"When am I getting out of here?" Allen wailed.
"Daddy and I love you very much. Soon," his mother assured him.
Taylor blinked. He was awake now. Whenever he started to go to sleep, that stupid boy would cry. "Be quiet," he murmured into the sheet. "Go away!"
"Did you say something?" Nora leaned over the railing of the bed and fixed the blanket. "Are you okay?"
"That boy," Taylor whispered, "is a big baby."
"Yeah," Nora agreed, sighing. "He is, honey."
"He is?" Taylor giggled. "You think so?"
"Uh huh." Nora stretched. "You are being very brave, though."
"That's 'cause I'm five," Taylor agreed.
"That's really big," Nora assured him.
"Yeah," Taylor agreed. "But that kid is a big kid. Bigger than me. As big as Ike, even." He smiled. "If Ike were here, he'd beat that kid up."
Nora grinned to herself. Isaac probably would beat him up.
"I WANNA GO HOME!" Allen bellowed. "I WANNA GO HOME!"
"I don't want to go home," Taylor whispered. Nora took his hand.
"Don't worry about it."
For awhile, neither of them spoke. The next time Allen wailed, Taylor sighed hugely, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling.
Nora had to grin. "Don't let him bother you, Tay. Go back to sleep, honey."
Taylor shook his head. "I can't. That boy is making too much noise."
Nora sighed. "I know, sweetie. Want me to tell you a story?"
"Mmhmm." Taylor nodded, looking up at her eagerly.
Nora racked her brain. She'd have to come up with a story.
"And so the astronaut in the rocket ship flew through space and he flew through the sky and the clouds and he came back home." Dan yawned. It was scarcely eight thirty, but all three of them were exhausted. He'd gotten Isaac and Zac both to take baths, put their pajamas on and get into bed. And then he got roped in to telling them stories. "And then he went home to sleep, because he was very, very tired." He stood up. "It's time for bed now, guys, for real."
"One more story?" Zac sat up and bounced up and down. "One? One more? Please?"
"Zac." Isaac bit his lip. "He doesn't have to tell you a story."
"Okay." Zac lay back down. He looked up at Dan. "But it would be nice, though."
Dan smiled. "Only one more? And you won't ask for anymore?"
Zac nodded solemnly. "No. No more. I promise."
"Well. . . okay, I guess." Dan sat back down on the edge of the bed. "What about?"
"I want Ike to pick it," Zac smiled.
"Ike, you want to pick it?" Dan asked.
Isaac shook his head. "No. You pick it, Zac."
"You." Zac folded his arms across his chest. "You pick."
Dan glanced from one to the other. "Want me to pick it, Ike?"
Isaac nodded. "Uh huh."
"Okay." Dan took a deep breath. "Once upon a time there was. . . What are you doing now?"
Isaac had crawled out of his own bed and was trying to sneak over to Zac without Dan's noticing. Because Dan was on Zac's bed, this was a physical impossibility. Isaac blushed. "I have to tell him something. . ."
"Okay." Dan waited while Isaac whispered something in his brother's ear and dived back into his own bed.
Zac grinned up at Dan. "I want to hear a story about a princess."
"About a princess?" Dan glanced over at Isaac. "Okay." He knew who really wanted to hear a story about a princess. "Okay, so once upon a time there was this princess and. . ."
"And the bad fairies who made her go to sleep for a hundred million years," Zac added.
Dan stifled a laugh. "And she was really a pretty cute princess, I mean like, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue material. . ." he continued.
"What's that?" Zac interrupted.
"I'll show you one tomorrow," Dan promised him, having no intention of doing so. "And she was really cute, but she was cursed. . ."
"And so the grandmother said to the Big Bad Wolf, 'Have lunch with us if you're hungry.' And Little Red Riding Hood said 'Yeah, borrow my cape if you don't have any clothes.' And the Big Bad Wolf said, 'thank you, that's very nice.' And he stayed for lunch, and he borrowed her cape, and they all lived happily ever after." Nora took a deep breath. The only parts of "Little Red Riding Hood" she could remember had been really violent, so she'd changed a lot of things. Would he buy it?
Taylor smiled. "That's a good story." He yawned, rubbing his eyes. "Have they found my mommy yet?"
Nora bit her lip. An hour and a half before, she'd gotten a phone call from Mary, the social worker. They had found his mother. Right now, she was in jail on charges of child abandonment and reckless endangerment. If she would agree to go into a drug rehabilitation program and counseling, Mary told Nora, Kathleen, the boys' mother, did have a good chance of getting them back. Intellectually, Nora knew that that would be a good thing. If she could get her life back on track, Kathleen deserved custody of her sons. Emotionally, though, Nora was fighting devastation. The one thing she'd been telling herself for the past few days was that she shouldn't become attached. She couldn't help herself.
What did she tell him? That his mother was in jail? Did she tell him they had found his mother, but leave out the jail part? If she left out the jail part, what would she tell him when he asked if he could see his mother?
