Deena's cousin Betty was a suburban wife, mother of three, and the picture of bland, blonde Hale womanhood. But she also had a fondness for crack (giving Deena her first puff at fifteen) and was addicted to gossip and text messaging, which made her Deena's source of dirt about the Hales. Twenty minutes after Uncle M had been thrown out of Uncle David's home last Thanksgiving, Betty snuck into a bathroom and told Deena all about it.
so howsa 300yr man look, was Deena's response.
Betty: like my dad. looks better than your dad. weird skin. touched his hand when i gave the carrot. waxy.
Deena: wudyamean.
Betty: uknow, like evita perone. preserved...but just not real anymore.
Deena: whens last time u touched evita.
Betty: bitch! u touch him and see. and check out his fingers.
The man ready to hug Deena was real. His nostrils moved, he had lips, teeth, and a tongue. His hair was faded and thin, but still covered his scalp. His body was thin too, but you could see muscle definition under his pale blue sweater. And so what if his skin was all pallor, leeched of its juices like dried fruit? He was old, just nowhere near as old as he claimed. If her family had been here—a resurrected David Hale, pointing a self-righteous finger—Deena would have defended Uncle M. But she was alone with him and he was a fraud.
So hug him then, she thought.
"Wait. We don't want to crush the cake. I'll...put it somewhere." Before he could answer, Deena left the room, not running but walking quickly to discourage him from following her. In the kitchen, she put the plates on the immaculate counter; the food smells seemed more intense than before, the voices louder, though still not intelligible. She shivered. When she returned to the living room, Uncle M was standing in the same place, although, to her relief, his arms were at his sides again.
"Uh, think your turkey's burning," Deena said, "and your guests are getting way too juiced."
Uncle M smiled, raised an arm, flicked two fingers, and the smells and sounds were gone. Right, just some motion-sensor-activated control, shutting off the CDs and the spray, but Deena's throat closed up like the room was now as empty of air as deep space.
"Shall we sit and take our ease?"
"Why're you talking like that—trying to prove you're from seventeen-hundred, or something..." She realized she was half-quoting David Hale, and sighed: so she could still breathe.
"Point made," Uncle M said. Another flick of his hand, toward the chair that he had originally occupied, and she snuck a glance. The hand had no age spots, and the fingernails—wait, he didn't have fingernails. She stared openly. The fingernails were gone. The other hand too. She looked up accusingly at his face, lost her nerve and veered away from his eyes, landing on his ear: shaped like her father's ear, except the lobe seemed to be missing.
"So? Why don't we sit down and talk?"
"OK. I guess." He urged her again toward his chair, and Deena reluctantly took it. Uncle M sat in an identical chair at a right angle to hers. His legs were extended, and she drew her legs against the base of her chair to avoid contact. He noticed—she was sure he noticed everything—and kept smiling.
"What you want to talk about," she mumbled after a minute went by.
"You seem nervous."
"Maybe."
"Don't be. I don't have—what do you call it these days?—an agenda. I just love spending time with people your age, it makes me young, or, I should say, makes me feel...centuries younger." He paused for her to react, but she didn't. "Well. What would you like to talk about?"
"You're the one who wanted to talk. But OK. You. You say you're three hundred—"
"Three hundred twenty three today."
"Well, I don't buy it. So tell me who you really are."
"I'm your great, great, great, great, great, great, great-great granduncle," he said. She shrugged.
"OK, if you're trying to make me lose count..."
"Born in 1684. Not in Hallem but a nearby village that no longer exists. And there were three generations before mine. We are a very old family. Old, but not particularly distinguished. The reason we've held onto the surname is because we've had more than our share of unwed mothers. The bloodline is thoroughly mongrelized."
"And that's your excuse for not looking anything like the rest of my family." My family? she thought. Unbelievable.
"Oh, now, but I have these, don't I?" He pointed at the indented temples. "And your father's ears..."
"You're not going to warm me up by duplicating him." She sat back, as if trying to rein herself in. He watched her indulgently. "So tell me your real name. Uncle M. That's not a name, that's an initial."
"For Methuselah. Do you know your bible?"
"Yeah yeah, somebody old—"
"Nine hundred and sixty-nine years old. But as of today, I'm only a third of the way there. Hence the abbreviation."
"So, it's not your name. It's, like, made up."
"Everything is made up, Deena. Is a name more real because somebody else gave it to you? Because your parents named you after an idiot ancestor or movie star? But I don't need to tell you. That's why you changed yours, isn't it?"
His voice was level, but she felt mocked. As if that arching eyebrow was adding silently, This is all a bit of a joke, isn't it? after everything he said.
"Yeah," Deena said. "And now that it's changed, I don't know why I bothered."
"Why?"
"Because...I thought I was doing it for me but really I was doing it against them. Like everything I do. I thought it would change me, and it just reminded me that I can't."
She couldn't look at him. In a microsecond he had totally humiliated her—no, even worse, he had gotten her to do it for him.
"Oh, but Deena," and his warm, accepting voice drew her eyes back to him, "you were exercising your imagination, and that's always worth the bother. Imagination is freedom—the greatest freedom there is—except, of course, freedom from death."
"Look, you can't be three hundred whatever years old. The human body just can't last that long. You have to be lying..."
He closed his eyes and shook his head faintly.
