Sawyer
Study Room #2 at UC Hastings College of the Law was silent but for the turning of pages and keyboards clacking. Students sat together in stuffed chairs, barricaded behind laptops and headphones.
My study partners, Beth, Andrew and Sanaa were on couches and chairs in our circle, bent over their work, nary a joke or smartass remark among them. I missed Jackson, but the bastard had the nerve to graduate one quarter ahead of me.
The relentless overhead fluorescents seared my tired eyes and made the text on the page in front of me blur. I blinked, focused, and took a mental snapshot of a paragraph of California Family Law Code. With the image firmly in mind, I put pen to a page in my notebook and wrote what I saw in my own words. To lock them down.
When I finished my notes, I leaned back in my chair and let my eyes fall shut.
“Hey, Haas,” Andrew said, a millisecond later. I could hear the smug smile color his words. “You going to sleep through the rest of the hour?”
“If you’d shut up, I might,” I said without opening my eyes.
He hmphed and sniffed but didn’t rejoin. Jackson would have given me a smart-ass remark back and we’d be off to races to see who could out-insult the other. Andrew was no Jackson.
“This Family Law exam is going to kill me,” Andrew groused. “Someone quiz me.”
“Section 7602?” Beth asked.
“Uh…shit.” I heard Andrew tap his pen on the table. “It’s right there…”
I smiled to myself. My focus was Criminal Justice, but since a certain Evil-Doer party ten months ago, Family Law had become my unofficial minor.
I mentally scrolled through my Family Law code photo album to section 7602, and recited, “The parent and child relationship extends equally to every child and to every parent, regardless of the marital status of the parents.”
Silence. I peeked one eye open. “Sorry. It’s one of my favorites.”
“I’ll bet.” Andrew snorted and took up his laptop. “Okay, let’s see what else you got, Haas.”
The others leaned forward with interest. It was a novelty, what I could do. Very little escaped the mental darkroom in my mind; names and faces, years-old memories down to the smallest detail; even whole pages of text—word for word—if I read them enough times. I don’t know how I ended up with a photographic memory, but thank God I did, or I’d never have made it through these last ten months. Not on three or four hours of sleep every night.
“What other section is applicable to Section 7603?” Andrew asked smugly. He was kind of an asshole. I think he thought he’d feel better about the incredible stress of law school if he stumped me. I never tried to make him feel better.
“Section 3140,” I said. I was kind of an asshole too.
“In 7604, a court may order pendente lite relief consisting of a custody or visitation if…?”
“A parent and child relationship exists pursuant to Section 7540 and the custody or visitation order would be in the best interest of the child.”
“Why do you even bother coming here?” Andrew groused and shut his Mac.
“To give you the answers,” I said.
The women snickered while Andrew shook his head and muttered under his breath, “Arrogant prick.”
“You’re wasting your time, anyway,” Sanaa said to him. “Sawyer’s memory is infallible.” She shot me with a knowing smile. “I’m sure he could go for days.”
I didn’t miss the double meaning behind her words, and the invitation behind her eyes. My body went warm all over, begging me to reconsider my rule. Sanaa was beautiful and smart; a new addition to our group when Jackson and another friend graduated last quarter. But I could’ve told her the same thing she told Andrew. She was wasting her time. My days of hooking up with random women were over with a capital O.
Beth didn’t miss Sanaa’s approving smile at me. She rolled her eyes at all of us. “We should name this group Dysfunction Junction.” She checked her watch. “Come on. It’s time to go.”
We gathered our shit, stuffing notebooks and laptops back into bags, and chucking our empty coffee cups. I shuffled out of the room after my study group. Beth was right. Even in my mind, these people weren’t my friends. I didn’t have too many of those anymore, but I looked at Beth with her severe hair and Andrew with his shirt buttoned up to his ears and tried to imagine them at one of our epic Evil-Doer parties. I tried to imagine me at another Evil-Doer party and couldn’t do it.
“Something smell bad, Haas?” Andrew asked.
“Nah,” I said, blinking as we stepped into the sharp June sunlight. “Just remembering some ancient history.”
“You probably have the Classics memorized too. Got some Odyssey up in that steel trap of yours?”
I met his gaze steadily.
“Speak, Memory—
Of the cunning hero,
The wanderer, blown off course time and again…Sounds like you, Andy.”
“Shut up. And don’t call me Andy.”
Sanaa hid a smile in her coat collar. “See you all Monday,” she said to the others, then moved to stand beside me. “You’re so mean to poor Andrew.”
I shrugged. “I’ve never met a guy with zero interest in hiding his short-comings.”
“He’s just jealous. He struggles to get this stuff down and it’s all so easy for you.”
