Ingrid's Reminiscence II: Oh Brother

Ivory didn’t want to get my hopes up too soon and decided to wait until all the paperwork was finished before telling me I was going to have a brother. On the surface it sounded great, being an only child under normal circumstances can be lonely enough let alone when your Dad passed away, you have a bitch of a cousin, and an inattentive Mom

Naturally when we met it wasn't anything how I imagined in my head. The only tidbits of information Ivory gave me was that he was 10 and a little ‘special’. Without much to go off of my mouth was agape when we met. I was well over a full foot taller than him and if Ivory hadn't told me prior I would've thought he was five. As you can imagine finesse wasn't my strongest attribute and I hounded him for a good hour trying to figure out why he was so small. I didn't know anything about his shrinking disease and I chalked it up to him just being an abnormally short child.

Beyond the initial shock of his size, we got along quite well and believe it or not Tanner was actually a pretty sporty kid like me back then and we used to compete at everything. I mean 'compete' very loosely since that'd assume it was competitive, because he wasn't anywhere near as physically blessed as me I was always able to beat him with zero difficulty. Even if it wasn't the best way to improve my skills it was nice to have a playmate at home and it was all healthy sportsmanship at the time.

For as well as things went with Tanner it was more of the same with Ivory and ironically I was still the red-headed stepchild so to speak. Tanner, Tanner, Tanner this, Tanner that, it never ended with her. The only time I ever received a modicum of her full focus was when she was lecturing me about him. I didn't get it, what the heck made him so special? I’m an honor roll student, best athlete on my team, with enough medals and trophies to fill a mantle, and then you have him who’s only discerning quality was that he was a runt? Was I jealous and bitter? Hell freaking yes, and at that point it wasn’t about healthy sportsmanship anymore. I had a point to prove, my superiority.

“Hey Tanner up for a game of basketball, first one to ten points wins.” For a sport that favored the vertically inclined it should've been a foregone conclusion that I was setting him up for failure. His eyes wavered up my taller frame until he met my self-assured smirk. I can imagine the only reasons he accepted was to salvage whatever male bravado a shrimp like him could have and the ever so slim hope that he'd catch me having an off day.

“Fine, you're on.” He declared in his best impression of a confident competitor. I had to admit if I was in his shoes I wouldn't have been so keen accepting such an uphill battle, not that I cared at the time it was another item off my checklist to say I beat him at and it went about as well as you'd think it go.

“Come on Teeny Tanner, you're gonna have to reach for it!” I taunted holding the ball over my head. Every now and again I lowered it within his range only to yank it away when he tried to make a steal for it. It was tasteless and unnecessary on my part but I couldn’t help myself, it was in in those moments where I was dominating him that I felt validated.

Holding in my laughter was impossible as I saw him spread his arms out in a poor attempt to block me. That would've been fine if our heights were anywhere near comparable, but in our case it looked plain silly and I was able to shoot the ball right over his head and into the basket without even needing to jump.

“Hm, what's the total now?” I knew the score, I only wanted to hear him say it.

“. . . Nine to nothing.” Tanner reluctantly admitted. He was sweating buckets and trying to find his air, I almost felt pity for how hard he had to try to keep up with me who was barely putting forth any effort.

“Want to just give up?” I offered, it was a rare moment of mercy on my behalf to spare him the shame of losing ten to zero.

“No!” Unlike before where he sounded like he was trying to convince himself that he had a fighting chance, he was firm and unyielding in accepting the out I gave him.

“Don’t say I didn't give you a choice.” I boasted as I tossed the ball to Tanner. He slowly dribbled it towards me. He was still trying figure out the best way to get past me, it was kind of cute how in the face of a hopeless situation he still played like he still had a shot at winning. I put up a flimsy guard with my arms lazily held out, I was almost positive he didn’t have the energy left to get by me. That cockiness though proved to be my downfall and he suddenly found his second wind managing to duck underneath my arm for a layup against the rim of the basket.

“Score one for me.” Tanner smiled, proud of the fact he managed one measly point. I’m sure in his mind that was incredible feat.

The score was still lopsided in my favor but I was floored nonetheless and furious that I allowed myself to get so careless; him scoring a single point in my mind was almost the equivalent of losing altogether. I wasn't going to give him an opportunity to revel in his newfound confidence and I quickly took the ball back in my possession.

Tanner’s smile disappeared as fast as it came once he saw my whole posture change. He opened up his arms again to guard, but this time I straight up rushed him. To his credit he tried his best to stick close to me, but he was too small to contain me and I used my body to bump him out of the way and with the significant disparity in our size he fell straight to the ground. With the path being clear I made another easy shot at the basket for another tally in the victory column.

