Still Standing

Chapter 1: Boyfriends, Bus Stops, and Babies

“This isn’t about me, Bryson. This is about you. And the problem with you, to be quite frank, is that you’re a train wreck when it comes to the way you deal with people. You need to be a little more…”

Bryson watched Richard—Ricky to his friends, d**k or Dicky to Bryson, at least for the last several moments—turn to look directly into Bryson’s face as if the direct stare might give his speech more impact. But instead of letting the d**k continue the obviously rehearsed rant, Bryson lifted his hand and flicked his fingertips against the intercom on the side table. Every room in his mother’s house still had one, even though Bryson hadn’t lived there for over a year now. “Dicky, you champ, you rascal, you cad, you know you’re one word away from getting tossed into the street like so much trash, right?”

Richard put one hand on his hip. “Are you making fun of my accent now?”

“Fairly so,” Bryson agreed, pouring on the extremely bad English inflection he’d started with. “Tally ho, spot of tea, spoonful of sugar, and what have you.” He dropped the accent when Richard clicked his tongue, and he gave Richard a long, disinterested stare. “I mean, train wreck, Ricky? Just because you say something with an accent doesn’t make it classy.”

“Yes. Train wreck.” Richard waved at the-gods-could-only-know-what and sat down on the Victorian settee in Bryson’s mother’s parlour, aka sitting room, aka her cozy nook. This was the room of quietly happy moments. It was a timeout spot for people who wanted to chill and relax, but in a slightly more refined environment than a game room or family room. It wasn’t a place for putting on airs, though. Richard hadn’t seemed to pick up the vibe of the place, regardless of the months he’d spent time in it. At that moment, if Richard had stretched out like Cleopatra with one hand on his forehead, calling for servants to come fan him, Bryson wouldn’t have been surprised at all.

“‘Appreciative,’ by the way. That’s the word I was looking for before you cut me off so rudely. You need to be a little more appreciative. I can’t find it in me to understand why you don’t give me a little more credit for all that I do for you.”

Bryson widened his eyes. That was a new one. He hadn’t been expecting that at all. “I’m sorry. Did you just say the things you do for me?”

Richard casually shrugged. “It’s not easy, you know. I try to carry off a certain amount of normality with respect to your—” he wiggled his fingers as if he were going to pick a word out of the air once he caught it,”—issues. I’m not saying that I’ve settled in order to—”

Bryson was already narrowing his eyes and shaking his head before he cut Richard off. “What exactly are you saying, then?”

Richard waved his hand, dismissing the question. “Look, we’re getting carried away here. This is supposed to be a civil conversation—”

“Get the f**k out, Dicky.”

Most people wouldn’t notice the oh-so-cautious, oh-so-perfectly-put-together Englishman getting riled up, but Bryson wasn’t most people. Bryson had been watching Richard’s expressions for months now—what he looked like mid-orgasm with his stupid mouth wide open and his eyes screwed shut so tight they all but disappeared into his face. What he looked like when he was pleased, with the smug, self-satisfied smile barely contained behind a slightly pursed puss. Yes, those spots of colour heating up his cheeks would become an entire flush, given time. The thinning of his paling lips would press those otherwise-plump kissers into a Muppet mouth if they got the chance. Richard was slowly and surely getting, at the very least annoyed as all f**k, and at the very worst pissed right off. Bryson held back an angry smirk. Jolly good, then.

“Look.” Richard’s voice became as cold as his gaze. “I get that you’ve been coddled a bit. And rightly so, to some extent. The ‘little baby in a basket’ story is an intense one and people have let you feed off it for a while now—”

“Last chance to get out of here without making a fool of yourself, Dick.” Bryson shifted in his seat and prepared himself to stand. He hadn’t been doing a lot of moving and he had no doubt it was one of the reasons that Richard had chosen this moment to pounce. Ricky had a knack for kicking someone when they were down, and Bryson had known before getting out of bed that morning that it was going to be a rough day. There was always pain, but low-level pain could be dealt with using one of the various Jedi mind-tricks the pain management team had taught him. Today, as he’d understood when he rolled over in bed, was one of those low-level days…unless he moved. When he moved, the pain became a solid six, maybe even an eight, existing directly in the center of his hip, right side, one of those godawful deep-in-there-and-getting-deeper kind of pains that had to be the reason people believed other folks stuck pins in voodoo dolls. And this particular pin had been set on fire before it had been used. If he sat, and stayed sitting, things were fine. If he stood, and stayed standing, all would be cool. However, getting up or down shot shrieks of agony through him that could very well have been his nerve endings screaming war cries as they revolted against his sanity.

