Maybe Someday

by Ede Clarke

After two weeks had passed I knew I had to make a decision.

  “Looks like he’s gone and with not much of a trace other than one phone call from your home to a Chicago pay phone and the deposit into your account,” Detective Daniels told me as he sipped a bit of the water I had given him. “We will continue to work with our friends throughout New York and Illinois, but at this point we are going to take this off our active list. We just don’t have any more information to go on right now. If anything comes to us or you, we will jump right on it and check it out though.”

  The crying had stopped a few days before and I assumed it would not return for years, like before. This would have been an appropriate time to cry, I thought, and I could tell it wasn’t going to happen. I wondered if I seemed unsympathetic, displaced, wrong. I tried to compensate with my words, “This is really happening, right? He’s just gone?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” the Detective confirmed.

  “Talk to me about the kids, Detective Daniels. Please help me understand how this works. What do I do? What can I do?” I pleaded with him.

  “Well, what do you want?” he first asked.

  Well now, that was something I hadn’t asked myself since the decision to move to New York. I assumed I still wanted the kids. I wanted them when he was with us, so why would I not want them now that he is . . . not here?

  “The social worker will be coming by this week, in the morning, sometime from eight to eleven,” Detective Daniels continued as he gave me a sheet of paper with her name and number and other information. We have a case number. I looked at the paper. The Five and I have a social services case number. “There are different options that she will talk you through. It’s not as simple as do you or do you not want the kids. She knows all the different options and how to maneuver through the system to hopefully get the outcome that is best for everyone involved.”

  “Will she take them away until things are resolved?” I asked without looking at him.

  “That is a possibility, Ms. Lewis. You have no legal right to these children, as you know,” he gently explained.

  “Yes,” I replied and then looked at Detective Daniels. I was looking for something, I don’t know what. I’m sure I wasn’t really looking for the truth of what had happened, as much as I was looking for him to make me feel better.

  In response to the who-knows-what-kind-of look I had on my face, he offered, “This looks like a case of . . . he wants to be gone, so he is.”

  The next morning, after everyone had scampered off to school, I stood in a corner of the kitchen staring at the dirty dishes. The immense pressure of time immobilized my body. An intense desire to sleep became the constant millstone I drug around all day long. My brain seemed to be functioning completely autonomously, though, thank goodness. Although I was grateful for the ability to think things through, I felt trapped in muscles and flesh that had nothing to do with who I was, or what I wanted, or what I needed to get done. This must be how Clara feels every day of her life. Then the tears started to choke the back of my throat. Another thing being heaved on her . . . and she’s not even finished grieving for her mother.

  I forced myself back to focusing on the decision at hand: I must tell The Five before the social worker shows up. Must tell them what, though? “Your Father has disappeared and I know nothing and the police know nothing and now you’ll have to go live with someone else for a while until we figure out what is best for everyone involved.” Or, “Your Father never went to New York City, but I’m sure he’s fine. He’ll be back at some point I’m sure. We’ll wait for him. I’ll work with the social worker so I can stay here and wait with you guys. Everything will be fine.” At this point it did occur to me that our lives weren’t that different with him gone. Aside from the principles of what a father is and how a family should work and just knowing he’s around in case, there wasn’t a huge difference with him missing. So, I could just say, “Look, although your father has been living in this house with us, he’s been missing for a long time. Now it’s just official.” Or, “Now we don’t have to keep making extra food that is never eaten.”

  I stopped fantasizing and got back to real problem-solving. The more I got to thinking about these kids without any parent, the more the faces of the group home children came back. At first it was just one or two pair of eyes dispersed between thoughts, but then it was a barrage of sounds, smells, touches, smiles, and cries. “Where are you sleeping tonight?” at least one would always ask. “At my house,” I would reply. And then the inevitable closing would immediately follow,.“Can’t you take me with you? Can I please sleep at your house?” Or, others would take the tact of slyly calling me Mom or Mommy even though this was strictly against the rules. They would slip it in hoping I wouldn’t notice and just unknowingly play along in their short-lived fantasy. “Now, you know I’m your Aunty Patty. And I love you so,” I would immediately correct. They longed for ownership of an adult, a mom, a dad, to call their own. They would fight over me as their Mom, all agreeing I couldn’t be everyone’s Mom, only for the one who was currently asking for me. There was no sharing in the Mom fantasy.

