All the Drama

 

 

“BUT YOU said we can go make cookies!” Josie was trying to be patient, Henry Calder knew, but it had been a long day for him too. He swung his four-year old niece up into his arms, threw his gym bag over his other shoulder, and shut the door to his brand new hybrid with his knee.

“I know, Bunny,” Hank said, trying hard to keep his voice from ratcheting toward irritation as he wove around the cars in the parking lot. “But if your Uncle Hank doesn’t get his workout in, he gets cranky!” He made his voice low and growly, and since she was in his arms anyway, he blew a bubble through her puffy pink jacket, just to make her laugh. It worked, and he held her close and kissed her blonde head. He’d done his best at a braid today, and he thought he was getting better.

“I promise, Bunny. If you can let Uncle Hank get in a little bitty workout, we’ll go home, and make some cookies and we can eat some mac ’n’ cheese while they’re baking. How’s that?”

Josie nodded adamantly. “Good. ’Cause Mommy’s not going to come back unless we make Christmas perfect.”

Hank smiled and nodded, and tried not to clutch his stomach and bury his face in her shoulder and cry. The odds of his sister coming home for Christmas—or any day, for that matter—weren’t great.

“We’re doing okay, aren’t we?” he asked as he wrestled the gym bag and Josie and the door, coming in from the Sacramento cold into Cal-Fit, his happy place. “We managed Halloween and Thanksgiving okay, right?”

Josie wrinkled her nose. “That princess dress was too big!” she told him, and he nodded. It was true, the costume would fit her again next year. Well, sue him. His sister had left her daughter with him the week before Halloween. He’d managed a princess dress, candy for the door, and a friend to give the candy out while Hank took his niece trick-or-treating throughout his neighborhood. The fact that the only dress he could find at the Halloween store had been two sizes too big was extraneous. He’d come through.

“I know it was,” he said, taking it on the chin. “Next year we’ll do better.”

“Next year Mommy will take me.”

Hank held out his pass for the nice lady at Cal-Fit, who scanned his card and smiled warmly at Josie. Cindy had curly blonde-gray hair pulled back in a pony-tail and faded blue eyes. Hank felt bad—she was the closest thing to a woman in Josie’s life at the moment, and Josie lit up whenever she saw her.

“Hey Josie,” Cindy said, her voice sweet and grandmotherly. “You gonna go visit Justin today?”

“I like Justin,” Josie proclaimed, and Hank nodded. Of course she did. The guy drove Hank banana shit, but no, Josie liked Justin.

“That’s good, Bunny,” he said, and took the name tags from Cindy before giving her an absent smile and turning down the hallway to the daycare area.

“Do you like Justin?” she asked, and he smiled. For her, he’d love Justin, marry him, take the guy into his house and give him foot rubs.

“Yeah, of course I do!”

He hated that guy.

Of all the flame-outs Hank had ever seen, in college and after, Justin was by far the most dramatic, over-the-top boy-princess in the entire northern half of the state. Oh God. Even as they got near the playroom enclosure, Hank could hear him squeal. And of course, the kids loved him.

“Oh my God! Do you guys think… did I hear… is Santa going to be coming to Cal-Fit? Did you know that? Santa is coming to Cal-Fit! Are you all going to be here?”

“Yes!” The cheer was deafening, and Hank actually looked at the door before he opened it and saw that there was going to be an event on Saturday. Oh wonderful. Santa.

“Santa?” Josie said, her voice all excited, and Hank started doing his mental schedule all over again.

“Of course,” he said. “Santa.” Oh God. Please God. Just let him get to the treadmill. Twenty minutes on the treadmill so he could clear his head. Twenty minutes on the free weights, and a five-minute shower, and he could do this. Just please please please please please let him have his happy time before he figured out how to fit Santa into redoing Josie’s room and dealing with the child welfare services who were going to visit on Monday and who insisted that he show that she would have her own space and—

“Justin!” Josie squealed as he opened the door, and Hank looked up to see the cherry on his headache smiling so wide, Hank was surprised the top of his head didn’t fall off.

