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Beauregard
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Dear friends,
Sometimes we meet very special people, who meana lot to us. Sometimes those people get hurt. And sometimes we just don't know what to say to them...
I wrote this story for my good friend Vibs.
If you do not have the song, "Just One person" please e-mail me, beauregard97@gmail.com , and ask for a copy before you read the story. For those who have it, listen to it before you begin.
Beauregard
__
This story is dedicated to Vibs by realy good friend and real/fake twin-sister...and to any person in the world who has been through what Robin is going through...
Kermit grabbed the green telephone on the second ring. “Hi ho, Kermit the Frog here.”
“Thank goodness you’re there.”
“Jimmy?” Kermit moved the telephone receiver from one hand to the other. He put the coffee mug down on the table. “Jimmy, what’s wrong?”
“Have you seen Robin?”
Kermit glanced around the backstage area as though Robin could have hidden there without his noticing. “No,” he said. “Why? Where is he?”
“Kermit, Robin ran away.”
As soon as his brother finished speaking, Kermit dropped the phone back, and gulped the last of his coffee, cold now. He checked everything was in place backstage for the night’s performance, and slipped his arms into a light green summer coat. He locked the stage door, put the key into his pocket. He turned up the collar of his coat against the drizzling rain.
Where was Robin now? What could have made him run like that…?
Kermit started up the shadowy alleyway. He stepped aside to pass a trash-bin. The rain pooled on the sidewalk, and Kermit’s feet were damp. It reminded him of the swamp. Long evenings with his friends Croaker, and Goggles. And then with Jimmy when he grew up a little. How did Jimmy come to be the one with kids already?
Kermit smiled as he thought of Piggy and the rumours she spread through the glossy-mags. Maybe he’d have kids of his own one-day. A shadow across the street moved. Kermit stopped. “Hello?”
There shouldn’t be anyone down here. This road only led to the theatre. “Who’s there?”
Kermit heard a sniff, a stifled sob.
He crossed the road in quick strides, and saw him there. His nephew, bunched in a ball against the wall. Kermit crouched down, touching Robin’s shoulder.
“Go away,” Robin said.
“Robin. Robin, what’s wrong?”
Robin peered through his folded arms. “I don’t want to speak to you. Or anyone. Just leave me alone, alright?”
Kermit straightened up. “Alright, Robin. I’m going to just cross over the street here.” He walked to the other side, and leant against the graffiti covered wall. He noticed a crude drawing of Gonzo, and frowned. He looked back to Robin.
Robin lifted his head. “I told you to go.”
Kermit smiled sadly. “But I don’t want to go,” he said. “I want to stay here. And help you.”
“I don’t need help.”
“Yes you do Robin. Everyone needs help. And when something bad happens, and we don’t want to talk to anyone…that’s when we need help the most.”
Kermit folded his coat over in his hands. Robin sat low in the chair behind Kermit’s desk. He wrapped his hands around a mug of steaming hot chocolate. He was shivering from the cold, bunched inside his jacket.
Kermit put the coat down on his desk. He sat on the dressing-room steps. “Is that nice?”
Robin shrugged.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Kermit asked.
Robin shrugged again. He sipped hot chocolate.
Kermit rested his elbows on his knees, leant forward. He waited to see if Robin would say any more, then, “Robin, what’s the matter?”
He looked up, his big eyes, sad. “They’re gone, uncle Kermit. It’s all over.”
Kermit watched him finish his drink, set aside the cup, stand up. “Where are you going?” Kermit asked.
Robin shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t care. I don’t know. Uncle Kermit, the whole world…I mean, the whole world and everything in it has fallen apart today.”
Kermit thought for a moment. He smiled very slightly, and patted the step beside him. “The theatre hasn’t fallen apart,” he said. “I haven’t fallen.”
Robin turned away. “It’s not that, it’s just….” He trailed off.
“Sit here with me.” Kermit moved over to make room. “It’s halfway down the stairs, remember.”
