The Foster Dad

by Christopher X Sullivan

  “See ya soon,” I promised. “Skype later.”

  Then he turned his back and walked into the crowd. Alex was riveted on his retreating figure, waiting to wave one last time. Then Mark turned around and waved enthusiastically. Alex jumped up and down because he was so excited to wave back.

  Mark disappeared.

  I got on my knees. “Climb on my shoulders,” I offered.

  “What?”

  “Like you do with Mark. Climb up and we’ll try to wave at Mark one last time. Gotta hurry.”

  He climbed into position. “You said I’m too heavy to do this.”

  “I did say that.” I lied to you because it seemed so dangerous. “Look for Mark’s head over the crowd. He’s a tall guy. Can you see him?”

  “No.” Alex dug his fingers into my hair. “I don’t see him.”

  “Look by the door. He should be walking in that direction. Remember the light-blue shirt he was wearing? And he has brown hair.”

  “I see him!” Alex said. He hovered out of his position like a jockey riding a horse. “I see him. He’s right there.”

  “Is he looking at us?”

  “No.”

  “Is he walking through the door?”

  “Yes. He—” Alex started waving like crazy so that he nearly fell from my shoulders. “Mark! Mark! Mark! He’s waving. Chris, he’s waving.”

  “Calm down, buddy.”

  “Kisses. Kisses.” Then the kid stilled. “He’s gone.”

  I lowered him to the ground, then got him in the car. “We must have really surprised him. I bet Mark is really happy right now,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  I got in the driver’s seat and pulled out of the hectic airport. Alex sighed magnificently and bounced his head against the back of his seat. I watched him through the rearview mirror. He sighed again a few minutes later.

  “Is everything alright?”

  “I miss Mart already.”

  “Me too, buddy. Me too.”

  He sighed again. Is that what I did when I was lonely? Alex was mimicking someone. I resolved to be less gloomy over the next few days and try not to sigh wistfully while looking out the windows into the distance.

  “Mrs. S is going to visit us and we’ll play with Charlotte and the twins. Mark will be home in a few days. It’ll go fast. Don’t worry about it.”

  After a second of thought, Alex said, “Yeah. Mart always comes back.” He strained against his seat buckle, then collapsed into his seat and heaved another dramatic sigh. It was depressing. I never told Mark about that conversation. There are some things you can’t tell a partner. Mark never would’ve gone on another business trip if he heard those lonely sighs. It was especially cutting to hear Alex’s faith that Mark would always return to him, given what was on the horizon.

  Alex wet the bed that night. It was the first time in weeks. We didn’t tell Mark about that either.

  The Elevator

  I CAN’T REMEMBER WHAT we were doing or what our plans had been. All I know is that my phone rang, which was odd. If it wasn’t my mother calling, then people usually texted.

  It was Valerie. It must have been late in the afternoon because I can remember feeling a pit in my stomach, like she shouldn’t have been calling so late. Normally, she texted Mark when she wanted something.

  I rarely used my phone as a phone. Even to this day, I prefer e-mail and dislike phone calls. This discomfort probably has something to do with my suspicious nature. If you talk on the phone to negotiate a contract, the person on the other side can claim you agreed to certain terms when you didn’t. It’s much easier to sneak confusing language into a phone call.

  When you talk via the written word, then you can look up every term and there’s always a record of what was said. It’s just common sense.

  It seems like phone calls are only for bad news.

  And, boy, did Valerie have some fucking bad news. “Chris,” she must have said. “Are you at home?”

  “Yes,” I must have answered. It was a strange question for her to start with and I probably picked up on the implication immediately.

  “I have some news about Alex’s situation. Is Mark around?”

  I was staring at Mark, probably with a stricken expression. “Mark is with me.”

  “Good.”

  Mark was on high alert. He left Alex to watch TV in the sitting room on his own. There was such concern in his posture. I can remember thinking: he knows what’s happening.

  Val and I must have discussed a few other details of the situation, but I don’t remember what they were. I just mumbled along and felt the tears silently fall down my face. Mark comforted me, but it wasn’t enough.

  My voice was even—at least, that’s how I remember it.

  “I can fight for you on this. I can get you boys a couple days to adjust. We still have paperwork to file and I can get you those extra days.”

  “No,” I said calmly. “As soon as you’re ready. It will only hurt more. Come get him as soon as you’re ready.”

  She sighed. “We can be there tomorrow before lunch.”

  I nodded in agreement. She couldn’t see me, but she had to know I was devastated. “Will he—Will he—” I already knew the answers to all my questions. We’d been over them before during the sunny days when everything was going smoothly.

  Miss Val would take care of the kid, process him and send him on his way to his new destination. She would fly with him, if needed. His family in North Carolina would take him. Apparently he had an aunt and two grandparents.

  “Chris,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” I can still remember her low voice expressing sympathy. It was jarring that in the midst of all this pain, the woman who was causing me so much grief was deeply sorry for me.

  It was all unfair.

  Somehow, the call ended. I don’t know if Mark took the phone from me or if I said goodbye or what. I was in shock. All I could see was Alex... just sitting there in his green chair and enchanted by the television. Those green glasses. All the memories we had made. The life we had shared, as short as our time had been.