Justin was young—in his second, maybe third year of college, with widely spaced blue eyes, surrounded by a fringe of dark lashes. He had one of those Irish fair complexions, the kind that showed color easily: straight black hair, a heart shaped face, and a nose that tip-tilted on the end. The first time Hank had ever seen him, Hank had thought he was one of the prettiest young men on the planet Earth, ever. And then Justin had opened his mouth.

“Josie!” Justin trilled, opening his arms and doing a little dance. Josie squealed, trying to get to Justin as he held court at the end of the coloring table. He’d apparently been inspiring all of the young artists to put glue and green sparkles on their Christmas tree masterpieces.

“Justin!” Josie squealed, throwing herself at him after wiggling out of Hank’s arms and almost getting her tiny bunny butt dumped onto the floor of the gym’s daycare room.

“Omigah, Bunny, you will never guess what I just told everybody!”

“Santa!” Josie squeaked. “You said it was going to be Santa! Uncle Hank said we could come, isn’t that right Uncle Hank?”

Oh God. Commitment time. Hank wondered desperately who he could call to be at his house while the movers delivered Josie’s little white twin bed, so she wouldn’t be lost in the big queen-size that took over what used to be his guest bedroom. But Justin was pouting at him like he was being a big meanie and Josie was glaring at him like he was depriving her of this one and only childhood experience because he was determined to suck at this whole parenting gig, and, oh, hells, even Hank remembered that Santa was important.

“I’ll try, Bunny,” he said quietly. “Is that good enough?”

“Mommy would make sure I got to see Santa,” she said spitefully, and Hank nodded. Yup, that was the truth. Amanda would have taken Josie to see Santa for the photo op. Amanda would have shown a picture of Josie sitting on Santa’s lap while wearing a red velveteen dress she hadn’t been able to afford, and then shown all of her friends just to listen to them coo, and then she would have told Josie to go away, couldn’t Josie see that Mommy was talking to her friends? And then she would have dropped Josie at a friend’s house while she, Amanda, went out to party because why was a girl her age at home with a child anyway? Didn’t she deserve to party? Hadn’t she earned that right? She’d had the kid’s picture taken with Santa, after all.

“Yeah, Bunny,” Hank said, needing the freedom of the treadmill like he needed nothing else in the world. “Your mommy would have made sure you got to see Santa.”

He wasn’t sure what was in his voice when he said it, but Justin flinched back, and Josie stuck her tongue out at Hank, and Hank signed his name on the roster. “I’m going to have my earbuds in,” he muttered, because this was something they had to know. “If you need me, you need to come get me.”

And with that he fled the gym childcare, leaving Justin, who was probably going to cry about what a big meanie Hank was to tell Josie that he was a big loser and that any uncle who couldn’t sprinkle glitter on Christmas trees was obviously not going to be a good bet as a parent.

Yeah, well, until the better mommies and uncles lined up to take her, Hank was all she got.

 

 

HE CHANGED quickly and queued some Linkin Park up on his iPod, putting it in the handy little case that wrapped around his bicep. He’d always been an active kid, and since becoming an adult he’d learned when you worked your body a lot, it tended to protest when that sort of activity stopped. He’d also always liked this gym—it was designed specifically for families—and he liked it even more now that he had a family to bring here.

But at the moment, with Linkin Park queued up, he wasn’t thinking about the daycare, or the nice supportive vibe or the kindness of the staff. He was thinking about nothing more than warming up and pushing his body to the point where all the stiffness got worked out, and then cooling down responsibly—and getting it all done before daycare closed. He didn’t want to impose.

Oh, gods! It felt so good! There was no worrying about keeping custody of Josie, no worrying if Amanda was going to come back and completely disrupt Josie’s life, no worrying if his job was too many hours or if he was doing enough as a parent, no stressing about Christmas and getting all the little details down. There was no disappointment in his sister or irritation at their mother or loneliness at doing all of this alone or—

The hand tapping his shoulder startled him so much he missed a step, which sucked because he was going fast enough for the treadmill to throw him hard against the console and slam his shoulder with enough force to bruise. The rebound threw him backward and he was seizing hold of the handrails so he could stabilize and press the stop button when a long-fingered hand darted in front of him and pushed the stop button for him. Hank grabbed hold of the handrails and steadied himself, panting and furious, and turned around ready to unload his temper and his pain and found himself face to face with the one person he hadn’t been running from.

