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Chapter 1 – Sunday August 11

With a stranglehold on the stem of a thorny weed, I planted my boot and pulled. Got it. I tossed the weed, hairy roots and all, onto the heap and grabbed the next stem.

“What are you doing, Billy?” my sister Beverly asked, car keys in-hand, on her way to the mall no doubt. “She’s been here a hundred times. She knows we have weeds behind our garage.”

“Okay,” I said, remaining on my hands and knees. “But now she’ll know that we don’t have weeds behind our garage.”

I say ‘our’ garage, dear reader, because my sister Beverly and I co-own this duplex. She lives in the upper unit and I live in the lower unit. Five years ago, this communal arrangement was the only way we could afford to live in this leafy lakeside pocket outside Detroit called Grosse Pointe. Money’s not as tight anymore, but I like living with my sister. We’re about as close as brother and sister can be without ever really talking to each other. She was born nine months after I was, which people still tell me is impossible. My parents didn’t fool around when it came to having a family. They had twelve of us in sixteen years. I was number six and Beverly was number seven.

It turns out that Beverly and I are the last of my parents’ brood to be married. A few are on their second marriages, but all ten of our siblings are wed nonetheless. And they all have children, but none more than three, which is a clear violation of an agreement we made when we were much younger. My oldest brother, Pete, was sixteen years old when he convened a family meeting without our parents before we went to sleep upstairs one summer night. There was some whispered debate on whether the right number was ten or twelve, but in the end we agreed that we would each have ten kids so that our parents could enjoy one hundred and twenty grandchildren. Good God! Can you imagine?

Although our procreation program failed, we enjoyed some success with our second and final compact. After my brothers and sisters decided to have ten kids apiece, we all promised that when we were grown-ups we would each buy a huge house within our very own family subdivision on Lake St. Clair in Grosse Pointe. “Just like the Kennedy Compound” we whispered in our pajamas. Our mom always talked about the great American Kennedy family and dreamed that we would become a bigger and better version. Unfortunately, we never had money like the Kennedys. We had a nice house for a family of four: four bedrooms, two baths, and a small in-ground pool. But there were fourteen of us living under that one roof in East Detroit. Call me crazy, but I doubt the Kennedys bathed three kids in one tub to save on their water bill. We have yet to purchase our Ryan Compound, but we’ve all moved to Grosse Pointe and no one is further than two miles from anyone else in the family.

With all of us living so close together, everyone’s friends become friends of the family. So when my sister and I decided to throw a summer party, we cleaned the house, bought a bunch of booze, weeded behind our garage, and utilized a guest list that was almost identical to my brother Dan’s guest list for his St. Patrick’s Day party.

All of them – my family and friends – were at our party last night. Everyone was having a good time, except for my dad who kept yelling at me to turn down the music. At eight o’clock we still had daylight and eighty degrees. I looked around and estimated well over one hundred people in my backyard, but I did not see Kate. My work was in vain. Every decision for the party – from the brand of vodka to the mix of music – was made with Kate in mind. I dreaded the inevitable questions about Kate’s non-appearance from my family. I saw my eight-year old niece, Jacqueline, looking over the desert table, tiptoed. I came up behind her and lifted her as high as I could and then carried her in my arms as she clasped her hands behind my neck and told me about her week at summer camp. I kissed her and set her down because another niece, Hannah, wanted to compare song lists on their iPods. I watched the two girls walk away, arm-in-arm, and then saw them hesitate before waving to Kate.

Our eyes met for a second before my mother stole Kate’s attention with a hearty hug.

Kate came to the party with whom I presumed to be her new boyfriend. Let the games begin, I thought. She also brought her younger sister, Lucie, and Lucie’s boyfriend, Teddy. Lucie and Teddy started dating soon after Kate and I met and they actually experienced their first kiss in my backyard. I like to think I had a hand in bringing those two together.

