“Oh no,” I muttered under my breath, staring at the computer screen.
“What?” Peter said.
I’d waited until after I put the kids to bed to begin work on the computer, and the house was pleasantly quiet. Quiet enough to hear the symphony of competing appliances—dishwasher, washing machine, dryer.
“I have to go back up to northern California.”
The obscenity Peter used was one of those words he specifically keeps out of his screenplays in order not to run afoul of the Motion Picture Association of America’s PG rating.
“What is wrong with you?” I asked.
“What’s wrong with me? What do you think is wrong with me? This will be your third trip in a little over a week.”
This had never happened to us before. Never had Peter been anything but supportive of my career, no matter how burgeoning, no matter how little money I made, no matter how foolhardy my job would strike anyone else. All the other feminist men my girlfriends and I went to college with, the ones who marched by our sides in Take Back the Night marches, who protested sex-segregated fraternities with us, who took Intro to Women’s History as their freshman American Studies elective, those men had all ended up as versions of their fathers, working twelve-hour days and expecting to come home to immaculate homes and above-average children whose homework was done and already in their backpacks waiting to be handed in to the teachers in the morning. Peter was one of the few husbands who didn’t mind a messy house, filthy children, and dinner from a bucket or paper bag. Not so long as his wife was satisfied and content. Most women I knew were complying with their husbands’ expectations. A few were still working, but many had left their jobs as pediatric neurologists or partners in law firms or studio executives, and had become full-time mothers. It went without saying that the stay-at-home moms did all the child care and housework, whatever wasn’t contracted out. What was stranger was that the working mothers did it, too. But Peter was different from my friends’ husbands. He did more or less his fair share, and didn’t object when I tried to carve out some sort of career in the few hours between car pool runs. Or at least he hadn’t until now.
“I don’t have a choice, Peter. The couple that fostered the baby is in Oakland.”
It was just stress. That’s the only explanation for why we ended up standing inches apart, our faces red, screaming at each other. Peter said things like, “You aren’t around when I need you,” and I said things like, “You aren’t being supportive.” It’s even possible someone screamed, “I hate you,” at the top of his or her lungs. Like I said, it was all just stress. We were exhausted, stretched to the breaking point by sleep deprivation and worries, Peter about his lawsuit, me about Sandra’s murder and her lost son. We loved each other as much as we ever did, and we didn’t mean any of it.
But try explaining that to a four-year-old.
Isaac stood in one of the balcony nooks overlooking the living room. He was sucking on the neck of his pajama shirt and rocking back and forth, holding on to the iron railing. His low moans were virtually inaudible from so far above our heads. I noticed him only because he was wearing a pair of Ruby’s bright-orange-and-pink-striped long underwear, and the flash of brilliant color caught my eye. The pajamas were much too big for him, and the long cuffs drooped over his wrists and ankles, covering his hands and feet.
“Oh, baby,” I crooned, looking up at him.
Peter followed my gaze. He swore softly under his breath. We ran up the stairs and within a few moments I was holding Isaac, who by now was crying uncontrollably, his little bird body shaking with sobs. Only his cheeks retained any baby softness now; the rest of him was all knobby, little-boy bones. Snuggling him was like cuddling a Tinkertoy.
“Sweetie,” I said. “Mama and Daddy were just having a little argument. We’re okay.”
He burrowed his head into my belly. Peter patted ineffectually at his back.
“It’s all right, buddy,” he said.
Isaac moaned.
“You’ve seen us fight before, kiddo,” I said. “Lots of times. Mama and Daddy fight, and then we make up. Just like you and Ruby. See, now we’re making up. Watch.” I pried his face loose from my waist and lifted him out of my lap. His eyes and nose were streaming and I wiped them with the tail of his shirt.
“I love you, Daddy,” I said brightly.
“I love you, too,” Peter replied, equally falsely.
“And I’m so sorry for all the mean things I said.”
“Me, too.”
