Lyle's service

“Don’t you remember? The schooner that Lyle had at the Santa Monica harbor?”

This glass of wine will be my fourth, I think to myself as Janine’s fat hand stretches in front of me to fill my glass. I already have the spins, the swirling of the living room becoming more and more pronounced the longer I sit there. I want to shoo her away or cover my glass with my hand but it’s taking all my concentration to focus on the high-pitched words of Kathleen sitting across the stuffy room from me. I can feel a bunch of eyes on me and all I can think to do is shrug and smile my hideous smile.

“Too much teeth,” my father used to say, “you have to keep those Chiclets in the bowl, you know? Guys get uncomfortable with a smile like that.

Remembering his leathery sullen face I awkwardly draw my lips closed, but everyone is looking at Kathleen again because I’ve taken too long and I’m sitting silently with my mouth making weird shapes.

“Yeah he had this boat that sat in the harbor for years and he would take people out to go fishing off Hermosa. Tabita was only five the first time he took her out and she got so sick he had to bring her back after twenty minutes.”

Clint leans over slightly.

“What a fucking awful dress to wear to a funeral,” he says in a whisper. I know he means Kathleen and even though I agree with him I don’t say anything or even acknowledge him. He gives up quickly and turns his attention to a woman standing in the hallway whose tits are spilling out of her too-tight blazer.

It was like our downstairs neighbor, Ms. Disadora. Clint would watch her through the blinds when she came into the building in the evening.

“There’s no way those are real,” he would say in a way which meant to sound like he was being critical, but I could tell he liked it.

“Maybe go ask her if you can touch them then,” I would mumble to myself, folding my arms over my own chest.

Kathleen’s dress is a vulgar display of floral: bright sunflowers mingled with strange vine-like stems of something or another, but the whole thing is a loud, flamboyant mess of color and shapes which look absolutely out of place at a funeral – even disrespectful.

The wine glass in my hand rests heavily on my thigh and I see it is filled, a blood red bowl of alcohol sloshing with my tipping movements back and forth as I reel from the three previous glasses. Aunt Janine is sitting squatly next to me in a creaky folding chair; her thighs look like pale uncooked sausages in her tan nylons. She takes sips again and again, constantly pouring wine into her glass which makes it appear always full.

“Grape juice for you kids, and grown-up grape juice for Auntie Janine,” she liked to call when my sister Olga and I would spend the weekend at her house. She didn’t have a guestroom, so Olga and I slept on the living room floor with pillows over our faces because Janine didn’t have curtains on her front window and the streetlight poured across the carpet.

Kathleen raises her glass to her lips but doesn’t sip, setting it back in her lap and saying, “Lyle sure loved you girls.” She says this with a weird inflection in her voice, like it is a question, and the sun setting beyond the Verdugo hills casts a sinister glow on her aging face. All I can do is sort of squint and shrug, attempting to smile sincerely while avoiding saying anything. Kathleen stares pointedly at me for what feels like an eternity, grinning with her mouth but not her eyes, and I start to feel uncomfortable and raise my glass to sip wine, sighing heavily to myself as the smell fills my nostrils. It seems to give her the same idea and she takes a gross, unpleasant looking mouthful of wine which empties her glass.

Clint is scrolling through his phone, his glass of gin sweating rings into the denim of his jeans. He is engrossed in a piece of text which I can’t make out, my eyes starting to cross as I try to focus on it. The more he scrolls, the more my stomach flops, and the more my temper grows. He is supposed to be my social diversion at this funeral, my excuse for avoiding family, and instead he has done nothing but drink gin, make vulgar comments about anything and everything, and ogle women.

Kathleen’s impromptu reminisces end and people are on their feet again, milling about as the sunset casts long shadows about the room. I can feel moisture on my neck, something that usually happens when I am drunk. The sweating would start with my neck and move to my arms. I try to set the glass down but leaning over makes me nauseated so I slowly, carefully rise to my feet.

“Where you goin?” Clint asks, still gazing at his phone.

I turn away from him and take a wobbly step. “I’m going outside for some air.”

Clint inhales like he is going to respond but never does, still engrossed in his phone screen, slouching in his chair. In the other room I squeeze by the table with the deli spread, trying not to look at food, my stomach gurgling loudly. I am suddenly aware of the wine in my hand and I set it down when I come to the first flat surface I see, which turns out to be a Bible on an end table, but I don’t give it another thought.

My uncle Felix notices me from near a window and gives an obnoxious exaggerated wave, and I hope briefly it isn’t at me but then he calls my name like he is calling his dog at the park and I have to acknowledge him just to get him to shut up.

“I meant to say earlier,” Felix says, flashing me the OK sign, “that Clint is a real keeper.”

I try to give a polite laugh and say something like, “Well, thank you,” but it comes out like “Welsh nakes” and I belch a little, just into my own mouth which somehow I hide, though luckily Felix glances away for a moment and I sneak off, pretending to be rushing away to take a call on my phone.

In the hallway the walls are bathed in orange light and several people are already departing out the front door; I can see balding heads shuffling down the sidewalk, a few palm trees leaning lazily in the stale summer evening. The air of the porch isn’t fresh but it is cooler, and even though I still feel sick I don’t feel like puking.

There is the framed photo of my grandparents on a table near the front door; the glass reflects the pink of the growing twilight. My grandpa Lyle looks happy in it, one of the few times I remember him looking happy. My grandma Bernice is sitting beside him, giggling, their laps covered by a table with a blue linen cloth.

“That was the Fall before grandma died,” I say to myself like I am narrating. My phone vibrates in my palm and I look down at it and see a picture Clint has sent me of the pewter statue of Saint Michael in the dining room. He has wedged a sharpie between the legs and included the banana emoji. I stare out into the L.A. twilight and wait for darkness.