  Mark was hugging me and crying. I was crying and holding his arm as it wrapped around my torso.

  I don’t remember what either of us said, but if I were to hazard a guess, I would say Mark was probably silent in the immediate aftermath while I tried to sound out my logical arguments for why this was happening. “Alex is going to his family. He’ll be in a better place. We did a good thing. We did a civic duty and we should be proud.” Et bullshit.

  I remember the devastation clearly. The next twenty-four hours were filled with grief and I have these images in my mind that are locked in place forever. I can see myself standing beside the kitchen island and watching the kid in the sitting room. Mark is behind me and holding me tight. There are little things in the living room that belonged to Alex, like his bamboo forest and his tomato plant. His chair. His toys. Kid books.

  And him. Most of all, I can see the back of his fuzzy head and just a sliver of his green glasses. His mouth is half-open and he’s transfixed by the glow of the TV.

  He’s happy. He doesn’t have a clue about what’s about to unfold. And I can remember thinking: This isn’t going to happen. It isn’t happening.

  I couldn’t tell him. Mark was absolutely useless in a crisis. He couldn’t even talk, really. If anyone was going to have the guts to explain to the kid what was about to happen, it would have to be me. Alex would listen to me. I could make this transition better. Maybe, if I could maintain my composure, I could somehow siphon some of the pain away from the kid. Maybe I could convince Alex that this was normal and that everything was going to work out and there was nothing to worry about and his family was going to love him and we would always love him and he was such a good kid and this wasn’t his fault. That was the important one... maybe I could convince him that this wasn’t his fault.

  Maybes are for fools.

  WE WENT THROUGH OUR nighttime rituals with great delib
eration. Alex had spent the few hours since the phone call trying to hug either Mark or myself like he knew something was wrong. Kids must have a sixth sense about knowing when their caretakers are suffering.

  It was hard to pretend everything was normal. Mark and I agreed that we wouldn’t tell him about the separation that night—we wanted him to sleep well and without nightmares. In my heart, I would’ve loved for him to pee the bed one last time, but he hadn’t had a real problem in months, just a few setbacks every once in a while, not that anyone was counting.

  Mark played in the bath with Alex and they had their nightly fun. It was the only time Mark really spoke that night.

  I read from Mary Poppins before bedtime.

  “Why not Harry Potter?” he asked.

  “I want to read Mary Poppins. It’s a shorter book.”

  “Yeah, but Harry Potter is your favorite book and Mary Poppins is Miss Val’s favorite book.”

  I kissed him on the side of the head and ran my fingers through his hair. “Miss Val gave us this book and it has all her memories in it. Do you remember how she read it with us?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t really understand the part with the cow.”

  I smiled. “We watched the movie and it’s very different, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”

  “If you know the sound of this it’s something quite atrocious!”

  We giggled. Then he settled in to read.

  “How about we read this last section here. Remember what happens? The kids have grown up and they no longer need a nanny.”

  We read the last chapter. I helped him through the longer paragraphs and he managed the small ones by himself.

  “You’re such a good reader,” I whispered. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Uh-huh...” He closed the book. “Mrs. S helps me read when I go to her house. We go to the library and we read one new book.”

  “Reading is fun. Right?”

  “Yep,” he agreed. “I can’t wait ‘till I’m old enough to read all the Harry Potter books, even the scary ones.”

  “You’re going to have to wait a few years still. These are big books with a lot of words.”

  “Yeah. It’s hard, but I like when you read to me.”

  “You like Hedwig... don’t you?”

  “Yeah. And I wish we learned magic in school like Harry. My school is boring.”

  “Hey mister!” I tickled him so that he rolled around in his sheets. “I don’t like that word. That’s a bad word.”

  “Just teasing!”

  He stopped working himself up so I gently patted the sheet over his chest. “You like school. Right? You’re making friends and we have projects to work on for homework.”

  “I like homework,” he professed. “But some of the kids in school are not nice and they get yelled at.”

  “Do you get yelled at?”

  He shook his head, proudly.

  “Good. You’re a great kid.” I kissed his forehead. “I love you very much.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I got up and turned down his lights so only the lamp by his bed was on. “I’ll go get Mark to tuck you in. Okay?”

  “Otay.” He adjusted under his sheets and waited patiently for me to leave. For Alex, nothing about that night was remarkable. For me, it was killing me how badly I wanted to break our routine. I wanted to say he could stay up all night and we could jump on the bed. Maybe we could tell stories all night. Even when our eyes got heavy, we would stay up. We could eat ice cream and drink sugary drinks.

  I wanted Alex to call out to me as I left and tell me he was scared. Maybe it would all feel better if we could read another book... just not Mary Poppins this time.

  My mom had gotten us this stupid penguin book at some point during the summer that I refused to read to Alex. It wasn’t stupid as in ‘dumb’. It was a painful read. The penguins start out by not being interested in girl penguins and the girls aren’t interested in them. Then the two guy penguins fall in love and do the mating dances and wrap their necks around each other and it’s all fine so far.

