THEDRUNKLE

Diana Altman

The Drunkle

Diana Altman

Drunks, a harsh way of describing a whole set of sad people, are often sogenerous you notice it. My uncle Howard, for instance.

At family gatherings he’d

stand next to me and

I’d feel something small and hard pushed into my palm

. Then

he wasn’t standing next to me which meant what he’d done was secret and I wasn’t

supposed to react. When I could go off by myse

lf and open my palm, I’d find a

dollar bill folded and re-folded until it was the size of a dime. So he not only gaveme a dollar, he thought about the best way to get it to me so that neither of uswould be embarrassed. Before I arrived he had made a plan that included methough

he almost never spoke to me and was always abashed by my exuberantgreeting when we met. There was some trick to folding the bill that small and Iappreciated that the trick was part of the gift. It was never coins in my palm. It wasalways real money, more than other adults thought to give someone six or seven.

You couldn’t thank him or even catch his eye

.This was his greeting to me, a childhe only saw now and then, the child of his much older brother, the brother whosometimes had to rescue him when the cops found him collapsed on the street.Uncle Howard was married to a Catholic girl. That was all anyone ever saidabout Aunt Moira.

She’s a Catholic girl

. I had no idea what it meant to be a

Catholic girl, or, rather, I had no idea why adults considered Catholic enough of adescription. I took it to mean drinking too much was not as foreign to her as itwould be to a Jewish wife.Uncle Howard and Aunt Moira lived in a walk-up apartment in the Bronxwith their two children, a girl whose eye was poked out by a stick, and a sonnamed Kyle.

Who poked out Patty’s eye no one said

. Was that because it was her

younger brother Kyle? Patty’s eye was not actually out; the pupil was white

.Nothing could mar her beauty, though. The beauty started in her bones andradiated out. Patty was about ten years older so was never interested in playingwith me but I could see she was a dignified and refined person. I was alwayscurious about her dilemma, living with an alcoholic father and a hard-edgedmother who seemed to be from a different social class. It was as if a graciousprincess came out of a char woman. I often asked my parents if Patty was adoptedbut the answer was always no.

I didn’t see myself as any b

etter than Patty so it was

a lesson in something that I couldn’t quite figure out

. How come I got to live in abig house in Scarsdale with a maid who cooked dinner and cleaned up and ironedmy many dresses, and Patty had to live in what looked to me like squalor? Was it,perhaps, because there was that layer of dullness in her? Did she, maybe, deserveit? Would I stop being described as sparkly if I had to trudge up four flights of smelly stairs to my home every day? Was this Fate?