“It’s so good to meet you,” Mom said. “Take a seat. Something to drink? Beer, soda?”
“Thank you, yeah. Whatever’s going. I’m easy.”
She opened the fridge door, screening her and me from Chase. “Oh my God. Is that…?”
“Yes,” I said. “Don’t make a big thing about it.”
She took a couple of beers from the fridge and closed the door. “Well, I told your father to be on his best behavior,” she said. “Not to say anything…unusual.”
Chase caught my eye and I laughed. “Yeah. That ship has sailed, Mom. Did he tell you that we ran into him at the Bigfoot museum?”
“Oh no,” she said. “With the statue?”
“Yep.”
Mom sucked in air through her teeth. “Did he talk about the tits?” she said, and Chase cracked up.
“Yes, he did,” he said.
“See? Genie’s already out of the bottle. He knows we’re strange, so you can stop pretending to be normal.”
I sat down next to Chase at the kitchen table. His knee nudged mine and I smiled at him, some part of me dimly aware of how we must look, gazing at one another like a pair of idiots. I couldn’t help it, though. My mouth was still full of the taste of him and my hands tingled with the sense memory of his skin. My body couldn’t keep from remembering the weight of his thigh across mine, his teeth on my shoulder. It was like he’d succeeded in what it seemed like he’d been trying to do this afternoon, and crawled under my skin completely.
My dad came in and we made some more small talk before settling down to eat.
“I got you chicken and salad and things,” said Mom, setting down the dishes. “It’s nothing fancy but…”
“It looks delicious,” said Chase. “Thank you.”
“Low carb,” she said. “I’m guessing our son has banned you from eating potatoes.”
He gave me that look I knew from the gym. “Yeah. He has.”
“And bread,” I said.
“And pastry,” said Chase. “And bagels. Pizza. Pasta. Gnocchi. Basically anything delicious from Italy? I can’t eat that.”
“That’s a shame,” said Dad. “Kathy’s spaghetti and meatballs can’t be beat.”
Chase groaned. “I dream about spaghetti.”
“You can’t do it,” I said, helping him to green salad and wondering what kind of spaghetti dreams accounted for his incredible sleep boners. “Even an inch of carb bloat and you’d never get into that suit.”
“I know that. Next time I’m going to get a role that lets me eat something. Just a dirty, dirty bulk, full of French fries and burritos and lasagna.” Mom pushed a dish towards him. “Thank you. Is that squash?”
“Butternut. With garlic and parmesan.”
“Oh, yum.”
Everyone dug in, and nobody said anything peculiar, until - sometime over peaches and cream dessert - my mom decided to just get it all out there.
“So I suppose Sean has been telling you terrible things about us?” she said.
“Nothing that wasn’t true,” I said.
“Oh, we’re not that bad,” said Dad.
“You are that bad. You traumatized your firstborn son by erupting out of a hedge in a disturbingly lifelike Bigfoot costume.”
Mom laughed. “He told you that one?” she asked Chase.
“He did, yes. Although I’m still in the dark about the ‘pumpkin incident.’“ Chase touched the back of my hand. “You never told me that one.”
“Incidents,” said Dad. “Plural. It was a pattern.”
“It was Patty,” said Mom.
“It was not Patty.”
“It was too Patty,” said Mom, setting down her fork with the air of a woman who had been through this too many goddamn times to count. “It was during her Jesus fiend phase.” She turned to Chase. “Our neighbor. This was a woman who had been freaking out about all forms of government since Waco, okay? Then boom - 2001. The towers came down and Patty lost her ever-loving mind. Went all in with the president and God and country and all that red white and blue...well, you know.”
“Bullshit,” said Dad helpfully.
“Thank you, Sean. I wasn’t going to say that, seeing as we had guests and all, but never mind.” She sighed. “Anyway, you remember. It was a weird time and everyone was coping with that horror in their own ways, and I guess Patty’s way was to follow the president’s example and get born again.”
“Right,” said Chase.
“Which led to her getting a bug up her ass about Harry Potter,” I said.
