The Anglophile (13 page)

When I click the receiver down, Kit say, “Oh, goodie. A skunk funeral.”

“You don't want to go to this.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously. And why are you so shocked about Alan coming? Did he have a fight with Dot?”

“You picked all of this up?”

“My conversations with my family last four seconds. Americans are very expressive.”

I throw my crumbled napkin at him. “Alan is a handful.”

“How's that? You haven't really talked about your brothers too much.”

I list just some of Alan's countless phobias over the years: green olives stuffed with pimiento, vomiting, plungers, a postcard of the Hieronymous Bosch's
Garden of Earthly Delights
a neighbor once sent to my mother from Madrid, undercooked egg, sharp whistle blasts, and the sharp-toothed boar in the We Serve Only Boar's Head meat products sign in the window of our local deli.

“Is that all?”

“And barber chairs.”

“And melty chocolate?”

“No, he loves chocolate. Who doesn't love chocolate?”

“Call Gene back. Tell him we're coming.”

I do, and agree to bring Kit to Gene's apartment via the F Train. From there he will give us a lift.

G
ene's two-bedroom spread is in Parker Towers, one of the more enviable apartment buildings in Forest Hills. In the ride up to the nineteenth floor I explain to Kit that my older brother's interiors will look professionally done because they were designed by his old girlfriend Jill—a woman with two facial features exactly like a stock Dr. Seuss character: a short upturned nose, and a vertically distended upper lip.

“When did they break up?”

“Six weeks ago. He's being predictably secretive about the relationship demise.”

Gene ushers us in. I'm surprised how he's aged even in the six months since I've seen him last. His hair has thinned, his forehead has prematurely pleated, and I'm a little worried about a possible double chin emerging.
But his killer smile is there, the one that the ladies in the Forest Hills bar scene love.

After a sibling kiss, Gene says “How-d'ye-do?” to Kit and shakes his hand firmly.

“Nice to meet you,” Kit says.

As we turn from the foyer into the living room I see that his interior has been redone once again. Jill's gone, and there's no way his unseasoned eye could have ever pulled this together so expertly. It briefly occurs to me that my brother's digs bursting with expensive furniture and mail-order baubles may be off-putting to a man offering an overseas freebie vacation out of pity.

“So when did you get this decorated again?”

“New girlfriend,” he says to me. “Also an interior designer. Didn't want Jill's stamp on it.”

“Are you dating one of Jill's friends? What's her name?”

“Cannot divulge,” he says robotically. “Must break three-month mark.”

“Nice place,” Kit says.

“Thank you. It's the ultra in fake American Colonial, or so I'm told.”

“Oh,” Kit says.

There's an awkward silence.

“Kit is also a Volapük specialist,” I say to fill the void.

Gene is relieved at the sound of spoken word. “There's two of you doing that?”

“Three. There's also a man at Columbia.” I keep to myself: Dave Mitchell's prolific praise of my competition, and how that stung me so. I marvel at fate. There's the very enemy himself, fingering a wooden Mancala tray.

Kit picks it up. “I like your Mancala board. Very old. A bit of African Colonial mingling in I see.”

“Since when do you play Mancala?” I ask Gene. “My old roommate played it. I might even give you a go.”

“This thing's for a game?”

I can see Kit is hesitating with a ready response. It looks as if he doesn't want to come off as a know-it-all. His overstuffed mind can't help itself: “It's an African strategy game. Mancala is one of the oldest games in history, you know. Yours is from the Congo, I'm pretty sure.”

Gene shrugs. “I've been using it as a candy dish. Jill made me buy it at an estate sale. She thought I needed something old for this place.”

After more brief niceties, we get ready to go to his car parked in the building's in-house garage. Gene loves his car and he hates hassle. An assigned parking space is the main reason Gene chose Forest Hills over the Upper East Side when looking around for a good place to buy. It's by no means the sole reason he bought here. Gene's a dime-a-dozen go-getting guy in Manhattan, but in this borough with a nice place and a banking job and a BMW X5, he is a big fish. In Queens he gets laid.

Gene hits the elevator button for Lower Level. “So did my sister tell you what a whackjob our aunt Dot is?”

“I didn't go there,” I say preemptively.

“You said she was big on candles,” Kit reminds me.

“No,” Gene laughs. “That's another crazy one-syllable aunt, on our mother's side. Fay's a lightweight. Dot is a class unto herself. For starters there's her body.”

