Uncle Jim

                                                 Uncle Jim


I was young, my feet still didn’t touch the floorboard of the car. Even though I had a coat on I was freezing to death. My pajama bottoms were letting in the cold  air. It was one of those first really cold nights of the year and it felt like someone I couldn’t see was pinching my nose with ice cold fingertips.

My mother was semi-agoraphobic among other things. We rarely left the house, especially like this. She wasn’t saying anything just driving. We had a set routine we were breaking. Dad goes to work, we stay home and watch General hospital and Super friends. This was not part of the itinerary. She looked possessed, or maybe more possessed than usual.

“Where are we going?”
“Your uncle needs a ride.” She said quietly, eyes still on the road.
“Uncle who?”
“Uncle Jim”

My Grandmother was a saint in every sense of the word. Saint Clara, patron saint of the truly selfless. She was pregnant seven times, but only five got names. None of them where named Jim. I didn’t ask anymore questions.

As we drove I stared out of the window watching the rows of houses pass endlessly. The moon was almost full and I was still at the age when you think it’s moving with you. Following your car and your car alone. The center of the universe. This isn’t something that’s learned it’s in our genes. I’m afraid to look away. My brother and sister sleep next to me in the backseat. Unaware of the magnitude of being. Unaware that the moon has chosen us tonight!

Slowing to a stop she illegally parks next to a fire hydrant near the corner of the street. There is no one around, the sidewalks are deserted. We wait and my mother doesn’t speak. She just stares at the blank metal structure. A paper mill or some kind of factory I’m guessing to myself. It looks like the place my father works, but I know it’s not.

A small door, the only blemish on the vast white wall of the building opens. A shadow emerges and lights a cigarette. The flame reveals a beard, a man. He scans, recognizes, and moves toward our car. The movement of the door opening, closing, and shutting wakes my brother and sister. He settles into the passenger seat and speaks to my mother.

“Thanks, this fuckin cold snap fucked my battery up or some-tin.”
“You couldn’t get a ride from someone you work with?” she tries to say softly.
“Shit no, the guy I rode in with is working a double”

My mother looks back at the three of us in the backseat and notices the others are awake now too.

“Kids, this is your Uncle Jim.”
We don’t say anything.
“How you guys doin?” he asks as smoke curls out of his nose like a dragon.
“Good” My brother and I say at the same time.
I whisper “jinx”. What else can I say?

We’re on the road again, just like the song. That’s what I thought of as the car pulled away from the fire hydrant. More houses flashed past the window. Old wood and tar shingled siding blurring as we sped by. Willie Nelson invading my brain. On the road again. The moon is not with us, it’s lost interest. We pass the steel mill with the flame from the blast furnace burning as bright as a rising sun. Under train trestles and over train tracks. We snake our way through the streets of a run down neighborhood to a small plain house with a rusty fence. He’s lightly fingering the door handle. As soon as the car stops rolling he jerks the door open and a blast of cold wind smacks at my face.

“Thanks babe!” He blurts out and before my mother can respond he leans forward and kisses her! She looked as if some one just smacked her with a dead fish. The car door slams shut and he’s gone. She watches as he passes through the rusty gate and into his house. She turns and looks me in the eyes and doesn’t say anything.

Leaving the house before dad got home from work was out of the question. She couldn’t be alone. When I got bored with the TV I would sit at my window and watch the other kids play. People unloading groceries from their car. The mailman walking from apartment to apartment. Newlyweds two doors down fighting and throwing each others stuff out the door. This was our routine. I didn’t have to sit with her or talk to her, I just had to be there. My social skills were stunted. Television and that small window in my room was what I knew of the world.

I thought about Uncle Jim and the kiss. I didn’t understand but, then again I did. I had seen this before while watching soap operas with my mother. That secret kiss at the end of an episode that would thrill you into watching the next day to see what happened. What happened next was usually not good. My mother had crossed a line of no return and I knew it. Worry overwhelmed me. I had visions of her in a coma. Kidnaped by evil Doctors and taken to a deserted island for strange experiments. Brake lines that were cut. Beautiful women with too much make-up vowing revenge. Returning from the dead after five episodes to claim an inheritance. Falling back into a deep coma and a young doctor with boyish good looks falling madly in love with her without saying a word.

The days passed into weeks and soon I was consumed by my “bible”. The Sears Christmas catalog. I spent hours each day scanning the endless wants of a child. Bending dog ears onto the pages. Circling everything of interest. Wanting.

She says my name a third time before I look up. I notice she’s changed from her nightgown to jeans and a sweater.
“Come on, get your shoes on.” she says hurriedly. “And help your brother find his coat.”
“Where are we going?”
“To eat, let’s go!”
“To eat? Can we go to Mcdonald’s? I ask exited! We almost never went out for dinner.
“No, just get your shoes on and help him find his damn coat!”