“What?”
“Harry Potter,” said Mom. “The books were just starting to get popular and the kids wouldn’t stop talking about them. But Patty being Patty, she’s a warrior for Jesus now, okay? Sees children pretending to cast spells on one another and freaks the hell out.”
Chase gave a theatrical gasp. “Sorcery!”
Dad shook his head and poured more water from the jug. “Look, you can blame a lot of things on Patty Chive, but that was not one of them.”
“It was her,” said Mom. “You know what she’s like. Dives headlong into everything. She’d been a born again Christian for just over a month, but as soon as that first Halloween rolled around it was like she’d turned into Cotton Mather. It was all satanic, Chase. Pumpkins, plastic skeletons, trick or treating. All of it was Bad, Wrong and Had To Be Stopped for the sake of the children. That’s why she was sneaking around the block smashing up Halloween pumpkins with a baseball bat.”
“No, no,” said Dad. “Kathy, there is no way those injuries could have been inflicted with a bat.”
Chase looked alarmed. “Injuries?”
“Nobody was hurt,” I said. “Dad just went all Forensic Files on a pumpkin.”
“Pumpkins. Plural. And I saw them. They were squashed. Not battered. I ran tests in the backyard, trying to replicate the damage with a baseball bat. Couldn’t do it.”
I nudged Chase’s elbow. “Feel free to run screaming, by the way,” I said. “I won’t judge you.”
He just laughed and busted out the red carpet manners on my dear, deranged dad. “So what do you think it was that was doing this?”
“Guess,” I said.
“Look,” said Dad, ignoring me. “You take a Halloween pumpkin, right? And you cut out the eyes and the pointy teeth mouth.”
“Right.”
“Well, that right there is a threat. To a primate, that’s a threat.” Dad grinned, showing all his teeth. “That’s why you don’t do this to a chimp. Bared teeth equal aggression.”
“And you think that sasquatch were intimidated–”
“–by Halloween pumpkins,” I said.
“They were crushed,” said Dad. “I told you. I ran tests. That wasn’t Patty Chive - or anyone else with a baseball bat. I saw what happened to those pumpkins. They were squashed, like they’d been stomped on by something large and heavy.”
“Like a six hundred pound cryptid with eighteen inch feet,” I said. “Obviously.”
Dad appealed to Chase once more. “You see what I mean? Cynical. I’d believe it was Patty too, if I hadn’t ruled her out through extensive tests. It’s a mystery, right Chase?”
“Sure,” said Chase, picking thoughtfully at the label of his beer bottle. “How much squash could a sasquatch squish if a sasquatch could squish squash?”
I barely swallowed my mouthful.
“So,” Mom said, when everyone had finished laughing. “Do we get to talk about the other elephant in the room? Or is that off limits?”
Chase sighed. “You mean me?”
“Your…situation.”
“Oh, that. Yeah.”
“What situation?” said Dad.
Mom gave him her patented exasperated stare. “Your son brings home a movie star and you don’t even notice?”
Dad blinked at Chase. “You? You’re a movie star?”
“Sort of,” said Chase, with a guilty little grimace like he was admitting to ripping a particularly bad fart
in an elevator. He was too adorable for words.
“What have you been in? Sorry – I’m really bad with faces.”
“And all other forms of human interaction,” I said.
Just then Dad’s head snapped up, his expression wary. It was a look I normally associated with wood-knocking, weird hooting or some other sign that a sasquatch might be nearby, only of course Bigfoot didn’t exist and we weren’t that lucky. There was someone lurking near the back door, but it wasn’t anyone who planned to set up home with the Hendersons any time soon.
It was Patty Chive.
“Knock knock!” she called, and sailed right in. “Oh, hey – I didn’t realize you had company.”
She totally did. Nothing escaped the three hundred and sixty degree swivel range of Patty’s eyes and ears.
“Hi, Patty,” said Mom, with a chill in her voice. “What’s up?”
