The Foster Dad
Book Eight of the
ROMANTIC SELF-PORTRAIT
It's Just Us Here
Christopher X Sullivan
Published by Jester Publishing, 2019.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
It's Just Us Here: THE FOSTER DAD
First edition. November 12, 2019.
Copyright © 2019 Christopher X Sullivan.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Written by Christopher X Sullivan.
Contact: ChristopherXSullivan
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
BOOK EIGHT: The Foster Dad
Our Place
Green Glasses
He Who Does The Fucking
Camping
The Lion King
Bamboo Forest
Birthday Presents
School Selection
Ice Cream
The Elevator
The Foster Dad
Book Eight of the
ROMANTIC SELF-PORTRAIT
It's Just Us Here
Christopher X Sullivan
Published by Jester Publishing, 2019.
Our Place
THE BIG DAY WAS UPON us. We were moving Alex from Val’s house to our place and I was incredibly nervous.
We had taken Alex to our apartment a few times in the previous few weeks because we weren’t sure when the paperwork would go through, but Val assured us that it would be upon us sooner rather than later. So we prepared.
We allowed Alex to play with the buttons on the elevator. We took him for walks along the beach in the shadow of Mark’s building. We (Mark) bought Alex a baseball mitt and we played in the park.
Alex was perfectly fine with our changing arrangements and was very excited by everything. I don’t think he really ever questioned why we were two guys living together. Not to my memory, anyway.
He loved the elevator. He loved that our apartment was so far above ground. He loved that we had an empty guest room that was going to be his bedroom.
I asked what color he wanted for a bedspread and he said, “Green!” Green had been his favorite color ever since I pulled him out of that hellish house and shoved his face into my green shirt. His favorite color might’ve been green before then, but we knew virtually nothing about his prior life, so I liked my story better.
We didn’t know how old he was or if he had allergies (none so far). We didn’t even know what his birth name was and the police didn’t have any leads other than a potential street name. All we knew about the father was that he had gotten the dead woman pregnant—the woman who apparently abused Alex and later overdosed in the bathtub while close to term with Alex’s baby sister. She wasn’t his mom, so this deepened the mystery. (And even though I knew the name Hoffman was associated with Alex’s family, I didn’t tell anyone... not even my partner.)
It broke my heart to even think about what this kid had been through.
And yet he was well-adjusted. He knew how to read (he loved reading). Someone must have read to him when he was a child. Alex was very bright, but easily overstimulated. It took him about a month to settle into life at Valerie’s with me and Mark also in the picture before he was able to sleep through the night on a consistent basis. The kid still wet the bed and I often overheard him make fearful noises in his sleep.
But during the day he was an energetic, curious kid who quickly became dependent upon me and Mark for his happiness—two guys who knew nothing about kids!
We moved Alex into our apartment on a Wednesday. The gulls were cawing loudly and the weather was perfect. Valerie came with us for the move. I’d asked Mark’s brother to help my dad move the kid furniture into our guest room while we picked up the kid so it would be ready for Alex. Mark and I didn’t do it ourselves because I didn’t really believe this moment would ever happen, even after we had the paperwork in our hands.
Valerie assured me that this was the fastest she’d ever seen a foster application go through. She apparently spent a lot of energy to make sure our papers went to the right people who treated our application with high priority. Val was a saint.
THE FOUR OF US TOOK the elevator up to the apartment. Valerie tried to look unimpressed by her surroundings... but Mark’s place was incredible. The lobby was stunning; the views were amazing. He lived in a wealthy building. I would have preferred something less flashy, but Mark had to have his status symbols, and he had a big enough trust fund where he could probably live in an apartment like that for the rest of his life... if he didn’t blow his money on other stupid things first.
Alex didn’t care one bit about the fancy counters or the marble floors or the chandeliers. He preferred the buttons on the elevator and his distorted reflection in the metal wall. He laughed when Mark tickled him. The kid held my hand tightly on the ride up.
My heart swelled. These were the two guys I loved most in the world, and we were finally going to form a somewhat stable unit. Of course, the police could always find Alex’s father and he could take Alex from us. The birth mother out on the West Coast wanted nothing to do with him. And it was either the dead druggie girlfriend or Alex’s father who put those burn marks on Alex’s back and allowed trace levels of heroin to get in Alex’s body.
If the police thought they were going to take Alex from me to give to the father—whenever they found him—they had another thing coming. Hell no. That’s all I had to say about that. Hell, fucking, no. And I wasn’t going to help anyone find him either.
“Open the door,” I encouraged the kid after handing him my keycard. We’d shown him how to unlock the door on our last visit and he loved it so much that we unlocked it three times in a row... but this time he was shy.
Mark held the kid’s small suitcase and I carried another duffel.
“Here, I’ll show you how to do it.” I dropped the duffel and placed the keycard in front of the lock mechanism. “See,” I said. “Now you try.” I handed him the keycard again, then smiled my encouragement. Alex looked at me shyly and held the plastic keycard as if it were a fragile egg. Then he giggled nervously.
He moved his hands to the lock, but the door swung open before he could reach the handle. His eyes widened and he stared up with this frightened yet adorable expression.
