So I participated in the damn Wiffle ball game and was actually having myself quite a day (three for four with two doubles and two RBIs—I promise I can hit a home run) until a line drive smacked my cousin Derek in the cheek. I didn’t see it from the outfield, but I could hear that plastic-on-skin pop! He only started to cry when the armada of aunts descended from the porch to tend to his abrasion.
We broke for dinner, which for some reason was always in the middle of the day, closer to when the Geigers had lunch. I brought my plate to Nana, who commented on how fast I run as she filled my plate with baked cannelloni that were so big I could wear them as gauntlets around my forearms.
I joined my cousins on the back deck, where we sat, segregated by gender, at long weather-beaten tables that reminded me of something medieval. I attempted to join a conversation that my brother was having with my cousin Markey, but I was denied entrance by the two words that had haunted me during my youth: “double digits.”
Tony and George had formed a highly selective, masonically secretive club that for admission required the member to obtain at least ten years of age. Being only eight, I was shoved to the margins of their conversations and locked out of the SEGA room on multiple occasions. I yearned for the age of ten like one yearns for seventeen (driving age in New Jersey) or twenty-one (Sambuca). And now it appeared that my cousin Markey, having reached the requisite age and enduring whatever cryptic rituals had been imposed on him by the older brothers of the world, was an active member of the eternal rite.
I looked down the banquet table and saw Britney scraping the sauce off her cannelloni with a plastic fork. Nana, who was hard of hearing and plopped the pasta onto our plates like soldiers in the mess hall, must not’ve heard Britney’s timid objection to the thick red gravy.
I got up and carried my plate down the table. “Hey Luke, could you switch seats with me real quick? I want to sit next to Britney.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Hey Brit, do you want this one? It only has a little sauce on it.”
“Okay. Thank… thank you, Victor.”
“Hey guys,” I said to my cousins Melissa and Marissa. They weren’t sisters, but they were chronically attached at the hip during family gatherings and could’ve passed for twins. “Have you seen Mulan? It’s one of Britney’s favorites, right, Brit?”
“Yeah! I like it when… when… Mulan…” The girls crossed their arms, waiting for Britney to spit it out so they could carry on with their conversation. “… when she... she cuts her hair off and becomes a boy.”
“Mhmm,” said Marissa.
“Uh huh,” said Melissa.
“What’s… What is… Do you have a favorite part?” Britney said, speeding up her question.
“We’re a little old for Mulan,” said Melissa.
They were the same age as Britney.
“It looked stupid to me,” said Marissa.
And they turned back to each other and continued their conversation.
“Hey Brit, I like that part too.”
“Yeah, Victor?”
“Yeah, but I like the Mongols.”
“The Mongols? But… but they’re bad!”
“I know! But they’re the best warriors. Hi-ya! Hi-ya, ya!” I sliced through the air with my plastic knife as Britney laughed.
I turned to my cousins Rookie, Luke, and Junior—who, like me, were stuck flailing in our youth and not permitted into double-digit conversations—and asked if they knew that King Arthur was gay. I didn’t have energy to explain to them what gay was, and Karl wasn’t there to fill in any gaps I might leave, so I performed a full rendition of the melee between King Arthur and the Black Knight right there on the deck.
After I was finished clunking two crumbling Italian bread crusts together as coconut halves, I plopped back onto the wooden bench and sopped up the remaining sauce and cheese by scooping the hunk around the lining of the bowl. Even at a young age, I had indulged in the invigorating act of fare la scarpetta (translation: to scrape up the remaining contents of a bowl with a piece of bread). There was a frisson of pure joy that accompanied whirling the flaky crust around the edge of the bowl until it turned a bright red that not even the enchanting home screen greeting of my SEGA Genesis could duplicate.
I watched through the sliding screen door as my father and papa walked across the living room and down the basement steps. I had long wondered what was in the lake house basement but had always been too terrified to venture into the deep unknown on my own. Perhaps it was the courage I had gained from witnessing the Black and White Knight’s heroism in the arena, or perhaps it was my exclusion from the tantalizing double-digit conversations, but I decided that day would be the day I descended into the darkness.
I scarfed down the rest of the bread and slid open the screen door before I finished chewing. I trailed them down the steps and reached the dusty, dank cellar, home to tools and fishing rods and plenty of spider webs that reminded me of an expansive dungeon or doomsday bunker. I followed what I assumed to be my father’s voice, but it was so distant it seemed to be receding, even past the confines of the house as if the cellar were an underground tunnel—similar to a project Karl and I had been concocting to connect our two houses.
The door closed at the top of the steps, and I practically jumped out of my pants. In a frantic spasm, I coursed through the cellar, twisting and turning as I got caught in a spider web.
“Dad!”
I tripped over a tackle box and held my composure until I looked down at my bloodied knee.
“Dad!”
“Vito?!”
“Ahh!”
My father popped out from around the corner, holding some sort of battle-ax with
