By Robert McGuill
His cousin was what to me? Exactly? An ex-niece…in-law? I was her mother’s brother-in-law until I divorced her mother’s little sister, my ex-wife, Marie…plus, I worked for her dad in his body shop one summer when I was twenty, so that made me something too, I suppose—
I don’t know. You think you know, but you don’t. Or maybe you know a little, but in the end a little is pretty much the same as knowing nothing at all.
Brendan and I were driving up to Coors Field when he asked if I minded dropping by My Brother’s Bar so we could have a drink with her.
“You have a cousin?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Jim and Judy’s daughter.”
I swung my eyes back to the highway, punched the accelerator and passed the step van that had been blocking my view for the last five miles. I hadn’t heard Jim’s or Judy’s name in over thirty years. Jim was Jim Gaise, my ex-sister-in-law’s husband. Judy was Jim’s wife, my ex-wife Marie’s older sister.
“What’s she doing in Denver, your cousin?”
He was checking his phone. He paused, tilted his head back and looked at me. “She lives there.”
I drove along thinking he might say more, but he settled into the seat and for the next mile we were quiet.
“What’s her name?” I asked as the skyline appeared. “She has a name, yes?”
He was fiddling with his phone again. He raised his finger, making me wait. When he turned his thumbs loose from the keypad, he said, “Lisa.”
“Lisa.” I repeated with a nod. “That’s nice.”
He swiped the screen and slipped the phone back into his pocket. “Yeah. She’s named after somebody. I don’t remember who.”
I wasn’t big on sharing time with this mysterious relative of his. He was only here for the weekend, and the ball game was supposed to be one of those occasions you save for the father-son highlight reel.
“If you’d have told me about her sooner,” I said, “I’d have bought an extra ticket.”
He glanced over, dubious. It was no secret I didn’t care for his mother’s side of the family, and he’d probably picked up on the tightness in my voice. “No worries,” he said. “She only has time for a drink.”
I eased back from the wheel, trying to picture this girl. But of course the first image that came to mind was her mother, Judy, and after that, her father Jim.
Jim was a tall, good-looking guy who inherited a used car business. He had the kind of money that, in a small town, makes you seem bigger than you actually are.
Jim put his arm around my shoulder the first time we met. We were at a family picnic. He took me aside for a heart-to-heart, and explained what I should expect marrying into Marie’s family.
“Anna Faye,” he said with a conspiratorial smile, waving at my mother-in-law-to-be from a distance, “is a raving bitch.” He unlocked his arm from my shoulder and picked up a croquet mallet, twirling it in his fingers. “Irv, on the other hand,” he said, nodding at my future father-in-law who sat obediently beside his wife at the picnic table, “is a bald-headed broomstick. With a medical problem.”
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.
“He has no—” He turned the mallet loose on the wooden ball. Thwack!
I followed the ball with my eyes.
He glanced up at me, sideways, grinning. “Anna Faye rules the roost. Irv spends his evenings cowering behind a newspaper. You get on the wrong side of the womenfolk in this family, don’t expect him to bail you out.”
He smiled, tilting his head, urging me to tag along. I had nothing better to do—Marie was off pounding down wine coolers with her sister Judy—so I followed him around the lawn.
“They go to church every Sunday,” he said, knocking the striped ball through a wicket, one handed, while he drank a beer with the other, “and have a big family dinner afterward.” He studied his next shot. “On the Fourth of July, they play slow-pitch softball in the park, and in the fall they take their family vacations together in Branson.”
He lowered the mallet, raised the beer and said, “Here’s to a long, happy life, honcho.” He took a deep swig. Pointed the bottle at me. “By the way, how’s Marie in the sack?”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.
He shrugged. “I’m comparing notes, okay? Judy’s a prude. How’s Marie?”
I looked away with an uncomfortable smile.