  The thing that occurred to me early on while getting to know these abandoned kids was that they never asked for their original Mom and Dad. They never asked why they decided to not be their parent anymore. They never asked if I knew where they were or how they were. They never asked if they looked like or sounded like their mom or dad. They had closed the door on first mom, and desperately flung open the door to new mom and began calling for her at every opportunity. If the leaves shook a bit more violently one day for the wind kicked up a bit, they would ask, “Was that someone going by?” and peer out the window or screen door and then when they didn’t see anything, look at me and ask, “If we have dinner later tonight, can you stay longer before going home?”

  After my parents died I didn’t want a new mom or dad. I wanted my Mom and Dad. But, knowing that was impossible helped me move through grief and into acceptance. If there was even a bit of hope that they could have come back, it would have rendered me useless as a human being, incapable of doing anything other than waiting for their possible return. Oh, I would have still worked, ate hot fudge sundaes with Candy, carried file after file and book after book up the old stairs with Mad at the library. But, I would have always had one eye on the leaves on the trees outside, seeing if the wind was kicked up a bit. I would have always had one leg in reality and one out, living out my real identity in the dark parts of my thoughts; never really able to focus on that which was before me. For the first time in my life I was grateful my parents were dead.

  After dinner dishes were cleaned and dried and homework was finished, I asked The Five to wash up for bed a bit early so we could have a talk before they were tucked in. My hands trembled so fiercely that I had to abandon the idea of carrying tea into the living room, as I was sure it would have given me away.

  As Lizzie climbed on my lap and Hector settled into my right hip, I quietly noted how far we had come from our first family meeting where it seemed I sat on one side and the five opponents on the other. This time we all collapsed on the couch and adjacent chair in a big heap, cozied in, layered on top of one another. The constant movement of body parts was comforting to me, like waves of a moderate massage, lulling me to stay awake. “This is going to be a hard conversation, guys.” I decided to start with an attention-getter that would hopefully bring Beth back from boys, Clara—the poor thing—back from almost falling asleep, Hector back from turning a pillow or anything else lying around into a weapon, and Lizzie from talking with her dolls. Jackie was always attentive, so he picked up on my seriousness immediately and sat up a bit straighter, although still slouched a bit onto Hector’s right arm.

  “It’s about Dad, right?” Beth helped us along.

  “Yes, dear. This is when we talk about what happened to your Dad.”

  Now they all looked at me. Their eyes were so innocent, and I could tell they had absolutely no idea what was comin
g. I had originally decided to ease them into it, but I saw now that would not help at all. Until I actually said it, they were not going to know. They would not be able to make the leap for themselves.

  “Your Father is not coming back. He is dead.”

  “There’s gotta be a law against what you did,” Candy said to me over the phone two days later.

  “Yeah,” I told her, “God’s law. I lied!”

  “So, you realize that coming from you this line of reasoning is really hard to swallow.”

  “Actually, I think it makes more sense. I mean, who else would know it as intimately?”

  Candy decided not to touch that, and instead went to, “So, I assume this means you’re going for full legal custody.”

  “Yeah,” I told her. “The social worker called and should be here in less than an hour. I hope she’s an ally.”

  “Well, Patty,” Candy immediately started back in, “don’t you think once she finds out you told the kids Ted is dead, you’ll lose any chance of keeping them?”

  That hadn’t even occurred to me. “Well . . . ” I stammered. I felt so stupid. I hadn’t even connected the two things. “Oh, man . . . ” I conceded to Candy.

