“I know he wants to live with you. I know you want to be his mother—”
Lucy didn’t let her finish. “Christopher’s getting older. He’s asking more questions. He can tell his foster mother isn’t crazy about dealing with him and the twin babies she’s also fostering.”
“Catherine Bailey and her husband are one of our best families. He’s lucky to have them.”
“I would be better for him. He has a strong attachment to me,” she said. Childhood attachment was important. She knew that. Mrs. Costa knew that.
“They feed him, clothe him, put a roof over his head, keep him safe, make sure he does his schoolwork, and Mrs. Bailey shows up prepared to every court hearing, every team meeting…What more do you want?”
“I want him to be loved. They don’t love him. Not like I do.”
Mrs. Costa exhaled heavily. “That isn’t a crime.”
Lucy interrupted. Her voice was so sharp even she was surprised by her vehemence. “It should be.”
“Listen to me,” Mrs. Costa said. There was a gentleness to her voice that forced Lucy to meet her eyes. “I would give that boy to you this minute if I could. If love were enough, you’d be the perfect person to adopt him.”
Lucy waited. Her stomach knotted up. She knew what was coming because she’d heard it all before. “But—”
“Right. But. You will never pass the home study. Not with things as they are right now. You’re in a lot of credit-card debt, Lucy. You don’t have access to reliable transportation. You live with three roommates in a house that’s one grease fire away from going up in smoke. Oh, and one of those roommates has a recent DUI conviction. Even if we got you enrolled in all the public assistance available to you, you still wouldn’t be able to afford appropriate housing and a car. I mean, Lucy, think about it—if I sent Christopher home with you today, where would he sleep? On the floor of your bedroom?”
“I’d sleep on the floor. He can have the bed.”
“Lucy—”
“We get money, right? Foster parents get a stipend from the state. I’d use it to get us better housing.”
“You need to have appropriate housing before you foster a child.”
“Look,” Lucy said and pulled out the Foster Facts brochure. “It says right here that kids in foster care are seven times more likely to suffer from depression and five times more likely to have anxiety than other kids. And four times more likely to go to jail. You want me to keep going?” She waved the brochure. “Isn’t living in my crappy house for a couple of months a small price to pay for saving him? He needs a real mom. He’s better off with me than with someone just going through the motions.”
“The motions are pretty darn important too. I know you think kids need nothing but love, but a strong dose of stability doesn’t hurt either. I hate to say it, but your life is currently not stable enough for a child. He has school. He has therapy sessions twice a week. And what happens when he wakes up sick and needs medicine in the middle of the night, and the only pharmacy open is ten miles away? Wait two hours for a bus? Wake up one of your roommates and ask them to drive you? Ride your bike at four a.m. on a highway?”
“I can borrow one of their cars. I can—”
Mrs. Costa waved her hand, cutting her off. “You need a new job.”
Lucy tried explaining that she’d planned on teaching but couldn’t afford the classes she needed, the license and certification fees.
“A second job then?” Mrs. Costa said.
“If I got a second job, I’d never see Christopher. He doesn’t use phones, totally terrified of them. You would be, too, right? You’re asking me to abandon him.”
“I’m asking you to make some hard choices.”
“Right, because all the choices I’ve been making lately have been so easy.”
“Lucy, Lucy, Lucy…” Mrs. Costa shook her head. “I know you’ve heard it takes a village to raise a child. Where’s your village? Where’s your support system?”
“I don’t have one, okay? My parents only cared about my sister. Still do. I lived with my grandparents, and they’re gone. I don’t have anybody anymore.”
“What about your sister?”
Lucy snorted a laugh. “Didn’t you hear me? She was my parents’ favorite. We haven’t talked in years either.”
“Well…she might regret that? Ever think about that? Maybe give her a call, see about getting some support in your life.”
“I would sell my bodily organs on the black market before I’d call my sister begging for money.”
Mrs. Costa crossed her arms, sat back. “Then I’m afraid I don’t know how to help you if you won’t help yourself.”
Lucy blinked away tears. “You should have seen the look on his face when I told him it might be another two years or more until I had enough money saved up for a car and an apartment. You would have thought I’d said twenty years. Or forever.” Lucy held out her hands, her empty hands. “Poor people should be allowed to have children. Shouldn’t they?”
“Yes, yes, yes, of course they should,” Mrs. Costa said. “Although I also believe poor children shouldn’t have to be poor. But they didn’t put me in charge of that.”
“There has to be a way,” Lucy said, leaning forward, her eyes imploring. “Isn’t there anything?”
“If I believed in miracles, I’d say hope for one, but…I haven’t seen any miracles lately.” Mrs. Costa had the same hollow look in her eyes as some of the teenagers out in the waiting room. “It might be time to tell Christopher it’s not going to happen.”
Lucy shook her head. “What? I can’t. I just…I can’t do that.”
What had her ex said to her? People like us shouldn’t have kids, Goose. We’re too fucked-up. Fucked-up people fuck up their kids. You’d be as bad a mother as I’d be a father…
She forced the words from her head. Tears ran down her face. With a graceful gesture that surely came from years of practice, Mrs. Costa reached behind her without even looking and pulled a few tissues out of the tissue box and offered them to Lucy.
“The last time I spoke with Christopher,” Mrs. Costa continued, “he said you and he play a wishing game. You both make all kinds of wild wishes. You know it doesn’t work like that, right? You know wishes don’t come true just because you want them to badly enough?”
“I know that.” Lucy’s voice was hard to her own ears, hard and bitter. “But I wanted Christopher to have…I don’t know. Hope?”
“Did you give him hope?” Mrs. Costa asked. “Or did you just get his hopes up?”
Outside the office door was a waiting room full of people in need, people much worse off than Lucy, and kids who were even worse off than Christopher.
“I can tell him if you want,” Mrs. Costa offered. “I’ll go to the Baileys’ house and have a little heart-to-heart with him. I’ll tell him I made the decision, and it’s not your fault.”
It was a kind offer to do a terrible thing. Lucy almost wanted to take her up on it, but she knew that was the coward’s way out.