Rutting Season Page 13

  “Jared, you know Orchard Hill at all?” Deanna said.

  “Out in Hamden?” he asked thickly. Just getting a sentence out was an effort.

  “Uh-huh. That’s where they saying that family’s at. Remember the one supposed to be sending their kids away?”

  It took him a moment. “Oh, yeah. You still on that?”

  “Yeah, I just can’t— I don’t know . . .” She trailed off. “Orchard Hill Road, that is Orchard Hill, right?”

  Orchard Hill was one of the newer subdivisions, with four-thousand-square-foot houses, triple-bay garages. Not a place DCF usually had occasion to visit. “Yeah, I guess,” Jared said, “but that seems like a bit of a stretch. You heard from the school yet?”

  “No, not yet. They trying to get permission. To release the records, you know? Oh, wait a minute,” she said. “Lane. Orchard Hill Lane.” She turned back to her computer.

  Jared sketched in a couch and a coffee table in a corner of the living room, then thinking better of it, redrew the couch with its back to the open kitchen. Much better. And maybe a couple of chairs?

  “Oh no!” Deanna groaned.

  “What is it?” he said.

  She was looking at the computer, reading something. “They went TPR on Porsche,” she said.

  A bolt of heat flashed through him. “What?” He clicked on his email and saw the one from Will: “Determination, case of Porsche Rivera.” He didn’t need to read the whole thing, only the one line: “. . . that it is in the best interests of the two boys, as well as the unborn child, to file a petition for termination of parental rights.”

  He felt his pulse start to race. He’d known she wouldn’t be getting her kids back soon, but this was different, this was a move to make it never. Was that what Will had been aiming for all along? Or had Jared’s report on the interview been so negative that the committee changed course?

  “I mean, I understand he was thinking about the baby, but not to give her one more chance?” Deanna turned to him. She seemed to have shrunk, like an old woman; leathery accordion folds showed around her mouth.

  “I-I’m sorry, D,” he said. His voice sounded hollow, false.

  Deanna didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t mean you,” she said, turning back to the screen. “I know you did the best you could. But sometimes that man is just—ignorant, you know? Sitting up there in his fancy house, reading his theories. What does he know about how the rubber hits the road?”

  So it was okay, she didn’t think it was his fault. Still, his mind seemed to have frozen. He reread the email, not absorbing anything.

  “You hungry?” Deanna said after a while.

  “It’s only eleven.”

  “I’m thinkin’ KFC.”

  “Serious? Nah, it’s too hot.”

  “They got air-conditioning,” she said, “real air-conditioning. C’mon. You’ll be hungry once you get in that cool air.”

  * * *

  That evening, as the sun pulsed irritably on the horizon, Jared waited for Eliana in the asphalt-stinking heat of the IKEA parking lot. They were going to check out a couch for the new condo. Check out the couch, grab dinner at that new bistro on the Green, walk back to her place—it was the kind of evening he loved, but for some reason he felt unsettled and he found himself pacing, despite the heat. When he caught sight of Eliana’s slim, dark figure walking across the lot, his heart leapt like a fish.

  She came up and kissed him. “What’s kicking, big guy? How was the day?”

  “Same old,” he said. “Yours?”

  “Good,” she said. “Hot, though. I got that new piece started.” In the summer, when she wasn’t teaching, she worked on her own art. “Fiber work” she called it, not “knitting,” as Jared had once made the mistake of saying. The pieces were nice-looking in their strange way; he was looking forward to hanging some in the new condo.

  They turned and walked together toward the sliding glass doors, hand in hand. Happy, he’d think later, in sync. So why did he bring up Porsche? There was no reason, really. It was just an itch in him, a wrinkle he wanted smoothed.

  “Remember that girl Porsche I told you about?” he said as the doors glided open for them. “They’re going TPR on her.”

  “What’s TPR again?” Eliana asked, dropping his hand to untwist the strap of her sleek little Kate Spade backpack.

