The door opened to reveal a short, heavyset black woman. Her breasts were half her body, it seemed to Ana. “Hello,” said the woman matter-of-factly, as if they were there to sell her something she might or might not want to buy. “Come in.”
But the apartment was sunny and clean—Ana felt relief. A stack of children’s books sat by the sliding door that led to a tiny balcony where a child could slip through the bars, dropping to the parking lot below, James thought.
A tall, stoop-shouldered woman stood up from the couch and offered her hand. “I’m Ann Silvan, Finn’s caseworker, and this is Mrs. Bailey,” she said.
Mrs. Bailey had moved over to stand by a makeshift mantel, a shelf right above where a fireplace might go, and a row of thumb-size glass animals. Above that, along the wall in matching gold frames, were dozens of photographs of children and babies, brothers and sisters leaning into one another, smiling.
James turned around and around, searching.
“Where is he?”
“The boy needs to nap,” said Mrs. Bailey, revealing a thick Jamaican accent.
“I’m Ana,” said Ana, extending a hand first to Mrs. Bailey, then to Ann Silvan.
“We have the same name,” said the social worker. Ana smiled and nodded, even though she had never felt like an Ann, letting her mother correct every bureaucrat and schoolteacher: “It’s On-na,” her mother would say, “as in: ‘On a moon.’ ”
“Mrs. Bailey is one of our best foster parents,” said Ann Silvan, smoothing her skirt, which had a prominent wrinkle down the front, Ana noted. “She’s been with us for sixteen years and worked with more than eighty children. Is that number about right, Mrs. Bailey?”
Mrs. Bailey nodded. James wondered about the use of the honorific, if the foster mother had requested it, a grasp at a kind of authority. They were sitting now, Ana and James in oversize armchairs, Mrs. Bailey and the social worker on the couch. James felt a strange urge to lean back and kick out the footrest he knew would appear at his ankles.
“I have three of my own, but they’re gone now.” Mrs. Bailey gestured to a triptych of photos, three teenagers in their graduation caps. “Each one has gone on to university.” Finally, she smiled.
“So there’s much to discuss,” said Ann Silvan. “How are you feeling?”
Ana felt like spitting, all of a sudden.
“Our lawyer told us the will wasn’t being contested,” said James.
“It’s not, but there are checks and balances.” A strange phrase, thought Ana, a phrase to connote democracy, as if there were choice in this room. Ann Silvan continued to talk about Children’s Aid and home visits, leafing through papers.
“You’re not working right now, Mr. Ridgemore?”
“I’m writing a book.”
“What’s it about?” asked Mrs. Bailey, raising a penciled eyebrow. Ana was curious, too; she hadn’t been able to ask about this herself since James had been fired. All three women tilted toward him.
“It’s nonfiction. It’s about terrorism,” said James, his voice thinning. It was a little bit true that if anything had been written, it might have been on terrorism.
Ann Silvan wrote on her pad of paper.
“So you’ll be at home with Finn, then? Or will you be taking time off, Ana?”
Ana shook her head. “Maybe a couple of days. I—my work is quite unforgiving.” She felt this statement take hold in the room. It stuck like neglect.
“It will be something of a transition.” Ann Silvan continued to talk, and Ana piped in from time to time, working from a list of questions that she had researched. There was money to be released. There was a court date pending. There was suddenly a fleet of people in their home, in their bank accounts, her office. Ana had begun to feel like a criminal, as if she were trying to steal this boy who had, in fact, been given to her, shockingly, without her request, even her knowledge. Between lunch and dinner, Ana and James had become the stewards of a human being.
“Did you know we were the guardians?” Ana had asked, her head in her hands in their living room. “I thought we were just executors. I don’t remember agreeing to guardianship.”
“I think we did,” said James. “I don’t know.” He felt guilty somehow. He hadn’t told Ana about his visits with Finn, the ones that had filled up so many afternoons lately. Maybe they had meant more than he’d realized. Now James could never tell Ana about those visits, though he had been waiting to tell her about them, searching for the right moment. But suddenly his relationship with Finn had taken on new significance, and he couldn’t explain it to Ana, just as he knew that, with Sarah in her hospital bed, there was no one to expose him to her.
But he hadn’t done anything wrong, had he? This had been for James, privately, the summer of Finn. He remembered their last visit in the park: He held a miniature soccer ball and a bag of graham crackers while Finn ran in circles, over and over, until he collapsed. Finn wore a plush panda suit, his face peering out from below the ears, his wrists and ankles exposed, a pair of white sneakers on his feet. It was still hot, but according to Sarah, his panda suit obsession was nonnegotiable, and she had decided not to fight it.
Finn got up, arms out, and ran in a small circle until he collapsed again. James laughed, crouched down on the grass, irritated by the cigarette butts, the stupidity of people who smash beer bottles where children play. A tall hipster walked by, smoking a cigarette, wearing sunglasses as big as the front window of a car. James felt a surge of hatred toward the guy’s skinny legs, his huge headphones, probably playing something electronic. He picked up an old cigarette butt and tossed it at the guy’s back, narrowly missing him as he trotted along, oblivious. Even though James still had four or five cigarettes a day, around Finn he became a virulent nonsmoker.
James and Finn had already been to the museum that week to look at the dinosaur bones. The week before, they had taken the ferry out to Toronto Island, and James had steered a paddleboat with Finn at his side. Sarah said she was thrilled to get a break, that she could finally get some time to herself to work on her photography, to sleep.
“I can’t go back to teaching,” she had told James. “But I can’t always be around him, either.” James was impressed with how efficiently Sarah sliced and packaged time. Three days a week, Finn was in day care, but only until two. Marcus often didn’t get home until seven or eight, when Finn was in bed. The daycare mornings were catch-up time for chores, household management. Sarah needed just one afternoon a week to herself, open time. James was happy to take Finn. He liked the idea of saving someone.
When James was with Finn, he felt useful again, which he hadn’t in the months since he’d been fired. He got a different response from people when he entered a store or rode the streetcar with Finn than he did when he was alone and suspiciously present during the city’s working hours. But with Finn, the world was a gigantic welcome mat. People hummed a low, inviting note that only parents could hear, that James had never known existed. It reminded him of when he would walk with his black friend, Kyle, and Kyle would exchange a little nod with every other black person who went by. James had considered researching this phenomenon for the show, but when he took a pretty black intern to lunch to covertly test his theory, she just looked straight ahead and never glanced at anyone.
“Finny, do you want to get a croissant?” asked James.
“Oh yes please I do!” cried Finn, and he began to run toward Queen Street, a two-and-a-half-year-old who knew the way to the city’s best croissants. James wondered if he could work that into his unwritten novel.
While they sat on the bench eating croissants, James asked Finn questions.
“What did you do at daycare yesterday?”
“Panda suit.”