Any Other Family by Eleanor Brown

Author:Eleanor Brown [Brown, Eleanor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-07-12T00:00:00+00:00

17

• • •

GINGER

“NOBODY’S ANSWERING THEIR phones.” Sunny, the family’s social worker, never says hello. She simply begins the conversation halfway through. Ginger has ceased to find this habit startling, but she still takes a moment to orient herself before replying.

“John and Perry are golfing, and everyone else went for a walk around the lake at Maroon Bells. Perhaps they don’t have cell service,” Ginger says. “Or Tabitha decided they should leave their phones in the car.”

“Ha, that sounds like Tabby,” Sunny says. She is the only one who calls Tabitha “Tabby,” and whenever she does, Tabitha smiles in a politely pained way, but never says anything. They all live in a strange fear of Sunny, who gives the initial impression of being casually unprofessional, but can turn smart and sharp whenever she spots weakness, a shark smelling blood in the water. The parents’ anxieties in her presence exist likely because their relationships with Sunny were formed in the cooperative yet adversarial process of home studies, of being evaluated for parental fitness. Ginger had never thought of herself as a person with secrets, but after each session in which Sunny rummaged around in her emotions and past, she felt exhausted and shaken. Then came the actual home evaluation, where Sunny led Ginger through her own apartment with a clipboard, ticking off all the hazards Ginger had never noticed. How had she been so foolish as to live without a fire extinguisher, an escape ladder, with blind cords just dangling within reach? Ginger considers herself a competent person, but that process exposed so many ways in which she fell short, and she still feels off-kilter in Sunny’s presence, as though some other failing is always threatening to be exposed.

Sunny crunches into something on the other end of the line. She is even smaller than Tabitha, but is constantly eating lab-created artificial cheese snack foods: Takis, or Doritos, or Cheetos. There were orange thumbprints all over Phoebe’s adoption paperwork.

At first, Ginger was startled by Sunny’s casual approach to everything. It made it seem as though she didn’t take her job seriously. After a time, however, Ginger recognized that Sunny’s affect was mostly the result of professional fatigue, that though this was the first time she and Perry and Tabitha were all going through this process, to Sunny it was routine. And they were, Sunny constantly told them, an easy case, which made Ginger wonder what qualified as hard.

“How come you’re not with them?” Sunny asks around the mouthful of whatever she is eating.

“I sprained my ankle,” Ginger says. “I’m excused from all activities.”

“Oh, right. Tabby did mention that. Bummer,” Sunny says, though she sounds perfectly cheerful when she does.

Ginger is similarly undecided about whether her injury is a blessing or a curse. She greatly appreciates being excluded from most of the family expeditions, and at the same time finds herself at loose ends when they are gone and relieved when they return.

“Anyhoo, I actually wanted to talk to you in particular, so it’s great I have you all to myself.

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