“What is your relationship to the boy?”
A tough question that, and I really didn’t know how to answer. “I’m his . . .” What? Mother clearly wasn’t an option anymore. Babysitter did not convey the half of it. Aunt, cousin, in-law—these rung closer to truth but were really, of course, farther away. Friend seemed a small, cold, distant answer. And one I wasn’t sure Jill would vouch for any more than the one I’d started with. “We share custody,” I finally tried. “I live with him and take care of him.” And then, “I love him,” I added, though no one had asked that. The one cop exchanged a glance with the other and looked at me steadily, coolly.
“Why is he sick?” she said.
I can only imagine my face went to surprise, displaying the confusion with which my brain processed this question, because the officer softened visibly before I even answered.
“I have no idea,” I managed.
“Did you give the child anything?” asked the corner officer.
“No!” Again aghast, confused, appalled as I caught on to what they were thinking.
“When was the last time you saw the child?”
“I’ve been in Vancouver all week, but I was with him all afternoon yesterday and last night. If anyone had known something was wrong this week, they’d have called me at my parents’ house. When I got home, he seemed fine, and no one said anything, so they must have thought he was fine too.”
“You didn’t see him this morning?” said corner cop.
“No. I got up early to teach then spent the afternoon in the library.”
“Where do you teach?” asked backwards cop.
“Rainier University.” They looked impressed. Important note: when being arrested, it is useful to have an impressive-sounding job.
“Who is the boy’s mother?” asked corner cop.
“Jill. Jill Mattison.”
“And his father?”
I rolled my eyes. I may have gnashed my teeth. I sighed and shook my head and finally admitted, “Daniel Davison,” with as much equivocation as I could shove into those two words.
“And you and Jill are . . . lovers?” asked backwards cop.
“No,” I laughed, and both looked confused again. Suddenly I understood that they’d worked this all out in their heads—Jill and I were lovers raising her and Daniel’s baby. Jill was undecided, thinking of going back to Daniel. I was getting the shaft, dumped by my girlfriend who was trying to take the child I had helped raise as my own. This was a lovers’ tiff. Nothing more. Silly lesbians.
I saw too that this narrative garnered their sympathy. It explained why the boy would be mine but not mine, why I would consider him my son even though I lacked a birth certificate to prove it, why I lied, and why Jill was so angry, and it clearly put me in the wronged-and-harmless-victim box. I was loath to give up this advantage. But though it wasn’t too far from the truth, it wasn’t quite there either.
“Jill and I are best friends,” I confessed. “She got pregnant. The father left. We’re in grad school so we don’t have much money. Our other friend Katie and I moved in with her, and we all raise the baby together. Our friend Jason, who brought Atlas in to the hospital, also helps. We take shifts on the childcare thing and also bathing, feeding, whatever else needs to be done. I was there when he was born and nearly every day since. I have taken care of him like he’s my own. Jill and Katie have both been pretty distracted lately, so I’ve taken up the slack. It’s a joint arrangement. I didn’t birth him, but essentially, he’s my son.”
A little paragraph that, a short, simple, entirely true explanation. To my ears, it sounded perfectly reasonable. To my ears, it put me totally in the right. How could anyone who loved him have the heart to leave him alone in an emergency room? And how could anyone doubt I loved him? And then how could anyone blame me for this?
They looked convinced. But not moved. Not one way or the other. “Wait here,” said one or the other. I’m not sure which. I was looking at the table by then, the floor. I had become very small, sad, and darkly. Worried scared angry and waiting.
Thirty-two
“What the fuck did you tell them?”
The door banged open sometime later, and there was Jill, red-faced, furious, yelling already, with Daniel Davison in tow and corner cop who closed the door with a pointed look—at whom I wasn’t sure—behind us all.
“What the fuck did you tell them?” I said wearily, exhausted already.
“I told them the truth. I told them you were lying and trying to keep us from our baby.” At first I took this “our” to mean our, hers and mine, but then I realized she meant “our,” hers and Daniel’s. She was ranting in paragraphs. It was hard to keep up.
“They said would Janey want to kidnap the baby, and I said you might. They said would she have given him something to make him sick, and I said you might. They said were you acting strange lately, and I said you were. They said could I think of any reason you would want to keep us from our baby, and I said yes, I could think of lots of reasons. I told them you were experiencing unnatural attachment and maternal delusions and you were angry at the father and you wanted to hurt me. They said were you alone with the baby in the last twenty-four hours, and I said you were. They said did I think you would poison Atlas or give him something to make him sick on purpose like to get attention or control or something, and I said yes I thought you might.”
“Is that because you’re insane or just evil?” I asked, mock-mild, but unable to pull it off so hard was I shaking. I couldn’t even meet her gaze let alone stand.
“I don’t know, Janey. Which are you? What was I supposed to say? Jason called me and said he’d been trying for hours. Atlas is in the ER; he won’t wake up; no one knows why. We rush over there, but they won’t let us back there to see him because it’s immediate family only, and his mother’s already with him. I said I’m his mother, and they wouldn’t believe me. Even Jason vouched for me, but they wouldn’t let me back there. When I went home and got the birth certificate, that’s when they started asking questions. And I’m thinking when I left he was fine, and now he’s in the ER with you. What was I supposed to think?”
“We didn’t bring up poison or purposely making him sick,” Daniel put in more gently, half embarrassed, half scolding me, “but once they did, it scared us. We don’t understand how he could have gotten so sick so quickly. You promise to take good care of him, but then all of a sudden he’s in the hospital, and we can’t even see him.” There was a pause during which I imagined backwards cop and corner cop behind the two-way glass calling for backup from the irony cops under whose jurisdiction this clearly fell. “If you gave him something, Janey, please, please tell us now so we’ll have more time. The tox screens will save him anyway, but it would be better—for everyone—if you told us right away.”
It was hard to know where to start. I lacked enough energy for screaming anger and bred-in-the-bone fury and caustic silence and quiet freezing truth all, so I had to choose among them. I do not like yelling. I do not like confrontation. I tried to choke back everything. And what came out instead was tears. It was either going to be tears or laughter I guess. The latter secures dignity and the aura of high ground. But there was already too much lost there.