Mother's Milk

by Charles Atkins

  She glanced to her left and saw that Chase too had been disturbed by the photo. She revised her inventory of him: Gorgeous, smart, knows how to dress and has a heart. Way too young, Barrett, don’t even think about it – has to be gay. Her ruminations were mixed with thoughts of Hobbs, of how right it felt being back with him, and of how strange it felt to know he was dating someone.

  Chase felt Barrett startle in her seat as the grainy photo of Bobby and his troublemaker girlfriend filled the screen. Up to now this had been hot; getting a firsthand look at the beautiful Dr. Conyors, neither her pictures – both the ones online and the framed montage now in his desk drawer – nor Janice’s description had done her justice. He glanced at the podium as Commissioner Martinez talked.

  ‘Robert … Bobby Dix … was one of ours,’ Carlos Martinez said. ‘He left his group home on his eighteenth birthday, and was dead before his twentieth.’

  ‘Sad stuff,’ Chase commented, letting his words waft toward Dr. Conyors.

  ‘Very,’ she said.

  Chase felt her gaze flit over his perfect profile. This part of things was just like fishing, the bait drifting on the surface, letting out the line, waiting for that first bite. He sensed her attraction, from the dryness in her throat to the furtive glances, as though needing to confirm that he was really that beautiful.

  ‘At least he’s not shifting the blame,’ she added, as the commissioner candidly laid out the failures of the system.

  ‘That comes later,’ Chase said, catching her eye. He smiled. ‘The whole agency is obsessed with documentation and covering your ass. Pretty sad, actually.’ He loved the color of her eyes, somewhere between gray and blue, hard to be sure in the dim light … she wore almost no makeup, just a hint of lipstick, her skin was flawless, but her clothes were a catastrophe, at least from his perspective. She was in a navy off-the-rack skirt suit, with a mannish button-down shirt – it was clear she did not like to bring attention to herself, even her jewelry, tiny gold earrings and a plain gold chain around her neck, was a study in understatement.

  He turned back, wondering at the body she was concealing, Is she still nursing? and relieved that Bobby’s photo had been replaced by snapshots of other dead youths, none more than twenty or twenty-one. Commissioner Martinez gave brief histories of each, how long they had been wards of the state, how they had lived and how they had died – mostly through drug overdoses and suicide, but there were homicides as well. Chase recognized a few of the faces; one – like Bobby – had been part of the family, but he’d gotten too old and a little sloppy. Bored with the well-intentioned dribble, he let his gaze wander toward Janice, sitting on the stage, her hands folded in her lap, a look of fixed concentration on her face as she nodded in approval with the commissioner’s talking points. In the front row he spotted the man whose electronic passkey he’d used a day ago to gain access to the lovely Dr. Conyors’ office. He was nodding along with Janice, and every few seconds would turn in her direction. Obviously one of her lackeys; he wondered if he’d slept with her, or was it just the usual kiss-up at the office to get ahead?

  ‘Potent,’ Dr. Conyors said as the lights turned up, signaling the midday break.

  Chase used the back of his sleeve to wipe away an imaginary tear, as all around him he saw people reaching for tissues. He looked at her, and cocked a half-smile. ‘Dr. Conyors, I am thoroughly depressed,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, and it’s Barrett,’ she said.

  ‘Chase,’ he said, extending his hand and taking hers in a gentle shake. Her fingers were long and there was strength in her grip.

  She turned away, and smoothed a long bang from off her brow as she opened up her packet. ‘They want us to divide up in workgroups,’ she said.

  ‘Which one are you in?’ he asked, even though he already knew.

  ‘Criminal and legal dimensions of at-risk youth.’

  ‘What do you know,’ he said, ‘me too, probably because two-thirds of my caseload is budding young thugs and thugettes. It seems I’m always bailing somebody out.’ He shook his sleeve back from his right wrist and glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes to find room D132.’

