T.J. Klune - Bear, Otter, and the Kid 2 - Who We Are (17 page)

“Jerked off before I called you,” he says, laughing louder now. “That doesn’t count!”
“Otter, nine. Bear, zero.”
“I’m going to get you back, you know.”
“Really?” he says, sounding way more interested than he probably

should, given what we just did. “And what would that entail?” “Oh, you’ll find out,” I promise him, a sneer on my lips. “And you’re going to regret ever trying to fuck with me.”

“Jesus.” He sounds like he’s squirming. “You know how much I fucking love you, Papa Bear?”
I do. But I’m an ass. “How much?”

“More than anything,” he says softly.

 

So not fair. “I love you too,” I mumble back, ignoring the blushing Bear in the mirror.

 

“Wanna go again?”

 

My phone beeps. Another call coming in. I glance down at the screen. “Shit, I gotta take this. It’s Erica.”

He sobers instantly. “I thought we weren’t supposed to hear from her until next week?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “What if….” I don’t know how I’m going to finish that, but somehow Otter knows what I’m trying to say.

“You answer it, Bear. Answer it, listen to what she has to say, and then call me back. It’s going to be fine. You’ll see. She probably has some good news.” Otter, the eternal optimist.

“When can you come home?” I ask him, hating how I sound, but suddenly needing the big guy here with me, to protect me from what, I don’t know. It’s strange to think how fiercely independent I used to be before I traveled to the safer lands of Codependency. I was never one for middle ground, it seems, as I’ve gone from one extreme to the other. But it has to do with the fact that I know Erica doesn’t call early. She’s a stickler for a set schedule. If she said she would call next week, then that’s when she was going to call. Something had obviously happened. It’s the only reason she’d call before she was supposed to.

“Talk to her,” he tells me gently. “Then call me back, and if you need me, I’ll come running. You got me?”
“I got you.” I clicked over. “Hello?”

“Derrick, it’s good to talk to you again,” Erica says, in that tone of voice that says she doesn’t have time for bullshit. Strangely, she’s one of the few people in my life that I make an active attempt to keep my mouth shut around. “How’s things?”

She’s not really asking to get a response, just out of politeness. One might think that she comes across as kind of a bitch, but I suppose you have to sound like that if you’re going to be a lawyer.

“Good,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “You weren’t supposed to call until next week.”

“Are you freaking out?” She sounds amused. Okay, maybe she is a bitch.
“Should I be?”

“You are, aren’t you? You’re totally freaking.”
“You never call early,” I remind her.
“Why do you automatically assume it’s bad?”
“If you were in my shoes, you wouldn’t have to ask that question.”

“Oh. Right. I didn’t know you were having a pity party. My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.”

Fun fact: everyone in my life thinks they’re a comedian. “Are you trying out new material or something?” I ask her irritably. “Like, to use this in opening arguments to get the jury on your side? If so, you should probably try again. I would vote to put
you
in jail along with whoever’s on trial.”

“I can see why Tyson wants to live with you,” she says. “You’re so much fun. I can feel your emo-angst through the phone. It feels like tears.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be professional? I could totally fire you, you know.” And I have half a mind to, because she’s obviously dragging this out as long as she can just to fuck with me.

“You could, but you won’t. I’m too good at what I do,” she says breezily. I can hear the
clackclackclack
of her keyboard through the phone. She’s probably not even paying attention to anything I’m saying.

“Your ego’s showing.”
“You can’t
handle
the truth!”
“Is that the only reason you became a lawyer, is so you could say that

line?”
“Of course not,” she scoffs. “I became a lawyer to make lots of money
and drive a fancy car. But, as it turns out, family law isn’t that big of a

moneymaker. I need to be a corporate whore before that will apparently happen. Life is so unfair.”

 

“Now who’s filled with angst?”

 

“Enough chitchat,” she says. “You ready?”

Sweat pops out and beads on my forehead. I look down and see come drying on my hand, cold and congealed. Tyson laughs loudly from the kitchen, the sound bringing a smile to my face before it drops back off again.

“You’re starting to breathe heavily,” Miz Erica Sharp says. “If I hadn’t met that pile of sex you call your boyfriend, I’d swear you were flirting with me.”

