Chapter Thirty

-- August, 2002

Bob Seger – “We’ve got Tonight”

We got the invitation to the family reunion shortly after. It was organized by one of Mom’s cousins down in Orlando, a side of the family I had never heard of, but Lynn sure had. These cousins were wealthy, but not in the way she would have preferred. They owned a massive motor home and R.V. park which made them a mint but meant they had to rub shoulders with rednecks.

The reunion wasn’t until August, but the anticipation cast a pall over the summer. I spent most of July dreading seeing my family members again. The scene I made at the Vanowen’s was severe enough that Mom gave up even trying to get me to go to Sunday dinners anymore. Jesse was away at fat camp, so I had the run of the house. But I just stayed in my cave, only coming out to shit and eat.

When I learned that the get-together was to take place in Florida, I decided to call Aunt Sheila and see if she was coming. She seemed glad to hear from me, especially because we hadn’t spoken since my disastrous visit a few years back. I told her about the reunion, but when I asked her to come, she became cold all of a sudden.

“Taylor,” she said. “That’s not my family anymore.”

The conversation petered out after that. After I hung up, I bitched about her to anyone who would listen. When I told Mom, she said “Be nice to Sheila, she’ll probably leave you her millions.”

I stared her down and told her I wouldn’t take a cent of it. Mom nodded sadly, seeming to understand.

When August finally rolled around, Mom and I found ourselves driving to the R.V. park from Orlando International Airport. Janet had made a fuss when the car rental place ran out of mid-sizes and we ended up with a cherry red Convertible. In the car with the top down, the wind blowing in her hair, she seemed happy, somehow in her element. Being a wanderlust, she had always loved old maps and road trips. As she drove down a sun-soaked stretch of two-lane highway, she had a great big smile on her face.

But I was far too anxious to enjoy the scenery. During the drive, I imagined a massive grandfather clock hanging over my head counting down the moments until I would inevitably see my family again.

They were, it seems, inescapable.

Lynn, in particular, I hadn’t seen since my outburst. I dreaded the scene that would play out. Mom, however, seemed to sense my apprehension. “I don’t know why the two of you don’t get along better – you’re both so alike.”

I turned to her, mouth agape. “Take it back!” I screamed.

Janet laughed, shocked. “Taylor!”

Shortly after, we pulled into the campgrounds of the Embargo Motor Lodge. It stood at the end of a mile-long country road wreathed in crab grass. As the car kicked up clouds of dust, we passed ramshackle porch attachments that weekly and monthly visitors could hook their trailers up to. Little hoovervilles had popped up in between. There were neon red signs advertising the sternos and propane they had for rent.

It took some trial and error, but we finally found the motel we were staying at. The Commodore’s Wharf was a driftwood building decorated in a sea green, nautical theme replete with wharf ropes, deep sea divers, and pirate ship wheels.

Getting out of the car, I surveyed the area. A small tributary ran along the south side of the parking lot. When I stood at the top of the gulch looking down into it, I realized that our family weren’t the only monsters we’d be seeing that week. Apparently, alligators roamed freely here. I made a mental note to stay indoors.

**

That night, once everyone had arrived, the family met at the Community Rec. Hall for dinner. When she saw my mother, the first thing Lynn did was complain. “I’ve never seen so much white trash in my life!” Janet laughed and shook her head.

Behind Lynn was her family. I considered ignoring Dean, but that would just make this reunion feel like forever. I sucked up my pride and joined him as everyone walked into the lobby. Someone had taken great care in collecting old family photos and blowing them up at Kinko’s. The walls were decorated with them.

“Look at this...” I said, pointing them out.

Dean gave them a cursory glance. “Black & White -- boring!” He turned away without a second thought. I hung back to run a finger down one of the glossy veneers, then ran to catch up.

The hall was expansive. Our extended family, some one hundred people, barely filled a quarter of it. We sat at two long ‘last supper’ dinner tables that someone had dolled up with fancy linens. Bringing up the rear though, Mom wasn’t too happy to be seated next to Lynn. “I don’t want to sit next to her!” she told anyone who’d listen. “She’ll pinch me!”

Most of us laughed, but Lynn just looked affronted. “Don’t do anything to get pinched and you’ll be fine.”

I sat down next to Dean, relaying what Todd Hyde had told me up in Boston. “What a heart-warming story of my birth!” he said, sarcastically.

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Over the course of the meal, we met cousins from Michigan, cousins from North Carolina. Mom spent a good three minutes trying to get the attention of the oldest woman I had ever seen in my life. She kept repeating, “Aunt Minette!” over and over again until the woman winced in her direction. “It’s Sandra’s daughter, Janet – do you remember me?”

Aunt Minette nodded, dumbly. “Just a gin and tonic, dear.”

Several people asked Mom if she were married. “Got close a couple times,” she said to more than one of them. She kept a smile on her face but started drinking more than usual. By the end of the meal, she was happily drunk and in the middle of telling a story to Lynn. “So, I looked at him and I said, ‘Leisure Suits?’--”

Lynn knew where she was going with this and joined her for the punchline: “--More like ‘Loser Suits!’” They fell about themselves, delighting in their inside joke.

“Oh, but he was a prince compared to your high school boyfriend... what was his name? Pizza face?!”

Lynn abruptly pinched her sister. “You are so mean!” Janet howled.

