Bear, Otter, & the Kid 03 - The Art of Breathing (50 page)

“I knew that,” I say, even though I had no idea. I’m not going to look like some rube in front of a child. Who the hell does she think she is?

“Sure you did,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You totally look like the type that gets dirty.”

“I get dirty!”

“You nails sure look manicured,” she points out.

“Goddamn Kori,” I mutter as I hide my hands behind my back. “That was thanks to my ex-girlfriend. Well, sort of. Not sort of she gave me a manicure. Sort of she’s my ex-girlfriend. She’s also my ex-boyfriend. Wait, that doesn’t sound right either.”

“You’re a mess, huh?” she says. “Almost offensive too. I think the term is transgendered. Are you transphobic?”

“No! I’m not phobic
anything
.”

“Well, entomophobic, anyway.”

“I’m not
scared
of bugs! I just don’t
like
them.”

“Most of them won’t hurt you,” she observes. “Especially if you leave them alone.”

“I know that!”

She nods, but it’s so obvious she doesn’t believe me that I want to knock her upside the head, but then I remember she’s a child I don’t know, and I think it’s probably frowned upon to hit unknown children on the street. Or anywhere else. “So,” she says, “you have an ex-boyfriend and girlfriend all in one? That’s pretty epic. There was a transgendered boy at my school, but he got made fun of and his mom took him out. Life sucks like that sometimes. And then you die.”

“That’s a morbid way of looking at things.”

“Or realistic,” she counters.

“He’s not transgendered,” I say, though I have no idea why I’m explaining myself to her. “He’s bigendered. That means that—”

“I know what that means,” she says. “I’m not a little kid.”

“You sort of are. How old are you? Ten? Eleven?”

“Twelve. How short are you? Four foot two? Three?”

“I’m five seven!”

“Something to be proud of,” she assures me, though I think she’s actually mocking me. “So we’ve established you are scared of bugs, have a fence fetish, and have dated outside of societal norms. Anything else I should know?”

“Do you always talk like this?” I ask.

“What? Like I know what I’m talking about?”

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

She grins. “I like you.” Then she frowns. “Wait. You’re not like a kidnapper or a rapist, are you? I have to warn you, I have a black belt.”

“I’m not a kidnapper or a rapist,” I say. “What do you have a black belt in?”

“Nothing,” she says. “But I own a black belt. Didn’t it sound intimidating?”

“Not really,” I say. “I’m not scared of a little girl.”

“But you’re scared of bugs. They’re a lot smaller than I am.”

“I am not!”

“Boys,” she says, rolling her eyes. “All bluster and noise.”

“Tell me about it,” I mutter.

She claps her hands against her chest. “You
would
know about it, wouldn’t you? Because you’re gay.”

“I suppose.” This conversation needs to be over so I can skulk in front of the house some more. Or leave and never look back. That sounds good too.

“Well, that’s fascinating. So, which one are you?”

“Which one what?”

The little girl looks over at the house. “I hear her talking sometimes. She can get loud when she wants to. Once, she was yelling into the phone and I heard a lot. That was before Frank left.”

A buzzing noise picks up in my ears at the name
Frank
.

“I don’t know who she was talking to, but she was yelling about them. Sometimes, she gets drunk and tells me stories. It doesn’t happen much anymore. The stories. And her getting drunk. I think she’s actually trying this time. Who knows whether or not she’ll make it. Jury is still out on that one.”

“Who are you?” I ask her, though in my secret heart I already know.

“You’re too young to be Bear,” she tells me. “Such a funny name, that. She told me you gave it to him.”

“When I was just a little guy,” I whisper.

She nods sadly. “Then you must be Tyson. Well, Tyson, I don’t know why you’re here, but it might be better if you left. Things might have changed, but it’s nowhere near where it should be. She’s never going to be what you need.” She says this with such a familiar air of forced adulthood that I’m taken aback. She’s essentially me.

“Izzie?” I ask her, dazed.

And she smiles, and gone is the cynical edge, the sarcastic lilt. Bear smiles the same way. So do I. As does our mother. It’s uncanny.

Isabelle McKenna, my little sister, says, “I used to wonder if you’d ever come for me. Now I just wonder why you came at all.”

