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“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do? I am a doctor.”
“You’re a PhD.”
“Several times over, and I know medicine isn’t my specialty but I’ve done a lot of work in recent years on a human cellular level, and what is cancer but an out of control mutation?”
“Cary, I appreciate the thought, but my time is up. I’m okay with that. I’d just like to spend some time with you two before I go.”
Kerry slid out sideways until she was holding the phone. “If cancer had a face, I’d have pulped it by now.”
“I have no doubt.” Mama chuckled a little. “And I appreciate that thought as well. Let me know when I get to see your face again. There’s room at Aunt Lucy’s for all of us to stay for awhile.”
Once they hung up the phone, Kerry busted several holes in her punching bag and Cary didn’t even admonish her for it. His grief was as quiet and still as hers was angry and rough, but it was the same grief. Just like the two of them. Apparently different, fundamentally the same.
After a few minutes of simply sitting while she grunted and roared at the bag across the room, he spoke up. “I just wonder if we were wrong to leave her alone out there. I mean, maybe we should have stayed in Montana, to take care of her, it’s our, our duty to care for our elders as they grow old, and…we weren’t there.”
“She could have come here. You offered.”
“But her sisters and brothers, her whole family…everyone except us—”
“We’re the most important.”
“You joke, but—”
“I never joke.”
“That’s—that’s true, but to be honest, Mama didn’t really fit in there once we came along, any more than we did. We sort of… wrecked her life. And now we’re the only ones who don’t hold her at a bit of a distance. I’m sure Aunt Lucy is taking good care of her but…she needs us.”
“Melanie needs us, too.” But she looked a little confused as she said it.
“She can do without us for a few months. And she can wait, if that’s all Mama has left–”
“Don’t even say that!”
Cary was about to tell her not to hide from the truth, when he noticed she’d already abandoned the punching bag and was now fishing in a cupboard.
She pulled out their suitcase and tossed it at him. “Let’s go, let’s move, chop chop old man! Mama needs us.”
He fumbled the suitcase and gave her a half smile. “We do have time to wrap up a few things before we leave, you know.”
“Who cares? We’re all Mama’s got.”
The door to Aunt Lucy’s apartment was opened by a tall, wrinkled-yet-rugged-looking old man, who’d already said, “Cary,” before Cary could recognize him. Then his stomach flipped.
“D-Dad?”
Ray? Kerry refused to use the honorific the man had never done a thing to earn. What’s HE doing here?
“Glad you could make it. It means a lot to your mother to have you here.”
Cary struggled to form words. “But what are…when did y…why…?”
“Your mama’s a lot for your Aunt Lucy to handle all by herself, so I’ve been sitting in.” He smiled sadly. “I know we’ve had our problems, but I love your mother, always have, and I’m gonna be here for her.”
“Great, should have thought of that fifty-two years ago.” Kerry slipped out and pushed past Ray into the room. “Where’s Mama?”
Ray stared after her, agape. “Who was that?” he mouthed to Cary.
Cary smothered a nervous giggle. “Kerry.” Well, this would certainly be…complicated. He hoisted the suitcase and followed her inside.
He was relieved to find Mama sitting up and smiling. Thinner, wanner, more wrinkled, but fully present. There was a teasing bounce in her voice as she kissed Kerry and told her, “You haven’t changed a bit. It always makes me feel so young. There’s my handsome nuclear physicist!” She reached her free hand out to her son. “Oh, it’s so good to have you both back with me.”
Ray hung back in the doorway, looking bemused. “Irma, why did you never tell me we had a granddaughter?”
Mama did a bit of a spit-take, and said, laughing, “I don’t even know where to begin with that question.”
“I can think of several good reasons off the top of my head,” Cary offered nervously.
“’Cause you abandoned us, first of all.”
“Kerry!” Cary snapped. Mama winced.
“What, I only said what everybody’s thinking.”
Ray sighed. “I know I have a lot to answer for, but let’s…try not to upset Mama right now?”
Mama smiled a bit sadly and said, “You three have an awful lot to talk about, and I don’t want to keep you from it. I just want a good hello and how do from my babies here first, then you all can head to the kitchen and let me rest.”
“When you’re ready, then.” Ray nodded once, then ducked into the kitchen.
Cary tried to focus on Mama. “How are you? Is there anything we can get you?”
“I have everything I need now. What is new with you two? Meet any interesting superpowered people lately?”
They looked at each other, and exchanged a few noncommittal phrases: “Idaknow—” “Just the usual, really” “Nothing much exciting” “Well there was that young man with the memory thing–” “Well he’s been there—” “I guess….” And then they trailed off, sneaking glances at the door to the kitchen.
After a few more awkward seconds, Mama raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms. “All right. We can’t get past the elephant in the room here—or in the kitchen—can we.”
Kerry looked confused, and Cary told her, “Dad,” quickly.
“Let whatever you have to say out,” Mama said.
“Okay, I have questions.” Kerry stood up and began to pace. “First of all, how can you even look at that man after what he did to us? Left us on the edge of poverty, just assuming someone would pay you enough to feed us? Refused to believe you and made you out to be the bad guy so everyone in town would whisper about you and make comments right to our face? Let you live in constant fear that someone would decide a Native single mom couldn’t raise a weirdo blond kid and take us away? Treated Cary like absolute crap just because he thought we weren’t his?”
