Do You Know the Monkey Man? (13 page)

you could choose your friends, but not your family. But sometimes you
could
choose your family.

I yawned. It seemed like Bob and I had been stuck in that little conference room forever. I’d lost track of how many games of hangman we’d played. But we didn’t have room on the McDonald’s bag for any more games. That was how long we’d been there. I checked my watch. It was almost nine o’clock.

“You getting tired?” Bob asked.

“Yeah, a little,” I said. I was getting hungry, too. I wished I hadn’t thrown away my cheeseburger.

Bob must have read my mind. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “There’s probably a vending machine out there somewhere. Why don’t you go get a little snack.”

“Okay,” I said.

Bob waved a five-dollar bill at me.

“Oh, that’s okay. I’ve got money,” I said, patting my purse.

Bob pushed the bill across the table. “Take it,” he said. “And while you’re at it, bring me some M&M’s.”

“Okay.” I was really in the mood for a bag of M&M’s myself. “Thanks.”

I went out in the hall. If I went to the left, I knew I’d come out by the front door. I didn’t remember seeing a vending machine anywhere that direction, so I went the other way.

The hallway ended at a small waiting room. Two chairs sat on either side of a square table that was piled with magazines. Across the room was a vending machine.

I stopped. T. J. stood in front of the machine dropping coins into the slot.

“I-I didn’t know you were still here,” I said.

She whirled around when she heard my voice, then slowly turned back to the machine. “I’m waiting for the lady from the Department of Human Services to show up.” T. J. pressed a button and her candy dropped to the tray at the bottom.

M&M’s.

I leaned against the wall. “My mom’s…
fiancé
sent me down here to get us some candy,” I said stupidly.

I didn’t want her to think I was copying her, so I said, “He wanted some M&M’s. I don’t know what I’m going to get for myself.”

T. J. walked around me without looking at me, then sank down in one of the square chairs. I watched as she ripped open her bag of M&M’s.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I get what I came here to get and go back to the conference room? Or should I sit down next to T. J.?

I took a good hard look at her, this girl who was my sister. Her eyes drooped and her face was all blotchy like she’d been crying. But her whole life had just been turned upside down, so why wouldn’t she cry? And it was all my fault. She must really hate me.

“You probably hate me,” T. J. said suddenly.

“What?” Why would I hate her? “I thought
you
hated
me.
”

T. J. blinked. “I don’t even know you.”

I sat down in the chair next to her, resting one foot under my butt. “I don’t know you, either.” And I
wanted
to know her. I wanted to know her even more than I wanted to know my dad.

T. J. popped an M&M into her mouth, then offered the bag to me. I shook five candies into my hand, then gave the bag back.

Silence.

“It’s not that I don’t want to get to know you or your mother,” T. J. said after a little while. It sounded weird when she said “your mother.” Like my mother wasn’t her mother, too. “I just …”

“You don’t want to come live with us.”

She shook her head and looked down at her lap. “No. I don’t want to leave Joe. Or my grandma.”

My throat caught when she said that. Her grandma was my grandma, too. And I didn’t even know her.

“But Joe took you away from us,” I said. “You belong with us.”

She shrugged. “He’s still my dad. Nothing he did all those years ago changes that. And now your mom wants to take me away from him.”

Of course she does.
After what your dad did, why shouldn’t she take you away from him?

“What if it was you?” T. J. asked. “What if you were going on about your life, not knowing anything about me or Joe. And one day Joe just sort of popped into your life and said your mom did something wrong and now you have to come live with us. Would you want to?”

I always thought that if my dad ever came into my life and asked me to come live with him, I’d go in a second. I wouldn’t even look back. But would I really? Mom and I didn’t always get along, but she was my mom. She was the only parent I’d had. Would I really leave her and go live with some stranger even if he was my dad?

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. Maybe I wouldn’t.

“I’m still getting used to the idea that I have a mom and a sister. Just because somebody says it’s true doesn’t make it true. Do you know what I mean?”

I thought about what Bob had said about how a piece of paper doesn’t make you family.

I understood T. J.’s point, but still. What about my mom? She wanted her daughter back. Didn’t she deserve to have her daughter back?

How would we ever resolve this? There were no right answers. There weren’t even any okay answers. No matter what happened, nobody was going to come out of this totally happy.

I
t was dark outside when we finally left the police station. Bob drove over to a Holiday Inn that was just down the street and he and my mom paid for two adjoining rooms, one for my mom and me and one for Bob.

