'Me and Macbeth,' I said.
'Not of woman born,' Susan said. 'But that's all I know.'
'And all ye need to know,' I said.
'Many people would welcome the chance to sit in a quiet bar on a rainy afternoon and talk about themselves to an attentive listener,' Susan said.
'Many people pay one hundred and fifty dollars an hour to come and sit in a quiet office and talk to me about themselves.'
'Do they know you used to wear polka dot panties with a bow?' I said.
'Most of them don't.'
I drank some beer. I looked out the window at the wet, wind-driven cityscape. The small rain down can rain.
'My father was a carpenter,' I said, 'in business with his wife's two brothers. They were very young when I was born. My uncles were seventeen and eighteen. My father was twenty.'
'My God,' Susan said. 'Children raising children.'
'I suppose so,' I said. 'But this was the depression, remember, and people grew up early those years. Everyone worked as soon as he could, especially in a place like Laramie.'
'Your father never remarried.'
'No.'
'And your uncles lived with you?'
'Yeah, until they got married. They both married late. I was in my teens.'
'So you grew up in an all-male household.'
I nodded.
'My uncles dated a lot, so did my father. There were always girlfriends around. But they didn't have anything to do with the family. The family was us.
'Three men and a boy,' Susan said.
'Maybe four boys,' I said.
'All unified by a connection to one woman.'
'Yeah.'
'Who was dead,' Susan said.
I nodded.
'They were all fighters,' I said. 'My father used to pick up spare money boxing, around the state, at smokers, fairs, stuff like that. And my uncles did the same thing. Heavyweight, all three of them. One uncle fought for a while at light heavy until he filled out.'
'And they taught you.'
'Yeah. I could box as far back as I can remember.'
'What were they like?' Susan said.
'They were like each other,' I said. 'Other than that it's hard to summarize. They were fairly wild, tough men. But one thing was clear. We were family, the four of us, and in that family I was the treasure.'
'They loved you.'
'They loved me without reservation,' I said. 'No conditions. Nothing about their love depended on my grades or my behavior. They expected me to learn how to act by observing them. And God save anyone who didn't treat me properly.'
'Like what?' Susan said. I could see how she'd gotten to be such a good shrink. Her interest was luminous. She listened with her whole self. Her eyes picked up every movement of my hands, every gesture of my soul.
'I went to the store once,' I said, 'and on the wayback, past a saloon, a couple of drunks gave me a hard time. I was probably sort of mouthy.'
'Hard to believe,' Susan murmured.
'Anyway-I was maybe around ten-the bottle of milk I was carrying got broken. I went home and told my uncle Bob, who was the only one there. One of them was always home. I never had a babysitter. And he grinned and said we'd take care of it, and later that afternoon, we all went down to the place. It was called the Blind Pig Saloon, and my father and my uncles cleaned it out. It was like one of those old John Wayne movies, where bodies would come flying out through the front window. I didn't know if the culprits were even in there when we arrived. Didn't matter. By the time the cops came the place was empty except for me, and everything in there was broken.'
'Where were you,' Susan said, 'while all this was happening?'
'Mostly behind the bar, watching, like the kid in Shane. Even had the dog with me.'
We were quiet. Susan twirled the stem of her nearly full wineglass. There was the imprint of her lipstick on the rim. I thought about what it might be like going through life with everything having a faint raspberry flavor.
'Parents' day at school was an event,' I said. 'They'd always come. The three of them. All six feet or more. All around two hundred pounds and hard as the handle on a pickax, and they'd sit in the back row, at the little desks, with their arms folded and not say a word. But they always came.'
