Who We Are

by T. J. Klune

  He looks slightly panicked. “We don’t have to move again, do we? I like it here, Bear! I don’t want to go back to that stupid apartment. I like my room! I like Otter being here every day and Dominic being right down the road. I promise I won’t get upset again, Bear! I don’t want to move.” By the end, his breath was catching in his chest, his face red, eyes wide. I drop his hands and cup his face, holding him still so he won’t try and squirm away.

  “Now, you listen here, Tyson,” I say, doing my best to sound like Otter.

  “We’re not going anywhere, okay? I like our house too, and I like my room and Dominic and I happen to love the guy that sounds like he’s growling behind me. We can’t leave. There’s other people that depend on us now, other people that need us. What do you think would happen if we just left?

  Dominic would be pissed off because he needs you, because you’re his best friend. Otter needs us because we’re his family now. Did I tell you he said that? He told me he’s proud that he has his very own family now, one that he doesn’t have to share with anyone else.

  “There’s always been you and me, Kid, and I’ve always done my best to make sure you’re okay, and you’ve always done the same for me. And I think we did fine, the way we were. But that wasn’t living, Tyson. That was getting by. And you don’t deserve that kind of life. And I’m starting to think I don’t, either. We’ve got people now, people that will be sad if we’re gone, people who want us around. I don’t think I understood what that meant.

  Not… before she left. Certainly not after. But that doesn’t matter anymore.

  “And there’s one thing I want you to remember, one thing I want you to know for the rest of your life, no matter what else happens in the future, no matter where we end up. I need you to remember one thing for me. Can you do that, Kid?”

  He nods as his breath trembles from his body.

  “You remember that I’ve got you. Okay? Whenever things look rough, whenever you don’t think you can take another step and those fucking earthquakes seem to be able to tear you apart, you have to know that I’ve got you. I promised you that a long time ago, and I think I’ve been pretty good at keeping my word to you. I may have messed up a bunch of other times and probably will again, but I will never let you down. You hear me? I’ve got you, and that will never change.”

  And that’s all he can take, and it’s all I can take, and suddenly he’s in my arms, the weight of him the greatest thing I’ve ever known, and he cries into my neck. I thank God, that malevolent bastard, who’s done his best to knock us down, who’s seemed to have a personal vendetta against the Kid and me. I thank God because the only way that I have the Kid as I do is because of some miraculous occurrence, some unbelievable twist of fate.

  Throughout the shitstorm that’s been our lives, through everything we’ve had to endure, something somewhere thought I’d do okay by him. That I’d give him what he needed, and that in turn, he’d give me everything.

  It’s moments later, and the Kid’s breathing has calmed, my neck wet and snotty and wonderful. Otter’s arm is still draped over my waist, but his snoring has stopped, and I know he’s awake, but I don’t know for how long or how much he’s heard. That’s okay, though. I hope he’s heard enough to know the Kid is good. Not all the way, but getting there. Just like Otter and me.

  “This is probably why I’m in therapy, huh?” the Kid finally says, causing me to laugh.

  “Probably,” I agree. “That and the fact that you’re the smartest nine-year-old vegetarian ecoterrorist-in-training on the planet. I’m sure Eddie is going to turn you into a well-adjusted adolescent.”

  Tyson raises up and smacks me across the chest. “You wish,” he says, scowling as I wipe away the wetness from his cheeks. “I’m going to be like this forever.”

  “I hope so, Kid.”

  “Can I go get some cereal and eat it in your bed? I like watching CNN

  in here, and Anderson is coming on to do a special morning report on bovine growth hormones that I just can’t miss. It’s supposed to be life-changing.”

  “Sure, Kid. We’ll have breakfast in bed. Can you bring up that pizza in the fridge? Don’t worry about putting it in the microwave. It’s better that way.”

  He rolls his eyes as he slides off the bed. “I’m going to pick off the multilevel animal genocide you call toppings. Seriously, Papa Bear, you’re going to have a heart attack by the time you’re thirty. Not even Otter will love a bald man with heart palpitations. He told me.”

  I throw a pillow at him as he runs cackling from the room.

  And then it’s quiet.

  “How much did you hear?” I finally ask him.

  Otter rolls over on top of me, his massiveness giving me serious ideas of either asphyxiating or getting a boner. I think some people try to do that at the same time. Weirdos.

  He looks down at me with the gold-green shining and says the only thing he can, the only thing that’s necessary. There’s that Otter grin, and before his lips touch mine, I think of the sun.

  “Enough,” he says as he lowers into the kiss. “And you know what? I’ve got you both.”

  8.

  Where Bear Marks

  the Passage of Time

  AND so we lived. Or at least as best we could.

  It seemed like time sped up then, and the next few months flew by quicker than I expected. Several things of note occurred, which I will explain here. Some good, some not so good. There were days that were rough, days when Ty needed the bathtub, days when I needed it. Otter would always find himself sitting with us in there, holding onto us both until the earthquakes subsided. They never lasted long. But the one thing that you should know during those past few months is that we did live, and we were okay, for the most part. There were still issues, to be sure, but I think that there always will be. People like Ty and myself aren’t ever going to be completely free of our damnable neuroses, no matter how hard we try.