Mom had picked up my suitcase at Angela’s dad’s house, but neither of them had bags for themselves. They weren’t planning on staying overnight when they left Clearwater this morning. They thought they’d just pick me up in Hill Valley, then go right back home.

“Should we see if we can find a Wal-Mart or someplace where we can get a change of clothes or at least a couple of toothbrushes?” Bob asked as we trudged down the carpeted hallway, looking for our rooms.

“No,” Mom said. “I’m tired. We can get something in the morning.”

We stopped in front of room 235 and Bob inserted the plastic card in the slot and opened the door. I walked in and plopped my bag on one of the beds. Mom slowly sat down on the edge of the other bed. Bob unlocked the adjoining door between our rooms and went over to check out his room.

“I still think there’s something screwy going on here,” Mom called to Bob. “Why can’t I take Sarah home tonight?”

“T. J.,” I corrected. But no one paid any attention to me.

Bob walked back into our room. “Honey, you know why,” he said, sitting down with my mom. “A judge is going to have to hear testimony—”

“But why?” My mom sprang to her feet. “She’s my daughter! He took my daughter away! And now if she says she wants to stay with him, I may never get her back? It’s just not right!”

“No, it’s not,” Bob agreed.

“There’s got to be something we can get him on,” she said, stomping around the room. “Falsifying documents? Deprivation of parental rights? Whether we were divorced or not, you cannot tell me that what he did was legal.” She glared at Bob as though daring him to contradict her.

“Well—”

My mom cut him off. “What about all the money the county spent on dragging the quarry, looking for Sarah’s body all those years ago? Maybe the county can bring charges against him.”

“Oh, that’ll really make T. J. want to come live with us,” I mumbled. “If you find a way to get Joe arrested.”

“Sam,” Bob said in a warning voice.

Mom whirled around to face me. Her eyes were angry little slits. “Don’t call her T. J. Her name is Sarah,” she said firmly.

“No it’s not!” I stood face to face with my mother. “Sarah is dead. The girl we knew as Sarah is gone. She’s never coming back. This girl’s name is T. J. We have to call her T. J.”

As far as I was concerned, Sarah and T. J. were two totally different people. Sarah was the girl I used to play Barbies with. The girl I once shared a room with. The girl I would’ve shared all my secrets with, if things had been different. I had no idea who T. J. was. I just knew she wasn’t Sarah.

“Your sister’s name is Sarah,” Mom insisted. We stood eye to eye. Nose to nose. We were so close to one another that I could feel her angry breath on my face. And she could feel mine.

I threw up my hands in frustration. I could not believe the way she was acting.

“Do you really think she’s going to want to go back to being called Sarah when she’s been T. J. for ten years?” I cried. “Geez, why don’t you ever think about what other people want? Do you really think you can control everyone and everything?”

My mom looked like she’d been slapped. But I was just getting warmed up.

I think Bob could tell, too, because he stood up and put his hand on my shoulder. “Now, take it easy there, Sam,” he said.

But I couldn’t take it easy. I needed to tell my mother how I really felt about some things.

“It’s not just T. J., you know. You do this with me, too. You try and control my entire life!”

Mom gasped. “I am your mother! I’m allowed to control your life.”

“You shouldn’t be allowed to control everything. Did you ever think maybe I needed to know stuff about my dad and my sister? Maybe I don’t want to move out of my house and go live in a brand-new house! Maybe I don’t want Bob to adopt me!”

“Okay, Sam. That’s enough,” Mom said. “We’re in a hotel here. You cannot carry on like this.”

“You’re doing it again!” I stomped my foot. “I’m not done talking, but you’re still trying to control how much I say!”

I took a deep breath and tried to lower my voice. “Bob and I talked about him adopting me while you were doing whatever it was you were doing at the police station. I told him I wasn’t sure I wanted him to adopt me, and do you know what? He’s fine with it! You’re probably the only one who’s going to have a problem with it.”

My mom sank to the bed. But I still wasn’t finished.

“Haven’t you ever heard the phrase: ‘If you love something, set it free’? ‘If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.’ Mom, did it ever occur to you that maybe people don’t belong to each other? I don’t belong to you! And T. J. doesn’t belong to you! If you push this thing with her, you’re going to lose her forever! Is that what you want?”

“Whoa!” Bob said, stepping in between the two of us. He made a T with his hands. “Time out. I think the two of you need a break from this conversation. Sam, it’s late. Why don’t you go to bed.”

What?
He was telling me when to go to bed?

“And Suzanne …” I realized right then that my mom wasn’t even
looking
at me. “Why don’t you come over to my room and we can talk without disturbing Sam.”

