Call Me Twice

Chapter 4: Family Values

Link

I've never been one for religion. My father is an atheist. That's good enough for me. I've watched documentaries and I'm aware of world religions I just don't have a favorite yet. That feels like a lot to commit to. I'm feeling out my sexuality first.
That said, the Pastor Ralph and his wife are very nice. They agreed to take me in in a heartbeat when CPS came knocking and they have been more than polite and gracious with my less than typical self. I have a closet I mean spare bedroom. And while I only brought two small suitcases from home it still didn't fit along with me and the twin bed in that room. There was also a pile of stuffed animals on it which felt so creepy like sleeping with somebody's else's lover.
"You don't like them?" Pastor Ralph asked me, the first night when he saw me stacking them in the hall.
"If your wife just died, and you came home and found I had hired a hooker who was now laying in your bed, and you walked out of the room in total shock and grief, and asked me that question, how would you want me to respond to you?" I asked.
He hasn't spoken to me since then so I didn't get my answer. But I think we both now know how I feel about other people's stuffed animals.
I have a nice stuffed bear. It is a Steiff. My father bought it for me when I was a baby and it has always been mine. Because I was non verbal when I named it, it's name is Bebe, but I stick by that. He looks like a Bebe.
Like I said the Pastor and his wife are nice but I think we might be from different planets. I'm quiet and haven't burned their house down or referenced hookers or dead wives again so I think they're just grateful at this point.
When I get up on Saturday morning, I find my case worker waiting in the kitchen.
"Good Morning Hilda," I say, politely, as I come out.
"Link. Can we talk?"
I nod.
We go outside to sit on the porch steps. It's a bright, sunny day, already, and I can hear lawn mowers in the distance.
"I want you to know, the DNA test results came back," she says, overly nicely. Oh so she doesn't know a thing.
"I'm well aware Sebastian Brenner is my father, I told you that," I say, calmly.
"Yes, so, the results came back and so your grandparents, want to take custody of you," she says, very kindly.
"Greta is my mother," Greta is not my mother. I think we're equally glad we're not really related. Like we are fine not sharing DNA not in a bad way but we look at each other and are glad the parasite relationship that happened was brief.
"So yes, your mother has been contacted, but since she never had any role in raising you, your grandparents lawyers can show that she abandoned you—,"
"It's not abandonment I was with my father," I say.
"She didn't have a role in raising you. So we're going to be talking to her too she's not in the country right now. So for now it would be best you're with family, with your grandparents. They're excited to meet you."
"Are they though?"
"They are. They didn't know you existed until a few months ago," she says.
"Yeah and then they waited to make sure I'm not related to 'that grubby queer little Eastern European,' " I imitate  my grandfather's southern drawl. For the record, I naturally have my father's soft Serbian accent because, ahem, he taught me how to speak. I can get rid of it if I want to. I just choose not to.
"How did you—,"
"I listen at doors. I'm an only child," I nod.
"Okay. Well. They miss their son, and they're very eager to meet you."
"Am I going with you?" I ask.
"Yeah, do you want to get your things?"
"I'm not leaving them," I say, standing up.
Packing up takes only a few moments. There wasn't room to properly unpack. And so, my things safely stored in my two small suitcases, I depart the little Parrish house. I don't think the Pastor and his wife are sad to see me go. I thank them for the stay and they nod at me which seems appropriate.
I get in the back of the social worker's Volvo, headphones on, and I stare out the windows at the tall pines. So they know nothing. Yet. This is so far from over. I curl my fingers into my palm. I want my dad here. I want my dad. I don't want them to lock me up. Yet I can't be afraid. As he said that makes us look more guilty. So I have to be confident, if disgruntled. The thing is there's a reason that I've never met these people and there's a reason their son never wanted to be a parent. And that's not because they're sweet well meaning people who aren't racists and homophobes.  Okay, I don't have proof of that second thing. I do my utmost to force myself to swallow the accent. I can get rid of it to imitate anyone on TV, it's likely only going to infuriate them that I sound like my father the person who taught me how to speak. And I just need to get through this.
The social worker drives me to a nicer than average log cabin set well into the woods. Big four car garage. Very neat garden. No dogs or anything like that but there is a little statue of one on the porch.
They are waiting outside. Older couple, the Ramos's. Their son, my father, took Brenner which is my father's name, ergo all three of ours. If that doesn't sound Eastern European it's not he changed his name when he came here because at school they always couldn't say it so he got sick of it.