  “Patty, big decisions right now really shouldn’t be made without someone else involved. You know?”

  “Right . . . right . . . the cancer thing,” I remembered.

  “Right,” she affirmed back. “Well, give her my number for a reference and I’ll talk you up real good. But, I gotta tell you, you should probably adjust your expectations now.”

  Thirty-five minutes later I ushered into the living room a large, disheveled, booming middle-aged woman who I was convinced that at any minute would be completely overcome by the wads and wads and piles and piles and sheets and sheets of the paperwork that seemed to be sticking out of every possible crevice of her attire as she made her way to my couch, shamelessly collapsing, and then loudly proclaiming, “Don’t let this fool you.” Catching her breath she immediately continued, “ . . . I’m actually quite brilliant and on top of the dozens of kids I keep track of, which, as of now, includes yours.”

  Over the next few hours I found Mrs. Rosalie Atkins to be just as she described herself to be, and then some. She had an answer for every question, and could even offer more information than I knew to ask. Years of experience oozed out of her every pore, as she anticipated my concerns, requests, and fears. Never appearing harsh or someone I could bare my soul to, she at the same time instilled an instant trust that I felt I could rely on from the very beginning. “Make no mistake, Ms. Lewis,” she made quite clear at one point after offering a ton of information and resources, “I work for the state, not you. If it comes down to it, I’ll take those kids away from you faster than you can imagine. But until we both know what’s what, let’s keep working forward and see what’s best.”

  She talked most of the two and half hours we were together. She took nothing I offered her. No water. No cookies. No bathroom down the hall. No open window for a slight breeze, since I had noticed through the front windows the leaves were then blowing a bit. No tissue when her left eye became watery. She was a self contained unit in perpetual speech, in need of no assistance whatsoever.

  “Do you have kids yourself, Mrs. Atkins?” I finally asked as a rare break in monologue made itself known while she rifled through a stack of papers.

  “Ah, right,” she began, without looking up from the pile she was thumbing through. “Funny how in all these years every, single, first visit this question comes up.” She then looked up and into my eyes, with the found sheet in her right hand. “As unique as we all are, humans are just full of human nature. Now aren’t we?”

  She continued on with the paperwork and the history of me and the kids and Ted and his wife, and never answered a single personal question I asked. I stopped asking them, even though I felt outplayed, and controlled. A part of me wanted to keep asking the prying questions just to show her I am not that easily deterred. But, maybe I was the only one playing that game, and it was really just because she wanted to get the papers complete and move on to the other few dozen kids. In convincing myself she didn’t care, I could give that control to her. “I’ll just see their rooms now and the bathrooms and then I’ll be on my way.”

  That evening was punctuated by slight twinges of doubt. Did I make a mistake not telling her I had told the kids Ted is dead? Should I have told her I felt they would feel less abandoned? Should I have appeared more take-charge and authoritative. Did the nice Patty seem to inept? She would be coming back the following week to see the kids. I had five days to figure out what to tell the kids in preparation for their meeting.

  What took immediate attention, however, was trying to once again explain to the more curious members of The Five why there was no funeral. “If there is no body, there is no funeral, you dummy!” exclaimed Hector to Jackie.

  “Alright, you get five minutes in the corner for calling your brother a name and being mean to him. Apologize and then go. Now.”

  As Hector stood in the corner behind my chair, we all continued to try to accept this concept.

  “But, if he’s missing, he might not be dead,” Beth came back around to.

  “Lots of people are known to be dead even if the body is not found,” I told them. “All the information leads to one conclusion. I know you want him to be alive. I know you want to hope. But, the fact is that he loves you all very much but is gone now. Both of your parents are together and they both loved you very much. But, now they are gone.”

  Lizzie began a slight whimper, but then Beth went over to her sister and hugged her and said, “They loved us, Lizzie. They will always love us. It wasn’t their choice. But it is the way it is.”

