Chapter Three

--April, 1999

Elvis Costello – “And in Every Home...”

Some thirty years later, I dropped my mother’s writing back into her nightstand and dry-retched. Who the fuck would want to read that?!

“Taylor, we’re leaving!” my mother yelled from downstairs.

“Just a second!” I said, scrambling. Dinner at our cousins was a Sunday tradition, so it shouldn’t have taken me by surprise, but here we were. Looking down into my mother’s open bureau, I quickly made the decision to take the manila envelope. From the looks of it, it was several years old, and its absence probably wouldn’t go noticed for quite a while.

I felt like I was only scratching the surface of who Janet really was. I didn’t even know she did anything creative, let alone that she could write so vividly about her past. It made sense though. I had recently started writing short stories of my own, so maybe it was in the genes. I shoved the stack of paper under my shirt and ran up to my room.

I lived on the third floor. My sister and I used to share a bedroom, but once she needed her own space, I was banished to the attic. Upstairs, the wallpaper was dusty and covered in cabbage roses. The floor was cold and uncarpeted. And the walls were so thin that my neighbor, Tim, once punched a hole straight through one of them. You could even hear the squirrels that had taken over the bird’s nest in the roof. Every time I tried to complain to Janet about this, she’d just say “you have a whole floor to yourself!”

I hid my mother’s thinly-veiled memoir behind a bookshelf and hurried back downstairs. I was rounding the landing of our staircase when I bumped into the compact Asian man that was my little sister. “Mom says it’s time to go!” she yelped.

“I said I was coming – god, you’re so annoying!” Once when I was younger, I tried to leave her out for the garbage men, but they wouldn’t take her, and Mom just ended up giving me a stern talking to. Jesse and I could not have been more different. She loved the outdoors, and I was an indoor cat. She would pass me in the house and marvel at the fact that I wasn’t outside enjoying whatever beautiful day was happening outside, even though I told her the sun would ruin my plans of watching seven movies in a row. Also, I had to be careful around the girl. She was a certified narc who would tell on me for anything.

I followed her out to the car and reluctantly got into the backseat because Jesse had beat me to shotgun. Before pulling out of the driveway, Janet announced, “seatbelt race!” and both of us complied without question. Mom had gotten into a really bad car accident in her youth, so it was best to just placate her on this one because if you didn’t, she just sat there idling until you gave in.

As she drove, I thought about how much of what I read was true. If it was all verbatim then Grandpa was a racist, Mom was a smoker, and Uncle Nick was the luckiest kid alive. I had nothing but questions about Janet and the rest of the family. I know Mom tried hard to make me into the kind of son she always wanted, and I admit, for a while I wanted to be that kid too. When Nick and Sheila went to Bermuda, she brought me with them. She signed me up for French lessons at the middle school during the summer. She begged, borrowed, and stole (I’m assuming) to get me the things I needed in life. Still, she knew there were things she could not give me. I think that’s why she let me spend so much time at the Vanowens.

The Vanowens lived two towns away and had money. The Vanowens had a lake house. They vacationed in the Poconos. They belonged to a country club and had a seven figure, canary yellow house with blue bell flowers out front. I grew up thinking their life was the be all end all. It fit my dreams of what rich kids got. My cousins grew up with the Disney channel, had multiple playrooms, and a mother who picked them up precisely when school was over so that they could watch afternoon T.V. Rich kids didn’t do “after care.”

Mostly though, I spent time there because of Cousin Dean, my best friend in the entire world. Unfortunately, with Dean came his parents. Aunt Lynn and Uncle Kev had a way of always triggering my anxiety. Every time I saw them, I felt like I had to be on the defense. As we drove down their street, I unconsciously began to bite my fingernails.

Their house sat at the end of a cul de sac and we first saw Kevin Vanowen as we pulled up. He was on the porch shucking corn, which the maid could have done, but knowing Kev he’d take any excuse to get outside and smoke a stogie. With his Kirk Douglas chin, he resembled a kind of chubby Chevy Chase. Uncle Kevin was a republican, the life of the party, the kind of guy who gave every kid who came into his house a nickname so that they felt like they belonged. I was known as “Dr. Big Head” because I’m a smart ass. Dean’s best friend, Avi Schmidt, was obviously known as “Schmitty burger!” Kev was also the one who came up with his daughter, Amanda’s, “Mandy moo-moo” moniker; a rather cruel name that stuck as she was rather large. Not cow large, but you get the point. When he saw us coming up the drive, he brightened. “Hey, Dr. Big head’s here! Help me shuck this corn, Dr. Big Head!”

