Bill & The Kid: Chapter 1


"Is that him?"

Straining for a better view, Bill shook his head. "I think he's taller."

"How do you know? You've only seen him from the shoulders up."

"Just the impression I got," he said with an attempt at a shrug.

Struggling to move, Anton laughed. "Impression from what?"

"His shoulders. They looked pretty wide."

Pushing himself forward, Anton chuckled again. "Anybody can have wide shoulders. It doesn't depend on their height."

"I know. I know," Bill muttered into the crowd. The roar was so loud he could barely hear himself, much less Anton. "I'm glad you do, though," he said as he tried to keep pace. Anton's shoulders were very wide, handy when pushing through a mass of pushy people. "Let's wait and see," he growled as he caught up.

Suddenly, they got separated by a group weaving diagonally through the crowd. "Is this the line for flight 342?" came a shout into Bill's ear.

Bill stopped pushing. "There's a line?"

Looking miffed, the man pushed right through, cutting Bill off even more. Feeling miffed himself, Bill fought his way forward. He was starting to fear the mob as it thrust one way and then another like a tsunami that couldn't make up its mind. "Anton!" he cried.

Raising his hand, Anton stopped and turned around. It wasn’t his height that signaled his presence. Anton was barely five-ten. But there were very few arms like his. "Here!" He waved.

Relieved, Bill let himself smile. Leave it to Anton to rise above the din. Nothing seemed to faze him, not even the hours they'd been waiting as one flight after another had been delayed and the one they were waiting for delayed even more.

What is it this time? he muttered to himself. A volcano? A strike? A fistfight over who got which seat? But the airline didn't say. All they said was delayed.

"There you are!" he said as he caught up.

Reaching out, Anton took Bill's hand. "He's still blond, right?"

"More light brown, I think. Hard to tell online. "

Even without the particulars, Bill was sure he'd recognize him because he looked an awful lot like his grandfather who he'd never forget.

"We'll find him. Don't worry," Anton assured him as he rose up on his tiptoes to see. "You still in touch with Ruth?"

"Oh, yeah." Bill glanced down at his phone.

Before leaving home, they'd made a plan. Anton was to stay in contact with the airline and Bill was to stay in contact with Ruth. It was easy. She called every half-hour.

Then everything changed very fast. The flight's arrival was announced, causing the crowd to surge and soon they all lurched forward with people yelling into phones, yelling at the staff, and yelling at each other as they all prepared for the happy event.

Anton was right up front. It had taken him a while to get there, but in the give and push of the chaotic crowd, his bulk carried weight. Bill, in shape but less thick, was crammed up right behind and he could feel Anton's glutes swell as he raised himself for a better look.

"I don't see him," Anton was saying.

Placing his hand on Anton's shoulders, Bill pushed himself up. "Neither do I."

"Well?" came a tiny voice from Bill's hand.

"Not yet!" he cried into his sweaty phone. "But we'll get him, Ruth! We'll have him in just a few minutes!"

But they didn't. Those few minutes passed along with a few minutes more and the crowd began to disperse only to regroup around the baggage carousel where it surged once again. But at the gate, only a few stragglers remained, among them Bill and Anton.

"What the hell?" Bill whined. Scrolling through his phone, he found the flight details again. The flight had indeed landed at five forty-five, but now it was almost seven. Spying the flight attendants as they swept through the door, he called out. "Anyone left onboard?"

Shaking their heads, they moved on.

Then, he saw him. Sitting on the floor and propped up by a column in a corner, a boy was glued to his phone. Even crouched over, he was tall. The height he got from his father.

"Liam-Pierre?" Bill called out. "I mean, Liam?"

Ruth had warned him. Liam-Pierre was Liam now. The news had saddened Bill a little, but he understood. A double-barreled first name with one of them foreign may not go down well with the other kids at school.

Glancing up, the boy looked surprised, as if he'd forgotten all about them. First sight blew Bill away. With his pale hair and gray eyes, he looked so much like his namesake that Bill could have cried. With a furtive glance, the boy kind of waved. Nothing extravagant. More recognition than glad. Pocketing his phone, he stood up, and grabbed his suitcase and sauntered their way. His face was so neutral under his helmet-like hair that Bill wondered if he was even happy to see them. Or was it jitters? Probably that, he decided. He was nervous, too.

