The Otter and The Fox

He opened his office in a tiny house on Seaview Avenue, out near Shilshole marina, and the tiny house sat in what was now in a commercially zoned district and had, for a while, been a bicycle shop. The office was cold and damp, sitting as it was just yards from the rocky shoreline, of he kept a wood stove going sometimes almost year round, and he loved the juxtaposition of the damp and the dry. On on the strength of all his earlier commissions at the firm he'd built a following, and a cult like following blossomed after an article appeared in a nationally circulated magazine dedicated to architecture and interior design came out. A local photographer who expressed a deep admiration for his work asked to shoot his favorite projects and co-produce a book with him if he'd write a bit about each. After the book came out, clients came to him from as far away as Montana and Colorado, and as the economy improved after the war wound down his business took off.

It wasn't too many years later that one of the partners at the old firm came by looking for work, but by then Tracy was back and she was on his payroll, who along with a secretary-bookkeeper was all he could afford. But that was the nature of the business, and everyone knew it. Business was cyclical and architects lived to prosper during good times but had to be ready to hunker down when things slowed.

He still lived on a boat, but he had upgraded to a 43 foot Nauticat, having a small office with a drafting table installed as she was being built in Finland. There was more room now for people and things but he continued to lead a spare life, and he was really a rather frugal person.Tracy lived a few slips away but she understood that C. Llewelyn Sumner had decided long ago that his would be a celibate's life. He saw life through his parent's eyes, his father's most of all, and what he saw was endless cycles of violence and suffering. And then one night he told Tracy he couldn't stand the idea of bringing children into such a world, and he told her about all those murders under the noonday sun in Austin and how there really weren't any answers to be had for those who sought comfort in knowledge. Human beings could be lovely people, he said, but there was pointless savagery lurking just under their skin.

"What about you?" she asked him one night as they took their long evening walk on a nearby beach. "Would you wish now that your parents had never conceived you? That you'd never been born or lived to take a single breath?"

And he had to think about that one for a minute.

"You know...I'm here. I'm alive, and I can appreciate that for what it is. The universe came together in a moment and made me, and one day I'll go back into the universe. What's different is that somehow, for some reason I'm aware of the universe, aware of existing, and it's a beautiful thing to be alive, to be cognizant of beauty and to create beautiful things, but when I look around I see so many terrible things. It's hard to find a balance between the two. So hard that sometimes I feel any kind of balance is impossible."

"And you do know you didn't answer my question, right?"

"I'm here. I like being alive. So no, I wouldn't wish that. I'm glad they decided to have a child."

"And you don't think a child of your would feel the same way?"

"That's hard to say, Tracy. The world I see coming doesn't look like this one."

"Because you're a pessimist?"

"No, I'm not sure that I am, not here in this moment, anyway. But the future looks grim to me."

"What do you think the future looked like to your parents?"

"Limitless," C. Llewelyn Sumner said. "Endless, bright possibilities."

"Chuck, you're so full of shit."

He chuckled at her sarcasm. "I learned it all from you, kid."

"Gee, thanks," she sighed. They walked further from the marina on drying sand, and as the tide went out more and more sand appeared. "Maybe you should get a dog. Just go down to the pound and pick one, maybe one they're getting ready to put down. You know, save a life, make a new friend?"

"What brought that on?"

"Oh, just look at this beach! Imagine throwing a tennis ball and letting a dog run after it. Imagine the joy, the companionship."

"But you're not talking about a dog, Tracy. You're talking about having a baby, about the joy and companionship having a baby would bring to your life."

She nodded. "I know," she whispered. "I've always wanted to have a baby with you. From the first time I laid eyes on you."

"That explains it!" he snarked.

"Yup, sure does."

"So? Where do we stand?" he sighed.

"Give me a baby, Chuck. Marry me if you want, or don't. I won't make any demands on you one way or the other. I'd just like to have a part of you, ya know?"

"It's not right to bring a kid into the world without a father."

"What's right or wrong about it, Chuck? If you want to be a father let's do it that way. If you don't, let me do it the other way, the right way or the wrong."

"Could I at least think about it, or did you just want to drop trou right here and do it right here on the beach?"