  OK, Barrett thought, catching the Movado logo on the black dial that had four gold dots to denote the three, six, nine and twelve, let’s add money to the list, and I bet those shoes aren’t knock-offs. Wealthy girlfriend? Boyfriend? Family money?

  ‘You want to grab some coffee?’ he asked. ‘And I don’t mean that boiled crap downstairs. There’s a Starbucks around the corner.’

  ‘And every corner,’ she added, but fresh air was suddenly very appealing. ‘Let’s go.’

  Pushing their way into the emptying throng, they drifted up the stairs of the auditorium. She walked just behind him, and noticed how others turned to look at him – mostly women, but a few men as well. He took the stairs with an easy grace and she guessed his height at around six two or three – about the same as Hobbs. She had the oddest thought, that this was a man without flaw. His thick, almost black wavy hair left no flake of dandruff on his jacket that gave a silhouette of broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. He looked back at her, a stray bang across his forehead. He pointed toward an opening in the crowd, and reaching back to grab her hand they shot through.

  The physical contact, his warm hand strong in hers, but not dragging her, felt easy and sexy. There was an awkward moment as they made it to the top and he let go of her. ‘I hate crowds,’ he admitted, ‘I just had to get out of there. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Not at all,’ and they headed down to the lobby and outside.

  ‘God, what a gorgeous day,’ Chase said as they caught the first whiff of the slightly cool June day. Purple and yellow irises were in full bloom in the carefully tended beds of the municipal building and across the street the small park was an explosion of new green leaves, and pink and white bridle wreath.

  Barrett couldn’t resist. ‘I like New York in the spring.’

  Without pause, Chase responded, in an off-key baritone, ‘What about you?’

  Thank God, she thought. Finally a flaw, he’s tone deaf. But he knows show tunes … gay gay gay. OK, so he’s gay, probably has a wealthy boyfriend and will make a nice buddy for this miserable conference. ‘So how did you get dragged into this?’ she asked, as they headed for coffee.

  ‘I’m kind of a department golden boy,’ he said, catching her off guard. ‘You see,’ and he threw an odd look, almost as though he were testing her, ‘I was one of those at-risk kids.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, realizing she might have been way off base with her first impressions.

  ‘Foster care of one kind or another since I was three.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Chase, I had no intention of prying.’

  ‘You’re not, it’s one of those things that either you try to keep hidden or you let just be a part of you, and people either can deal with it or they can’t.’

  ‘I imagine it must give you amazing insight in working with these kids as their counselor,’ she said.

  ‘It does, because I know exactly what they’ve been through. Or if I haven’t been through it myself, I was around kids who’d had the same horrible things happen to them.’

  ‘Do you enjoy the work?’ she asked.

  ‘Mostly,’ he said, ‘it’s nice to see that some of them can pull it together, try to make it past the horrible hand they’ve been dealt. But others …’

  ‘I know,’ she said, her thoughts drawn back to Jerod and Hobbs’s question – Why does he get to you so much? ‘I’ve got one now that I’m working with, you see all the potential and then all of the obstacles and you don’t know if they’ll ever make it. Or if you can really make any kind of difference.’

  ‘It definitely gets to you, and I think if I did it too much longer, I’d become one of the department burnouts. So what about this kid makes him special?’

  ‘The usual mess. A psychotic disorder – probably schizophrenia – but when he’s on his meds, you
’d never know. And the trouble he gets into with the law is all petty stuff, then there’s the horrible childhood, the bad things that happened to him when he was in foster care …’ She stopped, realizing how enjoyable it would be to discuss Jerod’s case with someone like Chase, also how wrong and a breach of confidentiality.

  ‘He’s one you think you can save.’ He held the door for her at Starbucks, and they both ordered large lattes with extra shots of espresso. They spoke little inside, but when they got out, Chase said, ‘Can I ask you something personal?’

  ‘OK,’ she said warily. ‘I do reserve the right not to answer.’

  ‘Understood.’ He sipped his latte through the hole in the plastic cover, just like letting out fishing line. ‘You are without doubt one of the most attractive women I have ever met, why no wedding ring?’

