The Guncle

by Steven Rowley

  “Can I hold the leash?”

  Patrick handed the retractable leash to Maisie. “Don’t let her get too far ahead.” Patrick closed his eyes for their next ten steps, enjoying the momentary silence.

  “I want a turn!” Grant grabbed for the leash.

  “Hey, hey. Cool your jets, you’ll get a turn.” He stepped between the two kids. “Having a brother or a sister. That’s something really special. I want you guys to remember that. You two to remember that. Aunt Clara wouldn’t want me to say ‘guys,’ as that’s the language of the patriarchy.” Patrick picked up several stones in the road and skipped one across the asphalt like it was a pond.

  “Can we do that?” Grant asked, excited.

  “You can’t really skip stones on the road. You need a pond.”

  “We have a pool!”

  “I have a pool and you’re not skipping stones in it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’ll sink to the bottom or clog my filter, and guess who has to dive in to get them.” He pointed at himself with both thumbs. “But listen to me. The sibling relationship. Brother and sister. That’s special. Especially for you. With your mom gone. You need to be there for one another. Hear me? Don’t let stupid shit get between you. You’ll end up regretting it.”

  Patrick jumped ahead to grab the leash from Maisie; Marlene was out sniffing something suspicious in the adjacent vacant lot. The last thing Patrick needed was for her to lunge for a dead animal or something equally horrific. He reeled Marlene in and locked the retracting mechanism so Grant could walk her with a shorter lead on his turn.

  “Don’t make our mistake.” Patrick had fresh determination to make things right with Clara. He would lead by example. Be the bigger man.

  Person.

  Man.

  * * *

  Patrick and the girls sat on the floor around the tree, while Grant settled himself on the couch like a little gentleman, propped up by a navy throw cushion with an embroidered yellow Xanax that was meant to be whimsical—a pill-ow, it was called. He’d been meaning to tuck it away since the kids’ arrival, given their father’s addiction, but he always seemed to forget. Clara noticed, and she was not amused.

  “Really?” She pointed directly at it.

  Patrick waved it off. “Grant, come sit on the floor with the rest of us.”

  “I want to sit here.”

  “If I have to sit on the floor, then we all do. Look at your aunt Clara. She can sit Indian-style and she’s old as the mountains.”

  “They don’t say Indian-style anymore,” Clara corrected.

  “What do they say instead?” Patrick wasn’t sure who she meant by they.

  “Criss-cross applesauce,” Maisie offered, always ready to help.

  “Criss-cross . . . what?”

  “Applesauce.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Patrick scoffed. “I’ve heard of jelly legs, but applesauce legs? Your legs are just blobs of applesauce and pulpy bits of skin?”

  Grant laughed as if it didn’t make much sense to him either.

  “It’s just a fun little rhyme,” Clara implored. And then she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Indian-style is racist.”

  “Sorry. Native American–style. It’s okay. This is Native American land we’re on.”

  Clara raised her hackles, ready to push back. “What do you mean, Native American land?”

  “My property belongs to the Agua Caliente Indians. I own the house, but this is tribal land, and I lease it from them. That’s true for a lot of Palm Springs.”

  Clara was instantly fascinated; the idea of Native Americans retaining land—something they were historically (and horrifically) stripped of—and charging rich white people to use it was of great interest. Maybe this was Christmas, and a merry one at that. “How much do you pay?” she asked with delight, as if she secretly hoped it was through the nose.

  Patrick didn’t answer. “Grant! Hand out some gifts.”

  Grant scrambled down from the couch and crawled straight for the tree. Patrick had given the kids two twenties each to find gifts for him and Clara at the souvenir store. The kids had been very secretive about their purchases, and Grant passed out their presents with a giggle.

  “For me?” Clara asked, feigning surprise in that exact, predictable way adults do when handed a gift. She neatly picked at the corner of the wrapping paper and slid her fingers under the tape.

  “C’mon, Aunt Clara!” Maisie implored.

  “But you decorated this paper so beautifully. I want to keep that, too.” She pulled apart the wrapping to reveal a jigsaw puzzle that said Greetings from PALM SPRINGS; each bubble letter in Palm Springs contained a different desert landscape.

  “For when you get up firtht, you’ll have something to work on!”

  “One thousand pieces,” Clara read from the box. “You must be planning on sleeping awfully late.”

  Patrick chewed on his lip to keep quiet.

  “GUP, do yours next!” Maisie exclaimed.

  “It’s about time.” Patrick locked eyes with Grant and tore his present open, both to destroy (finally) that hideous paper and earn the respect of his nephew. Clara protested, but it was over in a flash. Underneath the wrapping was a small box from Sunnylife; inside were four pineapple-shaped floating drink holders for the pool.

  “So you can take your drink with you in the pool!” Maisie’s excitement exposed her hand; clearly, this purchase had been her choice.

  “Thanks, you two. And there’s four, so we can each have a drink when we swim.” He enveloped Grant, then Maisie, in big bear hugs before turning his attention to Clara. “Not to worry. They like Shirley Temples for the pool, seven maraschino cherries each.”

  Clara actually laughed.