So of course she had to sing a few bars of Why Don't We Do It In The Road and that made him smile a little, but he was kind of being serious, too.

"Right now, you mean?" she asked. "Right here, right now?"

"Isn't that what you want, Trace?"

She nodded. "Yeah, but what about you?"

"I'd like you to be happy, Trace. Maybe more than anything else in the world."

She took his hand and they turned to walk back to the marina, but it was the way he said it that hit home. The whole 'I'd like you to be happy' thing meant there was nothing in the world that could make him happy, but that didn't matter, not really.

She'd been right all the time about him, too. He didn't know the first thing about making love. No one had ever taught him a thing about it and he'd never done anything about it. Maybe he'd been with someone before and maybe he hadn't; she didn't want to know because that didn't matter at all. Not now.

She continued to work at his office for a month or so, but then one day she came in and said she was off to Arkansas to work for a firm there, and almost without a word she packed up her things and she came up to him after her little car was loaded and she kissed him once, rubbed his cheek with her open hand while she looked him in the eye, and then she was gone.

Well and truly gone. And he knew it just then, that he'd never see her again. He could feel it, a dull pain somewhere smack dab in the middle of nowhere. When he went down to the marina that night after work her little sailboat was still there, but now there was a For Sale sign on it, and a broker's number to call if interested. He sighed as he walked over to his boat and once he was inside he looked around and for the first time in his life he couldn't hear a thing. He was surrounded by pure silence for the first time in forever and he couldn't even hear his beating heart and everything was suddenly so unnerving and he didn't know what to do now.

And it was like that after she left. Silence, everywhere.

Clients came and he listened. He sat at his drafting table and he turned out one miracle of design after another. Architects came from Germany and Holland and Japan to study his designs, and two more monographs dedicated to his work were published -- one in German and the other in Japanese. He started to dress better, better suited to his station in life, anyway, and as the years passed draftsmen came and studied with him for a year or two and then they moved on but there was never another Tracy.

He went to his father's funeral, then his mother's, and he inherited some money after the dust settled and he decided to build a house of his own across the sound near Port Townsend. He was beginning to slow down now, and his hands were bothering him more and more. He decided to keep his little office down by the water going for another year or two, but time had taken a toll. He was tired of the grind. Of selling his work, of trying to convince people that he was the best architect for their needs.

And one morning he looked in the mirror and he saw his father looking back at him. Or someone who looked like his father. "But that someone is me," he realized, and for some reason that made him uncomfortable.

Because he knew his father had been incapable of love. And once he'd as much as said so. He didn't believe in it, he said. It was all about the heat of the moment, just like in war, but this thing called love was about creation, not destruction, and so we'd simply dressed up our animal instincts along the way, dressed them to suit the heat of the moment. And as he looked at the old men in his mirror he thought then that his father had probably been right all along. There was no such thing as love...there couldn't be, because love just didn't make any sense at all.

'But,' he wondered just then, 'did my life really make sense without love?'

'What about that girl in Austin?' he recalled. 'I watched her die. I saw her death. I reached out that door and pulled her to safety, and I held her while she died. Did she ever love anyone? Did she even get the chance to love anyone?'

And he reached into the mirror, pulled the old man he saw in there closer until he could really look into his eyes.

"Who are you, old man? Do I know you? Did I ever really know you?"

They turned away from each other just then, and they walked away in callous disregard -- one for the other.

Soon enough he was spending more and more time across the sound over in Port Townsend. His new house had been a success, a complete statement of everything he'd ever considered important as an architect. He loved the spaces within, loved the way he managed to bring the outside inside. He loved the way the house blended in to the surrounding forests and mountains. He loved everything about his design, and about the reality his vision had brought to life.

And one day, when he was over at his tiny old office he was sitting at his drafting table after talking to a new, well a prospectively new client, when two teenagers came in the door, the two teenagers followed by an older gentleman -- who somehow, for some reason, seemed a bit familiar.

Then he recognized the older man. He was Tracy's older brother.

And then he looked at the teenagers. Twins, a boy and a girl.

And as they walked up to him his mouth began to feel dry, his heart to beat a little faster.

