Caseworker visit got moved to today. 11am. I’m driving up now. Before you ask, I am not okay. Please tell me the house is somewhat ready.
His response came in under thirty seconds.
Saylor
Breathe. Hawk’s busy today but I’ve been here since six. We have enough done. It’s going to be okay. I’m ready. Are you?
Me
No.
It’s the last text I send before I slam on the gas, peel into traffic amidst a symphony of protesting honks. At least it was honest. I am very, very not okay.
Breathe.He tells me to breathe like it’s a skill I should have mastered by now, like oxygen is something I simply forgot about in between the panic attack in my closet and the moment I got in the car wearing a blouse that is technically ruined because I did not heed the “Dry clean only” warning, which is basically a sin against my own religion.
The Saw Mill River Parkway stretches ahead of me—trees, guardrails, the occasional minivan carrying someone to a life that makes sense. Definitely not my life. My hands are tight on the wheel. My hair is in a low bun that I assembled in the rearview mirror at a red light, which is apparently the signature style of a woman whose life is held together by bobby pins and spite.
My blouse is cream. Wool black dress pants. The Louboutins flats—authoritative but not aggressive, the shoe equivalent of “I am a serious person who is also prepared to chase down a fleeing child before they find the road.” I put on the reading glasses even though I don’t need them to drive because they make me look thoughtful, and then I took them off because I realized I was costuming myself for a role instead of showing up as a person. But then I put them back on because the costume is all I have right now.
The real Celeste has been in bed for four days. The real Celeste doesn’t have her shit together. The real Celeste is a thirty-eight-year-old woman driving to her childhood home to convince a stranger she’d make a good mother while privately wondering if Whit made a terrible mistake.
She was so focused on who she thought I was, maybe she overlooked who I actually am. It’s possible she didn’t realize how hard it would be to turn me into a mother worthy of her daughter or son.
The exit comes up fast. I take it too sharp, the tires complaining, and then I’m on local roads—the tree-lined, hedge-trimmed, absurdly manicured roads of the neighborhood where I grew up believing everyone’s house came equipped with a home office, two spare bedrooms, a guesthouse, pool, and of course everyone’s mother wore silk to the daily full-spread breakfast.
I practically blast through the security gate, the tiny sensor in the upper-right corner of my Range Rover triggering. The guard waves through the rearview mirror, holding his walkie-talkie to his lips. Possibly warning other security members that a crazy lady is coming through at the speed of light.
As I near my destination, the oaks close overhead like a cathedral ceiling, dappling the windshield with light.
And then I see the house.
I haven’t been here in over a year. The last time, I drove up alone on my birthday—my first birthday divorced from Greg. I sat in the driveway for twenty minutes, then drove back home without going inside, realizing my childhood was just as lonely as my current adult reality. I couldn’t face it. The house felt empty, even when we inhabited it. I didn’t hate my childhood. My parents weren’t cut from the same cloth as Whitney’s, but there was something hollow about the way I grew up. I don’t have warm memories, just transactional ones. I was fed well, medically cared for, got a great education, but to this day, I bet my life my parents couldn’t tell you what my favorite food or color is. They don’t really know me. They never felt they needed to.
When they gifted me this house, I think they thought they were handing over my childhood in some grand gesture. They didn’t understand I saw this place as a museum, and I was on display. There was nothing warm about it. No warm chocolate-chip cookies after school. No beaming faces staring back at me from the talent show audience. They weren’t there to help me get ready for my junior prom. I wasn’t even excited about going with Greg. I was proud to be wearing a dress I designed. It was all endless missed opportunities to get to know me.
But the house I’m looking at now is not the house I left.
The porch has been swept. The shutters—the black shutters that were peeling so badly they looked leprous—have been repainted. The front path, which was cracked and weed-choked the last time I saw it, has been cleared and edged. The garden beds flanking the entrance have been weeded, the dead plants pulled, the soil turned. Someone—Saylor—has placed two potted mums on either side of the front door. Yellow. Cheerful. The kind of detail that sayssomeone lives here and they give a damn.
I pull into the driveway and park behind the rented truck that appears to have become Saylor’s mobile workshop. My hands are still shaking. My blouse may or may not be clean. And there is a dark gray sedan pulling in behind me that I am choosing to believe is a neighbor but know, with the certainty of a woman whose luck has been on an extended sabbatical, is the caseworker. Shit,shit, I hope she didn’t clock my manic driving. That can’t look good on my motherhood application.
I get out of the car at the same time as she does.
She’s younger than I expected. Mid-thirties, maybe. Natural hair pulled back, a navy blazer over a printed blouse, sensible flats, a leather portfolio tucked under her arm. She has the calm, observant energy of someone whose job is to notice everythingand say very little, which is essentially the opposite of my entire personality.
“Ms. Brinley?” She extends her hand. “I’m Janet Lundy. Court-appointed family services evaluator.”
“Janet. Thank you for coming.” I shake her hand with the firm but warm grip I reserve for people who hold my fate in their portfolio. “I apologize I’m a little disheveled. I barely made it in from the city in time. There was some confusion with the scheduling—I only learned about the change this morning.”
“It’s purposeful. We find that flexibility is actually part of what we’re evaluating.” She smiles—professional, practiced, giving nothing away. Her eyes are already on the house. “Shall we?”
That was swift. Did she just admit to pulling the ol’ bait and switch to catch me off guard? I instantly hate her.
The front door opens before I reach it and Saylor is standing there like he owns the place. Which, in some ways, after days of labor, he does. He’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt—clean, I notice, like he changed into something presentable before I arrived—and his sandy-blond hair is pushed back, still damp from what I suspect was a sink-wash five minutes ago. There’s a smudge of paint on his forearm that he either missed or left intentionally because it saysI’ve been workingin a language that caseworkers probably speak fluently.
“Hey,” he says, looking at me. And the way he says it—soft, steady, a single syllable that carries the weight of five days of barely answered texts and a house he rebuilt while I was falling apart—makes something inside me crack along a fault line I didn’t know existed.
“Hey,” I say back, and it comes out smaller than I intended.
