Do You Know the Monkey Man?

by Dori Hillestad Butler

  “Samantha, hi,” Mr. Hunter said all friendly-like, as though we weren’t all standing in the middle of a police station.

  “Hey, Sam,” Angela scurried over and grabbed my hand. “How are you?”

  “Okay. Do you know where my mom is?” I asked.

  Angela shook her head.

  “She and that fellow she came up here with were talking with several police officers when I got here,” Mr. Hunter said.

  “Fellow she came up here with?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes, the fiancé from Iowa—”

  Bob? Bob was here, too?

  “They came up in their own vehicle,” Mr. Hunter continued. “Which was probably a good thing. Sounds like you’re all going to be here a while.”

  I didn’t know why my mom had to go and drag Bob along. It wasn’t like they were married yet.

  “Are you ready to go, Angela?” Mr. Hunter asked.

  “In a minute. I just want to say good-bye to Sam first.”

  Mr. Hunter moved down the hall to give us a little privacy. Once he was far enough away so he couldn’t hear, Angela leaned toward me. “Guess what?” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “My dad thought something bad had happened to us. He was actually worried.” She seemed really happy about that.

  When I didn’t say anything, she said, “Don’t you get it? That means he cares about me. He even gave me a hug when he saw me. A real hug!”

  I smiled. “I’m happy for you, Angela.” Really, I was.

  “Looks like there’s hope for my dad after all. And if there’s hope for him, maybe there’s hope for your situation, too.”

  It was weird listening to Angela talk about hope. At the moment, I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel hopeful about anything again.

  We said our good-byes, then Angela and her dad left. I peered up and down the hallway, wondering where my mom was. Leaving the door slightly ajar, I went back to my seat to wait.

  I took out my comb and mindlessly ran it through my hair for something to do. What was happening in all those other rooms? Were my mom and Joe and T. J. giving their own versions of what happened? Were they arresting Joe? Getting T. J. ready to come live with us?

  About the time I was starting to think I’d been forgotten, there was a light tapping at my door. I looked up.

  “Hey there, Sam,” Bob said. Before I even had time to react, he strode right over to me and wrapped his big arms around me.

  I just sort of melted into him. Wow. Bob and I had never hugged before. But…it felt okay. Good, even.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. There was so much concern on his face that my eyes filled with tears.

  “I’ll bet you’re hungry,” he said, handing me a paper bag from McDonald’s. Once I saw it, I could smell the hamburger and fries. And then I realized that yes, I was indeed hungry.

  “Quarter pounder with cheese, no pickles, right?” Bob asked.

  “Yes,” I said, surprised that he knew me that well.

  “So, what’s going on?” I asked. I carried the bag over to the table and took the burger and fries out. “Where’s my mom?”

  Bob sat down in the chair across from me. “Well, she’s talking to some people about what it would take to try and get temporary custody of T. J. tonight, but I don’t think she’s going to be successful.”

  “Why not?” I asked, my mouth full of cheeseburger.

  “Because this is a very complicated case. It’s going to take a while for a judge to talk to everyone and decide what’s in the best interests of the child.”

  “What’s complicated about it? My dad committed a crime.”

  “Well, yes and no,” Bob said. “I’m not sure he can really be charged with any crime because at the time he took your sister, there was no divorce. No custody agreement. He had the same rights to you and your sister that your mom had.”

  What? I swallowed the food in my mouth. “He had a right to tell everyone she was dead and then take her away?” I exclaimed. “He kidnapped her!”

  “Not as far as the law is concerned,” Bob said. “That’s why I’m saying it’s complicated.”

  “But…he lied to the police. He made everyone search the quarry, which must’ve been really dangerous, not to mention expensive. All for nothing. Isn’t that a crime?”

  “Well, yes,” Bob admitted. “But honestly, we’re not likely to do anything about it now. Not after all this time. The real issue here is your sister and what’s in her best interest.”

