The Kid snickers. “I know. Otter told me. I meant figuratively, you dumbass. You probably shouldn’t be punching anyone. You know why?”
I shake my head, and he leans down, pressing his lips against my cheek. “Because you’re just a little guy,” he says, “and you need all of us to help fight for you. Let us do this, at least this once.”
I look up at him. “Can I do this?” I ask, hoping.
He, who’s great and wise and kind, tells me I can.
I look past him, at the ocean and the sun and the waves. There’s no argument against any of his words. And I know, as I’ve always known, that when my nine-year-old vegetarian ecoterrorist-in-training tells me to do something, I better goddamn do it.
I raise my hands to him, and he pulls me up. I hug him to my side and marvel how his head barely reaches my stomach. “I’d be lost without you,” I say truthfully.
He laughs. “Duh.”
I look up the sandy dune to the parking lot and see only my car.
“Did you walk here?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “They all drove me. Everyone wanted to get out and run down to you, but I told them to go home. To just let me go. That sometimes, what needs to be said should just be between brothers.”
“Where do we go from here?” I ask, meaning now, meaning forever.
The Kid looks up at me and dazzles me yet again: “We go home, Papa Bear. They’re waiting for us.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
THE drive is quiet. The Kid holds my hand, playing with my fingers. I think everything that needs to be said between us has been said, but then I hear him mumbling something to himself as he looks out the window. When I hear the words, I grin:
Otter! Otter! Otter!
Don’t lead cows to slaughter!
I love you and I know
I should’ve told you soon-a
But you didn’t buy the dolphin-safe tuna!
Now everything’s been said.
WE WALK up the stairs to my apartment, the Kid leading me by the hand. He takes his house key from its hiding place in his underwear (“Pajamas don’t have pockets, Bear, so stop laughing!”) and puts it in the lock. The tumblers click and snap, and the key twists. The door opens, and the Kid pulls me inside.
Instantly, there’s a stampede from the living room as our family crowds into the hallway, led by Otter. He sees us standing in the doorway and hesitates. Anna, Creed, and Mrs. Paquinn peer over his shoulder. We all stand for a moment, staring at each other. It should be awkward, but it’s not. I drink my fill of them, of him. His chest rises rapidly and falls as he breathes. The hard planes of his pectorals stretch the fabric of his shirt alarmingly. His arms are bunched up massively as he crosses them over his front. His mouth is set. His nose is flaring, his forehead creased, but his eyes, his eyes are the same. I think they always will be.
“I’m sorry,” I say, not taking my eyes off of him, somehow knowing that if I do, he’ll disappear, and I’ll realize that this was all just a dream. I try to make my voice steady, but it’s been too long of a night for that to ever happen. It wavers slightly, and something inside Otter snaps, and he rushes forward, the determination never leaving his eyes, and I know somehow that he is going to wrap me in his arms and what needs to be said won’t be. I raise my hand to block him and step back. I hope to God I won’t ever have to see that look in his eyes again, the one he is giving me now as he stops. “Not… not yet, Otter. I need to talk to all of you first. Then… then we can see.”
He nods tightly and spins around, pushing everyone into the living room. The Kid drags me by the arm, and surprise, surprise, it just so happens that the only available seat left is right next to Otter. The Kid looks at me expectantly and jerks his chin toward the empty seat. He lets me go and goes to sit on Creed’s lap.
I move carefully, calculating the number of steps it takes me to reach Otter. Seven. It takes me three seconds to turn and sit down. I pop my knuckles four times. I count to ten in my head. It takes me twelve seconds to think about what to say, five more to realize again I won’t have any control over it, seventeen seconds to argue with myself, ten to shut off the voices in my head, and by then a full minute has gone by in utter silence. If someone was watching this without knowing what was going on, they would probably think we were mimes that didn’t do mime stuff. Just sad, sad mimes—
Mrs. Paquinn finally acts like Mrs. Paquinn and interrupts my intelligent internal monologue by saying, “Bear, I think having sand in your butt crack must be really uncomfortable. Maybe you should go change your clothes. You don’t want to catch sand crabs. What’s the point of getting crabs when you weren’t having any fun doing it?”
