Homecoming

*40*

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No One Expects ..."


Brian

Even while I'm pulling the door closed behind me, and thinking about how I can protect Gus and make sure that he never gets to meet the evil grandmother from Hell, and wondering if I should just shove her down the lift shaft and be done with it, part of me is just pissed off about how fucking unfair it is.

Two days. Two fucking days. If she'd come here two days later we would have been gone.

But then she's giving me the evil eye, and I wait for the patented "I'm your mother, don't speak to me that way" speech.

But she surprises me. And at first I honestly don't understand what she's saying, because it's so different from what I expect to hear.

Then finally I hear Lindsay's name and I realize why Joanie has turned up on the doorstep right now.

Surprisingly, she's not bitching at me about 'how could you let me find out this way that I had a grandson' and all that shit. She looks fucking furious; that cold fury that used to totally paralyze me, far worse than Jack's rages. But as I should have fucking guessed, it's not me she's furious with, it's Lindsay.

I calm down enough to actually listen to her and find out that Linds, having gone the rounds of all the rest of the 'family' in an attempt to find someone who'd support her efforts to get her son back so she can use him as a bargaining tool in her battles with the She-wolf of the North, decided to go visit the She-wolf of Pittsburgh to see if she'd be prepared to help. Hell! Knowing our history better than most, Linds probably figured Joanie would be the first to throw up her hands in horror at the thought of her pervert son actually having an innocent child in his clutches.

But maybe Linds never has been all that good at reading people, because she's got Joanie completely wrong. If she'd gone there and wept on Joanie's shoulder about how she knew I was a good Dad, but she just missed Gus, Joanie might have bought into it. But Lindsay, apparently, didn't do that; she thought she could get Joanie's well-known prejudices to work for her, and went in there sounding off like some missionary Christian about how it couldn't be good for Gus to be brought up by someone like me.

Now, if Joanie's given the chance to be the first to throw stones at me, that's one thing. But family is family, and to have some outsider come and tell her that her son isn't fit to raise a child … Hell, no! Linds might have been able to manipulate Joanie into raising Hell with Child Services or some shit, if she'd been clever, but to come in all high and mighty and threatening to get outsiders involved in Joanie's family business … that approach was never going to work.

So while I listen carefully, I'm way ahead of the story. I know exactly how my dear old Mom would have reacted to some WASP outsider swanning in and telling her that her son wasn't a fit father. She'd have done exactly what her and her kind have always done, resorted to the Creed. Not the Creed you learn in Church, but the creed followed by all the wives of drunken working class men like Jack: "No matter how bad things get, you keep it behind closed doors, keep it in the family; and you never let anyone get away with thinking they've got a right to criticize a family member, no matter what shit they're pulling".

It's the creed that made a Hell of my childhood, but I guess this time it's fucking worked in my favor

Lindsay, in her WASP arrogance, couldn't have got it more wrong. I'm betting she was shown the door with an icy politeness that didn't do a lot to mask implacable hostility, quite probably spiced with a touch of 'how dare you?' thrown in, that coming from anyone else would have sounded suspiciously like Joanie defending her pervert son. That doesn't surprise me nearly as much as it would have fucking surprised Lindsay.

The only thing that does maybe surprise me is that Joanie's here telling me about it.

She's finishing up now, drawing herself up and saying in that pinched mouth way of hers, "I just thought you should know what the mother of your apparent son is saying about you."

Then she turns away.

I'm even more surprised that she'd not storming the loft, demanding to see this grandson she didn't know existed, demanding to know how he's being cared for, all that shit. But having said her piece, she just starts walking down the stairs.

I'm about to go back in and pull the door closed, making sure it's locked when I glance up and see her looking back.

If it were anyone but Joanie, I'd say that for one fucking moment she actually looked regretful; I know that all of a sudden she looks fucking old, and … I don't know … maybe defeated, or some shit like that. Then catching me looking, she turns away and straightening her back heads on down the stairs.

 

*****
 

Justin

He looks kind of … disconnected … when he comes back in, like something's happened that he can't process properly. For just one moment, I really wish Gus wasn't here so that I could go to Brian and try to get him to talk about whatever it is that's just happened, whatever that bitch of a mother of his has said about him. Or about Gus. Or about us. Or … well, what the fuck ever it is that she has sounded off about.

He stands there, lips pulled in, just looking at the floor, while I scrabble around under the couch to help Gus find his missing trainer and then help tie his laces. Then he looks up and our eyes meet.

"Lindsay," he mouths.

Fuck!

