Yeah, just in case everything else was too subtle, pal…
Between the countless case studies I’ve read and the handful of actual murder cases I’ve been involved with as a forensic witness, I’ve had both a front-row seat and a backstage pass to the ultimate freak show, the things killers do to announce their horrific intentions. Really sick and depraved stuff.
This guy going to town on my photo, on the other hand, was pretty tame by comparison. Still, for the first time, I wasn’t looking at some stranger, a person I didn’t know and had never met. I was looking at me.
On this day of all days, too.
“You’re late!” Tracy called out from the kitchen before I’d set two feet in our apartment. “Hurry up and shower.”
Normally, I would’ve cracked a joke along the lines of, “My day was good, thanks for asking,” but that little touch of sarcasm would’ve only brought Tracy out of the kitchen to actually ask how my day was, and it just didn’t feel like the right moment to announce that there might be some crazed lunatic out there who wants to kill me.
So instead I hurried up and showered.
“What are you going to wear?” asked Tracy, appearing in the doorway of the bathroom minutes later as I was toweling myself dry.
“Let me guess,” I said, although I was hardly guessing. “Whatever you just laid out for me on the bed?”
“That depends. Were you about to throw on some old jeans and a T-shirt?”
Guilty as charged. “Yep.”
“Then, yeah,” said Tracy with a laugh. “What I just laid out for you on the bed.”
“You do realize the whole purpose of this visit is so they can see that we’d be normal parents,” I said. “How much more normal does it get than jeans and a T-shirt?”
“Do you think the gentleman interviewing us will also be wearing jeans and a T-shirt?” asked Tracy.
Rats, outsmarted again. No wonder we’re together…
“Hey, how do you know it’s a guy who’s coming?” I asked.
“Don’t you remember? We briefly met him,” said Tracy. “Barbara introduced us.”
Barbara was the head of the adoption agency. “Trust the process,” she told us during our initial screening meeting. “It will feel like hell sometimes, but it will all be worth it.”
Amen. There’s nothing on this planet that Tracy and I want more than a child of our own to love. It’s just so dangerous to get our hopes up too much, though.
“Oh, yeah, I remember that guy,” I said. “He looked like Mr. French.”
“That’s another thing,” said Tracy. “No obscure references during the interview.”
“What do you mean? Family Affair isn’t obscure. Uncle Bill, Buffy, Jody…Mr. French? It’s a television classic.”
Tracy gave me “the Look.” I never fared well against the Look.
“Okay,” I said. “No jeans, no T-shirt, and no classic television show references. Anything else?”
Tracy came over with a kiss and a smile. “Don’t get me started.”
Shortly thereafter, the doorbell rang. I tucked in my button-down and straightened out the pleats on my very respectable-looking khakis before joining Tracy at the door.
Trust the process. Let the home interview begin.
Too bad it was over before it even started.
Chapter 7
“OH,” SAID the woman. It was one measly little word.
But, oh, the way she said it…
She was standing in the hallway and staring at us, wondering if she had the right apartment. She quickly checked the clipboard in her hand. Once, then twice.
“Dylan and Tracy?” she finally asked.
“Yes, that’s right,” I said as cheerfully as I could.
Again she checked her clipboard. “Yes, well, then…I’m Ms. Peckler from the Gateway Adoption Agency. Mr. Harrison had a family emergency this afternoon, so I was asked to step in,” she said. “You were expecting him, correct?”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Tracy, albeit far less cheerfully.
Shit. The fuse was lit.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, Tracy was the calm and patient one while I was the loose cannon, the sufferer of no fools. But look out for that damn 1 percent of the time.
For instance when a priggish woman with a clipboard says “Oh” with just the wrong kind of inflection.
To most people it would have all the resonance of a dog whistle, but for those of us who have been on the receiving end of it more times than we’d ever care to remember, it might as well have been screamed through a bullhorn.
Still.
“Please don’t,” I whispered out of the side of my mouth.
Tracy turned to me. “Don’t what?”
“It’s the name thing,” I said. “She didn’t—”
“It’s not my name she has a problem with,” said Tracy.
“What’s going on?” asked Ms. Peckler.
Bad question, lady.
“What’s going on is that it doesn’t matter how many times you look down at that clipboard of yours, because every time you look up I’m still going to be a dude,” said Tracy.
Boom, there it was.
“Excuse me?” said Ms. Peckler.
“I think you heard me,” said Tracy.
“I don’t think I like what you’re insinuating,” said Ms. Peckler, placing her nonclipboard hand firmly against her hip.
“Then I’ll ask you very clearly,” said Tracy, his law school degree kicking in, as it often did when he wanted to cut to the chase. “Do you personally have a problem with two gay men wanting to adopt a baby?”
I so wanted Tracy to be wrong on this one. I wanted Ms. Peckler, all prim and proper with pearls, to set the record straight—that she didn’t have time to read our case file and had assumed that Tracy would be a woman, understandably so, and that her “Oh” was nothing more than the surprise of realizing she was mistaken.
This was the Upper West Side of Manhattan, after all, the supposed tolerance capital of the world.
But it was wishful thinking, and I knew it. I heard what Tracy heard. After a few seconds of silence—which also spoke volumes—Ms. Peckler essentially confirmed it.
“What I personally think of the lifestyle choice you two have made is separate from the job I have to do,” she said. “I’m a professional, and I’m insulted that you would accuse me of being otherwise.”
Lifestyle choice?
Tracy turned to me again. “I don’t really know where to begin with that,” he said.
Nor did I. But I gave it my best shot. “You know, this reminds me of an episode of Family Affair…”
By then Ms. Peckler was already halfway down our hallway, heading to the elevator.
I closed the door. The sound of the latch catching—snap!—jolted Tracy out of the moment.
“Oh, Christ, what have I done?” he asked.
We’d been married for four years. We were a couple for three years before that and had first met almost fifteen years ago, in college. By now we could do more than finish each other’s sentences; we could start them. We always seemed to know what the other was thinking, and this was no different.