Still, pain or no pain, one had to do what one had to do in order to get one’s self out of the face of one’s newly decided enemies.

He set his jaw and stood, fighting against the shock he knew was coming when he put weight on his right side. He locked his knee to try and stop the hitch of his leg, but that made everything worse and he almost forced himself into a stumble. So much for a dignified exit.

“There now, where are you going? Let me help—”

Bryson lifted his hand without turning back to look at Richard. “I’m fine. Get out. We’re done.”

“Bry, come on,” Richard said, his voice suddenly soft and charming.

Bryson heard him rise and then, completely ignoring Bryson’s demand, he was wrapping his arm around Bryson’s waist. “There’s no need to get upset. I’m just saying that it’s not unreasonable that I might want to spend time with some people who are capable of doing the things that you aren’t.”

Pushing away from Richard with enough force to gain any distance was worse for his hip than standing, and he had to take a minute, resting as still as he could while trying not to put any weight on the hurting side of his body. He should have brought his cane, but should-haves and would-haves didn’t change the past. Besides, he hated the stupid thing. The only person who could look cool with a cane was someone who didn’t need it.

He took one second to imagine himself collecting all the pain in his body and rolling it into a ball. Not only today’s pain, either, but all the pain. Then he transferred that spitting, roiling, burning ball directly into his chest. He looked up at Richard with what he hoped was all the spiteful fury of Satan and offered an appropriate smile. “Oh, Dicky. I don’t mind you spending time with the boys on the boats. Or the tennis courts. Or the rugby field. I mind you f*****g them.”

At that moment, he would have given almost anything to be able to glide smoothly across the room, but that wasn’t how life was. He hobbled to the window, counting the steps in his mind like a child—just three more, two more, one—but kept the acid in his voice as he did it. “I mind you talking about me to them like you’re doing the world a favour for giving me someone to hold on to. I mind you feeling like I owe you things.” He pointed over his shoulder, hopefully in Richard’s direction. “That watch. The Marmont wallet. That ridiculous belt.”

Richard threw up his hands. “It’s not my fault you like to buy me things!”

“Uh, no. I didn’t even know that I bought you that stupid wallet until I got my credit card statement. I mean, seven hundred dollars? For a wallet? And you don’t even ask me first? Who does that, Dicky?”

Richard made a sound that was something between a breath of nervousness and a disdained gasp, and Bryson held up a hand to stop him from making more. “Don’t. I get it. It’s the least I can do, right? Poor you, giving up so much to look after the little cripple boy—”

“Your words, not mine!”

“But that’s what you said, isn’t it?” Bryson peered out the living room window, more to hide his expression than to see what was happening on the perfectly landscaped street on which his parents’ house sat. “You really ought to be more careful who’s around when you start your bragging and your trash talk, Dicky boy. Did you think Amaya wasn’t going to tell me that you said something like that?”

“What are you talking ab—”

“It’s over, d**k. No more coercing expensive presents. No more tagging along on the fancy family vacations. Sucks to be you, old boy, but that’s what happens when you start telling people that I better damn well respect what you do for me. And that I should keep my mouth shut if once in a while you want to bang someone who can actually move in bed. Mm hmm. She told me that, too. But the one that really got me was when you said that I should count my lucky stars anyone is even willing to look at me—”

“I did not say th—”

“You f*****g did!”

“So, you take her word over mine, then?”