I can not believe that even Lindsay would do that; would go to Brian's fucking mother and get her involved in this. Lindsay knows, better than anyone except Michael and maybe Deb, how much Brian's parents fucked him up. She knows that's why Brian has never let his Mom find out about Gus. And now, just to get her own way, she goes to Mrs. Kinney to help her get Gus back?

That is so fucked!

But Mrs. Kinney came here. Does that mean that she refused to help Lindsay?

I tell Gus to go visit the toilet before we leave and he heads up to the bathroom.

While he's up there, Brian gives me a bullet point summary of what brought his mother here, and I find myself saying, without any agenda, just kind of thinking out loud, the first thing that had come into my mind.

"She came here," I say.

He frowns.

I shrug.

"I'm just saying. She could have gone to her priest, or Child Welfare, or even the police. But instead she came here."

Gus comes barreling out of the bathroom, slowing his impetuous steps to descend the steps carefully under Brian's watchful eyes, and then running to me.

"Are we going now, Dus?"

"As soon as we get our coats on," I tell him. It might be May, but the weather is definitely not all that warm yet, we'll need our coats in the park.

Brian seems kind of lost in thought, but he grabs his own coat and joins us in the elevator. He gives us each a quick kiss goodbye when we get to the street and heads for his car. We've arranged that he'll call once he's done at the house, and then come pick us up and we'll do the supermarket shopping to get all the basics we need for the house. After lunch we'll do the fun shopping.

Gus and I get to the park and he heads straight for the swings. I offer to push him, but he's so independent he insists he can manage by himself, so I sit on a bench nearby and pull out the small sketch book I keep in my coat pocket.

I'm working on capturing the absorbed determination on his face – so like his father's when he's working on a project – and vaguely thinking of painting something that conveys that resemblance, maybe even for one of the panels in Gus's room, so it's not till I hear Gus's delighted "Daddy!" that I realize Brian has joined us a little earlier than I expected.

And he's not alone.

 

*****
 

Brian

I have no fucking idea why I am introducing Joanie to her grandson. I thought I was driving to the house; but I guess my subconscious had other ideas, because I took a different turn and found myself trailing my fucking mother to the bus stop.

She barely glanced up when I pulled the car up in front of her, guess she wasn't expecting me to be there either.

Of course I had to get out of the car and open the fucking door for her. Heaven forbid that she just got in the fucking car.

"If you want to spend a few minutes with him in the park, that's fine," I told her. "But I'm not telling him you're his grandmother. You're just some woman his father knows."

I think I'd expected her to get right out of the car again, but after a moment she just nodded, her head still in the fucking air, of course.

"Very well," she said. "You can introduce me as Mrs. K."

So that's how I do introduce her when Gus slips off the swing and comes running over to us.

Of course, my sonnyboy is as smart as they come, so right away he says, "K is for 'Kinney'."

I fucking freeze for a moment, but of all people my fucking mother comes to my rescue.

"So it is," she nods. "… and also for 'kettle'. Now, what else starts with 'K'?"

That derails him from the whole 'Kinney' thing and he starts going through the things that he can think of that start with 'K'. He's like his fucking father, I guess. All too fond of showing off how smart he is, so that sometimes he outsmarts himself and misses the obvious.

"Kite!" he pipes up. "And 'kestrel'. That's a kind of bird. There's a pitcher in my book."

"Picture," I say automatically. Didn't the fucking munchers teach him anything about pronouncing words properly? My son is not going to sound like some ignorant moron.

"I know something else," he pipes up, just as my fucking partner finally joins us, probably wondering if I've totally lost my mind.

"Krispy Kreme!" the little manipulator finishes triumphantly, then turns his fucking eyes to his beloved Dus and does his best to look like he's a starving orphan and Dus is his only hope in the world of getting any food again ever.

"Mo…" I start, almost shooting myself in the foot. "Mrs. K.," I correct myself, "I don't know if you remember my partner, Justin?"

I'm amazed at how easily those words come out; and right away I see their effect on both of them.

The little twat, who had been looking all anxious and confused, suddenly seems a fucking foot taller and comes to stand right next to me. He smiles at her, and says, "Well, we've never actually been introduced, but we've run into each other a couple of times."

A couple of times? When the fuck has he ever 'run into' Joanie aside from the viagra afternoon? That's something I'll have to follow up later.

Meanwhile, my Mom is staring at him like she can hardly believe her eyes, but for once she keeps her tongue between her teeth and simply responds, "Yes, how do you do, Justin?"

Like this is a perfectly normal social situation for us all.

Fuck!

"Krispy Kreme, Dus," Gus says, anxious that the grown ups don't lose track of what's important here.