  The backpack and the down payment on the condo and a hundred other luxuries and conveniences were courtesy of her parents back in Philly. The couch, though, he was going to buy himself.

  “Termination of parental rights,” he said.

  She looked up at him, her slender eyebrows arched in surprise. “Termination? Like that’s it, she’ll never get her kids back?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “Oh God, that’s awful!” she said. She actually looked pained.

  Jared felt a spasm of annoyance. “She’s had many chances, believe me,” he said. “And she’s blown it every time.” This wasn’t exactly true—she’d done the rehab, and the parenting course, too, come to think of it—but he wasn’t going to complicate things by mentioning all that. “Anyway, we’ve got to do what’s best for the kids.”

  “Maybe so, but God, forever?” She shook her head. “That’s just . . . I don’t know.”

  “Well, she should have thought about that before she screwed up.”

  Eliana gave him a look. “That’s kind of harsh, don’t you think? I mean, she didn’t choose to screw up.”

  “Of course she chose,” he said. “Sure as hell wasn’t anyone else choosing.” They had reached the base of the escalators. “Furniture’s upstairs,” he added.

  But Eliana had stopped. Her sharp gaze raked his face. “You think people have that kind of control.”

  “I think they should,” he said stubbornly. A part of his own mind looked down at himself in dismay.

  “Well then you do need to be a lawyer, because you definitely don’t belong in social services,” she said. She turned her back on him and stepped onto the escalator.

  He put his foot on the jagged edge of the stair behind her. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “You want to help people, you got to have some compassion.”

  “I don’t have compassion? Two years at the DCF and I don’t have compassion? You don’t see in a year what I see in a month.”

  She sliced her eyes away. “It’s not a contest, Jared.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Oh yeah? Then what is the point?”

  They turned to face each other on the landing, something dangerously close to dislike in their eyes. “Forget it,” Jared said, quickly, “let’s just forget it. It doesn’t matter.”

  She gave him a look but she fell into step beside him, and they wove their way through the displays toward the furniture department, like any other couple on a purchasing mission. Jared knew the couch he wanted: a low, black leather model with a streamlined, 1960s-type shape. He could already picture it bisecting the open living space of their new condo, with a couple of those curved leather chairs on either side.

  He located the couch in the third furniture display, set up with a steel-and-glass coffee table and a bright orange rug. “There,” he said.

  “This is it?” Eliana said.

  With a little shock, he noticed that her lower lip was jutting out like a petulant child’s. “Yeah,” he said, slowly. “You don’t like it?”

  “Not really.”

  Jared crossed his arms. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It just looks sort of . . . cheap.”

  “You think that looks cheap,” Jared said. “That’s a nine-hundred-dollar couch, Eliana. And let me tell you, it’s by far the best one in our price range. I know, I checked them all out.”

  She was not looking at him, had not looked at him, in fact, since they’d stepped off the escalator. What had he done to deserve that? Jared felt his pupils snap in anger. Leaning in toward her, he said
the first thing that came into his head. “You have got to get real about our financial situation, Eliana. Unless you want to keep going to your parents for every little thing for the rest of our lives.”

  He must have raised his voice because two salespeople stopped in the aisle to stare at him—two of them, in a store where finding one was a minor miracle. Jared felt the familiar flush of heat and then, hard on its heels, the old, choking rage. Wasn’t he allowed an opinion? Couldn’t he express a little aggravation without everyone jumping all over him? No one would have stopped for a white couple arguing, a white man. “We’re just discussing a purchase,” he called out. “You got a problem with that?”

  “No, no, of course not,” the saleswoman said, flushing. Then, a beat too late, “Let us know if we can be of assistance!”

  “Nosy bitch,” he muttered as he turned back.

  Eliana’s eyes met his: cold, appraising. “It’s just a couch, Jared,” she said. “You don’t have to get all hateful about it.”

  * * *

  “You hate me, don’t you?”