Isaac looked from one of us to the other, part of him wanting desperately to believe that it could be over so easily, part of him disgusted with what was obviously a sham.
“See?” I said. “Mama and Daddy are all made up.”
“For good?” Isaac whispered.
“Of course.”
“For forever?”
“Of course.”
Peter said, “That doesn’t mean we’re not going to fight again, bud. That happens, God knows. Especially when a person is married to someone like your mother. But I’m going to try to be more patient in the future.”
I opened my mouth, all set to resume with a fresh blast of fury, but caught myself in time. Peter smiled at me and mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.”
I saw him then, as I hadn’t for the past few minutes. It’s strange what happens when we fight. When we argue it’s as though I am no longer able to recognize that standing before me is the person I love. Instead, I see only this opponent. Now, suddenly, when he made a joke and whispered a real apology, the red haze lifted from my eyes and I could recognize him again.
“I love you,” I said. This time there was no falseness in my tone.
“Me, too.”
“Me, too,” Isaac interjected.
“Bedtime for you, my friend,” I said as I heaved him up into my arms. “And for me, too.”
“Juliet, why don’t we all go with you?” Peter said as he walked us down the hall to Isaac’s bedroom. “There’s an animation studio up near San Francisco that’s in the running for the TV series. I wouldn’t mind checking out their setup. And the kids have never been to San Francisco. We can ride the cable car.”
“What about school?” I said.
“So they’ll miss coloring and Legos for a couple of days. It won’t kill them.”
I rested my cheek against the top of Isaac’s head. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go online and find a hotel as soon as I get him to sleep.”
Fifteen
THE next day—as I wolfed cucumber sandwiches and tried to convince the wretchedly behaved royalty with whom I was forced to experience San Francisco’s finest Prince and Princess Tea to stop lobbing scones at one another’s heads—I could not help but contrast this San Francisco vacation to the ones Peter and I had taken in years past. Back then we’d chosen our hotels based on criteria other than the availability of cribs and children’s room service menus. We’d spent our days wandering through the Hayes and Noe valleys, shopping the hyper-funky boutiques. We’d gone to old movies at the Castro Theater and roamed the streets snapping bad photographs of adorable Victorian houses.
“Look, Mama!” Isaac interrupted my reverie. “Ruby braided my hair with her princess stick.”
She had indeed managed to interlace her scepter, a foot-long, rainbow-colored lollipop, through his feathery hair.
“Ruby,” I said, the threat in my low voice so frightening that a dozen juvenile princes and princesses in our immediate vicinity clung in abject terror to their mothers. “If you licked that lollipop before you put it on Isaac’s head you are going to be in the worst trouble of your life.”
A buzz cut, it turns out, is an oddly easy thing to track down on a Friday afternoon in downtown San Francisco. By the time we were due to meet Peter back at the hotel, Isaac’s long, floppy hair had been shorn to regulation military length by a friendly Filipino barber. Isaac was the proud owner of a new San Francisco Giants baseball cap, which I hoped would help warm his newly denu
ded scalp.
The next morning we set out for the cable car, me carrying Sadie strapped to my front in the Baby Bjorn, newly bald Isaac wearing yet another new hat, this time a San Francisco Giants ski cap, and Ruby skipping along by my side. Peter was talking on his cell phone, as he’d been doing all morning. His “litigation team” had set up yet another conference call and Peter was hard at work in his designated role, cursing Macramé Man and bemoaning the frivolity of the lawsuit. He kept it up on the line to the cable car and all the way up Powell Street to Ghirardelli Square. He’s a good father, though, so despite being involved in his telephone call, he managed to catch Isaac when the kid swung from the bar of the cable car into oncoming traffic.
I think Ruby and Isaac enjoyed themselves. I hope someone did, because I sure as hell didn’t. It’s hard to have fun when you’re in an ice cream parlor, breastfeeding a baby, wrangling two rambunctious small children up to their ears in hot fudge and whipped cream, while dodging the dirty looks of the people at the next table who don’t appreciate your husband’s loud cell phone conversation, his profanity, or the dollops of chocolate chip mint that keep landing on the backs of their necks.