“Screw it,” he said. He finished his beer, turned and pitched the bottle onto the grass, noting its whereabouts as if he intended to retrieve it at some later point. “Judy doesn’t believe in doing it from behind,” he said, giving the ball another whack. “I’m wondering, is it nature? Nurture?”
He checked the time on his gold wristwatch and handed me the mallet. I took it, and he went off for another beer.
I decided I didn’t care for Jim, though I didn’t completely make up my mind on the matter until the morning Brendan was born, when I found him sitting in the hospital waiting room along with his old high-school buddy, Cecil Sullivan.
He rose and tossed aside the Sports Illustrated he’d been thumbing. “Neil!”
I thought he was going to congratulate me, but instead he pushed his hands in his pockets.
“How’s Marie?”
He stood, blocking my way. I glanced around, but Judy was nowhere to be seen.
“She’s fine,” I said. “She’s resting.”
“What about the baby?”
“The baby’s fine, too.”
He looked at me crookedly. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well what the hell is it? A boy? Girl?”
His buddy Cecil snickered.
“A boy,” I said, feeling strangely embarrassed. “Seven pounds, eight ounces. He was born an hour ago.”
Cecil let out a small whoop. He pushed up from his chair, clapping Jim on the shoulder. “How about that, Jimbo! It’s a boy!”
The two of them carried on as Cecil pounded Jim’s shoulder, and when the celebration ended Jim reached inside his jacket and produced a couple of cheap cigars.
I fed the car some gas. Monument Hill had slipped away in the late afternoon sun. We sped along, up the highway, and I remembered the other part of that morning. The delivery room, holding Marie’s hand. Watching my kid being born.
I had no idea what was coming that day, not a clue in the world. I thought it was the blood and slime you had to prepare for when you threw on a pair of scrubs. But it turned out to be something quite different. It turned out to be the birth itself—the miracle of life—that left you dizzy and speechless.
I used to feel sorry for Marie after our divorce. I’d have long, imaginary conversations with her where I’d say things like, Someday that kid will know the truth, Marie. Someday he’ll wise up, and when he does he’ll see I’m not the thief you made me out to be.
But that day never came. Believing it would was one of the great miscalculations of my life. I moved west after the divorce, and became one more absentee father who rarely, if ever, saw his child. It didn’t matter whose fault it was that we lost track of one another. What mattered was, it happened, and it didn’t have to.
These days we see one another once every two or three years, if we can. We’re cordial, polite. Occasionally, even affectionate. But we’re far from being the way he is with his mother and her family. He calls me “Neil.” Talks to me the way you’d talk to a college buddy—one you don’t know particularly well, and are cautious not to offend.
Go ahead, Marie once dared me. Tell him anything you want. See how far your stories get you. All you’ll do is end up making him hate you.
She was right, of course. She knew long before I did she wouldn’t have to lift a finger. Life would blackmail me into silence all on its own.
The bar lights were low when we walked in. The pub was noisy, bustling. His cousin Lisa was waiting for us at a bistro table near the front window. I recognized her, instantly. She was every bit her mother’s child—same hair, same eyes. She rose slightly from her bar stool and waved at us, and Brendan laughed and made his way through the crowd and kissed her cheek.
I stood back, watching.
“Welcome to Denver,” she said, motioning to a pair of empty seats. We each pulled out a stool.
She turned my way, extending her hand. “So,” she smiled, “I’m Lisa. Nice meeting you.”
“You, too,” I said.
The three of us sat for a moment, exchanging glances, allowing the introductions to settle. Lisa gave her head a short little toss in Brendan’s direction and said, “Do you travel with this bum a lot?”
“No, no,” Brendan interrupted, laying his hand on his cousin’s wrist. “He isn’t from Texas. He lives down the road, in the Springs. We’re just up here for the game.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a double header.”
“Right,” she nodded. “Got it.”
She straightened and looked for the waiter. Snared him with a crooked finger and a flash of her dazzling eyes.
“I’ve never known anyone as crazy for baseball as this guy,” she said, turning to Brendan. “He can tell you the history of every ballpark in the country.” She laughed. “Have you ever seen his library? He owns exactly one book! Who’s Who in Baseball.”
