Dinner was casual in this new foster house. In the last one the whole family sat down at the dinner table every night and stared at each other. Here, Mark, who was their son, not their foster son, often took his dinner into the den. Angie set herself up at the kitchen table to feed that sad baby, as Chance called her to himself. Doug and Angie didn’t eat until later, when the baby was asleep, if she fell asleep. And there didn’t seem to be any good place for Chance to eat his dinner, at least not after that first night.
The baby’s name was Louise. Her mother had left her at the hospital after she was born. She had been sick and had to stay in the hospital for a long time. Then a family had adopted her. But she had been too sad for them. They had wanted a happy baby. And so they had given her back. After that, Angie and Doug had taken her in as a foster child. Two months later they took Chance in too.
Louise was still sad. She cried all the time. She screamed and screamed. She screamed in the nighttime and in the daytime. She screamed in her crib and in her high chair and in Angie’s and Doug’s arms. Chance had a pretty good idea about why she was so sad. After all, he knew all about being abandoned and being given back. He was glad that Angie and Doug kept Louise. They held her tight, wrapped in her blanket. They sang to her and talked to her.
Sometimes they seemed tired. Sometimes they even snapped at him or at Mark. But they never seemed to think of sending anybody back.
On that first day, a Sunday, his caseworker had dropped him off in the afternoon. She had come into the house for a few minutes and had offered to stay longer, but he had brushed her away. “I’m okay,” he had mumbled.
She had looked at him hard for a moment. “I’ll be checking in next week,” she had said. Then she had gone.
The house was quiet that afternoon. The baby was napping for once, and Mark was at some kind of sports event. Mark had wanted to be here to meet Chance, Angie said, but his coach was strict and couldn’t spare him. Chance knew she was lying. The sons and daughters of foster parents never wanted him or any other foster kid around.
“We thought that maybe it would be easier for you to get to know us gradually, grown-ups first. And Louise,” Angie said. Her smile was so big and warm that Chance was almost taken in. Almost. “You’ll meet Mark tonight at dinner,” she went on. “We’re roasting a chicken to celebrate. I even cleared the table in the dining room, so we can have dinner together for once!”
Angie did seem nice. So did Doug. They showed him through the house, especially his room, where they put his bags. Then they led him into the kitchen and doled out milk and cookies. But his head felt stuffy and swollen, heavy on his shoulders. And pain ran up and down his back and legs. They didn’t know him yet. This was just another in a long line of houses and apartments, of smiling grown-ups with milk and cookies. Those smiles never lasted more than a few weeks.
“Could I go to my room?” Chance said, his eyes on the table.
“There are lots of puzzles and crayons and games, tons of Lego, in the front room. You could take your cookies in there if you like,” Doug said, his voice coaxing. Chance didn’t have to look up to know that he was giving Angie a worried look.
“I just want to go to my room,” Chance repeated. He knew that he sounded stubborn, that he was supposed to be grateful, to smile back. His caseworker, June, was always telling him those things. But he didn’t have a smile in him.
“All right,” said Angie. “Take some of these along. You must be starving,” she added, folding his fingers around two enormous oatmeal cookies. Chance was not hungry. His throat felt as if it was full of rapidly hardening cement, but he took the cookies.
He froze halfway up the stairs as a horrible wailing poured forth from one of the bedrooms, the room that Angie and Doug had not shown him on their tour. “That’s the baby’s room,” they had said. “She’s napping.” He had not known then what a miracle that nap was.
Angie came up the stairs behind him. “Well, I guess she’s awake,” she said lightly as she passed him. “I hope her racket won’t bother you too much.” The wailing turned to screaming, screaming that did not die down when Angie went into the bedroom. Keeping as far from the baby’s door as he could, Chance made his way to his own bedroom.
Closing the door behind him, he stood and looked.
He was in a small room with a big window right in front of him. The curtains were open, revealing a few trees and the next house, gray and plain. In front of the window was a desk. It had a small black metal lamp on it, a red mug holding a few pens and pencils, a new box of pencil crayons and a thick pad of paper. A small backpack sporting the logo of the local basketball team hung over the back of the chair. To the right of the desk stood a bedside table and then a bed. The bed had a blue spread on it, same color as the curtains. Chance’s small suitcase and sports bag were sitting on top of the spread. Two posters were tacked onto the wall above the bed. One showed all the planets in orbit around the sun. The other showed the night sky, with the Big Dipper dead center. The bedside table had a clock radio and another black metal lamp.
A card was propped up against the lamp. He hadn’t noticed it when Doug and Angie had shown him the room earlier. On the card was a picture of some men and boys fishing.
Chance walked across to the bed and sat down. He put the cookies on the table and picked up the card. First he looked at the picture for a long time. It showed three men and two boys in a big rowboat. They were in the middle of a lake. Every one of them was sprawled in the boat, holding a fishing pole, some sort of hat pulled down over his eyes. Five fishing lines entered the still water. Mist rose gently into the bright sky. The cement in Chance’s throat threatened to crack.
He opened the card. It was full of words. Happy words, he was sure. Welcoming words. He looked at the words for even longer than he had looked at the picture. Then he laid the card down flat, picked up the cookies and dropped them into the wastepaper basket beside the desk, lay down on the bed and turned his back to the room, the house, the crying baby, and the kind and happy people.