Robin sighed, tried to smile. He climbed up the steps. “Uncle Kermit…”
“Yes, Robin?”
“They’re gunna be divorced.”
Kermit stopped. He stopped thinking. He stopped breathing. He could almost feel his heart slowing. Jimmy and Leaper were parting? Poor Robin…oh Robin, Robin. Kermit took a breath. He would be strong. Robin needed him now.
He took Robin’s hand in his. They sat in silence then.
The phone rang.
Kermit answered it. “Hi Ho, Kermit- Hello Jimmy.” He looked at Robin.
Robin shook his head, eyes wide.
“You already rang and asked that, Jimmy,” Kermit said.
Robin moved to the edge of the step near the door. He was ready to run. Already running in his mind. He could be through the door in one frog-jump. Before Kermit would have time to put down the phone, he’d be sprinting up the road. He’d hide in the old trashcan until Kermit passed. He could do it, he would.
“I hadn’t seen him the first time, Jimmy,” Kermit was saying. “And that was…” He looked at the clock. “Seven minutes ago.”
Robin’s chin wobbled, a smile began to form. Why hadn’t Kermit said, “He’s here. At the theatre. Yeah, I’ll keep him here while you come and get him.” Robin smiled a little.
“Yeah, I’ll keep in touch. Bye.”
They sat together in the Green-Room, a dressing room used by all the cast. There were clothes on hangers scattered about, draped across the dressing tables, lounging on chair backs. One light bulb in the string around the mirror had broken. Kermit made a note to replace it. A cannon and a pyramid of empty Coke cans were by one wall.
Robin sat cross-legged on the table. He rested his chin in his hands. Kermit was in a chair, his hand on the edge of the table. “What happened?” Kermit asked.
“It happened too quickly,” Robin said. “It was over so fast.” He pulled a pink flat stone out of his jacket pocket, and fingered it. The Fraggle Pebble was the one thing he’d taken with him when he ran. Robin had run from the room, holding back tears. His feet thudded up the stairs to his bedroom. He threw himself onto his soft bed, buried his head below the duvet. This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t right. And he’d run then, caught up his jacket from the bed, and the Fraggle pebble from on top of his chest of drawers. Outside the cold air hit him like a slap in the face. It wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t a nightmare. His breathing had started to get difficult, like sobbing, but without the sobs. Robin turned the pebble over and over in his fingers.
“They called me,” Robin said. “From downstairs. I was cleaning my scout badge. With, um, with polish, and stuff, and a duster. And making it shiny. I could almost see my face in it, Uncle Kermit. It was that shiny. And I thought, ‘Mrs Appleby will be proud.” And then, they called me. And I said, just coming. And they said I should come quickly. And I said I was. And I was, uncle Kermit. I just put the badge away in the box, the shoebox you gave me with the wrapping paper on, and, and the cotton wool inside to keep things safe. Special things. And I went down the stairs one by one. Something inside me just said, I know what’s happening, then. I knew it already. I though, I don’t want to go in there. If I turn around now, I could pretend I didn’t hear them…except I couldn’t.”
“Robin,” Kermit said gently. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
Robin looked away to his reflection in the mirror. What a difference a day can make. Yesterday he was in this same place, dressing for his part in the Camelot sketch. A shiny visor on his head, sword in hand. And Sweetums picking him up in a black-leather gloved hand. “Let’s go little fella.”
Robin blinked away the solitary tear. “No. I want to tell you, uncle Kermit.”
“I’m ready to listen.”
“Uncle Kermit,” Robin said.
“Yes, Robin?”
“Why?”
“Why what Robin?”
“Why all of it? Why me? Why my family? Koko at school, his parents, I mean…”
Kermit moved his arm closer around Robin. “I know what you mean, Robin,” he said. “And, Robin, sometimes Why is a question we cant answer, at least not yet.”
