"THE AVUNCULAR"

The Avuncular was at it again, he had gotten drunk in the night with absolutely no evidence for it. No empty bottles, the decanters were filled. We searched his person for a flask, ticket stubs, loose change. We’d nothing to show for our efforts and remained mystified as we sat down and watched him cook Eggs Benedict.

“Double boiler!” the Avuncular screamed at us.

The eggs were perfection. He stood in the corner and smoked while we ate breakfast.

“I’m going to have a bath,” said the Avuncular, and that’s when we realized no one had thought to check the cistern of the toilet. We waited five minutes and then barged in to find him mixing a vodka martini. He had stored the vermouth in an old shampoo bottle. He congratulated us and jumped out the second story window and was not seen for three entire days. Though he kept calling the house to reiterate that he was going to screw all our wives and girlfriends.

“What a bastard,” said Hedgegrave. “That tears it. He won’t be having my Elspeth. Sure we have got our problems since the baby. Sure she’s unhappy. We just need to get away from it all.” And he was the first to go. There were five of us that had been summoned by the Avuncular, who told us outright he was sick and tired of being the Avuncular.

“When you were all born it seemed necessary to play the Avuncular. To be responsible for your education in the arts and culture. But I’m not the Avuncular, not really. It’s more like I’m Commander Cool of the Admiralty, and the Admiralty is just like the goddamn Chili’s on a Wednesday night. Hump Day. Zero Hour.”

“What about the opera?”

“Oh, fuck the opera. If you got something out of it, that’s grand. I’m more of a Stan Getz fan myself.”

The Avuncular had rounded us up each year around Christmastime since we were ten or so and taken us to the opera. He’d plant us in our seats and then go to the mezzanine bar and get hammered.

“But why? Why do it at all? Why not take us to a ball game?”

“Well I suppose, lads, that I wanted to feel better about myself. It’s reassuring to know you’ve served as some kind of special envoy for culture. I’m a boozer. It’s an ongoing upheaval, this clinical depression.”

We wondered if he would be okay not being the Avuncular and he said he had recently taken up bocce.

“We have work to do,” said the Avuncular.

The Avuncular wanted to lay out a couple of bocce courts. We had to take down the half dozen Norwegian spruces on his property. We had to till up half the yard, lay down rebar, pour cement and then over that put down a tonnage of crushed shale.

“It looks good, lads,” said the Avuncular. “You’re nearly there.”

When each of us was born the Avuncular had purchased a bottle of exquisite single malt whisky, to be held in his trust until he decided we were ready. Each of those bottles was worth a small fortune according to Sotheby’s, as the original distillery had caught on fire some years ago, about the time that the Avuncular was touring the Highlands, chasing after a woman he had likened to Sophia Loren.

The Nemesis was throwing a party and the Avuncular wanted to embarrass him. We all had our parts to play.

“Say,” said the Avuncular, sidling up to the Nemesis at the bar. “The Mandela Effect is a funny thing, a mass instance of a false memory.”

“I suppose it is,” said the Nemesis.

“Like for example. Everyone thinks Dan Hedaya played Carla’s husband on Cheers.”

“I remember that show. It was Dan Hedaya. It was.”

“No, no it wasn’t. It was a young Saddam Hussein.”

“What? That’s absurd,” said the Nemesis.

“Ask anyone. You there,” the Avuncular waved a few of us over. “Who played Carla’s husband on Cheers.”

“Saddam Hussein.”

“What!”

“Yeah, I mean he was fighting a proxy war for us with Iran. We were arming him. He wanted the part. He liked Carla.”

“It was a gesture of goodwill according to Donald Rumsfeld,” added the Avuncular.

The Nemesis seethed. He stopped one of the caterers, but it was Hedgegrave back in the fold. He had infiltrated the catering staff as per the Avuncular’s instructions. “Who played Carla’s husband on Cheers?”

“Oh it was Dan Hedaya, obviously,” said Hedgegrave in a sort of double bluff. Hedgegrave was disagreeable. Everyone knew it, including Hedgegrave. The Nemesis would not be inclined to take his word.

The Nemesis turned back to the rest of us. “Rumsfeld, eh? Those bastards had a few tricks up their sleeve. Well! You learn something new every day.”

We reconvened at the bocce courts. As promised the Avuncular handed out our bottles of single malt scotch.

“The Nemesis will fuck up. Eagerly tell the next person he intends to lord over his newfound trivia and embarrass the hell out of himself. You’ve done well, lads.”

We didn’t see much of the Avuncular after that, the occasional christening or wedding. We’d pass a flask around with him or sink a few jars if there was an open bar. He had started collecting jazz records. He was playing bocce three or four hours a day. One day apparently Hedgegrave had shown up and left his child with the Avuncular.

“Elspeth and I need to get away. Can you take him to a ball game?”

“The season’s over. I could take him to the city landfill to root around for scrap metal,” the Avuncular offered.

The Avuncular quite literally saved Hedgegrave’s marriage. In spite of himself, the mischief, the drinking, the probable arson, he will never stop being family.