Akin Read online

  A guard moved to separate the two. “Brother-sister pose!”

  Reluctantly the couple pulled their bodies apart and stood facing forward, his arm slung over her shoulders.

  No indication that it would be Amber’s visitors’ turn anytime soon. That baby began shrieking again. Noah tried to tune out the sound, as New Yorkers learned to do for car alarms, honks, and sirens. “If Amber’s all that compliant,” trying out the jargon, “wouldn’t she soon be eligible for parole?”

  “Sorry, could you repeat that?”

  He kept forgetting about the social worker’s bad ear. “Parole.”

  Rosa Figueroa shook her head. “There’s no parole on determinate sentences for felonies.”

  “Oh.”

  “And the maximum good-time credit is one-seventh, so the earliest she could hope for, in terms of conditional release, that would be two years and nine months from now.”

  The wails of the baby went up a notch. Noah wanted a cigarette so much his fingers were curling.

  Too bad, Joan said. She’d always despised the habit. It particularly galled her (or at least the neurological replay of her who’d taken up residence in Noah’s head) that he’d smoked his first cigarette on the day of her funeral. Perverse, to have resisted the social pressure to light up—so strong in the ’50s and ’60s, beginning to taper off only in the ’70s—for most of his life, then succumbed in 2009, of all years. He hadn’t meant to spite Joan; he’d just needed something else to do with his hands when they reached for her and closed on nothing.

  “Davis,” a guard called, and gestured to their table. “Inmate Davis!”

  A girl in green walked over and lowered herself into a seat beside Rosa Figueroa. Young woman, Noah thought, correcting himself. Shirt tucked into her pants, work boots. White painted nails, hair pulled back in a smooth blond ponytail, eyes sunken behind thick glasses. A hard case, he could tell that much at a glance. But unnervingly young.

  Rosa Figueroa introduced herself as Michael’s caseworker. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Amber—may I call you that?”

  A nod, stone-faced. “They wouldn’t let me go to Mom’s funeral.”

  “Really?”

  “Said the documents hadn’t come through in time.”

  “That’s a real shame.”

  “Where’s Michael?” Amber scanned the room.

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t arrange in time for him to join us today.”

  The young woman’s glance flicked over the two men sitting opposite her.

  Rosa Figueroa introduced Lucas Weinburg and Noah. “Can I get you something, Amber, a drink?”

  “Coke. Cheetos.”

  Noah couldn’t help despising her a little for wanting junk food at a time like this.

  “Mr. Weinburg,” Rosa Figueroa asked, “could you possibly…”

  The notary public stirred. She handed him a fistful of coins and he headed off to the vending machines.

  “Well.” She made an attempt at a smile. “Your son’s been staying in the apartment next door to your mother’s, at a Bernice Johnson’s.”

  A rapid nod. “Berni’s a good woman. Mom knows her from church.”

  “But she’s got four of her own living with her, so…”

  Hands clenched, the white nails digging into the palms. “Are you going to apprehend Michael?”

  A weirdly formal verb, Noah thought.

  “I hope we won’t have to consider removal,” Rosa Figueroa told her.

  Another strange word, removal, he thought: like transporting a corpse.

  “Our agency focuses on family preservation. It’s all about kin, these days. If he could be placed with a relative…”

  “Has Grace been in touch with you yet?”

  Rosa Figueroa checked her notes. “This would be your sister, Grace Davis?”

  “Yeah. Grace Drew, that’s her married name—she still goes by that since they split up. She’s got two little girls, they know Michael. Grace will definitely”—Amber broke off—“I’m ninety-nine percent positive she’ll take Michael for me, now there’s no one else.”

  “I’ve had some difficulty tracking her down. The number I was given, it seems it’s no longer in service.”

  Ah. Of course he wouldn’t have been anyone’s first call, Noah realized. How long was the list of names the social worker had tried before reaching his?

  “She moved, but I think I remember her cell,” Amber told her. “And you could try Instagram.”

  “Sure, write it all down for me, any details at all would be a help.” Rosa Figueroa slid a notebook and ballpoint across the table.

  The guard frowned.

