– Sammy –
Interview One
Monday morning arrives with an awkward intensity permeating the air.
What happened between Sam and I last week was a strange anomaly, and though I don’t regret what happened, I feel like maybe he does. He’s been out of the apartment every night since – and of course I know it’s because he’s working – but when he is here, it’s basically pure silence except for when he chats with Lily.
Sam snuck into my room around four a.m. the morning after our afternoon together. Silently pulling me out of my bed and into his, he slowly undressed me and slid into me far gentler than he had the day before. We didn’t speak. He didn’t sing. He didn’t even ask me to keep my eyes on him. He simply kissed my throat and gently made love to me.
He did the same thing the next morning, then yesterday morning, and then again a few hours ago. But once the sun comes up each day, we go back to silent roommates as an awkward intensity threatens to suffocate us.
Tying my hair into a sleek low bun, something I’d do for court days for work, I straighten my crisp white shirt and button my coat, and I slide my feet into low pumps. I look at myself in the mirror and find career Sammy staring back at me. I’ve done this a million times before. I’ve been to these meetings a million times before. The only difference is this time, it’s my life hanging in the balance.
I might have been hesitant when this all began. I might have been scared and unsure, and I might have even felt weird thinking of myself as ‘mom.’
But things change and I fell in love.
They’ll have to pry her from my cold, dead hands before I’ll ever give her up. And Sam’s silence the past few days, while unnerving, just proves to me that although he said he would help, I’m not taking anything for granted.
I won’t be complacent.
I’m giving Lily a stable home and a future to look forward to. And I’m making Sam help me, even if he does it kicking and screaming.
Lily lies in her travel crib, staring up at me through the mesh sides, and looking adorable in her own little ‘important meeting’ outfit.
“Are you ready? This is the first step to the rest of our lives.”
I step forward and scoop her up, grab my diaper bag and shove my purse inside, then I open the bedroom door and walk into the living room. Sam’s introspective gaze comes up to mine as he sits in the recliner with his acoustic guitar in his lap and a pen between his lips. He’s wearing nice dress pants and his own crisp white shirt. His hair, although still wild, sits nicely on his head as the long curls hang loose and tickle his lashes.
Leather bands decorate his wrists, his nose ring glints in the morning sun filtering through the curtains behind him.
And my heart lurches painfully at the glinting wedding band on his left hand.
He watches me watch him for a long minute. His long lashes flutter slowly, then eventually, his gaze travels down my body and stops on my hand. “Our story is that we’re married, right?”
I nod.
“Better put your ring on. It won’t look good if you forget it on our first day on the job.”
On the job.
I cough away the nerves that threaten to choke me. “Yeah. Are you ready to go?”
“Yup. Just waiting on you guys. Lily’s all set?”
“Yeah. She’s been fed. I’m hoping she’ll just sleep the whole time we’re in there.”
He nods slowly, then setting his guitar aside, he stands with a grunt. “Well, as your husband and her future daddy on paper, it’s my responsibility to help rock her if she gets mad during the meeting. Don’t worry. We’ll get through it in one piece.”
He holds his hands out for her, then taking her against his chest, he walks away without another word. I follow them into the kitchen and watch as he expertly clips her into the carseat, then popping a pacifier in her mouth, he looks up at me. “Let’s get it done.”
***
“Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Turner. Please, take a seat.”
We sit down in a minimalistic boardroom, with grey chairs and a grey laminate table. A water dispenser sits in the corner, with plastic cups thrown haphazardly on top, and watermark stains on the carpet in front.
Like the perfect gentleman, Sam holds my chair out for me, then as I sit, he slides it in and drops the perfect husbandly kiss on the top of my head.
Our interviewer is a sixty-year-old portly man who reminds me of Ed. With a balding spot spreading from the crown of his head, and a grey suit that matches the blandness of the room, he clasps his hands on the table between us and looks back and forth between Sam and me.
It’s like he knows we’re frauds, and he’s waiting to strike.
I nervously fumble in my bag and pull out a manila folder full of paperwork I knew we’d need.
“How are you guys today?”
I swallow nervously. “We’re good, Mr. Clay. Thank you.”