“Sand crabs?” I spit out.
“Sand crabs,” she repeats. “I can just imagine that the rest of the day won’t go well for you when you have to go to the doctor and explain how you got a sexually transmitted disease without actually being sexually active.”
“Is it considered an STD if they’re sand crabs?” Creed muses out loud.
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Paquinn replies. “I should think that’s a real thing, but I can’t say for sure because I would be lying. But it seems to me that it certainly sounds like a real thing, doesn’t it?”
“You can get crabs from a toilet seat,” the Kid adds. “MSNBC did this black-light thing in hotel rooms, and it showed crabs in the bathroom and ejaculate on the ceiling.”
Is this really happening?
“My goodness,” Mrs. Paquinn breathes. “How did it get all the way up there?”
“The crabs?” Anna jumps in. “Well, I’m pretty sure they can jump off of you—”
“No, dear,” Mrs. Paquinn interrupts. “The ejaculate on the ceiling. That just doesn’t seem humanly possible. I’ve never known a man to be able to do that. Not that I’ve had too much experience in the matter. My Joseph, God love him, wasn’t capable of quite the superhuman feat himself.”
“I don’t know,” the Kid says with a shrug, his forehead scrunched in deep concentration. “They never said how it got there. What’s ejaculate, anyways? They didn’t explain, but I want to know why it glowed in the black light.”
Mrs. Paquinn shifts her weight to turn toward the Kid. “Well, Tyson, when a man and a woman—or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, but I don’t think that works quite the same way—love each other very much and decide to have relations, ejaculate is what comes out and makes babies. Well, it makes babies if you are a man and a woman. If it’s just two men, I would assume all it makes is a mess.” She peers at Otter and me for clarification. We give none.
“Oh,” the Kid says. “So does spanking and fisting make babies too? I mean, if it’s a man and a woman?”
I choke on my tongue.
Mrs. Paquinn looks stern. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. My Joseph, God love him, was never into that kind of thing. He was very vanilla, as I believe they say these days.”
“Vanilla?” the Kid asks. “I tried vanilla soy ice cream once, and it was gross. Even for soy ice cream.”
Creed laughs. “I think it’s not the vanilla part of it, Kid. All soy ice cream is gross.”
The Kid shoots him an evil look. “You say that, but I bet it’s just your veal-induced guilt talking.”
“Veal is cow, Kid,” Creed argues. “What good are cows if we can’t eat them?”
“Veal is baby cows! Why would you eat baby anything?”
“Veal is baby cow?” Creed asks, looking slightly green and horrified. “How in God’s name did I not know that?”
Anna pats his arm. I watch them closely as she says, “I think there’s a lot about a lot of things you don’t know.”
“It’s okay, Anna,” the Kid says, letting out a long-suffering sigh. “I have some literature that Creed can take with him and read. It’s life-changing.”
Mrs. Paquinn sniffs. “I don’t eat veal either because I just feel so guilty picturing their little faces every time. B
ut I’ll have a steak every now and then. No one thinks grown-up cows are cute.”
“Is veal really baby cows?” Creed whispers.
“Are you all fucking insane?” I scream.
Mrs. Paquinn claps her hands. “Oh good, Bear has finally decided to speak.”
“About goddamn time,” the Kid mumbles.
“Watch your mouth,” Anna admonishes him, lightly tapping him on the back of his hand. Then she smacks Creed on the back of his head. “And he gets those words from you, so you watch your language too.”
“Bear just said fucking!” Creed whines, rubbing what I’m sure is a gaping wound on his head.
