the creeps, too, big time,” John says, and then eats the cookie he just finished decorating.
We nod in agreement, and Mary’s crosses jingle around her neck.
Just then there is a burst of laughter from the porch. It is intense and a little hysterical. We all recognize the sound. It means that the McLaughlins are now drunk enough, loose enough, to start telling stories from their childhood. Their stories are about outwitting baby-sitters and being rescued from the top branch of a tree by the fire department, and breaking bones falling off roofs and bloodletting battles between siblings over stolen wedding dresses and prom dates. There is nearly always some violence and the stakes are always high. My mother, Uncle Pat, Aunt Meggy, Aunt Theresa, Uncle Johnny, and even Uncle Ryan tell of a vibrant childhood and adolescence when life was lived right down to the bone.
My cousins and I used to love to hear those stories. When Gracie, John, Dina, Mary, and I were little, we would run to the room where our parents were when we heard that particular shout of laughter. We would crouch at the door, or behind a table, and listen as the stories were told, happy to picture our parents living such large lives. But at some point, as we got a little older, we began to hear the stories from a different angle, and with less pleasure. We realized that our parents and their brothers and sisters had lived those stories when they were our age, and that we had nothing to compare in our own lives. Our problems were normal and boring; we couldn’t come up with one exciting, knee-slapping story among us. We had fewer brothers and sisters, fewer brawls, fewer secrets. Our lives were not shaped by unbreakable Catholic rules and inescapable Irish history. We began to feel small, and although we never voiced the decision, at some point we simply stopped running toward the sound of the McLaughlins’ laughter. We stayed where we were, just out of earshot, and kept on doing whatever it was we had been told to do.
Tonight we bend over the cookies and focus on decorating. We pass around the different colors of frosting, try to stay within the lines of the cookies, and dot M&M’s where the rabbit’s nose and mouth should be.
There is still laughter rising and falling out on the porch when my father and Uncle Travis come inside for more beer. “You guys sure do take your work seriously,” Dad says. He rests his hand on my shoulder as he leans over to inspect the cookies. Travis picks up the egg-shaped cookie Mary has just spent twenty minutes decorating and bites it in half.
“Mmm,” he says, his mouth full. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“Right?” John says, and laughs with a sound of relief. He pushes his chair away from the table with his long arms and stands up. He seems to be shaking off the somberness of us girl-cousins and the faraway laughter on the porch. “Oh man,” he says, “I can’t take all this sitting still.”
“I wanted to show that cookie to Gram,” Mary says, looking down at her hands. “That was my best one yet.”
Uncle Travis, who is not a bad guy, just an insensitive drunk, shrugs. “Sorry, kiddo. Hey, Doc, any new ideas on my bad knee? It’s killing me these days.”
“You need surgery.”
“Nah. I’m looking for an option that doesn’t require a knife. I’m not the kind of wacko who signs up to have himself cut open, I’ll tell you that much.”
“No? What kind of wacko are you?”
Gracie hits me in the arm, but Uncle Travis just laughs. “You’re ballsy, girl.”
John laughs, too, trying to wedge himself into the banter. “Hey, funny. Listen, Uncle Travis, how about if I have a beer? Just one? Mom won’t care.”
My father’s hand presses down harder on my shoulder. Meggy and Theresa are close, meaning that Theresa lets Meggy boss her around on a daily basis. It also means that Travis has been the one steady man in John and Mary’s lives. He is almost a father to them, the emphasis on almost. My dad would like to step in here and tell John he can’t have a beer; I can feel that through the weight of his hand, but he can’t speak up because he has no right. He only sees John once or twice a year. He is a barely known uncle, and nothing more.