I throw my hands up. He is such a jerk sometimes.
“God. Pick on the skunk, but not her fat. Fat doesn't equate insanity, Gene. Lots of people have weight issues.”

“I'm not talking about her fat, Shari. Her toes are disgusting. Did you ever see Dot's hammertoes when she wears sandals?”

“Are the sandals environmentally sound?” Kit says dryly.

Gene laughs, surprised that his guest already knows that insider joke, and I shoot Kit a look to shut up. Later, I'll laugh, too, after I take Gene to task. “She only has one left hammertoe now, so you can cross that off your list. Mom said they cut the tendons on seven of her toes, but the one that is left was full of arthritis.”

“How do you get seven hammertoes?” Kit asks with an interested but slightly sickened face.

“She wore stilettos all her life,” I say to Kit and then I look intently at Gene. “Let's leave poor grieving Dot alone.”

“Well you said Kit didn't hear any evidence of insanity in our family.”

“No, I actually still haven't,” Kit says.

“Okay, than what's with the skunks as pets?” Gene demands of him.

I jump in: “I'm surprised to hear how attached she was to this one. I don't know anything about this particular skunk other than its untimely demise.”

Gene addresses me back and Kit rolls up a cigarette before we get into the car. I catch Gene's frown at the smoking. “Have you really ever bought their childlessness? Dot couldn't adopt?”

“Gene,
enough,
okay? Leave her alone. You're just being mean. If you remember, before Eric, she had no
partner. It wasn't easy to adopt as a single parent twenty years ago.”

“You're playing innocent, Shari, like you don't rag on Dot twenty-four/seven—”

“Gene!” I knew introducing Kit to my family was a dumb idea. Going to see Sam in Headless Horseman territory was a surprisingly nice experience, but it looks like when it comes to introducing the rest of my eccentric family, it's all downhill from here.

“Nice car, by the way,” Kits says, after we've climbed into Gene's beloved BMW.

“Thank you,” Gene says proudly.

I say nothing.

Gene starts the ignition. “Well, one last thing then, Shari, and then we can talk about the weather.”

“What?” I spit out.

“I don't buy it.”

“Buy what?”

“That she couldn't have a kid. Mom thinks that, too, by the way, that Dot didn't want a kid, that she never wanted the emotional responsibility of children. She never wanted anyone who would talk back to her.”

I'm ready to smack him.

Kit looks politely out the window at the moving cars as we pull out onto Queens Boulevard toward the Long Island Expressway, but I'm sure his distraction is partly due to distaste.

“Oh,” Gene says a few blocks into our journey. “We have to also warn you not to laugh when you meet Eric.”

“Look, no more vitriol, please, really. Save it for a phone conversation.”

Kit coughs uncomfortably, but Gene has no shame: “Eric looks like your worst nightmare of Gene Wilder, and then toss in that he's hard of hearing.”

I'm peeved at him for blatantly ignoring my warning, but the thought of Eric as Gene Wilder's doppelganger makes me laugh out loud, and Gene sneaks me a triumphant grin. “All right, you get one point for funny,” I allow.

“Gene Wilder,” Kit says. “Do I know him?”

“C'mon, of course you do,” I say. “You know about regional African Mancala styling but not Gene Wilder?”

“I'm not sure I do.”

“Really? You never saw
Blazing Saddles?
” Gene says loudly.

“No.”

“Producers?”
he tries again.

“Never saw that.”

“You never saw
The Producers!
” This comes in a shriek; even before the Broadway hit,
The Producers
was Gene's favorite movie. He has been known to hum “Springtime for Hitler” in his sleep.

“Don't get carried away here,” I say. “Everyone has to watch the movies you watch?”

“What about
The Frisco Kid? Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother?
”

“You're a big fan of this bloke, I see,” Kit replies tartly.

“Sharing a name with him has made him a buff.”
Stop it, Gene,
I say to myself. Even though my brother has an overall sunny disposition, he's so pigheaded sometimes, with his cruel women's body comments. And what I also didn't prewarn Kit about Gene is how he relentlessly
teases; he almost destroyed Alan's sense of self when he decreed that Little Brother was definitely homosexual because he couldn't climb the rope in gym. Our mother never figured out why Alan went into another of his terrifying dark funks that week—but before she sought professional help a noticeable swagger miraculously replaced his despondency. Gene told me everything Alan had that very day confided to him—and made me swear it was “in the vault.” Alan lost his virginity bonking a Roosevelt Mall rat named Robyn whom he'd previously avoided when she swanned up to him at school dances in skintight jeans and obscenely low-cut shirts.

