“He’s not home. He’s over at the house.”
He arched a brow. “I beg your pardon?”
“We bought a house. Over on Reagan Street.”
“Here in Los Alamitos?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s right,” she said, apparently much happier to talk to me. “We can’t live there yet, ”cause he’s fixing the place up. Hang on.“
She hurried inside. After a few minutes, she came back out with a slip of paper. She handed it to me. It had the number “10682” written on it. “That’s the address. When you see him, tell him his wife said to get his- to come home,” she amended, after glancing back at Travis.
She looked back at me and seemed suddenly unsure of us, eyeing the scrap of paper as if she wanted to take it back. I quickly put it in my pocket.
“He hit you?” she asked, indicating Travis.
“Do you find that likely?” he asked.
“Who are you guys?”
“Long-lost relatives, looking through the family tree,” I said.
“No fooling,” she said suspiciously, but then studied Travis. “He does look a little familiar…”
Travis thanked her and we were about to leave, when she suddenly shouted, “Wait! Here he comes!”
A big pickup truck with a construction toolbox on it pulled under the carport. A large, gruff-looking man wearing a T-shirt and shorts got out. She ran to him. He was tanned and muscular, his face weathered and his dark hair turning silver on the sides. He picked her up off her feet in a big bear hug, saying, “Hey there, sugar.” He looked over her shoulder at us, puzzled for a moment, until he saw Travis.
His eyes widened, and he gently set his wife back down. She was starting to babble out an explanation to him, but Gerald seemed not to be listening. Looking straight at Travis, moving slowly forward, he said, “Good God in heaven… you’re… you’re Arthur’s boy, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Travis said quietly-so quietly, I wondered if Gerald heard him. It seemed to me that all the mischief of a moment ago had been replaced by an anxiousness that he didn’t quite manage to hide.
“Travis?” Gerald asked.
Travis nodded.
“Well, Travis,” Gerald said, his voice breaking, “you’re the spitting image of your dad.” By the time he reached us there were tears running down his cheeks. Travis stepped forward, and Gerald extended a hand, but then, seeing the bandages, moved to one side and hugged Travis around the shoulders. “Lord ‘a mercy,” he said, looking down at his nephew. “Lord ’a mercy.”
I watched Travis carefully; he returned the embrace, if a little awkwardly.
“Whew!” Gerald said, dashing away his tears. “Come on in, boy, come on in.” Then, seeing me, he said, “Forgive me, I’ve lost all my manners.” Without letting go of Travis, he said, “I’m Gerald Spanning, Travis’s uncle Gerald.”
“I’m Irene Kelly. Travis’s cousin on his mother’s side.”
After the slightest flicker of hesitation, he smiled. “Yes, we spoke on the phone, didn’t we? Well, bless your heart for bringing this boy to see me. Come in, come in. You’ve met Deeny, right? Her name is Geraldine, but that just confuses the hell out of everybody, so I call her Deeny.”
“Better than what some of the old farts around here call me,” she said, turning on her heel. She wasn’t hiding her unhappiness-she seemed jealous of the attention Travis was getting from her husband-but she led the way into the trailer without protest.
“She’s not much older than you are,” Gerald confided to Travis, “so it’s best you not call her Aunt Deeny.”
The interior was roomier than might have been expected for a mobile home. It reeked of cigarette smoke, but was clean and neat. The furnishings looked as if they had been purchased in the ‘70s, although the mobile home itself didn’t appear to be that old. Deeny gave a wave of her hand to indicate that we should have a seat. I sat on one of two avocado-green recliners; Travis, having smoothly extricated himself from Gerald’s grasp, took the other one. Gerald didn’t seem to mind taking a seat on the gold-and-brown couch, separated from us by a heavy, imitation walnut coffee table. There was a paperback on one corner, an action adventure story, with a bookmark near the last pages.
Deeny came back from the kitchen with four cans of Coors still in their six-pack plastic collar. She sat down close to Gerald and pulled them free, popping tops and shoving a can at each of us without asking if we wanted one.
Gerald lifted his beer can as if for a toast, and Deeny stopped in the act of taking her first swig to hold hers up as well-so Travis and I followed suit.
“Mi casa es su casa,” Gerald said, smiling at Travis.
“Speak American!” Deeny complained.
“English,” Gerald corrected.
“Whatever,” she said sullenly, earning a reproving look from Gerald. Her shoulders drooped a little and she asked, “Well, what did you say in Mexican?”
Gerald smiled at Travis and me, rolling his eyes. Her shoulders fell a little farther and he gave her a quick squeeze. “Oh, now,” he said easily, “don’t fret. It’s just an old way of welcoming someone in Spanish. Kind of like saying ‘Make yourself at home.” And that’s what I want my nephew here to do-make himself at home.“
“Thanks,” Travis said.
“I take it Arthur doesn’t know you’re here?” Gerald asked.
I nearly missed seeing the sharp look Deeny gave him; I didn’t know what to make of it, though. Travis, for his part, was remarkably self-possessed.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that my father has passed away,” he said.
“Arthur?” Gerald said, his eyes wide. “Arthur’s dead?”
“Yes, sir,” Travis said.
“No-no it can’t be. Why, he’s not even fifty!”
“No, sir. He was forty-eight. He died of cancer.”
“Cancer?”
“Yes, sir. Last month.”
“Arthur, dead a month… excuse me,” he said, rising.
He walked away from us, down a short hallway, where I supposed the bedrooms were. Deeny got up and followed him, not saying a word.
Travis glanced over at me. “I didn’t handle that very well, did I?”
“There’s no easy way to tell someone something like that,” I said.
“I feel terrible. I should have realized that he wouldn’t know. I should have thought about it before we came over here.”
I didn’t say anything. We waited, neither one of us sure exactly how much time had passed since the Spannings went into the other room. We could hear their muffled voices every now and again, not able to make out any words, nor trying to. Travis grew edgier as time passed.
Sitting was only making me stiffer, so I stood and stretched.
“I don’t want this beer,” I said. “You want yours?”
He shook his head. He held the nearly full can up to me.
I took it from him, and picked up my own. I carried them into the kitchen and poured them down the drain. I rinsed out the cans and looked around for a recycling bin. I found a plastic grocery sack full of empty cans next to the trash can, and bent to put them in it. As I did, something in the trash can caught my eye.
A church bulletin. From St. Anthony’s Catholic Church. I reached in and carefully extracted it from beneath a used wet coffee filter. I heard voices coming into the living room and quickly folded the paper. I had just stashed it in my back jeans pocket when I heard Deeny say, “What are you doing?”
“Just putting our beer cans in the recycling,” I said.
I stood up and washed my hands, while she leaned against the counter, scowling at me. I could hear Gerald talking to Travis in the other room, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. When I reached for a hand towel, she said, “Make yourself at home, why don’t you?”
“Mi casa es su casa,” I said with a smile, taking perverse pleasure in watching her eyes narrow.
In the living room, Travis was sitting close to Gerald on the sofa, their heads bent over something. Gerald had a pair of reading glasses on. As I drew closer, I realized they were looking through a photo album. Travis looked up at me and patted the empty space next to him. “Sit next to me, you’ll enjoy this.”