Sightings (11 page)

But Dad wasn't grateful, and he certainly never referred to what he'd done as a stunt.

“The children were starving,” he defended. “What other choice did I have?”

The following morning, when we'd returned home, the first thing Dad did was rip his
American Progress
print from the wall in his den. He crumpled it, said we Americans knew nothing of progress. Next, he tossed all of his carefully organized back issues of
American West Quarterly
into the trash can, mumbling something about “no longer wasting his time with that smut.”

Never again did my father and I approach the subject of cannibalism of the nineteenth century. We just didn't. Not even when all the pixelated buffalo ran out and the computer game demanded it. That sordid chapter of our lives – we hoped – we'd left behind in Weston.

That night for dinner, Dad took what remained of last year's deer from the freezer and prepared his specialty – oven-barbecued venison. I watched him baste in silence. He turned around, saw me there, and told me to make myself useful: set the table with the good silverware.

“And get some placemats,” he added. “The ones with the trim.”

Then, we all sat around the table and waited for Dad to say grace, thanking God for his steady hand, etc. But he didn't. He just shoved the food toward us.

“Now look, we are going to finish this meat,” he explained calmly, resting his hands on the table. “Is that clear?” Sam nodded, forking a piece and leading it to her mouth. Barbecue sauce dripped the return route to her plate, leaving behind a perfect trail.

Dad, his chair pushed back, sat solemn, watching us chew. We tried to pretend we enjoyed it. Throughout the meal, Mom continued commenting on how wonderful everything was.

“Mmm . . . so tender. And the silverware! And the placemats! Max, did you do this?”

I ripped into another hunk of venison, and, mouth full, gulped my milk glass empty.

“They're just placemats,” I chewed, eyeing my father. “It's not like we're barbarians.”

The Clowns moved in on a Thursday, two months after their son, Bubbles, perished in a cannon-related accident and just days after taking a devastatingly hard hit from the recession. On the advice of their financial planner, Mr. Bobo Longbottom, the Clowns had invested bullishly in seltzer water as the entertainment industry plummeted around them. Business slowed – people just didn't have a lot of money to throw around on clowns anymore – and due to the decline in birthday party performances and the rising costs of funerals, the Clowns found, one cold October day, that they could no longer pay their mortgage. The bank foreclosed on their home, and finding themselves with no place to hang their polka-dotted hats, they called upon my father.

They were second cousins, or something like that, and citing familial obligation, Dad said there was no greater honor than to assist them.

Mom and I were hesitant, though Dad rebuffed our concerns.

“The Clowns have dedicated their entire lives to bringing joy to others,” he reminded. “The least we can do is try to give a little back.”

I hardly knew them. They weren't regulars around the Thanksgiving table, and while they sent me my annual birthday card – “Wishing you a wacktackular birthday!” – that was the extent of our relationship. We'd gone to Bubbles's funeral, of course, though I'd kept my distance, sending sympathetic looks from afar, hoping they'd prove sufficient.

During the car ride over, when I asked Dad exactly how we were related to the Clowns, he referenced my Great Aunt Norma and then began using phrases like “twice-removed” and “half-sibling” until eventually he just sort of fizzled out completely.

“Good people, though,” my father added. “Always have been.”

They were a strange pair – perpetually in full clown regalia – and throughout the funeral service, every time Aunt Clown tried to wipe her nose a loud “honkahonka” permeated throughout St. Francis's Chapel, overpowering the organist and causing the priest to perpetually lose his place in the eulogy. Uncle Clown's grief was equally uncomfortable, and when Dad stretched out his arms to embrace him, Mr. Clown's plastic flower lapel sprayed a stream of seltzer directly into Dad's face. Dad was a good sport, and when Mr. Clown apologized and tried handing him a handkerchief, he discovered, quite to his horror, that the more he pulled the more handkerchiefs spilled out.

“Oh, damn it,” Mr. Clown cried, pulling from various pockets, equally unsuccessful in finding a single, usable kerchief that wasn't part of a chain. “Oh, Christ.”

I watched helplessly as he pulled and pulled, sending streams of colors floating through the air, making their slow descent.

“One second now,” he told my father. “Let me just try this pocket. My God, this can't be happening. Of all the goddamned days . . .”

Those of us still in the pews glanced down at our watches or turned toward the wall, attempting to keep his embarrassment private.

It could have been quite funny if it weren't so tragically sad.

I don't have to describe them.

The usual.

Shoes ten sizes too big, enormous polka-dotted jumpsuits, gloved hands, painted faces, and bulbous red noses protruding. Red paint outlined their mouths, guaranteeing a smile, even in the shadow of death.

