Spinning (30 page)

“You promise?”

Tears started running down her cheeks. She not only looked sad, she looked scared. It was hard for me to believe that the Family Services people had her best interests in mind, if this was what they were doing to her.

“I promise,” I said. I tried to sound confident, but the words simply came out loud. I picked her up and gave her a hug. “I love you, Spring.”

She buried her head in my neck. I seriously considered the idea of slipping out the fire escape. I mean, I seriously considered it. I knew I could open Spring’s window without making too much noise, and once we were on the street, I knew we could disappear pretty easily. But life on the lam was not something I was willing to put Spring through, even considering the alternatives.

I held her quietly for another minute before I carried her to Mrs. Family Services. Before Spring would let go, she whispered something into my ear. For the first time since sharing Spring with Diane, I wasn’t embarrassed when she whispered a little too loudly. “D?” Her eyes welled up with tears. “I love you.” She’d never said it to me before. “Remember…you promised.”

Mrs. Heins took Spring, while one of the cops grabbed her backpack.

“Thursday at 1:00,” Mrs. Heins said, as though she needed to remind me. And then they were gone. I didn’t even get to kiss Spring goodbye one more time.

I turned around to my suddenly silent apartment. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend that Spring was playing in her bedroom. It was a useless exercise. Because I had pretended I could keep her like finding a puppy I had lost her. I hadn’t filed in the first 20 days because I didn’t think Spring would be with me that long. And when I finally decided that I couldn’t live without her, I tried to ignore the fact that what I was doing was completely illegal. People got away with a lot more every day.

Mr. Jimmy sat temporarily forgotten on the floor, his Teddy Bear face protruding from his duck suit. There was a knock. I picked up the stuffed animal and hurried to the door.

“Spring?” I said as I opened it.

“Did she get loose again?” It was Jim. “I brought the brewskies. We’ll need more pizza if Mr. Jimmy’s eating, too.”

I sat down on the floor.

I wanted to be alone, and although it took some persuading before I could get Jim to go, at least he left the beers. I tried getting wasted and couldn’t even get a second beer down my throat. This was unquestionably the first time in my life that had ever happened. A few days ago, I thought my life was tough because I couldn’t get a sandcastle to withstand a little wind. Now, every woman in my life who I had ever loved was gone.

I stared at Spring’s giant mural of her, Billie, and me holding hands. Just below the picture and to the right, in a stretch of wall not covered by paper, was another one. It was Spring’s rendition of The Angel of the Waters
Fountain at Bethesda Terrace that Diane, Spring, and I had visited on that first weekend of the rest of my life. Like the teenager who vows never to wash her hand again after touching a celebrity, I told myself that I would never move from this apartment because I needed to have this picture with me forever.

From deep below the silence, a lone echo offered counterpoint:
I promise… I promise… I promise…
I’d promised Diane’s spirit that I would take care of Spring. I’d promised Billie that I would be honest. I’d promised Spring that I would bring her home. It was too late for Diane. And Billie and Mr. 600 I.Q. were probably on their third Slow Screw by now. And as I sat there, I felt my third promise evaporating. Who was I to make that promise anyway? What possible right did I have to keep Spring? What did it matter that I loved her and would do anything to help her have a good life? What was love compared to the New York legal system?

It was almost 8:00 and time for Spring’s bath. But there wouldn’t be a bath tonight no story, song, or funny voices. What an awful way to discover that I needed the routine as much as Spring did. Tonight, it was just Mr. Jimmy and me, an under-responsible man and a stuffed toy whose last name I didn’t know.

They say that people who freeze to death ultimately surrender to the cold and embrace it. I realized that selfpity was a lot like that, and I allowed myself to be numbed by it for a few minutes more. Then I got up. I felt that if I didn’t do something that they’d ultimately find me sitting on the couch, bewilderment etched forever on my face. I went to the closet, removed the old relic of a suitcase and dumped it onto the bed. I had thrown all of Diane’s stuff into it, except a few pictures and the urn. The contents
spilled out; shirts and photos mixed with cards, the address book, and the thermos. The same old thermos that clanked when I shook it sat next to the address book with the mysterious
E
. I unscrewed the top, removed the sock and looked at the aluminum skeleton key. This key had the answer to secrets. I had known that for a long time. I just wasn’t sure I wanted those secrets revealed to me. After losing Diane, I didn’t want to lose Spring by finding her loser dad. But now I didn’t have the luxury of feeling that way.

I grabbed the address book and flipped through it for the bazillionth time, stopping where I always stopped: on the
S
page. I looked again at the
E
next to the telephone number
466-4642
and no area code. Diane’s picture, taken in front of Lake Michigan, smiled at me with her funny 90’s hair and wrinkle-free face.

I ran my fingers along the edges of the key and read,
4642
stamped at the top. The same number that was in the address book. I scanned the objects before me, hoping for a message to emerge.

