Ralph spent a lot of time fixing up the trailer. He scrubbed the peeling countertops in the kitchen. He hid the worst of the exposed wires. Finally, he sat on the edge of the stained tub and wept.
He went outside when he heard her car.
The social worker had given him a thick stack of home-study forms. He had filled these out to the best of his ability. They hadn’t been very good at teaching at Axis, just like they weren’t at Brightwood. He had written down his income, and answered the questions about his personal life, even his sex habits—he had none; Martha had ruined that for him. He puzzled over the question about what his parents had done for a living. Ralph didn’t want to write down that his dad had gone to prison, so he left that section blank. He left the financial history blank too.
There was one sheet for past addresses. He tried to remember allthe places he had lived before coming to Brightwood. He wrote down a few, but when he saw their names, like Camp 12 Berry Plant and Seneca Farms Green Beans Camp, he felt bad.
“Thank you for coming,” he told the social worker as she got out of her car.
She looked from the decaying trailer to the unfenced cliffs and unruly ocean below.
“This way,” he said, showing her into the trailer. “This will be his room.” He’d bought a new bed and a used dresser from the junk shop in Seaside. He had put a stuffed animal on the dresser. Ralph had never had a stuffed animal, and he thought the boy would like one.
She reached for the light switch, and he stopped her.
“Not that one, ma’am. This one.”
She turned on the lamp he pointed at, and then looked back at the exposed wires barely concealed by the dresser.
In the living room, she peered around, smiling at the ocean paintings as if she got the joke.
“Dennis can do his homework here,” he said, hopeful.
“Where will he go to school?”
“Um, there’s got to be a school close by, right?”
“It’s all the way in Seaside. The bus doesn’t come this far.”
“I’d drive him, ma’am.”
“You’ll be at work when he gets out. Do you have plans for after-school care?”
“I’ll get a different job.”
She walked through the trailer, making marks on her checklist.
Safe wiring?No.
Clean water? She turned on a tap. Rusty water poured out.Unknown.
Egress in case of fire? She tried a window.No.
Septic system? She walked outside. The trailer appeared to drain into an illegal brown field.Sanitation does not meet legal requirements.
Child-safe environment? She looked toward the ocean, where the boy could simply run to the cliffs and fall right over.No.
Can adoptive parent meet the therapeutic requirements of the child? In his file, Martha had written that Dennis was not ready for a regular family. He needed more treatment.
No,she wrote.
She tore off the pink copy under the sheet for Ralph, then handed it to him. Her eyes were kind.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He followed her to her car.
The wind from the ocean lifted her hair as she opened the car door.
