T.J. Klune - Bear, Otter, and the Kid 2 - Who We Are (18 page)

T
HERE
was a moment when I was young—
six i was six six and a half maybe

—when I’d come into the old apartment we used to live in over on River Road. The apartment that had the swings that always squeaked and the old man who lived next door who spent every day sitting in a chair staring out the window, sipping something out of a chipped tea cup. The pathways between the buildings were chipped and cracked, and a woman who lived next door said one day someone was going to trip over the cracks and would be able to sue and be set for life because what was a little pain if you had a lot of money? Don’t step on the cracks or you’ll fall and break your back (and become rich)! Money made everything better. I would always jump over each crack as best I could because I didn’t want to get hurt. I didn’t want to have to sue anyone. I didn’t want their money.

i left a little bit of munny to help yu out for now

I came home one day from school to that apartment on River Road and found my mom sitting in the living room on that old couch covered in cigarette burns and food stains. Her face was in her hands, and I could hear the subtle gasp of a choked sob, and this was my
mom,
and I was so little—

maybe seven i was such a little guy
—and I ran to her and jumped in her lap and told her—
don’t cry mom it’s going
—it was going to be fine, that somehow—
i promise it will get better and better and

—we would find a way to make whatever was making her sad go away, that I would do everything I could to make her happy, and did she want to see the gold star I got on the picture I drew because the teacher said I did so well, that I was like an artist and so very, very talented? I wanted to tell her how that praise had made me feel, how starved I’d felt for any kind of attention, that I’d begun to think of my teacher Mrs. Terrance like she was my friend, like she was my mother, like she would take me home with her one day to her big house that would be warm and smell of fresh bread, and there would be gold stars all over the floors and ceilings, and she would look down at me as we walked through the door and tell me that this was my home too, that I would get to stay with her forever because she loved me too. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t say that to my mother. Even then, I knew the power words had. To heal. To hurt.

So I held my mother while she cried, and eventually the tears subsided, and she began to hiccup softly, and this made me giggle, and she almost looked like she was going to smile at me, and I forgot about the house filled with gold stars because one smile from my mother was worth a billion gold stars and a billion Mrs. Terrances and a billion houses that smelled like fresh bread. I knew this was going to be a moment I would remember because it would be for
me
, it would be
because
of me; she’d seen fit to smile at me, and then her mouth would open, and she’d tell me how proud she was of me, how thankful she was I came home when I did, that I just make everything better, that I was her son, her only son, and God, how she loved me, how she couldn’t live without me and how she never, ever wanted me to leave her. There would be love in her eyes that were so very much like my own, and for the first time that I could remember, we would be connected somehow, and I would know that she was my mother, that she wanted me there with her and no one else, especially not the one-named strange men (
Bob
or
Greg
or
John
or
Bud
) that came in with her late at night, both of them whiskey-drunk and laughing as they tripped over chair legs on their way to the kitchen to get more booze, the smoke from their cigarettes trailing over their shoulders like contrails from planes in the sky.

But this… this was different. There was something there, something
emotional
, and I would take it for what it was, like the great gift that it was. Oh
God
, how this was going to be the moment, the first true moment of my life when I’d finally get what I had always dreamed about. There were tremors then, almost like a precursor to an earthquake, the room around us silent except for the tiny sniffles from my mother.

The smile never formed, and the words that came out instead—
i need a drink and a smoke

—cut me, ran me through, and I cursed myself for thinking otherwise as I broke inwardly, for thinking that maybe, just maybe, I would know what it felt like. She stood up and stumbled slightly as her knees popped. She walked toward the kitchen, glancing at me over her shoulder and—

bar tonight so you’re on your own for dinner kiddo

 

—there was a flash in her eyes, but it was the opposite of recognition, like lightning behind clouds, and I—

 

i’m going out to the bar tonight so you’re on your own for

—knew that it would not happen today, that it might not happen ever. But I was six (maybe seven?), and my ideals had not yet been shattered, my faith had not yet been shaken. I trudged off to my room, passing the kitchen while my mom lit up a Marlboro Red and splashed Jack over a couple of ice cubes. I lingered for a moment in the doorway, but I was invisible. I was a ghost, even though I could not haunt her, even though I could not make her look up and scream and scream and scream. I went to my room and closed the door behind me.