“C'mon,” Gene persists. “Who didn't see
The Producers?
That's the greatest movie of the twentieth century!”

“What does he look like?” Kit says. “Maybe I'll know his face.”

“Check out Eric when you meet him and you'll know.”

“How is Alan coming to the cemetery?” I say tensely.

“His new girlfriend at the commune is driving in.”

“Yes, I meant to ask you about that commune, Shari,” Kit says.

And I was so relieved when you didn't.

We pause the conversation when Gene decides he better stop to pee at Burger King now or he'll be in trouble in fifteen minutes. Kit's out for a smoke as fast as Gene stops the car. Time to fret about what family inferno lies ahead.

 

The last time I saw Alan was the week he had gone to the extraordinary step of inviting me to dinner at the
sandal commune, and met me at the Staten Island ferry so we could take a bus there. It wasn't a formal commune per se, as a San Franciscan might expect, but rather a series of houses on the same block bought up by the collective. They wore normal clothes, if a little thrift-storish. It's established that I'm big on thrift store finds, but these were the dreg clothes you see after the sitcom stylists have already picked over goodies like the seventies dresses with kimono sleeves. A P.A. system wired between the houses called everybody into the communal dining room for dinner. The food served was nominally health food; each member brought a dish from his or her home kitchen, beet-colored macaroni, and some sort of dessert with wheatgrass. Instead of soda, they served Juicy Juice, for that lovely canned juice taste, and used off-brand ketchup that looked to be sitting in someone's refrigerator so long that a dark maroon crust manifested around the bottom of the bottle. Alan leaned toward my ear and admitted that only half of the commune residents were there; the rest were out and about; I assume he told me this to quell my fears that he lived in a cult. During the meal they talked about group experience and conflict resolution. Someone had bought a used car, not from a friend, and as it turned out it was not in very good running condition. He was trying to figure out what he should do. Should he get some of the money back, or all of it? This discussion was led by an elderly man I assumed was the spiritual leader, a man with a beard named Xander. The thing that actually freaked me out most of all was that there was a member of the group who spontaneously got up and started
rubbing Xander's old callused feet. Nobody said anything, not even Alan, so apparently this was normal.

When we went back to Alan's house, he said, nervously, “Pretty great, huh?”

Mom pumped me hard after my visit, but I didn't want to break her heart. Alan would never go back to live with her in Queens, and although I didn't think the place was a cult, it was a life choice that appalled me. Besides, if he left, where would he live? He never finished school, and his long list of phobias now included applying for a job.

 

“Aren't you excited that Alan has a girlfriend?” Gene says as he climbs back in the car.

“Why?”

“That's pretty fucking exciting. All he wanted to talk about the last time I saw him were drapes.”

“Curb it. You know he's had other girlfriends.”

He waits to answer until Kit has his seat belt on. “Are you so sure? Have you met any?”

“No, but stop telling Alan he is gay. Maybe he's just not as showy as you—”

“Showy? Is that what you call heterosexuality?”

“There's new drapes on a commune?” Kit slips in.

“Oh, c'mon, drapes?” Gene turns to Kit: “What do you think, Mancala Man? This guy is sharp, sis, he'll tell you like it is.”

Kit shrugs with a guilty smile, and Gene laughs in response. I'm a little mad for the mateship betrayal.

Gene turns his focus to his printout from MapQuest. “We need to take the I-87 North toward White Plains. But I want to stop for gas.”

“Oh,” says Kit. “We took that road to see Sam and the Tenth Mountain chaps.”

Gene crinkles his face in confusion. “You've met my uncle Sam?”

“Great guy. Amazing life. By the way, I'll pay for the petrol.”

Gene waves him off. “It wasn't your idea to get dragged to a skunk funeral. You're not paying anything.”

“Actually he insisted on tagging along,” I say.

“Gene,” Kit speaks for himself, “is there a person alive who wouldn't want to go to a skunk funeral?”

Gene chuckles. I think Kit is finally winning him over. He stops at the no-name gas station inside the boundary of the Bronx. “Bargain unleaded,” he explains. “What New Yorker can't stop for a deal?” Gene wasn't lying; he won't let Kit pay. After a polite fight, Kit heads inside to the minimart to search out a can of Red Bull, or at the very least a Coke.

“You must be serious about this guy,” Gene says through my open window as he pumps. “He knows about Alan and the sandals, and man, he's already met Uncle Sam?”