by Brent Coffey
August shook his head no. A lion and a fire truck were enough. For a kid who rarely played, getting two new toys was better than winning the lottery. It was almost too good to be true. And it made up for the fact that Sara had forgotten to bring him the blocks that she’d promised.
“Alright, give me twenty minutes, and I’ll be back with the stuff.”
------------------------------------------------
Bruce didn’t want to call Sara. He cringed at the thought of contacting someone who’d told him to stay away. But if Gabe was up to something and August was involved, he had no choice. After all, she was August’s social worker, and maybe she could clue him in on some recent events in August’s life. Maybe she knows what Gabe meant about getting me my boy. Besides, it was only fair that he bring her up to speed about a criminal’s interest in an orphan under her jurisdiction. Plus, if he was lucky, maybe she’d come to believe that it was the mob that had broken into her home. If, that is, she believes anything I say at this point.
He cringed again at the thought of calling her, but concern for August’s safety required that he work with the chain of command to keep the little guy safe. Thinking about calling Sara stressed him out. His nerves began to buzz, and his stomach suddenly felt unsettled. Oh, no. Dear, God, no. The stress activated his colitis. Bruce, driving back from Stop and Go with his beer and pot pie, didn’t make it to the toilet this time. He would toss out this pair of pants and boxers. And Febreeze his Volvo.
------------------------------------------------
Conversation and knowing laughter wafted through the air, along with the smell of fresh pasta. The usual faces were here, Gabe, his uncles Ronald and Michael, and a half dozen top associates. The meeting was on. Gabe was seated at the end of a restaurant table, facing the front entrance. He was the first to see Luke Espinoza enter Gialovi’s Italian Eatery in a renovated part of Southie. As Luke pulled up a chair at the Adelaides’ table, he changed the topic from Gabe’s acquittal to his most recent errand.
“I got the kid two toys. A lion and a fire truck.”
“That’s all?” Gabe asked.
“That’s all he wanted. Seriously. I asked if he wanted something else, and he said no. So that’s all he got.”
A silent table of professional thieves chewed in anticipation of Gabe making something significant out of this news. But his only response was:
“What did the kid do then?”
“Jesus, Gabe, how the hell would I know? I just dropped the shit off and left. I didn’t know I was supposed to make nicey nice and play with him. The kid doesn’t say much, and it’s hard to tell what he does. He took the stuff to his room when I brought it in, and I never saw him after that. By the way, what’s up with this kid shit, Gabe?”
Indeed, what was up with this kid shit? Ronald and Michael Adelaide wanted to know that as well. The entire Family had heard of Gabe’s insistence on buying toys for a foster kid, and word had spread that Gabe had ordered the kid’s social worker’s condo trashed with a message that appeared to assist the Family’s nemesis, Bruce Hudson, in his adoption efforts. What, pray tell, was Gabe doing messing around with the D.A.’s adoption of this kid? All eyes focused on Gabe, awaiting the details of some rational scheme.
“I’m bored. What can I say? It’s not like there’s a lot going down in Southie these days.”
Surely there’s more to it than this, everyone collectively thought. When Gabe saw that his response was met with confused stares, he knew he had to say more:
“Look, don’t worry about it. I’m just fucking with Hudson. Let me have some fun, okay? If you’d spent the past several months jacking off in the county jail, you’d wanna fuck with him too, got it?”
This answer was also confusing. How was buying this kid some toys fucking with anyone? And how did that fit with having the social worker’s condo trashed? Gabe wasn’t making a lot of sense to his uncles and associates, but no one said anything because he seemed agitated and defensive. Besides, there didn’t seem to be any harm in what he’d done. Scaring a social worker and being nice to a kid seemed kind of odd, especially since neither brought in any cash for the Family, but what Gabe did in his free time was his business, the guys concluded. The subject was dropped.
“You want to work a few counties northwest of proper?” Ronald asked. By “proper” he meant the city limits of Boston.
“What’s out there?” Gabe asked.
“Mostly dairy shit. There’s some old guys that do cows. They get farm subsidies twice a year, the firsts of June and January. You hit ‘em up for 30% of those checks and you’ll make upwards of six figures, if you work all the farms in the nearby counties.”