They hadn't seen him in years and seeing him now was daunting. Quickly checking him out, Bill looked for piercings or tattoos. But with an oversized jacket zipped high and baggy jeans that dragged on the floor, nothing metallic or ink-based was visible. In fact, the boy looked almost nondescript, as if he were invisible too. His only ornament was a pair of earbuds, which Bill hoped were off. So, when he caught a glimpse of a tiny mole on his neck, he was reassured. Liam-Pierre had been born with that mark. He may have changed, Bill said to himself, but deep down he was the same. Bill was sure of it.

Anton suffered no such distractions, and reaching out, he grabbed the boy as soon as he could. "So good to see you!" he enthused. "How was your flight?" Not giving Liam time to answer, although he didn't look like he was about to, Anton enthused even more. "Come on!" he said with his hand still on Liam's shoulder. "Let's get you home!"

Now recovered from his bout of déjà vu, Bill jumped into the conversation. "You look so grown up!" he cried over the airport's roar. "The last time we were together you were what? Nine? Ten?" He waited for an answer but none came. "Ten!" Bill confirmed. "We flew over for your birthday! Remember?"

Looking down, Liam kept his gaze well under his mangled bangs, shrugged and then, still without a word, he followed them to the escalator, through the airport lobby, and out the automatic doors.

The drive back was quiet. While Bill navigated out of the parking lot, down the ramp and onto the highway with Anton beside him and Liam in the back, Anton was the only one talking. Animated as always, he varied his attempts to engage the kid from asking him about himself to telling him about the neighborhood that would be his for the summer. But Liam just sat and stared.

Bill knew he was going to hate himself for saying it, but he said it anyway. Looking at himself in the rearview mirror, he could see his scowling face. "Are you even listening?" Sure enough, he hated himself. He sounded just like the grumpy old geezer he was trying not to be.

"Bill!" Anton snapped. "Give the kid a break! He just got here!" And he was about to go on when a mumble emerged from the back.

"Sorry." It was Liam. Removing the earbuds, he stuck them in his pocket.

"No, I'm sorry," Bill said as he veered off the highway onto the road. "Anton's right," he added with a glance Anton's way. "I'm excited, I guess. You must be tired. Did you sleep?"

"A little." That mumble again. Whenever he spoke, the words barely escaped.

"Anyway." As Bill made the turn, Anton took over. "We've got your old room just waiting for you. Do you remember it?"

That old room. First a storeroom, then Pierre's room, and after Pierre's passing, it had served as a part-time office for them and a full-time room for young Liam whenever Ruth and her family came down for a visit. That was before they'd moved to England, which was a long time ago. Six years was a lifetime for someone so young.

"A bit," Liam muttered again.

Frustrated with the monosyllabic replies, Bill let it go. He'd expected more of a connection. But then he taught kids, he reminded himself — or he used to until his retirement a few months ago. He knew how unreadable they could be. "We weren't sure if you'd want to sleep there anymore," he picked up. "I mean, we made it when you were a baby." With each wall a different primary color and a bureau painted pink, they hadn't thought that it may be inappropriate for a boy of fourteen. Now they did. Bill did, anyway.

It had been built right off the kitchen and, when Pierre moved in, he'd made it his own. Many years later that was where he'd died. Rather creepy for a teen, Bill thought. And the fact that it had been subsequently converted into a baby's room may gross Liam out even more. Hoping to dispel any worries, he sought a way to connect. Then, he had it. "Pierre's hat's still there. Do you remember that hat?"

For the first time, Liam made eye contact. "You mean the cowboy hat?"

"Yes!" Bill crowed.

That hat. It wasn't a cowboy hat. It was a fedora. Or had been. Uncomfortable with the elegance, Pierre had rolled up the sides and cut off the trim. In the end, worn and yellowed with age, it looked more rustic than glamorous. After Pierre's passing, they'd kept it on the bookshelf in Liam's room. They thought he may play with it one day.

The hat was a talisman, a good-luck charm, and a connection to the past. From Liam and Pierre to Liam-Pierre, they'd all been through so much. Ruth had chosen her baby's name. Liam was her father, although long since gone, and Pierre had been her...Her what, exactly? Her substitute dad? Her greatest ever grandpa? Her playmate when she was young? All of the above. So, when her baby's birth coincided with Pierre's death, Ruth kept both names alive.

