Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley (9 page)

“Sirloin, Bobby. Only the best,” Nathan said. Uncle Bobby had dressed up, his nicest blue and green polo shirt, his new khaki shorts the requisite one size small, them riding high on his tree-trunk thighs. “You all want a beer or a rum and Coke?”

“Beer, please,” said Uncle Bobby.

“Rum and Coke,” said Janie.

“Yeah, that's what I want, too,” Uncle Bobby said.

She saw right away that Nathan expected her to pull together most of the meal from groceries he'd bought—iceberg lettuce, baking potatoes, bacon bits—while he fretted over the three steaks on the grill. She set her drink on the windowsill and scrubbed potatoes while Uncle Bobby hovered between her in the kitchen and Nathan outside, Uncle Bobby knowing better than to help with hot things. All afternoon had
been pumping up to storm, Janie could smell the lightning making, she didn't have to look at the sky, and the air-conditioning at Nathan's was a good five degrees cooler than her grandparents would run it, the chill lifting bumps on her upper arms. Each time Uncle Bobby opened the door, the humidity bulged in like a man-sized blister.

“It's gonna pour, huh, Janie? I hope he gets those steaks done before it pours, don't you, Janie?” She and Uncle Bobby had spent most of the day together, and the tag questions—
I am here, Tell me so
—were starting to get on her nerves. Janie poured herself another rum and Coke. Uncle Bobby wandered outside to “huh” Nathan awhile. Janie ripped the lettuce into a bowl.

Through the window, she watched Nathan's self-important fussing over the steaks. She felt the pressure of his groin against hers, and she was suddenly so angry her hands shook. She snapped the last leaf into the bowl and swallowed the second half of the rum and Coke. But it wasn't working. Like those tequila sunrises at Ramella's had not worked, the alcohol was plateauing. She looked at Nathan again, and again, her hands shook, her teeth clenched. But shot through that, complicating, confusing: the normalcy, the domesticity, of standing at this sink preparing food. That Nathan had invited them upstairs, invited them for a dinner he at least thought he was preparing, and he'd asked Uncle Bobby, too. For Nathan, there was nothing strange about having Uncle Bobby, too. And it dawned on her that this was the only event she or Uncle Bobby had been invited to all summer with the exception of church functions, and this flooded her with such embarrassment and desolation her fist went to her chest.

Shrieked giggles bugled from the patio, Uncle Bobby's high apparently escalating in inverse proportion to hers falling. Through the glass door she saw him doubled over, clenched hands pounding his shorts, his face forced purple, and she knew it was because he'd remembered
her grandmother was right across the street and might hear. Janie knew he was trying to gulp down the laughter, flatten it into pressurized shrieks. And finally they were sitting down at the dining room table, famished and agitated, Nathan not having understood how long potatoes took to bake. Janie put her napkin in her lap and surveyed the room.

Its casual fineness made her small. The polished wood of the furniture, the paintings on the wall, the Oriental rugs under her feet, the dark gleaming bookcases evenly rowed with hardback books. Other things she didn't even have a name for, only knew that they were expensive. All of it, Janie understood, exactly what her grandparents' house wanted to grow up into. But almost certainly would not have time. And then Nathan at the head of the table in greasy cut-offs, bare feet, and a
Johnny's
T-shirt with its collar frayed, and two months ago Janie would have marveled at how hard it was to reconcile him with his house and that would have made her want him even more. Now she understood that his subversion was deliberate. The air-conditioning churned, the storm still had not broken, and Uncle Bobby commented three or four times how lucky they were the steaks had gotten done before the rain. They'd only eaten a few bites when the phone rang. Nathan sauntered into the kitchen and lifted it from the wall.

Janie strained to hear past Uncle Bobby—“And I told him, you should keep your dog tied up, German shepherds are mean dogs. And I was right, wasn't I, Janie? Wasn't I?”—but she could tell only that the exchange was muffled, sharp, and short. The clobber of receiver back on the wall. And the second she glimpsed Nathan's face again at the table, Janie winced in the base of her throat. It had something to do with Melissa.

