Chapter 21
Twenty-One
“Uncle Tony?” I leap out of my seat. Grizzy topples to the floor, landing on her feet. “Raaaawwwrr.” Betrayed, she narrows her eyes at me and trots off. I don’t have time to soothe my cat right now.
The room erupts into a shouting match as everyone talks on top of each other. Shock. Indignation. Relief. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone’s pointing fingers and yelling at Elliot.
My mom nearly faints.
Mayor Thornberry shakes his head in disgust.
Brian cracks into a pistachio nut and pops it in his mouth.
Victor gets up, jogs a lap around the sofa, and then sits down again. I don’t know what that’s all about. Victor likes attention.
His wife is equally perplexed. “Victor,” Ivy shuts her eyes in exasperation, “now is not the time to exercise!”
“Liar!” Aunt Cherry gets in Elliot’s face and pokes him in the chest. “How dare you accuse my husband! Tony is innocent.” She swats Uncle Tony on the chest. “Tell ‘em Tony. Tell them you would never…”
“And yet…” Elliot’s voice was the calmest in the uproar. “He did.”
I step forward, tugging on Elliot’s shoulder. “Are you sure? You said he had a solid alibi.”
When it came to Uncle Tony, I’m pretty indifferent.
We never had any deep, soul-searching conversations beyond the obligatory greeting or a curt nod or two.
He was one of those relatives who was just there.
Sure, we had some issues and I suppose he might resent me for refusing to bail him out of his gambling debts, but when isn’t Uncle Tony in debt?
When he manages to leave his couch, he practically lives at the racetracks.
This was the first time I put my foot down and declined to loan him money.
Besides, Aunt Cherry was more upset over my refusal to bail him out.
Uncle Tony didn’t seem to mind. So far, he had been nothing if not apathetic.
Even now, with Elliot staring him down and all eyes turned to him, Uncle Tony’s body language is the definition of ‘Eh.’ He sinks comfortably in the cushions, clutching his beer in one hand.
He’s a couch potato, a limp vegetable of a man, beady eyes starting disinterestedly back at his accuser.
What, if anything, is he thinking? What’s he even looking at?
“But he never left the couch.” I shake my head in confusion. “We have photographs. Witness testimony…”
“Or so he would have you believe,” Elliot says, still mad-dogging Tony. “We think he never left the couch, but he did take a bathroom break… right behind your tree. He was wearing a blue sweater that night. The elbow in the photograph? His…”
We all turn to the suspect in question.
Uncle Tony shrugs off the accusation like it’s a common occurrence. Maybe it is. I don’t know anymore.
In fact, why is he so calm about this? We’re all freaking out. His family is enraged. I’m frankly bewildered (and disgusted). But Tony calmly scratches his bristled chin and swigs his beer.
“Uncle Tony?” I ask him directly. “Did you shit on my floor?”
He turns to me and shrugs. There’s a moment of silence where I expect him to come to his senses and start defending himself, but he takes another swig of beer. “Yeah.”
His response triggers a collective gasp of horror.
“‘Yeah?’” Aunt Cherry swats him on the arm. “What do you mean ‘yeah’? Holly’s asking if you pooped on her floor and you say ‘yeah’? Did you hear her?”
“I did it,” he says. His eyes shift to me. “Sorry.”
“Gross, Daaaaaad!” Victor clutches his temples and moans in mortification. “Why would you do that?”
My mom shakes her head. “I told you,” she wags her finger at Aunt Cherry, “I never liked this guy. Dirty man. Dirty, nasty man. Blew his nose on the tablecloth at your own wedding!”
Elliot beckons me aside. He lowers his voice. “Are you okay?”
“No! I’m pretty freaking far from okay.” I turn to Uncle Tony. “Do you hate me that much?”
Uncle Tony finally sits up. He switches his beer to the other hand. “It’s nothing against you, Polly.”
“Holly!” Mom looks like she’s about to clock her brother-in-law. “Her name is Holly.”
“Is it?” Uncle Tony arches a bushy eyebrow like that’s news to him. “She looks more like a Polly, but whatever…” He gives another apathetic shrug. “I don’t have anything against you, Holly.”
