“What’s going on, Ty?” Otter asks.
Ty pulls back enough for me to see how wide his eyes are. “She’s here,” he whispers.
“Who’s here?” I ask, confused and scared. Ty shakes his head and puts himself back into my chest and breathes heavily against me. I haven’t seen him like this in months.
Otter comes around to my side and puts his arm around me. I look at him, and he smiles back and squeezes my shoulder. I will my feet to start moving and eventually they do, one after another. It’s only eight or nine steps to the living room, but it’s the longest walk of my life. As we turn the corner, I see Mrs. Paquinn sitting rigidly on a chair, facing the couch on the opposite side of the room. She looks at me and there’s something in her eyes, something I can’t quite place. I think it may be sorrow or fear or any number of things that people think when a bomb is about to be dropped. I honestly still can’t see what’s so bad. Ty’s in my arms, breathing and safe (even though he’s petrified about something), and our apartment hasn’t burned down, and Mrs. Paquinn isn’t dead. I try to let myself feel some sense of relief. I try, that is, until I hear Otter speak beside me.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” he mutters.
“Hello, Bear,” my mother says.
I think I must be hearing things, because it couldn’t be her. I allow myself to be amused for a split second that I would still be able to recognize her voice after all these years. Then I think I must be seeing things as I turn to look at the couch, because what I’m seeing couldn’t possibly be there. Julie McKenna is sitting on the couch, h
er back as rigid as Mrs. Paquinn’s. Her dark hair is shorter now and pulled back into a ponytail. On most, this would give a youthful appearance, but what I am struck by most when I see her for the first time in over three years is how old she looks. The crow’s feet around her eyes divot and scar her face. Her cheeks are puffy, and it looks like she’s gained weight. The lumpy dress she’s wearing screams sale rack at Kmart, and the shoes are blocky, nondescript. The necklace she’s wearing is too shiny to be anything but cheap plastic. She looks beat, weathered, like nothing in her life has ever gone her way. Instinctively, I grip the Kid harder, trying to make him disappear so he never has to see where he came from, only where he’s going. My eyes never leave my mother’s, and I’m almost horrified to see that they are the only thing about her that has not faded, the only thing about her that looks the same. They look the same because they are the brown of my eyes, the brown of the Kid’s.
I feel a protective hand on my shoulder and realize it’s Otter. I tear myself away from my mom for a moment and glance at him. His face is tense, his eyes hard. He’s glaring at my mother and not doing anything to hide it. He feels my eyes on him and turns to me and squeezes my shoulder again, his eyes shifting from anger to hold us, me and Ty, in the same regard he always does. It’s almost enough to knock the drowning fear out of me. Almost. His eyes grow cold again as he glances back at my mom. She looks between us nervously and attempts another smile and fails miserably.
Mrs. Paquinn coughs behind me, and I hear her wheeze as she rises from her chair. “Bear, would you walk an old lady to the door?” she says quietly. I nod and kiss the Kid’s head and hand him over to Otter, whose arms are already waiting. As soon as Ty transfers to him, the Kid curls up against his chest, and Otter leans down and whispers calming words into his ear. His eyes are a contradiction from his words, like soft steel.
Mrs. Paquinn waits for me at the entryway. As I walk up to her, she speaks to Mom: “It was… interesting to see you again, Julie,” she says, her voice flat. “I hope you know that Bear has raised a pretty amazing child.”
My mother nods but doesn’t speak.
I follow Mrs. Paquinn out the door and close it gently behind me. She turns to face me, as if expecting my barrage of questions.
“What the hell is she doing here?” I demand. “When did she show up?”
Mrs. Paquinn shudders and leans against the door. “She got here a couple of hours ago,” she says, her voice wavering. “There was a knock at the door, and Ty ran to get it, thinking it was you and that Otter boy. He came back in, just white-faced, and she was following behind him, smiling up a storm. At first I didn’t recognize her, but then she opened her mouth, and I knew who she was immediately. Tyson and I both tried to call you.” She says this last part with no accusation in her voice, which makes me love her even more.
“I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t hear my phone at all.” I shake my head. “What is she doing here, Mrs. Paquinn? Did she say?”