"Link Nikolai Stankovic-Brenner," I say, nodding to them. In my natural accent and I just used both my Serbian names. Wow, I also thought I was better than this.
She, Mrs. Ramos, looks at me with tears in her eyes.
"It's good to meet you," he says, strongly, but he's staring at me as well. He would be. I push my hair out of my face a little but not much.
"Link, I'll call you when we get any word, okay? Let me know if you need anything," my case worker says.
"Thank you," I say, kindly.
"You look so much like Sebastian," Mrs. Ramos says, choking back her tears.
I nod a little, I'm well aware I'm the spitting image of her dead son.
"Did you—you never met our son?" Mr. Ramos asks.
"No, I was born about two years after he died," I say, calmly.
"Let's—come inside," she says, nicely.
I obey, mounting the creaking steps up to the porch, then following them in a screen door.  I almost have to duck my head to step in, and don't really seem to notice, just looking back at me as though haunted as they lead me into a neat little sitting room.
"You look—just like your father," she says again.
I nod a little, not bothering to dignify it with a response. I have seen pictures of him.
"Tell me, why—do you know why he called you Link?" She asks.
"It was the name of my dad, your son's, dog. Closest he got to naming me, it's from a game," I explain, a bit amused that was the part of my name they took issue with. My father doesn't call me that. He gave it to me so I'd have an American first name. He calls me Nikolai, or the diminutive Koyla, but of course in public I go by Link; the Americans can't pronounce much more than four letters.
"Ah," Mrs. Ramos appears to be regretting asking. She wouldn't have known about the dog they hadn't spoken in over fifteen years before his death.
"Do you know how your father died?" Mr. Ramos asks. I think he's going to ask me if I know I'm in America next. Seriously, that's the line and manner of questioning.
"Yes. He was killed in a shooting, at the school where he was lecturing. Then his body was stolen from the morgue, tragically," I say like my father absolutely did not do the stealing which he completely did. I'm not saying that stealing keeping my dad's body on ice so he could talk to him, is the craziest dramatic gay thing a person can do, I'm saying I'm going to have to work hard to top it. He buried him finally; it's not that weird it just was for a while there and he told me about it so he doesn't see the problem. Again, gonna have to work hard to top that.
"Yes," Mr. Ramos says like he definitely blames my father but has no proof, "They said he home schooled you? How much did you know about—the outside world?"
"I speak three languages. I've been to seven Broadway shows. I've backpacked in Yosemite. I've been to London, Tokyo, Cairo, Sydney, and Belgrade of course," I say, mildly amused, "That's major cities, I've been to every continent. I assure you my education lacked nothing. I'm top of all my classes."
"I see," Mr. Ramos says.
"Sebastian never spoke about having—children," she says, looking at me still like she doesn't believe I'm here.
"My fathers had planned for a child when the time was right in their careers. After your son's death—my father chose to move forward alone, but of course he wanted me to be related to your son. My mother was a willing surrogate, she was a research assistant of my dad, your son, and she was happy to help. We get along well. I was involved in an internship last summer with her on a dig. She's got her own career but she's glad of me. You understand we both will be happy for me to remain with her till my father is out," I say, coolly, also proud of how nice that sounded. It's about ten degrees removed from the truth. Research associate is a nice way to sum up surrogate daughter to my dads who against her will parented her after her family threw her out. After my dad's death she turned partner in crime and had me. It's true she's glad enough of me though. But it's more of a wise-cracking know it all teenager, feminist wine aunt  type of relationship than the nice safe sounding thing I just implied.
"Oh I'm um—glad you know your mother," Mrs. Ramos says.
"Hmm," I'm not. One more time Greta is not in any sense of the word my mother.  I send her 'gestational surrogate day' cards on my birthday and she sends me 'womb parasite' cards it's funny to us that's fine. My father also thinks it's mildly funny but in a, he thinks he should be more mature than us kind of way, so he can't admit it's funny.
"What did he tell you about us?" Mr. Ramos asks.
"That you kicked my dad out when he told you he was gay. And then I read my dad's journals which, have, so much more colorful language than that," I say, shrugging.
"You have his journals we—he would never give them to us," Mrs. Ramos says, "We never—got anything. After your father passed."
"You hadn't spoken to him in what—fifteen years?" I ask, frowning.