I looked to my right and saw that Sandra wasn’t talking to anybody. “How you doin, Nan?” I asked her.

She shook her head, the air tubes from her oxygen tank stuck in her nostrils. “Not too good,” she said. “My friend's keep dying...”

“Yeah, I heard about that, sorry--”

“--And my arthritis is acting up.” She showed me the gnarled finger she was talking about. It was her middle finger.

When Dean saw this, he laughed. “This finger, Nannie?” He flipped her the bird.

But Nannie didn’t seem to notice, she was counting fingers. “The third from the left.”

I nodded. “Third from the right, too...”

By now, the whole table had gotten wind of our conversation and were laughing, in a restrained sort of way. Nannie couldn’t take it. “What are you all on about? Acting like a bunch of ninnies!”

Drunk Janet wanted to join in. “Is this the finger you’re talking about, mom?” She gave her mother the finger.

“Yes!” Nannie insisted.

“How about this one?” Lynn surprisingly did the same as her sister.

“And these two?” I asked, giving my grandmother a double salute.

She pounded the table. “Yes! Yes! All the same finger!”

Seeing the grownups laughing, Ollie tried to get in on the action. “This finger, Nannie--”

He started to put up his middle finger, but Kevin swatted it right down. “Stop. Inappropriate.”

This sent us into hysterics.

I didn’t know if they were playing nice for the rest of the family, but I liked them like this. Too often they only smiled on the weekends, were only happy in the summer. Here they were a family full of love, but a love that was contingent upon you acting right.

I had never seen Lynn so animated. I didn’t know if it was too much chard, but she started telling an older relative about Dean’s chin scar, the one I was responsible for.

Was she trying to pick a fight this early into the reunion?

“How’d he manage that?” the woman was asking.

“Oh, he tripped over a chair when he was four or so. Thirty-three stitches!”

I scanned her face for signs that she was omitting what really happened. But I saw none. I couldn’t understand, if she didn’t blame me for hurting her baby boy, then what was this grudge she was holding against me? Was it all just in my head? I decided to set her straight.

“Actually Lynn, I threw that chair.” This got the table’s attention, so I relayed the story of being told to clean by Uncle Kev and hiding everything in the closet, then getting mad when our ruse was found out. When I got to the part where I threw the wooden chair, I watched Lynn laugh, genuinely surprised. For years she had thought this was an accident and Dean had never corrected her. I felt a sudden surge of love for my family.

When dinner was over, the cousin who owned the R.V. park introduced a short video compilation of home movies he had gotten different family members to send him. A projection screen was set up. I watched two minutes of people I didn’t know, and then suddenly, there was my mother in a white dress. She was about sixteen and Bill was holding the camera (you saw him in a mirror). When Janet took a secret sip of William’s drink there was a big laugh from all of us. Then Bill’s hand shot in front of the camera snapping for her to give him some too.

I heard Mom whisper to Lynn, “that must be Bill’s graduation party...”

Then the footage changed to when they were much younger children. It was a time when you could burn the fall leaves and while William set about starting a trash can fire, Janet and Bill rolled around in the leaf pile.

The edit shifted to them on some earlier Christmas day. Bill and Janet stood on William’s feet, holding onto his outturned pockets, being carted around.

I watched in real time as Bill and my mother looked at each other over the rec. hall table. They smiled briefly, nostalgia tingeing even the worst of times.

By the time the home movies ended, Mom was drunk enough that I had to help her back to our motel room. As we slowly hobbled back to Commodore’s Wharf, we overheard Aunt Beth drunkenly yelling at Bill. “I saw you looking at her, Bill!” she screamed.

“Don’t be ridiculous, she’s my cousin!”

“You were ogling her like you were a single man!”

“You’re drunk--”

“--Maybe if you could last for more than fifteen seconds, I’d actually be worried!”

I shifted Mom to get at our room key. Entering the air-conditioned space, we left the voices behind. I groped for the light switch and plopped Janet down on her bed.

“Thank you, sweetie...” she mumbled, struggling to pull the covers out from underneath her. “If they lined up all the little boys...”

“Yeah, yeah...” I said, rolling my eyes. As I helped her take her shoes off, I thought to myself that I could probably say anything right now and Mom wouldn’t remember.

“You know, I read some of your old writing.” I began. “You were really good. Why didn’t you keep at it?”

Mom spoke with her eyes closed. “You know how it is... life got in the way...” She rolled over onto her side. “I’ve had a thousand careers...”

I sat on the other bed and watched as she drifted off to sleep. “I’m sorry that life didn’t turn out better for you, mom.” I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but I was glad I did.

Unfortunately, she was still awake. “I loved my life. What makes you think otherwise?”

“You loved your life?” I said, skeptically. “This is what you had in mind when you were a little girl? All your dreams came true?”

“You and your sister were my dreams.”

“Then why did you move us?”

“What?”

“From Nick and Sheila’s. Why did you get your own place? Did you think that he might visit?”

Janet sighed. “Enough with the questions for now. I’m tired.”

It was true what she had said to me years ago: the ones who take it for granted get it handed to them... and the ones that work so hard at it, find it hard to come by.

As I stood and tiptoed to the door, she muttered to herself. “Are you leaving?”

“No ma, just getting the lights.”

“Good. Everybody ends up leaving me.”