“It’s okay,” I told Spencer. I didn’t know what else to say. There was no explanation I could give that would make sense to him, because it didn’t make sense to me. That this was happening at all felt preposterous. “You’re just going to Mom’s this week instead of next week.” I couldn’t imagine this would last any longer.
“It’s not okay! This week is Dad and Claire. Next week is Mom and Scott. Look on the calendar. This week is Dad and Claire!” He knelt on his bed and jabbed at the calendar hanging over the headboard. A weather calendar with historical weather facts for every day.
“What if we change the calendar?” I said. Sometimes this was all it took: for what was happening in Spencer’s world to align with what was supposed to happen. And for the zillionth time since I’d fallen in love with this boy six years before, I thought how wise he was. Because wasn’t this all most of us wanted? For the world to align with our image of it?
“We can’t. We can’t change it!” His voice rose in pitch. Unthinkingly, I touched his arm, his pajamas on inside out so the seams wouldn’t irritate him, and he jerked away. “This week is Dad and Claire. Next week is Mom and Scott. We can’t change weeks!” He hopped to the other side of his bed and, before I could stop him, started pulling things off his bookshelf—VCR tapes, a framed picture of him and Annabelle, his clock and tape recorder, books, CDs—and hurling everything to the floor.
“No, Spence, come on,” I said, keeping my voice calm. I knew this boy needed a better reason for why we were changing his routine without any warning, but I didn’t have it. I also knew it wasn’t the dumping everything to the floor that he needed but the putting it all back later, exactly as it had been. I understood this too, desperate to return our lives to the way they’d been this morning.
Spencer started kicking and thrashing, screaming, “Not okay, not okay, not okay!” I knew to let him be, but I got down on the floor with him and kept talking, reading him facts from his calendar. “Listen to this, Spence. On this day in 1950, Hurricane Easy—that’s kind of a funny name, isn’t it?—Hurricane Easy produced the second-greatest twenty-four-hour rainfall in the history of US weather—thirty-eight inches in Yankeetown, Florida. That’s more than three feet, kiddo.” Over and over, until finally Erik rushed into the room, followed by the girls. “We’re just going to Mom’s, Spence,” Hazel cooed, on her knees next to her brother. “No!” he screamed. “We can’t go to Mom’s, we can’t!” Erik ended up lying next to Spencer, holding his son in a tight hug, which often calmed him in the midst of a meltdown. “It’s okay, honey, it’s okay.” Erik’s cheeks were wet with tears, but I didn’t know if they were Spencer’s or if Erik was crying too.
“Let’s go make sure you have everything,” I said to the girls.
Erik was still with Spencer when Annabelle and Scott arrived. Annabelle wouldn’t acknowledge me, even as I silently begged her to please look at me. Instead, she opened her arms to the twins, who had been sitting in their nightgowns on the stairs. She was still dressed in what she must have worn to the lawyer’s: tailored navy pants and a cream-colored silk blouse, her hair clipped back from her face.
Scott stayed on the porch, staring out across the yard, hands shoved into his painter’s pants. The girls were bouncing up and down: “Why are we going to your house, Mom? Is it a surprise, is that why you didn’t call?” and “Whose house are we going to tomorrow?”
“Come on, come on,” Annabelle said, hurrying the girls along. “I’ll answer your questions in the car.” Hazel’s glasses were askew on her face, and I crouched to straighten them, but Annabelle moved between us and ushered Hazel quickly outside. I stayed in that crouched position for a minute, then stood slowly, feeling as if I’d been kicked.
I wanted to remind Annabelle that I’d been with these kids for six years, that I knew Hazel wanted to grow up to be the Little Mermaid, that Phoebe loved going to gift shops and picking out cards for everybody she cared about, and she always chose cards with rainbows or unicorns for Annabelle. Spencer’s favorite day was April Fool’s and he started making lists of pranks in January (changing the clocks, filling Oreos with toothpaste). The recipe he most wanted to make was mole because it had the “most ingredients of all!” Plus, he loved the name. “Mole?” he’d laugh in his staccato giggle, clapping with excitement. Did she understand I would do anything to make that boy happy, including going to three Spanish markets to find five kinds of chilies to make mole with him? But Annabelle was already nudging Phoebe to get in the car. Scott carried Hazel, while Erik followed, awkwardly walking a screaming, kicking Spencer to Annabelle’s SUV.
The echo of his howls scalded the air, and though I hated that he was so scared and confused and angry, his reaction seemed the only honest one. Shouldn’t we all have been howling and screaming? Shouldn’t we all have been fighting this? I wondered what would have happened if Erik had told Annabelle there was no way in hell she was taking the kids. She wouldn’t have called Child Protection or involved the police—she would never traumatize her children like that—but we were too fucking scared and guilty to realize it.