“Well, Bear just felt left out of the conversation, and he’s had a rough night,” Mrs. Paquinn explains. “I think ‘fucking’ was the straightest way to the point he was trying to make.” She suddenly raises her hand to her mouth and giggles as she blushes. “Fucking was the straightest? Oh, listen to me, making funny sentences.” Creed and the Kid laugh. Anna smacks them both again. Then they all stop and look at me. I open my mouth to speak.
Otter kisses me.
I hear shocked gasps coming from our audience as his hands come up to the side of my face. My eyes are bugging out of my head, and I’m looking straight (ha, ha, ha aren’t we all just so punny!) into his eyes. His thumbs brush over my eyebrows and my forehead, smoothing out all the bumps and wrinkles. His lips are warm as they move across mine, his fingers trailing fire in their wake. And still he looks at me. The gold and green are so close that I can make out myself in their reflection. I look like I’m about to explode. And then my body melts, and I sigh quietly into his mouth, and he kisses up the side of my jaw to my cheek, my forehead, my hair, my eyes. I fall into him, and he wraps me tightly in those big arms, and I let it all out. He rocks me back and forth, and I hear him whisper, “Never again, you hear me? Never again. Something happens, you tell me. I need you to tell me. I need you.” I nod blindly into his chest, and he strokes my hair. He lets me lay there for a moment and then pulls my face back and kisses the tears away.
“I want them to leave,” I mumble.
He nods and smiles, that crooked grin in full force. “Soon. Creed and Anna need to speak to you first. After that, we’ll go wherever you want. Just you and me.” He kisses me again gently and pulls me back into the couch, curling me into the crook of his arm protectively. I grab his hand tightly, not wanting to let go. I think he’s indulging me in this, but some part of me believes he doesn’t want to let go, either, by the way he’s clutching me. He smells so fucking good. I rub my face on his chest, trying to get the wetness off. His heart beats quickly, and I press my free hand against it. He grunts softly and captures my hand in his and presses down harder. I think I know what he’s trying to say. I feel slightly better knowing we will at least have a chance to talk before… whatever happens.
I look back at the others sitting across from us, and I am surprised to see the smiles on their faces, even Anna’s. Creed’s smile is a little green, as I’m sure seeing his brother and his best friend make out isn’t necessarily on the top of his to-do list, but at least he’s trying. I spy their hands between them, clasped. Creed’s thumb strokes over Anna’s.
“So, you two, huh?” I ask, wondering if I’m still angry. “This something new?”
They look at each other and blush slightly.
Anna speaks for them.
ONCE upon a time, Anna broke up with her stupid gay boyfriend. She didn’t know for a fact that he was gay, but there was always something that came across his face when he spoke the magic word: Otter. She tried to ignore the signs, tried to ignore the feeling in the pit of her stomach that ate away at her. It couldn’t possibly be true, could it? Sure, her stupid gay boyfriend was always there for her, could always… perform when it was required, so why would these thoughts never go away?
One day, the magic word made a dumb decision and fled town to the mythical far away land of California. She never really understood the reason why, at least at the time, but the whispers in her own head saw the way her boyfriend collapsed in on himself, saw the way he became cold, distant. She tried to do the math but never came up with the right answer. She knew something had happened, something bad that she wasn’t privy to, but it never stopped her from wondering. She went on with her life, trying to pick up the pieces that were left behind.
It was tiring to do so, but she knew it was necessary. No one could go through what her boyfriend went through and not break. But even as she tried to put him back together, the pieces wouldn’t fit right, and no matter what she did, she couldn’t make him whole again. Anna began to doubt herself, but she also began to look closer.
For three whole years, she looked closer.
Then one day, not so very long ago, the magic word came back. She didn’t know why. She saw the way her boyfriend was angry at first, angrier than she had seen him in a long time. Then she saw him slowly awaken, as if from a deep sleep. Something in him sparked back to life, and she knew it was nothing she did. The voices that spoke to her, that whispered dark things to her, said that she could never be what Otter was. Anna made some bad choices (but weren’t they the only choices she could make?) and harsh words were said. Even as her own heart was breaking, she broke his. She didn’t believe that was even possible. It made her doubt her actions, made her believe she made the wrong decision. And then, on that fateful night, she called Otter. She didn’t accuse him, didn’t relay her fears. In return, Otter told her a story about his adventures in California. He told her that he came back to find himself, that he wasn’t happy where he was. And while she believed his words, she felt that something was missing from his story, that it was broken somehow. So broke that it rang false in her ears. She pushed Otter toward her ex- boyfriend and prayed that what she felt to be true was a lie.