  I picked at my french fries. “So you don’t think Joe will go to jail?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so. Like I said, the main issue here is going to be custody. And that’s going to have to be hashed out in court. The thing is, your sister has been with your dad for ten years. She wants to stay with him. The judge is going to factor that in.”

  “Have my mom and T. J. seen each other yet?”

  “Yes,” Bob said. “But it doesn’t sound like the meeting went very well. Emotions are running pretty high. On both sides. This is going to take some time.”

  “Well, if my mom doesn’t get custody of T. J. tonight, what will happen to T. J.? Where will she go?”

  “I suspect she’ll go into temporary foster care.”

  Foster care? My heart ached for T. J. In foster care, she really would be with strangers.

  I suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore. “I shouldn’t have done this,” I said, pushing my half-eaten cheeseburger away. “I shouldn’t have gone looking for my dad.”

  Bob didn’t answer right away. “Well, I understand why you did.”

  I raised my eyes. The main reason I went looking for my dad was I wanted to know what he thought of somebody else adopting me. I wanted him to put his foot down and say no. That he didn’t want anyone else to adopt me. That he was my dad. How could Bob possibly understand when he was the “somebody else”?

  Bob scooted his chair forward a little. “I lost my dad when I was right around your age, Sam. I know what it’s like to grow up without a father.”

  “Your dad got shot on duty, right?” I said slowly. I was pretty sure that was what my mom had said.

  “Yes. During a convenience store robbery.” Bob had a faraway look in his eyes. “He wasn’t the kind of father who spent a lot of time with his kids. He put in a long day at work, came home, and relaxed in front of the television. He was right there in our living room every single night, but I didn’t know him. Not really. I didn’t know who he was, what he thought about, what he was like as a kid. I didn’t even know for sure that he loved me.”

  It was weird to think of Bob as a thirteen-year-old kid who just wanted a little love and attention from his dad. Just like me.

  “Then when he died,” Bob went on, “I realized I’d never know those things. But it was different for you. You didn’t know for sure your dad was really gone. You still had a chance to get to know him. That’s why you went looking for him. Even though you knew it would hurt your mom.”

  I swallowed hard. “I never meant to hurt my mom.” I never meant to hurt anybody. “I just—” How could I justify this?

  “You just wanted to know whether your dad could ever love you.”

  I nodded. Maybe Bob did understand.

  “You know, you and I will never be blood relatives.” Bob leaned a little closer to me and looked right into my eyes. “But we could still be a family.”

  I knew that was all he and my mom wanted. For us to be a family. The funny thing was I had been looking for a family, too. Just not the same family my mom and Bob had been looking for. Maybe that was my mistake.

  “D-do you have to adopt me for us to be a family?” I asked. I don’t know where I got the guts to come right out and ask that question. But that was what it came down to for me. I had nothing against Bob. I just didn’t want him to adopt me.

  If Bob was upset or hurt, he didn’t show it. “A piece of paper doesn’t make people a family,” he said. “Often family is a choice, not an obligation
.”

  I’d never thought of it that way before. I always knew

  you could choose your friends, but not your family. But sometimes you could choose your family.

  I yawned. It seemed like Bob and I had been stuck in that little conference room forever. I’d lost track of how many games of hangman we’d played. But we didn’t have room on the McDonald’s bag for any more games. That was how long we’d been there. I checked my watch. It was almost nine o’clock.

  “You getting tired?” Bob asked.

  “Yeah, a little,” I said. I was getting hungry, too. I wished I hadn’t thrown away my cheeseburger.

  Bob must have read my mind. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “There’s probably a vending machine out there somewhere. Why don’t you go get a little snack.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Bob waved a five-dollar bill at me.

  “Oh, that’s okay. I’ve got money,” I said, patting my purse.

  Bob pushed the bill across the table. “Take it,” he said. “And while you’re at it, bring me some M&M’s.”

  “Okay.” I was really in the mood for a bag of M&M’s myself. “Thanks.”

