by Kyell Gold
“Their ‘values’,” I growl. “Their whole purpose is to invalidate relationships like mine.”
He composes himself again and takes the last bite of his eggs. “It’s not their whole purpose. They try to make families stronger, to help cubs make the right choices, to help parents support them.”
I can feel the heat radiating off of Lee, but he keeps quiet. I find myself channeling what he wants to say. “The ‘right’ choices according to what they believe.”
“Of course,” Gregory says. “Everyone’s morality is determined by their own belief system.”
“The point is,” I say, because the conversation is sliding off into abstraction, “that you took the case. This group drove a gay cub to kill himself—”
“That’s not proven.” He raises his voice, cutting me off. “The settlement stops the family from going ahead with the lawsuit. It doesn’t admit to any wrongdoing.”
“We know.”
“The reasons a person takes his life, which is a tragic event, are complicated and can’t be laid at the doorstep of one or two persons who only communicated positive messages of love and hope that have not resulted in suicide in most other cases.” He sounds like he’s reciting from a legal brief now.
“For Christ’s sake, stop being a lawyer and have a heart for once.” My voice is louder, I realize, but that’s what Gregory’s good at doing to me. We’re both tense, like we want to jump over the table and fight.
Dad speaks up. “Gregory, you were told to take the case by the company. Is that not so?”
Gregory takes a breath. “Kind of.” We all stare at him. “I mean, they said it would be a good case for me to take, it would be appreciated by the company, yes.”
His words feel incomplete, and I’m not the only one who feels that way. Mom says, “Why would it be appreciated?”
“I guess they asked for me.” My brother sits up with some pride.
“Who did?” Dad frowns, leaning across his empty plate.
“The Families United people. Someone at their office heard about me, I guess.” He doesn’t look at me as he says that.
“Because you’re Dev’s brother,” Lee says, and then shovels a forkful of eggs into his mouth, like he hadn’t meant to blurt that out.
But he’s right, of course. I mean, I know it. Dad says, “Because of all the cases you have argued,” but I can tell that even he doesn’t believe it.
“Come on,” I say. “How many suicide cases have you argued before? How would they have heard of you except as the brother of the famous gay guy?”
Gregory flinches, then growls. “You’re saying I’m not a good lawyer?”
“I’m saying you’re an idiot if you think whatever cases you won were the reason this religious group wanted you in the courtroom.” I raise my voice again, and Mom says my name but I don’t stop. “So they didn’t mention me at all? Didn’t ask your views about gay people? Did you think at all about how your appearing on that case would look?”
“To whom?” he sneers. “To Mom and Dad? To you? To him?” He stabs a fork in Lee’s direction. “I know how it looked to my company: it looked like I was a professional who could take on a difficult case and negotiate a settlement.”
“You’re not the only lawyer,” Lee says quietly.
“Of course not,” Gregory says.
“On the case, I mean.” My fox looks up. “They have an in-house lawyer and they had a local legal consultant for the district where the suicide happened. Why were you there, exactly? What specialized knowledge did you provide?”
“I…I consulted…” He shakes his head and then shoots a look at Dad. “Look, why is he even here? Isn’t this a family matter?”
“He’s here because I want him here,” I say. “Counselor, maybe you’d like to answer his question? Why were you there?”
His ears go back and his lip curls. “Don’t play at being a lawyer. Stick to hitting people.”
“You’re avoiding the question,” Lee says quietly.
Gregory’s paw slams the table. “It’s too complicated to explain if you don’t have a legal background. The point is—”
“Gregory.” Mom says his name now, and that does stop him. We all turn to her. “The issue is not what people thought, but how it makes your brother feel.”
The table goes quiet. Dad says, “Oh, feel. Why should feelings matter in business? Gregory must do as his company says.”
“Yes, Misha,” Mom says. “But he can also tell them if he is uncomfortable.”
“And then what?” Dad raises his voice. “The next time there is an important case, they worry whether he is uncomfortable, they give it to someone else?”