“And,” Gabe’s other uncle, Michael, added, “it’ll keep you low for a while. You don’t need to be in proper. Too much scrutiny right now. The trial’s still fresh, people are still talking, and we gotta let this stuff die down. It’ll do you some good to get some fresh air,” he suggested with a wink.
Gabe knew that starting new turf on the counties’ dairy farms would take a lot of work, because starting new turf always took a lot of work. First, you had to make the rounds, dressed to the nines in a sleek black suit (or an equally classy getup), introducing yourself as an insurance agent. For effect, you arrived in a stretch limo, with both front and rear license plates reading FAM. You took along your associates, also dressed in black with their eyes hidden behind dark shades, and you made your appeal. The first offer, protection from accidents, was always turned down. It seemed surreal. You had to make it seem real. You made the offer seem real by then visiting a neighboring business and burning that motherfucker to the ground (and you should always choose to burn a poorer business that wouldn’t have paid as much in premiums), leaving your calling card. A calling card took on various forms. Sometimes it was an employee kidnapped from the first business and burned alive in the second one, with the charred remains identified by dentists. Sometimes it was an unlabeled CD recording the sights and sounds of the nearby fire, dropped anonymously in the surviving business’s mailbox. Whatever. So long as you got the point across there was room for creative differences.
Gabe had a head start on setting up new turf on one of the local farms. He’d already stolen a St. Bernard from there.
“Sounds good,” Gabe said with a mouthful of linguini. “Sign me up.”
------------------------------------------------
From the end of World War Two until the 1980s, the Baby Scoop Era displaced over four million children in the United States. The period had “Scoop” in its name because children born out of wedlock were often “scooped” out of the arms of their unwed mothers and placed in traditional families with married parents. Doctors pressured single women to give up custody of their children, telling these mothers that they were unfit to raise a child on their own. Some mothers reported being harassed by doctors, when these experts tried to convince them that clearly their judgment was lacking or they never would’ve gotten pregnant outside of marriage. Sometimes, doctors confronted mothers who’d just given birth and, lying, told these women that it was against the law to raise a child without being married. The experts, tactful as always, labeled single moms “breeders.” Doctors scared plenty of single women into surrendering their youngsters, leaving a large number of birth mothers to later regret their decision not to raise their children. As a result of the Baby Scoop Era, adoption boomed. The number of newborns adopted during this period reached record highs in the US, numbers which have never been equaled.
It wasn’t until the social stigma against being a single mother ended that unmarried women became comfortable keeping their children. Years (and sometimes decades) later, many single moms who’d forfeited custody of their kids would search for them in an effort at being reunited. Because most adoptions during this period were “closed adoptions,” the state prevented single moms from knowing the names of their kids’ new parents. A high number of reunification attempts were unsuccessful.
/> ------------------------------------------------
Some years back, in 1980, during the waning years of the Baby Scoop Era, one of Boston’s most prestigious fertility doctors was blindfolded, hogtied, gagged quiet with a wadded sock that was shoved in his mouth and held in place with duct tape, and thrown inside the trunk of a late model Mercedes. In that same condition, and still alive, he’d meet his fate in the Atlantic, the same dumping ground for several other fertility specialists who’d failed to produce a male heir for the boss’s Family business. Boston Kingpin Victor Adelaide was sterile and needed a son.
------------------------------------------------
Also during the last years of the Baby Scoop Era…
“What the fuck do you want me to do? I’ll do it! Do you hear me? I said I’ll do it, okay?”
“Ma’am, it’s unnecessary to swear, and I already told you what I want you to do. Sign the forms.”
The doctor’s relaxed attitude, as he offered her a clipboard and a form, outraged her. He was so calm about it all. It was smooth sailing when it wasn’t your child being signed away. Another day, another document.
“I’m not signing shit! What else do you want me to do?” she seethed. “Do you want a portion of every goddamn one of my future paychecks? Is that it? Do you want me to sign up for free labor? Mop the nurses’ station? Name it!” Debby Fallon shouted, emphasizing every sentence with wild, swinging hand gestures that made her look like she was doing upper body aerobics in her hospital bed.