“Justin?” he asked, his temper skating the fine edge, and Justin grimaced.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Calder—I really am. But Josie has to go potty, and company policy says that her guardian has to take her. We’re not allowed to.”

Oh. “Oh.” God, he felt dumb. “Of course.”

Suddenly Justin—who had shown some clear-headedness turning off the treadmill—started shaking his hands and trilling, and Henry was not in the mood.

“Ohmigah omigah omigah! Mr. Calder—you’re bleeding!”

Hank looked down at his aching arm and saw that Justin was right. “Fuck,” he said succinctly. “Fuck. Just… hell. Okay. Let me get Josie to the bathroom. I’ll get some Band-Aids or—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Justin assured him, flapping his wrist airily. Hank had picked the treadmill closest to the wall, and Justin grabbed a disinfectant bottle, paper towel, and poly gloves from the little alcove made just for that purpose. As he spoke, he put on the gloves and wiped the console that had taken a chunk of Hank’s skin. “I’ve got the supplies, you just get your little princess to the potty before we have lots of things to clean up, okay?”

Hank grunted, sort of impressed by Justin’s competence and the triceps flexing as he worked, and Justin turned to him, furrowing his brow. “Okay?”

Deep breath. The kid was doing his job. It wasn’t his fault Hank hadn’t been laid in a year and a half. “Okay,” Hank said mildly. “Proceed.”

Justin smiled, like he’d won something, and Hank followed him down past the weight machines to the daycare room again. There was a tiny little bathroom adjoining the playroom, and Hank walked Josie over to it as fast as he could.

“Wait outside!” Josie ordered, and Hank nodded.

“Right.”

He stood outside and listened to her tinkle, and Justin approached him. His hands were already encased in the poly gloves, and he had a first aid kit open on the tiny kid-size table.

“This really isn’t nece—”

“Oh, of course it is,” Justin said, a playful inflection in his voice. “Besides! We’re trained to do this and everything. I’ve been dying for someone to bleed on my watch, just so I could doctor them up and prove I can! How else am I going to get my merit badge?”

Hank allowed a brief laugh to escape. “I have no idea,” he said, and then, calling behind him into the bathroom, “Josie, angel, how you doing in there?”

“I have to go number two!” she called back, and Hank looked at the clock and sighed. So much for his workout or his cool down or working out any of the anxiety that had built up in his muscles over the—

“Ouch!” he cried, pulled out of that death spiral of frustration by the sudden sting at his arm.

“Sorry!” Justin apologized brightly. He was dabbing at the cut on Hank’s arm with a cotton ball and some hydrogen peroxide, a look of concentration on his face.

Hank grunted. He didn’t want to be a baby.

“So,” Justin said, setting the cotton ball down on the absurdly small table next to them, alongside the rest of the first aid kit, “why don’t you want to take her to see Santa?” He picked up another cotton ball then and smeared some antibiotic ointment on it, and his attention on those things were what let Hank answer.

“I’m dying for her to see Santa,” he said, more sincerely than he thought possible. “But the social worker is coming on Monday to give me full custody, and her bed is coming on Saturday. I want it to look like her room, so it’s perfect.” Justin smeared the ointment delicately on his arm, and Hank sighed. “She needs permanent. And that’s—”

“Ohmigah! That’s way more important than Santa!” Justin said, and Hank turned to him, surprised.

“I know but—”

“I can totally see why you’d want to do that more! Why can’t you just tell her that? She’s a smart girl, I’m sure she’d understand.”

“Uncle Hank!” Josie called imperiously. “Are you still there?”

“Right here, Bunny!”

“Mommy likes to sing when I’m in the potty so I don’t get scared.”

Hank met gazes with Justin, who grimaced a bit, and then Hank launched into something Hank and Amanda’s mother had played almost constantly when they’d been kids.

“I’m on top of the world looking down on creation—” And then Josie’s voice interrupted in command.