Shirts, hats, deck of cards, the photo, a black and porous rock with a small hole, some paperbacks, an old candle; it was a suitcase full of trifles that didn’t remind me of Diane and didn’t send any messages at all. None of these things fit Diane or my image of her. Hadn’t I figured out who I was by trial and error? Not all of my things matched me. Like the Fishook Cactus or my pink hibiscus urn. Maybe Diane kept these items to mark some kind of evolution, the trying on of various personae en route to becoming the real Diane Sommers. Or maybe it didn’t match her because most of the stuff wasn’t hers at all. Was it the dad’s? Was it a collection of stuff that guys who had broken her heart had left behind?

These were mysteries I’d try to solve on another day, or maybe never. With the key, I had a place to start in my quest to keep Spring from Family Services although it could very likely lead me to losing her to another man.

I asked myself if I was ready for this. I hadn’t been up until now. And then it dawned on me that being ready had nothing to do with it.

While I’m not so sure how long I stared at Diane’s stuff, I was sure about what I needed to do: I needed to get Spring back. It had been only a few hours, but without her, my life seemed to leak from my heart like a small cracked plastic bucket used to form sandcastle memories.

It couldn’t have been very late maybe 9:00 but it took a few knocks for Jim to answer his door. He was wearing his boxers and a T-shirt, and his typically messy hair flew all over his head.

“Figured out how you’re going to get her back yet?” were his first words.

“I’m going to fight,” I said. “That much I know. But I’m not sure how to do it.”

“You need a beer.”

“Tried that already.”

“And an attorney.”

Of course I did.

“Amanda,” we both said.

“Should I call her now?” I followed Jim inside to his fridge. Now that we were moving in some direction, the beer sounded better again. “Do you think she’d mind getting this kind of call outside her office?”

“What difference does it make whether she minds or not? And I don’t think she likes you anyway.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Come on, D-Man. She thinks you’re shallow. Like your friends. Like me, Jimbo the Monkeyman.” He pointed at himself with a beer. “It’s that whole
you are the company you keep
thing. It doesn’t bother me…it’s just Amanda.”

“Shallow? How can she think I’m shallow? I always thought
she
was shallow.”

“Good to see that there’s never a point at which a challenge to your image can’t distract you from what needs to get done.”

He punched in Amanda’s number and handed me the phone.

“Jim?” Amanda answered, “I told you not…”

“Amanda, it isn’t Jim,” I said, looking at him a little confused. “This time. It’s Dylan Hunter. I’m very sorry to bother you, but I have a real problem. I was hoping we could meet.”

“Dylan, you sound horrible. What happened?”

“It’s about Spring. Family Services has taken her.”

“I hate those bastards. What about her adoption? How far are you in the process?”

“I never did the paperwork.”

“Shit, Dylan.”

“I know. I looked down at my unopened beer. “Amanda, there’s a temporary custody hearing scheduled for Thursday.”

“Thursday, got it. I’ll be by your office tomorrow anyway. Can we talk there?”

“Yeah, of course. We can talk on the Moon, if that would help.”

“Bring whatever papers you have, and anything that you think might work in our favor. This isn’t going to be easy. They can be real sons-of-bitches. But we’ll give it everything we can.”

“I understand. I’m trying to prepare myself for the worst, not that I’m doing a very good job of it.”

“You can prepare yourself for the worst…just don’t convince yourself of the worst. You have to believe that you can do this…that you’re supposed to do this.”

“Just talking to you makes me feel a little better.”

“There’s a first time for everything, huh?”

When I hung up the phone, I realized that Amanda had just said yes without thinking about it. She didn’t say that she had to check her schedule or with her assistant. She just said yes. She didn’t make fun of me, or make me feel small, or suggest in any way that she was grudgingly coming to my rescue. She just said yes. I opened my beer. I think Jim was on his second. Tonight, he had opened his door to whatever problems I had, just as he had on numerous occasions before. There were never any conditions with him, either. Somehow, through the loud music, disposable fashion, tequila, and inebriated waitresses, I had managed to hook up with some great people who would come through for me when I really needed them. I wondered if I would have done the same for them. I was very glad to realize that I would.

The caring hadn’t started with Diane and Spring. They’d just accelerated the process. For a moment, I thought about Billie. There was definitely stuff I had to deal with there. But it wasn’t anywhere on the agenda right now.

“All set?” Jim said.

“Yeah, she’s coming by the office tomorrow morning.”

“At least you’ve got someone in your corner now.”

“Yeah.” I leaned against a wall. “She said it might be tough.”

“Did she say it would be impossible?”

“No, she didn’t say that.”

“Then it’s not impossible. Amanda is nothing, if not honest.”

“Is there something about you two…?”

“Some other time.” He hesitated. “I was drinking, okay? Not exactly the point at the moment. The point is that if Amanda thinks it’s possible for you to get Spring back, then it’s possible.”

“She didn’t really say that.”

“Listen, D-Man, I’m not the king of pep talks. If you’re going to make this complicated, neither of us is going to wind up feeling better.”

I laughed.
First time in a while.

“Maybe this is nothing more than a test. Something to make sure that you are really, totally, 100-percent ready to take care of Spring.”

I smirked. “I didn’t need a test.”

Jim shrugged. “The other way of looking at this is that you screwed up and didn’t fill out a bunch of forms, and because of that you don’t deserve to have this little girl you love. Which would you prefer?”