Nora took a deep breath and looked straight into Taylor's eyes. "They're working on it, honey. They do know that she's safe."
Taylor gripped her hand more tightly. "Are you sure that she's okay?"
Nora nodded. "I wouldn't tell you anything that wasn't true."
"Okay." And Taylor believed her.
Dan had emerged from the guest bedroom after telling the final story (Zac had fallen asleep during it) and sprawled on the couch, waiting for Nora to call. He was too tired to open his eyes, and Isaac was quiet. It wasn't until Dan sat up to call the hospital himself that he noticed the little figure in the doorway.
Dan smiled blearily. "How long have you been there, buddy?"
Isaac shrugged. "I couldn't sleep." For the first time all day, his eyes met Dan's. "Have you heard anything at all about my mother?"
Dan swallowed. He'd gotten a phone call from the social worker that had been highly similiar to the one Nora had received, and it had raised the same questions in his mind. He thought for a moment, wondering how to phrase this.
"C'mere, Ike." Dan moved over to make room on the couch. Tentatively, Isaac sat down next to him, apprehensively intertwining his fingers. Dan felt overwhelmed. He decided he'd forget any 'I am an adult, you are a child, so you'd better listen to me even though I'm lying' pretension. He thought Isaac would probably see through it.
"I don't want to tell you this, Ike. I think you need to know, because I don't want to lie to you, okay?"
Isaac stiffened. "Okay. . ."
"Because. . . " Dan sighed. "Listen, Ike, I will never lie to you. Ever. You deserve to know the truth about what's going on, and if I didn't think you could handle what I'm about to tell you, I wouldn't say anything to you. Okay?"
"Okay," Isaac agreed, hardly hearing what Dan was telling him. Oh my God, he was thinking. Something awful happened. She's dead or something.
"They found your mother," Dan told him. "She's all right."
"Thank God," Isaac murmured, before he thought the better of it.
Dan put his arm around Isaac's shoulders. "Yeah, that's the good news. But Ike? She left the three of you, and put you guys in a dangerous situation."
"We were okay," Isaac defended.
Dan didn't have it in him to argue. "Yeah, but most kids wouldn't be. So they have laws that deal with parents who go away and leave their kids. Ike, they had to take her to jail, and she'll probably be there for a little while."
Isaac drew a long, shaky breath. He didn't say anything.
Dan put an arm around his shoulders. "They're going to help her make a plan to get her life back together. So that she can take care of you guys. She'll probably have to go to drug rehab, and work with some counselors who'll help her. If she agrees to do those things, they'll let her out, and, after she does them, you can probably go back and live with her."
Isaac actually felt a bit relieved. At least his mother was off the streets. At least someone was
keeping an eye on her. "So she won't be in jail for, like, the next twenty years?"
"Of course not," Dan told him. "They're going to help her, and maybe she won't feel like she has to leave again. Because when someone goes away like that, it usually means that they need help."
"My father left us," Isaac mused, half to himself. "Before Zac was born, even. And I don't think anything happened to him."
Dan didn't really know what to say to that. It was certainly a valid point. "I don't know why some people can get away with leaving, while other people can't."
"My father said he was coming back, though," Isaac told Dan. "When he left, he said he'd come back."
"Maybe he thought that he would." Dan chose his words carefully. He didn't want to instill false hope, but he didn't want to burst any of Isaac's bubbles, either. "It's hard to know why people go away." Shoot, he thought. I sound like Mr. Rogers.
"He said he'd call sometimes," Isaac continued, a faraway expression in his eyes. "Like on my birthday or something." He was quiet for a moment. "He never did, though."
"My Dad used to forget to call on my birthday all the time," Dan agreed. "And I'd cry. Every year."
Isaac looked up at him, surprised. "Your dad forgot about you? And you cried?"
Dan nodded, trying to get in touch with feelings he'd come to terms with during the past twenty years. He tried to phrase them simply. "It would hurt my feelings, you know? When he said he'd call, and he wouldn't."
"I don't cry any more," Isaac told him, his eyes dark and unreadable. "He's never coming back." He looked up at Dan. "If your father doesn't call you on your birthday, you shouldn't feel bad." He glanced down at his hands, thinking.
Dan held Isaac a little more tightly. He didn't say anything, waiting.
"You know, I was kind of hoping that he would call this year." A small, faraway smile played at the corners of Isaac's mouth, and Dan wondered if he knew he was speaking aloud. "I waited and waited all day, kind of thinking that maybe he'd remember this year. But he didn't." He took a deep breath, absently picking at a cuticle. "I thought maybe, if my father didn't call, my mother might come home. Or she might call, even, if she remembered that it was my birthday."
Dan nodded. "Yeah, I know what you mean."
Isaac drew his legs up to his chest, his bare feet resting on the edge of the sofa cushion. He wrapped his arms around himself, resting his chin on his knees. "But she didn't. And I mean, not that it's important or anything, but I kind of wished one of them would. Because I knew I wasn't getting any presents or anything, and I didn't care about that. I just wished my dad would keep his promise."