From the age of six to, oh I don’t know, twenty, my Uncle Kevin was my natural born enemy. Because my father wasn’t around, Uncle Kev took a personal interest in me. And trust me, you do not want Kev to take a personal interest in you. Kev doesn’t sleep through the night. Just like my mother, if he’s seated for more than three minutes he will fall right to sleep. What this series of micro-naps meant was that if you ever slept over at the Vanowen’s for the weekend, Uncle Kevin would without fail barge into Dean’s room at 6:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning and ask what we were doing. I think we learned to curse just to respond in these situations. “We’re fucking sleeping, Kev! Shut the goddamn door!” Undeterred, he’d keep asking questions until we screamed at him enough to get our point across.

“Wait a second, so you guys don’t want to get up?” he’d finally say.

Dean and I would scream in unison, “Nooo!!!” until he finally left.

I resented being asked to shuck the corn, because none of his shitty kids would ever be asked to shuck corn. “I don’t wanna.” I groaned.

Uncle Kev lived for moments like this. He took a break from shucking to throw a tennis ball for his dumb as rocks Labradors. They took off after the green blur across the dog shit covered lawn. “So, let’s get this straight – you come to my house, you eat my food, and when I ask for one teensy little favor you bail? That’s it – you’re out!”

Uncle Kev had his own series of catchphrases. They would come out involuntarily if a child wasn’t doing what he wanted. “Negative,” he’d say, “you’re out!” if said behavior was to exclude you from taking part in some activity. This became funny when the activity wasn’t something you particularly looked forward to doing. “Oh, you don’t want to go to the model train museum? Fine – you’re out!”

Kev was what effeminate psychiatrists called an alpha male. Even grown men seemed drawn to him. I think it’s because of his almost supernatural confidence. Sure, he was sort of a slovenly man, but he truly did not give a fuck what anyone thought of him, which becomes very clear if you ever see him dance at a party. If I had to guess where this confidence came from, my bet would probably be his much-whispered about manhood. Growing up, Cousin Kady found a picture of him taken in the eighties, post-skinny dipping. During a party, he had flashed the camera, opening his towel wide enough for the lens to take him in in all his glory. That picture is proudly displayed in one of the Vanowen photo albums. It is literally the only scandalous thing Aunt Lynn has ever been a part of. And you know what? If I was packing that much heat, I might not give a shit what people thought of me either. I left Uncle Kev with his cigar smoke and went inside.

The Vanowen house wasn’t so much a “house” as it was a mansion and grounds, with several different wings to it so if you didn’t want to see anybody you could absolutely spend the day alone. The first thing people usually noticed about the place was its staircase, the wide mahogany staircase with landings big enough for people to congregate on. Whereas you had to turn sideways to get through parts of my own house, theirs you could practically gallop through. And unlike our house, the Vanowen house was spotless. This was probably because Lynn followed the maid around gently correcting her, showing her the proper way to clean. Aunt Lynn had many, many rules, all of them designed to maximize cleanliness. Of course, her children didn’t follow any of them. But I was expected to...

Lynn was always the first to spot our arrival, like a basset hound trained to hate headlights. She dressed in pastels and was a notorious gossip and snoop who was suspicious of everybody. The first thing you usually saw of her was her hair; it wasn’t blonde, it was gold. She walked over and we gave each other air kisses because, god forbid, we ever touch. Owing to Nannie’s drinking, Janet practically raised Lynn, a fact my aunt tried hopelessly to forget. I think that’s why she let me come over so often.

As she led the way through the living room, I watched the odd way she walked. She had the posture of most wasp women; the looseness of childhood had stiffened, leaving her with a permanent tilt of the head, always in judgement, so brittle she was apt to break in two. I can’t tell you the number of times when I would do something that didn’t mesh with her standards of etiquette and she would stare at me with this withering look of dismissal that made you want to toe the line just so you never had to see it again. I hated that look because it seemed to scream one very important fact: that SHE would never do such a thing. And neither would her children.

