor was kneeling backwards on his chair, biting his lip as he stared through the glass and into the hallway. Zac buried his face in Dan’s shoulder, crying quietly now.
Dan shook his head. "She’s not leaving, Zac. She’ll come back soon."
Zac drew back, searching Dan’s face. "Do you promise?"
Dan drew in a breath. He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t want to say that he wasn’t sure, either. "I promise."
"Mommy’s coming back," Zac murmured into Dan’s shoulder. "Mommy’s coming back."