“But Koko’s parents, his dad Croaker, his mum. They aren’t even as nice as my parents. I thought, I mean. Sure, they are nice. But my dad, he, does little things. Dad irons my scout-suit, even my necktie. He tucks me into bed. He…comes to me performances, every night. He…”
“Robin,” Kermit said. “Robin, he doesn’t love you any less.”
“He does. He must. Why else would they do this to me? Uncle Kermit, I’m not even me any more. I’m not part of a family. I’m not Robin, I’m a child of divorced parents, child from a broken home, a problem child. I’m not Robin any more, Uncle Kermit. I’m not me.” He started crying again then. The tears ran down his chin.
Kermit picked up a handkerchief from the table. He noticed it was the one they had used as a prop in the shooting of Muppet’s Take Manhattan. The one Miss Piggy had thrown to him while shouting good-bye. He held it in his fingers for a moment, then touched the tears away from Robin’s face.
“I love you Robin.”
“I love you too uncle Kermit.”
“Robin,” Kermit said. He took Robin’s hand in his. Robin looked up into his face, and tried to smile through the sadness.
“Yes, uncle Kermit?”
Kermit gazed down at the tiny hand clinging to his own. He closed his fingers around it. “Robin, you asked why. Why has this happened? But, Robin, the fact is, sometimes why is the only question that defies an answer.”
Robin looked down at the floor. Kermit continued. “I left the swamp, when I was just very young, young like you,” he said, speaking softly, slowly. “I couldn’t answer that question. That why. I ask myself even now, over and over. Why did I do it? And there is no answer, Robin. Why is a part of our lives that we have to accept, that we may never know.”
Robin’s fingers tightened on his thumb. “I think,” he said, “I think I might have already know that, uncle Kermit. I think, I needed reminding.”
“We all need reminding sometimes, Robin.”
Robin rested his head against Kermit’s arm.
“Sometimes,” Kermit went on. “We need reminding simple things, to brush our teeth, to get to school on time. Other times, we need to be shown truths again. The fact that a simple touch can share love, that a smile can warm the cold. That somebody loves us.”
Robin pulled away, shaking his head. “But, uncle Kermit, if someone loves us, why would they hurt us? Why would someone do a hurtful thing, to make me sad?”
“Robin -“
Robin jumped down from the table. “It won’t be the same,” he said. “It will never be a family again. I try not to think, but, uncle Kermit, I can’t not think. And I think, what will happen at Christmas? I think of telephone calls. ‘Yes, I’ve been good today. How are you?’ And I don’t, I don’t understand it. Is that love, uncle Kermit?”
“Yes. Yes it is,” Kermit said, his voice so quiet that Robin had to pick out the words. “That is love, Robin. Your love. And that’s bravery, knight of Camelot, you have to be brave.”
Kermit bent down and picked up the shinny visor from where it had been left on the floor after yesterday’s performance. It caught the light. Kermit set it on the table.
Robin leant against the table leg. His arms were folded, but he was listening now.
“A family is more than two people in a house with a child. It’s even more than brothers and sisters. It’s people held together by love. Robin, your father loves you, he always has, he always will. Your mother, Leaper, she loves you too. Their parting will not change any of that. But, Robin, they can’t be happy if they are unhappy.”
“I know,” Robin said slowly. “I know that. I do. But, maybe, I don’t want to know.” He climbed up off the floor onto Kermit’s seat beside him. “But I’ll still never be part of a family. I feel I don’t even have anyone.”
Kermit put his arm around him once more. “Robin,” he said. “You do have a family. You have a father, a mother. They may not be together now, but, but they still belong to you, to your family. You have aunts, uncles, cousins…”
Kermit was saying the words, but Robin was shaking his head.
“You have me,” Kermit said.
And Robin looked up then. His face uncertain, and then sure. A smile lingered there a second. “I have you, uncle Kermit. You are all that I do have.”
Kermit lifted him gently onto the table. He closed his eyes for a long moment, then softly began to sing words that Robin had once sung to him.