I don’t know when she got like this. When I was much younger, I remember her being loving and maternal. Around kindergarten she bought me a Sesame Street figurine and said, “Don’t tell Dean or I’ll have to buy him one too.” I don’t know what changed. When Dean was born, she left her job at “Good Housekeeping” with every intention of returning after maternity leave.

And she did… for a while.

But then Kady was born. And she had to take leave again. When she got pregnant the third time, she started to take the hint. By the time her favorite, baby Ollie, came around, she was a professional mother. She remembered all too well what it was like being born last and doted on her youngest.

We sat at the Vanowen’s kitchen table, but almost immediately Mom and Jesse left to use the bathroom, leaving me alone with Aunt Lynn. Lynn never really warmed to me. It probably goes back to the time when Dean and I had made a mess of his playroom. Uncle Kev told us to clean up, something neither of us wanted to do. Then I had a brilliant idea: if we stuffed everything in the closet nothing would be left on the floor! When Kev came back three minutes later and the place was spotless, he knew something was up. He quickly found the jam-packed closet and told us to clean for real this time. I was so upset my scheme didn’t work that I started throwing things over my head out of the closet. Apparently, Dean wasn’t looking when I hurled the wooden chair. It caught him on the chin. He ended up needing thirty-three stiches! So, when it came to Lynn, I had hurt her baby boy and from then on, I wasn’t to be trusted.

Maybe I was being too hard on her. I remembered a story Mom had told me once about her and Lynn running into Pete at a liquor store one Christmas not too long ago. Lynn followed him out into the parking lot, shouting, “I hope you’re happy this time of the year!” How do I reconcile that Lynn with the one who was permanently cold? The way she’d look at me sometimes...

It was as if she had stepped off the pages of “Ordinary People” or “Bonfire of the Vanities.” In the early eighties, when her husband’s packaging materials company was flush, she was said to have spent upwards of $5,000 a week on shopping. She’d make runs into the city, to the Short Hills mall, to Jordan Marsh, all in an effort to decorate the perfect house.

But the kids... she couldn’t keep up with the kids... little sociopaths that accused her of being “a destroyer of fun.” They ruined the house faster than she or the maid could keep it clean. She’d find evidence of their misdeeds, but when she tried to confront them, they’d lie, frequently, and without guilt. They ate like animals, stole from each other. Their sadistic dumps would wreck the toilets to the point that Lynn had to start buying very thin toilet paper that you’d have to ball up tightly if you didn’t want shit on your hands.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

When they were young all her kids looked like little aryans; handsome, imperfect youths that Kevin and Lynn could take to the club and proudly be seen chauffeuring about town. People have always been drawn to them. I know I was for the longest time. Later I knew better. But they presented well. They trick or treated for Unicef, they made appearances in school pageants. It’s only now that I realize how jealous I was of them. They could make all the mistakes they wanted. Because they had the money to fix it.

I asked where everyone was. Lynn told me that Amanda was in her room, which was no surprise as the girl usually had to be told dinner was ready before she’d emerge. She loved trash television that much. That, or she was agoraphobic. She had a number of crippling fears, among them lightning, which meant that she couldn’t be alone in the house during a thunderstorm without calling Nannie or some other relative to come over and, what? Stop the lightning?

Like clockwork, her skinny older sister, Kady, came bustling in the front door carrying Burger King. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Lynn said out-loud when she saw. “I told you I was making dinner!”

Kady shrugged, “I’m sorry, I forgot...” She let the silence fill the space between her and her mother. “Laura’s mom took us through the drive-thru. What do you expect - me to not get anything?”

“Yes!” Lynn shrieked.

Kady made a ‘pump the breaks’ motion. “It’s fine, mom – I can eat again.”

Lynn scoffed, sitting back with her chardonnay. “You don’t have to tell me that...”

“Hey!” Kady stomped her feet and glared at her mother.

Lynn explained. “All I’m saying is, ‘no one wants to hug a fatty!’”

