Short Story: The Seal Maiden: A Custody Battle out of the Not-Too-Distant Past

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To see her son, in a visit supervised by a social worker who would sit in the back of the room, her head folded behind a newspaper, Miriam Birkin had to leave the colorful, people-crossed, café-lined streets of Lakeview and drive through the northwestern outskirts of Chicago into a section of Skokie filled with boxy, yellow houses and new trees. On the radio, Annie Lenox was singing: "Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree . . . ."

The counseling center sat at the edge of a mall. In a corner by the mall's entrance, she passed Mr. Lee, thin and white haired, sitting in his lawn chair, playing his reed. His instrument whistled sweetly …