“I win.” I haughtily declared, smiling down at Tanner. That was always the story, I was too big, too strong, too fast, I won every time, and at the time that's all that mattered.

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As pessimistic as it sounded Julie expected at some point an accident with Tanner was bound to occur, especially with as small as he got. She thought it'd most likely spawn from a moment of carelessness, but as Ivory explained to her over the phone she hardly believed what she was hearing and knew they had to talk in person. First thing in the morning at 9:00 a.m. she came over and met with Ivory and Marcelle in the dining room to get a clearer picture on what happened.

Pen and clipboard ready she started to go over what she knew. “ So it seems to be pretty unanimous that Ingrid was intoxicated when everything transpired, yes?”

“ Yes.” Ivory impatiently answered, this meeting seeming more like a nuisance to her than anything else. “ Might I ask why you wanted to talk with us alone? Why can't Tanner be present?”

“ Because it would be insensitive to press Tanner on what happened after a dramatic event.” Julie answered unfettered by Ivory's accusatory tone. “ Moving on, since you're both positive Ingrid was drinking it's only logical to speculate where she could have gotten alcohol from being that she's underage.”

“ You think she got it from me?” Ivory responded to Julie's statement that wasn't aimed at anyone.

“ I didn't say that, I just think it's a fair question that needs to be addressed.”

“ You're thinking that I'm responsible for this and want to be sure I'm not abusing him, that's the only reason you didn't-”

“ Maybe Ingrid got a friend to buy it for her, people at my university do it all the time.” Marcelle intercepted before Ivory got too deep in her tirade.

Julie ignored Ivory's comments and gave some brief thought to Marcelle's speculation. “ A fair point” She took another look at her notes. “ After that you came into the room first to see Tanner in Ingrid's fist and you tried to convince her to stop.” As Julie recapped the events Ivory swayed back and forth in her chair and clutched the cloth of the table as if hearing the sequence of events was causing her physical discomfort. Julie continued. “ Hearing the commotion, you came upstairs Ivory and at the sight you told Ingrid to let Tanner go and she took your words quite . .literally.”

By the time the recall was complete Ivory had a death grip on the table cloth wishing she could wipe those horrible moments out of her mind forever. With a heavy exhale she nodded in confirmation. “ Right.”

Julie clicked her pen a couple of times as she thought. “ To no surprise Ingrid isn't in any shape to be talking right now and I can only imagine how Tanner feels about it all. But based off what I know I think. .”

“ You think?” Ivory asked.

Given the aggressive stance she's taken so far Julie knew Ivory would not like what she had to say next. “I think it's best for Tanner to spend a few days away.”

Ivory's brain processed that sentence like a calculator being asked to divide by zero. “ I knew it you just wanted to take him away.”

“ Ivory-”

Ivory's volume continued to rise “ I've raised and nurtured him for the last six years!”

“ Ivor-”

“ He's right where he needs to be, right here with me!-”

“ Tanner could've died.” Julie said.

Even without raising her voice to match the incoherent mother Julie's words cut with the precision of a scalpel. The lack of any inflection in her tone made the icy truth of her statement cut deeper and the cold reality that Ivory didn't want to acknowledge was brought right to her face “ . .I know.” She lowly stated, trying to clasp her palms together to keep them from shaking.

Julie sighed after coming off harsher than she wanted to, but the ramifications of what happened couldn't be understated. “I get it, you think of him as your own flesh and blood and as much as I want to believe this was all some freak accident, this isn't something I can ignore and sweep underneath the rug. Who knows, maybe some separation will do everyone some good, at least until I can get the rest of the story.”

“ . . . Okay.” Ivory replied after a long delay to get her breathing and twitching under control enough to have a normal conversation again. “I take it he's staying over at the Levey's?”

Julie confirmed with a nod prompting another exhale from Ivory. Once her initial probationary period with Tanner ended, they allowed her to sign to have another legal guardian for Tanner until in the event something happened to her for the sake of keeping him out of the foster system. She never thought it would come to that, but it was never a bad thing to have a contingency plan. The Levey's were nice and trustworthy people, but were the epitome of everything boisterous and energetic. A triple helping of those attributes were passed along to their eldest daughter Blake.

“I don’t mean to spring this up on you so suddenly, but we need to do this post-haste. I called them ahead of time to explain that I needed them on standby, I'll let them know to expect him by the afternoon. If you need to take a minute to say something to Tanner before he goes now’s the time to do it.” Everything beyond Tanner having to be away from her was going in one ear and out the other and Julie may as well have been talking to a hollow shell of Ivory. She waited to see if Ivory would have any response to what was said to her.

Without a word spoken Ivory excused herself from her chair and headed upstairs.