Kady’s mouth went agog. She glowered at Lynn. No one was actually saying anything though, so I thought it would be a pretty good time to laugh hysterically. Kady turned on me, pissed. “What are you doing here?! You weren’t even invited!”

She didn’t wait for an answer. She marched out of the room, passing Mom who was returning from the bathroom. “Hi-ya, Kates!” Janet said, brightly.

To the Vanowen kids, my mother was the “fun aunt.” Every time they saw her, they had the nerve to ask if she had “prezzies” for them. But now, Kady just put a hand in her face. “Don’t talk to me!” she barked, stomping away on her long, mosquito bitten legs that she scratched to no end.

Mom called after her. “Excuse me? Did I miss something?!”

Kady whirled around, yelling “Ask her! Apparently, we live in Communist France!” before disappearing up into the room she shared with Amanda, which was like storing napalm and dynamite together.

All of this reminded me of a classic Kady story. When she was nine, she once took a penny and carved “Fuck you, you’re fired” into her babysitter’s car. I wasn’t saying we were on track to surpass that, but it was certainly shaping up to be a memorable night.

Whenever her children ran roughshod over her, Lynn would focus her anger on someone else. Namely, my mother. Mom tried to sit down next to Lynn at the kitchen table only to find that her baby sister was hogging the space. “Are you gonna move over?”

Lynn just stared at her. “How much room do you need?”

“Oh, do not start.”

“Haven’t you been going to your meetings?”

Mom looked anywhere else. “Is there alcohol?”

Uncle Kev wandered in from outside, having finished his cigar. He placed the shucked corn on the counter and spotted my mother, “Well hello there, Auntie Em!”

See? The guy loved nicknames.

“You made good time – no meeting today?” he smirked. He and his wife thought of my mother as a silly old coot that was fun to needle. Like most bullies they focused on her weight.

“No, those are in the morning.”

Seeing that Janet wasn’t in the mood, Uncle Kev turned his attention on to me. “So, Taylor... I read your story.”

I turned, furious, to Mom. “You sent him my story?!”

“I loved it! What’s not to like?!” she said in defense.

Kevin continued, seemingly immune to my outrage. “Let me get this straight – it’s basically about a bunch of retarded people in England running a motel?”

“Yes, you’ve successfully parroted the plot back to me.”

“Well, I guess I don’t get it then. Kind of seems like something a mentally unbalanced person would write...”

Now was as good a time as any to re-ask my earlier question: “So where is everybody?”

But Kev was a dog with a bone. “Taylor, what are your plans for this summer?”

“I don’t know... television?”

“I think you should come to Hillcrest. I’ll show you around the club. Dean will introduce you to people. It’ll be great.” I was beginning to worry that Kev was taking an active interest in me. Fortunately, I didn’t have to think about it for long as Dean and Ollie returned from a hockey game – Dean from playing, Ollie from watching.

Ollie worshipped his older brother and would follow him anywhere. He was the youngest of all the cousins and a surprise in a marriage that had already been going on for fifteen years. He had quickly achieved the rank of Lynn’s favorite, the golden child that Dean never could have been. He was a pretty cute kid, with a mischievous grin and a childhood lisp that he wouldn’t shake until he was a teenager. But he could be manipulative and overly charming, moving people around like they were chess pieces. And if he didn’t get what he wanted, he had scary rage issues.

“You win?” Kev asked his oldest.

Dean shook his head, still too disappointed to talk about it. He had a head full of curly hair and could look like either an eighties bully or cupid depending on the time of day. We did our patented, secret handshake and I told him about the Wilbury’s CD I had just gotten. We argued about whether or not there was a Traveling Wilbury’s “Volume Two” but couldn’t come to a decision.

Dean insisted, “I’m telling you I’ve seen it!”

“Then you saw a fake because it doesn’t exist! They skip volume 2 – that’s the joke.” Uncle Kev felt left out. “What are you talking about?”

“The second Traveling Wilbury’s album.”

“Doesn’t exist. It goes from volume 1 to volume 3, that’s the joke.”

I nodded. “That’s what I said. Dean swears he’s heard it.”

“I have!”

I sneered. “Oh yeah? Like you heard that lost beach boys album?”