  “Now you, now you, now you.” Patrick pointed to two identical gifts under the tree. “Grant, hand one to your sister and the other is for you. Doesn’t matter which, they’re both the same. I was going to give you these at the end of the summer, but I guess now seems like as good a time as any.”

  Grant handed one of the flat boxes to Maisie.

  “Ready, set, go!”

  The kids had the paper off in a flash, revealing plain white gift boxes. Inside each was a layer of red tissue, and under that was a framed photo of their mother that Patrick had taken on the roof of their dorm building soon after they started college. The photographs caught Sara mid-laugh, her thick, reddish hair cascading effortlessly behind her; back then she would spend up to an hour blowing it straight. Behind them, Boston. It was right before they were caught by campus police, if Patrick recalled correctly. There was a write-up of the incident in the campus police blotter that ran in the student newspaper and, for a second at least, they felt infamous.

  “Do you know who that is?”

  Maisie grasped her frame with both hands like a student driver grips a steering wheel. “Mom.” Her eyes were fixed on the photo. It was from deep in his archives; Patrick was quite sure the kids had never seen it.

  * * *

  “Laugh,” Patrick had said as he focused his camera on Sara. The sad truth of “magic hour” was that it was a misnomer; it lasted only a few perfect minutes.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Why? Because we just broke onto the roof. We should look like outlaws.”

  “Jesse James laughed?”

  “He laughed in the face of authority!”

  Sara sneered at him. “Some outlaws we are. We were stuck in the stairwell for an hour.”

  “Well, that was my fault,” Patrick admitted. “Doorknobs confuse me.”

  Sara looked at her new friend with awe. “You’re so dumb and you’re going to be rewarded for it, because dumb men fail upward.”

  “Would you just laugh?” he im
plored.

  “It’s not funny.”

  Patrick rolled his eyes. “Fake laugh, then. Like I’m fake crying.”

  Since the light was on her face, Patrick was backlit and she couldn’t quite make out the expression on his, especially as it was blocked by the camera. “I hate you.”

  “You love me.”

  “I hate you because I love you.” She laughed for real and Patrick snapped the picture.

  “That one’s going in a frame.”

  * * *

  Patrick studied Maisie as she regarded the photograph. “Your mom was so pretty, wasn’t she? She was only ten years older in that photo than you are now.”

  Grant scrutinized his gift before smiling, then handed it to his aunt for a look. Clara held it up to the table lamp beside her and glanced up at Patrick warmly. Grant nestled under his uncle’s arm. Clara mouthed, Beautiful. He might have been mistaken, but there was something glistening in her eyes akin to pride.

  “Merry Christmas, family.”

  Guncle Rule number eleven: Make the yuletide gay.

  SIXTEEN

  Patrick fussed around his living room, picking up stray bits of wrapping paper and ribbon and even a well-hidden cup with the remnants of some cocktail from the party that was—Good god, could that be possible?—just the night before. Clara sat with a cup of tea, her legs curled beside her on the couch. The kids crashed hard; they’d been up far too late for the party and having Christmas as a follow-up wasn’t exactly resetting the clock—if there was even such a thing as normal anymore. Before bed, Clara spent a good half hour brushing chlorine snarls out of a patient Maisie’s hair. She whispered, “Mom used to do that,” barely able to muster the words for her aunt. Her eyes were wet, perhaps from discomfort, but it wasn’t hard to imagine Maisie herself as a tangle of throbbing memories. Patrick had read to an exhausted Grant, who complained when his uncle skipped a page. “Why do you need me to read this to you if you already have it memorized?” Grant answered by simply making a fist around his uncle’s shirt and holding on tight. Patrick decided not to care that it would wrinkle.

  “You did a good job, getting them to bed.” Clara seemed genuinely impressed.

  “We’ll see if they stay down.” Patrick wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “They’ve been sneaking into my room at night to sleep at the foot of my bed.”

  Clara placed her hand over her heart and inhaled sharply.

  “How can you drink hot tea?” Patrick asked, indicating her mug. “It’s ninety degrees outside.”

  “It’s your air-conditioning. I’m not used to it. I’m cold.”

  “Would you like me to get you a blanket?” Patrick mindlessly worked to untie a knot from a piece of ribbon.

  “There, right there.” Clara set her tea down on the coffee table. “Everything out of your mouth is a criticism.”

  “I offered to get you a blanket. That was me being nice! You’re an uninvited guest in my home. I want you to be comfortable.”

  “That’s not you being nice, that’s you thinking it ridiculous that I could be cold in the California desert.” Clara crossed her arms and rubbed her bare biceps; yoga had been paying off, her arms were the one thing she didn’t hate about her body.

  “When I have a criticism, you’ll know it.” Patrick loosened the ribbon just enough to slip a finger through and finally make waste of the knot. “Besides. I’ll bet you had a choice thought when finding that tea bag. A constant comment, if you will, about my lack of selection.”

  He’d read her completely. “How do you only have one kind?” she asked.

  “Because I’m not a hundred years old.”

  Clara rubbed her cold feet to bring circulation to her toes. “When did this start?”

  “What start?”