"You realize, of course, that nothing I say will convince you of my age. Not in any scientific, factual sense. I could hand you a church register with the date of my baptism, or my father's letter denying paternity—which we know is ridiculous, based on the DNA—and it would not be enough. Not because the human body isn't built to last, but because the human mind, your mind, Deena, is not built to conceive it. That can be changed, but it takes work. And will. Imagination is like a muscle: it must be stretched and exercised every day to reach its potential."
"Sounds like you're stretching it."
Her sarcasm withered in the air between them. Uncle M smiled his infinite smile.
"Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I'm an exception. A freak of nature. My body simply does not break down. I've been given a gift. But I could have died dozens of times, even so. I had to recognize this gift, and dedicate myself to making the most of it."
"So do you eat meat..."
"Spoken like a vegan."
"Sorry." Abruptly she stood, as if trying to jump out of her skin. "I know I said I was vegan before, but I'm not, really—anymore. Like I still don't eat meat or dairy or fish, but I stopped believing in it." She waited for him to ask her why, but he didn't. She said angrily, "I just got it, to be alive in this world, you're always killing something else."
"An interesting insight."
Fuck you, she thought. "Hey M, it's been really real, but I'm going."
"Deena. What did you see here?" She stiffened. "You cased my apartment like a burglar. What did you find?"
"Nothing. Nothing furniture, empty walls."
"In the kitchen?"
"Mostly nothing. Water, carrots, raw—"
"Television? Books? Computer?"
"No."
"That's right. And the curtains?" He motioned with the back of his head.
"Closed..."
"Because I don't need them open. I don't need any of these things. I have it all here." He stroked the side of his head, let his hand slide down his neck and over his left nipple; and then flicked his fingers as he had when dismissing the apartment's smells and sounds. Deena shivered.
"Uncle M—" Her voice shaking too—"maybe I'm too stupid to get you."
"No, you get everything. You're just afraid. Fine. I'll say it. There's something in us that makes us live, gives us the will to live. It's not your brain or your heart, or that hole between your legs, or that muscle between mine. The Chinese call it Qi. Scientists—morons—refer to biofields. A vital element, a life force—the words are useless! As long as you have it, and nourish it with your imagination, you live. That explains me." He stood: "It's as strong in me at this moment as it was at the moment I was born, Deena."
He extended his hand, and instinctively she recoiled. She walked past him to the window. She pulled at the curtain, but it wouldn't budge. Uncle M was next to her. Though he didn't touch anything, the curtain parted, and Deena blinked at the flash of lights and shapes across the Hudson River. She pulled back from it as she had from him.
"Still afraid? Why? This is nothing. You don't need it. Look at me. My body hasn't left this room today. I haven't even looked out this window. But oh, where I've been, what I've done. Seen, smelled, loved, fucked, felt—"
Deena retreated from his voice. She found herself back at the chair, reaching for her backpack; she tried to hoist it over her shoulder, but was off balance, and the pack thudded to the floor...
"And I'm no better than you, Deena. You have it too. You could be standing here with me three hundred years from now. You just have to learn..."
"You, you. That's me. The only one knows shit about me is me."
"Good." Uncle M lowered his chin, eyes, even that eyebrow, as if chastened. "Guide me then. Help me help you."
"...No thanks." She gave him her back and managed to raise the pack onto one shoulder. And there was Uncle M, in front of her again, his face inches away.
"Tell me about your father. The great David Hale. What he did to you. Oh, I know he never tried to sleep with you. Instead, he told you that you were adopted. How old were you? Twelve. Your mother said you were too young, but he insisted. You're adopted, he said, and that's why you look different, but don't worry, we love you. And he was right—you always felt different, didn't you? In fact, a part of you was relieved, because your whole life you had hated him. But at the same time you were hurt to your bone marrow, because you wanted a connection with someone in this world, even if it had to be him."
"Crap," she said, though it was all true.
"Oh, but then. The coup de grāce. You're eighteen and getting a passport and you need a copy of your birth certificate and look—his name is on it. David Hale. He is your father, after all. He conceived you with some secretary. He paid her off, but he couldn't let you go, and yet for the sake of his social position and most of all, for the sake of his name, he couldn't acknowledge you, either. So he made you a foundling. Nobody knew. Your stepmother didn't know. He even had you convinced that you didn't look like him!"
"What's your deal, Uncle M? What do you want from me?" Even as Deena said this, she was setting the backpack on the floor, pulling off her denim shirt, stepping out of her pants, revealing no underwear but all her tattoos. "He wanted to fuck me, he just didn't have the balls to try. Do you want to fuck me, Uncle M?"
"I already have," Uncle M said, tapping the side of his head. "So you can get dressed. But tell me, Deena. Tell me how finding this out made you want to kill him, to hug him so hard his blood would burst through your pores. How it makes you want to sever yourself from this world, yet everything you do ends up binding you tighter. How you need to be beaten and cut, to be loved. How you've tried evil and tried redemption and now you're out of options, and you go through the motions without meaning or peace..."
"Or maybe," Deena, still naked, lifted the backpack and upended it, dumping the contents at his feet, "maybe I'll just tell you about this." She looked into the abyss of her things—laptop, apples, carrot, mittens, thong, water, flip flops, soap, sweater, vibrator, socks, spoon, blackberry and curled copy of Black Beauty—and at last saw the gun. She picked it up.