“Christmas music, Uncle Hank!”

Hank closed his eyes. “Deck the halls with boughs of holly—”

“Tra la la la la,” Justin chimed in, smiling encouragingly. Hank smiled back, grateful for the moral support, and they continued.

“La la, la la.”

Justin bandaged his arm as they kept singing. They made it through the entire song by the time she was ready to go—after needing some help with the cleanup, of course. Hank figured that there was nothing more guaranteed to let you know where you stood in the order of the world than a four year old bending over the potty waiting for you to wipe her behind.

When he was done, he left her in the gym childcare office for a moment to run and get his stuff from his locker. It was close to seven o’clock, and the locker room was completely empty, which was a good thing. Hank was in the process of pulling a spare pair of sweats over his workout shorts when Justin stuck his head in.

“Who’s with Josie?” Hank asked. When he’d left, Justin had been the only adult in the room and—

“Don’t panic, cowboy!” Justin said, rolling his eyes and waving his hand. “Jackie’s in there—you know, my supervisor? I had something to ask you!” His wrist never stiffened up, did it? But Hank remembered those long, artistic hands working steadily on the cut on his arm and figured that Justin was good at pulling in the swish when he needed to.

“I’m sorry,” Hank muttered, struggling with getting his pants over his shoe. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t worry about it.” Justin rolled his eyes again. “I get that you don’t like me, but I’ve got a plan.”

“For what?” Hank asked, giving up on the shoe. He sat down, toed the shoe off and yanked it through the elastic opening of the sweats while Justin finished speaking.

“If you like,” Justin said helpfully, “I can come get Josie on Saturday and bring her in with me. I just cleared it with Jackie and…”

Hank took a deep breath, not wanting to be indebted to him anymore, especially because that thing, that drama thing, was still there, grating against Hank’s teeth. Justin must have seen his refusal because he just kept talking faster like that was going to get him his way.

“…and don’t say no because you’re worried about her, because I’m totally certified in everything, and I’m getting a liberal studies degree and units in child development so I can do CPR and teach her the alphabet and—”

It was time to inject some sanity.

“Why?” Hank asked bluntly. “It’s nice of you. It really is, but why?”

Justin shrugged and smiled, looking embarrassed and eager and everything. “Well, because I like kids, Silly! If I didn’t like kids, I’d be studying something that made me more money, like banking, right?”

“I like kids!” Hank heard his voice pitch up embarrassingly. God. He should turn in his employee card as Loan Officer at Wells Fargo for that voice crack.

“I know, I know,” Justin placated, holding his hands out. “But, you know, you have to be the responsible parent, and I get that and it’s really great! But I can be the fun Uncle Justin, and she can see Santa! Please?”

Hank let out a sigh. He was the fun Uncle Justin right now. At the moment, he was Hank’s best ally.

“Yeah,” Hank told him, getting his clothes situated. He stood up so he could get to the inside of his gym bag. “Here. I’ll get you my address—”

“Oh, I can get that from the computer or find it on my phone…”

Hank felt his eyes bulge out, and Justin backtracked at warp speed.

“…and that would be totally illegal so of course I wouldn’t do that, so go ahead and write that down for me, ’kay?”

“Thank you,” Hank said belatedly as he was writing down his info. Justin had his phone out and was punching the numbers into it briskly, and Hank envied him. He was pretty sure he didn’t have many friends at the moment because of his antiquated texting skills, and he kept losing people’s numbers. “She… we really appreciate this.”

Justin grinned so widely his eyes almost squinched shut. “I’m happy to help.”

There was a moment, then, an awkward one, and Hank felt compelled to be truthful.

“I don’t ‘don’t like you’,” he said, putting his pea coat on over his workout clothes. His skin was still clammy from the sweat he’d built up and not been allowed to wash off.

Justin had moved closer to get his address, and when Hank turned around from his locker, he saw that Justin was right in front of him, looking up at Hank’s six-foot-three-inch height from his own much shorter build. His eyes were open and blue, and Hank could see the places in his hair where his gel was starting to break down. Justin had apparently put in a long day too.

