Who We Are

by T. J. Klune

  Otter: “I’ll blow you if you do it right now” (I totally took him up on that one). The Kid, his lip trembling, his eyes wide but glinting: “Don’t you want to get custody of me, Papa Bear? I thought you loved me! I wish my mom were here!”) So I don’t take Erica’s threats idly, knowing full well she has the rest of the cool kids on speed dial.

  I mumble something at her, to which she replies, “Sorry, didn’t catch that.”

  “The Kid is going to freak,” I say again, a little louder.

  “And yet, you both don’t have a choice. You forget I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of one of his rampages. Do you remember what happened when he found out I’m a registered Republican?”

  He’d asked her what it felt like to live without a soul and to have Fox News make love to her without having bought her dinner first. And that’s me cleaning it up quite a bit, knowing I’ll now have to have a darn filter with the social worker coming in. We’d had a long talk with the Kid after that little colorful burst of Kid-ism (“Do you even know what a Republican is, Bear? Pretty soon, she’s going to be having me want to vacation back East with my perfectly coifed hair and starched sweater vests and vote on giving tax breaks to the rich! I demand you fire her!”). He might act like an adult, but he’s still a Kid and needs to watch his mouth, and I told him as much. He’d looked at me so incredulously when I’d threatened to ground him for a week for every curse word he used. When he saw that I was serious, he grumbled dark things at my person that undoubtedly would have been hilarious had I not been trying to prove a point.

  “I remember,” I sigh. “But you haven’t heard his views on psychotherapy yet. And trust me; you’ve heard nothing until you’ve heard that.”

  “I know,” she says. “And I know sometimes it can feel like a burden to be in charge of a gifted child, but you have to make him understand, Bear.

  And you can’t be worried about the reprisal. You’re the adult, remember?

  It’s not as if you are doing this just to upset him. It’s a state requirement, and it’s going to be the only way the courts will agree to grant you custody.”

  “I’ll call today,” I say, knowing there’s nothing left to argue with.

  “And then?” she asks.

  God, she’s so annoying! “And then I’ll call you back with the date and time of the appointment so you can call to verify. You’re a flipping hardcore female dog, you know that?”

  Erica laughs. “Subtle, Bear. Real subtle. I can see where the Kid gets it from. And for the amount I’m being paid for this, you bet I’m going to be a flipping hard-core female dog.”

  There’s a question I’ve been avoiding, and it’s one that I want to ask but am not sure if I want to know the answer. I’m sure she would have told me had she found anything out, but I still can’t help but wonder. Gathering my resolve and trying to sound as casual as possible, I ask, “Have you found her yet? Or anything?”

  I hear her stop typing on her keyboard, a sure sign that I have her undivided attention. There’s tiny little sigh, and I almost want to know what she’s thinking right now, wanting to see everything she sees. But instead of saying anything further, I wait.

  Silence. Then, “I’m surprised you haven’t brought that up sooner, Bear.

  What happens if I say yes?”

  I think hard for a moment, only to realize it would change nothing. I tell her as much. “Have you, then?” I ask. “You know, found her?”

  “No, Bear. We haven’t.” I don’t know which answer I was expecting, and I don’t know if the one I’ve gotten makes me feel relieved or not. “She hasn’t filed taxes in the last three years, so it’s unknown if she has a job or not. And so far, the search through the DMV database still only shows her Oregon driver’s license. And an old unpaid speeding ticket from 2004.”

  “I remember that ticket,” I tell her quietly. “She was late for work.

  Again. The cop almost arrested her for screaming at him. She got fired, and for weeks afterward, all she could do was blame the cop, that the cop got her fired, that she was going to sue him and the Pizza Shack and get a bunch of money and travel. She said she always wanted to travel.”

  Wow, it sighs. That didn’t come out sounding like you have issues at all.

  Why do you remember these things? Why do you care? Could it be that Bear still wuvs his mommy? It chuckles. I wonder what she would say if asked to name a memory she has about you. A good one. Any good one. What do you think she would say, Bear? You think she would say anything at all? Let’s be honest: if she did say anything, it would probably be the clichés she seems to live her life as now, the evil mother quoting scripture against the horror that is homosexuality. The Bible says … Leviticus says … God says . Fuck her.

  Fuck her and your memory of her. The quicker it’s gone, the better off you’ll be. You can’t forget unless you consciously decide to do it. Why hold on to her when she thinks nothing of you?

  “Bear?” Erica asks, and then she hesitates, but only for a moment. “Do you ever miss her?”

  Before I can even consider formulating a response to that, there’s a knock at the door. “Bear?” the Kid asks. “Why are you locked in the bathroom? Are you talking on the phone while you empty your bowels?

  That’s so gross. You better not have ever done that while talking to me!”

  “I’m not emptying my bowels!” I yell at him through door.

  “Well, that’ s good,” Erica says. “I’m not, either. Has anyone ever told you that you overshare?”

  “I gotta go,” I tell her.

  “Call the therapist,” she says. “Today. And call me if you want me to be there when the social worker comes, although I think you three will be fine.”

  “Oh, please. So you can bill us for the trip down here? You wish.”

  “I can’t wait to hear the date and time of the therapy appointment!” she says cheerfully as she hangs up the phone.

  I set the phone down near the sink.

  Bear.

  I know this is going to be heard for yu to read.

  Do you ever miss her?

  I need yu to do something for me.

  I can’t—

  Please don’t try looking for me.

  I have to leave.

  I won’t—

  Do you miss her?

  No. No. No, I don’t, not even if there was a moment that—

  THERE 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.

  WE’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.