  I went out in the hall. If I went to the left, I knew I’d come out by the front door. I didn’t remember seeing a vending machine anywhere that direction, so I went the other way.

  The hallway ended at a small waiting room. Two chairs sat on either side of a square table that was piled with magazines. Across the room was a vending machine.

  I stopped. T. J. stood in front of the machine dropping coins into the slot.

  “I-I didn’t know you were still here,” I said.

  She whirled around when she heard my voice, then slowly turned back to the machine. “I’m waiting for the lady from the Department of Human Services to show up.” T. J. pressed a button and her candy dropped to the tray at the bottom.

  M&M’s.

  I leaned against the wall. “My mom’s…fiancé sent me down here to get us some candy,” I said stupidly.

  I didn’t want her to think I was copying her, so I said, “He wanted some M&M’s. I don’t know what I’m going to get for myself.”

  T. J. walked around me without looking at me, then sank down in one of the square chairs. I watched as she ripped open her bag of M&M’s.

  I didn’t know what to do. Should I get what I came here to get and go back to the conference room? Or should I sit down next to T. J.?

  I took a good hard look at her, this girl who was my sister. Her eyes drooped and her face was all blotchy like she’d been crying. But her whole life had just been turned upside down, so why wouldn’t she cry? And it was all my fault. She must really hate me.

  “You probably hate me,” T. J. said suddenly.

  “What?” Why would I hate her? “I thought you hated me.”

  T. J. blinked. “I don’t even know you.”

  I sat down in the chair next to her, resting one foot under my butt. “I don’t know you, either.” And I wanted to know her. I wanted to know her even more than I wanted to know my dad.

  T. J. popped an M&M into her mouth, then offered the bag to me. I shook five candies into my hand, then gave the bag back.

  Silence.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to get to know you or your mother,” T. J. said after a little while. It sounded weird when she said “your mother.” Like my mother wasn’t her mother, too. “I just …”

  “You don’t want to come live with us.”

  She shook her head and looked down at her lap. “No. I don’t want to leave Joe. Or my grandma.”

  My throat caught when she said that. Her grandma was my grandma, too. And I didn’t even know her.

  “But Joe took you away from us,” I said. “You belong with us.”

  She shrugged. “He’s still my dad. Nothing he did all those years ago changes that. And now your mom wants to take me away from him.”

  Of course she does. After what your dad did, why shouldn’t she take you away from him?

  “What if it was you?” T. J. asked. “What if you were going on about your life, not knowing anything about me or Joe. And one day Joe just sort of popped into your life and said your mom did something wrong and now you have to come live with us. Would you want to?”

  I always thought that if my dad ever came into my life and asked me to come live with him, I’d go in a second. I wouldn’t even look back. But would I really? Mom and I didn’t always get along, but she was my mom. She was the only parent I’d had. Would I really leave her and go live with some stranger even if he was my dad?

  “I don’t know,” I said truthfully. Maybe I wouldn’t.

  “I’m still getting used to the idea that I have a mom and a sister. Just because somebody says it’s true doesn’t make it true. Do you know what I mean?”

  I thought about what Bob had said about how a piece of paper doesn’t make you family.

  I understood T. J.’s point, but still. What about my mom? She wanted her daughter back. Didn’t she deserve to have her daughter back?

  How would we ever resolve this? There were no right answers. There weren’t even any okay answers. No matter what happened, nobody was going to come out of this totally happy.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was dark outside when we finally left the police station. Bob drove over to a Holiday Inn that was just down the street and he and my mom paid for two adjoining rooms, one for my mom and me and one for Bob.

  Mom had picked up my suitcase at Angela’s dad’s house, but neither of them had bags for themselves. They weren’t planning on staying overnight when they left Clearwater this morning. They thought they’d just pick me up in Hill Valley, then go right back home.

  “Should we see if we can find a Wal-Mart or someplace where we can get a change of clothes or at least a couple of toothbrushes?” Bob asked as we trudged down the carpeted hallway, looking for our rooms.

