“I tripped,” he said.
“Okay…”
He made no move to get up.
“What’s the matter?” Mary Alice asked. She’d seen something in his expression.
“Nothing,” he said. He’d just had a bad thought: These are Grandma Mo’s dresses. I’ve just despoiled my dead grandmother’s clothes.
He propped himself on an elbow. Trying to look comfortable, as if he’d just discovered that twenty-year-old frocks made the perfect bedding material.
Mary Alice started to say something, then she glanced at the wall behind him, just over his shoulder. Her eyes narrowed. Through force of will, Matty did not turn around to see if she was looking at the empty electrical box.
“Okay then,” she said. She backed away from the closet.
“Right,” he said. “Thanks. All good.”
The girls left the room, and he immediately turned and covered the hole in the wall with the orange gown. He began to rehang the dresses and coats: a waist-length rabbit fur coat, a bunch of knee-length skirts, a plaid raincoat. One of the last items was covered in a clear plastic dry-cleaning bag. It was a long, shimmery silver dress, and the sight of it rang chimes somewhere far back in his brain.
Oh, he thought. That’s right. It’s what Grandma Mo wore on the videotape. The videotape.
Uncle Frankie had shown Matty the tape at Thanksgiving four years ago. Frankie had been drinking a lot of red wine, hitting it hard as soon as his wife, Loretta, unwrapped the shrimp cocktail appetizers, and his sentences had turned emphatic and urgent. He was railing about some guy named the Astounding Archibald, who’d ruined everything.
“Think what we could’ve had,” Frankie said. “We could have been kings.”
Irene, Matty’s mom, laughed, making Frankie scowl. “Kings of what?” she asked.
Irene and Matty had driven in from Pittsburgh the night before, and they’d woken up to find that Grandpa Teddy had bought a bird and not much else; he’d been waiting for his daughter to conjure the rest of the meal. Now that they were finally on the other side of dinner, the table turned into a postcombat battlefield: pumpkin pie destroyed, Rice Krispies Treats in ruins, all wine bottles depleted. Matty was the last kid left in his chair. He’d always liked hanging out with the adults. Most of the time he stayed under the radar, not speaking, in the hope that they’d forget he was there and start saying interesting things.
“That no-talent hack just couldn’t stand to see us win,” Frankie said.
“No, he was a talented man, a talented man,” Grandpa Teddy said from the head of the table. “Brilliant, even. But shortsighted.” As usual, he was the most dressed-up person in the house. Shiny black suit, pink shirt, riotous paisley tie as wide as a trout. Grandpa always dressed like he was about to go to a wedding or a funeral, except in the mornings or just before bed, when he walked around as if he were alone in the house: wife-beater T-shirt, boxer shorts, black socks. He didn’t seem to own “sportswear” or “work clothes,” maybe because he never did sports and didn’t work. He was rich, though. Irene said she didn’t know where the money came from, but Matty imagined it was all poker winnings. Grandpa Teddy, it was understood, was the greatest cardshark of all time. He taught Matty seven-card stud, sitting at the kitchen table for hours until Matty’s pennies ran out. (Grandpa Teddy always played for money, and never gave it back after a game. “You can’t sharpen your knife on a sponge,” he’d say, scripture that Matty believed in without entirely understanding.)
“Archibald was a necessary evil,” Grandpa Teddy said. “He was the voice of the skeptic. If your mother had shown him up, the audience would have loved us for it. We could have gone to the stratosphere with that act.”
“He was evil,” Frankie said. “A damn liar and a cheat! He wouldn’t take Communion without palming the wafer.”
Grandpa Teddy chuckled. “It’s all water under the bridge now.”
“He was just plain jealous,” Frankie said. “He hated our gifts. He wanted to destroy us.”
Matty couldn’t stand it any longer. He had to ask. “What did this guy do to us?”
Frankie leaned across the table, looking Matty straight in the eye. “What did he do?” he said in a low, emotion-choked voice. “He killed Grandma Mo, that’s what.”
A thrill went through Matty. It wasn’t just this dramatic declaration; it was the electricity of being noticed by his uncle. Of being seen. Uncle Frankie had always been kind to Matty, but he’d never talked to him as if he mattered.
“Can we drop this, please?” Irene asked.
“He did kill her,” Frankie said, leaning back but keeping his eyes on Matty. “Sure as if he’d put a gun to her head.”
Matty’s mom frowned. “You believe that, don’t you?”
Frankie swiveled his head to stare her down. “Yes, Irene. Yes, I do.”
Loretta got to her feet. “I’m going for a smoke.”
“I’ll join you,” Grandpa Teddy said. He rose from the table, straightened his cuffs, and took her arm.
“You’re not supposed to smoke, Dad,” Irene said.
“Loretta’s smoking,” he said. “I’m secondary smoking.”
Uncle Frankie gestured to Matty. “Come on, it’s time you saw something.”
“I’m not doing these dishes alone,” Irene said.
“Have Buddy help you.” He slapped his brother on the shoulder—a little too hard, Matty thought. Buddy’s eyes fluttered, but his gaze never moved from the middle distance. He had a way of sitting very still, slumping lower and lower, as if he were turning to pudding.
“Leave him alone,” Irene said.
Buddy remained unperturbed. He’d been in one of his trances since finishing his pie, staring into space, occasionally smiling to himself or silently mouthing a word or two. His muteness was a mystery to Matty, and the adults wouldn’t talk about it, a double silence that was impenetrable. Matty’s mom would only give him variations of “That’s the way he is.” Once Matty worked up the courage to ask Grandpa Teddy about why Buddy hardly spoke, and he said, “You’ll have to ask him.”
Frankie led Matty to the front room, where a huge console television was parked against the wall like a Chrysler. His uncle dropped heavily onto his butt—holding his wineglass aloft and managing to keep most of the wine inside it—and opened up one of the cabinets.
“Now we’re talking,” Frankie said. A VHS machine sat on a shelf, and in the space below was a jumble of videocassettes. He pulled one out, squinted at the label, and tossed it aside. He started working his way through the stack. “I gave Dad a copy,” he said under his breath. “Unless Buddy threw it out, that fuckin’—hey. Here we go.”
It was a black cassette box with orange stripes. Frankie ejected the current tape from the machine and jammed in the one from the box.
“This is our history,” Frankie said. He turned on the television. “This is your heritage.”
On the screen, a store clerk madly squeezed rolls of toilet paper. Frankie pressed play on the VCR, and nothing happened.
“You have to turn it to channel three,” Matty said.
“Right, right.” The TV’s dial was missing, exposing a naked prong. Frankie reached up to retrieve the set of needle-nose pliers Grandpa Teddy kept on top of the console. “That was my first job. Grandpa’s remote control.”
The tape had the swimmy look of something recorded off broadcast TV. A talk show host in suit and tie sat on a cramped set, with a brilliant yellow wall behind him. “—and they’ve been thrilling audiences around the country,” he was saying. “Please welcome Teddy Telemachus and His Amazing Family!” Matty could hear the capitals.