  “Why are we like this with each other?”

  Patrick looked down at the untied ribbon he’d twirled around three fingers. He held them up like “scout’s honor.” “Look at this. Am I my mother’s son? Am I going to reuse this ribbon? Of course not. I’m never going to reuse this ribbon. So, what am I doing?”

  Clara smiled. “You know one time I caught her hanging a wet paper towel over the windowsill to dry?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Swear to god.”

  To avoid this destiny, Patrick unspooled the ribbon from his fingers and tossed it in the trash. Clara reached for her mug and held it tight in her hands. It said yaaaasss in bold letters. Patrick regarded it with an expression somewhere between bemusement and horror. “You have it all wrong, you know.”

  “How so?”

  “Greg was the smart one, you were the crusader. I was the trivial one and you treated me accordingly. It’s okay. I’m not making a big deal out of it. But that’s how it was.”

  “Well, what do you want? We had different interests. I wanted to change the world, and you were interested in . . .”

  “Surviving it.”

  Clara rubbed her temple. Either the cold air was giving her a headache, or she was suffering jet lag. She took a sip of her tea, which had already cooled. “Where’s your microwave?”

  “You don’t hear me, do you. Every conversation we’ve ever had, you don’t listen. Not really. You look at me. Your mouth stops moving. But the entire time, you’re just waiting until it’s your turn to talk again.”

  “I’m not sure you’re aware of this, but the problem with the world is not that women don’t listen to men.” Clara marched her tea into the kitchen and Patrick followed in pursuit.

  “You’re doing it right now!”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too!” It was amazing to Patrick how quickly siblings could devolve into the language of childhood. “If you were really listening you would have said, ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, Patrick. That must feel devastating not to be heard. It was never my intention to contribute to your feeling that way . . .’”

  “We’re not actors, Patrick. We don’t all follow a script.” Clara held her breath, failing to stop an impending hiccup. “You want to know what it’s like to not be heard? Try being me. Or any of the rest of us when you’re around. Or not around! All anyone wants to talk about is Patrick. Do you know what that’s like? As soon as anyone finds out we’re related, they’re no longer interested in me. They’re only interested in you.”

  Patrick opened the microwave drawer that pulled out from under the counter. “I’m sure that’s very frustrating. If it’s any consolation, I’m sick of hearing about me, too.” He hit the button to reheat.

  They waited in silence for the microwave to beep. When it did, Clara removed the mug, testing the temperature carefully. “Nothing productive ever comes from litigating the past. It’s the past.” She headed for the living room.

  “Perhaps,” Patrick said to himself as he folded and refolded a dish towel before tossing it on the counter with disgust. He really was becoming his mother. He found Clara sitting with a dancer’s posture on the nearest arm of his sofa.

  “I’m taking the kids back with me,” she announced. “To Connecticut.”

  “What? Where?”

  “To Connecticut. You’ve had your time with them. It’s only fair I have my time with them, too.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Look who’s not listening now.” She took a sip of her tea and it burned her mouth. “This is too hot now.” She returned to the kitchen for an ice cube, talking over her shoulder. “I think Greg would agree that’s fair. A passing of the baton.”

  “It’s not a relay race.” Patrick made a sour face as he heard Clara activate the ice maker in his refrigerator door, imagining tea splashing across stainless steel.

  “It’s not a marathon, either,” she called back.

  “We’re kind of in the middle of something here. The kids and me.” He leaned in the kitchen door
way.

  “What’s that, Patrick. Throwing parties at all hours of the night?” She set her tea on the counter to let the ice melt.

  “Party. One party. They had fun!”

  Clara sighed wearily. “There’s a video of the kids on the internet.”

  Patrick was confused. Was someone stalking them? A fan perhaps, recording him while they were in public? “What are you talking about?”

  “At dinner. You filmed them playing with their food and you put it on the internet. To remind people you exist, to gain sympathy for yourself. I don’t know what your scheme is, but I don’t like it. I don’t like you using those kids.”

  Patrick was genuinely perplexed. “The cotton candy thing?”

  “And that’s not even touching on their diet. Candy for dinner? Is that what you’re feeding them?”

  This was like Whac-A-Mole, new charges sprouting faster than Patrick could swat them away. “Like I’m the first person in history to give a child sugar?” This wasn’t making any sense. “Clara. I honestly don’t know what you’re going on about. I took a video of them. It’s on my phone. I can show it to you.” Patrick searched the counter for his phone.

  “It’s not on your phone. It’s on YouTube. And god knows where else.”

  “That’s not possible.” And then, after he thought about it, “How do you know?”

  “I have a Google Alert set up on your name. I’m shocked you don’t have one.”

  Patrick frowned. “Why would I have one?”

  “So that you know what people are saying about you.”

  He stifled a laugh at the ridiculousness of the idea. “That sounds like a nightmare.” He plopped a few ice cubes into a glass for himself and poured a sip of vodka. “Look, I’m flattered you think I would even know how to post a video to YouTube.”

  “So what are you saying? You were hacked by China?”

  Patrick sloshed the vodka around in his glass. The sound of the ice cubes calmed him.