  He saw her recoil and wondered if he’d pushed too fast.

  She paused. ‘I was married,’ she said.

  ‘Divorced?’

  ‘Widowed,’ she said simply.

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘OK, buster,’ she said, ‘I thought you said one question.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he smiled, ‘I’m just curious.’

  ‘I have a son … Max.’

  ‘Excellent name, how old?’

  ‘Four months.’

  ‘Really?’ coloring his voice with surprise, and pretending to choke on his latte. He coughed a couple times, and used the napkin to wipe his nose. He stopped and looked at her, not too much to be creepy, just enough so she could know that he admired her figure. ‘You gave birth four months ago?’

  ‘Sure did,’ she said.

  ‘I have so many questions,’ he continued, noting the rise of color in her cheeks, ‘but I have a feeling I’ve gone over my quota.’

  She laughed, as they came back to the steps of the conference center. ‘Boy, I don’t want to go back in,’ she said.

  ‘We could play hooky,’ he offered.

  ‘Uh-huh, I don’t know how your boss will take that, but mine will be auditing all of the sign-in sheets to make certain I didn’t miss a single session.’

  ‘Mine’s the same,’ he said, ‘plus I’m supposed to represent the department as not being one giant screw-up. I am an example of how the system can work; their shining star.’

  ‘So, shining star, do they know you’re leaving?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ He glanced up at the massive marble-fronted facade and steps. ‘And that’s complicated.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘OK …’ He lowered his voice, and thought, After the compliments come the secrets, let me be the man you want. Or as Janice called him ‘her chameleon’, but even she didn’t know how true that was. ‘If you nark me out, I will find you and do horrible things that only an at-risk adult could do.’

  ‘I won’t breathe a word.’

  ‘It’s a somewhat big deal,’ he said. ‘The department paid for my undergraduate degree one hundred percent. It was through a scholarship program that no longer exists. In principle it should have worked, but I think the results with the exception of me and half a dozen others weren’t so great. In exchange for promising a year of service to the department for each year of college, they paid for everything. Even a monthly allowance, which while it wasn’t great, did take care of the mac-and-cheese two boxes for a dollar on sale at Gristedes. And don’t get me wrong. I am extremely grateful, but what they don’t know is that while I was taking all of the social-work courses, making it look as though I’d go on for the master’s, I was also busting my butt to get in all the pre-med requirements.’

  ‘You’ve not finished your four years of payback,’ she said, realizing her guess at his age couldn’t be far off, and further upgrading this gorgeous man’s intelligence; pre-med with all of the chemistry, calculus, organic, micro, bio, and physics was hard enough, but to do it as a double major. This dude has serious IQ points.

  ‘I have another year to go.’

  ‘You’re twenty-four?’ she asked.

  ‘Five, and now who’s prying?’

  As they headed up the stairs, she figured the age difference. She was thirty-three, thirty-four in July, which wasn’t that far off. It was a solid eight or nine years, and what the hell are you thinking about anyway, she reminded herself. She thought of Hobbs, although he said he’d moved on, and then of Ralph, just over a year since he was run down coming home from the symphony.

  Back inside there was an excited buzzing of voices as everyone pulled facility maps from their folders and went in search of their respective rooms. ‘I think it’s close,’ Chase said, and again she noted how people snuck glances at him, a couple doing semi-comical double-takes, as if uncertain of what they’d seen. It was also one of those rare times where she tuned in to the looks she attracted from men. Most days it was something she shoved to the back of her awareness, always damping down her looks with a minimum of makeup and ultra-conservative clothing – mostly suits that she could wear to court. She’d learned to keep her eyes forward when walking the streets of New York, not acknowledging the frequent head turns, never making eye contact. But now, because of the proximity to Chase, she wanted to let herself meet the glance of the man with the graying hair who smiled and then looked away – obviously married – and then the social-worker type in the khakis, plaid shirt, and Birkenstocks who grinned widely when she returned his look.

