The Guncle

by Steven Rowley

  “They do toy reviewth!” Grant exclaimed.

  Patrick plowed right over him. “Or do you just watch them because they’re there? Because one video rolls into the next in a never-ending parade of I don’t even know what. Bullshit, is what it is. It’s all bullshit. That’s why I used to pay someone else to do my sosh.”

  “What’s sosh?” Maisie looked appalled.

  “Sosh. Social media? You guys. Come on, now.”

  “You’re on YouTube.”

  “No I’m not, I’m at the dinner table with you.”

  “No, you’re on YouTube. Mommy helped us do a thearch.” Grant twisted sideways, away from Patrick, before resting his head on the back of his chair.

  “Oh, what. Clips from the show? That’s copyright infringement. That should be taken down.”

  “No,” Maisie corrected. “A woman was asking you questions.”

  “Like an interview? My god. Was it that one where I had quinoa in my teeth?” Patrick shuddered and Maisie laughed. It wasn’t really funny, though. Patrick still wanted that segment producer fired. That was the problem with the internet. It was the Wild West and nothing could ever be erased.

  Grant spun back around to face his uncle. “You could put us on YouTube.”

  “Yeah!” Maisie agreed. It was almost like the two had planned this and were making a rehearsed pitch. If that was the case, Patrick would advise them to work on their subtlety.

  “I could order your lupper for you. Spaghetti with extra worms.”

  “I don’t want worms! I want to be on YouTube!”

  “No you don’t. It’s a cult. The cult of self-expression. Everyone wants to put everything out there and the truth is no one cares! No one cares. I’m sorry to say that to you in the face of what you’ve been through. But no one out there really gives a shit. You know who does care? I do. GUP. So decide what you want to eat, let’s order it, and then we can sit here and you can tell me whatever it is you want to tell the masses. And I won’t have to go on my phone to see it because I’m sitting right here.”

  “I don’t want to tell you!” Grant made two little fists that were ready to strike and yet also adorable.

  “Sit still and look who you’re talking to. I’m an actor, okay? I understand the need to perform, I really do. But now everybody is performing. That’s what vlogging is. Performance. Everyone is performing everything all the time for everyone and there’s no reason for it. I was at least acting out a story. I went to school to learn how to act, and writers went to school to learn how to write, and directors, even the TV ones, spent years honing their craft, and producers—well, no one really knows what they do, but they seem to work very hard at it. Okay? It has purpose. It has value. People used to want to escape from their lives at the end of the day. Now they want to lie back in bed and watch themselves over and over again and count their likes and comments and shares and followers. Don’t you see? They’re performer and audience. It’s just one big masturbatory waste of time!” Patrick pushed a menu in Grant’s direction and caught the eye of an older woman eavesdropping. Patrick gave her the thumb’s-up; he’s got this. “Now, what do you want to eat?”

  “No one knowth what you’re talking about.”

  “Let it marinate while you decide on lupper.”

  “I don’t want lupper!” Grant shoved his menu back at Patrick, nearly knocking over a water glass.

  Patrick sighed. He’d seen these families at restaurants before, children misbehaving, acting out. Parents ignoring them, looking exhausted, clutching their silverware like pitchforks and tossing back cheap chardonnay like it was the only thing preventing them from stabbing their spawn. He’d judged them then, sometimes harshly. He wanted to do better now.

  “I’ll have the pizza.” Maisie offered a feeble smile; even she felt sorry for him.

  Patrick thought back to his years on The People Upstairs. Did he know what he was talking about? In the early seasons the cast would gather at someone’s house to watch the show the night it aired, first with takeout, later with midlist catering like Maggiano’s eggplant parmesan. It was fun, a mini cast party every week for a show with an open-ended run. They were all young, breaking into the business together, and nothing excited them more than being an audience for each other. None of them had ever made money like this, and maybe it wasn’t much by Hollywood standards, not at first, but it bought happiness—temporarily, at least. Especially in those early years. For Patrick it was a second chance. A sign he would survive. A reason to believe there would be life after Joe.