Nathan pulled his plate right under his chin, wrapped one arm around it, and began spearing into his mouth bits of steak he'd already
cut up. Every sane impulse in Janie screamed “stay quiet,” but the part of her that had asked “What time?” on the phone instead of no, she heard that part softly inquire, “What's wrong?”

“Nothing!” Nathan jammed another chunk of meat into his mouth.

Uncle Bobby took him at his word.

“Man. It'd sure be nice to have a nice homegrown tomato with this dinner.”

Nathan's jaws worked like an animal's. Janie could hear the cartilage, the hinge. She lifted a forkful of lettuce, Thousand Island, and bacon bits to her lip, then set the fork back down.

“Man, it'd be nice to have a nice fresh tomato. I just love homegrown tomatoes. Those store-bought tomatoes, they taste like plastic water. Huh, Janie? Huh?”

“Yeah,” she said. Nathan smashed his baked potato with the back of his fork.

“This dinner would be perfect with a tomato. A nice, fresh, red tomato.” Uncle Bobby demolished his food as he talked without choking on a word, his astounding skill at talking with his mouth full without anyone hearing the food, years of practice under her grandmother's vigilant ear and eye. “I know where there's a homegrown tomato, you know that, Nathan? You know that?”

Nathan tore off half a piece of garlic bread and thrust it into his mouth. Janie could see clear back to his molars before he started chewing.
Don't talk to him, Uncle Bobby
, she whispered in her head,
leave him be
.

“There's a nice ripe tomato on one of your dad's plants out back by the alley. I saw it when I was putting out the trash.”

Uncle Bobby
, and this time she just about said it out loud.

“I'd sure like to have a tomato now, that would be nice.” Uncle Bobby looked at each of them in turn. “You know, if neither one of
you all are gonna get it for me, I believe I'll just go out there and pick that tomato myself.”

In a single motion, Nathan rammed his chair away from the table and hurled his knife, the blade glancing off an antique bureau and dropping, mute, on the Oriental rug. “You can't have that fucking tomato!”

Uncle Bobby looked down and away. Nathan bolted onto his feet, wheeled, and slammed an open hand against the arch between the kitchen and dining room.

“Goddammit!” he shouted. “Just get the fuck out of here!”

Janie stood up. Uncle Bobby stayed down.

“Not you! Him!”

Uncle Bobby gazed shut-mouthed and blank-faced off to the side. A dog who didn't do it. Upon Nathan's command, Janie had started to sit back down, but she stopped halfway, her hands on the chair arms, her knees slightly bent, paralyzed by emotion. Frustration with Uncle Bobby for never knowing when to stop, and embarrassment for him, too, and shame. But more impassioned than those, the instinct to defend Uncle Bobby against Nathan and the line he had crossed. Nathan was not family, only family was allowed to raise their voices at Uncle Bobby, and when they did, they never screamed, they did not cuss, there were rules for reacting to Uncle Bobby annoyance. But in that moment, overriding even her outrage at the injustice committed against Uncle Bobby, Janie felt most primally the urgency to calm Nathan down.

By now, of course, he'd blown himself up big, and this time he bellowed instead of screamed: “I said, get the fuck out of here!”

Uncle Bobby scooted away from the table. As he walked out, his napkin dropped from his lap to the floor.

Nathan flung himself into a living room chair, his heels on the seat, his knees pulled up to his face. Janie eased herself back down into her
own chair. She looked at the torn food on her and Nathan's plates. At Uncle Bobby's almost empty one. After a few minutes, she started to clear the table.

Nathan entered the kitchen behind her, placed his soft hand on her arm right above her elbow, and pulled her, not roughly, outside. The clouds strained towards storm, dusk greenish with it, and he led her, him still barefoot, to his Scout on the street.

They'd just turned off Kentworth Drive and were passing the Coin Castle when the storm finally broke, instant and violent. Just like a movie, Janie thought.
Just like one of these old movies
. That too explained why everything felt at such a distance from her. Around them, cars pulled off to the sides of the streets to wait out the first blinding force of the rain, but Nathan forged head-on into it, and Janie had no room in her to be afraid. They were driving up the Ohio River on the West Virginia side this time, the rain exploding on the windshield like comic book firecrackers, and Nathan had not spoken a word. Soon the thunder and lightning started to divide so she couldn't tell which clap went with which flash, and the rain fell with less ferocity, and Nathan was pulling them into a field across the river from an Ohio country club. They'd been in the field before. They had rapid sex in the backseat while the rain continued to slack on the roof. Then Nathan passed out.