  Lizzie looked at Beth and gave her a slight smile and then the two hugged each other and I grabbed Hector from the corner as Jackie got up from his seat. We all surrounded Lizzie’s chair and hugged and cried and smiled. The more we talked about it, almost every night at dinner in fact, the more they accepted it as truth.

  “No, your father is not dead. He is missing,” Mrs. Atkins told The Five for the umpteenth time. But it was no use. They had already firmly decided on the truth.

  “He didn’t want to leave us, but he is now with Mommy,” Jackie plainly told her.

  “Yeah, he loves us, but that is it,” Hector added with firmness. Mrs. Atkins shot me several looks that let me know exactly to what extent her displeasure had reached by the end of the hour-long meeting with The Five.

  After they were excused from the living room I immediately said to her, “I know you think it’s wrong, but I’m convinced it’s right.” She said nothing for several minutes as she collected her papers, books, picture cards, pencils and finally her bag. As we both went for the sheet of paper that escaped onto the carpet, she halted and let me pick it up and then place it in her hand. As we both held the piece of paper on opposite ends, she looked me in the eye and smiled a big smile and then said, “You can kiss legal guardianship good-bye. You’ll be lucky to get temporary custody.”

  “Yeah, hope in God. Hope in the future. Hope in college. Hope in good decisions. Hope in . . . ”

  At that Candy cut me off. “You cannot control everything, Patty. You don’t want them to take a chance, so you orphaned them!”

  “That is not true! Ted orphaned them. Plus, what is wrong with taking chances in things we can control, but not hoping in the things we have no say in?”

  “Because, Patty, we have no say in anything in this world. No control. No power . . . ”

  “I don’t believe that for one second, Candy, and I don’t think you do either.”

  At that moment we looked at each other and had nothing to say for the first time in the argument.

  “I can’t go back now, anyway, even if I wanted to—which, I don’t, by the way. You didn’t convince me of a thing.”

  She smiled at that last comment and smirked back, “No surprise there.”

  “What if he�
�s alive, Patty?”

  “Then I’ll kill him again,” I told her as we laughed away the pain of the serious threat I had made.

  “Everybody gets to say something to the picture and then put in the box whatever you brought. Then we’ll bury it in the backyard. I already made a hole, but you guys can help me fill the dirt back in after the box is down there. Who wants to go first?”

  “I just really wanted to tell him that—”

  I interrupted Hector and told him, “Tell your Daddy, honey, not me. Go on. Go ahead. It’s okay.”

  “Well, um, I just . . . ” Hector began to cry and then everyone started to cry.

  “It’s okay to cry. Go ahead and talk whenever you want to. Take your time,” I told them.

  After a few minutes Hector began again, “I just want to tell you that I really love you too and that it’s okay you’re gone. I know you would be here if you could. I will see you in Heaven someday and I’ll watch out for Jackie.” Then Hector put a Star Wars t-shirt in the box. It was one of Ted’s favorites.

  “I don’t really understand why you went away, but I know you didn’t mean to. So, please know I don’t mean to be mad, either. Just that sometimes I am and I’ll try better. I love you, Daddy,” Lizzie muffled through her hands that stayed near her mouth and nose while she talked. Then she placed one of her favorite baby dolls in the box.

  “I think Mom is probably really happy to see you, so that is good. And I think we’ve been doing pretty good for a while, so we’ll be okay until we see you again. I love you, Dad,” Clara told the picture and then placed in the box a poem that she had written to him. No one was allowed to read it.

  “I’m real sorry for being so mad that you weren’t home much. Now I think it wasn’t that bad since you’re never home now. I love you,” Jackie cried as he gave his favorite stuffed animal a new home in the box.

  It took Beth a few more minutes, and then she finally said, “I don’t know if you’re really dead, but maybe you’re happier now.” Then she placed a music CD in the box.