The wounded pride in Richard’s voice almost made Bryson laugh. Or it would have, if he hadn’t been trying to swallow the emotion that was doing its best to choke him. It’s not like he hadn’t known Richard was, appropriately, a d**k. Bryson had known it the first time he’d set eyes on the man. Unfortunately, he’d also been super cute, pleasingly charming, and he really was blessedly skilled with his c**k. Worse, even though Bryson wouldn’t admit it out loud, he probably should be grateful Richard would look at him naked. Let alone be willing to stick his c**k in Bryson. Bryson’s body wasn’t exactly pretty to look at.

A half a dozen of his friends and both his parents immediately began to shout at him from inside his own head, berating him for daring to think such a thing. Easy for them to say, though. They could make themselves look however they wanted to. Their lower bodies didn’t stop functioning for days after an attempted workout. Sure, his chest and his arms were in decent shape, but his midsection would never get beyond okay. And the rest of him would never even get that far. For him, it was never leg day. He knew how he looked, like someone had taken two vastly different dolls and welded them together at the waist. He was the Toy Story mutant in real life—on the top, a normal Ken doll albeit with a deep scowl and a tendency to wear his hair too long, and on the bottom, the spindly, awkwardly bent legs and feet of a spider. His friends and family would never know what it felt like to get naked in front of someone else while looking like that. They couldn’t.

“Yeah, I do take her word over yours,” Bryson finally said, responding to a comment left open for too long. “You see, she, unlike yourself, has no reason to lie.”

“You’ll regret this.” The razor-sharp, ice-cold tone was back in Richard’s voice.

“Probably no more than I regret wasting the past four months with somebody who was using me for my parents’ money. Somebody who could barely stand to look at me. Is that why you always closed your eyes, Dicky?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. You don’t get to play the ‘broken baby on the doorstep’ card forever, Bry.”

Bryson snorted a laugh. He turned, fixing a calm, relaxed expression on his face. “It wasn’t a doorstep. It was the bus stop. Get your story straight if you’re going to throw it in my face.”

The flush now completely covered Richard’s whole face. His lips were so thin, they were gone. His eyes looked as dark and as sharp as chunks of black ice. “You know? I hate to be the one to point this out, Brybaby, but guys like me don’t come around much. Not for guys like you.”

Bryson smiled. “Thank. f*****g. God.”

Richard clenched both fists, and adrenaline spiked through Bryson’s blood. His heartbeat skipped when Richard stepped forward. None of it was fear, though. If anything, he was waiting for Richard to strike. What an albatross that would be around the man’s pretentious, perfectly muscled neck, the time he got so mad he hit his disabled ex.

Bryson sucked in a breath that was more laugh than anything else. “Go on. I dare you. Not only will I relish every single embellishment I tell of this little event, Dicky, but I will end this thing by quite literally having you dragged through the front door by Gus. You and I both know he’s only a tap on that intercom away.” Gus had been his parent’s houseman for a long time, so it wouldn’t be the first time Gus had muscled something in or out of the house for them. It would, however, be the first time that thing was one of Bryson’s former boyfriends. “Come on. Please? I’m kind of looking forward to the drama.”

Smiling, probably looking like the cat that caught the canary, Bryson leaned against the window, not quite confident he could get himself all the way down on the seat without giving Richard something to mock. He didn’t have to stay there long, though. Richard spun on his heel and stormed out of the living room.

Bryson considered buzzing Gus to make sure Richard had actually left, but the squealing tires out front of the house made it obvious.

With a grunt of effort, he sat on the window seat and waited for the pain to subside. He watched the empty street, as if Richard’s departing tires had left fire trails and it was his duty to make sure they burned themselves out. Then, when both the street and his hip were calm, he flicked his gaze down to the posh little bus stop shelter. They weren’t all that clean or sparkly. In truth, most fared far worse. Like many larger cities in the southern half of Canada, the city of St. Catharines had operated public transportation for its constituents since around the turn of the twentieth century. In the final years of the 1800s, it was nothing more than horse drawn carriages and electric rail, but by the 1930s, bus transportation was running throughout downtown. The shelters of today’s world, with their weather-defying roofs and walls and their partitioned, easily wiped benches, were recent, though. Back in the nineties, even the nicest bus stops were nothing more than wood benches on a concrete pad with a sign.