“If just one person believes in you. Deep enough, and strong enough, believes in you. Hard enough, and long enough, it stands to reason, someone else will think, If he can do it. I can to it. Making it two whole people who believe in you…”
Robin felt a tear trickle from his eye. He thought of Grover. Grover had given the Fraggle Pebble back to him last Christmas…
“…deep enough, and strong enough, believe in you. Hard enough, and long enough…”
He thought of Gonzo. Gonzo with no family, except for those he met around him. Those that he loved.
“…there’s bound to be some other person who believes in making it a threesome, making it three…”
Robin wiped the tear. He bit his lip.
“…people you can say…”
And Robin joined him now, his small shaky voice touching Kermit’s heart.
“…believe in me…And if three whole people, why not four. And if four whole people, why not more. And more. And more…”
Robin stopped, and Kermit sang alone again. “And when all those people believe in you, deep enough and strong enough believe in you, hard enough, and long enough, it stands to reason, you yourself will see what everybody sees in you….And maybe even you…”
“And maybe even me,” Robin sang.
“…maybe even you, can believe in you too…”
Kermit’s arms folded around Robin in an embrace. “I believe in you, Robin,” he whispered. “I believe your love will make your family strong.”
And they stayed there for a long time.
Kermit covered the phone with one hand. “Robin, he wants to speak to you.”
Robin climbed slowly onto the table. He took the phone from Kermit, but Kermit stayed there beside him. Robin spoke. “Hey.”
“Oh Robin, I thought you were gone,” Jimmy’s voice was filled with emotion.
Robin stared into the distance. “I’m right here,” he said. “Right here, dad.”
“Should I come and pick you up?” Jimmy asked. “I can be there in a few minutes.”
Robin thought for a moment, then shook his head very slightly. “Dad, I’m right here with Uncle Kermit. Would it be alright, can I stayed here a while?”
Jimmy was silent, then, “Yes, Robin. Yes, that would be fine.”
“Will you be at the performance tonight?” Robin asked.
“I’ll always be at the performance, Robin. I love you, Robin.”
“I love you dad.”
Sometimes we meet very special people, who meana lot to us. Sometimes those people get hurt. And sometimes we just don't know what to say to them...
I wrote this story for my good friend Vibs.
If you do not have the song, "Just One person" please e-mail me, beauregard97@gmail.com , and ask for a copy before you read the story. For those who have it, listen to it before you begin.
Beauregard
__
This story is dedicated to Vibs by realy good friend and real/fake twin-sister...and to any person in the world who has been through what Robin is going through...
Robin's Story...
Kermit grabbed the green telephone on the second ring. “Hi ho, Kermit the Frog here.”
“Thank goodness you’re there.”
“Jimmy?” Kermit moved the telephone receiver from one hand to the other. He put the coffee mug down on the table. “Jimmy, what’s wrong?”
“Have you seen Robin?”
Kermit glanced around the backstage area as though Robin could have hidden there without his noticing. “No,” he said. “Why? Where is he?”
“Kermit, Robin ran away.”
*****
As soon as his brother finished speaking, Kermit dropped the phone back, and gulped the last of his coffee, cold now. He checked everything was in place backstage for the night’s performance, and slipped his arms into a light green summer coat. He locked the stage door, put the key into his pocket. He turned up the collar of his coat against the drizzling rain.
Where was Robin now? What could have made him run like that…?
Kermit started up the shadowy alleyway. He stepped aside to pass a trash-bin. The rain pooled on the sidewalk, and Kermit’s feet were damp. It reminded him of the swamp. Long evenings with his friends Croaker, and Goggles. And then with Jimmy when he grew up a little. How did Jimmy come to be the one with kids already?
Kermit smiled as he thought of Piggy and the rumours she spread through the glossy-mags. Maybe he’d have kids of his own one-day. A shadow across the street moved. Kermit stopped. “Hello?”
There shouldn’t be anyone down here. This road only led to the theatre. “Who’s there?”
Kermit heard a sniff, a stifled sob.
He crossed the road in quick strides, and saw him there. His nephew, bunched in a ball against the wall. Kermit crouched down, touching Robin’s shoulder.