“Sure you do,” Justin said. “You think I’m a big ol’ flaming ’mo, and you’re way too butch to have anything to do with me, and you don’t think I should be hanging out with your niece and generally you wish my entire people would fall off the face of the earth.” He did the rolling eyes, twitching hips, and limp-wristed thing all in conjunction, and, Hank had to admit, it was one hell of a show.

He hated to put a stop to it.

“I’m gay, moron.” He swung his duffel bag over his shoulder and paused for a moment to admire Justin’s sweet little heart shaped face, open jaw, bulging eyes and all. God, he was pretty. It was a shame about that whole other problem.

“Wait a minute!” Justin said, reaching up to grab Hank’s arm and stop him. He must have remembered at the last moment that Hank had actually hurt himself, because his grip on Hank’s shoulder was surprisingly gentle.

Hank turned around with a long-suffering sigh.

“What?” he asked. The one thing that had been getting him through this day had been his workout. That had been cut short, and he apparently had a commitment with this… person in his future, and he was hanging onto his patience with a very, very fine thread.

Still, he couldn’t help but hear the naked hurt in Justin’s voice when he spoke next, and yeah. He felt like shit.

“But, if you don’t have a problem with gay people, why do you always seem like…” Justin was waving his hands and trying to find the right words, and Hank realized he’d have to put the guy out of his misery. Justin was still wearing the company uniform, and he really had been nothing but professional.

“Look, I’m sorry if I’ve been a complete dick,” he said, and looking at Justin’s helplessness and his kindness, he realized he meant it, too. “I am. It’s not the gay, Justin—it’s the drama. I mean, people like you are fun to be around, right up until they let you down. I totally appreciate the help with Josie, and I’m going to take you up on it, because, I’ll admit it, I’m desperate, but….” His head was starting to ache, and he hoped the rolls of cookie dough he had in the refrigerator had enough sugar to counteract that little problem. Maybe the coffee drinks he had in the fridge would help too.

“But what?” Justin asked, curiosity apparently warring with the hurt. He was worrying his lower lip, and it was becoming sort of succulent and red, and Hank realized he’d wandered off in the middle of his sentence.

“But what? Oh.” He flushed. “I guess I just mean, I can’t count on you, that’s all. Believe me. I’ve lived through drama. At the end of the day, it just gets you tired.”

Justin just looked at him, his eyes dark with hurt, his mouth opening and closing, and Hank felt that curious sense of needing to make him feel better.

“It’s like turkeys,” he said, out of the blue, and Justin blinked.

“Turkeys?”

“Yeah! Turkeys in the snow.” Hank sighed and set his gym bag down. “See, turkeys are like the drama queens of the animal world. They freak out at any little thing, but they ignore all the really important things. So, you put a bunch of turkeys in a pen, and let a fox in there, and they look at him and think, ‘Hey! It’s a fox! So the hell what?’ Which is bad because the fox is eating the turkeys, right? But these same turkeys see a snowflake, and they’re like, ‘Omigodomigodomigod’, and they run around the pen just freaking out, until they trample the other turkeys in the pen, and they hurt them too.”

Justin was starting to giggle, and Hank closed his eyes, realizing that he’d sort of flapped his arms and made “Omigodomigodomigod” sound a lot like “gobble gobble gobble.”

“Oh no,” Hank said, sighing and hating himself a lot.

“Oh yes!” Justin crowed.

“No, you didn’t get the point—”

“Oh, I totally did!” Justin was laughing and Hank grabbed his workout bag again and slung it over his shoulder.

“No, no, no, no—” He said, trying to get out of the locker room before he had to hear Justin say it.

“Omigah, Mr. Calder! You sounded totally gay!”

Hank sighed and just kept right on walking. “Yeah,” he muttered, “I totally know.” This sent Justin into another paroxysm of laughter, which Hank heard rattling around in his head for the rest of the interminable night.

 

 

HOME. FINALLY. Mac and cheese, rolling out the refrigerated cookie dough and cutting shapes, icing them, quick bath, bedtime a half an hour too late.