It was on one of those benches, at one of those bus stops, on Monday, November 19th in 1990, where Bryson’s story started. At least, the part of his story that he knew, anyway. And the part that Bryson knew, he knew very, very well as he’d spent most of the entire eighteenth year of life researching it and interviewing everyone who would talk to him.

It began while the sun was still low enough in the sky that the man who was brought in for questioning by the city police knew it was morning-ish but also close to noon-ish. Shaggy Phil (who couldn’t remember what his full name used to be and who had no ID on him at the time) saw a dark-coloured car pull up to the bus stop on the corner of Glenridge and Westchester. Unfortunately, the concept of a make, model, or license plate number was also lost to poor Shaggy, who, according to the officer who wrote up Shaggy’s interview, would have been lucky to remember the name of the city on whose streets he resided. Shaggy had recalled that a tall, thin man got out of the car with a duffle bag, walked to the bus stop, and set the bag on the bench. He then sat beside it and the car drove off.

Normally, none of this would matter too much to Shaggy, and it probably would have slipped his mind like most things did, but he had been hungry and debating whether he should approach the man and beg for some pocket change. That could go very badly for him, especially with men, as he’d learned many times in the past. Women tended to hand him change just to get rid of him, while men occasionally handed him shoving matches that resulted in broken noses, ripped-up knees, or twisted ankles.

So, he’d watched, and he’d waited, and he’d debated, and when the man stood up several long minutes later and walked away, Shaggy Phil’s already piqued interest multiplied—the man had left behind the duffle bag.

Shaggy didn’t approach it right away. He’d told the officer that he “kinda meandered on over” so that nobody would know what he was up to. He didn’t pick up the bag, convinced it was some kind of trick or maybe even a bomb, as “these things were in the news all the time and he knew it because he could still read and that ought not to surprise anyone.” He didn’t find lunch when he peeked in the bag, though. He didn’t find a wallet or even a spare sweater. He saw a baby. The baby’s eyes were open, but Shaggy was quick to point out that didn’t mean the little thing was alive. That was it for Shaggy Phil. He wanted “nothing to do with nobody doing nothing to no baby.”

That might have been it for Bryson. Had it been a couple of days earlier, when the high was seventeen degrees Celsius and the low only twelve degrees, or a couple of days later when things were back up in the seven to fourteen degree range, things might have remained fairly comfortable in the duffle bag on that bench. On the nineteenth, though, autumn had not only stepped away from its post, it had left the door open and winter had come creeping in. The low that day was negative five Cesius. So, four blocks and an unknown time later when Shaggy was reaching into a garbage bin for the half sandwich that he’d seen someone drop in there, and he realised that his bare fingertips were awfully cold, he had a sudden and unusual nag of conscience.

That was where Emma May Fields became a brief but important part of little Bryson’s story.

Emma May had been living on the St. Catharines streets for the better part of her adult life. She’d lost three children in that time. One to the system, one while it was still inside her, and one to the cold when she’d snuck it out of the hospital, convinced (no doubt rightfully so) that she was about to lose it to the system like she’d lost her first. She was exactly the right person for Shaggy Phil to tell about the surprise inside the duffle. She hurried to the bus stop as fast as her old legs could carry her and she did check to make sure that baby was still breathing. It was. At that point, Emma May didn’t know quite what to do, but she knew that she had to do something. Even though she knew nobody was going to trust a half-crazy, dark-skinned, old woman who looked as dirty as she smelled, she gathered up all the courage she could find and walked across the street to the little cottage houses that faced the bus stop. She started banging on the first door she found.

Mrs. Anne Watkins had no time for the homeless people that hung around the ravine or the bus stop. They were unsightly and they stole, and she was convinced that they would ravage her property value. Mrs. Watkins wasn’t a member of one of the families participating in the gentrification of the ancient, adorable cottages on the street. She had been there from the beginning and was holding on to the property tooth and nail, no matter how much they raised her taxes. She was doing that mainly by mortgaging the property value over and over again. In her opinion, it wasn’t a foolish idea at all. She had no children to leave the property to, her husband had one foot in the grave, and the bank would get its due if something ever happened to her. Property values would, after all, continue to increase…if the city could keep away the lowlifes that seemed to be coming out of nowhere and not moving on. So, when one of them came banging on her door, squawking something about “poor little babies,” she did what anyone in her position did when they saw someone not as well-off or with the same colour skin that she had. Mrs. Watkins called the police.