“Go away,” Robin said.
“Robin. Robin, what’s wrong?”
Robin peered through his folded arms. “I don’t want to speak to you. Or anyone. Just leave me alone, alright?”
Kermit straightened up. “Alright, Robin. I’m going to just cross over the street here.” He walked to the other side, and leant against the graffiti covered wall. He noticed a crude drawing of Gonzo, and frowned. He looked back to Robin.
Robin lifted his head. “I told you to go.”
Kermit smiled sadly. “But I don’t want to go,” he said. “I want to stay here. And help you.”
“I don’t need help.”
“Yes you do Robin. Everyone needs help. And when something bad happens, and we don’t want to talk to anyone…that’s when we need help the most.”
*****
Kermit folded his coat over in his hands. Robin sat low in the chair behind Kermit’s desk. He wrapped his hands around a mug of steaming hot chocolate. He was shivering from the cold, bunched inside his jacket.
Kermit put the coat down on his desk. He sat on the dressing-room steps. “Is that nice?”
Robin shrugged.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Kermit asked.
Robin shrugged again. He sipped hot chocolate.
Kermit rested his elbows on his knees, leant forward. He waited to see if Robin would say any more, then, “Robin, what’s the matter?”
He looked up, his big eyes, sad. “They’re gone, uncle Kermit. It’s all over.”
*****
Kermit watched him finish his drink, set aside the cup, stand up. “Where are you going?” Kermit asked.
Robin shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t care. I don’t know. Uncle Kermit, the whole world…I mean, the whole world and everything in it has fallen apart today.”
Kermit thought for a moment. He smiled very slightly, and patted the step beside him. “The theatre hasn’t fallen apart,” he said. “I haven’t fallen.”
Robin turned away. “It’s not that, it’s just….” He trailed off.
“Sit here with me.” Kermit moved over to make room. “It’s halfway down the stairs, remember.”
Robin sighed, tried to smile. He climbed up the steps. “Uncle Kermit…”
“Yes, Robin?”
“They’re gunna be divorced.”
Kermit stopped. He stopped thinking. He stopped breathing. He could almost feel his heart slowing. Jimmy and Leaper were parting? Poor Robin…oh Robin, Robin. Kermit took a breath. He would be strong. Robin needed him now.
He took Robin’s hand in his. They sat in silence then.
The phone rang.
*****
Kermit answered it. “Hi Ho, Kermit- Hello Jimmy.” He looked at Robin.
Robin shook his head, eyes wide.
“You already rang and asked that, Jimmy,” Kermit said.
Robin moved to the edge of the step near the door. He was ready to run. Already running in his mind. He could be through the door in one frog-jump. Before Kermit would have time to put down the phone, he’d be sprinting up the road. He’d hide in the old trashcan until Kermit passed. He could do it, he would.
“I hadn’t seen him the first time, Jimmy,” Kermit was saying. “And that was…” He looked at the clock. “Seven minutes ago.”
Robin’s chin wobbled, a smile began to form. Why hadn’t Kermit said, “He’s here. At the theatre. Yeah, I’ll keep him here while you come and get him.” Robin smiled a little.
“Yeah, I’ll keep in touch. Bye.”
*****
They sat together in the Green-Room, a dressing room used by all the cast. There were clothes on hangers scattered about, draped across the dressing tables, lounging on chair backs. One light bulb in the string around the mirror had broken. Kermit made a note to replace it. A cannon and a pyramid of empty Coke cans were by one wall.
Robin sat cross-legged on the table. He rested his chin in his hands. Kermit was in a chair, his hand on the edge of the table. “What happened?” Kermit asked.
“It happened too quickly,” Robin said. “It was over so fast.” He pulled a pink flat stone out of his jacket pocket, and fingered it. The Fraggle Pebble was the one thing he’d taken with him when he ran. Robin had run from the room, holding back tears. His feet thudded up the stairs to his bedroom. He threw himself onto his soft bed, buried his head below the duvet. This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t right. And he’d run then, caught up his jacket from the bed, and the Fraggle pebble from on top of his chest of drawers. Outside the cold air hit him like a slap in the face. It wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t a nightmare. His breathing had started to get difficult, like sobbing, but without the sobs. Robin turned the pebble over and over in his fingers.