Glad they'd finally connected, if only just, Bill was about to launch into all the plans they had for him when Anton raised his finger to his lips and shot a glance into the back seat. Catching that look, Bill checked out the rearview and smiled. With his eyes closed and head softly bouncing along with the steady rhythm of the tires, Liam was sound asleep.

"Now that's the kid I remember," Bill whispered.

"Yeah," Anton sighed.

Despite the shadow of facial hair just above the upper lip, the baby face shone through. Bill knew that face. So did Anton, and satisfied that all would be well, they sat back and relaxed until Anton, too, fell asleep. Suddenly, Bill felt complete. What better place to be right now than with Anton and Ruthie's child?

Soon they'd be home, their home and Liam's too. At least for the summer. It would be different from the one in London. No school pressure. No mummy and daddy breathing down his neck. A new place. A fresh start. They'd bring him out of his shell.

Changing gears and slowing down as they slid into town, Bill couldn't wait to give Ruth the good news. Liam was fine.

***

It had started with a call. Bill and Ruth always kept in touch. Not every day or even every month, but whenever one felt the need to let off steam, one always called the other. They went way back to when Ruth, herself, had been a child. They'd met when her father, Liam senior, and Bill had fallen in love, and they all eventually became a family. With Pierre as its core.

A lot had happened since then — a death, a separation, a marriage, a birth. But nothing had changed between them. They trusted one another. They'd learned to. If two people can love the same person without jealousy or resentment, they'd end up connected for life.

So when one day she called him from London and asked if he was busy, Bill knew something was up. As usual, Ruth didn't beat around the bush. Liam-Pierre, she'd explained, wasn't himself and hadn't been for a while. She and her partner, Marty, had tried to get him to open up, but the boy, who'd always been so easy to talk to, no longer was. Always a good student, he'd barely passed his year. But meetings with his teachers had yielded no results. All they said was that he was distracted and detached, but Ruth knew that already and wanted more.

Marty said it was just puberty and that things would settle themselves. Ruth was unconvinced. When she suggested a psychiatrist, Marty, usually so supportive, emphatically disagreed. His parents had done the same with him, he'd explained, and the experience had scarred him for life. That's where Bill and Anton had come up.

When she asked if Liam-Pierre could spend the summer with them, Bill had jumped at the chance. Although he trusted Ruth's judgment, he tended to agree with Marty. Remembering his own puberty — the falling balls, the breaking voice, the acne out of control — he thought that all it would take to bring the kid out of his shell was a change of scenery and a few new friends. Anton, too, agreed. Marty was slower to come around. But Ruth got her way. She usually did.

Ruth was a force to be reckoned with. She'd given birth and obtained her doctorate at barely twenty-three and had been hired by one of the city's best engineering firms. When, a few years later, the chance came up to run their London office, she'd taken it. So, with baby and hubby in tow, they left. Only for a while, she'd said at the time, but that while grew. At the same time, Marty had his own career. So, all was good.

For Bill, the move had been difficult, as if a kind of lineage had been broken. Pierre had raised him, and along with Liam, they'd raised Ruth. And when the baby came along, Bill and Anton had been the world's most available babysitters. He never thought he could love a baby as intensely as he did Liam-Pierre. The child was Ruth's and bore the names of people he'd loved. How could he not?

But it was more than that. Liam-Pierre's arrival had coincided with Pierre's death, and while Bill was a devout atheist, he couldn't help but feel that, with the baby nearby, neither Liam nor Pierre were far away. The thought was crazy. He knew that and he'd told only Anton.

"It's only natural," Anton had said at the time. While he'd never known the original Liam, the baby's grandfather, he'd known Pierre very well. He'd been his caregiver until the end.

***

Feeling better as he saw the house come into view, Bill brought himself back to the moment. The past was the past. It was the future that mattered now and the future, tucked up into a fetal position, was out cold in the back seat.

"Hey, sleepyheads!" Bill cried as he pulled into the drive. "We're here!"

Now excited again, he watched as both Anton and Liam shook themselves awake. A new life awaited and not just for the kid. As soon as they entered that house, all their lives would change. He couldn't wait.