Wow, if she thinks that’s breathing heavy now, she should have heard me two minutes ago. “Just fucking tell me!”

 

“Tyson has been assigned a social worker. She’ll be in contact with you later today or tomorrow to set up a first visit.”

I don’t know how to take that. I hear one thing and a billion other things flash through my mind. Of course we knew this was coming, that it was part of the process, but I’d gotten it in my head that it was going to be down the road a bit before this ever happened. I can’t decide if that’s good or bad.

“Uh… okay? And what does that mean?”

She laughs. “It’s a good thing, Bear. That means your petition for custody of Tyson is moving forward a lot quicker than we could have hoped for. Regardless of what people think, the courts
like
it when families stay together. So the fact that your case is being pushed forward this quickly is a good thing. Stop being all dire all the time.”

She has a point, even though I won’t let her know it. You can only get knocked down so many times before you start shying away from a raised hand, even if it’s extended in kindness. While I know we’re better off than we ever were before, it’s still hard to get our expectations set too high, as we always seem to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s a shitty outlook to have, but it’s a habit the Kid and I have not yet broken. Of course, I should be the one leading by example, but knowing the Kid,
he’ll
be the one dragging
me
along. I don’t know what it’s going to take for me to get over myself, but I would do so gladly.

“I just want this to all be over,” I mutter. “I just want the Kid to be mine.”

“He
is
yours,” she tells me as gently as she knows how. “All that’s going to change is that a piece of paper will agree with you and won’t allow anyone to say otherwise. Try not to forget that, okay?”

“Yeah.”
“Have you called the therapist’s office yet?”
Uh-oh. “Uh… I was going to do that as soon as we got off the phone.”

She sounds exasperated as she sighs. “Bear, you are taking this seriously, right?”

How the hell can she ask that? “Of course I am!” I snap at her. “Isn’t it pretty fucking obvious by now?”
“Two things: one, try to watch the language when the social worker is in the house. I’ve heard she can be kind of a hard-ass, and we don’t need anything knocking you down on her list.”
“Oh, dang,” I say. How fucking stupid is that?

“Better. Two: it would be pretty obvious to me had you already called and set up the appointment like I told you to do. Do I need to call Otter? Or Mrs. Paquinn? Or Anna or Creed? Don’t make me tell on you.”

And she would too. Our lawyer is a tattletale, and my family is nosy as all hell. They’ve all already gotten on my case about my signing the initial petition a day later than I was supposed to. (Creed: “It’s only a signature, dude. The first step and all that jazz.” Anna: “Won’t you feel better once this whole thing is over with? Just sign the damn thing!” Mrs. Paquinn: “I would forge your signature if I thought it would help, but I can’t do that because that would be bad karma and my face would probably fall off and I’d forever be known as The Woman Who Pissed Off Buddha” (don’t ask). Otter: “I’ll blow you if you do it right now” (I totally took him up on that one). The Kid, his lip trembling, his eyes wide but glinting: “Don’t you
want
to get custody of me, Papa Bear? I thought you
loved
me! I wish my mom were here!”) So I don’t take Erica’s threats idly, knowing full well she has the rest of the cool kids on speed dial.

I mumble something at her, to which she replies, “Sorry, didn’t catch that.”

“The Kid is going to freak,” I say again, a little louder.
“And yet, you both don’t have a choice. You forget I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of one of his rampages. Do you remember what happened when he found out I’m a registered Republican?”
He’d asked her what it felt like to live without a soul and to have Fox News make love to her without having bought her dinner first. And that’s

me cleaning it up quite a bit, knowing I’ll now have to have a darn filter with the social worker coming in. We’d had a long talk with the Kid after that little colorful burst of Kid-ism (“Do you even know what a Republican
is
, Bear? Pretty soon, she’s going to be having me want to vacation back East with my perfectly coifed hair and starched sweater vests and vote on giving tax breaks to the rich! I demand you fire her!”). He might act like an adult, but he’s still a Kid and needs to watch his mouth, and I told him as much. He’d looked at me so incredulously when I’d threatened to ground him for a week for every curse word he used. When he saw that I was serious, he grumbled dark things at my person that undoubtedly would have been hilarious had I not been trying to prove a point.