Lucie and Teddy joined me for a drink at the makeshift bar in front of my garage. Lucie – the drama queen herself – hugged me and asked “How are you doing?” as if I was diagnosed with cancer. “O, poor Billy!” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it a couple times. I struggled to keep my eyes from rolling to the back of my head.

“I’m fine, Lucie.”

I asked Teddy questions about his job at General Motors and then I asked Lucie about her upcoming ballet performances. They answered my ostensible curiosity with a leisurely thoroughness that tortured me to twitch. If we didn’t get to the unfolding crisis soon, I was going to come unhinged!

“That’s…that’s fascinating, Lucie. Truly. Now, who’s the clown with Kate?”

“Come on, Billy!” Lucie said, annoyed that I’d play dumb with her. “You know exactly who that is,”

While I didn’t know exactly who that was, I had a pretty good idea. His name is Tino and the testimony to-date is damaging. My friend Chase ran into him and Kate at a wedding in July. Chase reported that Tino wore a shiny suit and when he peeled off his metallic jacket to dance, Tino revealed a belt loaded with gizmos: cell phone, electronic personal organizer, and a small device Chase guessed was a garage opener. “You’re gonna have a tough battle, Billy,” Chase told me after the wedding. “Kate’s new boyfriend is freakin’ Batman.”

A couple weeks ago, Lucie told me that Tino – allegedly short for Valentino – worships with a congregation on the fringes of mainstream Christianity. Lucie and Kate’s parents are concerned about Tino’s religious zeal and sometimes worry that he’s going to take Kate on a vacation to Jonestown. Rename it Tinotown.

And finally, to round out my impression of Tino before meeting the man, my sister Anne spotted the new couple at the Grosse Pointe Day Spa recently and reported that Tino sat next to Kate throughout her entire manicure. “I mean…isn’t there a ballgame he’d rather watch?” my sister Anne said in disgust. “I felt smothered just seeing him there.”

“This guy’s a clown, Lucie,” I said. But as I made my way towards Kate and Tino, weaving through the party guests, Tino didn’t seem funny anymore. He was slightly taller than me and showed signs of being fit and muscular at one time in his life, but had since allowed a thin roll of blubber to cover his midsection. He kept his black hair tightly trimmed and gelled. His large jaw sported a goatee that I remember being ubiquitous among the hip Ann Arbor students over a decade ago. He wore a stretch t-shirt, khaki shorts and sandals. His forearms were freakishly free of hair while his left wrist sported a gold watch.

Sweet Kate kept her arms crossed as I approached, robbing me of my rightful hug.

“Hey Kate. How are you?”

“Good. Real good,” she said. “Billy, I’d like you to meet Tino. Tino this is Billy.”

I swore to myself that when I met Tino, I would shake his hand with an iron grip and keep a steel face. He was a curse, a plague, the grim reaper! In a different age, I would’ve had no choice but to challenge him to a duel. But when the moment came, I smiled like a politician, shook his hand and remarked what a pleasure it was to meet him. He responded with a smile, which I thought was friendly enough until he released our grip and placed his hand on Kate’s hip.

“This is a great party,” Kate said finally. “Thanks for inviting us!”

“My pleasure. Thanks for coming.” At this point, I expected the well-raised Kate to make a polite comment about how nice my yard looks, how green my grass was, how vibrant my flowers were, or how far away they had to park because there were so many interesting people at my humble house party. But she just stood there biting her lip. I scrambled to stop the silence. “I couldn’t have asked for better weather. Can you imagine if it had rained? We’d all be crammed inside my house and I would’ve had to clean my dishes,” I said and laughed even though I wasn’t funny. “So...can I get you two something to drink?

“How ‘bout a Coke,” Tino said.

“Can you make that two?” added Kate.

On my errand to get the Cokes, I recalled a steamy evening last summer when Kate knocked on my door bearing a six-pack carton with only three beer bottles inside. As she handed the half-full carton to me, I asked her what happened to the other three bottles. She giggled, shrugged her bare, tanned shoulders and said she got thirsty on the drive over to my house. I miss my Kate.

