The Animators(59)

I make a point of gawking back. “Hey, guys.”

“I thought Aunt Sharon was fat,” Caelin yells.

Shauna calls, “Caelin, say you’re sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” she says lifelessly.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Your mom says you want Glamour Shots.”

Caelin’s face lights up. “I did, but now I want head shots. I was in the Little Miss Mountain Rose Pageant and I won second place. I beat my cousin Kelsey. She cried.” She twirls. “My pageant dress is in Mamaw’s room. So’s my bridge. Wanna see?”

“Bridge?” I crane my neck for Shauna.

Shauna rolls her eyes. “Flippers. Fake teeth. You can’t have a girl up there with teeth missing.”

“She’s seven.” I stop. “You’re seven, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“Seven-year-olds lose teeth.”

“Well, them pageant runners don’t seem to know that.”

Caelin runs toward Mom’s room. Jaeden creeps around the coffee table toward Mel, who is sifting through another box of photographs. “Think you could be a little more subtle with that?” I mutter to her.

She holds up her hands, cigarette dangling from her lips. Jaeden makes a grab for her iPhone. “How’s it going, kid,” she says.

“Can I see?”

“Do what you want to, man.”

Jaeden flicks the screen. The phone lights, blares Mel’s favorite Biggie track. Fuck bitches, get money.

“I don’t care,” Shauna yells from the kitchen. I see her hunched in anger, cellphone pressed to her ear. “You ain’t seen my sister in like four years. The least you could do is plan for it and you didn’t because you don’t give a shit about your family.” She pauses. “She could have died, and you ain’t even getting off work to come see her. Marvin could cover you, you know he could.”

Mom pushes Shauna hard on the hip, pointing toward the door. Shauna steps out, letting it bang shut behind her.

Mom sticks her head in. “Looks like Brandon’s not making it,” she deadpans. Jaeden barely looks up from the phone.

Mel leans over—“Hold up and I’ll give it back to you,” she says—and with a thumb flick so fast I’m not even sure I’m seeing it, takes a few shots of the Polaroids, then guides the phone to a Tetris program and hands it back to Jaeden. Looks to me, flashes a picture. Another shot of the old Caudill place—the small, squat white house, the crumbling front stoop, the chimney. The photo has yellowed; there are more trees surrounding the property. Pines brush the ground, slung low.

Caelin runs back into the room in full pageant regalia—pink dress sprouting crinoline, sock ruffles above patent leather Mary Janes. A thick red snake of lipstick runs over her mouth. “Mommy, I need my bridge,” she yells.

“Hold on,” Shauna calls from outside, then into the phone, “No, goddammit, not you, I was talking to your daughter. Mom? Get her the bridge?”

Mom ducks in, hands Caelin something. Caelin hunches, then spins around, revealing blindingly white teeth the size of Chiclets. She runs to the CD player she lugged out from behind the couch, presses play. “Copperhead Road” begins to twang loud. She turns, back to us, hands on hips, begins to line dance, shimmying. Mel and I glance at each other. Kent—we’ve forgotten he’s there in the corner, ankle crossed over knee, Faulkner Gazette draped over his leg—coughs and shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

Shauna returns. “That son of a bitch.” She tosses her cell onto the couch, then stands with hands on hips, watching Caelin dance. “Iddint that cute,” she says.

—

Jared arrives around six with his wife, Britney, and their kids. They have three; the oldest is Melinda, who apparently had a growth spurt last summer. Boys lust for her, girls put up with her, and both make her unbearable at home. Shauna fills me in out of earshot. “She’s gonna turn out like Britney. We all know it.” I see her point: big boobs, oily hair, brimming with girl-on-girl antagonism. “Hey, Aunt Sharon,” Melinda says, perfunctory, rolling eyes and giving me a loose, loopy hug. It makes me sad. I was fifteen when Melinda was born. Hers was the first diaper I ever changed. When she was two or three, she used to dance around to my Roxy Music CDs while I sketched her.

I ask her if she remembers this. She crinkles her eyebrow at me in such a way that I know not a lot has been said about her weirdo aunt in New York, but enough—just the right, damning details, probably from her mom—for her to draw a final disapproval. “Um, noooo,” she says. And that’s the end of that conversation.

When Jared sees me, he stoops over, removes his cap, and hugs me hard with one arm. “Hey,” he says. “You look like shit.”

“Thank you very much.”

Red’s hairline is feathering back. There are lines around his mouth. “Thanks for coming,” I tell him.

“Well.” Shuffling his feet and trailing off, he breaks with “Good to see you.”

Jared married Britney when he was twenty-two. Britney was three classes ahead of me, and hung out with girls who did a lot of whispering and pointing at my boots, my hair; my sister-in-law now judges me in secret. She steps in as the other two kids—Bella, age eight with crippling ADHD, and Jaxon, four, whose name made me snort beer up my nose when I read the text message sent out at his birth—run in. I am somewhat entertained to see Bella, a little fat and a whole lot tall, smack the bejesus out of Caelin first thing.