“I was being selfish. I know that now!” she says. “It wasn’t fair to either of you and I… I want you to know that I don’t think I will ever be able to forgive myself.” When she finishes, I see the beginnings of tears in her eyes, but they only prove to make me angrier.
“Is that why you’re here?” I growl. “To seek our forgiveness?”
“I… I don’t know, Bear. I thought that—that if I came back….” She turns her head and brings up a hand to wipe at her eye, and I see her makeup smudge. It makes me want to get up and put my hands around her throat and throttle her until I hear a rattle in her throat as the last breath escapes.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I say. “If you came to see how we were, at least now you know. You’ve got that to appease your fucking conscience.”
“Don’t use that kind of language with me, young man,” she snaps. “I am still your mother, and I will not have you talking to me like that.”
“I don’t think you get to dictate what he does or does not say,” Otter lashes out. “You lost that right a long time ago, Julie, when you took the coward’s way out.”
She turns her irritation to him. “I wasn’t talking to you, Oliver,” she says, annoyed. “Since when do you sit in on family discussions like this, anyways? Don’t you have your own home to go to? Or did you feel like slumming it for a while?”
“Don’t talk to Otter that way!” the Kid suddenly shouts. I barely flinch, but Mom recoils sharply in her seat, and I think she’s going to fall over. I look over at Ty and see he’s resumed the look of pure fury on his face, and it’s directed at his mother. “He’s more of my family than you are!”
“Ty, this is a grown-up matter,” she says through gritted teeth. “Why don’t you go to your room, and we can talk later.”
“You don’t get to tell him what to do,” I shout at her. “You gave that up when you walked away!”
“What else was I supposed to do?” she shouts back. “If I’d stayed, everything would have gone to hell, and who knows where we’d be now?”
“We would have gotten through it somehow!” I cry. “We always did! It doesn’t matter how hard things get, you never run out on your fucking family!” I pause, my hands shaking. Both Ty and Otter have their hands on my leg now, and it’s not lost to me when my mom’s eyes dart there. “But I tell you what,” I continue. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe the best thing for you was to leave. Maybe it was the best thing for all of us. I know I would have hated you even more than I do now for dragging us down with you.”
“I didn’t want to,” she whispers, tears flowing freely now. “I couldn’t see any other way….”
“We’ve established that,” Otter says dryly. “Now why don’t you answer Bear’s question? Why are you here?”
She shoots daggers at him again and looks down at her hands. “I told you: I wanted to see how my sons were doing. I needed to make sure they were okay. I’ve been thinking about you two more lately than I have in a long time.” She shudders and pushes on. “I know how that sounds, trust me. I don’t mean it to be harsh in any way. But… regardless of how you feel about me right now, you are still my children, and I—I don’t know. I think its guilt or it’s something else, but lately, you guys have been stuck in my head. There’s sometimes I think I see you walking down the street, and I know it’s not possible, but I still run after you, and, of course, when I get there, it’s not you at all. It doesn’t even look like you.” Otter and I both stare wide-eyed at each other, remembering the story he had told me from his time in San Diego when I haunted him.
“It’s weird,” she continues, “but I got it going that I needed to come home and see my sons. I thought that maybe I could learn to be a good mother and that….” She stops and looks up at me, eyes shiny. “Does anything I am saying make sense?” she asks quietly.
“It does,” I concede, refusing to let her know why. “I understand more than you could possibly know.” I shake my head as she starts to look hopeful. “But it’s too little, too late. Whatever you hoped to accomplish here is done.”
“You can’t ever forgive me?” she says dully.
“One day, maybe. Now? No. I can’t. And you being here has only made it worse. I think it best for all of us if you just leave.”
“Ty?” she says meekly, and I hate her for it.
The Kid shakes his head. “I don’t want you here. Papa Bear has taken care of me more than you ever did or ever could. I’m only nine, and I can see that.” He glances over at me, and I smile at him and that gives him courage to continue. “He’s had me to look after for a long time and things are finally starting to be okay. I’ve done my best to take care of him, and I think I’ve done a good job.”
“You have, Kid,” I whisper to him, and he smiles.
He glances up at Otter, who kisses his forehead, and he looks back at his mom. “And then Otter came back because he realized that he loved Bear, and Bear loves him, and we don’t need anyone telling us how to be a family ever again.” He pauses, and then his face goes white.
It probably matches my own.
My mom’s eyes flash up. She stares at the Kid and then looks between me and Otter and shakes her head. “He what?” she asks quietly.
“It’s nothing,” I say quickly. “You need to go.”
When she looks at me next, there’s something in her eyes, something I can’t quite place. It fills me with dread because the closest thing I can equate it to is victory. She looks like she just won something, and my heart fr
eezes in my chest. My skin feels clammy.
“I heard… about you,” she says to Otter, her voice dripping with obvious disgust. “Before I left, someone told me that they had seen you going into a fag bar up in Portland. I didn’t believe it. I told them there’s no way… no way that you’d be like that.”
“You have no idea what you’re talk—” Otter starts, his eyes blazing.