coating me head to toe in a venomous glaze, shellacking me in his personal poison.
“You’re my only living heir, God help me. You’ve never given me any reason to take you the least bit seriously, so why would I start now? You’re Charlie Flanagan’s son through and through. Collie Flanagan . . .” He hissed my name, and it made a scalding sound like acid hitting pavement. “And please, spare me the pathetic show of independence. The only way you’ll ever amount to anything is if it’s handed to you on a silver platter. I’m all that stands between you and a lifetime spent in a padded room fashioning a giant ball out of tinfoil.”
Like flames deprived of oxygen, he suddenly vanished, the air still sizzling and sending out sparks, snapping with the improvised electricity of his rage. I put my arms around Cromwell’s neck and gave him a hug.
“It’s a good thing you’re his favorite,” Uncle Tom said when I told him what happened.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
BY EARLY DECEMBER, POP WAS ON THE PHONE AND INSISTING that I come home for the Christmas holidays. I figured it was the least I could do, though I wasn’t feeling too festive. My other plan for the holidays was to sit in a chair and stare.
“Where’s Uncle Tom?” I asked Pop shortly after he got up. I looked over at the kitchen clock. It was two p.m. on Saturday. I had arrived late the night before and still hadn’t seen Tom.
“He’s taken Gilda and Nuala,” Pop said, withdrawing without further explanation behind his beloved New York Times, engrossed in his reading and oblivious, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for someone to disappear for twelve hours at a time while out walking an Akita and a Boston bull terrier.
Tom once vanished for a day and a half trailing his crabby old cocker spaniel Fagan around the island—I was well into adolescence before I realized that other people actually made the decision for their dog about when to end the walk and not the other way around.
Finally, the light from the late afternoon sun burning through the cracks in the blinds, the side door banged open and then shut, and Uncle Tom began hollering out complaints from the kitchen.
“Gilda had no interest in coming home,” Tom said, turning on the tap and running fresh water for their bowls. “If it weren’t for Nuala finally prevailing upon her to turn around, why, we’d still be out there.”
“It’s a good thing you’re home, Uncle Tom, there’s supposed to be a big storm,” I said as wind gusts whistled through the brittle windowpanes.
“A storm, did you say?” Pop set aside his newspaper and looked over at me. “Where did you hear about this?”
“Pop, all the weather guys are talking about it.”
“Well, there’s reason enough to ignore it. Whenever there’s a consensus about anything, you can count on it being wrong,” Uncle Tom said as he buttered stacks of bread slices for the dogs that surrounded him in anticipation of their daily treat. “I prefer to rely on Gilda. She has an infallible sense of weather, and she doesn’t seem particularly alarmed.”
“Couldn’t we at least take a few precautions just in case she’s mistaken?” I asked, knowing better than to challenge the basic assumption concerning Gilda’s meteorological insights.
“If you’re that scared, there’s an umbrella in the front closet,” Uncle Tom said.
“Pop . . . ,” I implored him to intercede. You know you’re truly desperate when you’re depending on Fantastic Flanagan for a show of common sense.
“Do we have a fully stocked larder, Tom?” Pop asked, using code to make sure they had enough booze to see them through a nuclear winter.
“Say, what do you think?”
“You see, Collie, everything’s taken care of. My, you’re becoming a worrier. You get that from your grandmother McMullen. She’d work herself into a frothing fit anytime she had visitors to the house, going mad about every little detail. She was in her eighties and rushing about trying to make everything perfect for company when she lost her balance, tripped, and fell in the bathroom, and they found her with her head in the toilet, drowned, ” Pop said, and resumed his reading.
“And don’t forget she was only wearing her underclothes when she was discovered,” Uncle Tom said, staring over at me, making it clear that I could expect a similar fate.
The bishop of all things great and small, Pop frowned, ministerial crease forming on his forehead. “Collie doesn’t