But in her heart, she knew it wasn’t.
She gave them space, gave them time. She didn’t want to push further because if she was wrong, it would be all the worse because of it. Yet the next time she saw him, he seemed different. He was wary around her, didn’t seem to have the right words to say. But it was there, something behind his eyes that danced like she’d never seen them dance before. She wanted to scream and shout and punch and kick, but she couldn’t. She waited. And waited. And waited.
And while she was waiting, something funny happened. She leaned on someone she had never leaned on before. The magic word had a brother, you see, and although he had been around almost all her life, she’d never thought of him as more than a friend. Even while her heart was broken, she felt something stir inside her. She wondered if it was out of anger that she felt it. Out of jealousy (of what, she didn’t yet know). She wasn’t trying to get back at her stupid ex-boyfriend when it happened for the first time. She doesn’t even know how it happened. They were talking about nothing and everything, and someone leaned in and someone else leaned closer and their lips met, and it was awkward, and it felt strange, and the lips were so alien to her, but she didn’t stop.
Anna and Creed both felt guilty, of course. How could they not? They both felt like they were betraying the one thing that bound them together. But even as they swore that it would never happen again, it did. It happened again and again and again. And then she didn’t want it to stop anymore. She was happy, or at least as happy as she could be. She felt that she deserved it. She felt it was owed to her. She had done nothing wrong, she decided, even as she called herself a liar.
It went on, as these things seem to do. There were good days, and there were bad days. She felt strong and weak and forgiving and spiteful all at the same time. And after a while, she felt herself falling for the brother, the best friend, the constant who had been background noise for most of her life.
But still, she wondered.
Then came the day when the brother came running into her room, his eyes shell-shocked, his body trembling. She held him for a long time that night. He wouldn’t say what was wrong, wouldn’t even give her a hint, so s
he just held him. They fell asleep… and were awoken by furious pounding at the door. She left the brother where he was and opened the door and saw the Kid before her. He was terrified and angry, and somehow the truth, that long-suspected truth, made itself known. The Kid didn’t have to put any specifics behind it, only saying that his brother was lost so very far in himself. Because of their mother. Their mother had come back and taken everything away. She thought to the night before, to the other brother lying in her bed. And that’s when she knew. And as she held onto the trembling Kid, her anger rose again, unbidden but there nonetheless. She called her ex, hiding behind a veil.
And when he arrived, when he held the Kid in his arms, when he looked at them with determination is his eyes, she knew. And then he said—
ANNA looks down at her hands. “You said you were in love with him, that you needed to fix it. You had such desperation in your voice, and I knew you had never felt like that for me, before.” She shakes her head, interrupting my protests. “I know you loved me. But this… this was different and don’t you dare say otherwise.” She paws at her eyes, trying to clear her vision. “I threw it back in your face. Because, for once, I hated being right. But that didn’t stop me, because it made everything we had seem fake. Like I was just a stand-in for all those years while you figured yourself out.”
Creed rubs her knee, then looks back at us. “I didn’t mean for all of this to happen, Papa Bear. You have to understand that. It was never about going behind your back, never about hurting you. Some things just happen. You of all people should know that by now. You were doing the same thing.”
“I suppose that’s one way to look at it,” I say slowly, not wanting to concede just yet.
Creed snaps his head to me, suddenly furious. “One way?” he snarls. “You were fucking my brother without conveniently telling anyone you switched teams, and that’s all you can say? You coldhearted bastard, how the hell can you sit there and judge us?”