If she’d known the kind of day she was going to have, Sabrina might have dragged the sheet back over her head and stayed in bed. But ignorance had her peeling her eyes open at dawn before she gamely dug through to the bottom of her closet in search of anything that hadn’t already been worn twice and was relatively unwrinkled. An impossible ambition when she hadn’t done laundry in weeks.
Okay, she thought, yanking on a skirt and top, let Gert Bordon raise her eyebrow and lecture her on corporate dress code. Definitely. Not. A. Big. Deal. She’d suffered worse torment when she’d worn her threadbare clothes to every new school she’d attended over the years. The mean kids stared and smirked or worse called her hurtful names. The kinder ones, as only New York City kids could sometimes be, pretended to believe her when she said she was into wearing vintage, as if her twelve-year-old self was seriously experimenting with fashion in too short jeans and ripped sneakers.
A few hours of fitful sleep separated her from her graphic dreams, in which she hadn’t said no to Mr. Sexy Stubble. Only the reality of her emailed overtime workload report convinced her the entire episode hadn’t been a chocolate-induced fantasy. Her body still hummed with an excess of aroused nerve endings as she took a quick shower.
Alex was back to his usual self, his teething episode finally behind them, and he careened around their tiny, untidy apartment as Sabrina made a slapdash effort at feeding them both before they plodded, toddler-style, up to the fourth floor where Mrs. Egan welcomed Alex into her waiting arms.
Mrs. Egan’s incessant chatter usually enfolded Sabrina like a cozy blanket. Today she took one look at Sabrina’s drained face and stopped opining on who she thought should win her favorite dancing competition program. She shooed her out the door knowing that Sabrina was in danger of missing the last train that would get her to work on time. She thrust an oversized envelope into Sabrina’s hand and spoke fast.
“This was on the ledge above your mailbox. From the nursery school.”
Sabrina had been both too wiped out and too wired to remember the mail last night.
“And Alex and I will get to your office a little before five, so you can take him to his checkup.”
“Yesrightthanksseeyoulater,” Sabrina called over her shoulder as she rushed down the stairs. Most days it felt like her life was a runaway train that just kept moving faster with each passing moment, while she sprinted through quicksand destined never to catch up.
On the subway, she snagged a seat and skimmed the pre-school application. Then her brain clicked into gear. For Alex to be considered for a spot in the class, Sabrina had to provide Alex’s official birth documents and vital information with the application.
How in hell had she missed this? So anxious to give Alex the very best start in life, she had completely overlooked this obvious side of the equation.
How could she hand over information, which would reveal to the school that Alex was not her child but actually her brother?
She stared unseeing at the shuttered faces of her fellow straphangers as scenes from her childhood bombarded her. Her mother sobbing because her father had picked up and left them with no indication of where he was going and when, or if, he would return. Surprise. He hadn’t come back. Her mother discovering that her father had drained the joint account just before he left. Killer surprise.
The nasty stigma of being on public benefits, as friends, initially full of well-meant advice, began to avert their eyes and evade their company. The years when her mom chased down promising jobs as they hopscotched from neighborhood to neighborhood in search of better housing. The numbing too-good-to-be- true relief when her mom grabbed the opportunity to be receptionist at Pinnacle Realty, and they finally climbed out of welfare. It was so long in coming Sabrina never quite lost that feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop, even though her mom had aced the receptionist gig and was soon studying to become a broker.
History would not repeat itself. She would not make those mistakes. Marriage was out of the question. Neither would she give the authorities information that would cause them to separate her from Alex, no matter what expert reason they provided. Alex was her only family, and she wasn’t letting him go.
She had a plan. She had some money socked away for his preschool tuition, money she might have used to
finish traditional college instead of going the online route. They would be secure enough for a time, and then Alex could attend public grade school. She would get her degree and then she’d stop working so much overtime, move on to the kind of job you could get when you had a college degree. In a few years, Alex would go out for the baseball team or run track, maybe take music or art lessons. She had big plans for him, for both of them, together.
But right now, she needed Alex to be able to take that first step into their new life by getting into preschool. The question was how. Sabrina couldn’t risk the inquiries that would lead to the discovery that she struggled mightily to keep a roof over her brother’s head. If the authorities got a glimpse of their hand-to- mouth existence, if they discovered she wasn’t Alex’s mom and there was no father on the scene, they’d take him. He’d go into foster care. As tough as her childhood had been, Sabrina and her mom always stayed together. No, that was not an option. They would never find out Alex wasn’t her son. Never.