“Ma’am, we’ve been over this. You don’t have insurance. You just delivered here at St. Knox’s…”
“I had a son, goddamn it! I didn’t just…” (she was too angry to think) “…you know, drop off a package or something. My delivery was a fucking son! Do you hear me?” The Demerol and Nubain did nothing to calm her.
“I’m aware of the child’s gender,” the doctor matter-of-factly stated in a disinterested tone. “You just incurred thousands of dollars in medical bills. You’re unwed, unemployed…”
“I’ll get a job. I’ll pay you in time.”
“… uninsured, uneducated…”
“I’ll go back to school! I just need a few years, like when Gabe’s old enough to be left with a sitter. And like I’ve fucking said a thousand fucking times since I’ve fucking been here, I’ll get a job and pay you!”
“That’s not the issue. I’m not worried about eating the cost of your delivery. This is a Catholic hospital, a nonprofit. We regularly write off losses for indigent patients, and we’ll be glad to do so for you. But we have to look out for the welfare of your child. We’ll only forgive your debt if you sign over custody of your son, so that the child can be properly reared in a financially stable two parent household. If you won’t agree to that, if you won’t put the best interest of your child ahead of your own selfish clinginess, then we’ll have to contact social services. You don’t have the money to leave this hospital with your account in good standing. You’re facing bankruptcy. You’ll barely scrape out a living for yourself, and caring for a child is out of the question for you. While you might one day repay a fraction of what you owe the hospital, your son needs provisions now. Again,” he began in a slightly more pleasant tone, “this is a Catholic institution, and we find good homes for kids all the time. Just sign these forms granting a new life for your child, and all your hospital bills will be immediately erased.”
Debby didn’t know that her obstetrician, Dr. Martin Platter, was wired. Charlie Unique listened to the good doctor’s sales pitch from a late-seventies white Chevy conversion van on the second level of the patients’ parking garage next to St. Knox’s Memorial Hospital. Unique wasn’t his last name. Smith was. Ribbed for having the least unique name ever, the title stuck. Listening with a headset, Unique beat his smokes against the palm of his left hand to pack the shit tight, and he slid out a non-filtered Camel. Killing time was killing Unique. This bitch just needs to sign the goddamn papers already so I can let Victor know he’s got a boy and (yawning, losing his train of thought) God, I’m tired of sitting here.
Debby Fallon was wearing Unique’s patience thin. She’d been in labor for seven hours, which was bad enough for someone as impatient as Unique. But, then, she’d spent the past three hours refusing to sign the kid over. The nerve of that bitch. His butt was going numb from sitting in this nasty van that stank from his own cigarettes, farts, and sexual escapades, and his legs needed stretching before, yet, another spasm cramped his right calf. Least it’s a boy, he consoled himself. He was really, really glad that he didn’t have to rape another chick to make the boss a son. Don’t misunderstand. He liked the sex. But the effort… the goddamn effort. Well, it was more work than sitting in a van waiting to transport the future Kingpin to the Family, and that was work enough for Mr. Unique. Yeah, it was a lucky break that the kid’s got a pecker, he reminded himself. Lucky, too, she hadn’t gone all slaughterhouse after that Roe v. Wade shit. Victor was right to worry that a woman these days might get out of bounds and not have the damn kid. Can’t believe she went to term. She’s a saint. Come on, honey, we just need one more break here. Sign the papers, so we can all call it a night. He was tempted to take the headset off. Debby’s late night screaming at Dr. Platter was giving him a migraine so harsh that not even the nicotine could shake it.
“Don’t tell me about your righteous, uppity two parent households! I was raped you Catholic fuck!” (Dr. Platter visibly cringed.) “I didn’t ask to be a single mom. But now that I am a mom, by God, I’m going to be the best mom this world has ever seen, and you aren’t going to take my boy away!”