“Yeah.” Gregory looks around. “I can’t turn down cases just because…because I feel bad about it.”
“Do you?”
We all turn to the fox. Lee has his paws clasped in front of him on the table, and he’s looking intently at Gregory. Nobody says a word, so he goes on. “I’m sorry, I mean, I barely know you. But your mom is right. It’s about feelings. And maybe this is how your family processes guilt and affection and whatever, but…” He shakes his head.
“You’re right,” Gregory sneers. “You don’t know me.”
“But I know the situation.” Lee looks steadily at him. “My mom joined that Families United group. Last time we saw each other, it didn’t go well. But I felt bad about it, and so did she. We still disagree over how I should live my life. She doesn’t think love should be the only reason you’re with someone.”
I want to hug him. I think Mom does, too; she reaches a paw toward him and then pulls it back. He doesn’t seem to notice, going on as my brother stays miraculously quiet. “We love each other, is the point. And I think maybe underneath all of this, you love Dev and you don’t understand why he’s a different person now than he used to be. It’s confusing and scary. But he’s not that different. He’s just doing different things. And if you feel bad that you defended the people who want to take away his happiness…” He pauses, then, and there’s a little sparkle in his eye as he looks at me with a raised eyebrow and a cupped ear.
“Happiness,” I affirm.
He smiles and returns his attention to Gregory. “Then you should say so. And if you don’t understand why he feels bad, ask him.”
The table is quiet. Lee pushes his chair back. “Breakfast was delicious, thanks,” he says to Mom, and takes his plate into the kitchen.
“Lion Christ,” Gregory says. “I don’t feel bad. I did a job, that’s all.”
Mom stands and picks up her plate as well, following Lee into the kitchen. Gregory says, “Mom,” but she doesn’t stop.
Dad sits still, his expression pensive. Gregory turns to him. “Dad. Come on, you understand, I have to do the cases they give me.”
“Yes,” Dad says. He turns his head slowly to me and then back to Gregory. “We may not understand your brother’s decisions, but you should always take family into consideration.”
“He—” Gregory points at me.
Dad doesn’t let him finish. “When your brother did not respect the family, I expressed my displeasure. He has apologized for that.”
“He hasn’t apologized to me!”
“For what?” I snap before Dad can. “We hadn’t talked in years—”
“For how it affected my career!”
He hurls the words at us like a volcano exploding, and even Dad is somewhat taken aback. Gregory turns to him, ignoring me. “Everyone in the office was coming up to me like, ‘hey, I heard about your brother,’ and ‘so did you turn him gay’ and shit like that.”
“Seriously?”
“That is…not your brother’s fault.” It takes Dad an effort to say that, and his ears flick. I remember him talking about the guys at the auto shop and my own ears fold back. So many things I’d never thought about while sitting up at that conference table.
“And what about Alexi?”
This strange turn of the conversation stuns me int
o silence. Dad, too, seems perplexed until Gregory goes on. “He’s going to have to go to school, and all his friends who like football, they’re going to be asking him about his gay uncle. He’ll get teased, he’ll get picked on. He’s already white, as if this wasn’t hard enough.”
Oh. “He’s two years old,” I say. “He won’t be in school for another three years.”
“He’s twenty months,” Gregory snaps. “He has friends down the block.”
“How is he doing?” Dad asks, softer, and I wish I’d remembered to ask that.
Here is the moment where Gregory would ask me for money, if he needed to. The room is quiet and it’s a lot easier to remember that we’re a family here, a family with a sick cub. If Gregory would just look at me, would let me see his vulnerability and his need…but his expression remains closed and guarded. “He’s fine,” he says. “For now. White tigers just need more care. We’re doing fine.”
“Anyway,” I say, “Polecki came out. There’ll be others. And in three years, nobody will even remember.”
“Right. Nobody will remember the first gay football player. You’re even stupider than you look.” Just like that the family moment is over.
