The Little Bear

My parents loved me. I knew they did. However, in their quest to remain young and relevant, they failed spectacularly to embrace that I would, inevitably, grow older. At some point, they would have to acknowledge the chubby toddler fat would give way to sprawling, awkward limbs, the dawning muscle of youth, the sinews of which would become the solid flesh of adolescence. From there, we were but the briefest amount of time away from when adolescence would become the teen years. I don't think they thought much about how my growing up would ever impact their business. I did believe that if they could have put me into some amber and frozen me in time, they would have. Without a doubt.

However, at this particular moment, they kept me in a sailor shirt, blue shorts with blue and red plastic ornamental buttons, shaped like boats. And there were the knee socks and the blue canvas sneakers. None of the other boys in my pre-school and kindergarten was wearing anything that came close to what I was forced to wear. None of the other kids in my entire school said a single word about the sailor hat I was forced to don each day, which I doffed as soon as I exited the car at drop off.

Mostly, the kids ignored me.

What am I talking about?

The kids did ignore me.

It was okay, I guess. I flew under the radar at home, and I flew under the radar at school. My parents had a lifestyle brand, and I was background furnishing to their empire. The craziest part of their lifestyle brand, though, was the throuple aspect of their work. Mom and Dad were married to each other, and that was all fine and nice, most of the time. But then when I was three or four, maybe, they added Blondie. Getting their business off the ground was truly something to behold, though. The three of them decided to start small.

First came the breakfast cereal mixes, then the soup mixes. So many mixes. In the beginning our kitchen was like a mad scientist's laboratory. Powder here, there, everywhere. Then when the three of them decided they needed to make the soup mixes more complex, we had I don't know how many food dehydrators in the kitchen. In the strictly powdered soup days, though, there was as much powder on the floor as there was in the bowls, then cellophane bags full of powdered soup mixes. Whatever was on the floor was fair game, and I made the most of it by lying in the detritus of what would be their juggernaut and making snow (?), powder (?) angels. Blondie recorded me on her phone, and posted it to social media. I think someone thought it was cute. Maybe 100,000 people thought it was cute. It brought a lot of attention to their fledgling venture. Viral, I guess.

Their next posts, though, were the catnip. They showed the breakfast mixes served next to toast with the butter melting from the top of the crust, flowing down the nooks and crannies of the plane of the bread like some siren beckoning the world to the most important meal of the day. The blueberries, akin to the lush pillows of a young girl's unkissed lips, rested atop the cereal.

The breakfast post broke the internet. One late night pundit said something about breakfast as food porn, and no wonder people were later and later to work. Who in their right minds could shun breakfast after one viewing of the breakfast cereal that caused everyone to slow the starts of their days.

Then came the posts with the soup mixes. If the cereal posts were food porn, the soups were food erotica. Shortly after the soups went crazy, Mom, Dad, and Blondie couldn't keep up with demand, and they moved out of our cottage kitchen into an industrial kitchen. They became the face of the brand, and I was no more than the faint buzz of a mosquito to their busyness. They bandied me about in their lives like a piece of luggage, or maybe like a luggage tag—something they knew was there and was necessary but not necessarily life-altering either. They didn't forget about me, but I was hardly a focal point in their day-to-day lives. But, since they were the brand, they started making appearances on infomercials, and then the shopping networks, and then, they pivoted. They moved into furniture.

The perfect chair. Each one of them had their own chair. I had a chair. They showed me sitting in the chair once. On their social media, someone said, "Who's the little one?" Someone else said, "Did I know they had a kiddo?" And yet another fan said, "Isn't that the snow angel kid?"

They finally decided to move more fully into their lifestyle brand, and their throuple-dom was born. They engineered the perfect mattress to accommodate three adults. However, they didn't want to alienate their more traditional fans, and they introduced a whole line of children's bedding and mattresses. One night I awoke to a bright light shining into my eyes. I rubbed the crust of sleep from my eyes to see Blondie standing over me, whispering to Mom and Dad, "Oh, my god. Is that not the most precious thing you ever saw?" As confused as I was, I could only yawn, and turn my head back into my pillow.

Before I went back to sleep, Mom asked, "Honey, how are your new bed and pillow?"

I whispered, "It's perfect, Mommy." I heard the three of them sigh before quietly leaving my room.

The tender moment wasn't for just the three (or four) of us, though. It was for the whole world. For the third time, I had rated important enough to make it to their social media. When the whole world saw me, they sighed. They gushed over my abject cuteness. As with anything, though, the bedding made a bigger splash, and I was quickly forgotten. And it was right around the time of the sigh heard round the world that my parents and Blondie found I needed to have a nanny.

Dad found the nanny. Mom was brunette. Blondie was, duh, blonde, and the nanny was a redhead, like some long-dead bombshell named Rita Hayworth. Mom, Dad, and Blondie commented on her pinup girl good looks, but Susan insisted she had a strong background in childcare and early childhood education. None of them called her Susan. They called her Rita. I called her Susan. It would not stand for me to be pulled into their dehumanization of someone by giving them some random name just because it was what they could remember.

It dawned on me one day. Did they remember my name? They'd been calling me 'Baby' for a few years now. Granted, I wasn't yet in preschool, but I don't think I had heard anyone utter a single 'Charlie' in more than a year.

"Susan, do you know my name?" I asked one morning while we were sitting on the veranda, overlooking the orangerie. Blondie insisted we needed to be able to have fresh oranges year round.