  Acceptance is the next step, I’m told. Hell, at least I’m no longer in denial.

  Mostly.

  Probably the biggest thing you should know is that sometime in October I received a phone call from Erica Sharp, one that I knew was coming but still could not prepare for. It’s like being aware that a car accident is about to happen. You see it coming, you know there’s nothing you can do, and you brace yourself for impact and hope that it won’t be enough to shatter you into a billion little pieces. I braced for that impact and had apparently been doing so for a while, but it didn’t seem to matter. Hearing the words sent chills down my spine, and I gripped the phone so tight that I thought it would break apart in my hands. Lucky for me, the Kid was in the backyard with Dominic. Otter was going over prints for an upcoming show displaying his work at an AIDS benefit. It was a pretty big deal, and he’d been busy for the past couple of weeks, getting everything ready.

  The words?

  “Derrick,” Erica said gently. “We’ve found her.”

  At first, I didn’t know what she meant. I think it was my brain’s last ditch effort to avoid insanity, but it only lasted for a split second before my hand started to squeeze the phone and my jaw began to ache. My heart thumped erratically in my chest. I felt a cold sweat bead out on my forehead, and all I can remember thinking is finally. Finally we’ve found you. It wasn’t a relief born out of need; well, not the need of Julie McKenna. It was more the necessity of finally knowing where she was, that I could look at a map and point and say, “There she is. She’s somewhere right there.” It took away a layer of the mysteriousness off it all, but I didn’t know how much further I wanted to dig.

  “Where?” I croaked out.

  Erica hesitated. “Bear, you should know that this doesn’t really change anything, okay? We’re still going to move forward like we had planned, we’re still going to push and pull and fight until we get what we want.

  Nothing is going to change that. The only thing this means is now we know where she is, so we won’t necessarily have any surprise
s coming down the road. We’ve already sent a process server out to her with the paperwork showing your intention of gaining custody of Ty, in addition to supports for her to sign if she is willing to relinquish custody of him to you.”

  “Dammit, where is she?”

  “Coeur D’Alene.”

  “Coeur D’Alene? Where’s—wait. Idaho?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re fucking telling me that she’s only four hundred miles away?”

  “Yes.”

  I saw red, and I heard Otter call out my name in a worried tone from his little office down the hall. “How long has she been there?”

  “Bear, does it really matter? What matters is that we know. For some reason, she decided to apply for a checking account through Idaho Fidelity, and it pinged back to us off the skip-trace search.”

  “How long!”

  Erica sighed. “It looks like she’s been there the whole time, Bear.”

  Otter came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my chest, pulling me back into him, resting his chin on the top of my head. I felt him breathing behind me as he rubbed his thumb against my sternum, and I was able to rein in my anger, at least for the moment. I glanced back up at him, and he must have seen the fear and anger in my eyes because his brow furrowed, and he took the phone from my hands and pushed a button to bring it on speakerphone. He set the phone on the counter and gathered me in his arms again, like he was trying to shield me from her words.

  “Erica, it’s Otter. I’ve put you on speaker.”

  “Is Tyson with you?” she asked cautiously.

  “He’s outside. I assume that you’ve found her?”

  “Yes. In Idaho. There’s… something else you should know.”

  “Will it affect the outcome of the custody petition?”

  “It may, though I can’t quite decide if it would be in our favor or not, especially if she decides to attempt to get custody of Tyson. Though, obviously, her absence would play heavily against her. Probably to the point that no court would award custody to her. Visitation rights, maybe, but not custody.”

  For the life of me, I couldn’t think of what it could be. “What is it, Erica? Stop being vague and just fucking tell me.”

  “The guy she moved out there with? Frank Taylor? They still live together in a sort of common-law relationship. They are not married, as far as we can tell, and that would have popped up almost immediately as she would have a marriage certificate on file. But… there’s a… a third person in the household. And we were able to verify it through hospital records. Even though we couldn’t access them in their entirety due to privacy laws, we were able to confirm dates.”

  “Dates of what?” Otter asked, even though I already knew. I closed my eyes and wished it wasn’t so.

  “Julie McKenna gave birth in May of last year at the age of forty-four to a baby girl. Frank Taylor is the father listed on the birth certificate. The child was not put up for adoption, and the process server said that when Julie answered the door, she was carrying a little girl in her arms.”

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” I whispered.

  Erica sounded miserable. “I wish I was, Bear. You’ve got a half-sister now. Isabelle Jade Taylor, born May 26. There’s no records of Child Protective Services ever having been out to the house for any reason, no records of any time police have been called to the address in Coeur D’Alene, which are lower middle-class apartments.”

  Only one thought crossed my mind. “We can’t tell the Kid,” I said, my voice barely sounding like my own. “We can’t tell him about her. Any of it.

  I don’t want him to know. I don’t want him to know that she’s so close, that she fucking gave up her family so she could go have another. It’ll kill him.

  He’s strong, but this will kill him.”