“Gregory.” Dad, in that deep arresting voice that still curls the end of my tail.
Gregory scowls, and then picks up his plate and stands. Neither my father nor I say anything. He walks to the door, and then turns and says, “If Dev was doing a lot of heroin and I took an anti-drug case, you wouldn’t be mad at me.” He stomps into the kitchen.
I’m up and out of my chair and have already taken two steps after him before Dad waves me down, and even then I take one more step. “He is angry,” he says.
“He compared my relationship to a drug habit!”
Dad nods. “It was disrespectful, and I will speak to him about it.”
“Speak to him?” I’m still seething and I want to hit something, preferably Gregory’s smug muzzle. “When I came here with Lee, you threatened to throw me out of the house. You said I couldn’t come back.”
He growls low in his throat. “I know what I said. You are here now.”
“Why are you defending him?”
“I am not defending him!” He sits up straighter and challenges me with a stare. “I understand what he feels because it was not so long ago that I felt the same. Your fox is…difficult.”
I open my mouth to argue and then incline my head. “He is, yeah. But I love him.”
“He antagonized Gregory at Thanksgiving.”
“So did I.”
“Yes.” Dad waves a paw. “Gregory sees only the fox, blames him for the change in you.”
“You know his name, right, Dad?” I ask, resting my elbows on the table and leaning forward.
He doesn’t change his expression immediately, but after a second the corner of his mouth lifts. “Lee. Wiley, yes? Farrel. His father is Brenly. All right?”
“You can use his name once in a while,” I say.
“Gregory blames Lee for the change in you. None of us saw you often after college.”
“I was in the UFL, trying to—”
He holds up a paw. “I understand. You have Lee, it is difficult to tell us because you are afraid of how we will react.”
“With good reason.”
“Yes.” He smiles, showing the tips of his canines over his lips. “It is still not something I completely understand. But…” he gestures between me and the seat where Lee’d been sitting. “When we see you together, it is clear that there is something. Something very good for you. So,” he nods and his paw falls to the table. “Your mother and I approve of it.”
“Then Lion Christ, tell him already.”
“He is your brother too.” Dad hands me his plate. “Maybe you should tell him. Now take my plate in and come to the living room.”
I grab his plate and mine and the coffeepot. He gets up as I walk to the kitchen and heads the other way.
Lee and Mom are still in the kitchen talking in low voices. His ears are flat but come up as I come in, and he smiles. “Thanks,” he says.
“You could hear?” I say without thinking and then chuckle and brush my nose along the top of his ear. “Right.”
“I have been talking to Lee about his mother,” Mom says. “Are you going to see her with him?”
I drop the plates in the sink and the coffeepot on the counter. “I don’t think so. It would upset her. Last time I did that I thought it went okay, but…”
Lee shakes his head. “She was upset after. But it’s okay, she doesn’t blame you for it.”
“To be fair,” I say, “it’s the sort of thing you would do.”
“Uh-huh.” He smiles. “Which is why it was so sweet that you did it anyway.”
“It was years ago,” I say to Mom’s look. “He was nervous about them, but I thought that was just about school. They knew he was gay.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I think they were fine with it when it was theoretical. They weren’t ready to actually meet my boyfriend.”
“Well,” Mom says, “I don’t know that we were ready to meet you either, but I am very glad we did.”
“Me too.” He smiles at her and then at me.
Much as I would like to stay in this room, I have to go out to the living room, where Dad and Gregory are already sitting on opposite sides of the coffee table, leaving me only the couch where I sat with Lee last night. I park myself in the middle of it and sit up straight, reviewing breakfast’s conversation in my mind. Gregory is sprawled back in his chair, arm hung over one armrest, phone in his paw; Dad sits relaxed with a cup of coffee. Neither of them says a word.
“Look,” Gregory says finally, looking up from his phone, “can we get to whatever you want me to say so I can get back home to my cub?”