“Just call me Joseph, please.”
I’d rather not. “Okay.”
He smiles and claps his hands together. “Okay. I can tell you’re nervous, so we’ll just start. You needn’t worry so much. We’re all friends here, and we’re all looking out for baby Lily.”
I nod, then jump in my seat when Sam clasps my hand under the table and squeezes gently. He winks quickly, then looks back at Joseph. “We’re ready.”
“Alright. Today, we’ll be discussing you guys. I’ll need to discuss your financial stability. Medical history. Living arrangements. That sort of stuff, okay?”
We both nod as Joseph takes out his own notes and starts shuffling. “You’re listed as Ms. Ricardo, is that correct?”
I nod nervously. “Yes, sir.”
“How long have you been married?”
He knows this information, obviously, but Sam answers confidently anyway. “Almost fourteen years.”
Joseph nods and starts writing notes. “Obviously times have changed since I got married, but you didn’t take Mr. Turner’s name?”
“We were married so young, and then I knew I wanted to have a professional career, so I wanted to keep my name for that.” Lie. We were married and broken up in less than a week. I didn’t have time to make the official change.
“That makes sense.” He writes some more notes. “Like I said, times have changed, but that doesn’t make your choice wrong. You’ve listed two separate addresses in your paperwork--”
“One is our apartment here in town,” Sam answers smoothly. “The other is our apartment in the city. We move back and forth between them, depending on our work requirements.”
“You don’t think that’s a little unstable for a child?”
“No sir. Unstable would be staying in hotels. But having said that, that was our life pre-Lily. We both have flexible careers, so if you prefer we pick one apartment and stick to it, then that’s fine. We can make it work.”
Joseph smiles approvingly, then jots down more notes and looks up. “No other children at home? No pets?”
“No,” I answer him. “No one else at home, so no one that might become jealous of the newcomer.” I smile, hoping to impress him with my knowledge behind his question, but he just smiles back and continues writing.
“You guys have been married a long time. You didn’t want children of your own?”
“We just didn’t get to that yet,” Sam answers as emotion clogs in my throat. “Like Sammy said, we married young, we both studied hard and took on professional careers. We were getting to the making babies portion of our life, then Lily happened.”
“So what happens to Lily once you decide to make your own babies?”
Sam and I both frown at his implication. “We won’t just be setting her aside like an unloved kitten, Mr. Clay. We love her like she was biologically ours.” I push loose strands of hair behind my ear. “Do you have children, sir?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“More than one?”
He smiles knowingly. “Yes ma’am.”
“Did you toss the first one aside when you had a second?”
He chuckles, but he shakes his head and scribbles notes. “No, Ms. Ricardo, we didn’t.”
“Exactly.”
“Perhaps we could move into finances then.”
“Sure, go ahead.” I take bank statements from my manila folder and slide them across the desk, then my brow lifts as Sam takes out folded paper from his back pocket. Joseph takes my crisp documents, then Sam’s scrunched version, then he scans them side by side. He stares at Sam’s for a little too long, looking a little too closely, so I lean forward in my chair and point at mine. “As you can see, I have homes in five different states. They’re all paid off in full and have a small fortune in equity sitting inside them.”
“Why do you own five homes in five different states, Ms. Ricardo?”
“They were gifted from my parents years ago.”
Sam’s eyes snap to mine, but Joseph continues, “Titles are in your name?”
“Yes sir. I assume my folks were just trying to offset tax debt, but the fact remains, these properties are mine, and they’re fully paid.”
“Will you be holding onto them?”
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do. Sell them. Keep them. Sign them over to Lily in trust.”
“You’ll just sell your parents’ homes?” Sam asks quietly.
With a lifted brow, I nod. “Yup. In a heartbeat. Besides, they’re not theirs. They’re ours, honey.”
“Alright,” Joseph interrupts. “Lets continue. Criminal history. I have your records, but is there anything either of you would like to confess to?”
My heart thunders in my chest, but Sam chuckles and turns back. “No sir. Neither of us are jail birds.”
“In fact, your daddy and brother are both in law enforcement, correct?”
