Long Bright River(89)
* * *
—
By then, of course, it was too late to take back what I’d said to my sister.
Thomas Holme Fitzpatrick was born on December 3, 2012, at Einstein Medical Center. Of course, Thomas was not the first name he was given. Kacey called him Daniel, after our father. But I knew right away that that couldn’t be his name.
I was not present for his birth. But I learned, after the fact, that Kacey entered the hospital drowsy and intoxicated, clearly high. And I know that within minutes of being born, Thomas was taken from his mother and placed in the care of the nurses in the NICU so that they could monitor him for signs of withdrawal—which, within hours, he began to show.
At home in Port Richmond, I was ready to receive him, to welcome him into the better life that, for months, I had been planning. I had turned one of the bedrooms in my house—Kacey’s old room, in fact—into a soothing nursery. I decorated it in shades of pale yellow, a sunny color I hoped would presage a cheerful life for my new son. I framed favorite quotations from books I loved and hung them on the walls. I went to bookstores and bought for him the books that, as a child, I was never read. I’d read them all to him, I thought: as many times as he wanted, and then more. I’d never say no, I thought.
By that time, Simon and I had stopped speaking, but had come to an arrangement. He would give over the rights to Thomas, but he wanted to remain in the boy’s life. (Why? I asked him, and he said he always prided himself on finishing what he started.) I told him he could do so if he would fund Thomas’s education. Nothing else: just the money I needed to ensure for him a respectable education.
All of this was off the record.
In our arrangement, two threats were implicit, a careful equilibrium we orchestrated and maintained: I held over Simon the threat of my telling his superiors about the beginnings of our relationship. He held over me the threat of seeking custody of Thomas.
We were cordial with each other, but we rarely spoke. Once a month, after his birth, a check came for Thomas: his tuition for Spring Garden Day School, and nothing more.
In exchange, once a month, Simon took Thomas out on an excursion—something Thomas at first resisted and then began to look forward to more and more as he got older, something he counted on for weeks in advance and narrated the story of for weeks after.
The person who was left out of this arrangement, of course, was Kacey.
* * *
—
She didn’t give Thomas up voluntarily. She wanted to keep him. In her hospital room she promised, over and over again, that she’d get clean. But Thomas’s NAS score at birth was very high, and his withdrawals from the many narcotics that had been running through his mother’s body were severe. As my attorney and I expected, the baby was taken into the custody of the Philadelphia DHS, where he remained for one night while they assessed him and located the baby’s closest relatives. The next day, they telephoned Gee, and they telephoned me.
Gee told me I was crazy to get involved. You don’t know what you’re doing, she said. You don’t know how hard it is to raise a child alone.
But I had already decided.
Yes, I told the social worker; I have a place for him.
* * *
—
My plan was to seek full custody of the child. With my attorney, I decided against requesting a complete termination of Kacey’s parental rights. I left the door open, always, for her to get into recovery, for her to begin to see Thomas. But at my instruction, my attorney requested a caveat: Kacey would not be allowed to see her son until she began to pass court-ordered drug tests.
She never could. Despite her protests, despite her many attempts to regain visitation rights, she failed every test that she took.
She has never, therefore, been allowed to see Thomas, and I have retained full custody over him. The court has deemed this arrangement to be in the best interest of the child—an easy decision for any respectable judge.
This is, I suppose, exactly what I offer: Respectability. Decency. Sobriety. A stable home. A career. A chance for Kacey’s son—now my son—to be educated.
I told the PPD, and Truman, I had adopted a child.
No one asked questions.
Even Truman, with whom I had already been partnered for five years, only said, Congratulations. He brought me a present: a beautiful gift bag of books and clothes, so carefully selected that it must have taken him ages to compile. I wrote him a thank-you note and mailed it to his home.
* * *
—
The PPD’s parental leave policy is not generous. It is unpaid, for one thing. But they do grant new parents up to six months off, which is better than nothing. With the small amount I had saved, I determined that I could afford three months and one week. After that, I would enroll Thomas in day care.
Those first months of Thomas’s life were among the most difficult of mine. I do not recommend attempting to tend to any newborn for months on end alone, without some relief—familial or paid—let alone a newborn in withdrawal from a daily narcotic regimen as active as Kacey’s. But I did so.
In the hospital, he had been given morphine.
He was sent home with a prescription for phenobarbital.
Neither spared him completely from the pain of withdrawal, and so I watched in sympathy as his small body trembled and sometimes convulsed, and placed a hand on his chest to feel it rise and fall more rapidly than I sometimes thought possible, and listened in agony to his cries, which were at times unstoppable. He vomited so much after his feedings that every ounce he gained was a small victory. He was unable, often, to be consoled.