Josie was happy rolling out the cookies, but unhappy with the icing. It wasn’t perfect, wasn’t pretty, wasn’t shiny. Hank had bought the sprinkle things, and that helped, but generally, there was whininess and dissatisfaction about the entire affair.

“You don’t know anything!” she shouted at him when he told her that he thought her Christmas tree was the prettiest. “It’s ugly! Mom says the best Christmas trees have pink!”

Hank swallowed back a tightness in his throat that felt embarrassingly like tears. He remembered Amanda saying that exact thing when she was seven or eight. How wonderful that she’d taught it to her four-year-old daughter, and then gone off and left that kid in the hands of Hank, who had liked Christmas trees best when they were in the house a week before Christmas and not the night before.

“Yeah, I get it,” he said, his throat raw. “Your mommy knows best. You know, Josie, all this great stuff your mom knows might carry a little more weight if she was here.”

Josie had started to cry then, helplessly, and Hank picked her up and carried her to the bathroom, and held her—crying—while he ran water and bubbles in the tub. He undressed her—still crying—and set her in the water, soaping her hair and rinsing her off, and the whole time, her mouth was open as a low, pulsing wail was striated out, and Hank couldn’t think of a damned thing to make it go away.

She finally stopped and was down to sniffles and deep, shuddery breaths when he had her dried off and in her nightgown and in her bed.

“I hate this bed,” she told him. “It’s too big.”

“I hate it too,” he told her, because it was a reminder of all the ways in which he was ill-equipped for fatherhood at this particular moment in his life. It was meant to be a guest bedroom/den, so he had the bed and bookshelves and a desk and a laptop—all of the things a little girl didn’t want in her room. The bookshelves had big, thick, boring books on finance, and the walls were a stark white. There had been a beautiful, boldly colored print of two naked male torsos—no butt-crack, no peen, but very obviously non-hetero. Hank had taken it down before Josie even entered the room. The blank wall just sort of stared at them now, and Hank wiped his cheek with the back of his hand without thinking, and remembered his plan for Saturday.

Saturday, they would make this room better. They would. And now, thanks to the kindness of one very swishy, sweet-faced twink, that would be a whole lot easier.

“Are you crying, Uncle Hank?”

Hank shook his head no, because crying meant drama, and he absolutely, positively refused to do fucking drama. Not right now.

“No, Bunny. I’m just ready for a shower right now.” One of the first things he’d gone and bought her was one of those squishy fleece blankets, the kind that were impossibly plush and soft. This one had a pink rabbit on it, realistically done, in spite of the color, with the ears at helicopter position. It sat on top of the white comforter on Josie’s bed—yet another thing Hank was planning to change in two days.

“Sleep tight, angel,” he said, and bent to give her a kiss on the cheek. She turned unexpectedly and kissed him on the lips instead, and brought her tiny hand up to his own wet cheek.

“I’m sorry I made you cry,” she said in a small voice, and he shut his eyes really tight.

“Grownups get tired,” he told her, weary from his knees to his navel and all points north, south, and in between. “I…” He tried to keep his voice steady. “I was really looking forward to that workout, you know?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice even smaller, and he hugged her tight.

“It’s okay. We’ll try for a better day tomorrow.”

“Can we make more cookies?”

Sure, since I think I may eat half of them tonight. “Yeah. That’s a plan.”

“Are you going to work out tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. I can see Justin. He’s nice.”

Hank had heard this a dozen times before, but this was the first time his entire heart was in it when he said, “Yeah. Yeah, he really is. We’ll see him tomorrow. Good night.”

He escaped then, practically running to the shower. He turned the water on, hot and full, and left his clothes in a puddle as he stripped and jumped in. He hadn’t even soaped his hair before the day caught up with him, and the frustration and the frantic, palm-sweating, heart-pounding fear that somehow he was doing it wrong.

His body was jerking, his face contorted, his breath coming in gasps before his brain fully caught up to the fact that he was blubbering like a little kid, but once his brain caught up? Game over. He was lost, brain disengaged, while the stress and the panic and the disappointment of the past few months caught up with him, and he cried in the shower like he hadn’t done since his break-up with his first boyfriend.