We lived there for maybe a year before being evicted and forced to stay with a woman who made me call her Auntie Sherrie and smelled like peach Schnapps and sweat. She always had stale hard candy in her thrift-store purse. I don’t know if we were related, but it doesn’t matter because she moved away and we got another apartment, shabbier than the one on River Road. The new apartment didn’t have swings or a man sipping tea in the window. The paths were dirt so there were no cracks for me to jump over. I never saw my Auntie Sherrie again. I asked about her years later, but Mom said she had been killed by a drunk driver. I asked who the drunk driver was and if he was dead too. She said the drunk driver was Auntie Sherrie. Peach Schnapps, wouldn’t you know.

There was no Ty then. No Creed, no Anna. No Mrs. Paquinn. There was no Otter. God, how there was no Otter.
None of them were real to me yet. I couldn’t even imagine them. I never found out what made my mom cry that day.

I
DON
’
T
know why I thought you needed to know that. Maybe….
No. Never mind.
W
E
’
RE
sitting across from Georgia Erlichmann in the living room the next

day, the Kid to my left and Otter to my right. The social worker is opposite us, a small laptop perched on her legs, the keys clacking, writing only God knows what. She’s smaller than I expected her to be, and younger, given the gruffness of her voice over the phone. Her brown hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail, seeming to provide a cheap face lift as her eyebrows are almost in the middle of her forehead. Either that or she’s in a perpetual state of surprise.

I smile at her, trying to show her I have not lost any teeth due to the manufacturing and use of meth. She ignores me and glances around the living room and types something else. I look around then too, wondering what she sees. The living room is wide, a large couch against one wall, a flat-screen TV set over the fireplace, two recliners against the other wall. The carpet is a light brown (which goes
amazing
with the green color on the outside) and is clean. Otter wants to pull it up for the hardwood floors underneath, but we haven’t gotten to it yet. It looks like a normal living room. So why is it like she’s typing a fucking novel about it?

I’m sure she’s been in much worse homes, and probably has stories that would make me nauseous to hear, so one would think she would be relieved at being able to be in a
nice
home, with
nice
people. But she’d perfunctorily shaken my hand when she’d arrived in her nondescript government-issued vehicle, smiling only when the Kid had wandered in, asking how he was in her slightly accented English. The Kid had responded warily. I wanted to kick him in the shins and tell him to
behave
, but then I realized what that would look like in front of a social worker and was able to stop myself from having the Kid taken from me within the first five minutes of her visit.

It didn’t help when she’d walked in the kitchen after I’d gone in to get her a cup of tea and she’d seen Otter kissing me gently on the lips, trying to get me to calm down, to make the nervousness that was blaring through me quiet to a dull roar. She’d made a small noise in the back of her throat and started typing
something
on the damn laptop, and I could only imagine it would say something like,
The two homosexuals were engaged in anal sex on the kitchen table, using gravy as a sort of lubricant. The smaller man (obviously the “bottom” in the relationship) had a collar around his neck attached to a leash held by the larger man (a dominant “top”) who pulled on it and repeatedly asked “Who is my bitch?” The smaller man would say he was, that he was the bitch. This is not a good home for a child to be raised in. I recommend we move Tyson in with a heterosexual couple who are not into gravy sex and know that leashes are only for dogs as soon as possible.
I pulled away from Otter, restraining myself from shoving him, not wanting her to think I was capable of spousal abuse as well. I’d muttered something as I blushed and went back to the tea like it was the most important thing in the world.