My mom was in the door.
“There he is!” my mom said. “Come on in, come on in!” She dropped to her knees and tried to steal a hug from Alex, but the kid bolted and hid behind my legs. I placed a hand on the back of his neck to calm him. He peeked around my thighs and watched the stranger in the door.
“Ma.” I gave her ‘the look’. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be here. We hadn’t properly introduced her to Alex, other than that Fourth of July party. Actually, we hadn’t introduced anyone to Alex. We didn’t know he was going to be our foster kid until two weeks ago... and I didn’t believe it was really going to happen until the minute Val said we could move him to our apartment. Actually, I still didn’t believe it was really happening. I had a kid! He was mine to take care of! Ah!
My mom was still on her knees. “What? Can’t I visit my son?”
“I asked dad to move stuff in the bedroom. I asked him to be done and gone by the time we got here.”
“We are done,” my mom said in her self-satisfied way. She got off the floor and gave Alex a baby wave while squinting as she smiled.
Cool it, woman.
“You know how she is,” my dad said. He appeared behind my mother. “Where’s the kid?”
“If you two would get out of the doorway, we could go inside.” I glanced a
t Mark. He shrugged. I gave him a look which clearly to my mind said, ‘don’t you brush this off!’
“When did Keegan leave?” Mark asked.
“About an hour ago,” my mother said smartly.
“What have you been doing for an hour?” I asked. Getting into a lot of trouble, no doubt.
They moved out of the door and the four of us in the hallway entered the apartment. Alex moved from side-to-side as if trying to get lost in the traffic and to keep as much of me, Mark and Valerie between himself and my parents.
Great, now he’s scared.
I glared at my mother.
“We were arranging the kid’s room. Plus, we brought some of your old stuff to set up.” She smiled at me and grabbed my arm. “I think Alex is going to really love it.”
Alex heard his name and grabbed onto Mark for dear life.
You’re overwhelming the kid! He hates strangers! Get out of my apartment! I didn’t ask you to be here! I didn’t ask you to bring stuff! You offered and I said yes and then you went crazy with more stuff and I couldn’t say no!
“Ma,” I said pointedly. “Can you and dad sit on the couch.” It was a statement—not a request.
My mother was taken aback. She withered under my glare and seemed genuinely hurt, but I didn’t care. There was only one thing that mattered at that moment.
I knelt beside Alex and tried to steal a hug from him. He resisted and clung to Mark.
“Hey, bud. You’re doing so good. That’s my mom and dad. They were really excited to meet you. You remember them, right?” I spoke evenly and pretended like my mood was joyous, despite wanting to strangle my mother. I pried Alex away from Mark’s leg, then he ran to me and hugged my neck. “Nothing to worry about,” I promised. “I think they brought you some presents.”
“Presents?” Alex said. He didn’t know how to whisper properly and his voice was really loud in my ears, but what did I care? Anything to keep him talking. He pulled away from my neck and stared at me while keeping his head inches from mine.
“In your room. Didn’t you ask for green sheets?”
He nodded.
“Well... why don’t we see what you got? You remember where your room is, don’t you?”
He nodded, but slowly this time.
Mark rolled the little suitcase behind him. “Why don’t we go put your clothes away,” he suggested to which Alex nodded again. The kid kept pace with Mark so that he didn’t have to look at my parents sitting on the couch and he made sure I followed directly behind the two of them. Valerie stayed in the main room and spoke with my parents.
The three of us made our covert journey down the hallway and into the guest room—Alex’s room.
“Wow,” Alex whispered, still obviously nervous.
“Yeah.” I was equally stunned. “Wow.” There was a lot of shit in that room. And there was a lot of green shit in that room.
“I think my parents went overboard,” Mark said.
“Yours and mine both. Look at this bookshelf.” I walked into the room and knelt before the small bookshelf with large red, yellow and green “A, B, C” letters that supported the shelves. “Come here, Alex. Look at this. This used to be my bookshelf. And my books...”
He hopped to my side. “Yours?”
“Yeah. This used to be in my bedroom when I was your age. I can’t believe my mom kept it.” I was suddenly verklempt and smiled at the bookshelf while touching it fondly. Then I smiled at Mark, who was grinning at Alex.
“Let’s see what else we got,” Mark said.
“A bed!” Alex literally ran into it he was so excited. His little body crumpled in half at the waist and he plunged head-first onto the mattress.
“Calm down, buddy,” Mark admonished. “We don’t want you falling over.”
Alex shrieked. It was a mix between a laugh and a yell and it echoed through the room. Despite rattling my brain like a quarterback getting tackled from the blind side—that shriek was magically pleasing. Mark set the luggage down and opened the small dresser. Alex ran from the bed and launched himself at Mark.
“Oomph,” Mark said, not expecting the attack.
“Gotcha!” Alex yelled. He shrieked again. Mark tickled him and his strange sound turned to pealing laughter. The kid laughed so hard he ran out of air.