I could’ve laughed at that if I wasn’t so damn tired.
“So.” Sanaa tossed a lock of silky black hair over her shoulder. “Any weekend plans? I have an extra ticket to The Revivalists at the Warfield tomorrow night.”
A couple of mild excuses came to me, but I was too tired to bullshit too. “I’m out of commission. No social engagements for me until graduation and the bar exam.”
“That doesn’t sound healthy.”
I shrugged and tried a smile. “Thanks for the offer, though.”
“Okay,” she said, with her own smile that barely contained her disappointment. “See you Monday, then.”
“Yep.”
I watched her walk away and the weariness hit me.
It did that sometimes, like being punched in the gut. The late nights and sleeplessness, stress and anxiety; it all bowled right into me. No beers with the guys. No dates with hot study partners. No sex, no parties...
“Suck it up, Haas,” I muttered into the wind as I began to walk. “This is what you signed up for.”
At the Civic Center Muni station, I got onto the J line for Duboce Triangle, and slumped against my seat. The train wasn’t crowded with rush hour commuters yet. Friday was my one early day; no late classes. I was usually home by four, instead of five or six.
The rumble of the train beneath me lulled my tired eyes closed. The Family Law code seemed projected onto the back of my eyelids—an unpleasant side effect of eidetic memory. The more I committed something to memory, the greater the chance it would stick with me forever.
…when one parent has left the child in the care and custody of another person for a period of one year without any provision for the child’s support, or without communication, that parent is presumed to have abandoned the child…
Those words I would never forget, and the gentle gyrations of the train took me back to last August. Ancient history. I wasn’t tired, then. Not yet.
The drab building with the Department of Family and Child Services sign loomed across the street. The sky was overcast; a chilly wind swept over me as I held the bundle in my arms more tightly. It didn’t feel like summer, but like a cold winter was about to set in.
“Tell me again what happens when I turn her in?” I asked.
Jackson gave me a wary, side-eyed glance. “They’ll try to track Molly down.”
“I tried that and got nowhere.”
“Then the baby goes into foster care.”
“Foster care.” I glanced down at the sleeping face tucked in the blankets. My arms were getting tired. Olivia was small, but holding her on the Muni, then the three-block walk was rougher on me than any workout at the Hastings gym. I would have taken an Uber but I didn’t have a car seat.
I had nothing.
“It’s the best thing,” Jackson said for the hundredth time since the party, six days ago.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “The best thing.”
He gave me a dimmer, sympathetic version of his mega-watt smile. “C’mon. The light’s green.”
He nudged my arm to walk but I didn’t move. My feet were rooted to the corner.
I cast my gaze over the busy city streets. The wind whistled through the cement buildings that rose up all around us, cold and flat and gray. I tried to imagine walking into the CPS building and handing the baby over to some stranger. It would be so easy. She felt so heavy with the weight of the years that lay ahead, and all I had to do was set her down and walk away.
But already Olivia felt melded to my arms; to myself.
“I can’t.”
My friend’s smile stiffened then crumbled away. “Christ, Sawyer.”
“Molly entrusted her to me, Jax. Olivia’s mine.”
He stood, gaping at me. Then he shook his head, and turned in a circle on the street corner, arms out. “I knew it! Give me a prize, folks, I fucking knew it.”
He stopped and faced me.
“I knew six nights ago. After the party. Everyone was gone and you were sitting on the couch, sitting in a mess of beer cans and Solo cups, feeding her a bottle like there was no one else in the world. So is that what you’re going to do? Raise her? You’re going to raise a baby, Sawyer?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing, Jackson,” I said. “But this feels wrong. Being here feels fucking wrong.”
Jackson pressed his lips together. “So you keep her? How? With what money?”
“My scholarship fund is—”
“Just enough so you can go to school and pay rent,” Jackson finished. “It’s not enough to pay for childcare. And that shit is expensive.”
“I’ll figure it out. I’ll get a job.”
“You’re going to upheave your life. For what?”
“For what? For her,” I snapped, inclining my head at the baby.
“She’s not—”
“Shut up, Jax,” I said harshly. “Molly abandoned her, and in one year from now, the law will say she did too. I looked it up. I can put my name on her birth certificate. Molly should have done it, but a year from now, it won’t matter.”
Jackson stared at me for a long moment.
“You have to graduate, Sawyer, and you have to pass the bar—the first time—or your clerkship with Judge Miller? You can kiss it goodbye. You’ll lose that job and everything you’ve worked for.”