“Then why did you do it? Why did you shit on my floor?”
“I had to take a shit,” he says, as if his actions make perfect sense and I was the crazy one. “And someone was in the bathroom.”
Aunt Cherry pinches the spot between her eyes. “You didn’t think to ask Holly to use her second bathroom?” She gestures to the stairs. “She has a spare.”
“Eh.” Uncle Tony shrugs. “Holly was fighting with Susan.” He nods to my mom. “And I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“You could’ve just used my bathroom without asking,” I offer, exasperated by his reasoning. “I would’ve understood, given the circumstances.”
“Eh… the stairs… too much trouble.”
“Or go outside!” Aunt Cherry is hysterical. “On the lawn. Behind the bushes. Anything.”
“Eh,” comes Uncle Tony’s standard reply, and then his gaze shifts to the TV. “Two minutes to touchdown…”
“What?” Aunt Cherry peers into her husband’s blank face. “What are you saying? That you pooped on Holly’s floor because you didn’t want to miss the football game?”
“Daaaad!” Victor gestures between his father and the TV. “What is wrong with you?”
“I was going to clean it up,” Uncle Tony explains. He looks as apologetic as a human potato can be. “But I forgot,” he says as if forgetting to clean up your doo-doo on someone’s floor was in the same ballpark as forgetting to unload the dishes or take out the trash.
It’s the apathy that bothers me. If Tony had a diabolical plot up his sleeve, if his vandalism had been a result of a long-standing vendetta against me, I might be able to understand it. But the apathy… The complete and utter disregard for my hospitality, property, and my feelings.
What a shit uncle.
My eyes mist over with tears of rage and betrayal. Elliot hands me a tissue. I blow my nose.
“Oh brother,” Jen rolls her eyes. “Playing the victim again.”
Elliot shoots her a scathing look.
“What did you even use to wipe?” I ask.
Uncle Tony opens his mouth.
“You know what,” I hold up my hand, “I don’t want to know.” I eye Elliot. “Do you know?”
Elliot opens his mouth.
I shiver. “No. Don’t tell me. The fewer details, the better.”
“Don’t get all worked up about it,” Uncle Tony says. “I left one piece of shit. I doubt it stunk.”
Is he serious? First, he shits on my floor and now he’s saying I’m the one overreacting? “You left three turds and they stunk. They stunk to high heaven! I can still smell it.”
“Eh…”
I lunge at Uncle Tony. Elliot hooks an arm around my waist and tugs me back.
Aunt Cherry takes care of business for me by whacking Uncle Tony upside the head. “You will pay for her carpet cleaning, you filthy animal.” She’s so mad so could spit in his face. “And I want a divorce.”
“You always want a divorce.” Uncle Tony rubs his head.
“This time I mean it.”
“Wait,” I say, remembering a vital piece of information. “So while Tony was behind my tree,” I meander to my tree nook, retracing Thanksgiving night, “and I was in the kitchen with Mom. Jen was in the bathroom. Manny…”
“Knocked out.” Manny points to the couch. “Here.”
I turn to Aunt Cherry. “Where the hell were you?”
Blushing, Aunt Cherry eyes Dennis.
“Uh…” Dennis steps forward. “She was with me. In the backyard.”
I frown. “You said you were stargazing alone.”
“Error of omission,” Elliot adds dryly. “So Aunt Cherry, patron of the hardware store, was with you. What were you doing?”
Dennis defers to Aunt Cherry for direction.
I clasp my hands together and chew on my thumbs. Please don’t tell me Aunt Cherry fulfilled her cougar potential and snagged herself a cub. It’s too much for me to handle at this moment.
Aunt Cherry sighs. “Alright. If you really must know, we were smoking a joint. And why not?” Propping a hand on her hip, she pivots around the room, daring anyone to say anything. “You see who I’m married to? I need to take the edge off, okay?”
No one challenges her.
“Anyway, now that my aunt’s alibi is accounted for,” my gaze shifts to Elliot, “and Victor and Ivy were in my bedroom…” I glare at the couple.
My mom frowns. “What were they doing in your bedroom?”