“I remember,” I sigh. “But you haven’t heard his views on psychotherapy yet. And trust me; you’ve heard nothing until you’ve heard that.”

“I know,” she says. “And I know sometimes it can feel like a burden to be in charge of a gifted child, but you have to make him understand, Bear. And you can’t be worried about the reprisal.
You’re
the adult, remember? It’s not as if you are doing this just to upset him. It’s a state requirement, and it’s going to be the only way the courts will agree to grant you custody.”

“I’ll call today,” I say, knowing there’s nothing left to argue with. “And then?” she asks.

God, she’s so annoying! “And then I’ll call you back with the date and time of the appointment so you can call to verify. You’re a flipping hardcore female dog, you know that?”

Erica laughs. “Subtle, Bear. Real subtle. I can see where the Kid gets it from. And for the amount I’m being paid for this, you bet I’m going to be a flipping hard-core female dog.”

There’s a question I’ve been avoiding, and it’s one that I want to ask but am not sure if I want to know the answer. I’m sure she would have told me had she found anything out, but I still can’t help but wonder. Gathering my resolve and trying to sound as casual as possible, I ask, “Have you found her yet? Or anything?”

I hear her stop typing on her keyboard, a sure sign that I have her undivided attention. There’s tiny little sigh, and I almost want to know what she’s thinking right now, wanting to see everything she sees. But instead of saying anything further, I wait.

Silence. Then, “I’m surprised you haven’t brought that up sooner, Bear. What happens if I say yes?”

I think hard for a moment, only to realize it would change nothing. I tell her as much. “Have you, then?” I ask. “You know, found her?”
“No, Bear. We haven’t.” I don’t know which answer I was expecting, and I don’t know if the one I’ve gotten makes me feel relieved or not. “She hasn’t filed taxes in the last three years, so it’s unknown if she has a job or not. And so far, the search through the DMV database still only shows her Oregon driver’s license. And an old unpaid speeding ticket from 2004.”
“I remember that ticket,” I tell her quietly. “She was late for work. Again. The cop almost arrested her for screaming at him. She got fired, and for weeks afterward, all she could do was blame the cop, that the cop got her fired, that she was going to sue him and the Pizza Shack and get a bunch of money and travel. She said she always wanted to travel.”

Wow
, it sighs.
That didn’t come out sounding like you have issues at all. Why do you remember these things? Why do you care? Could it be that Bear still wuvs his mommy?
It chuckles.
I wonder what she would say if asked to name a memory she has about you. A good one. Any good one. What do you think she would say, Bear? You think she would say anything at all? Let’s be honest: if she did say anything, it would probably be the clichés she seems to live her life as now, the evil mother quoting scripture against the horror that is homosexuality. The Bible
says
… Leviticus
says
… God
says
. Fuck her. Fuck her and your memory of her. The quicker it’s gone, the better off you’ll be. You can’t forget unless you consciously decide to do it. Why hold on to her when she thinks nothing of you?

“Bear?” Erica asks, and then she hesitates, but only for a moment. “Do you ever miss her?”
Before I can even consider formulating a response to
that
, there’s a knock at the door. “Bear?” the Kid asks. “Why are you locked in the bathroom? Are you talking on the phone while you empty your bowels? That’s so gross. You better not have ever done that while talking to me!”

“I’m not emptying my bowels!” I yell at him through door. “Well,
that’
s good,” Erica says. “I’m not, either. Has anyone ever told you that you overshare?”

 

“I gotta go,” I tell her.

 

“Call the therapist,” she says. “Today. And call me if you want me to be there when the social worker comes, although I think you three will be fine.” “Oh, please. So you can bill us for the trip down here? You wish.” “I can’t wait to hear the date and time of the therapy appointment!” she says cheerfully as she hangs up the phone.

I set the phone down near the sink.
Bear.
I know this is going to be heard for yu to read.
Do you ever miss her?
I need yu to do something for me.
I can’t—

Please don’t try looking for me.
I have to leave.
I won’t—
Do you miss her?
No. No.
No
, I don’t, not even if there was a moment that—