  “Bear, if she decides to fight your petition, you won’t have a choice,”

  Erica tells me patiently. “He’ll find out anyway.”

  “No,” I snapped. “It’s not going to come to that. She’s not going to come back in some fucking last-ditch effort to get him away from me. If she wanted to do this, she’d have made good on her threat months ago. She’s not coming back. Fuck her.”

  “You can’t know that,” Erica argued. “Not yet. While it’s good you believe that, you have to prepare for every eventuality, Bear. I know it sucks, believe me, and I was dreading this conversation for the last few hours. But what good would it do either of you if he had to find out from someone else? That we’re in court one day and she walks in? Bear, he’d need to hear it from you first. He needs to know so he doesn’t find out you’ve kept it from him down the road.”

  “Erica, I know you mean well,” Otter said, “and I know you’ve got Bear and the Kid’s best interest in mind, but I’m inclined to agree with Bear on this. In the end, it is our decision, not yours. If we decide to keep this to ourselves for now, I’d hope you would respect that decision and not make this any more difficult than it already is.”

  She sighed in frustration. “I just hope there isn’t a time in the future when I get to say I told you so. But honestly? My gut feeling says that she’s not going to respond. I do believe she’d have done so by now. Other than her little stunt in August, she’s made no other attempt to reach you in the last three years.”

  “And we still have no idea how the hell she knew all that she did,” I said, feeling the oncoming rush of a headache. “It still freaks me out that she knew so fucking much about me and Otter. That’s the only thing I want answered.”

  Something crossed Otter’s eyes right then, something that caused his mouth to open like he was going to speak, but he seemed to change his mind. I looked at him questioningly, but he just shook his head.

  “And we’ve looked into your information, Bear. No one has tried to access your credit rating, made any inquiries through the HR office at the grocery store. I don’t think she hired someone to dig up information on you, because that would leave a trail. I’m as frustrated as you are on that end. I wish I had more answers, but if you haven’t spoken with any of her acquaintances and told them all about yourself, then I just don’t know.”

  “Did she seem… happy?” I asked, hating myself for even caring. Otter leaned forward and kissed my forehead.

  Erica laughed quietly. “It was just the process server that saw her, Bear.

  I don’t think he cared one way or another about her happiness. Most of them don’t. Does that bother you? If she was?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Bear, if there’s one thing I could tell you to remember, it’s this: whatever she’s got, it’s nothing compared to what you have. You have a family that loves you, a partner that thinks you walk on water, and a little brother who thinks you’re the greatest thing to have ever existed. That’s what is important. Do me a favor and remember that, okay?”

  “I’ll make sure to remind him daily,” Otter promised, grinning wickedly at me.

  I rolled my eyes at him, but even he could see I felt a bit lighter. “How long?” I asked. “How long does she have to respond?”

  “Ninety days, which will put it around sometime in mid-January.”

  “See?” Otter told me. “Even more to celebrate then.”

  “What’s that?” Erica asked.

  “My birthday’s on January 22. If we get the Kid then, it’ll be the best present, and I couldn’t ask for more.”

  “The countdown begins, then!” Erica said cheerfully. “We’ll all go out for dinner and celebrate because that should be the last big hurdle we’ll face in this. Georgia’s reports have been glowing, and the therapist said he feels both you and Ty have benefited in the couple of months you’ve been in to see him. We can almost see the finish line, Bear. You’ve almost made it.”

  I almost told her that’s when most people trip and fall, but quickly decided against it. Apparently, I was turning into an eternal optimist. Pretty soon, everything would have been sunshine and roses.


  “Sure,” was my reply.

  “Please let me know if you have any other questions, then, guys, and I’ll let you know if anything else comes up in the meantime.”

  Then she was gone.

  Otter turned the phone off and pulled me into him again, ignoring my protestations, ignoring how I told him I was fine, that I was okay, that I didn’t need to be comforted right then, that it didn’t matter. She didn’t matter. But he would have none of it, and eventually, I sank down into his embrace and allowed him to take away all the hurt and pain because he knew I was not fine, I was not okay. There was a turmoil there, that old anger sparking with new fire, burning bright with indignation.

  A daughter? I thought wildly. She has a fucking daughter. I have a little sister. The Kid is now a middle child. She has a new family that she’s kept, that she’s keeping, at least for now. Isabelle. Does she love her? Does she look down into the baby’s eyes and see herself reflected back? What does she think about the little life she holds in her hands?

  I couldn’t wrap my mind around it, how she could so easily walk away from her sons but hold onto her daughter. It would have been easy for her to give her up for adoption, and I couldn’t understand why she didn’t.

  It’s probably something I’ll never know.

  THE holidays came, as they do every year, but even with all the uncertainty hanging above our heads (though it did seem to be getting better day by day), it was a brighter time than it had been in years past. Thanksgiving was an unmitigated disaster, as we tried to have it at our house for the first time, which led to a suspicious accident involving the turkey that the Kid said he had nothing to do with, nor could I prove that he did. I’d prepared him an impressive spicy roasted edamame casserole which he raved about when I had him test it to make sure it wasn’t too much for him.