  And yet, he stopped attending those screenings, and the others eventually did, too. By the fourth season not one of them copped to watching the show and perhaps they themselves were responsible for the series’ diminishing ratings. But watching a program you were on had a strange effect; it made Patrick nostalgic for experiences he was still in the middle of living. It pulled him out of it. He was both him, living his life, and some ghostly version of himself, floating above his terrestrial self, watching, judging. He stopped feeling present in his own body. Stopped being able to feel this new joy, and it was eclipsed by sorrow again; perhaps happiness was destined to be temporary regardless, perhaps it never even stood a chance. Now he worried about that happening to the kids.

  “Grant? Pizza?”

  “I don’t want anything!”

  Patrick looked back over his shoulder for a way out of this. Three tables over was a party of silver-haired men in tragic Hawaiian shirts celebrating a birthday. At the center of their table was an enormous martini glass containing a mountain of pink cotton candy. He motioned for their waiter as he was passing by. “Excuse me, we’re going to start with one of those.” He pointed to the cotton candy.

  “You’re going to start with dessert.”

  “That’s right. We can’t seem to decide on a main course, so we’re going to start with dessert. When you have a moment.”

  This seemed to get Grant’s attention.

  “Look, it’s not right for me to film you and put you on the internet. That’s a decision that your father should be a part of and I don’t want to hear any protest out of you. But let’s see what you got. Okay? When the cotton candy comes, I want you to do as many goofy things with it as you can think of. I will record you on my phone. Think of this like an audition for YouTube.” Patrick sat back in his chair to consider this. Could he use this to their advantage? For better or worse, they were part of a self-documenting generation at ease in front of a camera. Perhaps he could get them to open up by filming them. Get them to talk about their grief in a way that they simply couldn’t manage face-to-face. Maybe they needed the camera between them as a barrier, a neutral arbiter who wouldn’t judge or ask questions or try to define their feelings or shape the way they expressed them. It would simply record their feelings for posterity. Perhaps it was the perfect therapist. “Deal?”

  Grant had his elbows on the table and put his hands under his chin to think about this. If only elbows on the table were Patrick’s biggest concern. “Goofy things like what?”

  “I don’t know, kid. What would you do on your vlog?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, that sounds like a rather dull viewing experience. Two kids staring sadly at candy.”

  “Eat it!” Maisie offered.

  “Meh.” Patrick shrugged. “I don’t think it’s fun to sit around and watch other people eat candy when you can’t enjoy any yourself.”

  “But why do we have to be goofy?”

  “People love goofy. Goofy bought me my house. There’s already a first wave of kids with followers. You’re second bananas. Like I was. You gotta ham it up to grab eyeballs.”

  “Bananas, ham.” Maisie scowled.

  “Eyeballth,” Grant added, grimacing.

  The waiter returned with the cotton candy, and when it was placed on the table it towered over all of t
heir heads, a pink Matterhorn made entirely of billowy clouds. “Here you go. I’ll give you a few minutes and check back to see if you’ve decided on dinner.” He winked at Patrick. Flirtatiously, conspiratorially, or just in recognition; it wasn’t clear.

  “Here, let’s start with an easy one.” Patrick used two hands to pull at a strand of cotton candy until it came loose. He pinched it in the middle and curled the ends, then held it between his upper lip and his nose like a mustache. Except for its pink color, it looked not unlike John’s.

  Grant instantly perked up. “I want one!”

  “Me too!”

  “Do you think I’m stopping you?” Patrick pushed the cotton candy to their side of the table so they could tear off the makings for mustaches. He tucked his under his nostrils, and he could feel it melting the littlest bit against his warm skin and the room smelled suddenly sweet, a spun sugar wormhole opening, beckoning, transporting him back to a happier time.

  “Look at me!” Grant hollered.

  “I am looking at you.” Patrick felt like an old-timey railroad baron, his voice affected by the snarl he projected to keep his mustache in place. He nodded to Maisie to make certain she knew he was watching her, too. “Okay, let me get my phone.”