Is it any wonder that Peter and I ended up having a fight on the pier? Thank heavens the kids were distracted by the barking sea lions, otherwise they would have been terrified. It always amazes me how a married couple can carry on a screaming fight in whispers. The volume may be low, but the facial expressions make up for it. Peter would have said this one started when I tore the ear bud out of his ear and flung it in San Fransisco Bay. I beg to differ. In my opinion it began when his cell phone rang that morning.
We both agree on how it ended, or at least how hostilities ceased for the time being. I stormed off with Sadie and hopped in a cab, leaving Peter by himself to manage his conference call and the family outing to Alcatraz.
Forty-five minutes later, I was in Oakland in front of what my skip trace had come up with as the address for Nancy and Jason McDonnell, shaking my head in surprise at the state of the building. Most foster families aren’t wealthy or even upper middle class. Those of us who are comfortably off don’t usually open up our homes to the less privileged. I’ve always been amazed that it is quite often the very people who have the least who are the most generous. Still, this level of decrepitude seemed too much.
The building was a ramshackle three-family house covered in peeling siding. The front porch hung crazily from one railing, the other side collapsed into a pile of splintered boards. Half the windows were broken, some taped up with duct tape, others covered in cardboard, and others simply left with jagged cracks. Still, the house was in better shape than the one next door, which had gone up in flames at some point and now squatted, a hulking, charred reminder of how little anyone cared about this part of Oakland.
I sniffed the air, wondering if my infant’s lungs were being filled with bits of ashen asbestos and if I should turn and make a run for it. But I had come all this way, and had had a horrible fight with Peter. I couldn’t bear to go home empty-handed.
I circled the house, hoping to find a back or side entrance as the front was obviously too treacherous to attempt even without a baby strapped to my chest. Instead, what I stumbled across was a young couple, huddled on the back steps, sharing a joint.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey,” the man replied with barely a glance in my direction. His whole body was curved around the joint like a question mark. Everything about him was long and thin, as if he were a fractal-person, composed of long, thin fingers on long, thin hands, dangling at the ends of long, thin arms under a long, thin face with long, lank hair, all atop a long, thin body. I couldn’t see them, but I was sure his feet and toes were long and thin, too. He was also dirty. Not filthy, but just a little bit greasy.
His friend was his twin, although they looked nothing alike. She was dark and small. But she had no more flesh covering her bones than he did, and she gave the same impression of being covered with a thin layer of grime. She had a down jacket draped over her shoulders, under which she wore only a dirty white tank top. Her arms were dappled with track marks, both fresh ones and others that had long since healed over. This case was causing me to spend an awful lot of time with junk addicts.
“I’m looking for Nancy and Jason McDonnell,” I said. “Do you know how I can get to their apartment?”
The man took a long drag off his joint and looked up at me, as if he was finally really registering my presence in the yard. His gaze lingered on Sadie for a moment. Then, as if dismissing any possible threat we could pose, he shrugged. “That’s us.”
“You’re Jason McDonnell?”
If he noticed the horror in my voice at the thought that these two bedraggled, hollow-eyed junkies were the people I was looking for, he did not show it. “Jase. Nobody calls me Jason. Now you know who I am, why don’t you tell me who you are?”
“Mind if I pull up a seat? My neck is killing me from dragging this baby around.” Sadie was getting too big and fat for the Baby Bjorn, but I hadn’t wanted to pull her stroller onto the cable car. Another reason to be angry at Peter. If we hadn’t had a fight I wouldn’t have stormed off to Oakland without the stroller.
The woman pointed to a rusted metal garden chair across the packed-dirt yard. I pulled it over and sat down. Sadie had fallen asleep, and I hoped that the sudden lack of motion wouldn’t wake her up. I rocked back and forth a bit to simulate walking. Not that that would fool her for an instant.
“I’m Juliet Applebaum,” I said. “I’m here about your foster son.”