  Chase turned and caught the exchange. ‘Friend of yours?’

  ‘No, just another schmuck who got pulled into this.’

  ‘Hmmm. I think this is ours,’ he said, looking at the number next to the door.

  The room was classroom size with chairs and tables arranged in a circle and a modest buffet on one side with coffee and hot-water urns. A smiling redhead in a green suit with a green-edged nametag – denoting that she was one of the consultants – greeted them. She looked first at their nametags – blue-edged. ‘Hi,’ she gushed, extending her hand first to Chase, ‘I’m Monica Fitzsimmons, I’ll be your facilitator.’ The woman’s high-wattage smile made Barrett’s teeth ache, and she did her best to be pleasant as the woman squealed, ‘Dr. Conyors! You’re our forensic expert, how thrilling that must be!’

  Fortunately, Monica had spotted the next arrival and moved on before Barrett could respond.

  Chase steered them to purple-and-gray upholstered office chairs close to the door and under his breath mimicked Monica’s voice and whispered, ‘How thrilling.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she warned, trying to hold back a giggle.

  ‘No really,’ he persisted, his imitation uncanny, ‘just thrilling!’

  She glanced down at the agenda on the table. ‘Oh no,’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve not been to many of these, have you?’

  ‘It’s my first,’ and then pitched his voice to a low growl. ‘I’m a virgin.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ She pointed at the top of the page. ‘Opening exercises are never good.’

  She wasn’t wrong, and as soon as Monica had checked off the last name on her list, ‘OK, it’s time to start. Everyone in your seats, and let’s get to work!’

  It could have been worse, at least Hugh had been assigned to another group and the opening exercise wasn’t a total waste. It involved going around one by one, saying your name, the agency you worked for, and why you were at the conference. The twenty or so people in her group were either counselors – like Chase – or upper management. Someone had actually given some thought to this, bringing together the people who worked with the kids and the people with enough administrative juice to make some changes.

  Monica kept things moving, and the woman had an endless supply of flipcharts and markers, taking down points and ideas while keeping up an energetic stream of ‘excellent’, ‘outstanding’, ‘perfect’. She was also adept at steering them back to the topic of how and why so many of these kids got involved with the legal system.

  An hour into the session she’d created an agenda, and at
the very top she’d written – Dissect the problem. As Chase was nonchalantly slipping Barrett a note, Monica turned to her. ‘Dr. Conyors, as a forensic psychiatrist, maybe you could take the first go at this.’

  Barrett looked up from Chase’s note, which had a single word on it – Lunch?

  ‘It’s not simple,’ she said, hiding his note under her hand, ‘and the people I evaluate who’ve been part of the system represent a sub-population. Although the more I hear today … maybe I need to rethink that. Basically, I work with adults who have both some form of mental illness and criminal behavior; the vast majority also have substance-abuse problems. By the time they get to me, it’s more damage control and for those with truly dangerous or predatory behavior – like rape and pedophilia – it’s about containment, and the level of risk that any community can tolerate in terms of putting them out in the world.’

  ‘OK,’ Monica said, indicating that Barrett wasn’t quite giving her the information she wanted, ‘let’s go backwards. From your perspective, how is it that they’ve ended up in your office?’

  Barrett looked around at the faces, men and women whose working lives were spent with these children. There’d be no need to dummy this down, if any group could get it, they would. ‘It starts early,’ she said. ‘Most of the young adults in the high-risk groups – the ones who’ve committed crimes, or display illegal sexual behaviors, or are involved with other high-risk activities like prostitution and substance abuse – have been through a series of traumas and separations, most starting at an early age. They get taken from home, put into foster care, then another foster home, at some point they’re molested, maybe at several points, they get shifted to a group home, they start to latch on to any adult who pays them attention or flatters them, but that’s all behavior we see on the outside. It’s what’s on the inside that’s more important to understand. With all of this disruption early in life, and I’m even talking about babies and before the child is able to talk, important developmental milestones are delayed or might never occur at all.’