“Very well. I see.” Dr. Platter left his fuming patient to lie in her hospital bed, wondering when she’d get the chance to hold Gabe. It had been hours since he was born, and she’d only seen him once (immediately after he’d been born). She wanted to cuddle him, to smell his forehead, to feed him. It was her motherly right, and, as soon as the grogginess from the pain meds wore off and she could walk a straight line, she’d walk that straight line to the nursery, pick Gabe up, and hail a cab home… and it didn’t fucking matter what her doctor and this Catholic institution thought about her single parent household.
“Ma’am,” spoke a gentle sounding elderly nurse entering her room, “I’m here to check your vitals and see if you need anything.” The nurse smiled warmly.
Debby didn’t recognize this nurse. When she was in labor, her nurse had been a black woman in her late thirties or early forties. This nurse was white, and she looked to be approaching retirement. Debby saw a fresh bag of something in the nurse’s hand. The nurse was going to replenish Debby’s IV drip.
“I’m going to take your blood pressure, check your oxygen, and listen to your heart for a sec, okay?”
“No.”
“Dear, you just had a child. We’ve got to monitor your vitals.”
“You aren’t monitoring my vitals! You’re feeding me more drugs!”
“Well, you don’t want to start aching do you? You were dilated not too long ago, and your body may still feel the effects if we don’t protect you.”
Sighing: “Okay, fine. But all this medicine is making me nauseous. Can I at least have some water before you start a new bag?”
“Sure, sugar. I’ll bring you some water, and then we’ll start some more IV fluids and check your vitals.”
As soon as the nurse left, Debby scraped off the tape holding the IV needle in her right arm and jerked the needle out. She quickly applied pressure to stop the bleeding. She knew she only had one shot at this, and she had to make it count. After the bleeding stopped, she placed the needle against her arm where it had previously been inserted and put the tape back over the needle to hold it in place, making the needle look as if it was still inside her. She then turned her arm down against the bed and waited for the nurse to return.
“Here’s your water, hon,” the returning nurse said. “Now, just let me hook this up to the IV, won’t take but a sec… There we go.”
Sipping her water as the nurse adjusted the numbers on her IV pump, Debby decided that she should act affected by the meds, as if they were calming her. “Mmmmmm,” came out of her as a relaxed sound. The nurse smiled, thinking that the meds were working and made no pretense about checking Debby’s vitals.
“Now, you just lay here and relax, sugar. Dr. Platter will be in to see you in a few minutes. He needs to talk to you, but don’t you worry your pretty head, hon. Everything’s going to be fine. You just lay here and relax. You need to let this medicine run its course so you’ll feel all good inside.”
Debby closed her eyes and put a satisfied smile on her face. Her acting had worked. The nurse never bothered to turn Debby’s arm over and check the IV to make sure it was still inserted, because Debby had fooled her with an impromptu performance worthy of an Emmy.
As soon as the nurse left, Debby got out of her hospital bed for the first time in the past two days. She moaned and stretched her legs and back, wrapping her hands around her waist. Giving birth was tough. Moving afterwards was just as tough. She knew, once more, that she had to be quick. She tore off the tape holding the IV needle against her arm and discarded them both. Barefoot on the cold floor, she gingerly made her way out of her room. Looking down the hospital’s hall in both directions, she saw several nurses making their rounds, but she didn’t see either the nurse that had tried to drug her or Dr. Platter. She walked as fast as she could into a stranger’s hospital room. A man lay snoring. She left without waking him. She hurried across the hall and into another patient’s room. A woman, about ten years older and several pounds lighter, was elevated in her hospital bed watching TV.
“Oh, hello!” Debby began. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say next.
Luckily, the woman didn’t acknowledge her. Too doped up on drugs, Debby thought. She quickly opened the few drawers in the room’s only piece of furniture, a waist tall brown chest. Rifling through it, she found the woman’s clothes. She discarded her hospital gown so swiftly that she didn’t even bother to untie it: she just slipped the top over her neck and let it fall beneath her. She then put on the woman’s pants. They were tight, very tight. I’ll just tell people that I forgot to bring my maternity clothes. She then squeezed into an uncomfortably small red blouse that didn’t quite match. Finding some shoes in the chest’s third drawer, she thanked her lucky stars that they weren’t heels. I’m dressed as miserably as I feel, but at least I’m no longer in a hospital gown.