  Patrick opened his camera and his finger paused without selecting video. “Wait, wait, wait. Let’s take a selfie for your dad.” He pushed his chair back, careful not to disturb Marlene, and slid around between them. He crouched and put his right arm around Grant and held the phone out in front of them. “Squeeze in!” They were cheek-to-cheek, and for a moment Patrick’s heart skipped—for a fraction of a second it actually felt like it stopped beating—and he took in a sharp breath of air. It was so, he didn’t know—saccharine. And yet deeply genuine, profound; he felt something he hadn’t in a long, long time. He closed his eyes.

  I love you, he said silently in his head, to himself, to the kids, to Joe, to Sara, to no one. To everyone.

  “Uncle Patrick!”

  He blinked his eyes open and fumbled with the camera like he was caught, as if everyone in the restaurant had been reading his mind.

  He’d never felt more exposed.

  “Say bananas!”

  “NO!” Grant yelled.

  “Say cotton candy, then.” This seemed more agreeable.

  “COTTON CANDY!”

  He snapped the photo, a keeper on the first try. He swung around back to his chair and looked at the picture. It was deceptive, a perfect moment of happiness in the middle of an otherwise tense meal; three sneers employed to hold their pink facial hair in place, when in fact it was the first time in days they were smiling. It was also artful; a column with luminescent tile perfectly captured the light, blotting out the disapproving woman behind them with blues and turquoises and pinks that picked up the color of their mustaches. He looked back in his phone to find his last text chain with Greg, scrolled and scrolled until at last there it was. Their last text, before Sara died, about something inconsequential—a pictorial in National Geographic about a climber who free-scaled El Capitan; Greg mentioned planning a future trip with the kids to Yosemite. And then . . . nothing. As if he were silenced along with Sara. Patrick attached the photo and hovered his finger over send. Was Greg even in possession of his phone? And if he was, why hadn’t he texted? Why hadn’t he checked in to make sure everything was going okay?

  “Do a video!” It was Grant. His mustache slipped and he caught it just in time.

  Patrick placed his sunglasses on his nephew, then added a pinch of cotton candy on each side where the glasses connected with his ears to make sideburns. Grant laughed and Maisie looked on in amazement. “You look like Martin Van Buren.”

  “Who’s Martin Van Buren?” Maisie asked.

  “Who’s Rip Van Winkle? Who’s Dick Van Patten? No one really knows.” He then grabbed the top third of their dessert and placed it like a bun on Maisie’s head. “Okay. Now you’re ready.”

  The kids twittered and giggled.

  “Do you know what you’re going to say?”

  “We’re going to talk about our favorite desserts.”

  Grant nodded his enthusiastic agreement; his uncle’s glasses slid half an inch down his nose and he tilted his head back to hold them in place, giving the camera a perfect view up his nostrils.

  “Well, I’m not one to chase trends, but baking shows are very hot right now. Okay! Aaaand. ACTION.”

  Patrick worked overtime to contain his smile as he hit record.

  THIRTEEN

  Patrick took one look at Cassie and blurted, “No, no, no, no, no” on repeat, as if a cosmic crisis were bearing down and he had the ability to stop it with the sheer force of his command. “This is a party.”

  The trepidation was apparent on Cassie’s face, as she hesitated to even step inside. Patrick could see she thought this was a mistake—the party hadn’t even begun and she was clearly panic-stricken that she’d done something wrong. “I’m well a-aware it’s a party,” she stammered. “I put together the guest list. And hired the bartender. And the valet.”

  Patrick admired the feeble defense she mounted; in fairness, she had accomplished a lot very quickly. “Well, don’t just stand there. Come inside.”

  The house was immaculate, glimmering white with colorful pillows and ceramics freshly rearranged—glorious vases and sculptures in orange and bronze—including a small metallic-blue Koons. Patrick’s Golden Globe sat in its new home, a shelf above where it had previously lived, out of the reach of young hands; it even had its own key light. And yet it was the seven-foot pink-tinsel Christmas tree with shimmering clear lights and glass ornaments that stood as a sort of pièce de résistance that really drew one’s eye. Patrick grinned proudly, claiming full ownership, when Cassie finally noticed it.