  His mother used to say that. Out of the blue, when he thought everything was all right. “You think I’m a pain in the ass, just like your father does.

  “It’s okay,” she would go on calmly, fingering the raggedy end of her brown braid. “I can understand. I don’t like it, but I can understand it.”

  She always started out like that: quiet and resigned, like they were talking about something already decided, something no one could do anything about.

  “S’not true,” Jared would mumble, keeping his eyes on whatever it was he was doing—eating, reading, building one of his models.

  Some days that would be the end of it. She would sigh and get up, and after a minute he would calm down enough to go back to whatever he’d been doing. Other times, though, she kept at him. “I just need to know why,” she would say. “I mean, what is it that bugs you so much? Is it the way I look? The way I talk? You can tell the truth, Jarey. I can take it,” she said, gazing up at the ceiling. “Boy, can I take it.” Being hit, she meant. Being hit and getting up again and putting on the tan makeup that she used when his father messed up her face.

  And so he would try again: “You don’t bug me” or “You’re okay. Really.” But sometimes it didn’t work. She would keep on, piling her words on his sickened and shrinking heart, and after a while they would both be yelling. “Just tell me!” his mother would scream. “Tell me the truth!”

  “Leave me alone!” he would yell back. By then he did hate her; he did want to hit her. The last time, in fact, he had come close: He had sprung up from his chair and pushed her against the wall, screaming, “Shut up! Shut up!”

  His father had walked in then and Jared had been strangely relieved to see the clarity and purpose with which he came, the animal gladness of his rage, as he pulled Jared off and knocked him around while his mother screeched “Stop it! Stop it!” from the edge of the room. Afterward, lying on his narrow bed, Jared had let her press the bag of frozen peas to his jaw. She was quiet then, normal—he didn’t have to say or do anything. Which was good, because he’d felt a crazy shaking inside, a wild giddiness like the bubbling up of laughter or the first surge of a vicious rage.

  * * *

  He and Eliana made up later on her couch, a stained old Pottery Barn sectional her parents had shipped to her when they remodeled their family room.

  “I thought you didn’t like this couch,” she said afterward, licking a drop of sweat off his temple.

  “Yeah, well.” He was still breathing hard. “It’s all right for some things.”

  “Dog!” she said, but her eyes were laughing.

  He put his hand around the back of her head and laid it gently on his chest. He didn’t want to joke or even talk. It had come to him suddenly that everything he cared about was wrapped up in that slender, inexpressibly fragile body. He tightened his arms, pressing her like a poultice against his bruised and swollen heart.

  * * *

  “I got it!” Deanna called out, waving a piece of paper over her head. “I got it!”

  “Got what?” Jared said, turning lethargically. It was only 10:00 a.m. and already the temperature was pushing 100; there was still no sign of the storm system the weatherpeople kept promising. Deanna held the paper out to him. A Care and Protect order, five kids to be removed from their parents’ custody, effective immediately. He handed it back. “Which one is this?”

  “Orchard Hill Lane, remember? The kids who were disappearing? Looks like the parents been selling them.”

  “Selling them?” he said, doubtfully. “Come on.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s what it looks like anyway. Remember that boy who went to Boston? He told the police up there his mom got five hundred dollars for him. A stack of bills, like in a drug deal or something.”

  “For real?”

  “Looks like it. And they traded another one for a washer and dryer or something, back in the winter.”

  “Wow,” Jared said, “that’s—I don’t know what that is.”

  She was plowing through some papers on her desk. “Press is gonna be all over this one.”

  “You going today?”

  “Not ‘you,’ my boy—‘we.’ We going right now. Grab me a car seat, would you? And a booster? I don’t even know how old . . .” Now she was feeling around in her purse. “I guess the police think they’re going to sell another one tomorrow. That boy in Boston said . . . Now what did I do—? Oh, here.” She fished up a lipstick, and a crumpled tissue flew out.