  Could pens be sharpened into shanks, had Noah read that somewhere?

  “I’ll keep working on finding your sister,” Rosa Figueroa said as Amber started writing. “But in the meantime, can you think of anyone else?”

  Noah felt quite invisible. A certain relief came with it. This young woman didn’t know him, and neither did her son; how could he possibly be considered kin?

  The pen halted as Amber looked into the middle distance. “We have some cousins on Dad’s side.”

  “Mm, they were in your mother’s address book, but the last whereabouts I could find for them were way out of state—Utah and Nevada. It would be less disruptive to find Michael a temporary placement right here in the city.” Rosa Figueroa turned her body toward Noah. “This is where Victor’s uncle could come in. Mr. Selvaggio’s a widower, no children of his own, and he’s offering your son a very comfortable home.”

  Hold on, she was twisting his words. Noah’s voice came out hoarse: “Open to the possibility, I said.”

  Both women stared at him.

  “Just in the short term, as a bridge.”

  Say “One week,” Joan proposed.

  “For a couple of weeks, maybe. Until this sister of yours turns up,” he said in Amber’s direction.

  Rosa Figueroa was nodding. “That’s so helpful.”

  “Hold on.” Amber’s lip curled. “I don’t know this guy from Adam.”

  “Well, likewise.” Noah hadn’t been expecting tears of gratitude, but what about basic manners?

  “If you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”

  He was finding this whole conversation embarrassing.

  Rosa Figueroa jumped in. “Seventy-nine, but he’s in excellent health.”

  The age his father had died, it struck Noah now.

  “He’s a retired university professor, owns his own apartment in Manhattan, with an empty bedroom.” She’d drawn all that out of Noah on the drive.

  “A stranger,” Amber said.

  Noah spoke up: “Technically correct.” What, this was a job interview now? Had he asked for any of this? He never should have answered the phone. “I’d be doing you a favor for the sake of—”

  “I’m not looking for any fucking favors, mister.”

  As her voice swooped up, the guard glanced their way.

  “What do you want with some boy you’ve never laid eyes on? You could be a chomo for all I know.”

  Noah’s ears were ringing as he rose to his feet. Was chomo some variant of homo?

  “Amber, I know you’ve been through a lot.” Rosa Figueroa had her hand over the other woman’s. “Mr. Selvaggio…”

  Noah couldn’t tell whether she meant to defend him or appeal to his kinder instincts, but he sat back down anyway, mostly because other visitors were staring.

  Amber wrenched off her glasses and stuffed them in the pocket of her overalls.

  The notary came back and deposited the soda and cheese puffs on the table.

  “Of course I checked state and federal crime records, as well as the sex-offender registry,” Rosa Figueroa was murmuring. “He’s never been arrested—never had a parking ticket, even.”

  Not that Noah had anything to hide, but it was a little unnerving to be investigated. “I don’t drive.”

  Amber pulled back her head, turtlelike, as if that oddi
ty counted against Noah; proved him incompetent rather than a lifelong New Yorker. She sat there slugging her Coke, a convicted felon, judging him.

  “The key thing to remember is, he’s fourth degree of consanguinity to Michael, which would be enough for my agency to consider it informal kinship care.”

  Amber was drumming on the table now, a flamenco riff of anxiety.

  “See, this would be voluntary—you’d be choosing to leave your son temporarily with his father’s uncle—and I’d be involved just in an advisory capacity.”

  “All right, all right.”

  Noah thought Amber meant she agreed, but no, it turned out she was just working up another head of steam.

  “What I don’t get is why you’re advising me to trust my eleven-year-old to this creepy old guy.”

  Rosa Figueroa spoke very low. “Because a family member is the only alternative I can see to taking custody of Michael today and placing him in a group home.”

  Those perfect brown eyes stared.

  Noah tried to steel his heart. A small, homey residence with qualified foster parents—it couldn’t be anything like Victor’s Limited Secure Placement behind rolls of barbed wire, could it?

  Let’s not kid ourselves, Joan said.