“Yes, sir. My dad retired a few years back and now he and my mom are vacationing somewhere in the tropics. And my older brother is currently police chief, and he hasn’t had to arrest me in years.”
Joseph and I both laugh, but his is a whole lot more carefree than my nervous chortle as I squeeze Sam’s hand in punishment. Sam smiles charmingly, leans into me and kisses my brow casually. “Relax.”
“Stop it.”
He squeezes my hand in answer, then turns back to Joseph with a winning smile. “No brushes with the law, sir.”
“Any relationship issues? Separations. Mediations. Extra-marital affairs. Reason to think you’ll be separating in the future, or at all in the past.”
Sam’s hand squeezes mine again. “No sir. I love my wife as much today as I did the day I married her, and that will never change.”
I bite my lip as he crushes my heart. Tears burn the backs of my eyes and my stomach drops at his easy – and fake – answer. Joseph looks at me and waits, and I shake my head quickly. “Exactly what he said.”
He smiles broadly. “You know, it’s so uncommon these days to find people who married as young as you guys did. Even rarer to find them still together more than a decade later.”
Sam smiles the fakest smile I’ve ever seen in my life, but to the rest of the world, it just looks like a smile. “We’re the easiest thing there ever was, Mr. Clay. It’s easy to love your best friend. Even easier to stay faithful to a woman as amazing as Sammy. Being married to her was never a hardship.”
“That’s sweet, Mr. Turner. I’m glad to hear it.” Joseph glances down and shuffles some more papers, then looking up, he stops on Sam. “Can we talk medical history for a moment? I know it might feel irrelevant, but mental health, even a decade ago, definitely needs to be addressed.”
I look over at Sam in confusion, but he continues to smile. “I don’t mind, Mr. Clay. It was a long time ago, and I’m okay with it now.”
“You were on anti-depressants for three years straight, Sam. That’s not small potatoes.”
He shrugs casually. “I was in law school. I was a newly married man. I was a teenager, then a young adult. It was just a really hard time of transition, so I needed a little help to get me out of a funk. I successfully transitioned off them and I haven’t needed them since.”
“You were seeing a therapist?”
“Yes sir. My family pushed me to see a therapist for a little while. In the end, she declared I could decrease those meetings too, until eventually, we stopped. That was all a very long time ago.”
“But years of treatment--”
“There’s something like forty-four million adults in our country who suffer depression or other mild forms of mental health. Only about half of them seek help. I sought and received help, and in that time, I learned coping mechanisms and I dealt with it. That should be praised, Mr. Clay, not judged. I’ve not needed medication since. I haven’t self-medicated with drugs or alcohol. With the help of my beautiful wife, I was able to overcome and move on with my life.”
Joseph nods and scribbles down more notes, but he smiles. “You’re right, Sam. And I didn’t mean to sound judgmental. I just want to make sure you’re fit to take in a baby. Emotionally. Mentally. Physically.”
“I’m fit as a fiddle, Mr. Clay. And I love my daughter. I’ll take care of her until my dying day.”
“Speaking of,” Joseph chuckles awkwardly. “Family history. Any family medical history I should know about?”
Sam thinks for a moment, but eventually shakes his head. “No sir. My parents are still alive. My grandparents died of old age.”
“No diabetes in the family? Heart issues? Cancer? Nothing degenerative?”
“No, sir. We’re all healthy.”
Joseph turns to me. “And you? Any medical issues in your family? As you know, we need to ask. If your folks, their folks, and their folks before them all passed away in their forties, then perhaps that’s a cause for concern.”
“I understand. But no, no issues. Both of my parents are still alive. No cancer. No diabetes. No heart attacks.”
“Okay. What about your own medical history?” He looks over my file, then pulling out the single sheet of paper I had printed days ago, he scans it. “One previous pregnancy.”
I swallow the lump in my throat as Sam’s hand painfully squeezes mine. “Yes, sir. Way back when we were newlyweds.”
“One pregnancy. One miscarriage.”
Shame washes over me. “Yes sir.”
Sam’s eyes snap to mine, and I have to pull my hand from his before he breaks it. His icy blue glare is so intense, I can almost feel my skin burning.