“Sorry, I won’t keep you. I just wanted to let you know that the fence is coming down again. You know? Where you patched it up last? It’s not holding, and I did hear that the weather was supposed to turn windy.”
“Oh, okay. Thank you. We’ll get on that.”
“Okay. Thanks.” She turned and directed her laser-guided gaze on Chase and me. “Hi, Michael. Lovely to see you. You’re up from Los Angeles?”
“Yeah.”
“And your friend?” She flashed a mouth of expensive veneers at Chase. “My, you are a handsome one, aren’t you?”
Mom looked terrified, and I knew why. The fire of Patty’s previous conversion had all but gone out over the past sixteen years and now she amused herself with gossip magazines and celebrity watching. Even a pair of glasses and a bleach job couldn’t save Chase from the scrutiny of a woman whose television was permanently tuned to E!
“Oh my goodness,” she said. “Are you…are you who I think you are?”
“I think I am,” said Chase. “Maybe?”
She let out a short squeal. “Can I get a selfie?”
“Not a good time, Patty,” said Mom, whose chill had turned to permafrost by now.
“No, it’s okay,” said Chase, to my horror. “I don’t mind.”
Oh God. He was stuck in red carpet mode. His mouth was saying all the things he was supposed to say to fans, but his eyes were screaming.
I stood up, placing myself squarely between him and her. “He’s not here for that, Patty,” I said. “This is a vacation. From his job.”
She put her phone away. “Right,” she said. “Of course. Excuse me.”
“No problem,” I said, but I didn’t sit down.
“Anyway. I just wanted to let you know…the fence…”
“Is coming down again. Thanks. We’ll get on it.”
Patty left, although we knew from long experience not to exhale until she was at least halfway across the backyard. “I swear to God I locked that door,” said Mom. “What is she? Houdini?”
I turned back to the table. Chase stood up and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me. He was obviously into the protective boyfriend thing, but then I realized that Patty – with her fine-tuned nose for scandal – had probably picked up on the same vibe. And she knew I was gay.
“Is she likely to tell someone I was here?” asked Chase.
“No,” I said. “She’s likely to tell everyone.”
Mom nodded. “She’s probably tweeting it right now.”
“Oh shit,” said Chase. “Excuse my language.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Oh my God, this is bad. I don’t suppose she has a reputation for…crazy, does she?”
“Crazy? You’re talking about a woman who took a baseball bat to a series of pumpkins because she thought Harry Potter was teaching devil worship to children.”
“Right, but that was a while ago. I’m talking about now,” said Chase. “Does she have a reputation as an…unreliable witness? Is there any way we can undermine her credibility?”
I frowned. “Why are you talking like a lawyer now?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I did a walk-on on The Good Wife a few years ago. It kind of rubs off on you.”
“Oh, was that before or after the nose job?” said Mom.
I turned to stare at her. “What?”
“That guy. Used to be on Sex And The City,” she said. “Everyone says they don’t notice that he had his nose done, but I can’t see how they don’t.”
Chase shook his head. “Uh, his character was under house arrest. I didn’t have any scenes with him, so…”
“Kathy,” said Dad. “Does he look like he gives a shit about Chris Noth’s nose job right now?”
“No, wait,” I said. “I know what you’re saying–”
“–yeah. It was a big nose, but it worked on him,” said Mom, jumping in. “Now his whole face looks out of balance.”
I sighed. “No, I’m not talking about Mr. Big’s schnoz. I’m talking about Patty. She’s always had a reputation as a bit of a kook…so…”
This was what growing up Finnegan did to a person; in this family we had a bad habit of throwing sasquatch at a problem. Sure, Patty was undoubtedly already mashing that tweet button harder than Donald Trump struggling with a heavy morning shit, but if someone was prone to gossip, why not distract them with more gossip?
Preferably of the kind that made them look like they’d stayed up half the night huffing paint thinner.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” said Dad.
“I know you still have it,” I said. “You worked on that thing. You put a lot of hours into it. I know you didn’t throw it away.”
Chase was understandably confused. “What are you talking about?”