I clenched my jaw. He was right about that too. I’d laid out the stepping-stones of my life so clearly and concretely. Graduate Hastings, pass the bar, earn a clerkship with Judge Miller, then begin my own career in criminal prosecution, maybe a run for district attorney. Who knew where I could go from there? I glanced down at Olivia and realized I wanted those things just as badly as ever.
But I wanted her too.
More than that, my goals would mean exactly shit if I achieved them with the mystery of her life trailing me wherever I went.
Jackson read it all in my eyes. He ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Sawyer, I love you, man, and I get that you think you’re doing what’s best. But as hard as you think it might be? It’s going to be a million times harder than that.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do. My mother had to work three jobs, one for each of me and my two brothers. Three jobs just to keep food on the table for us, and a roof over our heads, and never mind doing something like law school.”
“But she did it, and now her youngest son is finishing law school,” I said. “She’s proud of you. I’d like to think my mom would be proud of me too.”
“She would be, man,” he said quietly. “I know she would be.”
I clenched my teeth against the old pain, locked it down deep. A drunk driver had killed my mother when I was eight years old. If I tallied all of the things I thought she might be proud of me for, my full-boat scholarship to Hastings was pretty much it.
Jackson sighed, shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Olivia’s mine,” I said. “That’s what I know. I have a responsibility to take care of her.”
Jackson’s stiffened expression softened, and the faintest smile tugged the corners of his mouth. “I must be living in bizarro world.”
“I’m right there with you,” I said. I felt a tightness around my heart unclench, and a swamp of unfamiliar, strong emotion nearly drowned me.
My daughter.
“So you going to help or what?” I said, gruffly. “Someone once told me this single-parenting shit is hard.”
“There’s that exceptional memory of yours again.” Jackson grinned, then his face fell. “You’ll have to move out, you know that, right? The other guys aren’t going to do any Three Men and a Baby. Kevin’s already panicked that we’re losing street cred.”
“I’ll find a new place.”
Jackson stared at me a few moments more, then blew air out his cheeks and laughed. He lifted the baby bag off my shoulder and slung it over his. “Christ, this is heavy. You are one crazy bastard.”
I eased a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Jax.”
“Yeah, yeah, just don’t call me at two in the morning asking me about whooping cough or… what are they called? Fontanels?”
I laughed but a gust of cold, SF wind tore it away.
I hefted the baby in my aching arms, held her tighter to me. “Come on,” I told her. “Let’s go home.”
I woke with a start when my chin touched my chest, and blinked blearily. The Muni was screeching to a stop at Duboce. I shouldered my bag and got off, and walked the block and a half to the cream-colored Victorian in which I rented the second-story flat.
I passed the first floor door where Elena Melendez lived, and shot it a small smile, then dragged my tired ass up to the second. In my place, I took off my jacket, hung it on the stand and tossed my bag under it. I veered left, straight to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee, then to the living area, to my desk by the window. The clock read 4:42 pm. Technically, I still had eighteen minutes to myself.
I slumped in the chair and closed my eyes... then opened them again.
I didn’t want those minutes, I wanted my girl.
I headed downstairs, taking them two at a time and knocked on #1. Hector, Elena’s five-year old, opened the door.
“Hey, Hector,” I said. “Can you tell your mom I’m here?”
He nodded his dark-haired head and retreated. I heard from inside, “Sawyer? Come on in, querido. She’s ready.”
I stepped inside Elena’s flat that smelled like warmth, spices, and laundry soap. It was a tad cluttered, but not messy. Homey. A family lived here. Elena—a plump, forty-five year old woman with thick dark hair in a braid down her back and large, soft eyes—was bending to pick Olivia out of the playpen.
I smiled like a dope when Olivia’s little face lit up to see me. Her blue eyes were bright and clear, and her wispy dark curls framed her cheeks that were rounded with thirteen-month old baby chub.
She reached for me. “Daddy!”
Not Dada or Dah-yee, but Daddy. All syllables. My stupid heart clenched.
Elena handed her over with a soft smile, and Olivia wrapped her little arms around my neck.
“She had a good day. Ate all of her peas.”
“You did? Were you a good girl?” I kissed Olivia’s cheek and then fished in my pocket and pulled out my wallet. Olivia made a grab for it, and I gave it to her after I pulled out a check. “Thank you, Elena.”
“Always my pleasure, Sawyer,” she said, pocketing this week’s pay. She reached out and gave Olivia’s little wrist a tug. “See you Monday, little love.”
I took my wallet out of Olivia’s hands—and mouth—and shouldered the diaper bag. “Say bye-bye.”
“Bye-bye,” Olivia said.
Elena clasped her hands over her heart. “Already so smart, this one. Like her daddy.”
I smiled. “Come on, Livvie,” I said. “Let’s go home.”