  Noah squeezed his eyes shut. They’d failed Victor; not just Fernande and Dan, but Noah and Joan. Something had gone awry as that dazzling boy had entered his teens, and none of them had figured it out in time to save him.

  “In which case, Amber, your parental rights…”

  The young woman erupted. “I haven’t done anything to lose them!”

  “I know.” Rosa Figueroa was gravel-voiced. “I’m so sorry. But any time your son spends in the system would go on your record. My superiors could make a decision that it’s in Michael’s best interest to terminate your rights before you’re released.”

  Amber’s eyes glittered.

  It was only then that Noah grasped why the social worker was behaving in such a rushed, unorthodox way. She wasn’t naïve enough to assume that Noah would do a great job of this. She was just trying to keep one kid from being sucked into the pipeline. Because of the holy word kinship, her harried superiors, glancing at the paperwork, weren’t likely to object.

  None of this seemed fair. Dealer or not, this young woman had already lost years of freedom, her boyfriend, her mother, and now she was about to lose her only child. To prevent that, Rosa Figueroa was scraping the barrel, and Noah was all she’d managed to scrape up.

  “Hopefully it would be just for a little while,” Rosa Figueroa told Amber in the kind of voice you might use to calm a horse. “If Michael stays in the city, remember, he’ll be close enough to visit.”

  Still not a word from Amber, but her eyes brimmed.

  “Why don’t we see how it goes, give them a chance to get to know each other, just on a trial basis? Meanwhile I’ll track down your sister.”

  A tiny nod.

  “All right then.” Rosa Figueroa flashed a grin at Noah. “Let’s start on the paperwork.”

  A poke from Joan. If ever you’re to extricate yourself, now’s the moment.

  But it felt as if Noah had passed that turnoff in the road some time back. “All right. In principle.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Amber asked.

  “I’m certainly willing to, open to having the boy stay for a few weeks, if when we meet we, ah, we get along all right.”

  Amber crossed her arms, creamy nails like a shield. “Oh, you expect to get along right off the bat? So, like, if Michael’s not feeling chatty you’ll take a pass?”

  What was she hiding about her son? Or was Noah being paranoid? Maybe it was just that Amber had reason to fear this arrangement would fall apart as others had. He pointed out, “Michael may have something to say about the matter.”

  She pursed her lips.

  “Of course the boy’s views will be taken into account. But if we’re going to try this,” Rosa Figueroa warned, “you both need to sign off on it today.”

  Silence from Amber.

  Noah managed a nod.

  Rosa Figueroa popped open her briefcase. “Here we go. ‘Designation of Person in Parental Relationship.’”

  What an odd phrase, Noah thought. “Of course nothing can actually happen, in terms of his moving in, till after I get back from France next Monday.”

  Amber’s eyebrows soared as if he’d said he was jetting to the moon.

  “I’m leaving this Tuesday,” he reminded Rosa Figueroa. “The day after tomorrow.”

  Her face wore its exhausted look again. “I didn’t realize it was coming up quite so soon.”

  Noah was almost positive he’d told her. Maybe she’d missed that detail because of her hearing problem. Or was she counting on a seventy-nine-year-old not being entirely sure of what he’d said?

  “The thing is, Bernice Johnson’s been more than patient, but she can’t keep Michael past tonight,” she went on. “Couldn’t your vacation…”

  “It’s not a vacation. It’s a very long-awaited, overdue visit to the place I grew up.” A bequest from my sister, Noah wanted to add, but that sounded pampered.

  “Can’t it be postponed?”

  “No, it can’t! I’m going for Carnival—that’s like the Christmas of Nice. The flights, the hotel…” In peak winter season, the prices were already exorbitant. “I don’t know what it would cost to start changing everything.”

  Amber’s mouth tightened.

  On Noah’s university pension, it struck him, he was probably more comfortably off than anyone else in this awful room. Still, he didn’t mean to be manipulated into demolishing his plans. “This trip has taken a lot of organizing, and I’m not going to put it off.”

  “Then you could maybe take Michael along?” Rosa Figueroa suggested.

  He blanched at the prospect.

  “That’s crazy,” Amber said.