"May I help you?" he asked them.

"We need your help," the older man said.

"Indeed? How may I help you?"

"You designed a house years ago for my parents, a very large place out on one of the Sucia Islands."

"Oh yes, the Clarendon house. Of course."

But then he realized something he'd missed once upon a time. Something important.

Tracy. Her name. Was Tracy Clarendon.

"The house burned down over the winter. No one was there, no one was hurt, but my dad is gone now and my mother wants to rebuild the house."

"I see," C. Llewelyn Sumner said. "So, how can I be of service?"

"Mother would like you to come up and see if the site needs work, if the foundation can be reused, and the contractor we'll be using needs several sets of the original plans. She'd like you to supervise the work again, if that's alright with you."

"You're Tracy's brother, aren't you?" C. Llewelyn Sumner said, out of the blue.

The man looked away for a moment, then he stepped forward and held out his hand. "Yes. Yes I am. I didn't think you'd remember me. I'm Forbes, by the way."

"Yes, yes, of course I remember," C. Llewelyn Sumner said as he shook the man's hand. "How nice to see you again."

"Yes. Nice."

"And these are your children, I take it?"

And Forbes Clarendon shook his head just a little as he searched for the words he'd rehearsed on the drive down. "No, sir. They're yours."

And yes, there was some kind of recognition between all concerned inside this moment. C. Llewelyn Sumner knew that what Tracy's brother had said was true. When he looked at the boy he saw the same eyes he'd seen in a mirror not so long ago.

"Yes, I think I knew that," he said to the boy. "And how is your mother?"

Forbes cleared his throat then, and he looked away once again before he decided to answer the question. "She passed away last year. Cancer. The kids have been staying with me since you the past year and a half." He paused for a moment, then continued. "It's what she wanted."

"Understandable," C. Llewelyn Sumner said, and to him perhaps it really was. "The last I heard she'd moved to Arkansas."

Forbes Clarendon shook his head. "No. She went out to the island."

"So she...never left?"

Again, Forbes simply shook his head.

"Then I'm a little confused," Sumner said. "Why now?"

"I wanted to meet you," the teenaged boy said. "I wanted to know who my father was."

"Alright. So, what would you like to know?"

"Why didn't you want us?" his daughter asked.

And C. Llewelyn Sumner looked away, looked for just the right words he needed to address the moment. "When your mother left," he began, "she didn't tell me she was pregnant. She simply told me she'd found a better job in Arkansas and then, well, she just left..."

"So...you never knew?"

"About you?" Sumner said to his children. "No, I'm afraid today is the first I've heard about you."

"That's not exactly what Mom said," the girl, his daughter, said. "She..."

"I think your mother probably wanted to protect me," C. Llewelyn Sumner said, "from you. From what she thought was my indifference. And I suppose, in a way, she may have been thinking about protecting you."

"So...what do you feel right now?" his daughter asked.

"Confused. Maybe a little hollow inside, like I've missed out on so many things, and, well, I think I've lost my bearings a little. And I'm afraid I feel a little sorry for you mother. She never trusted my feelings, never trusted me enough to come and tell me what she had done."

"I understand," Forbes said, his voice gentle and full of understanding, "this must all come as quite a surprise..."

"Again, I'm simply confused. If Tracy wanted you isolated from me," he said to his children, "why the change of heart?"

"Because I can't take care of them any longer," Forbes said, "and Mother is no longer in a position to help?"

C. Llewelyn Sumner shook his head. "Okay. So. What are you asking?"

"We wanted to ask and see if you could take them now," Forbes said.

"I see. What about the house on the island?"

"As I said, Mother would like you to rebuild it."

"Is she not well?"

"Alzheimer's," Forbes whispered. "But it's early stage."

"I see," Sumner sighed, now knowing the house was probably a ruse. "Well then, perhaps the four of us should go have a bite to eat and talk about all this."

"Talk about what?" he son said. "Either you want us or you don't!"

"I think I know how you feel," C. Llewelyn Sumner nodded. "And, well, maybe it's as simple as you say, but first I'd like to know what you want. I'd like to know how both of you feel about all this, because if moving in with me is the last thing in the world you want..."

