off the ground in this family, and all you can do is apologize.”
“Thanks a lot, Tanner,” said Fletcher at the stove.
“Basement full of furniture says this house got only one going concern,” said Tanner.
“Nobody buys quality anymore.”
“Thanks a lot, Fletcher,” I said.
It was a pale facsimile of family banter—the fast-paced, rollicking back-and-forth to which our foursome had indeed risen on occasion, but which I generally located only on television. I’d grown up in such proximity to scripted family follies that you’d think I could have done a better job of faking it. But ever since I’d walked in with Edison in tow our interchanges had been forced.
For once when I told the kids to wash their hands before dinner, there were no groans; with a thick glance between them that I recognized from my own childhood, they scooted off, both spurning the nearest bathroom for the one upstairs. After a lag, I followed. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to admonish them—probably with something bland and pointless about trying to be nice. When I arrived outside the door, they weren’t even bothering with the pretense of running water.
“Then, like, he drops some peanuts,” Tanner was saying in a harsh whisper, “and stoops to pick them up, right? Except he loses his balance, ’cause that whale gut throws him forward, and he ends up on his hands and knees! I’m not kiddin’, Code, the son of a bitch couldn’t get off the floor! So I had to help drag his ass upright, and I thought we was both goin’ down! Even his hand is huge. And sweaty.”
“He is kinda gross,” said Cody. “Like when he bends down, and his shirt’s too small so it hikes up and you can see his crack with little black hairs in it, and these huge butt-blobs bulge over his belt.”
“Guy could do his own retro TV show, just like Grampa’s: My Three Chins,” said Tanner. “And he’s got a bigger rack than Pando.”
“If I looked like that, I’d just wanna die. His ankles are bigger around than your thighs. Hey, you think Mom knew he’d turned into such a load?”
“I kinda doubt it. But notice how she keeps pretending how everything’s all normal? Like, nobody’s supposed to mention that ‘Uncle Edison’ barely fits through the fucking door.”
I’d heard enough. Clearing my throat, I walked in. “Get it out of your system now. Just because someone’s overweight doesn’t mean he has no feelings.” Yet when I closed the door behind us, the atmosphere remained conspiratorial.
“But how long’s this guy gonna hang around?” said Tanner. “In twenty-four hours he could bust the whole place up. What if he sits on the john and it cracks to pieces?”
“I don’t know how long he’ll stay,” I said quietly. “But while he’s here, I want you to imagine what it might be like if you two grow up, and then you, Tanner, visit your sister and her family, and maybe you’ve had a hard time, and maybe you’ve been hitting the Häagen-Dazs. Wouldn’t you want your sister to still treat you like the same person? Wouldn’t you feel hurt if her family made fun of you?”
“Tanner will never get fat!” said Cody. “He’s got to watch his figure so he can keep pawing all over his girlfriends.”
I shot back, “That’s what I thought about my brother.”
That sobered them up. As we walked back downstairs, Cody dragged on my hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “What I said, I didn’t mean it.” She was close to tears. I assured her with a squeeze that I knew she hadn’t. Prone to self-recrimination, Cody was all too capable of tossing sleeplessly that night, berating herself for having been mean about her uncle even out of his earshot. I’d only ever seen her try to be nasty to impress Tanner, and she was lousy at it. At school, she perennially befriended the social dregs out of compassion, pulling her own mid-level status down several notches in the process.
We sat down to dinner. Fletcher passed his shrimp dish, in a tangy tomato, zucchini, and eggplant sauce over bars of baked polenta. As a special concession, he allowed the rest of us to spike it with Parmesan. The guest, Edison helped himself first, after which our largest rectangular baking pan was half empty. I took a tiny serving to ensure enough remained for everyone else, and Cody did likewise—unless the totem of excess at the end of the table was putting her off her feed. Me, I still had an appetite, but couldn’t meet my brother’s eyes; simply looking at him felt unkind. So I stole glances when he was occupied with his food, terrified he’d catch me staring—at the rolls of his neck, the gapes between straining buttons on his shirt, the tight, bulging fingers that recalled bratwurst in the skillet just before the skin splits.
I announced that Cody was studying the piano, and she said she “sucked,” but that she’d be grateful if Edison would give her a few lessons. He acted game—“Sure, kid, no problemo”—but his tone was surprisingly cool, considering that he’d usually jump at the chance to show off. I encouraged Fletcher to show my brother what he was working on in the basement later, though Edison couldn’t come up with anything to ask about cabinetry besides, “What’s the latest project?” (another coffee table) and “What materials?” (though Fletcher was doing some striking work with bleached cow bones, his terse reply was “walnut”). There’s nothing more leaden than this sort of exchange, and awareness that Edison didn’t care about the answers to his lame questions made Fletcher protective and closed.
Yet Edison grew more animated when I pressed Tanner to tell his step-uncle about his interest in becoming a screenwriter.
“The feature film industry is a total crapshoot,” Edison advised, rearing back in the recliner. “Half the time when after years of frustration the project’s finally lined up with casting, crew, everything, some douche pulls the money. Most Hollywood screenwriters just do rewrites of other people’s rewrites, and never see a script shot. You should think about TV, man. They get shit out the door. Travis, our dad—I guess you’re sort of related, right? Wouldn’t count on a guy who sells Pocket Fisherman on Nick at Nite to provide you a lot of contacts. But he may still know people who know people, and that’s the way it’s done. Me, I got friends out there who went into the industry, including one guy at HBO. Be glad to put you in touch.”
If I could have gotten away with it, I’d have been pulling the ridge of a flattened hand across my throat. Tanner’s expectations were already unrealistic. I didn’t want him encouraged.
“Thanks,” Tanner grunted skeptically.
“Tanner’s met his step-grampa,” I said. “A cautionary tale.”
“What’s that mean?”
“An unpleasant story that should keep you from making the same mistake.”
“What’s so cautionary about my grampa being a TV star?” I noted that in this instance Tanner had dropped the “step.”
“Was a TV star,” I said. “He spends most of his time opening used-car lots and doing Rotary Club lunches—”
“Lecturing on environmentalism, believe it or not,” said Edison with a laugh. “Chump never recycled a Coke can in his life.”
“—or,” I went on, “printing truckloads of anniversary T-shirts, when Travis Appaloosa is the only man on God’s earth who knows or cares when the first episode of Joint Custody aired