"That is—correct," Mr. Ramos says.
"I appreciate you letting me stay here, but my dad really wouldn't want me here, from what I understand," considering he didn't want to be here? He had journals from the time. And more than that, letters. All the letters they wrote each other from college, around that time period, about him getting kicked out, all of that. He had to sleep in his car. My father flew halfway across the country to come get him and bring him home. The only reason we lived within a fifty mile radius was my dad, missed this part of the country. the trees, the mountains, the weather was good for his asthma, everything. So my father brought him back, and we live in the middle of the trees high on the mountain. Where no one could find me.
"Sebastian was our only son. You must understand how we've grieved for him, over the last eighteen years," Mr. Ramos says, "Having the opportunity to meet you—it feels like a second chance."
I nod a little.
"What did he tell you? About your father?" She asks, shakily.
"Enough," I'm not about to say the truth. I don't think they deserve it yet. And it's far too complicated, wrapped up in us. And they don't deserve it. Because I have an entire letter that my dad wrote my father. Telling him that the answer was no. He would never have a child that he never wanted to be a father, because he would be terrified of being like them. The people who raised him. That he couldn't do that to someone else and he would be too afraid it was in him somehow. And these people instilled that fear in him, that fear of himself. And I'm young and I don't know much, but I know he shouldn't have been made to feel like he couldn't trust himself.
"We have a room made up," Mrs. Ramos says, nodding a little, "It's—would you like to see your father's old room? I—I left it."
"Sure," I say, politely.
"This way," Mr. Ramos says, a bit nervously, motioning for me to follow.
I do, they lead me upstairs and down a narrow hall. One room is clearly a guest room. The other is clearly the bedroom of a repressed teen obsessed with science. Pictures of gay mathematicians and scientists, models set up with care, a too neat bed spread. All dusty because the occupant got shot in the chest in his classroom while trying to protect two of his students. Got shot dead trying to get to a phone call for help. But he didn't make it to do that. I shudder. I'm well aware it's my imagination but sometimes my chest burns as though the bullets rip through me too.
"You can stay in here, it's—I wasn't sure what they let you bring," Mrs. Ramos says, nicely, holding open the guest room door.
"Thank you," I say, going back over to the guest room to put down my two little bags.
"How are you getting on at school? Have you been to school?" Mr. Ramos asks.
"It's not very exciting. My previous schooling was mostly distance learning classes. I was taking college courses now," I say, politely. They are being decent if, ignorant.
"We'll let you get settled," Mrs. Ramos says, nodding a little.
I wait till they descend the stairs to creep to the edge of the balcony.
"He looks just like Sebastian," Mrs. Ramos is sobbing now, "How—?"
"Except his voice, he sounds like that queer Eastern European," Mr. Ramos mutters.
"Even his smile—I know I keep staring at him," she sobs.
"I know. He's being polite, though condescending."
"It's like having Seb back," she sobs.
I sigh, rocking my heels. I'm not fond of reminding them of their dead gay son. Because I'd like to remain their alive gay grandson. Greta, how long is it gonna take you to get here? I grind my fists to my face. I really need to get out of here. They're not suspicious yet but they might get so eventually. I know I'm paranoid but back to being fond of remaining alive and free.
I stand up, straightening my hair and tying it back. It's just long enough for a short bun. And I need to go for a run. Clear my head.
"Do you mind if I go for a walk? Some school friends were telling me about good trails around here," I say, descending the stairs, in a good impression of someone who has school friends. I'm wearing cargos and a black t-shirt and a black hoodie and a black belt and black leather bracelets and a black choker and currently have my hair pulled up in a small bun and have black stud earrings in both ears. Sebastian never wore his hair long and that plus the accent distances me from his memory significantly. Plus the jewelry, he never had that in pictures and my father doesn't wear stuff like that, it's a me thing.
"He let you do that to your ears?" Mr. Ramos asks, just staring at me.
"Yes of course, go ahead," Mrs. Ramos said, well my dad's notebooks said she was the good cop if the homophobic cop.
"Yes, he took me to dermatologist, it was just so embarrassing. I recommend needle, ice, and never telling authority figures things, is that jog good?" I ask, pointing at the door as I unwrap my headphones from my walkman.
"Yes, go on," Mr. Ramos says, just staring at me.
I go, sighing as I clear the door. That could have gone worse I think.