Mama glanced at Cary and raised her eyebrows, as if giving him permission to put in his own two cents. “I-I-I have the same questions, to be honest,” he admitted, “but slightly less vitriol.”
Mama sighed. “The answer is time. Fifty years erodes quite a lot of edge down. And he genuinely regrets leaving. He’s sorry and I’ve accepted his apology. Look, I don’t have much time left, and I don’t want to waste any of it on grudges. There is a lot I love about your father, and I’ve missed that. So we’ve chosen to let bygones be bygones and just live.”
Cary nodded. “That makes sense.”
“No it doesn’t,” Kerry retorted.
“I know, it’s a lot to handle. But just give him a chance to talk it out with you. He really wants to make amends before I’m gone.”
“I don’t like a single thing you just said.”
“Kerry.” Mama reached out and beckoned her into a hug. “We can’t change the past. But we can make now the best we can make it. That’s all I’m asking for. Give him a chance.”
“We will,” Cary said quickly, with a warning look at Kerry. “Because you’ve asked us.”
“I’ll accept that reasoning. Do it for me.” There was another pause, then Mama waved them away. “Go, go get the elephant out of the room, then!”
“Stop saying that! You get my hopes up!”
Mama practically cackled as she shooed them away. Kerry continued, “What? Like you haven’t always wanted to fight an elephant?”
Mama’d always gotten along with her former inlaws, and they enjoyed being grandparents to Cary, often taking care of him while Mama was at work, teaching him their culture and history. So what he knew of the man whom Mama had always insisted was his father came through chance encounters at Kunsi and Kaka’s house. Cary knew who Ray Whitecloud was supposed to be, but the one time he’d instinctively called him “Daddy” to his face, the man had snapped, “Don’t call me that,” and completely ignored the really interesting piece of shale Cary’d been trying to show him.
The ground beneath Cary had turned to magma and dragged him under. His eyes had filled with tears. He’d dropped the piece of shale, which now seemed to be mocking him for having ever shown interest in something so dull. Kerry hadn’t started talking to him yet, so there was no one to tell him it’s not YOUR fault, Daddy’s just being MEAN (she said something along those lines years later, when the subject came up, but by then he’d internalized it too deeply). There was no one to help him process it. He’d just curled up tightly under the table, crying silently, burningly aware of his grandmother arguing with her son behind him. It was one of those quiet grownup exchanges they assumed he wasn’t listening to, or if he was, that he didn’t understand. “Ray, he’s four years old,” Kunsi had scolded, and he’d replied, “and I don’t think he should be raised under fraudulent pretenses.” Cary knew a lot of words for his age, but even if he hadn’t, the meaning was still clear: Daddy didn’t want to be his Daddy.
And that was when he had his first asthma attack. Cary sometimes wondered if this was the moment Kerry started to exist. It would be another couple of years before she started talking to him, and even longer before she physically manifested, but maybe this was when she split off, some kind of trauma-induced secondary personality, everything he wished he could be. Kerry wasn’t fond of this theory, partly because she was sure she always had been there, mostly because it implied she was a disorder instead of the best thing that had ever happened to him. But if any outside catalyst might have caused Kerry, that would have been it.
But nearly half a century had passed. Surely the trauma was all behind him. The old man generously chopping vegetables at the counter seemed friendly enough, but watching him, Cary felt small, sick, confused. It did hurt. Still.
It wasn’t anger, though. He never could get angry. Kerry got angry enough for both of them.
“Mama said we should talk to you now,” she said flatly, as they stood in the doorway.
“Mama is a wise, perceptive woman. Come. Have a seat.” He scraped the vegetables into a bowl and gestured toward the table, where he sat down. Cary and Kerry exchanged a look, and slowly, nervously (at least in Cary’s case), joined him there.
“This is all on me. I’ll own it. I know you have no reason to want anything to do with me. I did you wrong, and I’m sorry.”
“Yes,” Cary said, carefully. It seemed an awfully aggressive thing to respond, but it was all he could manage. Kerry just scowled silently, arms folded tight.
“It took me far too long to understand that this was something that should have stayed between your mother and me, and I was taking it out on you. Now, I forgave your mother long ago—”
“But she didn’t do—” Kerry started to insist, but Cary kicked her under the table, and Ray pressed on regardless.
“…but whether you can forgive me is a lot to ask. Maybe I don’t know who your father was, but I really should’ve been your Dad.”
“Got one part right, at least.” Kerry rolled her eyes.
“And to think my stupid pride made me miss this lovely young lady’s entire childhood. Are you in college, what, high school, now? Kerry, was it? Named after your dad?”
“Cary made me spend a decade in college, it was boring, I didn’t pay attention,” Kerry spat out, while Cary cleared his throat and said, “Um, I-I see Mama never got around to explaining about us, did she.”
There was a pause under the meaningful look they exchanged, and Ray looked from one to the other. “What. What am I missing?”
“Cary’s not my dad, you are.”