What
was
she looking at? The wall? She looked like a zombie sitting there. I felt a pain in my chest. Maybe I had gone too far? Or…maybe Bob was right and Mom and I needed a break from this conversation. I was pretty tired.

“Okay, I’ll go to bed,” I said. I moved my bag so I could pull back my covers.

Bob took my mom’s hand and pulled her back up. Then he slowly walked her across the room.

“Good night, Mom,” I said quietly. “Good night…Bob.”

“Good night, honey,” Bob said.

My mom didn’t say anything. I wonder if she even heard me.

I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night. I don’t think my mom or Bob did, either. All night long I heard muffled voices coming from next door. Sometimes I even heard crying. I didn’t think my mom ever cried.

At some point I fell asleep. And obviously my mom must have come back because when I woke up the next morning she was sound asleep in the other bed, her back to me. The door between our room and Bob’s was open and I could hear him snoring.

I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t. I was too wired to sleep. What was going to happen today?

A few minutes later I heard my mom roll over. I opened one eye and glanced over at her. She was awake, too.

“Good morning,” she said.

I swallowed hard. “Good morning,” I said back.

Mom sat up. “I think you and I need to finish our conversation from last night,” she said. She sounded a lot calmer this morning.

I was calmer, too. “Okay,” I said, pulling my sheet up to my chin.

Mom got up and came over to sit next to me on my bed. I shifted over to make room for her.

“Sam, do you like Bob? Are you okay about us getting married?”

“I like him,” I said, gazing up at the sprinkler on the ceiling. “And it’s okay that you’re getting married.” Really, it was. “It’s just…it’s going to be really different having him in our family, being part of his family, having him live with us.”

“Yeah, it will,” Mom agreed. She smiled. “But it’ll be a good kind of different, don’t you think? Bob’s a wonderful man. And he loves you as much as he loves me. Believe me, I wouldn’t marry anyone who didn’t. He wants to be a father to you, Sam.”

“I know.” I propped myself up on my elbow and looked at my mom. “But Mom, it doesn’t matter how wonderful Bob is. I still have another father out there. I know I shouldn’t have gone looking for him behind your back. But I just had to know something about him.”

“Now you probably know more than you wish you did.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Me too, honey.” Mom leaned over and hugged me. “I wish I had tried harder to find him when you first started asking questions. I guess I figured once Bob and I were married, Bob would fill that need inside of you. That’s why I wanted him to adopt you. But if that’s not what you want, that’s fine. He and I talked about that last night. He doesn’t have to adopt you if that’s not what you want.”

“I don’t know what I want,” I said honestly. “I just know there’s this hole inside me and I don’t know what can fill it. I’ve known all along that Bob can’t fill it. But I don’t think that…Joe can fill it, either. It might be that I’m going to need…both Bob and Joe to fill it.” I raised my eyebrow, trying to gauge my mom’s reaction to that.

But she only flinched a little. “I know you want to get to know your dad now.”

I
thought
I still wanted to get to know him. I was still pretty confused about all this.

“I understand that, Sam,” Mom said. “Really, I do.” She reached for my hand. “It’ll take some time, but eventually I’ll be at a place where that will be okay.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised.

Mom nodded. “As long as you promise to try and be part of your other new family, too. The family that includes Bob and his mother and brother and sisters.”

“I can do that,” I said. If she could give me the freedom to get to know my dad at some point, then I would do anything for her in return.

Mom scooted back on my bed and leaned against the headboard. “I think the hardest piece of this puzzle is going to be T. J.,” she said with a heavy sigh.

I sat up. “Y-you called her T. J.!”

“Yeah,” Mom said softly. She put an arm around me. “You were right about that last night.”

Mom rested her head against mine. “She goes by T. J. now. We can’t go back to calling her Sarah. And if she doesn’t want to come live with us, we can’t force her to or we’ll lose her forever. Just like you said.”

“S-so you’re not going to try and get custody right now?” I asked.

Mom shook her head. “Bob and I were up most of the night talking about this. Much as I’d like to go in there and demand that T. J. come live with us and Joe go to jail…it just wouldn’t be right, would it?”

I looked away. “No, I guess not,” I said sadly.

“If she’s happy, he must have done something right during these ten years,” Mom said.

For a while, neither of us said anything. Then I asked, “Are you glad we found out the truth? Or do you wish we hadn’t?”

At first Mom didn’t say anything. I could see her weighing it all out in the expressions that passed across her face. Finally she cupped her hand around my chin and smiled. “I think it’s always better to know the truth.”

“Me too,” I said. And then we just hugged each other until Bob came over and asked if it was time for breakfast.