“They called me,” Robin said. “From downstairs. I was cleaning my scout badge. With, um, with polish, and stuff, and a duster. And making it shiny. I could almost see my face in it, Uncle Kermit. It was that shiny. And I thought, ‘Mrs Appleby will be proud.” And then, they called me. And I said, just coming. And they said I should come quickly. And I said I was. And I was, uncle Kermit. I just put the badge away in the box, the shoebox you gave me with the wrapping paper on, and, and the cotton wool inside to keep things safe. Special things. And I went down the stairs one by one. Something inside me just said, I know what’s happening, then. I knew it already. I though, I don’t want to go in there. If I turn around now, I could pretend I didn’t hear them…except I couldn’t.”
“Robin,” Kermit said gently. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
Robin looked away to his reflection in the mirror. What a difference a day can make. Yesterday he was in this same place, dressing for his part in the Camelot sketch. A shiny visor on his head, sword in hand. And Sweetums picking him up in a black-leather gloved hand. “Let’s go little fella.”
Robin blinked away the solitary tear. “No. I want to tell you, uncle Kermit.”
“I’m ready to listen.”
*****
“Uncle Kermit,” Robin said.
“Yes, Robin?”
“Why?”
“Why what Robin?”
“Why all of it? Why me? Why my family? Koko at school, his parents, I mean…”
Kermit moved his arm closer around Robin. “I know what you mean, Robin,” he said. “And, Robin, sometimes Why is a question we cant answer, at least not yet.”
“But Koko’s parents, his dad Croaker, his mum. They aren’t even as nice as my parents. I thought, I mean. Sure, they are nice. But my dad, he, does little things. Dad irons my scout-suit, even my necktie. He tucks me into bed. He…comes to me performances, every night. He…”
“Robin,” Kermit said. “Robin, he doesn’t love you any less.”
“He does. He must. Why else would they do this to me? Uncle Kermit, I’m not even me any more. I’m not part of a family. I’m not Robin, I’m a child of divorced parents, child from a broken home, a problem child. I’m not Robin any more, Uncle Kermit. I’m not me.” He started crying again then. The tears ran down his chin.
Kermit picked up a handkerchief from the table. He noticed it was the one they had used as a prop in the shooting of Muppet’s Take Manhattan. The one Miss Piggy had thrown to him while shouting good-bye. He held it in his fingers for a moment, then touched the tears away from Robin’s face.
“I love you Robin.”
“I love you too uncle Kermit.”
*****
“Robin,” Kermit said. He took Robin’s hand in his. Robin looked up into his face, and tried to smile through the sadness.
“Yes, uncle Kermit?”
Kermit gazed down at the tiny hand clinging to his own. He closed his fingers around it. “Robin, you asked why. Why has this happened? But, Robin, the fact is, sometimes why is the only question that defies an answer.”
Robin looked down at the floor. Kermit continued. “I left the swamp, when I was just very young, young like you,” he said, speaking softly, slowly. “I couldn’t answer that question. That why. I ask myself even now, over and over. Why did I do it? And there is no answer, Robin. Why is a part of our lives that we have to accept, that we may never know.”
Robin’s fingers tightened on his thumb. “I think,” he said, “I think I might have already know that, uncle Kermit. I think, I needed reminding.”
“We all need reminding sometimes, Robin.”
Robin rested his head against Kermit’s arm.
“Sometimes,” Kermit went on. “We need reminding simple things, to brush our teeth, to get to school on time. Other times, we need to be shown truths again. The fact that a simple touch can share love, that a smile can warm the cold. That somebody loves us.”
Robin pulled away, shaking his head. “But, uncle Kermit, if someone loves us, why would they hurt us? Why would someone do a hurtful thing, to make me sad?”