  “Was I supposed to be in charge of decorations?” Cassie asked, worried the Christmas tree was there to cover some further failure on her part, the lack of balloons or streamers or some sort of custom banner. “Or maybe supposed to get ice?”

  “No, just the guests and the bartender and the valet, and you did all those things flawlessly.” Patrick snapped his fingers three times. “But what are you wearing?”

  “A dress.” Cassie’s shift dress was white, sleeveless—perfect, it seemed, for a desert garden party when it was likely to be over one hundred degrees. She twirled like she was on the red carpet, mistaking the horror in his voice for interest.

  “It’s white.”

  “Yes,” she agreed nervously.

  “Am I keeping you from your wedding?”

  “What? Of course not.”

  “And those shoes?”

  “It’s a two-hour drive! I can’t do that in heels.” Cassie’s eyes darted as if she knew she were out of her element.

  “You look like Louise Fletcher.”

  Even though her MBA was not an MFA and she lacked a formal education in film, Patrick’s remark was perfectly clear: in all white from head to toe, with shoes that were just shy of orthopedic, she resembled not Louise Fletcher but Nurse Ratched. She stared at Patrick. “You’re wearing white!”

  “A white shirt! That’s totally different.” As if to underscore that difference, Patrick kicked out a leg to display the loud butterfly print of his pants.

  “I see.” Her expression suggested she didn’t really see.

  “Well, it’s not a disaster. We can certainly fix it.”

  “We can?”

  “NOOOOO! But we can burn this and start over. Maisie!”

  Instead of Maisie, Marlene came running from around the corner, her nails failing to find traction on the terrazzo floor. She looked even smaller than her sixteen pounds, navigating the steps of the sunken living room, her splotchy face and tail and button nose standing out most against the white tile. A pink tongue hung limply to one side; any eyes Marlene may have had were lost in the sprouts of
dark fur.

  “I said Maisie, not Marlene!” Patrick exclaimed, but the dog didn’t understand him, and once she found her footing she made her way to his side. “Well, anyhow, Cassie, Marlene, Marlene, Cassie.”

  “You adopted a dog named Marlene!” Cassie crouched down to envelop the dog’s face in her hands.

  “No, I adopted a dog named Bella, but Jesus Christ. So she’s Marlene now. Maisie!”

  This time Grant came screeching around the corner. He was dressed in shorts and a short-sleeve shirt with a dashing bow tie.

  Patrick slapped his forehead. “What kind of Martha Marcy May Marlene nightmare is this?”

  “I can’t breathe, GUP.” The boy tugged at his tie.

  “Breathing is overrated.” But Grant started to stomp and Marlene jumped back to protect her front paws, so Patrick undid the kid’s bow tie until it hung loose around his neck like Grant was Dean Martin after a particularly intense bender. “Here. That looks way cooler anyhow. Where’s your sister?”

  “I’m right here.” Maisie appeared out of nowhere in an outfit identical to Grant’s; she, however, liked her bow tie, looking not unlike how one imagines Diane Keaton looked as a tween. Maisie fell in line next to her uncle, her brother, and the dog.

  “Maisie, Grant, you remember Cassie? And where is Marlene’s bow tie? Never mind. Maisie, will you take Cassie to my dress closet and find her something decent to wear?”

  Cassie started to protest, but was caught off guard. “You have a whole dress closet?”

  “It’s my caftan closet, technically, but I think you’ll find something nice. Maisie, you know what I like.” Leaving the decision to Cassie was clearly out of the question.

  With a modicum of pity, Maisie reached out for Cassie’s hand. “Come. I’ll show you.”

  They took a few steps through the living room toward Patrick’s bedroom. “You have a Christmas tree,” Cassie exclaimed.

  “We found it in GUP’s garage.”

  “It’s pink.” Cassie thought she would focus on the tree’s appearance rather than the fact that it was July.