We passed the street lined with fast food places and drove into a small neighborhood. The houses were small and built close together, almost identical to each other. The one exception was a house that had been converted and stood out from the rest. It was windowless and a neon sign hung in the front where a porch should be. I could read the words bar and grill glowing brightly, bathing the sidewalk red. I knew what a bar was because I went to them with my Grandpa.

I always looked forward to Sundays. My Grandparents would pick me up and take me to mass and after the service I would spend the rest of the day with my Grandpa. He fought in the Korean war and was a member of all the veterans clubs. He called it “running errands” when my Grandma asked where we were going. The  DAV, VFW, and The American Legion, is where I spent my childhood every Sunday. Listening to the old Vets tell war stories and drinking Shirley temples until my stomach soured from the grenadine.

When we walked into the bar, it smelled like Grandpas breath and french fries. It smelled like Sunday. There was a line of booths that ran against the wall opposite the bar. Uncle Jim was sitting at a table alone drinking a beer. When he saw us he stood up and let my Mother take the inside seat of the booth. My brother, sister and I, slid into the other side. We ate cheeseburgers and drank bottomless glasses of coke. When we were finished Mom gave us quarters to play Pac-Man. I seemed to be the only one bothered by all of this. My brother and sister were having fun and my Mom and Uncle Jim were still in the booth talking and drinking beers. I wanted to go home.

The warmth of my bed kept me from getting up right away. The angle from my bunk bed to the window in my room gave me a perfect view of the fresh snow that wasn’t there when I had fallen asleep. This was going to be a good day. Dad was home, it was the weekend. There was nothing standing in the way of me and day spent playing outside. As I jumped down off the top bunk I remembered that we were getting  our Christmas tree today. Mom slept in and dad made us breakfast. We ate our food in record time and dad just laughed. There were hills to sled down and snow forts to build! This was going to be a good day.

There was a very large hill at the entrance to our apartment complex. By the time my brother and I arrived the steep slope was already crowded. We sped down the hill together and trudged back to the top until our small legs couldn’t do it anymore. The snow was fluffy and wouldn’t stick. We tried to build various forts and snowmen, but the useless fluff wouldn’t cooperate. Snowballs meant to sting the face of my brother just exploded as they left my hand. We stayed outside until our wool gloves where soaked to the skin. Fingers numb and cold, that good kind of exhaustion setting in. We started for home.
Walking towards our building I could hear the faint sounds of domestic bliss. Yelling and screaming which I assumed was the newlyweds that lived two apartments down from ours. The day before the police had been called. I had watched from my window as the husband choked his new bride on the hood of a neighbors pinto wagon. But as we got closer my brother gave me a worried look. The awful noises were coming from our apartment.

I didn’t want to go in but the sun was low and the cold was biting. As I turned the doorknob my heart was pounding in my ears. They didn’t notice us until I had shut the door. My father sat on the couch with his face in his  hands, screaming into them in a muffled roar. My mother was red faced, sweating, and crying. There were opened boxes of Christmas decorations littering the livingroom.  She told us to go to our room and we ran. I tried to take the stairs two at a time but my winter boots made it too hard. I heard my father behind me say “How could you fucking do this to me!”.

Entering the bedroom we all shared I could see my sister laying on her bed, tears streaming down her face. I told her everything would be OK to comfort her. I lied. All three of us sat on her bed and listened. We could hear every word they said.

I thought about the Wonder Twins from my favorite cartoon. They could transform themselves by touching fist and announcing what it was they intended to become! The sister could change form to any animal she wanted. The brother, any inanimate object. This, I thought to myself would come in very handy in any crisis situation. I wanted to be a Wonder Twin. I wanted to be able to fix any problem. I tapped my sisters hand lightly and whispered to myself “form of a bucket of water”. Nothing happened. We sat with our backs to the wall and didn’t speak.

“I can’t believe you're fucking doing this!” I hear him say as something hits the floor and breaks.“What did you expect? I’m here all day alone with these fucking kids and you're always gone!”She screams unworried sounding defiant.
“Yeah I’m always gone cause I gotta fucking work for a living!”
Silence.
“What about our family? what about the kids?”
More silence.          
“Did you even think about that shit?” He asks. His voice sounding scratchy and worn. “What the fuck are we gonna tell the kids?”
“The kids already know!” She says cutting him off. My heart drops. I’m sick.

It’s silent now except for the sound of my father crying. I’ve never seen or heard him cry before. I can’t move, I just sit and listen. The sounds of a man defeated and hurt beyond repair drift up the stairs and into our room. His callused hands covering his face and muting the sounds so that they seem unnatural.  I can hear the front door open and my mother say she’s leaving. The door slams shut and she’s gone.  After a few minutes I can hear slow foot steps coming up the stairs. My heart tightens, I’m scared. My father opens the door to our room and stands there quietly.  It doesn’t even look like him. His face is distorted and red. His eyes are wild. He looks at me. He looks through me and finally speaks.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”.