“Hey, Sophie,” Dad called up the stairs to me on the day they moved into our house. “Go help your Aunt Clown with her things, huh?”

She wasn't my aunt, though “aunt and uncle” seemed the closest the branches of our family tree were willing to twist.

I stepped outside and helped Aunt Clown with her handbag, watching as Uncle Clown pulled trunk after trunk from their Volkswagen Beetle.

“Just a couple more now,” Uncle Clown said, stacking their belongings three times as high as the car. Aunt Clown didn't say anything. She looked sad, even with that face paint.

Meanwhile, Uncle Clown was having a difficult time himself, particularly with navigating our narrow stairs while trapped in gigantic shoes. His arms were loaded with boxes marked
JUGGLING BALLS
and
HAND BUZZERS,
but every time he made it halfway up his shoes betrayed him, sending him sprawling backward – classic slapstick.

He didn't say anything, just grimaced before wiping the sweat from his face.

“Let me help you with that,” Dad offered, but Uncle Clown shook his head, ran a gloved hand through his curly, red afro and just leaned there against the wall.

Finally, in an attempt to break the tension, Aunt Clown pressed
PLAY
on a tiny, handheld tape recorder, and hyena laughter burst through the room.

The silence turned to smirks, the smirks to laughter, and soon we were all doubled over and feeling a whole lot better.

“Haha, very funny,” Uncle Clown groaned, rolling his eyes. “She's got a great sense of humor, huh, folks?”

We tried not to listen to their fights, though it was hard, especially with those enormous shoes tromping overhead. Dad reasoned their marital problems were likely the result of their financial woes compounded by the death of their son – a one-two punch they couldn't shake.

“I can't imagine,” my mother kept repeating. “I simply can't imagine.”

Every time we heard Uncle Clown bumbling down the stairs we went to great lengths to appear as if we hadn't heard a thing, returning our eyes to the television and feigning interest in whatever juicer the infomercial was peddling.

Uncle Clown never even acknowledged our attempts. He had gotten into the habit of helping himself to my father's liquor cabinet, clinking a few ice cubes into a tumbler, pouring the whiskey two cubes deep. Nobody ever mentioned it. Didn't mention the smell on his breath or his stumbles or when his humor just turned mean. Through it all, Aunt Clown continued wearing her lopsided smile, helping Mom prepare meals, doing odd jobs around the house.

“We're just . . . we're so grateful to be here,” I'd overheard Aunt Clown whisper one night as she and Mom put away the dishes. “Surely business will pick up. We'll get a few birthday parties, maybe some corporate picnics . . .”

Mom had become an expert nodder, continually assuring Aunt Clown that they were no inconvenience, that they were welcome as long as they liked.

“Besides, it's nice to have a little laughter around the house,” she tried, but she knew she'd said the wrong thing.

On the worst nights, after Uncle Clown downed his drinks he'd lurch back upstairs – “Just need to fix my face,” he'd say before locking himself in the bathroom. I'd often be in my bedroom across the hall, working on homework, the door slightly ajar as I listened to the water pipes squeak. Twenty minutes later, when I heard the bathroom door click open, I couldn't help but watch his bulbous nose emerge from the steam, followed by the towel wrapped around his startlingly white waist, a near-perfect match for his face paint.

“Hey, Sophie,” Uncle Clown once slurred, fitting a Q-tip into his ear with one hand while gripping the towel with the other. “You hear the one about the clowns and the cannibals?”

“Um . . . no,” I said, putting down my pencil, my attempt at accommodating him.

“Long story short, the cannibals released 'em,” he said, pausing, a wry smile pasted across his painted lips. “Claimed they ‘tasted funny.'”

I didn't know what to do so I didn't do anything, just sat there, frozen.

He honkahonka-ed his nose and when that didn't work, said, “Ahhh, to hell with it. Everyone's a critic.”

This went on for a couple of weeks, everyone pretending as if everything was normal. I didn't say a word after I unclogged the shower drain of red hair, nor did I complain about the white face paint smeared on the table, marking the exact coordinates of where Uncle Clown most recently passed out.

Even the neighbors – who'd seen Bubbles's obituary in the paper – were kind enough not to make too big of a scene as they watched my drunken uncle attempt to mow zigzagged lines in our lawn in his squeaking
26EEE
sized shoes. Likewise, the mailman took it upon himself to forward their subscription for
American Clown Quarterly
directly to our doorstep, and even the Jehovah's Witnesses managed to walk on past every time they spotted the red-nosed man passed out in the kiddie pool.