When the police showed up and finally convinced Emma May that it was okay to talk to them, they decided they needed to call the bomb squad before they could approach the baby. That was when Officer Charles Wright became part of the story.

It was after four in the afternoon by that point, and as far as the police could figure, the baby had been there for hours. It hadn’t cried. If the child had moved at all, the movements had been so slight that the duffle hadn’t even wiggled. He or she had to be starving, freezing, and wet—yet hadn’t raised so much as a single whine. Why? How?

Officer Wright had seven kids of his own, those seven kids had ten of their own between them, and he knew a thing or two about babies by this point. One of those things was that a quiet baby was either a content baby or a very sick baby. And there was no way in Hades that this particular baby could be content. On that day, he was already eight years past the first possible date of his retirement, and two weeks into knowing that he had lung cancer. He told Bryson (many years later, which made him a very small percentage of long-term survivors) that in the space of about four seconds he decided two things—if the chief decided to fire him over what he was about to do, so be it; and if he blew himself to bits over it, well, it would probably be a lot easier way to die than the alternative. He walked right up to little Bryson, pulled him out of that duffle bag, and the whole street blew a collective sigh of relief when the two of them didn’t end up as confetti. It didn’t take a surgeon for anyone with a clear view of the baby to know something was wrong, though. Feet and legs, even on a little bowlegged babe, didn’t bend the ways these ones did.

And even then, dangling there, with his twisted little legs and feet, not even half dressed in that negative five degree cold, with his empty tummy and a rather bleak future ahead of him, Bryson didn’t make a peep.

The following morning, the city newspaper ran the story about the baby with the broken ankles and the twisted legs that were, as quoted by the attending doctor, “not twisted by God, either,” but the story was already bouncing around the city like a rubber ball.

Mrs. Anne Watkins told her book club all about it during their annual pre-holiday supper. Rachel, Karen, Susan, and Emily Smith were all immensely proud of Anne for the part she’d played in bringing that baby safely into the arms of people who could care for it.

Emily Smith, upon leaving the book club that evening, called up Hope Matthews, who couldn’t wait to tell everyone at the fundraiser her husband was hosting that night, although she couldn’t quite remember what this one was for. Either way, she had just got herself a brand new Halston gown and it, along with this story, was going to make her the belle of the ball.

Hope’s story got passed on to Lieutenant-Colonel Davis, who mentioned it to his caregiver when they were driving home that night, early, of course, as his arthritis had started to flair. The good lieutenant knew what it was to suffer, and his caregiver, Simon Gill, remembered that after they’d talked about it, they both kind of paused and thought about what life was going to be like for a kid who would end up enduring that kind of pain for the rest of his life. Simon had told Bryson that Lieutenant-Colonel Davis had said, “Let’s hope God gives him more graces than he gave me, hmm?” and Simon had looked up into the rear view mirror and caught Davis’ gaze with a grin, responding, “The wee thing will probably deserve more graces than you, won’t he?” They’d laughed. They’d had s*x when they got home, and when Simon had started to tell Bryson the intimate details of that part of their evening, Bryson had excused himself from the conversation. Gay or not, he didn’t need to share the details of an old man’s s*x life.

It was Simon, though, that brought that part of Bryson’s story to its conclusion. Once he’d tucked Davis under the covers and cleaned up whatever it was they had done to one another, he’d called his sister, Abigail, who happened to be working in the same city. She also worked as a caregiver, for a sweet couple who’d lost a second baby during childbirth. The couple, Mr. and Mrs. William Merritt (who had “more money than God,” according to Abigail) had been deeply upset on learning that not only had they experienced yet another unfruitful birth, it would be their last attempt at one. The family had been worried that the young Mrs. Mandy Merritt might take the news poorly, hence the need for a fulltime caregiver (i.e. babysitter). While Mandy had been put together with stronger stuff than that, she did, however, enjoy her caregiver’s company and found Abigail’s need to chat, chat, chat somewhat soothing as William wasn’t much of a talker. When Mandy had heard Bryson’s story, her heart—the very heart she’d been steeling in preparation of a childless life—melted.