I watched them with such fondness. Mark was so good with kids. He was born for this. We’d known Alex for three months and in that time I hadn’t been able to stop myself from dreaming of a future with me, Mark and Alex. It was only natural to think of what we might look like five or ten years down the road—the kid was so amazing and I loved him so much.
Mark, too, had his dreams. I advised my partner not to buy baseball gear, at least not until we knew for sure that he was our foster kid.
But like with most things, Mark dove in recklessly and was only living in the moment.
What if he gets taken away from us? What if we never moved him into our apartment? Then you would look at that baseball glove and...
I glanced around the bedroom and was struck by a sudden sadness, even amid all that pure joy. If he’s taken away from us... I’ll be kneeling at this bookshelf in a deep depression. I’ll be looking at all this stuff and...
Alex ran at me and caught me off guard. “Gotcha!” he said. Then he tickled me with his little, uncoordinated hands. “Mark told me to tickle you!” He laughed and ran back to Mark. “I did it,” he whispered loudly.
It was readily apparent that those two were going to be a lot of trouble. I put Alex’s clothes in the dresser, which was already mostly full.
“Did you get these clothes?” I asked Mark.
“I don’t know. I didn’t buy him anything other than what we got.”
Sure. Just like Mark never bought any clothes for anyone...
“I swear! Anything I bought is in storage.”
I held up one of the shirts and rolled it down my body.
“Maybe it’s Caleb’s old clothes? I bet Keegan brought some stuff.”
“I bet you’re right,” I agreed.
Alex’s legs moved like he was running through air, or trying to swim on top of his new bed. “So this is my bed?” he asked again.
“All yours,” Mark confirmed.
Alex laughed. He tried to tickle Mark, but then Mark tickled the kid. They laughed until they were laughed out. I sat on the bed beside them and waited for their little playtime to end.
Then Alex suddenly popped up from the mattress like a wild child. He kissed me on the cheek with a quick peck. “I love you, Chris,” he said. He waited patiently for his kisses in return.
I hugged him and kissed up the side of his face and then down the other. “I love you, Alex.”
The kid jumped at Mark and kissed him on the cheek. “I love you, Mark.”
Mark did the same thing—it was our ritual. What had started as a special flurry of kisses Mark did with me when I was feeling blue had grown to something we shared with this little boy. I had wanted to comfort Alex that day I pulled him from the house of horrors, and I did the only thing that came to mind—the only thing that made my worries melt away.
Enough of this melancholy.
I grabbed Alex’s hand. “Time to meet my parents.” My words were ineffective at moving him from the bed and he laughed nervously. “Come on, you’ll be fine. We have to say goodbye to Miss Val, too.”
“Why can’t Miss Val stay? I like Miss Val.”
“She has a family of her own.”
“Nu-uh. They’re all old.”
“She’s not supposed to take care of little kids anymore. She has grandchildren of her own now.”
“I think she’ll stay if we find another bedroom.”
“Oh...” I chuckled. “Is that what you think?”
“Yep.” He was confident like how little kids can be confident in their crazy schemes.
“Why don’t we talk to Miss Val and see if we can get her to stay? She’s gonna miss you.”
“Val!” Alex yelle
d. “Vaaaaal!”
“No yelling,” I said. “Come on, we’ll play in your room later.”
“Vaaaaal!”
Mark scooped up the kid into his arms and carried the weight over his shoulder. He gave Alex a playful swat on the butt. “Mr. Mom said no yelling.”
I glared at Mark, which only made him laugh. Then my partner walked into the hallway with a wiggling goblin pleading to stay in the bedroom. I reluctantly followed the two clowns.
They stopped in the kitchen and Mark placed Alex on the ground. The kid looked at the couch warily, but didn’t run away. I offered him my hand and Alex took it. We walked in front of my parents and Val.
“Mom, Dad.” I pointed to my parents. “This is Alex. Alex, these are my parents.”
“Hi there!” my mom said, like she was speaking to a baby.
Alex shied away immediately and tried to hide behind my legs again. He grabbed my thigh and looked down at the ottoman.
“Do you like your bedroom?” she asked, still with the baby voice.
I bent over and spoke softly, but not quite to a whisper. “Hey, bud. Can you thank Mrs. Sullivan for bringing you so many books and for setting up your bedroom?”
“Thankyoufor settingup mybedroom.” He pressed his face against my leg.
Mark plucked Alex from my clutches and nearly tossed him into the air. The kid zoomed over the ottoman, suspended by the armpits. Then Mark squatted on the couch, splitting my parents so there was one Sullivan on either side. Alex landed in his lap.
The kid laughed.
“Hey, dude. This is Mrs. Sullivan.” Mark introduced my mother by having the two of them shake hands. He kept one arm around Alex like a seatbelt.
“Call me Wendy,” my mom offered. “Or call me Grandma S.”
I slapped my forehead so hard I’m surprised I didn’t give myself a concussion. Nobody is calling anybody Grandma. Not until this thing settles down for real. Alex’s biological father is out of the picture, but that didn’t mean he’s gone forever.
“And this,” Mark said dramatically, “Is Mr. Sullivan. He got you your fishing pole. Remember?”
The Foster Dad Page 1
