But she doesn’t even go there. She doesn’t have to. “And you love him?”
“With everything I have.”
“Silly boy,” she says with a laugh, her voice cracking. “You are my son, as well. You know this. Don’t forget it. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Bear?”
“Yeah?”
“You know why I called you first, right? And not him?”
I think for a moment. “You wanted to make sure I was in this all the way. Because you knew already he was. Otter wears his heart on his sleeve.
You can see everything he feels in his eyes. And you saw what he looked like when he watched me. But I’m harder to read. You just wanted to make sure I felt the same.”
“Yes,” she breathes. “Yes.”
“Don’t doubt that. Ever.”
“He’s very lucky, you know. To have found you. Even if you were right in front of him the whole time, he’s still very lucky.”
I hear a door opening, and I look up and see Otter walking out of the therapist’s office, Eddie trailing behind him. Otter’s saying something to Eddie, and he’s got that crooked grin on full display, his eyes dancing, and I know he’s gotten a kick out of Eddie, just like I thought he would. He looks around and sees me down the hallway and arches an eyebrow and drops a wink in my direction as the Kid runs up to him and stands on his right foot, wrapping his arms around one of Otter’s big thighs. Otter reaches down, still talking to Eddie, and ruffles his hands through the Kid’s hair, an act so unconscious that it seems to be like breathing for him.
“No,” I tell his mother. “I’m the lucky one.”
IT’S nothing sordid, you know. The explanation behind Alice and Jerry’s reluctance. I know you’re probably thinking that there’s some big tragedy in the past that forever shaped this family, and that some dark secret is about to be revealed. While it was tragic, and while it did shape people, it’s not dark or morbid or life-altering, at least for us. It’s just sad. And even though I don’t rightly agree with their actions toward Otter and his coming out, I can still see their point.
Sometimes things have simple explanations, even though the consequences are complex.
Jerry had an older brother, a man named Alan. In 1982, right before Otter was born, Jerry was twenty-three, and his older brother was twenty-seven. Alan started coughing one day and couldn’t stop. Soon there was blood. Soon Alan was in the hospital. Soon Alan, an out-and-proud gay man, was diagnosed with what would be referred to later that year as AIDS.
The world became a scary place then, as some of Alan’s friends became sick, as people turned their noses up, as Reagan acted like nothing was wrong, even after almost four hundred people had died by 1983. Alan was one of them. He died due to complications from pneumonia on January 19, 1982. Otter was b
orn three days later.
Jerry had idolized his older brother. He had worshipped the ground he walked on. He’d held his hand when he took his last breath, even though he was told not to touch him, that doctors didn’t know how contagious he would be. But he’d seen the fear in Alan’s eyes, the despair, and he didn’t care what happened to him. He didn’t think about his new wife, his unborn son. He held his brother’s hand, and his brother had smiled around the tube down his throat, and right before his eyes closed, he winked at his brother, a look that Jerry had known his brother to give all his life.
He buried his brother on a winter day so beautiful it felt like a slap in the face. It shouldn’t have been so bright out. The sky shouldn’t have been so blue. The day should not have looked like it was celebrating when it should be mourning.
He’d been one of the pall bearers, carrying the casket on his shoulder, the weight there only a reminder of what he’d lost, of what he’d no longer have. Even when the coffin was lifted off him and lowered into the ground, he could still feel it on his shoulder, his back, digging into his skin as the sun shone down, as a gently fragrant breeze blew across his face.
Fast forward to four years ago. Otter came out. Jerry and Alice were smart people, caring people. They were also people with long memories, with scars that had never fully healed. They were scared. They worried.
They knew how the world worked, that much had happened since Alan’s death, that such a diagnosis didn’t mean death. But it was still Alan. It was still Jerry’s brother. It wasn’t a nameless face or a statistic. Jerry hurt for his son, hurt for his brother. He didn’t know how to act, didn’t know what to do.
So he did nothing. It seemed safer. He didn’t know that sometimes nothing is worse than something.
“I don’t know if I buy it,” Otter told me later that night, after we’d come home from their house. We lay in bed in the dark, Otter wrapped around my back. “Over twenty years later, and they freak out about that?”
“People remember what hurts them the most,” I replied quietly. “It’s hard to forget when it feels like it still chafes.”
He kissed my ear. “Do you remember? What hurts you the most?” His voice was low, but I heard the question behind the question.
I was careful with my reply, knowing exactly what he meant. “I remember that you came back.”
This seemed to satisfy him. “I don’t know if I can forgive and forget so quickly,” he said. “I’m not like you, Bear. After all that I did, you still found some way to forgive me. I don’t know if I can do the same with my parents.