  “Listen”—Noah got to his feet, looking at neither woman but the space between them—“I’m willing to look after Michael from next Monday, for a few weeks. Take it or leave it.”

  “Anyway, you can’t drag my boy off to Europe, he’s in school.”

  Amber’s disdain provoked Noah. “Well, if it came to that, what could be more educationally stimulating than a visit to a famous city that’s two-and-a-half thousand years old?”

  “I could speak to Michael’s principal.” Rosa Figueroa’s face was alight. “It would be the trip of a lifetime.”

  “But—” I want to go on my own, Noah wailed in the privacy of his head. Not shackled to some random boy.

  It was a half-remembered glimpse of Victor that stopped him from walking away. Dressed as a zombie for Halloween: plastic chains clattering behind him, an ax through his beautiful head.

  Noah let himself down heavily onto the seat.

  “Passport?” Lucas Weinburg broke his silence.

  Rosa Figueroa looked sucker-punched. She turned back to the young woman. “I don’t suppose Michael has a passport?”

  A blank look. “No, and he doesn’t need one.”

  Relief, then, like a shot of glucose in Noah’s veins. He wouldn’t have to do this after all.

  Rosa Figueroa seized one of Amber’s hands. “He’s going into a group home in East Flatbush, or he’s going to France. You choose.”

  Tears plummeted off Amber’s jaw onto the scored surface of the table.

  Noah couldn’t stand this. He whipped the clean cloth handkerchief out of his pocket and put it to her knuckles.

  Amber pressed his handkerchief over her eyes, hard, like Justice’s blindfold.

  Rosa Figueroa breathed out. “What time are you leaving on Tuesday, Mr. Selvaggio?”

  What if Noah said, “First thing”—would that get him off, even at this eleventh hour? “Late,” he found himself admitting. “A night flight.”

  “If we pay the rush fee…fingers crossed we’ll get it by Tuesday afternoon.”

  A murmur from Lucas Weinburg: “Wouldn’t coun
t my chickens.”

  “No, we can make this happen.” Rosa Figueroa squinted as if consulting her mental files. “There’s a form that lets us apply for a passport on Michael’s behalf, and another for you to consent to a relative taking him overseas,” she told Amber. She scowled down at her watch. “I’ll run out to my car and find them online. The problem is, how to get hard copies, because visiting hours end at, what…”

  “Two thirty.” Amber sniffled.

  Noah wondered if the young woman wanted this mad scheme to fall through, without its being her fault. Would she rather the devil she knew (at least by reputation)—the apprehending, the removal? She looked down at his handkerchief, the cotton wet and translucent in places.

  “I have a portable printer I can hook up to my phone in the car,” Lucas Weinburg mentioned.

  “Bless you!” Rosa Figueroa thrust her keys into his hand.

  Noah sat useless while the notary sloped off and Rosa Figueroa started filling in the Designation of Person in Parental Relationship form with Amber.

  Ballpoint in midair, the young woman studied it. “It doesn’t say anything about kin.”

  Rosa Figueroa checked the wording. “That’s true, you can designate any adult. But it’s as a kinship carer that I’m proposing Mr. Selvaggio.”

  Proposing? Strong-arming a prisoner into consigning her eleven-year-old to a geriatric stranger on the brink of leaving the States; Noah couldn’t decide whether Rosa Figueroa was a powerhouse or a loose cannon.

  The social worker asked, “Have you anyone else in mind who’s willing, able, and can get here in the next ten minutes?”

  Amber shook her head. Took a shaky breath. And signed.

  Noah’s turn. He skimmed the form. (He remembered Joan making him go through a publishing contract clause by clause, even though it was only with a university press and would make him a lifetime total of some four hundred dollars in royalties.) “NOAH SELVAGGIO, a person over the age of eighteen…the care of the following child/children/incapacitated person(s) MICHAEL JEROME YOUNG D.O.B. 06/17/2006… Any authority granted to the person in parental relationship pursuant to this form shall be valid (check appropriate box and initial)…”

  He looked up. “Thirty days? A couple of weeks, I said.”

  “That’s just in case,” Rosa Figueroa said, placating.