She tilts her head back and closes her eyes. “She didn’t say a whole lot, Bear, to be honest. She said that she came back to see how her boys were doing. She kept trying to get Tyson to talk to her, but when that boy wasn’t on the phone trying to call you, he was huddled up against me.” She opens her eyes and looks at me. “Whatever she’s here for, it can’t be good,” she tells me. “No mother takes off for three goddamn years and leaves her children and then comes back without wanting something.”
“Shit,” I mutter. I can’t focus as it seems every thought I’ve ever had in my life is now racing through my head. My hands are sweaty and my knees feel weak. I want to run inside and get Otter and the Kid and get the hell out of here. Mrs. Paquinn’s words add to the mess in my head.
She takes my hand in hers and brings it to her dusty lips. “Bear, you need anything, anything, you know where I’m at. I may not be all that quick anymore, but I’ve looked after that boy for a long time now, and I know how to protect those I love.” I take her in my arms, and I hear a soft exhale of surprise, but she welcomes me gladly, her arms stronger than I thought they would be. She lets me go after a time, and without another word, wobbles over to her door and goes inside.
No mother takes off for three goddamn years and leaves her children and then comes back without wanting something.
I go back inside. As soon as I get to the living room, my mother stands expectantly. I see that Otter has taken the Kid out of the room, and I walk past my mom without saying a word and I hear her sigh as she sits back down. Fuck her. She can wait. My guys are not in the kitchen so I head down the hallway and see our bedroom door is shut and the light on. I try the handle, but the door is locked
“Who is it?” Otter asks gruffly.
“It’s me,” I say quietly and hear the click of the lock, and the door opens. I look into the room, and the Kid is sitting on his bed, his back pressed against the wall. Otter closes the door and locks it again and pulls me over to the bed, where the Kid is, and gathers both of us in his arms and rocks us gently. He kisses the tops of our heads, and the Kid’s eyes are still wide and shocked, and I feel the first great wave of anger begin to wash over me. Otter feels me tense under his hands and begins to rub my back.
How the hell can she be here? After ditching her family for some fucking guy, how does she have the nerve to even show her face to us again, much less breathe the air in the same zip code? Bile rises, hot and bitter, but I’m able to choke it back down where it slides greasily in my stomach. Three years is a long time to let anger and hatred for someone fester, and to be honest, I thought I had gotten over the majority of it. Yes, it sucked horribly when she left, and I was doubting myself and everyone around me and wondering how in God’s name I was going to provide for a child when I was still a child myself. I had days where I alternately cursed her name and then begged God to make her come home. Over time it dulled into a low ache that I always carried with me but became strangely adept at ignoring.
Now she’s back, and it’s like the sore split open and started oozing all over again. But this time it’s accompanied by something else, something much darker. I try to focus on it, not completely understanding what it is. The best way I can think to describe it is that I’m offended, offended that she’s here, offended that she could ever think to show her face again. I don’t think I’m necessarily upset at the idea of her actually being here, but more so the fact that she thinks she can just show up like this, out of the blue, like nothing has ever happened. Like the last three fucking years never happened. Like I never came home that one day to find a note from our coward of a mother, saying she’s sorry, but that she has to go, that Tom sez she can get a job and that I was always a happy baby and that she had left me $137.50 out my bank account, $137.50 of my money that was supposed to be for school, but why did I need school to be a writer? Three years of fear, anger, scrimping, sadness, loneliness, three years of feeling lost, like I had been abandoned and forced into a position I was not capable of doing. The bitterness swells within me, and I squeeze my boys tighter.
“We need to call Creed,” Otter says sometime later. “Have him come pick up the Kid.”
I nod. “That sounds good to—”
“No,” the Kid hisses, startling us both. I push away from Otter to get a good like at his face and have to stop myself from pushing him away as he’s obviously livid. His eyes flash as his mouth twists into a sneer, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen this expression on him. Anger wells up in me again (did it ever really go away?), and I want nothing more than to knock down the bedroom door and drag her sorry ass out of our house and knock her down the stairs. I want to hear her bones break as she cries out when she lands. I want to break something so very badly, and it might as well be her.
“Ty,” I say, doing nothing to keep the vileness out of my voice. “Ty, I don’t want you to be here for this. She has no right to see you.”
“I don’t care,” he growls. “I’m not leaving with Creed.”