He was three. His brother lay in the crib across what seemed like a vast room upstairs in the English cottage. The leaves gone now; tree branches black against fading light. His older sister and her cousin, bumping around in the attic room above. Something faintly acrid still in his mouth. It was what his mother at dinner had called “tuna casserole”—new words that rumbled around in his head with the rest of them, like marbles. He longed for the bottle that his younger brother now had one bed over. Was it the taste of the milk or the succulent sound that his own mouth made against the nipple which had now forcefully been taken from him, replaced with his thumb?
And then his uncle was there outside the door. Again. Shouting up the attic stairs. “Girls! Quiet down in there and go to sleep.” Now he stood in the doorway of the nursery, the hall light behind him flattening his features, the flat-top of his head, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lower lip, a lighter in his hand as if he were just stopping in for a brief peek before heading downstairs for another smoke, into the low murmuring conversation of the rest of the adults, punctuated by laughter.
In his own room, there was the breathing of his brother, his sporadic sucking at the bottle as he drifted off, occasionally letting out a snort or even the single syllable of a cry. Uncle stood there still, as if deciding something, and Johnny stared over his covers, his heart thumping. Was Uncle Mick going to come in again?
Earlier at dinner Johnny had been singled out, oldest boy, to perform. “Tell us what’s up in the sky at night, Johnny.” He went suddenly shy. The audience of his father’s brother and sister-in-law expectant, his Uncle’s chin slightly raised, pointing at him. “He looks just like Mick,” said Aunt, her smile crooked, her face flushed with too much of the wine they’d brought. “Adorable.” Uncle did not look at his wife. He took a drag off his cigarette and blew the smoke up, until it clustered around the bell lamp above the kitchen table, lingered so long Johnny thought it would be there forever.
“Tell us what’s up in the sky, at night, Johnny,” his mother repeated leaning in. His brother stared out from his highchair, from behind his bib. Was he too waiting for an answer?
“Ball!” blurted Johnny. And his aunt clapped her hands. His mother smiled. His uncle took another drag. Was that a smile behind the smoke that poured out of his nose? His nephew, barely more than a toddler. “Ball!” Johnny repeated for effect. More laughs. It wasn’t just single words he could now formulate. But phrases, and even short sentences and his mother prodded him while wiping down his brother’s mouth with the bib, his brother pulling away, his little fists pumping the air. Did his mother have to be so rough with the bib, thought Johnny. And always wiping his nose after his mouth like that? It was just Pablum after all, or soft apricot puree from the little jar on the table.
“Who is your favorite astronaut?” asked his mother. “John Glenn!” shouted Johnny, pleased with himself. His aunt reached over and cupped the side of his head.
“You are so smart, little boy. So smart! And so adorable!” The girls were excused from the table to play with their dolls in his sister’s room.
“Just a half hour, girls. Then lights out,” his mother said. His father arrived from talking to the bishop in the front hall who had arrived unexpectedly to briefly discuss with an urgent matter of church business. Johnny’s father now stood behind his wife, his hands resting on her shoulders, the light off Uncle Mick’s smoke still leering at that level.
“Everything okay?” said his mother, referring to the dean’s visit. His father smiled, looked over for just a moment at his older brother, who, unlike him and his young family, was not religious and carried a certain disapproval about the church. The tee-totaling. The rectitude of it all. Still longing for family approval, Johnny’s father did not look at Uncle, who was studying him.
Attention had turned away from Johnny. And so that is when the boy said this: “Uncle Mick looks like John Glenn, astronaut. Go to Ball!” and he pointed up into the sky dramatically. The adults sat stunned.
“Bravo!” said his aunt, finally. His mother was visibly surprised. A full sentence . . . two in a row even, and they had been so worried that their three-year-old was talking so late. Uncle Mick abruptly put out his cigarette, stabbing it into the makeshift ashtray. Johnny was confused. He wanted his Uncle to like him.
“I’m going to check on the girls,” Uncle said, and pushed his chair back from the table without looking up.
When it was time for bed, his mother tucked him in, and put his brother, still the suckling, to bed as well, her heels soft and shuffling on the braided rug, then clicking across the wood floor on her way out. The smell of her skin which he loved. And now, minutes later, Uncle was lingering in the doorway. He pulled the unlit cigarette from his mouth, put it in the pocket of his shirt with short sleeves. Johnny could see the hair on his Uncle’s forearms backlit in the hall light, a beautiful red down over ropy, blue veins. He came into the room, looking over his shoulder, then closed the door a few inches so that the light on the floor narrowed to a single bright beam. Uncle had done this tickling thing for as long as Johnny could remember. First there was the smell of tobacco and then the feel of Uncle’s coarse fingers between his legs, the tingling that started there and rose up around him like a bath, the deep breaths, almost sighs . . . did they come from Uncle or from himself? Johnny closed his eyes, and pretended to be asleep, waiting for his covers to be lifted ever-so-slightly.
But the lift of his covers never came, and Johnny finally opened his eyes. His uncle stood with his back to him, a hand in his brother’s crib, his brother who was still in the babbling stage. Who could not form words, let alone a short string of them. (“Uncle Mick looks like John Glenn, astronaut! Go to Ball!”) He heard his brother stirring, saw the softening of his Uncle’s shoulders in the dim light, the gentle kneading reflected in the tendons of his right elbow as they twisted and moved.
And Johnny was sorry that Uncle did not choose him and angry at his brother whose blanketed feet were now moving up and down.
And then the single bright beam on the floor widened silently. He knew that someone else was there. An adult. Was it his aunt? No. Suddenly, he knew it was not a woman. The shadow watched for some time, and then quietly left. Uncle’s back a wall there between his bed and his brother’s crib, a deep longing adrift in the room, and Johnny now knew that at dinner he had made a mistake.
His uncle now knew his nephew could talk. Could report on his little moon-as-ball world.
Bad boy.
Photo by elizabeth lies on Unsplash