Kev had heard enough. “That’s not rock that’s surf music, you kids lump everything together.”

Feeling challenged, I asked, “Then what’s real music?”

Mom chimed in, “The Doors!”

But Kevin only shook his head. “Terrible. Carnival music.”

I sometimes think Dean and I would have been much happier living in the sixties and seventies. I said as much, but this Kev could not abide. “It wasn’t that great. You guys have the internet. If we made a mistake typing, we had to start the page again!”

“Wasn’t there that white-out option on typewriters?” I asked.

Kev shrugged me off. “Eh, it never worked. You’d turn in papers and they’d have so many gaps in them they’d look like redacted documents.”

Dean looked over at his mother. “Mom, I’m hungry – when are we eating?”

“Not everybody’s here.”

“Oh, don’t tell me they’re coming...”

“They” were Uncle Bill and Aunt Beth. Every family needed black sheep and that was these two. Bill had married a woman who weighed 85 lbs. soaking wet and I was terrified of her. She smoked Merit ultra-lights, her teeth colored from smoking or yellowed from neglect. Nevertheless, how she loved to smile, thinking it endeared her to people. When 9/11 happened, she picked up their son early from school and like a looney bird said only “We’re under attack.”

Bill, on the other hand, was no prize either. The fifties crewcut he wore throughout childhood was now an altar boy combover that just underlined how prematurely old he looked. He was known to spend hours watching soap operas and chain-smoking. He would get drunk and scream at his son Eddie’s soccer matches. He and his wife were not rich by any means, but the fact that both of them somehow held down jobs made it so that they could live in Chatham and their son could go to school in district.

Lynn threw up her hands. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t invite them...” She peered at my mother from the corner of her eye.

“Subtle, Lynn. It’s called family.”

Something told me that Aunt Lynn would have cut ties with that side of the family long ago if it weren’t for Nannie and Mom. “Well, when family reeks of cigarettes and gives my best friend an ‘ear rub’ for Christmas, I retract the invite.”

Dean perked up. “wait.... what happened?”

“Oh, you didn’t hear this?” Lynn was in full-on gossip mode. “Last Christmas, Beth gets drunk, sits on the couch next to Todd Hyde, and rubs his ear for the better part of fifteen minutes--”

“Ugh, I woulda cut my ear off!” Dean blurted out, overstating it a bit.

Even Uncle Kev couldn’t avoid the cattiness. “I was telling Lynn, I can’t be sure, but I think the mouthwash gets emptier every time they come over.”

Lynn nodded, taking another sip from her wine. “I drew a line on the bottle, so we’ll know for sure.”

When they showed up soon after, everything anybody said seemed to take on a special subtext. Lynn threw down the gauntlet first, asking them if they wanted anything to drink.

Beth waved her hands, “oh none for me thanks, I’m on a special diet.” As everyone exchanged furtive glances, she sat there like the cat that ate the canary, not wanting to give anyone the satisfaction. When dinner was served minutes later – which heavily featured Lynn’s special ingredient, mayonnaise – Beth hardly ate anything.

After a few minutes, she excused herself to the bathroom, passing Amanda. “Was anyone going to tell me dinner started?” We all laughed. This wasn’t the first time Amanda had been forgotten. A quiet girl, she was often getting skipped over in the face of her louder sibling’s drama. Kev motioned, “Grab a plate, mandy-moo.”

“I don’t know if I can eat,” she said. “They’re bulldozing Castle Park tomorrow. Turning it into a parking lot...”

Kev brightened. “You hear that, Lynn? They’re putting a parking lot in on Maple!”

“Oh, that is a godsend! It’s so busy over there!”

“How could you say that? I spent my childhood there!” Amanda suffered from a valley girl twang, every sentence ending in a question mark, a consequence of having seen “Clueless” so many times. Even though she was practically traumatized at the notion of her childhood playground being razed, she was still able to grab a plate and pile it high with mashed potatoes. “I’m gonna eat in my room...” she said, heading off.

“You eat with family or not at all!” Kev barked.

Amanda made her way, sadly, to an empty chair. Watching her go, I chimed in. “You guys are so mean to her! Amanda’s my favorite cousin.”

Dean felt slighted. “How is Amanda your favorite cousin?!”