  “No,” Mom said. “I’m tired. We can get something in the morning.”

  We stopped in front of room 235 and Bob inserted the plastic card in the slot and opened the door. I walked in and plopped my bag on one of the beds. Mom slowly sat down on the edge of the other bed. Bob unlocked the adjoining door between our rooms and went over to check out his room.

  “I still think there’s something screwy going on here,” Mom called to Bob. “Why can’t I take Sarah home tonight?”

  “T. J.,” I corrected. But no one paid any attention to me.

  Bob walked back into our room. “Honey, you know why,” he said, sitting down with my mom. “A judge is going to have to hear testimony—”

  “But why?” My mom sprang to her feet. “She’s my daughter! He took my daughter away! And now if she says she wants to stay with him, I may never get her back? It’s just not right!”

  “No, it’s not,” Bob agreed.

  “There’s got to be something we can get him on,” she said, stomping around the room. “Falsifying documents? Deprivation of parental rights? Whether we were divorced or not, you cannot tell me that what he did was legal.” She glared at Bob as though daring him to contradict her.

  “Well—”

  My mom cut him off. “What about all the money the county spent on dragging the quarry, looking for Sarah’s body all those years ago? Maybe the county can bring charges against him.”

  “Oh, that’ll really make T. J. want to come live with us,” I mumbled. “If you find a way to get Joe arrested.”

  “Sam,” Bob said in a warning voice.

  Mom whirled around to face me. Her eyes were angry little slits. “Don’t call her T. J. Her name is Sarah,” she said firmly.

  “No it’s not!” I stood face to face with my mother. “Sarah is dead. The girl we knew as Sarah is gone. She’s never coming back. This girl’s name is T. J. We have to call her T. J.”

  As far as I was concerned, Sarah and T. J. were two totally different people. Sarah was the girl I used to play Barbies with. The girl I
once shared a room with. The girl I would’ve shared all my secrets with, if things had been different. I had no idea who T. J. was. I just knew she wasn’t Sarah.

  “Your sister’s name is Sarah,” Mom insisted. We stood eye to eye. Nose to nose. We were so close to one another that I could feel her angry breath on my face. And she could feel mine.

  I threw up my hands in frustration. I could not believe the way she was acting.

  “Do you really think she’s going to want to go back to being called Sarah when she’s been T. J. for ten years?” I cried. “Geez, why don’t you ever think about what other people want? Do you really think you can control everyone and everything?”

  My mom looked like she’d been slapped. But I was just getting warmed up.

  I think Bob could tell, too, because he stood up and put his hand on my shoulder. “Now, take it easy there, Sam,” he said.

  But I couldn’t take it easy. I needed to tell my mother how I really felt about some things.

  “It’s not just T. J., you know. You do this with me, too. You try and control my entire life!”

  Mom gasped. “I am your mother! I’m allowed to control your life.”

  “You shouldn’t be allowed to control everything. Did you ever think maybe I needed to know stuff about my dad and my sister? Maybe I don’t want to move out of my house and go live in a brand-new house! Maybe I don’t want Bob to adopt me!”

  “Okay, Sam. That’s enough,” Mom said. “We’re in a hotel here. You cannot carry on like this.”

  “You’re doing it again!” I stomped my foot. “I’m not done talking, but you’re still trying to control how much I say!”

  I took a deep breath and tried to lower my voice. “Bob and I talked about him adopting me while you were doing whatever it was you were doing at the police station. I told him I wasn’t sure I wanted him to adopt me, and do you know what? He’s fine with it! You’re probably the only one who’s going to have a problem with it.”

  My mom sank to the bed. But I still wasn’t finished.

  “Haven’t you ever heard the phrase: ‘If you love something, set it free’? ‘If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.’ Mom, did it ever occur to you that maybe people don’t belong to each other? I don’t belong to you! And T. J. doesn’t belong to you! If you push this thing with her, you’re going to lose her forever! Is that what you want?”