“Honey, it’s our time to have fun together. Let’s get ice cream.”
Jane steps in. She speaks in an affected, baby-talk voice. “Gracie, I don’t want you to go, but your dad says you have to.”
Gracie cries, “No.”
Jane says, “These are the rules.”
The stress is going to break me. I write and work and raise a child, while Jane collects welfare and gets high. Why can’t I get high? Drink myself blind and come to behind a bar in western Maryland, covered in piss and dirt, left to piece together the night before using hand stamps and bruises.
Jane buckles Gracie into her car seat and closes the door. Jane and I are standing outside of the car. Pink scars twitch across the bridge of her nose.
I say, “You’ve been strung out for three years, and it’s my fault you don’t get to see your kid more.”
“We both just have today.”
“You have track marks on your hands.”
“You’re harassing me. I’ll call the police.”
“Good. Call them. Please.”
“Don’t argue in front of my daughter.”
When I get in the car to leave, Jane runs behind me so I can’t back up.
At least Gracie isn’t crying anymore. She’s sitting in her car seat playing with her fairies. “Daddy, what’s Mommy doing?”
“I don’t know, sweetie.”
I try to pull ahead through the side yard onto the cross street. Jane runs in front me.
I get out. “You’re insane.”
“You’re not taking my daughter.” She runs up and shoves me. I put my hands above my head in surrender.
Jane screams, “Don’t put your hands on me,” and shoves me.
“Get out of the fucking way,” I say. And I wonder what it would feel like to punch Jane square in the face. Feel her glasses break and her nose explode. Blood on my knuckles, getting stuck under my nails. I’d wind up in county jail, maybe in the writing class I used to teach. Maybe I’d talk to some MFA student about how much I miss my kid while he praises my work for its realness. Get it all on the page. Write through the pain. My life would be over. I’d see Gracie for two hours a month in some Lysol-smelling room in a building in Penn Hills with a social worker taking notes, while we play with worn toys on a bald gray carpet.
I keep my hands up.
Jane hits me in the chest. Then her eighty-seven-year-old grandfather hobbles outside. “Don’t you touch her.” Grandpa picks up a rake.
This is what my life has become. My drug-addled baby’s mom and her rake-wielding, arthritic grandfather, attacking me on their front lawn.
Back in the car, I inch forward, like I’m going to cut through the yard. When Jane tries to get in front of me, I whip it into reverse and drive backward out the driveway and down the street. Jane sprints after the car.
“Daddy, what’s Mom doing?”
“Exercising.”
We get out of the development, drive a few miles. Flashing lights spin in the rearview. I pull over. A cop comes to the window, carrying a stuffed moose.
He says my name like it’s a question. Please step out of the car.
The cop opens the back door and hands Gracie the moose. She says thank you, looks curiously at the doll, then drops it on the seat next to her.
I get out of the car and explain the situation as best I can.
FEBRUARY 2012
At a Rite-Aid near Hampton, Jane is arrested and charged with shoplifting, possession of a controlled substance, paraphernalia, and child endangerment.
Jane pleads to misdemeanor possession of prescription drugs. I don’t find out about the charges until the following summer.
I enroll Gracie in kindergarten at a magnet school in the city.
AUGUST 2012
A month before the start of the school year, Jane tells me she signed Gracie up for another year of preschool in Shaler. She claims I never told her about kindergarten.
I have to go to court just to get my five-year-old daughter into school.
The judge rules Gracie will go to kindergarten in the city. A new custody schedule is set: a fifty-fifty split.
When Gracie stays with me, we go mini-golfing. We color and play cards and have tea parties. I let her draw on our apartment walls and they’re still covered in seven years’ worth of stars and trees and clouds of every color. Phrases from children’s songs she writes in her loopy block lettering. For a while, I have a modicum of normalcy and routine. Gracie is happy. Kindergarten comes easy for her.
HALLOWEEN 2012
Gracie is inside dressed as a fairy, playing with her aunt. Jane is nodding out on the front steps. I walk up the driveway. “You are fucked up.”
“It’s my medication.”
Her eyes close and she burns her pants with a cigarette.
“Wake up. You’re falling over.”
NOVEMBER 2012
Jane checks herself into rehab.
I tell Gracie her mom went away to school for a month, and will be back soon. Jane writes Gracie heartbreaking letters that I’ll probably never show anyone.
After rehab, Jane moves into a halfway house for single mothers. Fridays, I pick up Gracie from school and we drive to the group home in Carrick. “Mom has roommates now. Tell me if any of them are ever not nice to you, okay?”
“Okay, Dad. Love you, Dad.”
On Saturday nights, Gracie stays with her grandmother. She stays with me Sunday night through the end of the school week.
FEBRUARY 2013
Jane leaves the halfway house early, and ODs in the bathroom at her mother’s house. She lives. I don’t find out about the overdose until almost a year later.
Jane moves back in with her grandmother.
Everything is calm until November. When I get a Facebook message from this guy Steve, an ex of Jane’s, who goes on a rant about Jane getting high and all kinds of shit I wish I didn’t have to take seriously. He keeps asking to buy me lunch in Butler. I decline. I tell Jane she needs to take another drug test. For the first time, she