"Yeah," Dan agreed. He was angry, all of the sudden, deeply saddened and filled with wonderment. Isaac didn't sound bitter about any of that. Just. . . wistful. God, Dan thought. No wonder he can't trust anyone.
"Anyway," Isaac finished, "A lot of people's parents forget about them, so you don't have to wonder that, like, your dad might be weird or anything." This fact was, Dan sensed, was supposed to be reassuring. "It probably wasn't anything you did. I mean, I know my parents left because of me, but I don't think you did anything when you were a kid that made your parents leave. They were probably just busy. And maybe they thought they called you and they forgot that they didn't."
"That's probably what happened," Dan agreed. "But I don't think your parents left because of you."
Isaac remained impassive. "No, it was because of me. Because I ruined their lives."
Dan was really angry now. "Who told you that?" he demanded, trying to keep the rage out of his voice.
"My mother," Isaac told him. "But I would have known it anyway."
"Why?" Dan asked.
"Because she had me when she was too young," Isaac told him. "And she didn't really love my father. And I was a mistake. So I pretty much wrecked her life."
"Is that what she told you?" Dan asked him.
Isaac nodded.
"She was wrong," Dan told him. "She was completely wrong, Ike. There's no such thing as a mistake."
"She didn't want me, though," Isaac pointed out.
"Maybe she didn't think she did," Dan told him, "but you were definitely one of the best things that ever happened to her."
"How do you know that?" Isaac asked.
"Didn't I tell you I would never tell you a lie?" Dan asked.
Isaac thought about this. "Yeah, but if she didn't have me, she wouldn't have had to live with my father, and have two more kids, and she wouldn't leave."
"Yeah. . ." Dan told him, "but she'd have no reason to come back." He squeezed his eyes shut, sensing the inadequacy of his answer.
Isaac bit his lip. "She says I'm too much like him."
"Like who?" Dan asked. "Your father?"
"Yeah." Isaac agreed. "She says I look like him and I talk like him, and that I'm probably going to leave as soon as I can. Like he did." He blinked hard a few times. "But I wouldn't leave, really." He paused. "Sometimes, though, I wish I could."
"It must be hard for you," Dan observed, wondering if he was helping at all.
"Don't tell anyone I told you that, okay?" Isaac asked. "Because I never really would leave. But sometimes I wish that I lived someplace else, and I didn't have all of these people who counted on me for everything all the time." He smiled. "Taylor and Zac think I know everything. But I really don't."
"They really look up to you," Dan agreed.
Isaac nodded, still smiling that distant smile. "Yeah. The other day, we were walking down the street and there was this dead cat by the side of the road? Like that had been hit by a car? And, I mean, it was really dead. Really dead. And Tay said 'I wish we had a cat.' And I said, 'That cat's dead, you don't want it.' And then, he said that he really did want a cat, and Zac said, 'don't worry, Tay, Ike will fix it and we can bring it home.' They both thought that it was a great idea, and they start saying 'fix it, fix it!' They didn't believe me when I told them that I couldn't. In fact, Taylor told Zac that I didn't feel like fixing it because we didn't have any money to get cat food!" He grinned, remembering. "But I can't bring dead things back to life, not for real. And there are a lot of other things I can't do. But they don't believe me. It's like having two kids."
"That must get hard," Dan observed, gently.
Isaac blinked, confused. "No, not really."
"It doesn't?" Dan was a bit incredulous.
"Yeah. . . I just wish I knew what to tell them." Isaac began to retreat back into himself. "Because they ask so many questions, and I don't know the answers to most of them. And I really would fix that cat for him, if I could. We'd find some way to feed it, I guess. Because. . ." Isaac hugged himself more tightly, thinking hard. "Because I want to be able to say yes when one of them wants something. And I wish I could do so much more than I already am. I know that I could take care of us, even if my mom can't." He sighed hugely. "I wish people would believe me about that. Because grown-ups think they know everything, but they don't."
Dan felt helpless. "I know what you mean, buddy. Grown-ups don't always know as much as they think."
Isaac nodded, then glanced up at Dan and abruptly changed the subject. "I meant to tell you thank you for getting us those Ninja Turtles today."
Dan smiled, wondering what this meant. Did Isaac no longer see him as an adult? "Oh, you're welcome. It was a birthday present."
"Because. . ." Isaac thought for a moment, deciding whether or not he was going to say it. "Because nobody ever gave me anything that way before. And so it surprised me, kind of." He yawned. "Thank you."
Dan racked his brain, thinking of some way to express all that he wanted to tell Isaac. "You're welcome," he managed. "It wasn't anything big, really. It's nice that you're so polite about it, though." He grinned. "Maybe we should do it more often."
Isaac looked startled. For the life of him, he could not figure this Dan Conway guy out. "That's okay," he assured him. "I think one Ninja Turtle'll last me awhile."
Dan could have laughed, cried or hugged him. Instinctively, though, he knew that Isaac wasn't ready to be touched just yet. "We'll see," he said. "You might change your mind."