And then she had the nerve to—
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back it up. Spouse? Did I just think
spouse
? When the hell did I start thinking of Otter as my
husband
? I don’t want to get fucking married! I’m twenty-one years old, goddammit! Goddamn the Kid for talking about gay marriage all the fucking time, like it’s something that I want, like it’s something I think about all the time. It’s not. I don’t think about it at all. I never have. Otter doesn’t, either. Besides, he wouldn’t want to marry me. That’d just be weird. Who would change their last name? Derrick Thompson makes me sound like I yacht at Martha’s Vineyard and have a stick up my ass. Oliver McKenna sounds like he… well, okay, that sounds all right. I guess. If you like that kind of thing. Where would we even do that? It’s not legal, so it’s not like it would be recognized or anything. I suppose
we’d
know, at least. That’d count for something, right? Maybe we could to some kind of civil ceremony, though, down at that spot on the beach. We could do it at dusk, and the sun would be setting behind us, and we could wear those tuxes that we wore the first time we were down there, that time that had started horribly wrong but ended so wonderfully right. He’d be looking down at me, and I’d be looking up at him, and the sun would be like a halo at the back of his head and that gold-green would flash at me, and I would know it meant forever because
he
is forever and as our family looked on, he would lower his face until his lips met mine and—

—and holy fucking shit, did I
really
just go there? My mouth is dry, my cock half-hard. And I’m staring at Otter. Who’s staring back at me, his eyes dancing like he knows
exactly
what I’m thinking about. No way. No fuc— (social worker is here, dang it!)—flipping way.

Georgia clears her throat as she looks back up at us, interrupting my mini freak-out/Barbie Fantasy Dream Wedding. I hope she doesn’t see the insane gayness in my eyes, because I don’t know if I can shield it. She doesn’t smile. I choke on my tongue as I think of a ring sliding over my finger.

The doorbell rings.
I jump up immediately, wondering if that is God saving me. “Don’t know who that could be,” I say, still trapped on a beach, Otter whispering “
I

do”
somewhere in my head. “No one ever comes over here. Er, I mean, we have people over, we’re not like some crazy shut-ins.” I laugh, and it comes out sounding like I’m a crazy shut-in. “People come over here
all
the time. Wait, that didn’t sound right, either. I know what I just said sounds like. It’s only people we
know
that come over here. We’re not drug dealers or anything.”
Oh, God, shut up!
“I don’t even know any drug dealers. Otter works for a photography studio, but I only think it’s fashion photographers that get hooked on cocaine, and he doesn’t do that anymore. Fashion photography, not cocaine. I don’t even think he knows where to get any? Otter, do you know where to buy cocaine?” He shakes his head, his mouth quirking at the sides, obviously not going to speak. I wish I could do that. The Kid has his face in his hands. “So there’s that,” I tell Georgia, who is watching me with a badass stoicism that chills me to the bone.

I get up and start walking toward the door as the bell rings again. “I’ve never even
seen
drugs before,” I continue for some odd reason. (
Not so odd,
it tells me.
You just like to hear yourself talk, apparently. Are you
trying
to make this worse?
) “Except on TV and in movies. I’m sorry. I just lied to you. I saw a marijuana joint once when I was sixteen. I didn’t touch it, though. It was just kind of… around me. Okay, so they smoked it around me, but I refused to partake because users are losers, you know? I would never put that in my body, because my body is a temple. Wow, that sounded conceited. I’m sorry. I’m not conceited and I don’t do drugs and I talk a lot when I’m nervous and
why haven’t you said anything about the tea
?”

I open the door. Dominic is there. And Anna. And Mrs. Paquinn. Nope. Not God saving me. God jerking me around. Again.

 

“Hi, guys!” I say loudly. “It’s so normal for you to stop by like this in the middle of the day. And none of you do drugs, either!”

“Not since the sixties!” Mrs. Paquinn says just as loud, like she thinks we’re playing a game. “But then everyone did drugs in the sixties! Free love, wouldn’t you know. I remember this one time I took two drops of acid off a sugar cube and somehow ended up in Wyoming, after having followed what I thought was a pink koala across state lines for six days. I couldn’t believe it when I finally came down and saw that there wasn’t a koala, after all, but a group of frightened Japanese tourists who thought I was stalking them for their yen! To this day, I still haven’t figured out why the Japanese would want to go to Wyoming. It’s not exactly a hotbed of Asian activity.”