How Things Look Now

FICTION

by Molly Lurie-Marino

        June is waiting for her uncle to come back. He is in the bathroom and she is watching the clock on the wall next to the china cabinet. It says 11:35. Uncle Joe has been in the bathroom for five minutes. If he takes longer than ten, June knows something is wrong and she will wake her mother to help in case Uncle Joe has passed out, or worse. June is twelve, and doesn’t think about worse.
         The curtain is only partially covering the window next to the end table. The almost-full moon shines through the two amber bottles and an ice water pitcher on the surface, on top of an embroidered cloth to protect the wood from memorizing moisture rings. June reaches across the table and touches her hand to the condensation on her uncle’s glass. Turning it slowly, she walks her fingertips and slides it to her side of the table. She puts the glass to her lips and takes a sip, then spits it back into the glass. She pushes it to where her uncle was sitting and wipes her sleeve across the water mark she left. Her uncle comes back into the dining room. She looks at the window. It could be an almost-full moon getting bigger, waxing, as Mrs. Wilson called it in class, or it could be a full moon getting smaller and disappearing, waning.
         Uncle Joe limps to the table. He falls into his chair. “Boy, ice is melting. That’s some alcohol abuse, right there,” he says, “better help this sucker out. You didn’t take none, did you?”
         June shakes her head. Uncle Joe has been telling her about when his parents separated the first time and his father “kidnapped” him, promising him shortbread cookies. He downs the end of his drink and gets up to make another. June has heard this story, a family tale repeated as if a fable, but with no clear lesson. A boy being hidden in a barn loft to prove a point to his mother. Cookies being the reason. The word kidnapped said both casually and seriously, it is what it is. June rolls her tongue around her palate and shifts in her seat.
         He picks up where he left off, “Now Pops had me stay in the barn, up in the loft with hay and all for a few days ’til he was sure no one was coming to look and see where I ended up. I liked seeing him, I did. Missed Momma too, though. See Junie, I loved Pops, but I needed Momma. And she needed me.”
         His openness while drinking is something June has heard of from the one-sided phone conversations behind her mother’s bedroom door, coiled cord wrapped through two doorways for the illusion of at least muffled privacy. June heard about when Uncle Joe was pulled over two years ago after hitting a biker and failing to stop, and how he handed over his license and asked the officer, “Can I be frank? I shouldn’t be driving.” To which the officer looked over his glasses, opened the door so Joe could get out, and replied, “I’d rather you be Joe, come with me, and sober up.”
         It will seem to June later that her uncle was trying to distract her. That he was telling her story through his own. June’s father left the week before. She would find out after a few months it was his last time slamming the door, his last time going on a business trip to a bar. And maybe Joe thought his story of their family hurting in the past would help her see life’s brevity, fleeting interactions, and understand sadness should be let go. At this point though, while Joe rocks his glass in front of his face, June starts to cry.
         “Ah, Junie,” Uncle Joe reaches his hand across the table for hers, “it’ll be all right. Tomorrow is almost always better than today.”  He picks his hand up—June hasn’t reached for it—and runs it through his hair. It is the same gray as the kitchen curtains where June’s mother, Uncle Joe’s sister, always smokes.
         June rubs her eyes. She doesn’t like to cry in front of others. She worries she is too emotional, a baby, and takes a deep breath.
         “It’s not going to be better, ever,” she says, “not any better than it is when he’s here, and it won’t get better without him.” By “him,” June means her father.
         Uncle Joe leans back in his seat. “I ever tell you about the man and his son, lived on a farm in the old country,” he says. It wasn’t a question. June looked at the clock again, 11:48. He had a penchant for interrupting himself multiple times over the course of a story. He’d start on the main trunk of the tale then branch off to asides seeming to have little to do with the story besides the man telling them, only to explain his associations as gospel (if he’d been drinking just enough to loosen up, but not too much to fall asleep).
         “Man’s horse runs off, comes back with a wild one. Neighbors say it’s a blessing—a new horse!” Uncle Joe looks at June while throwing his hands up to gesture for the story. “But old man isn’t so sure, says, ‘maybe it is, maybe not.’ Then his son breaks his leg riding that same horse. Folks think it’s terrible, but father says his same old ‘maybe, maybe not’ bit. Now, everyone’s thinking this man’s a little off—”
         He swallows and takes a breath, then wags his finger at June, back and forth between them, “like me, right? Like me. But next day some the state’s officials come ’round collecting young men for the draft, and the son doesn’t have to go to war. See what I’m saying, June?”
         June shakes her head and whispers she doesn’t.
         “Means not everything’s how it looks,” her uncle says.
         June reaches up and tugs some of her hair out of her ponytail. She pulls it in front of her head. It is fine and soft, the color of a mouse’s back. She saw one the week before. It ran away from her, and even as she held out a piece of cheese it ran back to its family in the wall. She breathes in for three counts, out for three counts. She closes her eyes and stops crying.
         Uncle Joe coughs. “I’m a bit tired, hon. Going to bed.” He stands up using the table to steady himself and puts a palm on June’s head. “Dream sweetly, string bean.”
         June follows her uncle to the door of his guest room. She stays far enough behind he doesn’t notice, but close enough she can tell when he makes it. June goes to her room and sits behind the door. She closes her eyes and listens for the soft scratching of the mice in the walls. She listens to them building, breathing, living.