I give my cousin a tight smile. “Yes, Victor, what were you doing?”
My cousin and his wife sink down in their seats. “We were on a timer,” he says, glancing sheepishly at his wife.
“I’m sorry it had to happen at your party,” Ivy blushes, “but I was ovulating.” She rubs her flat stomach.
“Yeah, well,” I fold my arms over my chest, “I’m sending you a cleaning bill, too.”
Frowning, my mom studies my pissed-off body language. Her gaze wanders to Ivy’s tummy.
When it clicks, she nearly falls out of her seat. “Waaaahhh! Cherry! Your son is a sex pervert. So disrespectful!”
“I’m not a sex pervert.” Victor turns to his mom for help. “We don’t do this often.”
I tap my foot impatiently. “You mean film yourself having sex on my bed?”
“Kinky,” Dennis mutters.
Manny’s gaze swivels from person to person as he watches my family drama unfold. “Are Holly’s parties this exciting every year?” he whispers to Paige.
“Well, the filming is a new thing,” Victor explains. “It’s for instructional purposes only. Mom, we’re not sex perverts. We’re sex experts.”
Obviously, like me, Aunt Cherry had a lot to unpack. It isn’t every day you learn that your husband shat under a Christmas tree and your son and daughter-in-law were amateur porn stars.
Aunt Cherry rubs her temple. “I’m done defending these people. After this, I’m going to need a lot of weed.”
Dennis pats her shoulder. “I’ve got you.”
“If it makes you feel better,” Ivy says in a placating voice, “we’ll name our baby Holly after her godmother.”
It does make me feel better, actually, but I’m not going to tell her that. I’ve never been a godmother before. It feels nice. Powerful. I am willing to forgive them for soiling my sheets.
“For what it’s worth, Holly,” Victor ducks his head, “had we been down here, we would’ve totally stopped Dad from shitting on your floor. Trust me, if he tries this again, I’ll put him in a headlock.”
This makes me feel better, too. “I may pardon you. I may not.”
Paige, who had been aggressively quiet this entire time, lingers in my peripheral vision.
“Paige?”
“Hm?” She stares back at me with big doe-caught-in-the-headlights eyes.
“Where were you?” I ask.
“I was…” She nods vaguely at the coffee bar.
“You were the only person… the only conscious person in the room where it happened. Didn’t you think it strange that Uncle Tony just popped behind the tree? You didn’t smell anything? You didn’t try to stop him?”
Paige’s lower lip trembles. She turns longingly toward the door.
Manny passes Paige the tissue box. “It’s okay,” he says, “tell her the truth.”
Blowing her nose, Paige looks up at me with red-rimmed eyes. “I saw your uncle head behind the tree. I wasn’t sure what he was about to do, but after a few minutes, I knew… I knew…”
“And you didn’t try to stop him?” I ask.
“How can I stop him?” Bursting into tears, Paige pleads her case to the jury.
“What am I supposed to do? March over there and stop him mid-squeeze? I have no control over the mechanics of his colon. I don’t know him well enough to detain him when he’s answering Nature’s call!
Suppose I get an eyeful of your uncle? Suppose some of the poop gets on me? It’s a very awkward situation.”
Elliot arches a conceding brow at me. “She has a point.”
In this respect, I have to agree. It’s a difficult situation Paige found herself in: stuck at a party with your friend’s uncle who’d just snuck behind a Christmas tree to empty his bowels.
“But after he did it, why didn’t you tell me right away?” I ask. “It’s been weeks and you didn’t speak up? You let us run around and around, interrogating everyone, interrogating you. You could have saved us a lot of time and effort.”
Burying her face in her tissue, Paige mumbles. “Because…”
“Because what?” I ask impatiently.
She lifts her head and the unaccountable change to her expression startles me.
I’d seen that glint of malice in her eyes before, here and there, nothing substantial enough to think that Paige could possibly hate me.
I’d thought I imagined it, but now here it was, no mask, no pretense…
an ugly side to my mousy best friend that I didn’t know existed.
“Because,” she says, her reticent voice spiked with pent-up resentment, “I wanted to watch you squirm.”