"Certainly. Your parents told me your name is 'Baby,' she answered as if she were telling me what time it was.

"Ah, no," I said. "I think they've forgotten my name. The name they gave me when I was a baby."

Susan just looked at me. It was the same look I imagined someone would have if they'd been told the sun was purple. It didn't compute. How on earth could the sun be purple? How could my parents not remember my name? How did something like that happen?

"Well, Ba-, uh, well, what is your name?" she asked.

"I'm Charlie. I was born as Charles, but then they started calling me Charlie, and then when they got busy making cereals and soups, they started calling me Baby, and I don't think they remember what they actually named me," I answered, my eyes downcast.

"Do you want to be called Charlie?" Susan asked.

"I would. I really would," I said, and I think a tear dripped off the curve of my cheek, but it wasn't sexy like the butter sliding down the bread. It was pathetic. And sad.

A few weeks went by, and my birthday passed. Summer was in full swing, and the television show my parents and Blondie had started filming was on hiatus for the season. It was a rare night when the five of us were seated around the table. Mom, Dad, and Blondie were talking about taking a break to Ibiza, and not a soul looked at me. 'I don't belong here,' I thought.

"Am I going, too?" I asked softly, My voice was either too soft, or they just weren't paying me any mind. I think I must have been speaking too softly. I looked down at my plate.

Susan, though, could read the room. She turned to me, commanding my attention, holding out a bowl of fruit salad, and asked, "Charlie, would you like some fruit salad?"

Mom, Dad, and Blondie looked around the table and the room as if there were someone else there they hadn't seen. Then they all looked at me, the three of them turning red. Then I turned red. Susan, none the wiser, put a helping of fruit salad on my plate. Susan didn't put me to bed that night. Mom said, "Baby, I want you to know that Rita is only going to be with us for a couple more weeks, then you'll go to preschool."

Two weeks later, I said goodbye to Susan. Two weeks later, I was whisked off to school. It turned out I was smarter than the average bear and moved into kindergarten, which lasted all day. No one congratulated me. No one noticed me. I made a friend, though. My friend's dad worked for a pest control company.

Jimmy's parents never forgot his name or his birthday. When he brought home papers that weren't even A's his parents said they were proud of him. Jimmy told me all about how his dad could get rid of rodents, bugs, and all the things that creep and crawl and go bump in the night. For show and tell, Jimmy brought in a canning jar with a brown recluse spider in it. I'd seen a few of them around the estate. We didn't just live in a house anymore. We had an orangerie, for crying out loud. We lived on an estate.

I asked the cook for a canning jar. I told her I needed it for a project. "I have to capture some caterpillars or woolly worms for show and tell," I said.

And who knew? Maybe I'd change my mind. Maybe I would catch some caterpillars or woolly worms.

Back by the gardener's shed, though, I found what I was looking for: a brown recluse spider. I kept him safe and fed. Then I found two more canning jars and two more brown recluse spiders. I had exactly what I needed.

It was on a Saturday, one of those Saturdays where there was the smell of decaying leaves floating on the breeze. One of those days where the sun gave the most benevolent glow to to the cheeks. Mom, Dad, and Blondie were somewhere filming content for their social media. I took the steps, quietly, to their bedroom suite. My three canning jars tucked carefully into my knapsack. I opened each canning jar and allowed my little friends to find their ways out of the jars to nestle themselves into the comfort of the bedding designed by my mother. I bid them farewell and tucked the comforter and blankets back under the pillows. Blondie had a way of finding any imperfection, which meant I had to be incredibly precise in re-making the bed.

In the morning, the housekeeper came for me, saying, "Your Mama, Papa, and Blondie aren't feeling well this morning. I've packed a bag for you. You're going to stay with your grandparents while they rest and recuperate." I kept my crossed fingers under my pillow.

I yawned and leaned into my cuteness. "Are they all right?" I asked.

"I'm sure they'll be fine in a couple days. They probably just need rest and relaxation. I don't think I've ever seen anyone work as hard as they do," the housekeeper said.

"Okay. I'll get dressed and brush my teeth and be downstairs in a jiffy." Oh, my god, I sounded like I was eighty-five years old. I put on another one of the stupid sailor shirts and the awful shorts, knee socks, and sneakers. My grandparents were waiting for me.

Grandpa said, "Ursula, can't we take him to get some clothes that don't make him look like a baby?"

Grandma answered, "Of course, we can, Paddy." She scooped me into her arms. "Charlie, do you have your things ready?"

"For god's sakes, Ursula, I hope he doesn't. Then we can buy all new stuff for him," Grandpa bellowed.

"Well, if he has a bag packed, we can always burn what's in it, right?" Grandma giggled, actually giggled. "We can make s'mores over his burning clothes."

"Charlie," Grandpa asked, bending down to my level, "tell me something. Do you pick out those clothes?"

I shook my head—vigorously.

"Didn't think so," he said.

We left the estate. I was with Grandma and Grandpa for several days before the call came in. Mom, Dad, and Blondie had languished in their bed. They didn't seek medical care. Their love would see them through whatever the mysterious ailment was. They perished, all three of them.

Social media captured me, in a tailored suit, holding fast to my grandparents' hands, watching as the caskets were lowered into the ground. The headlines screamed, "Baby Bear inherits Goldilocks and the Three Bears food, furniture, furnishings, lifestyle brand empire."

Those darn spiders.