M
Y
HEART
hurts a little when we walk inside and she immediately starts picking up the clutter around the house, obviously embarrassed by it. She mutters to herself that she most certainly wasn’t expecting guests as she empties an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts and ash. Some have lipstick on the filter, dried and flaking. The house smells stale, and, frowning, she opens a window.

“It’s not usually like this,” she says, but she won’t look at me. “I’ve just been busy with
Rosalia funebris
and haven’t had time to clean up.” She rushes around the living room, straightening out pillows and magazines. Wiping crumbs off the chipped coffee table. A layer of dust coats the top of the TV. A ceiling fan squeaks overhead.

“It’s okay,” I tell her as gently as I can. “Stuff like this doesn’t bother me.”

“Why not?” she asks. “It should. It’s a breeding ground for bacteria. Who knows how many strains of
Escherichia coli
are growing in here?”

“Probably at least six or seven,” I say.

She glances at me, eyes narrowed. “Are you making fun of me?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Good,” she says. She picks up a trio of coffee mugs and heads for the kitchen on the other side of the living room. “I’d hate to have to kick your ass.” She disappears through the doorway.

I walk around the room slowly, following her to the kitchen. There are celebrity magazines in piles on the floor near the couch. They look old and worn, and I can see the mailing label is made out to a hair salon. There are photos on a shoddy bookshelf, their frames plastic and cheap.

Here is Izzie, a toddler smiling with a princess’s tiara on her head.

Here is Izzie, dressed as a pirate for Halloween.

Here is Izzie, waving as she climbs onto a school bus.

Here is Izzie, sitting on Santa’s (Satan’s) lap.

Here is Izzie and my mother. Our mother. Izzie sits on her lap, that familiar smile on her face. Mom isn’t smiling. This is the first time I’ve seen what she looks like since the day she knocked on the door to that shitty apartment so very long ago. She looks tired. And old. Rough. I don’t remember what happened to the one picture I used to have of her that I kept hidden in my drawer. Maybe Bear found it. Maybe I just threw it away.

Out of the dozen photos, there’s not a single one of Bear or me. I should have known this. I should have expected this. And I think I did. It still hurts. I don’t know why.

Besides Izzie, Izzie, Izzie, there are more photos of beaches and foggy Irish moors and Stonehenge and castles rising impossibly out of steep cliffs. They line the wall with no rhyme or reason, torn out of a magazine or travel brochure and pinned to the drywall. I reach out and touch each one, the paper curling around the yellowing edges. These are hers, too, I think. My mom’s. She always did dream of faraway places. It’s sad to think she only ever made as far as Idaho.

The kitchen is dated, a Formica table in the middle, two folding chairs underneath on a linoleum floor. The fridge is a pale green, and some cabinet doors are missing their hinges. There’s an old electric range. An old microwave. An old everything. Everything in here is old. Secondhand. It might as well be how things looked for me growing up. Different place, same things. For a while, anyway. Before Otter came and saved us. Before Dom came and changed me.

Dom. Jesus, how I wish he was here right now. I don’t know that I’m strong enough to do this on my own. I don’t even know what to say to this little girl, this little girl who might be the only other person in the world aside from Bear and me to understand this life. To understand how it feels. To understand what it means. This little girl who’s furiously scrubbing at dishes in the sink like they’ll never get clean unless she gives it all she’s got. There’s no dishwasher. So maybe this is normal for her.

“I’ll dry,” I say, coming to stand beside her.

She sighs and her shoulders slump. “If you must. There should be a clean dishtowel in that drawer. I did laundry last week.”

There is, and it’s worn and frayed, but it’s clean. She scrubs out a coffee mug, rinses it, then holds it up to her face and squints as she inspects it. Her tongue sticks out between her teeth in concentration. It must pass inspection, because she hands it off to me. “Top cupboard,” she says. “By the fridge.”

I take it without a word and dry it before putting it back in its rightful place.

“Why are you here?” she asks after this goes on for a while.

“I don’t know,” I admit.

“That’s comforting,” she says. “Do you often travel hundreds of miles and show up at people’s houses without some kind of thought as to why?”

“Constantly. It’s sort of my thing.”

She stops and looks over at me, cocking her head. “You’re weird,” she finally says. “You’re lucky I like weird.” She hands me a fork and points to a drawer near the sink.