  Then they try to hatch a rock as an egg. It’s the saddest book I’ve ever read. Or maybe I’m just really lame for identifying so closely to the gay penguins. In the end, the zookeeper gives them an egg to hatch and they raise a baby just like any other penguin couple. Also, penguins apparently keep the same partner for life, so that was touching.

  That book made me think back to the beginning of my relationship with Mark and how I fought him every step of the way. I think, subconsciously, I didn’t want to be with a man because all of my experiences told me that two guys couldn’t make a family. If you wanted a kid, then you met a nice girl, got married, and raised a family. Sometimes the kid might come before marriage, but that was the basic formula.

  I didn’t want to end up like a gay penguin trying to hatch a rock. I always wanted the real deal. I don’t know that I ever wanted to raise a baby and I definitely didn’t want a biological child—as far back as high school I knew that I didn’t want to pass on my genetic ‘stand-out-ness’.

  But I’ve always loved children and often felt like I was missing a huge part of life without having a little one to defend, nurture, and be proud of.

  Nieces and nephews aren’t the same. Don’t get me wrong, I love mine and I love my godchild and if Alex hadn’t come along, I would have been satisfied watching all these children grow up around me. But you’re lying to yourself if you think being a ‘guncle’ is filling that need in your life. If you feel like you should be a parent, then start the journey. It’s long and it’s hard and it’s not as easy for queer people as it is for straight, but it’s worth it.

  Sometimes I wish Alex could be a grown up already so I could talk to him as an adult, or so Mark and I could travel more, or so I could see Alex in college or starting his own business or whatever path he ends up taking. (I’m still pushing for him to start his own business! Fail! Then get up and do it all again!)

  But then, like any other parent, I see how quickly he’s growing up and I want it all to stop, or to reverse. He doesn’t hold my hand at all anymore! He’s also in this phase where he suddenly needs all this privacy. He never used to lock his door, so I don’t know what that’s about. I mean, kid, your room is 120 square feet... you can’t really have that many hiding places. And all it takes is an ear cleaner to unlock your door.

  Whatever. Even though I’m curious about what all this privacy is for, I’m giving him his space. I have to set a good example for Mark. If I snoop around in the kid’s room even once, that’ll give Mark license to do it whenever he wants... and that’s wrong. I have to be disciplined.

  Also, I monitor everything he does online, so it’s not like I’m that far out of the loop.

  Wow, I’m a horrible parent.

  I just worry about him! He’s mine to worry over. I try not to let it show, but it often fails. I worry about him being a young bi-racial boy in a world where kids like him get shot for wearing hoodies. Mark wants to move back to Chicago, but that whole gun violence situation is still keeping us away. I like living in the country. Now that we have solar panels on our roof (which came with a nice tax credit), we’ll be getting an electric powered vehicle to take advantage of that tax credit, too.

  (Right, Mark?)

  Tax credits are basically just welfare for the wealthy. I mean, if you’re going to call poor black folks welfare queens, what are you going to call people like me who manipulate our purchases to receive the maximum of tax credits, deferments, and incentives? I’m a welfare king. Mark’s whole family are welfare kings.

  If we got rid of all these stupid tax credits, the country would have enough revenue equivalent to the entire budget for Medicare. Think on that. All of us people with money who are cleverly avoiding taxes are sinking the country’s finances.

  There are so many things in this country that don’t work the way they should. You shouldn’t rip children from the lovin
g embrace of a parent—an innocent parent. We can squabble about tax credits or solar energy or any other little thing until the cows come home, but children are not to be harmed. That should be the motto of government, do no harm. We can’t save every child in every poor country, but if they are within the borders of the United States of America, then we have a duty to do no harm.

  We can control how we care for children in our own country. Can’t we?

  Why are they still separating families at the border? It’s been several months and they still haven’t reunited the families. I read a report that said at least nineteen children will forever be separated from their parents because they can’t be located.

  How can something like this happen? I didn’t think the current administration would do something that was actually evil. When he got elected, I thought... well, he’s going to shake things up. He’s probably going to unite a lot of people in opposition to his abrasive style, but if he’s smart, he’ll be able to use that opposition to make positive, transformational change to some of the most broken systems in our government.

  Here, with these separated children, he has an opportunity to change the way we treat children who are cast aside by society. If you were to judge American society by how we treat the most vulnerable among us, we would not be all that impressive. We might even be exceptional in our cold-heartedness. But the current president... for all his faults... his administration is uniquely situated with so many opportunities to fix this shit. He really is. For the first time in a long time, you have a man desperate enough (and reckless enough) to break things... to force the system to change.

  And he is forcing our Departments to change. He’s making them evil. Instead of fixing the root causes of the problem, he’s burning everything to the ground.

  I hate it. I hate the people who work for him who are making this possible. I hate that children are being traumatized—lives are being ruined. In my opinion, Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen should atone for those nineteen tender-aged children she has forever destroyed. She should spend nineteen lifetimes in federal prison, to be served consecutively. Maybe you could spread some of those years around to a few of her deputies, but that woman is an absolute stain. I know I’m not supposed to call a woman a bitch... I’ve never done it before in my life. I basically only use that word when taunting either Mark or Suhail.