“Robin -“
Robin jumped down from the table. “It won’t be the same,” he said. “It will never be a family again. I try not to think, but, uncle Kermit, I can’t not think. And I think, what will happen at Christmas? I think of telephone calls. ‘Yes, I’ve been good today. How are you?’ And I don’t, I don’t understand it. Is that love, uncle Kermit?”
“Yes. Yes it is,” Kermit said, his voice so quiet that Robin had to pick out the words. “That is love, Robin. Your love. And that’s bravery, knight of Camelot, you have to be brave.”
Kermit bent down and picked up the shinny visor from where it had been left on the floor after yesterday’s performance. It caught the light. Kermit set it on the table.
Robin leant against the table leg. His arms were folded, but he was listening now.
“A family is more than two people in a house with a child. It’s even more than brothers and sisters. It’s people held together by love. Robin, your father loves you, he always has, he always will. Your mother, Leaper, she loves you too. Their parting will not change any of that. But, Robin, they can’t be happy if they are unhappy.”
“I know,” Robin said slowly. “I know that. I do. But, maybe, I don’t want to know.” He climbed up off the floor onto Kermit’s seat beside him. “But I’ll still never be part of a family. I feel I don’t even have anyone.”
Kermit put his arm around him once more. “Robin,” he said. “You do have a family. You have a father, a mother. They may not be together now, but, but they still belong to you, to your family. You have aunts, uncles, cousins…”
Kermit was saying the words, but Robin was shaking his head.
“You have me,” Kermit said.
And Robin looked up then. His face uncertain, and then sure. A smile lingered there a second. “I have you, uncle Kermit. You are all that I do have.”
Kermit lifted him gently onto the table. He closed his eyes for a long moment, then softly began to sing words that Robin had once sung to him.
“If just one person believes in you. Deep enough, and strong enough, believes in you. Hard enough, and long enough, it stands to reason, someone else will think, If he can do it. I can to it. Making it two whole people who believe in you…”
Robin felt a tear trickle from his eye. He thought of Grover. Grover had given the Fraggle Pebble back to him last Christmas…
“…deep enough, and strong enough, believe in you. Hard enough, and long enough…”
He thought of Gonzo. Gonzo with no family, except for those he met around him. Those that he loved.
“…there’s bound to be some other person who believes in making it a threesome, making it three…”
Robin wiped the tear. He bit his lip.
“…people you can say…”
And Robin joined him now, his small shaky voice touching Kermit’s heart.
“…believe in me…And if three whole people, why not four. And if four whole people, why not more. And more. And more…”
Robin stopped, and Kermit sang alone again. “And when all those people believe in you, deep enough and strong enough believe in you, hard enough, and long enough, it stands to reason, you yourself will see what everybody sees in you….And maybe even you…”
“And maybe even me,” Robin sang.
“…maybe even you, can believe in you too…”
Kermit’s arms folded around Robin in an embrace. “I believe in you, Robin,” he whispered. “I believe your love will make your family strong.”
And they stayed there for a long time.
*****
Kermit covered the phone with one hand. “Robin, he wants to speak to you.”
Robin climbed slowly onto the table. He took the phone from Kermit, but Kermit stayed there beside him. Robin spoke. “Hey.”
“Oh Robin, I thought you were gone,” Jimmy’s voice was filled with emotion.
Robin stared into the distance. “I’m right here,” he said. “Right here, dad.”
“Should I come and pick you up?” Jimmy asked. “I can be there in a few minutes.”
Robin thought for a moment, then shook his head very slightly. “Dad, I’m right here with Uncle Kermit. Would it be alright, can I stayed here a while?”
Jimmy was silent, then, “Yes, Robin. Yes, that would be fine.”
“Will you be at the performance tonight?” Robin asked.
“I’ll always be at the performance, Robin. I love you, Robin.”
“I love you dad.”
- The End -
{I too am privilaged to have a friend like you Vibs}regard