We ordered our drinks, and she continued to talk about Brendan with a mocking intimacy. Stories only a relative or parent would know. She said his favorite restaurant was Long John Silver, he couldn’t resist the cheap boiled shrimp. She told me he’d moved to Fort Worth because the Rangers couldn’t seem to win without him. Then, with a coy smile, she coochie-cooed his chin and informed me, sotto voce, he had a birthmark. “He won’t tell me where it is,” she teased, unaware that I’d known about the heart-shaped stain for thirty years, “because it’s too sexy. Isn’t that right, Brendan?”
She picked up her phone. Waggled it and said, “Entertain me?” Brendan grinned and they stood and pushed their stools together and began taking selfies. I waited for one or the other of them to call me over and ask me to join in. But it didn’t happen. Not even after the waiter sauntered up with our drinks and offered to lend a hand.
“We get a little silly when we see one another,” Lisa laughed, tugging the hem of her skirt as she shimmied back onto her stool. She slipped a kittenish look Brendan’s way. “In case you couldn’t tell, we’re more like brother and sister than cousins.”
I forced a smile.
She picked up her wine and sipped it. “So how long have you lived in the Springs?”
“Since 1983,” I said.
“Is that right?”
“I moved here from Muscatine.”
“Muscatine!” Her eyebrows arched. She set her glass aside and said, “That’s where I’m from!”
“I know,” I said. “I went to school with your mother.”
She squinted, an uncertain grin pleating the corners of her mouth.
“I worked in your father’s body shop one summer, too,” I said.
“Seriously?” She sat back, clearly surprised. “You know my dad?” She turned to Brendan, but he was busy flipping through the photos they’d taken.
“We’re acquaintances,” I said, avoiding any mention of the words ‘brothers-in-law’. “I can’t say I knew him knew him. But we were familiar.”
She cast another look Brendan’s way. But he was still running his fingers over the screen. When she turned back, she smiled, circumspect. Wondering, I suppose, if she was being played.
I lifted my beer and watched Brendan work his phone. He had his mother’s face. I could see her lying in her hospital bed, propped up with pillows, nursing him. She’d only just come out of labor, and her skin was shiny with perspiration, her long black hair in tangles.
The room phone rang, and she reached for the handset. I said, “Here. Let me.” thinking I was being helpful. But as I pressed the receiver to my ear, she sank back against the pillows and turned her face to the wall.
The baby’s mouth came loose from her breast. He began to cry. I said, hello? Hello? But whoever was on the other end of the line hung up.
Lisa was still puzzling over me, over how to account for my presence in her heretofore orderly and respectable life. But she was getting nowhere. She couldn’t seem to make sense of it—of me—and seeing this I laid it on all the more. I told her wild tales of Jim’s drinking, of her mother Judy’s flirtation with scientology. I told her about her grandmother’s hatred of immigrants, and how her grandfather’s ‘hernia’ operation was nothing more than a cover-up for his late-life circumcision. I told her stories too offbeat to have been made up. Too embarrassing not to be true. But while I heaped this baggage atop the load she was already struggling to keep in balance, I also took care to omit the defining detail of her family history—the fact that I had once been married to her aunt.
“This is so wild!” she said. She laughed, and lifted her glass and offered an ersatz toast. “I give up! I really do!” She leaned into the table and smiled. “What was your name, again? I mean, I know your name, Neil. But—are we related? Are you a friend of Brendan’s mom? Who are you?”
These were questions I’d asked myself far too many times. But on this particular occasion I turned to Brendan for the answer, to explain what I could not.
Robert McGuill’s work has appeared in Narrative, the Southwest Review, Louisiana Literature, American Fiction, The Saturday Evening Post and other publications. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize on five occasions, and short-listed for awards by, among others, Glimmer Train, The New Guard, Sequestrum Art & Literature, and Narrative.