By the time the rest of the city was reading about the little broken baby at the bus stop, Mandy had already contacted her lawyer, who was several documents and a few thousand dollars into the process of changing Bryson’s life forever.

“Hey, there.”

Now, Bryson turned away from the window and smiled at his mother, Mandy. “Bonjour, ma mère.”

She leaned in the doorway, as if she were unsure about coming into the room. “I heard you arguing. Is everything okay?”

“Fantastic.” He nodded. “I have been taking out the trash.”

She laughed. “Nice try, Bry, but I think you stole that from Marvel.”

“And I think they stole it from Tyler Durden. But you know, whatever.”

“Mm hmm.” She walked over and rested a hand on his forehead. “You okay? And I mean with respect to this, that, or another thing. You look pale.” She poked his forehead, between his eyes. “This is a little deeper than usual, too. You’re going to have caverns there by the time you’re thirty.”

He gently swatted away her hand. “If I can grow caverns in my forehead by next week…”

Mandy gasped, mockingly. “Is that so soon? I almost forgot!”

Bryson shrugged. “One can’t really know, can one? I think there’s only a handful of people who know if that date is right or not. For all we know, I’m already thirty.” He put his hand to his forehead, then pulled it away, pantomiming an explosion. “Mind. Blown. Am I right?”

“You are not. The doctor was pretty convinced on the eighth of August.”

“Mom,” Bryson said, drawing out the word while side-eyeing her. “He was convinced on August. You just liked the alliteration of oh-eight, oh-eight. I’ve researched this whole story, remember?”

She kissed his head with a big wet smack. “Repetition, son. Oh-eight, oh-eight is not alliteration. Honestly, the money we spent on your schooling…”

“Wasted,” he agreed. “Every bit of it.”

“Meh.” She shrugged. “I guess you didn’t turn out too dim if you knew to get rid of that waste of good orthodontic work.”

Bryson rested his head against the wall. Damn it all, but Richard did have a nice smile. He’d looked mighty fine in pictures, too. He could even make the two of them look pretty f*****g good when they were together. Angles and distances were Ricky’s thing. Any pic could look good if they hid the disturbing parts. From the waist up, the two of them looked almost normal. It was almost a shame Bryson was going to have to “unfollow” him.

“Ugh,” Bryson groaned. He knocked the back of his head against the wall. “Why do I pick such ridiculous losers every freaking time?”

Mandy patted his shoulder. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, kiddo. It’s hard to resist a charming man with a pretty smile.”

Bryson looked out the window again, thinking about pretty smiles that spit ugly words and nice c***s with mean intentions. “Maybe that should be my plan. Maybe the next guy needs to be some ugly bastard without a single charming bone in his body.”

Mandy feigned a gasp and clapped her hands together. “Oh! How nice. You’re going to find a man like dear old dad, then, are you?”

Bryson blew a breath of surprise, then laughed out loud. “Oh, my God! You are evil!”

She grinned at him. “You know I love him. Listen, why don’t you spend the night here? It’ll save you coming back tomorrow since we’re going to the dog show anyway. I’ll get Gus to freshen up your room. Good?”

He nodded. It would be nice not to have to get up and get into the car. Or get out of the car. Or make his own dinner. Or, or, or…“I’m just going to hang out here for a while, I think.”

“Sounds like a plan.” She walked across the room, picked up the intercom and his phone, and placed them beside him on the window seat. “Let us know if you need anything.”

He picked up his phone and thumbed it into life. “Got a new set of legs lying around somewhere?”

“Nope,” she said without missing a beat. “My sss order hasn’t come in yet.”

He chuckled, and on his phone, scrolled to the social media tab. Breakups came with way too much media management, but at least it would give him something to do while he sat there.