"This isn't their decision," Forbes stated, interrupting Sumner. "Look. I've lost my job. I'm about to lose my house -- and I simply won't be able to take care of them any longer. And with the house on the island gone...?"

"So, if you'll pardon my asking," Sumner said to Forbes, "what are your plans?"

Tracy's brother shrugged. "I don't know. I'm kind of at the end of my rope, if you know what I mean."

"Well then, as I've not eaten since breakfast I'm rather hungry, so I hope you'll be able to join me," Sumner said as he moved towards the front door. "I usually just hop across the street to the Boathouse, if that's alright with you?"

After the short walk they were all were taken out to the skinny little patio right over the water and it was still rather sunny and warm, so after everyone was seated he looked over at the marina and he could just about see the slip where these two children had been conceived, and in his mind's eye he felt Tracy walking beside him on the beach. Then he felt the moment when things had turned serious between them, too, and he remembered the moment with a smile.

He shook himself back into the present and turned his smile at Forbes. "So, what have you been doing to make a living?"

"I worked at Boeing," he said -- and that was really all he needed to say. Working at Boeing was like living on the flanks of an active volcano...you just never knew when...only that it would.

"So no retirement, just severance?"

"That's right."

"Can you do electrical work?"

Forbes nodded. "Yeah, sure."

"I know a couple of contractors that're hiring, if you're interested."

"I appreciate it, but I couldn't commute from Bellingham..."

"Of course not." Sumner turned to his children then. "You know, someone is going to have to make some introductions. Assuming, of course, you have names..."

"I'm Charles," the boy said grumpily.

"Elizabeth," the girl said, extending her right hand with a smile.

Sumner sighed. "Okay, so a handshake it is. And I'm assuming you're 17 years old now? And that makes you, what, getting ready to start your senior year?"

"Yeah," Charles said. "And that means I'm not going to be able to play football this year..."

"Oh?" Sumner said. "Why's that?"

"Weren't you listening? Newsflash, pops, but we're losing our home."

Sumner looked at Forbes. "What's the situation with the house?"

"I'm underwater on three months and back taxes. About fifteen large, I reckon."

"And your mom can't help?"

"She can't, and her guardian won't authorize it."

"So, Charles, I think I know where you stand, but Elizabeth, what about you? Where would like to stay?"

She shook her head. "Uh, I must've missed something, but, well, what's the choice here?"

Sumner shrugged. "Seems pretty simple to me. You guys can either come and stay with me at my place over in Port Townsend or I can see if your Uncle's situation is reparable. If it is then I assume you could stay there and finish out high school where you're at."

"Look," Forbes interrupted, "I can't ask you to do that..."

"And you haven't, have you. As far as I can tell, I've contributed exactly nothing to my children's lives..."

"What would you like?" Elizabeth blurted out.

"Well, thank you for asking, Elizabeth. Frankly, I'd like to get to know you both, and also I'd be more than happy to do what I can to help you along your way. If that means helping out your uncle then so be it. But right now I'm most concerned about what would make you happiest."

And Elizabeth turned to her brother then. "See. I told you he'd be like this," she whispered.

"Charles?" Sumner asked. "What about you? What about next year?"

"I'm trying for a scholarship at UW."

"Football? What, wide receiver or DB?"

"Both, I think."

"Forbes, what do you think? Has he got a shot?"

"Yes, he pretty good, and his coaches think so too."

"Okay, so football is a priority," Sumner said, and Charles visibly relaxed. "Elizabeth? That leaves you? What do you want to do?"

She looked at her brother then, and her uncle, then she sighed. "I'd like to know you better. I'd like to live with you next year."

Charles stiffened again.

Sumner leaned back in his chair and nodded. "Forbes? Scribble down the address of the house, would you? I've got to go make a call, if you'll excuse me for a moment." When he had the address he went to the desk and called his attorney, to her what he had in mind and to work out the numbers, then he went back to the table -- just as their meals came.

"So, Elizabeth, what about you? College in the cards for you?"

She nodded. "Yes, then veterinary medicine."

"Oh?"

"She been into animals her whole life," Forbes added. "She's been..."