"Gus," I intervene, "you know it's not a good thing to eat too much sugar. So you can choose. You can have one Krispy Kreme now, or you can have an ice cream this afternoon. Which is it to be?"

He looks as if he's about to pout, but then he stops and thinks about it.

"If I wait till this arvernoon, then can I say what I want?"

A negotiator, just like his old man; that's fine with me.

"Sure," I tell him. "If you want to wait till this af-ter-noon" (pronouncing the work very clearly)" … you can choose then what kind of treat you want."

"Okay," he says.

Mom is staring at me like I've unexpectedly grown another fucking head, or something, while the little twat is smiling at me like I've just done something amazing instead of having to think on my feet to keep up with a five year old.

 

*****
 

Justin

I have no idea why Brian has shown up with his mother. Or why … well, no I guess I can understand why he's not introducing her to Gus as his grandmother. But I can tell by the look on her face that she's amazed at what a natural he is as a father.

So she should be. He's never had any decent role model of what a parent should be like; even Debbie, good-hearted as she might have been to offer him some kind of refuge, isn't my idea of an ideal parental-figure; she was too busy excusing everything Michael ever did wrong and blaming it all on Brian.

But Brian – he just gets it. I had kind of decent parents - well, at least until good old Craig decided he no longer had a son - but even so I'm learning a Hell of a lot just from watching and listening to Brian. Because he never talks down to Gus. He always treats him with respect. Like just now. He could have just said 'no' to the doughnut, and then bought him an ice cream this afternoon – which would have sent all kinds of mixed messages. But he didn't do that, he just reminded Gus that he's not allowed to have too much sugar, and then let him make the choice on what kind of treat he'd like and when.

So Gus isn't left feeling like he's being treated like a baby and denied a treat into the bargain; he's left feeling like he's being treated like a big boy who is allowed to make some choices for himself and encouraged to make good ones.

I kind of half expect Mrs. Kinney to say something about it, but she doesn't, she just stands and watches while Gus runs back to the swings, shouting over his shoulder.

"I can push myself on the swing, Daddy. See how high I can go."

In fact, he doesn't go all that high. He's too light and his legs are still too short to give him much power, but he does get the swing moving, and he's clearly proud of himself.

Mrs. Kinney just stands watching with this really strange expression – like pride and regret and longing and bitterness and something that might be love are kind of fighting for control of her face. Brian goes over to sit on the swing next to Gus, and shows him how to lean back and pull hard on the chains to use his weight more effectively to swing himself higher, and while she's watching them together, her expression changes. The pride and bitterness have melted away, and her face is filled with regret, her eyes are desperate and hungry and sad, and she looks so alone.

After a minute, I look away. I just can't look at her anymore.

Because suddenly I see how much she looks like Brian. That's exactly the look he had on his face when I walked away with Ethan at the Rage party; and I don't want to think about what it means that it's the look on his mother's face right now.

I just want to feel free to hate and mistrust her like I have ever since she shattered whatever hope was left in Brian's heart that one day she might really become his mother over the whole incident with his nephew's allegations of molestation. But I can't hate her, not while she looks like that. It totally undermines everything I want to feel about her.

I begin to understand, though, why Brian has brought her here. If he'd seen anything like that look in her eyes while they were talking at the loft, he wouldn't have ever been able to forget it. It would have haunted him, and if he'd let her walk away without meeting Gus he would always have wondered 'what if'.

So I guess I'm glad she's here. At least, I'm glad Brian doesn't have to wonder what might have happened. For once, he's taking a chance. Even with Gus involved, he's giving her some kind of chance. And that ... that says to me that he's feeling secure enough to do that. That he's feeling sure enough about how things are with us, to be able to take that kind of chance with her; which is so fucking amazing that I find myself smiling at her. She doesn't see it of course, she's got her eyes totally glued to them, to Brian and his son. Her grandson.

Gus kind of gets the hang of what Brian has been showing him, and Brian sees her watching and gets up and comes back to us. "I'll drive you home," he says.

She nods, her head held high and says, quietly and without any tone except polite farewell, "Yes, thank you. Goodbye, Justin. Please say 'goodbye' to Gus for me."

And then she turns and walks away.

Brian gives me a look and I move to him and pull him down for a quick kiss.

"I'll be a bit later than we planned," he says. "Can you …"

"Why don't I just take Gus home in a while," I suggest. "I can go online and order the supermarket stuff and get them to deliver it tomorrow to the house. It's not like we need to choose patterns for a bucket or anything. We could meet you for lunch at the diner."

He nods, grateful for an easy solution to that problem at least, and then takes a deep breath before following his mother to the car.
 

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