“Because she doesn’t bother me. I still tell that story about her and the change.”

“What story?” Amanda asked between bites.

“When you said, ‘change is stupid, I just throw it out!’”

Amanda’s face reddened, hating the spotlight. “Oh, I don’t do that anymore...”

Lynn immediately dropped her fork on her plate. “Yes, you do Mandy - the maid told me she keeps finding coins in your trash!” We had ourselves a good laugh after that one. Well, most of us. I watched as Mom told Jesse what to eat and what not to eat. Tonight, it was steamed vegetables. My sister sat there looking miserable and staring longingly at the chicken parmesan.

I was about to say something when Beth returned from the bathroom. As she settled in, Lynn made up an excuse and quickly excused herself. When she came back holding a near empty bottle of mouthwash, I knew the night was about to get legendary. She loudly announced to Kevin, “Hun? We need to remember to pick up more mouthwash.”

I turned to Dean, wide-eyed, whispering, “the chardonnay whisperer strikes again!” He snickered as Lynn threw the bottle in the trash.

We chanced a look at Beth. She was staring at Lynn, coldly. Whereas Uncle Bill constantly watched soap operas, Aunt Beth thought she was IN a soap opera. “I know what you’re up to,” she said quietly to Lynn, then walked calmly out of the kitchen. Everyone waited a nervous moment until she was barely out of earshot, then we burst out laughing.

Things devolved from there. Bill thanked Mom for inviting them into a viper’s nest, whatever that meant, and soon they were screaming at each other at the top of their lungs. Dinner didn’t go on for much longer. At some point when Mom and Bill were arguing, Aunt Beth reappeared. She saw me watching them go at it and decided to explain this whole “adults fighting thing” to me. That it was normal, and I shouldn’t worry about it. She promised me that nothing had changed – she would still be my favorite Aunt.

I just stared at her.

As they were leaving, Bill stormed off to grab his and Beth’s coats. When he returned, he saw me eyeing him. He turned back, apologizing quickly and quietly, saying “Sorry, there’s a lot of history there...”

In the car after dinner, we rode in silence, Jesse and I too afraid to speak first. When Mom finally said something, it was out of the blue. “I don’t know why he married her.”

“Huh?” I said, unsure for a moment who it was we were talking about.

“Bill. I think he knew he was gonna drink for the rest of his life so he chose someone who wouldn’t object.” She stared straight ahead as she continued to drive. “I don’t know how we got here. He used to be my best friend in the world, then one day he just stopped being Bill...”

“You used to be friends with Uncle Bill? Who when we asked him what he was thankful for last Christmas said 'rock salt?' That Bill?”

She nodded. “He used to be the funniest person I knew.” Not only didn’t I find Uncle Bill funny, I couldn’t even remember him ever making a joke. All I knew about my Uncle was that he drank a bottle of vodka nightly without vomiting and thought “Days of Our Lives” worthy of taping.

“What do you mean 'he just stopped being Bill one day?' Who'd he become?”

“If I tell you this, you promise not to breathe a word of it--”

“Oh yeah, I'll tell him about it next time we hang out!”

“About thirty years ago, out of the clear blue sky he decides not to come home.”

“He ran away?”

“One day the school called and said he hadn't come in yet. Turns out instead of going to class he got on a bus to D.C. My friend, Tilly Boyd, found his books tossed behind a bush...” I pictured the movie in my head: Tilly Boyd going out to catch a football and landing in a bush, near some abandoned textbooks. “I still remember the night before he ran away. To this day, I couldn’t tell you why he did it.”

I didn’t know why I was asking so many questions about my family. They liked to trade stories about how great they once were. I think I was most curious about Bill, because he never seemed to. All I knew about their generation was that they ended a war by complaining. But for all their flaws, for all their blind boasting, they’ve always fascinated me. How did they get like this and how, for the love of God, could I avoid it? My family tree was littered with lost causes. But maybe if I looked back - if I saw where they all started to go wrong - I could be someone that mattered.

“I want to know everything,” I finally said. “The bad parts too.”

“Taylor, it’s late...”

“Come on!”

“Why all this worry? You barely know Bill.”

“I know,” I said. “I'm trying.”