I was preoccupied with thoughts of my young parents being harassed by a sleazy photographer. My answer for Chase came out almost automatically.
“No. I mean, not really. We occasionally talk about it but not very much because she still gets really upset with it. She wasn’t there as long as I was, and we were kept in different rooms.”
Salem and I didn’t talk much about Sebastian. We tried here and there, but it was honestly something I’d rather not talk about. Including now.Speak up.
“Um, can we maybe talk about something else?”
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s not you. This is difficult for me to talk about.”
“It’s okay, Brandon. Can I ask you something else? It’s unrelated to that topic.” I nodded again. “Were you happy as a kid? Did she—” Chase’s voice trailed off, and he turned to look out the window briefly before returning his gaze to me. “Did she keep you safe?”
I thought back to being a little kid. I had everything under the sun. Everything except an emotionally available mother. Tons of friends, toys, electronics. Everything.
“I had everything, Chase. Grew up in a big house. Had all the toys a kid could dream of. Massive pool with lots of friends who came to play. I never went without. Mom was always busy running around for parties and commercials. The older I got, the more we argued.”
“I meant, did your mom keep you safe at photo shoots? Was she always there with you?”
“She went to just about all of them. I was always safe.”
Chase’s lips had formed a tight line and the corners of his mouth turned upward ever so slightly.
“Good. I’m glad to hear she provided for you and kept you safe.”
I nodded slowly and then glanced at the picture of Patrick on the cell phone. I was desperate to move this conversation to something more pleasant.
“So, Patrick’s adopted?”
“Yeah, he was in tenth grade when my parents took him in,” Chase said as he turned the phone sideways. He scrolled through pictures to proudly show me the family.
“Did his parents give him up or die or something?” I asked as pictures of happiness glided across the screen.
“They had no choice.” A picture of Patrick behind a birthday cake slowly moved off the screen. “His parents were horrible to him. He’d come over with Hollis after school or after karate, and sometimes he’d just fall asleep.” A picture of Hollis, Morgan, Patrick, and Chase came across the screen. It looked like they were at a TCF fight. “He was always hungry and nursing some sort of injury.” Picture after picture of the four of them filled the screen for a moment.
Then it hit me. Chase had all of these moments of happiness. Moments with a caring family. He had a lifetime of memories with them, and anytime he wanted to reflect, he had all of these great photos.
Mom and I never had a picture together. I never had a photo album to thumb through and smile at. She hated me.
“These are from Christmas this past year,” Chase said as he slowly swiped his finger across the screen. “This is Dad slicing the turkey. We got him one of those electric carving tools, but he always liked to use a regular knife.”
A picture of a beautifully set table slid into view. It looked like one of those holiday table settings you’d see in the windows of the expensive furniture stores or in the catalogues. Then I looked closer at the table, and sitting over each fancy dinner plate was a paper plate.
“Are those paper plates?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Chase laughed. “So Mom was always into using special plates for Christmas dinner and Thanksgiving dinner. When we were kids, we’d always do some practical joke to mess the table up. Not badly, but just enough for her to notice. One year we’d replaced the forks and spoons with plastic wrapped sporks from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Every year it’s something different. Last year we put paper plates over the regular plates and took a picture.”
Even though I was starting to feel like shit, I couldn’t help but laugh at some of their antics of teasing their mom—my grandma.
“Whenever you’re ready, Brandon, I’ll introduce them to you.”
“Do, um… Do you think they want to meet me?”
Chase smiled and nodded.
“They’re dying to meet you.”
It would be kind of cool to meet them.