Ray frowned. “That doesn’t make a lick of sense.”
“You see, we—” Cary began, but Kerry stormed on.
“’Cause when we were born, all you saw was Cary when you expected to see me, so you freaked out and left, and there I was inside him the whole time, you just didn’t know.”
“To be fair,” Cary pointed out, “NO one knew you were there for the next eight years.”
“Well to be fairER, he knew YOU were there and he rejected you anyway, that’s not exactly better.”
Cary shrugged nervously. She was right. He was trying to be a grownup about this, for Mama’s sake, but it was kind of a relief to have Kerry voicing all that anger for him instead.
“Yes. I know. There is no amount of I’m-sorry I can say that will make it up to you. But I still don’t understand. How…? I was there, when Cary was born, you weren’t… you’re not twins or anything…”
“We are, sort of.” Cary explained. “We developed together somehow, co-mingled, not…not Siamese twins, technically, we each have our own unique genetic code. This is something…different. New. Kerry spends most of her time inside me instead of interacting fully with the world, so she ages at a different rate.”
“And frankly, I didn’t want to come out when you were around, full offense.”
Ray made a sort of choking noise, then nodded. “Understood. About the offense. But…I just don’t….”
He looked so incredulous that Cary couldn’t help feeling defensive. “I know, it’s, it’s unheard of, but why do you think I’ve devoted my life to researching mutation? Just because I, I can pass for white? When i-if anything that’s made life e-easier for me? No, it’s always been about her. My sister, and, and I. Us. Whatever we are.” The older they got, the weirder it seemed to call her “sister.” He had been more of a dad to her than Ray Whitecloud ever was.
“Whatever we are is awesome, that’s what. And we can do this.” Kerry took up her usual position and announced—in Cary’s head, at least— See? I was here just like this the whole time.
“He, um, can’t hear you.” Cary wondered at her forgetting that.
I know, you’re supposed to say it for me.
“She says to tell you she was here just like this the whole time.”
A sort of dawning came over their father’s face. “Wait. Now I do remember something. When you were little, you used to talk to yourself like that. Your mama was worried I’d somehow broke your mind, made you obsessed with the girl I’d thought you should have—I mean, that we’d been expecting. But she…she really was there?”
“Would you have stayed if you’d known?”
Cary and Kerry said that simultaneously, she taking the lead, he before he could stop himself. The thought had been there. She’d just given it a nudge on her way out.
The question hung between them like lead. After a long, heavy pause, Ray leaned in.
“Trick question. There’s no right answer, is there? And I honestly don’t know. If I’d known the girl I was expecting, was there inside that little wasichu boy… would I? Or would I still have assumed the worst? Possibly. Probably. I was a prideful idiot.”
He sat back again, thinking. Finally he said, “Now, I don’t know if you’ll appreciate this, you’re a man of science and all, but we have a long history of medicine men in our family. Magic men. I remember my grandparents once told me some of our ancestors were known to exhibit a unique skill, even among medicine men, of being two places at the same time. So I wonder now—”
Cary’s mouth twitched. “You’re suggesting our condition is… hereditary?”
“Yes. Yes, I guess I am.” Ray smiled in a slightly embarrassed way, which took Kerry aback slightly. She’d often seen Cary make that exact same face.
“On your side of the family.” Cary grinned, though his eyes were welling up. “Two minutes ago you called me wasichu.”
“I still don’t know where that yellow hair came from, but you definitely have my nose.”
“Oh my god.” Kerry buried her head in her arms.
“Kerry doesn’t always deal well with irony.”
“Fifty-two years! And you just noticed his nose?!”
“I can’t make up the half-century we lost, but I want to make the best of this last month or so we have with your mama.” He frowned toward the door. “Who should really be resting now.”
Mama leaned on the doorframe, watching somewhat smugly. “Are we finally all on the same page?”
“I…think?” Ray held a hand out toward Cary, as if awaiting his response.
“We are…moving in the right direction, at least.” Cary shook his father’s hand.
“Enough to call a truce, I guess.” Kerry kept her arms crossed.
Ray shrugged. “Well, I suppose I can’t be a real Dad without being scorned by my teenaged daughter at least once.” He watched her carefully. She watched him steadily back. Finally she cracked something of a grimace and graced him with a fist bump.
“So now that we’re all a big happy family again,” she said to Mama, “what, you want us to go to Disneyland together?”
“That might be fun.” Mama laughed. “But no. Maybe I’ll settle for going out for ice cream.”
“Gross.”
“Someplace with an arcade to keep Kerry busy,” she added.
“You don’t like ice cream?” Ray looked confused again.
“Better to avoid discussing food with her at all,” Cary muttered to him.
“So you don’t want to try my famous ratatouille, then?”
“…I’ll sit at the table, I guess.”
“That’s a tremendous compliment, you know, Ray,” said Mama.
And so the Whitecloud-Loudermilks sat down to their very first family dinner.
“…So your mama tells me you run some kind of … mutant cult?”
“Not a cult! A safe haven. And I don’t run it alone, I just run the scientific parts.”
“I run the fighting parts.”
“I have known you all of half an hour and that already doesn’t surprise me.”