I see the makings of a smile on Dad’s face. “Tell me, oh wise one, would you ever sit down and drink twenty-four Cokes in one sitting?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“Just answer it.”
“Of course not. I’d get sick.” I try to pretend the irony escapes me.
“Here’s the deal.” Dad stands up, walks around the table, and places his hands on Mom’s shoulders. “You’re grounded for four weeks. No phone, no going out on weekends, and you come home straight from wrestling practice after school.”
A slap on the wrist as punishments go, and yet what comes out of my mouth is, “No phone?”
“Except for…” Mom raises her hand in the air, index finger pointing back at my father.
Dad rolls his eyes as he sits back down. “Except for Laura.”
“Really?” I say.
Mom nods. “You can call Laura. No sense taking away the best part of your life just because the worst part got you in trouble. But no dates for four weeks.”
My eventual escape is secured. If things hold true to form, my parents will cave around the two, two-and-a-half-week mark. I push my chair back from the table, stand up. I try to look repentant, but I can’t help smiling. I walk around to stand between my parents. “I’m sorry.” Mom and Dad hug me, but briefly, as if to maintain the punitive illusion.
I reach down and place my hand on my mother’s distended belly beneath her old cotton robe. “Really…” I choke up a little, Dad’s earlier miscarriage allusion sneaking a punch into my midsection for real this time. “I am very sorry.”
Mom understands. “We know.”
I need to throw Dad some kind of bone, too. “Hey, Pops, how about I go shovel the driveway?”
Dad rustles the newspaper, not nearly as appreciative of my gesture as I had hoped. “Uncle Mitch is outside already doing it.”
“Uncle Mitch?” I say. “What’s he doing here?”
“I ended up buying that nineteen forty Series ninety from that farmer down in Kentucky.”
“That beat up old Oldsmobile?”
“That classic Oldsmobile. And yeah, that’s the one. Mitch volunteered to be my co-pilot. He and Aunt Ophelia are still going through a bit of a rough patch. I just thought a road trip would be a nice distraction.”
“Oh,” I say, pretending to care. Uncle Mitch and Aunt Ophelia have been separated for a year. Ophelia is seeking an annulment, but no one seems to know why. I have my theories.
“Is that a problem, Hank?” Dad asks.
Is that a problem? It’s a simple question without a simple answer. A part of me thinks I’ve imagined it all. Okay, so maybe there was some skin-on-skin heavy petting, but how awful is that? It’s not like I ever wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat as the repressed memories come rushing back to me. So he touched me. Big deal. I touch myself all the fucking time. Can the memories of a five-year-old or even a ten-year-old be trusted? I got past the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz, the Oompa Loompas in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, even that fucked up episode of Little House in the Prairie where the girl gets raped by the guy in the clown mask. Maybe I need to stop looking underneath the bed for a reason to be afraid. What’s there to fear under that bed anyway? My dad’s discarded Playboys? Those old penny loafers, two sizes too small and scuffed beyond the reach of any polish? That paperback edition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I’ve tried to read because I want the artsy college chick who moved in across the street to think I’m cool, and yet I never seem to get past the last sentence of Chapter Six: “But he took on so much and went so far in the end his real victim was himself.”
Who am I fucking kidding? That clown mask episode of Little House in the Prairie still scares me shitless.
“Need a hand?” I ask.
My godfather is a little underdressed for the weather, wearing a jean jacket, a pair of faded jeans, and old tennis shoes. “Sure I can’t interest you in a beer or something?” he says.
“You’re just so fucking funny,” I say.
“I’d like to think I am.” He laughs, handing me the shovel. His laugh starts in his throat and comes out of his mouth and nose at the same time, like a pig. He has a dark black receding hairline that frames a pitted face and a complexion made darker by his five o’clock shadow. A lit cigarette hangs out of his mouth. As he exhales, I can see and smell his three-packs-a-day breath.
Uncle Mitch smokes Merits. In the early eighties, he switched brands from Kool because someone told him menthol cigarettes were bad for you. The sound of crinkling plastic reminds me of Uncle Mitch and his Merits. Whenever I slept over, he’d spoon with me on the living room floor while we watched Charlie Chan movies. He always forgot to take his Merits out of his front pants pocket. I could hear the crinkling plastic during the whole movie.
“You gave your parents a scare last night.”
“I realize that.”
“You think you’ve learned your lesson?”
“Probably not.”
“I’m guessing John and Debbie want a bit more assurance.”
“Come on, Uncle Mitch, you’re a high school teacher. As the song goes, I am sixteen, going on seventeen.”
“Yeah, but your parents can’t hide you away from the real world in an Austrian castle and dress you in curtains.”
I shovel the snow in strips running parallel to the street as opposed to perpendicular. It’s an old trick Grandpa Fred taught me to keep the snow from piling up at the end of the driveway. He was a good teacher. Better than my godfather.
Uncle Mitch follows me. I point to the house. “You can go in now if you want.”
He extracts another Merit, lights it, and inhales long and deep. “I like the fresh air.”
I keep shoveling. I’m not comfortable around him, but I’ve had a lot of practice faking it. “How’s the job?” I ask. “You’re teaching health and driver’s education at East Catholic, right?”
“That’s right,” he answers.
“And you’re an assistant coach for the girls’ basketball team?”
“Assistant for the boys’ team,” Uncle Mitch says. “Great bunch of kids. After being lost for a really long time, I finally feel like I’m making a difference.”
“Lost? Is that what you call it?” I don’t know where the question comes from, but the fact is, I say it, and I’ve wanted to say it for years.
Uncle Mitch takes a tentative step toward me. “Hank, I don’t know what you’re trying to get at, but you know—”
“Don’t
