Chapter 22: Hayes

On Monday I told Patricia no, in her own sunroom.

Max was drawing at the end of the table.

"I write grant proposals," I said. "I don't know the first thing about trucks."

"You know a liar when one signs a page."

"That's a different job."

"It's the only job," said Patricia, but she let me say the rest.

I would vote Max's shares, I said, every quarter, and I would read every page first.

I would not sit in the chair.

A company that moves freight should be run by someone who has moved it.

Max's mother should be the one who checks that person's work.

Patricia looked at me for a long moment over her glasses.

"Good," she said. "I was testing you."

"Were you?"

"A little."

By Wednesday we had interviewed four people.

On Thursday the chairman and I hired a woman who had run a trucking line in Baltimore for twenty years.

She asked for a pencil during the interview.

I took that as a sign.

On Friday I went to the lawyer above the dry cleaner in Brooklyn.

Landon's withdrawal of the custody petition was on her desk, signed.

Clipped to it was a note in his own hand: Tell Max I said hello.

I read it twice and put it in the file.

Then she slid one more form across.

It was the petition to change my name.

I wrote it in pencil first, because that is my habit, and then in ink.

Joanna Hayes.

The pen did not shake at all.

That night Max slept at his grandmother's, with a promise that Saturday would be ferry day, and the apartment was quiet.

Caleb came at eight with a paper bag from the Italian place on Court Street.

We did not eat.

He set the bag on the counter and looked at me in the kitchen light.

I was wearing a green dress I had bought that afternoon for no reason.

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