Growing up, in my solipsistic way, I assumed Uncle Dan had no interest in a relationship, that the Jaybird and I were enough to make him happy, and why would things ever change? But maybe they had. Uncle Dan is living with a woman. I auditioned the thought, played around with it—rejected it. Had Nancy been some sleek, foxy senior lady, I might have accepted it, but the woman now occupying my bedroom, even minus a hundred pounds, was all wrong for him. You could see it in her eyes, the essential ain’t quite right hovering around her like a stench.
Kelly pulled our suitcases away from the door and sat on the couch.
“I’m hungry,” she said. “Let’s go meet your uncle. I’m all stoked for one of these legendary Jersey slices.”
“I want that woman out of my room.”
“Maybe it’s her room now. You haven’t lived here in twenty years.”
“Sixteen years. During college, this was my legal residence.”
“Fine. Sixteen years. But Donnie, it’s not your house. It’s not your room.”
“Who is she, anyway? She farted in the kitchen!”
“It happens.”
“It shouldn’t.”
“Let’s hope we never live together,” Kelly said. “You get another five minutes to be an ass about this before I get annoyed. Why are you so bothered by her? It’s not that big a deal.”
I joined her on the couch and put my feet on the coffee table, exhaustion working through me like a spasm. I could understand why Uncle Dan might be quiet about it, but why hadn’t Amy warned me that my uncle was living with someone? Her house was only three blocks away. She couldn’t have missed it. Holman Beach was a small town—weird one-armed fat women couldn’t just move in without people noticing.
I yawned, my muscles slackening.
“I know that look,” Kelly said, shaking my shoulder. “Don’t fall asleep on me, please. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Okay,” I said, my fingertips going pins and needles as I yawned again, my eyelids ready to drop.
“Donnie!”
Over the years several doctors had suggested that my narcolepsy was psychological instead of neurological, that physically there was nothing wrong with me, my falling asleep an obvious avoidance tactic, an extreme reaction to stress. I didn’t buy it—I’d had plenty of narcoleptic events during stress-free times, but I couldn’t deny that falling asleep was often a godsend. I pictured my old room, invaded and occupied by the troubling Nancy—my playbills replaced by grainy pages ripped from The National Enquirer, my closet stuffed with tacky housecoats and dingy slippers, perhaps even leftover fried chicken—and I pulled my legs onto the couch and reached for a pillow.
“You need to start taking those pills,” Kelly said, her voice fading, as if she—or I—had been sucked into a tunnel. “If you get up and start walking…”
“Okay,” I said. “But really, I’m not going to…”
. . . . .
I woke up to her hand caressing my hair, a gentle, comforting touch as my eyes drew focus near the bookcase, where Kelly, her back facing me, browsed the different titles on the shelf. I felt her fingers brushing the side of my ear, but if Kelly was by the bookshelf…?
I jumped, lurching away from Nancy’s meaty paw. She looked startled, as if a cat had bolted from her lap without warning, and she leaned back into the couch cushions, resting her one hand on the slight impression where my head, moments before, had lay sleeping.
“Good, you’re awake,” Kelly said, turning from the bookcase.
I stumbled back, crashed into the coffee table, and grabbed for the wall, steadying myself against a floor lamp. With a deep, phlegmy breath Nancy heaved her bulk from the couch and turned toward the hall. “Commercials almost over,” she said, bounding toward the bedroom—my bedroom—her housecoat bunched around her hips, her gigantic pink underpants sagging over the back of her thighs.
I waited until the door shut. Kelly flipped through a book, trying not to laugh.
“You let her touch me?”
“Don’t worry. She kept it above the waist.”
“It’s not funny.”
“You seemed to enjoy it. You were sleeping like a baby.”
“If that happens again, drag me outside and let me sleep in the driveway. Do not let her touch me.”
“Donnie, it was nothing. She seemed genuinely caring…”
“So did Frankenstein’s monster until he killed that little girl.”
“Okay,” she said, clearly done with me. “Let’s go meet your Uncle, and then I’m heading for the beach. I think some time apart is a good idea.”
The TV bellowed from the other end of the house, one laugh-tracked inanity after another, and I imagined Nancy crushing my old twin bed with her sloppy girth. I fished the car keys from my pocket, fuming.
Near the front door, a small mirror hung on the wall. Kelly checked her face, but even though my sleep-hair was in corkscrews and knots, screaming for a comb, I lowered my head and dodged the mirror, certain my reflection would show a fat thumbprint smack in the middle of my forehead.
. . . . .
After the introductions, all those nice-to-finally-meet-you and I’ve-heard-so-much-about-you handshakes and hugs, Kelly sat down with a Caesar salad and a slice of white mushroom while Uncle Dan and I headed for the storage room for a few private words.
Three years had passed since I’d last seen him, and his thinner, older face was a shock. Uncle Dan was sixty-five now, a senior citizen, for God’s sake, and while he was still in great shape, his chest still taut beneath his T-shirt and apron, his arms rock-solid from cutting all those slices and hauling those forty-pound bags of flour, he seemed smaller somehow, as if he’d shed a layer of himself and buried it somewhere behind the Jaybird. His shoulders, always a bit hunched from the years kneading dough, had a downward sloop, like a wire hanger trying to hold up a heavy winter coat. Time had