“I think,” said Mom. “That my son is planning to gaslight the neighbor lady by dressing up as Bigfoot, so that when she tweets that she also saw Chase Morrow in her neighbor’s kitchen she’s going to look like a goddamn lunatic and nobody will believe her.”
I winced. Gaslighting? Oof. That sounded bad. “That’s it,” I said. “You got it. The fact that you did is a damning indictment of the way people’s minds work in this family, but yeah – you got it.”
Mom shrugged. “You were the one who came up with it. And just for the record, that is effed the hell up, even by Finnegan standards.”
“It’s temporary,” I said. It was that or have Patty Bucketmouth out Chase. “Once we’re out of here and safely back in LA you can tell Patty the truth. And I will apologize and send flowers and do whatever I have to do, okay?”
“I’m gonna need the film,” said Chase, with one of those little flutters of his hand that said the artist was not only present but was also hard at work. “Can someone Google the Patterson-Gimlin film? I have to get the gait right.”
“Whoa, whoa. Back up, Stanislavski. Who said you were pretending to be Bigfoot?”
“Me,” he said. “I’m a Julliard trained actor and I’m three inches taller than you.”
“Pfft. Two and a half. Tops.”
Dad handed Chase his phone. My heart raced at the thought of all the things that were just a touch away on that screen. Things that Chase really did not need to worry about right at this minute. We leaned in and watched that famous, flickering minute of film, as Bigfoot turned to look at the camera and then stomped – no, strolled – away into the trees. Chase asked Dad to play it back again and we watched once more, but I still didn’t get it. It was like Mr. Big’s nose job; I couldn’t grasp why other people weren’t seeing what was so obvious, because that was clearly a man in a monkey suit.
“It’s been a while since I saw it,” said Chase, his shoulder bumping mine. “You were right. That’s not very convincing at all.”
“Told you,” I said, jubilant.
“I think we’re going to have to try a little harder than that,” said Chase. “Can I get some footage of apes walking upright? Can we search for that? Thanks…”
Mom raised her eyebrows and I went over and joined her on the other side of the kitchen, while Dad and Chase huddled over ape videos.
“He’s very…um…”
“Method?”
“I was going to say ‘your type’,” she said. “But yeah. That, too.”
*
I was helping Mom load the dishwasher when Bigfoot walked in.
The costume had been in storage for over twenty years and time had lent it a raggedy-ass look that actually made it look even more disturbingly real. It had also done nothing for the smell.
“Jesus,” I said, reaching for the Febreze spray.
“Don’t pee yourself now,” said Dad, who had followed Chase in.
I raised a friendly middle finger.
I had been totally within my rights to piss myself the first time. The face had been painstakingly sculpted over a plaster mould of a Gigantopithecus fossil, then cast in silicone and the rubber lovingly seeded with what I later discovered was goat hair. This process created the huge beetling eyebrows and sideburns so thick that they almost threatened to engulf the whole face and blot out the nose. Even worse was the way Chase inhabited that thing. He came rolling in with a slow, shambling gait, moving like nothing human. Ten minutes of watching ape footage and he’d gone full sasquatch.
Eat your heart out, Roger Patterson. Our Bigfoot could act.
“Oh God,” I said, suddenly uncomfortable at the thought of Patty coming across that thing in the dark. “I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”
“Honey, I will tell Patty as soon as it’s appropriate to do so,” said Mom. “It’s not like we’re going to gaslight her for years.”
I glared at Dad. “Yeah. Unlike some people I could mention.” I looked at Chase again and shook my head. “No. This is wrong. What if she pees herself in public?”
Mom shrugged. “Turnabout is fair play.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that your little accident back in the day…well, let’s just say it got around the neighborhood a whole lot faster thanks to the quadraphonic loudspeaker mouth of one Patricia P. Chive.”
I looked at Chase again, my heart hardening. “Okay. Fuck her. Let’s go, Sasquatch.”
“No, no,” said Dad. “It’ll look suspicious if we all leave the house. You stay here.”
Going Sasquatch Page 12