  Jared looked away. That pocketbook of hers was a disaster. And she was getting worse and worse about finishing her sentences. He’d begun to notice things like that, now that he was leaving—little lapses, annoying tics. Immediately, he felt ashamed of himself. He stood up.

  Deanna pressed her lips together to spread the lipstick. “You ready? The officers are waiting downstairs.”

  “Sure,” Jared said. He reached behind the file cabinet to grab a couple of car seats. It was Friday. One more week and he’d be out of there.

  * * *

  Jared understood their confusion about the address as soon as they had passed the shopping mall. The road to the Orchard Hill subdivision climbed straight up toward the crest of the hill, where a couple dozen McMansions were scattered across the rolling ground. Orchard Hill Lane turned out to be a side street at the base, directly behind the mall. He and Deanna turned onto it and followed the squad car as it crawled along, looking at numbers. These houses were small and cheaply built, already showing signs of decay: shutters missing, dark gaps around the fascia boards.

  After a quarter mile or so, the road came to an abrupt end in a raggedy patch of woods. Through the trees, Jared could just make out the white cinder-block wall of one of the mall’s loading docks. A run-down old farmhouse stood on the left, sideways to the street. He glanced over the junk-strewn yard while Deanna struggled to get the car parked. An overturned Big Wheel, a rotting picnic table, some sagging cardboard boxes—DCF territory for sure.

  Deanna put the car in reverse to try another pass and irritation spiked in him. “Just leave it,” he said sharply. Then, in a softer tone, “You’re fine, D.”

  “You think?” Deanna said, checking her mirrors. “Well, good. You know how I hate parking.”

  Stepping out into the hot press of the air, they picked their way through the clutter to the front porch, the officers following in the swaggering, wide-legged way they all seemed to share. There was a nasty odor by the stairs, something dead maybe. Jared resisted the urge to hold his nose.

  Deanna knocked on the edge of the bent screen door. “Hellooo!” she called.

  Like a friend, Jared thought, like someone they might actually want to see.

  After what seemed like forever, a skinny white girl came to the door, a cigarette in her mouth. She looked twelve, maybe thirteen at most.

  “You must be Melissa,” Deanna said. “I’m Deanna Johnson. We spoke on the phone.”
>
  The girl took out the cigarette with practiced fingers. “She don’t want to talk to you.”

  “I know, honey, but I got a court order, see?” She gestured behind herself, at the officers. “You’re gonna have to let us in, all right?”

  The girl’s narrowed eyes were the color of sea glass. Their sullen, jaded expression did not change, but she opened the door, stood aside.

  The interior of the house was dark and, surprisingly, cool. An effect of the covered porch, Jared thought; those old-time farmers knew what they were doing. He’d have to tell Eliana. It was something they liked to talk about, designing their own house someday.

  Deanna was speaking to the girl, telling her what to pack. Jared stepped around an empty TV box to let the officers precede him. He hated going into other people’s houses. All of the smells, the animal things that went on—bathroom things, sex things—he didn’t want to know about any of that.

  The officers had gone into the living room, to the left of the stairs. One of them was talking to a person Jared guessed must be the mother. He walked to the doorway and stopped. She was fairly young, the mother. Like a china doll—alabaster skin, the same sea-glass eyes as the daughter. A china doll going to fat, he amended, noting the bulge of flesh spilling over her jeans.

  “That’s bullshit,” she said to the officer, her face twisting into ugliness. “Fuckin’ bullshit.”

  The officer opened his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Could be, ma’am,” he said. “Could well be. I can’t be the judge. Like I said, it’s only temporary. You can tell your side of things at the hearing. Get it all straightened out.”

  “Fuckin’ bullshit,” the mother said again.

  Now the other officer stepped forward. He was taller and heavier, and his square face had the set, unpleasant look of a snapping turtle’s. “We all set here, Al?”

  “Just a sec,” Al said. He turned back to the woman and put his hands together as if to beg or pray. “It’s just for a few days,” he said. “Okay?”