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“Perhaps it would help if I showed you a blank contract?” Susan suggests.
Without waiting for my answer, she takes a sheaf of papers from her bag. She lays them on the table and the small print swims before my eyes. I can barely make sense of even the simplest sentences. I’m too tired and overwhelmed, and I know I’ll make a mistake somewhere in all this fine print. A costly mistake.
“I want a lawyer before I look at this,” I say as I push the papers towards her. “I know you say you mean well, Susan, but I don’t actually trust you, and I’m not ready to sign my child’s life away without professional advice.” I am proud of that reasoned speech, even though my voice trembles as I give it.
Susan stares at me for a moment, her expression opaque. Her smile has finally slipped and she just looks weary. The sunshine streaming through the windows highlights the gray in her neat bob, the lines scored deeply from nose to mouth. It occurs to me that she must have a very difficult job, but I can’t afford to feel sympathy for her now.
“Very well,” she says after a moment. “I’ll give you the name of the legal service I mentioned before.” She fishes in her bag before she finds a card and pushes it across to me.
“Thank you.”
Susan puts the papers back in her bag. “I’ll be in touch after you’ve been able to speak to a lawyer. Shall I call you tomorrow?”
I nod. Tomorrow it will be forty-eight hours since she took Dylan, and Susan has only ninety-six before DCF has to give Dylan back. At least, I think that’s how it works, but the truth is, I don’t really know. Maybe they can pull some other order or summons out of their horrible magic hat, and keep him for longer. Forever.
“Do you have children, Susan?” I ask suddenly, and she pauses before she answers. I wonder if there is some rule about case workers sharing personal details. She must deal with some real psychos, but I’m not one of them.
“Yes, I do,” she says. “I have a daughter. She’s twenty-one years old. I adopted her when she was four.”
“Oh.” I don’t know how to feel about that. What happened to her daughter’s birth mother? Did Susan adopt a child like Dylan, who’d been sucked into the system? Just the possibility fills me with terror. I am not going to lose Dylan, not for a few weeks, and certainly not forever.
As I say goodbye to Susan, I am filled with renewed purpose. I’m going to fight.
When I call the legal aid service Susan recommended, though, there isn’t anyone available to speak to me until next week, which fills me with frustration.
“That’s too late,” I tell the monotone-voiced receptionist on the line. “DCF has my child for just ninety-six hours. I need someone now.”
“After ninety-six hours, DCF will have to file a motion for an order of temporary custody,” she drones.
“I know, that’s what I want to avoid—”
“At which point you will be granted a lawyer through the court.”
“I know,” I say again, frustration audible in my voice. My fingers ache from clenching my phone so tightly. “I want a lawyer to look over a voluntary placement contract before we have to go to court—”
“There will be someone available to contact you next week.”
I end up slamming the phone down, and then I wonder if someone somewhere is making a note about that. Defendant ended call in a hostile manner. I don’t know if I’m being paranoid or naïve, and the uncertainty is tearing me apart. I am second-guessing everything I do, suspicious of everyone around me. It’s impossible to live this way without cracking up.
I decide to go for a walk, to clear my head. I walk towards the town center, and it feels strange to be on my own, arms swinging at my sides, instead of with Dylan’s hand in mine, his shadow trotting darkly next to mine.
West Hartford’s town center is full of pedestrians on a Wednesday morning, doing errands or having a coffee, or just window-shopping among the trendy shops and independent boutiques. West Hartford has a wonderful, historical feel to it, with a huge white spire of a Presbyterian church right in the middle, and a wide grassy verge bisecting Main Street. The sidewalks are wide, the shops often with friendly awnings, the cafés with tables outside, even in October, as it’s still warm.
Usually, when I walk into town with Dylan, we do our loop of the library, the supermarket, and then, if the weather is nice, the half-mile trek to Fernridge Park, to see the ducks and go on the swings.
But alone I’m not sure what to do. I wander up Main Street and turn left onto Farmington Avenue. Everything is familiar but without Dylan I feel lost, less than, as if I’m missing a limb or even a lung.
I decide to go into a café, simply because I can. Dylan won’t usually let me—they’re too small, with too many people, and the whole experience scares him. I order an iced coffee and take it outside to a little table. I sit and sip and watch the world go by, and I feel tense and unhappy the whole time.
It’s incredibly pleasant—the almost balmy air, the sunshine that spills onto the sidewalk like a stream of honey, the delicious coffee—I wouldn’t normally splurge four bucks on a cup of coffee in any circumstance—the leaves of the trees lining the street that are just starting to turn to russet and gold. It’s glorious and yet I can’t appreciate any of it. My stomach is churning and I still don’t know what to do.
Do I call Susan and tell her I wasn’t able to speak to a lawyer? Maybe she’ll offer to wait on the placement contract until I’ve been able to look it over. She’d have to, wouldn’t she? I mean, it’s voluntary, after all. But if she does, what happens to Dylan? Do we just stay in this wretched stasis until I finally bend to Susan’s will?
I can’t escape the sense of a bomb ticking away, of it being about to explode right on my lap. I’m afraid some unspoken deadline will pass and I’ll have missed my only opportunity. I can already picture Susan shaking her head sorrowfully.
I’m sorry, Beth, but you had to sign this paper by nine a.m. this morning, otherwise Dylan becomes a ward of the state. It’s too late.
I’m sure it wouldn’t happen like that, and yet maybe it would. I know so little, and everything online is so confusing, full of legal jargon, a thousand laws that seem only to sometimes apply.
