I take that right, into the Shari’s off Beaver Creek, and she’s already there at the booth with a fat ceramic mug steaming something inside and I can see all the way from the cash register: the waitress has already brought the crayons.

The Kid doesn’t seem excited to see his sister or the baby nephews. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t do anything he normally doesn’t do, not even talk, not even still since his momma died and all Sister’s texts and voice memos have broken through into the blue. The timeline matters, I know, but I just can’t remember how many days after so very much silence after so very much not silence.

He won’t change his underwear, let alone eat anything. I can’t get him to do a fucking thing and if I’m here it doesn’t matter anyway and I am and it doesn’t. I did get him to swallow some of the ketchup packets and applesauce squeezies she’d stashed in the glovebox for him for no reason in particular, as a precaution, she would have said, but she didn’t ever talk about raising children that way because we never talked about anything at all.

 

I wouldn’t call what he did to them eating any more than I want to recount getting him to do whatever you’d call it. Whatever, whenever it was.

One of the babies strains against its highchair thing with the brown straps that go click but won’t stay connected. I don’t remember which of the babies came first and I don’t remember their names and I never tried in the first place but I think they both started with “K” for some reason I never knew, never cared to know. Both babies are wearing the exact same outfits even though they clearly aren’t the exactly same ages. There’s a small pyramid of crayons just out of reach to both of them. When The Kid takes the top crayon off the pyramid, the other crayons don’t move in its absence. The babies just watch him do it.

Sister won’t make eye contact and never would. We used to live together and she used to ask me to watch the oldest of her two babies. TRY NOT TO SHAKE OR JUST LEAVE HIM SOMEWHERE was something she texted one of those last times she’d asked in her razorthin voice set almost all the way down to zero. I wasn’t a Papa long enough to be asked something like that, but I tried to do it anyway.

The Kid starts scribbling with his crayon onto the FUN! PAGE! that’s also his menu. But like always he strikes through the food items and shakes his head for the waitresses when they press him if he wants to order anything but he never does and the most he ever does is just shake his head. Side to side. Never up and down. Not that I ever saw and not that entire time.

 

Always just side to side.

By the time it’s time to go, which isn’t very long at all, The Kid’s started scribbling an impromptu monster on his FUN! PAGE!, right under the Overstuffed French Toast With Fresh Marionberry Preserves.

If you’d been there and seen when they got up and left, maybe you noticed all the crayons in the pyramid were brown. But this isn’t that moment. This is the moment it’s all + completely + forever over.

And so Sister doesn’t look up and I don’t look her in the eyes.

The Kid’s about halfway done on his scribblemonster when his sister breaks the terrible silence + tension, pocked + splintered by all the clattering of dishes + silverware that’s constantly filling spaces like this: where big things happen without the big conversations or big feelings that accompany them.

By the time you’re in any Shari’s parking lot with any kid, though, let alone one that’s been forced to call you something you’re not, there isn’t any room for talk. Let alone feelings. No room.

The Kid’s scribblemonster is a blur of thick, breaking streaks of mud + shit. All the miles + hard road in all that brown. He’s about to give it teeth when his sister finally says You’d Better Not Stick Around

 

that is all,

 

not even a flinch in her neck upwards when she says it.

The Kid’s jagged some more triangles onto the blizzard of them already there, in firmer, thinner, straighter lines of that same mud + shit.

I’m looking at the babies when she says it. I don’t know why, either. It just seems like the least disruptive thing to do in the moment.

The babies don’t look back in my direction, out towards the bustling carpet where the waitresses constantly splash coffee onto it and streak whipped cream into it. Mud + shit everywhere.

When her voice leaves the air and her eyes aren’t there, I almost look up but I don’t. The Kid is a dead ringer for his momma, especially in the eyes. Sister, however, looks just like Senior.

 

so do those babies.

 

still The Kid triangles his FUN! PAGE!.

 

still The Kid plunges his head further down when everyone’s food arrives and they just eat it in silence, even the babies, because I’m already way gone by the time Senior fetches them for sure, for good.

For you.

I don’t ever see this, of course, because I can’t + couldn’t + didn’t love any of them enough to not bother them in the first place.

I walk past the table one final time. Only it’s me on the other side of the big picture window with the fat wooden blinds. They are already relieved and it doesn’t even matter anymore if Senior comes to fetch them or not.

I want to believe The Kid finished his triangles before Senior reversed my steps and plowed through the door without waiting for a hostess to seat him like the thick wood sign guarding the cash register warns everyone not to do.

I want to believe the babies have grown up to be cowboys.

 

I want to believe their own momma didn’t let them.

 

I want to believe Senior won’t come find me again in any snowstorm, let alone this one, which is just a fucking blizzard. Wind so sharp. Shredding us all.

It’s not what I wanted. This FUN! PAGE! I got from The Kid that year Senior died, whatever year that became. But I’ll tell you at least this, my dear: it has every tooth.