Janie disentangled herself. She pulled up her shorts, snapped them. She pushed her hair away from her face. She crawled into the front seat. She could see even in the dark how clumps of weeds in the field had been beaten into swaths laid low across the ground, and from a side window, she watched the lightning recede across the rest of West Virginia. The lightning cutting the sky to the east. Uncle Bobby would not turn on the TV until the thunder died completely away. He was terrified of the set blowing up, not to mention “ghosts” appearing
on the screen, which he claimed he'd seen before during a storm, but Janie'd never understood if he meant actual spirits or some technical term he'd turned into a malaprop. In the morning, he would not mention the dinner. She also knew that no matter what else he felt about the evening, he'd still have some regret about missing dessert.

Suddenly, all the lights went out on their side of the river. The Ohio golf course continued to burn.

THOSE VERY LAST
days before she left, she and Uncle Bobby made a final ritual sweep of their places, Uncle Bobby toasting the two of them in each one. To skip the Alexander Henry was unthinkable, but the only movie they hadn't seen was
Reds
, two years old and just reaching Remington. Predicting small crowds, Gus assigned it to the shoebox-shaped confines of the converted shoe store.

Despite there being only twelve rows, Uncle Bobby made them sit in the back, the
EXIT
sign's red glow almost near enough to touch. Janie used to think it was the color that made him think fire, but now she understood the fire fear was yet another suspicion he'd contracted from “one of these old movies.” As soon as the lights lowered and the previews began, Janie eased the Southern Comfort into the Sprite, nudged Uncle Bobby with her elbow, passed him the drink, and toasted the waxed cup with her knuckles. Uncle Bobby hailed their naughtiness with a constricted cackle.

Almost immediately Janie regretted that they'd come, her unable to focus on the movie, and into the vacuum that inattention created surged the Nathan situation like a vomit. She glanced at her uncle to see how closely he was watching. She doubted
Reds
would have any scenes he found scary so at least she wouldn't have to suffer the laugh-shrieking when everyone else was silent. Again, the Nathan situation lifted into her throat. Janie swallowed on it hard. Then she remembered the time
back in July when Uncle Bobby had stopped laughing halfway through a movie. She recalled it now even though she hadn't given it a thought after they walked out of the Alexander Henry that afternoon. That was
Mask
, the Eric Stoltz and Cher picture about the kid with the horrible degenerative disease they said made him look like a lion but that actually made him look like a lion with a horrible degenerative disease, and Janie hadn't even noticed when Uncle Bobby's laughing stopped. She realized it only when she heard instead a peculiar snuffling sound in the dark beside her, and when she did, she pretended not to hear it, picking up the Sprite to pull a few last sips of ice melt and alcohol. The cup was already drained. The second the lights came up, Uncle Bobby began convulsing with laughter again.

“I have to use the restroom,” Uncle Bobby whispered now. He heaved himself up, and the whole row of seats shuddered at the loss of his weight.

The morning after the dinner at Nathan's, she and Uncle Bobby sat across from each other at the dining room table. She rotated in her fingers a piece of toast, Uncle Bobby behind his lineup of mixing bowl, Cheerios box, and gallon jug of milk. He would eat two mixing bowls of cereal because, he had explained to her several years ago, the holes in the Cheerios cut the serving in half. Uncle Bobby acted as if the night before hadn't happened, which gave away how profoundly it had, because if it had been a night during which nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, Uncle Bobby would be asking, “What happened after I left, Janie? What'd you all do?”

And as she sat there watching Uncle Bobby shuttle the Cheerios into his mouth with a gusto verging on ecstasy, she understood that forgiving her had not occurred to him because he had not registered any offense. And self-hatred and shame rushed through her in black-red waves so intense she felt vertigo.