“Very lucky.”

“I’ve never had a brother before,” she says.

“You have two of them.”

“How’s Bear?”

“In general or right at this specific moment?”

She makes a face. “What’s he like?”

I think hard on this. “Like a verbal hurricane,” I finally say. “But in the best way possible.”

“I don’t think hurricanes are considered good things, much less verbal ones.”

“This one is. I don’t know how else to describe him. He’s the greatest thing in the world.”

“That’s quite a lofty proclamation.”

“And it’s not made lightly,” I tell her. “What grade are you in?”

“Sixth.”

“You speak very well for a sixth grader.”

“That didn’t sound condescending at all.”

I roll my eyes. “I was giving you a compliment.”

She shrugs it off. “I like to read,” she mutters. She pops a bubble in the soap.

“What do you like to read?”

“Books,” she deadpans.

“It was just a question.”

“From a strange man who happens to be my brother, who until fifteen minutes ago I hadn’t ever met before.”

“My favorite is
Brave New World
.”

She laughs. “How pretentious. You don’t have to try and impress me.”

“I’m not.” She’s got a bit of a chip on her shoulder. Reminds me of me at her age. Unfortunately.

“
Wuthering Heights
,” she says. “That’s mine.”

I snort. “Talk about pretentious.”

“It’s romantic!”

“It’s not romantic. It’s about two fucked-up people who love each other so much they want to destroy one another.”

“Romantic,” she sighs. “And it sounds like you’re just projecting.”

I still. “What’d you say?”

“Projecting. It means—”

“I know what it means. I’m just… surprised you do.”

“I
am
pretty smart,” she says.

“I can tell. I was, too, when I was your age.”

“But not anymore?”

I shrug. “I suppose that remains to be seen.”

“Weird,” she says again.

“You still like weird?”

“For the most part. Your taste in books could use some work.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“So you don’t know why you’re here,” she says as she washes the soap away from the sink. “And you’re not smart anymore. And you like fences. Anything else I should know? Any diseases that run in the family?”

“Bear and I tend to speak without thinking sometimes. Well. All the time.”

“Because your mouth works before your brain?” she asks. She sounds delighted.

“Yeah.”

“I do that too. I think it’s just because I have a broken filter.”

“Manic, most likely.”

“It’s good to have an official diagnosis.” She steps away from the sink. “Want to see my room?”

“Sure, kid,” I say without even thinking.

S
HE
SHOWS
me her ant farm (“I’m breeding them,” she tells me, but for what purpose, she’s adamantly silent).

She shows me her collection of books and poems by the Bronte sisters (“Maybe you should branch out a little more,” I tell her. “Like,
Twilight
or something.” She punches me in the arm).

She shows me her poster of Nikola Tesla (“He was so selfless and so
dreamy
,” she sighs).

She shows me her yearbook. She’s in the Chess Club (“Pretty much the only one,” she says). She’s in the Botany Club (“President and treasurer. I could embezzle dozens of dollars and they would never know”). She’s in drama (“I can’t act for shit,” she says. “But I like to pretend.”). She’s in choir (“Have you ever heard someone running over a bike horn? Imagine that, and you’ll know what I sound like.”). There’s a signature or two in her yearbook, but they’re mostly from teachers. I ask her about it, and she closes the book and puts it away, averting her eyes. “It’s hard to have friends when you’re so busy,” she says. There’s a challenge in her voice, daring me to question that. I don’t need to. I know better.

“It’s hard being the smart one,” I tell her instead. “I skipped a few grades.”

“Yeah, well, I could if I wanted to,” she says, fiddling with her fingers. “I just didn’t want to leave all my friends behind.” She won’t look at me.

“Yeah, that can be hard. I didn’t have that many friends, though. I had my brother. And Otter.” I sigh. “And Dom.”

“Who’s Dom?”

“This guy.”

She grins. “This guy,” she says. “Must be some guy if you get all swoony.”

“I’m not swoony!” I sort of am.

“Totally swoony. Like, boy-band swoony.” She giggles to herself, and it’s a happy sound, a carefree sound. A little girl sound. It hurts. It hurts to know I’ve missed this. That I’ve missed all of this.