“Which one?” Jase said.
“You have more than one?”
“We don’t have any right now, because we’re, like, on temporary hold pending investigation, but we’ve had a bunch. I don’t know how many. Nancy, what is it? Six? Seven?”
“Seven,” she said.
“I’m talking about Noah Lorgeree.”
The woman drew back from me, and Jase’s face shut down. His fingers twitched spasmodically. He took a long pull on the joint and passed it to Nancy. “We don’t know nothing about that one.”
I was about to start wheedling, smiling, doing a song and dance to get the information, but I suddenly realized that was going to get me exactly nowhere with these two.
“You know what?” I said, leaning forward, the cold metal of the chair pressing against the backs of my legs. “Let’s not even start this, okay? You don’t care, I don’t have the energy for it, and my daughter’s going to wake up hungry in about ten minutes.”
I reached into my purse and pulled out my wallet. I quickly counted the cash. Thank God I’d gone to the ATM in preparation for this trip. “There’s five hundred dollars for you right now if you tell me what happened to the baby. I don’t know what you two are using besides that joint, but I’m pretty sure it’s heroin. What’s the street value nowadays? One hundred, one hundred fifty a gram? So even if you want to buy a handful of roofies to max out your high, you’ll still get a good three or four grams with what I’m giving you. That’s a nice little chunk, isn’t it? More than you’ve got stashed in your apartment, I’ll bet.”
They stared at me, open-mouthed. That’s usually the response I get when I exhibit a familiarity with a culture more dangerous than the soccer-mom milieu that people often assume I belong to. It’s not that I look particularly straight, although I’m not tattooed and have no piercings other than those that were considered de rigueur among Jewish American Princesses growing up in New Jersey in the 1980s—earlobes, two in each because I had a wild side. But I get my hair cut at an über-funky L.A. salon because that’s where Stacey insists I go, and my clothes, while certainly designed to camouflage my corpulent behind and upper arms, possess a certain ragged, urban chic. I really don’t think I look like a complete suburban mom. But it doesn’t really matter; strap on a Baby Bjorn or saddle up a baby stroller, and to the rest of the world—the non-mommy world—you fall into that amorphous, asexual, a-cool category. Othe
r mothers make the distinctions—we know the subtle difference between the sling-wearing, attachment-parenting, co-sleeping moms; the top-tier-nursery-school, Bugaboo-stroller-pushing, Pilates-reformer-straddling moms; the barbed-wire-tattooed, Zutano-baby-clothes-buying, never-listens-to-Raffi, funky-hip moms; the soccer-chai-with-drink-cup, nursery-school committee, carpool-queen moms. We know how to distinguish one from the other, but to the rest of the world we’re all just moms. And moms are certainly not supposed to know that Rohypnol enhances a heroin high.
“Five hundred?” the woman said. She looked about thirty years old. Actually, she looked about a hundred and thirty, but I could tell she was more or less thirty years old. A little younger than me.
“If you tell me where the baby is.”
“And if we don’t know?”
“You tell me what you do know and I’ll give you three hundred. That’s still three grams or so.”
“Two grams. I won’t use chiva, and china white’s one fifty a gram.”
I waited. Jase ground out the joint on the edge of the top stair and then slipped the roach into the pocket of his filthy jeans.
“Three hundred?” he said.
“Start at the beginning. How did you get involved? Who contacted you about Sandra Lorgeree’s baby?” Sadie began to stir and I got to my feet. While I waited for one of them to answer, I began rocking back and forth, hoping to lull her into a few more minutes of sleep.
“We got a call,” Nancy said. “Some lady called us and asked us if we wanted to earn twenty-five hundred bucks.”
“That’s not what happened,” Jase said. “First she asked us if we were the Jason and Nancy McDonnell who were licensed foster care parents in Alameda County. And if we’d been foster parents to”—he frowned—“damn, what was that kid’s name? The one who got us into all the trouble?”
The Cradle Robbers Page 10