I was disappointed with her newfound temperance but what really bothered me was Tino’s unveiling; he was a decent-looking man. An unctuous bastard, undoubtedly! But put him through a refinery and he could be formidable and that broke my spirit.

“Here you go…two Cokes,” I said to Kate and Tino upon my return. “If you have a moment, let me show you two around. I’ve done a lot of work recently and—.”

“Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo…Billy!”

I was interrupted by the evil old hag that haunts the house next-door, old Mrs. Sloan, who had ventured into my backyard.

“My…quite a party you have here, isn’t it?” she asked with a big smile.

Old Mrs. Sloan likes to serve a big smile alongside a neighborly stir-fry of heckle, needle and nag: *Billy, I sure hope your dandelions don’t spread onto my lawn!* Big smile. *Billy, your fence post seems to be leaning a bit. Gosh, I’d be worried the fence will fall over and crush my rhododendrons!* Big Smile. *Billy, it looks like it’s about time to repaint your garage!* Big smile.

“Hi Mrs. Sloan. How are you today?”

“Look at all these people! Goodness. Your sister sure has a lot of friends.” Big smile. “Say, I wanted to let you know that one of your party guests parked their car in front of my house and it’s partially blocking my driveway and that can be dangerous.”

I peered over to the street and saw no such obstruction.

“Mrs. Sloan, your driveway looks clear to me.”

“Well, I called the police just in case. I’d hate to see an accident, Billy.” Big smile. “O…and the wind must’ve blown some of your cocktail napkins into my yard so when you clean-up after the party, don’t forget to pick-up the mess in my yard.” Big smile.

What an evil old hag! There’s an old song by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels claiming that the devil wears a blue dress, but I’m here to tell you that the devil wears a housedress.

I turned back to Kate and Tino, but they were gone. As I went to find them, the caterer found me instead and asked for the balance of her payment. I stepped inside my house to write the check and noticed some of my nieces and nephews jumping on my bed as if it were a trampoline. “Let’s go play outside. At least take off your shoes, okay kids?” They either laughed at or ignored your faithful reporter. “How about we go upstairs and play in Aunt Beverly’s house?”

It was dusk by the time I got back outside but I had no problem spotting blonde-haired Kate. My sister Maureen had Kate’s ear while Tino was nowhere to be found. My sister excused herself as I approached. I again thanked Kate for coming to my party and told her that I was glad we could still be friends. I know how important our friendship is to Kate because she handed me a letter two months ago that said: “No matter what happens, whether we end up together or not, your friendship means the world to me!!!” I still have that letter in my desk. She double-underlined the words “friendship” and “world”.

“I have to leave in a minute,” Kate said.

“What are you talking about? You just got here.”

“I’m sorry, Billy. I don’t think this is going to work – this whole friendship thing. Yesterday,” she started and then looked around, “I brought Tino to meet my grandmother and the first thing she said was ‘Where’s Billy?’”

“That’s a good question.”

“No...no it’s not! It’s a stupid question! You know...it doesn’t matter. Forget it. I have to go...Tino left to get the car,” she said and looked towards the street. When she didn’t see him she turned back to me: “I told you this was a bad idea! We should’ve never come here tonight. After Tino met you, he kept asking me all these questions about us. Like...how long did we date? And did I love you? Then he asked if we ever slept together.”

“Is he in high school?” No reply from Kate. “Well…what did you tell him?”

“I told him we only hooked-up a few times and it didn’t mean anything. That’s when he stomped off and said that he was going to pull his car around,” she said and sighed. “I should have lied to him.”

“You did lie.”

“Please, Billy, don’t start.”

We saw Tino’s monster vehicle idling at the bottom of my driveway. A police officer – courtesy of old Mrs. Sloan – barked at Tino to keep moving. Tino tried to explain the situation, but the cop didn’t want to hear it.

Kate shook her head. “It’s always an adventure with you, Billy. I’ll give you that.” She stepped back and weaved her way through the revelers. At the curb, she climbed into Tino’s vehicle before any traffic citations were issued.