Uncle Micah

The Long Saturday

Chapter 63: Uncle Micah

The first question arrives over spaghetti.

Not the important kind, at least not on its face.

Just Clara, in her booster seat at our kitchen table, pointing one sauce-streaked finger toward the strip of photos above the sideboard and saying, "Who's that one."

She means Micah with the fish.

The old hallway picture from Mom's house, copied and framed smaller after the move because none of us wanted to lose the way he is laughing at the camera like it personally offended him.

I know she means him before I follow her finger.

My body does that old small flinch of recognition.

Nothing dramatic.

Just the hinge.

Norah is at the stove with the colander.

Mom is passing salad down.

The route card from Summit House is still clipped by our back door beside two grocery lists and a crayon drawing of a house Clara insists is "all of us and also a raccoon."

Every room in this house knows his name already.

Only the child does not.

"That's your Uncle Micah," Norah says before I answer, calm as weather.

Clara twirls one noodle around her fork with criminal incompetence.

"Where is he?"

Mom sets the salad bowl down.

Not heavily.

Just enough to mark the moment.

I wipe my mouth though it does not need wiping.

"He died," I say.

Children deserve clean nouns.

"Before you were born."

Clara thinks about this with the serious courtesy she grants new information.

"Like Great-Grandpa."

"Yes," Mom says softly. "Like that."

Clara absorbs another forkful of spaghetti.

"Did I miss him?"

Instead it sits there between the parmesan and the bread basket like an object nobody is allowed to rush.

"Yeah," I say.

"You did."

"Oh."

Not understanding everything.

Understanding enough.

She takes a drink of milk.

"Did you miss him."

Mom laughs once into her napkin.

"Every day," she says.

Clara nods like this confirms adult consistency.

"Was he nice."

Norah turns from the stove at that.

"Loud," she says.

"Restless. Funny. He would've taught you very bad climbing habits."

"And worse card games," Mom adds.

"And he stole bagels," I say.

Clara brightens.

"From a store."

"From me."

"Why."

"Because he enjoyed joy."

This is not theologically precise, but it will do.

Dinner changes shape after that.

Not sadder.

Wider.

The way a room does when someone else's name is said enough times to become part of the air.

Clara wants more data.

Did he like dogs.

No, he wanted one and never got one.

Did he know how to whistle.

Poorly.

Did he have a room.

Yes.

Did he like blue.

Depends which day.

At one point she points to the route card by the back door.

"Is that his paper."

"Yeah," I say.

"He worked at a climbing gym for a while."

"Like up."

"Exactly like up."

Mom smiles into her water glass.

"He liked every job that made him sweat on purpose."

"That sounds dumb," Clara says, with perfect four-year-old charity.

We all laugh.

After dinner Norah washes dishes and Mom dries because some alliances are older than marriage.

I sit on the living-room rug with Clara and a pile of wooden blocks she has decided represent "church and also snacks."

She hands me the yellow one.

"This is Uncle Micah."

"Strong color choice."

"Because loud."

Reasonable.

She places the yellow block on top of a blue one and says, "He lives there."

I do not correct her architecture.

"Do you want a story?" I ask.

She nods at once.

So I tell her one small enough to hold.

Not the lake.

Not Colorado.

Not any of the Saturdays that do not belong to her.

I tell her about Micah at eight sneaking tomatoes from Mom's garden before they were ripe enough to count as food.

How Dad caught him with his whole face offended by green fruit and asked why he couldn't wait one more week.

How Micah said, Because the tomato might need me now.

Clara laughs so hard she falls sideways into the rug.

"That is not tomato logic."

"No," I say. "It was not."

She rolls onto her stomach and props her chin in both hands.

"Tell another."

So I tell her about the fish picture.

Not the version where the fish matters.

The version where Micah held it out like a trophy and then shrieked when it flipped in his hands because bravery and disgust were always allowed to share a face with him.

By the time Norah comes to the doorway with a dish towel over one shoulder, Clara is chanting, "Again, again," and demanding the fish scream with more accuracy.

Norah leans against the frame and listens.

Not as a witness.

As family.

Later, after Clara is in bed and the house has settled into its smaller nighttime noises, I stop by her room on the way to ours.

The night-light is blue.

Her blanket is half on, half theory.

On the shelf beside the stuffed rabbit sits the yellow block from downstairs.

I know because she has drawn a lopsided grin on one side of it in washable marker.

Uncle Micah, apparently, has been promoted to permanent residence.

I stand there longer than necessary.

When I come to bed, Norah looks up from her book.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

Then, because it is the more exact word:

"Grateful."

She nods and closes the book on one finger.

"Good," she says. "He deserves to be loud in the house."