David cringed at the firmness in Delores’s voice. To his surprise, the boy giggled. “My mam says the same thing.”
“Well, she’s right.” Delores’s voice was matter-of-fact, with not a trace of the judgment or indignation that David felt every time he heard Anton mention his mother.
“One time we went to Dairy Queen and I ate so many scoops, I got a tummyache.”
“Well, we don’t want any tummyaches tonight. Right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Anton sounded subdued, but he cast a bashful look at Delores, and they smiled at each other.
Unbelievable, David said to himself as he began loading the dishwasher. Delores was unbelievable. Crisis averted. Thank God.
He strained to hear what they were chatting about in the dining room but couldn’t. When he walked back into the dining room, Delores rose. “Well, kiddo,” she said briskly, “we’ve all had a long day. I still have a headache, and you must be tired. Let’s have you brush your teeth and get into bed, yes?”
Anton shook his head vigorously. “Uh-uh. I’m not tired. Can I watch TV?”
Delores looked at David, but before he could respond, she said, “Not tonight. You need to rest.”
“But I’m not tired. At home, Mam lets me watch TV any time I want.”
For the first time since he’d brought Anton home, David saw Delores purse her lips. “We have different rules here, Anton. And we can discuss those tomorrow. But first, let’s get you changed.”
Without warning, the boy burst into tears. “I don’t want to stay here,” he said. “I wanna go home.”
David looked uncertainly at his wife, who flashed him a warning look. I’ll handle this, the look said. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “But that’s not an option. Now, come on, let’s go up to your room.”
The boy flung a look of hatred at Delores. “It’s not my room. It’s not my house. You’re not my mom. I’m going home.”
“Okay,” Delores said heavily. “Okay. You wanna go home? Fine. You can go tomorrow. We’ll drive you back to Children’s Services tomorrow morning. But tonight we all have to go to bed.”
Her words startled Anton enough that the crying decreased in volume. “But I . . . don’t want to . . . go to Children’s Services,” he said between sobs. “I . . . miss my mom.”
“Oh, honey, of course you do.” In one graceful movement Delores leaned toward the sobbing boy and embraced him. “And I’m sure your mommy misses you, too.”
Anton raised his head to look at Delores. “Jon said Mam left me alone because she hates me.”
“Oh, baby, that’s just not true. Who’s Jon?”
“One of the kids at Mr. Brent’s house. My foster brother.”
David had a flash of insight. “Is that the kid you punched?”
It pleased him to no end that Anton looked embarrassed before he nodded. “I just wanted him to shut up,” he mumbled.
“I don’t blame you,” Delores said loudly. “I’d have punched him, too.”
It was exactly the right thing to say. Watching the look on Anton’s face, David knew that immediately. How did she do it, Delores? How did she always know how to reach deep into a person’s wounds and drain the muck that festered there?
“Listen,” she was saying, “I want you to remember what I’m telling you now. Your mommy loves you. She always will. And your mom didn’t leave you. She just . . . got held up somewhere. You understand? You know how sometimes you don’t want to do something bad but you just do? Well, grown-ups do that, too. They make mistakes. So your mommy made a mistake. But she would never, ever not love you, Anton. I promise.”
His wife and the boy were staring solemnly at each other, as if sharing some unspoken language, and David suddenly felt like the third wheel. He cleared his throat. “Well, okay. Hey, do you have some clothes to sleep in tonight, sport? Tomorrow we’ll go buy you some clothes, okay? Would you like that?”
Slowly, Anton turned toward David, his amber eyes sparkling from his earlier tears. “Okay,” he said, and rose from the table.
David waited on the bed in Anton’s room as the boy used the attached bathroom. When he came out, he was wearing a Michael Jordan T-shirt and blue shorts. “You like him?” David asked, pointing to the T-shirt.
“I love him,” Anton breathed.
“Me, too,” David said. “Maybe we can go see him play sometime.”
Anton threw him a sly look, as if he had caught David in a lie. “He’s in Chicago.”
“Sure.” David shrugged. “But he plays elsewhere, too, right? So we can maybe catch him at an away game sometime.”
Anton’s eyes grew wide with excitement and disbelief. But then his face fell. “That nice lady said she’s taking me to Children’s Services in the morning.”
David patted the bed. “Come sit here.” He turned slightly to face the boy. “Anton. Here’s the deal. We would like it very much if you would stay with us for a while. If you’d let us be your foster parents and let us take care of you. So what do you say, sport?”
“What about my mam?”
“Your mom will always be your mom. But you can spend some time with us, right? Just until your mom can . . . get back on her feet.” Even as David said this, the thought of the boy returning to a life of poverty and addiction produced a chalky feeling in his mouth.
But no time now to parse his feelings, because he was flooded by a sudden memory. His first day at Phillips Exeter. Away from his parents for the first time, friendless, unfamiliar with the routine of a boarding school, he couldn’t have felt more alone if he’d been marooned on the moon. And scared. Lord, he’d been scared. Everything that had previously seemed routine—whether or not to raise his hand in class, whether to tell a joke to a group of boys—now had to be thought through and analyzed. He had walked around terrified, lonely, cut off from the world, until Connor Stevens, who had already been there for a term, had befriended him, picked him up like a stray puppy and rescued him. Then everything had changed.
“Hey,” David said. “I’ve been there. I know what you’re going through. But listen, it’ll get better, okay? We’ll have fun this summer, okay? Can you just hang in there a bit? You know, just give us a chance?”
When Anton smiled, it lit up his face like the morning sun. David felt anew the shock of his beauty. Unbidden, the lines from Yeats’s “The Living Beauty” entered his mind:
From beauty that is cast out of a mould
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears
He ran his fingers through the boy’s cropped hair, realizing it was the first time he’d ever touched black hair. How soft, how familiar, how organic it seemed, like wool on a lamb, this thing that they all feared so.
He heaved himself up from the bed. At the door, he lingered. “Listen. Our room’s right next door to yours. If you’re scared or can’t fall asleep, you just call for me, okay?” He waited until Anton nodded. “Good night, Anton. Sweet dreams.”
“’Night.”