I look at Dad, who sits back in his chair. “I want you to say whatever you want to say,” he says. “Your brother is here, and you have the chance to talk to him.”
“He doesn’t want to hear what I have to say,” Gregory says.
“Try me.” My throat is tight, but I want to know what he’s going to say. I can’t imagine it will be anything like what Lee’s mother has said to him, but now I feel a little more strongly what he must have felt listening to her, even though Gregory hasn’t spoken a word yet.
Gregory sighs. “Look,” he says, “I know all this stuff is attractive right now. It’s hip, it’s how society’s changing. But there are a small core of people who are pushing it to change faster than it should.” He keeps his voice low. “And the people they’re targeting are young cubs. Right? Cubs want to do what feels good, so they go along with the whole ‘love is all you need’ hippie bullshit that we got rid of in the seventies. The rhetoric is compelling—to someone with an underdeveloped mind.”
“So,” I say, “some people—who? Are trying to turn people gay? Why?”
He waves his arms, more flamboyant. “To cement their own power, to make themselves look bigger and more legitimate than they are. If they fool all these cubs into trying it out, into identifying with them, then they get to make all these laws that you can’t fire them, that you have to recognize their relationships…”
“Wait.” I hold up a paw. “I’m trying to figure all this out. So I’m only with Lee because some shadowy cult of people talked me into it somehow?”
Gregory looks at me from under my father’s brow and rubs his paws down his cheek ruffs, then steeples them together in front of him. “It was tough following me through high school. You wanted to rebel. You were afraid you’d never make it in the UFL. And this…” He waves his paw. “This fox comes along and shows you how to rebel, how to become a celebrity overnight. I can see how you were tempted. I—hey, wait.”
He’s shrunk back in his chair because I’ve stood up. My fists are balled and though I don’t intend to fight him, I’m sure I look imposing. I’m not sure he realized until that moment how much bigger than him I am now. But as much as I want to hit him, I am aware of my fa
ther, of Mom and Lee in the kitchen, and I stick to words. “That’s what you really think? You think I’m still your little brother, confused and stupid, trying to cheat at games so I can beat you?”
“Dev—”
“Yeah, I didn’t go to law school,” I say. “I’m not as smart as you are. But I don’t need to be smart to know when I love someone. I don’t need to be smart to know that he doesn’t have to have tits for me to fall in love. And I don’t need a law school degree to know that you’re a condescending asshole.”
“Devlin,” Dad says.
“I’m fine.” I turn to him. “I’m sorry that this talk didn’t work out. I know you hoped Gregory and I could work things out and walk out of here friends and brothers again. But I don’t think it’s gonna happen.”
Dad looks at me and I’m surprised at how sad his eyes are. Gregory stays silent.
“Lee!” I call back to the kitchen.
He walks partway into the living room, tail swinging behind him, but his tail stills when he sees me standing in front of the couch. “What—er—everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. “C’mere.”
He takes a few steps toward the couch on the side nearer my father, and I walk out to meet him. Without another word I pull him against me and lower my muzzle, crushing it to his.
He freezes. I hold the kiss, and a moment later he brings his arms up around my back, but he’s still tense. I don’t try to force my tongue through his lips, just stand there kissing him until he relaxes a little. Then I let go and I turn to face Gregory, who’s looking toward the fireplace, pointedly away from us.
“Don’t you ever fucking presume to know what someone else feels,” I say to him in a low growl. “Especially your own brother. And don’t treat me like some ten-year-old cub who doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong. I don’t give a shit who you defend from here on out, okay? I’ll expect you to show up defending murderers and shitbag corporations who screw over people, and whatever. It’s how you make your living. Dad’s right, you don’t have any control over that.”
The room is quiet. Lee drops his paw from my back. Nobody says anything. I clear my throat. “So, I’ll see you at Thanksgiving and Christmas maybe. Depends on how my work goes. Say hi to Marta. Good luck with Alexi.”
