The heat in Glendale reminded Mix of being in a sauna – the baking heat minus the tangy smell of heated wood. The cicadas were deafening. The pool lights cut through the green, half-drained swimming pool of his uncle and reminded him of everything that he hated about visiting this place. Uncle Bob wasn't his wife's favorite uncle…He wasn't anyone's favorite uncle. Or father, or son, or brother, or friend. Bob was Bob and a lifetime of poor lifestyle choices had finally caused him to cash it in on the cereal aisle of the local Fry's. His heart beat its last right between the Golden Grahams and the Lucky Charms
A dog roop-roop-roop'ed near by and Mix could hear Ranchero music echoing from a car window out on the street. The street was quiet again after a minute. The silence seemed to be pregnant and it got under your skin after a while. You were waiting for something to explode but somehow it never did.
"Duncan?" a voice called from inside and Mix turned.
"Yeah?"
"I'm putting the baby down, come say good night," his wife's voice floated out from somewhere inside. Walking into the house was like stepping into a steam room on top of a sauna – the swamp cooler had been broken and the house still held the heat of the day.
The kid was sweating as he slept on the couch – you could see tiny beads on his brow. It was after 9 o'clock and they were still divvying up old momentos, clothes and going through Bob's papers. They were checking to see if he had any money socked away that would help pay for the funeral. Briefly, Mix kissed his son's forehead and walked outside again – time for another cruise.
She heard his keys jingling at the door and caught him before he left. "Where are you going this time?" she asked him.
"Just out," Mix replied, he tried to keep it light but he knew his eyes would give too much away.
"Can't you see we need your help here?" she demanded.
"I've been sitting on the back porch for the last hour drinking Bob's beer," he said. "What to you want?'
"And while you're doing that, we're sweating our fannies off (she cleaned it up for the sake of Grandma when she visited) trying to figure out how to pay for Bob's casket!" She was getting shrill and he knew the whole house was listening, even if he couldn't see them. If he could hear her call from outside, well, the whole house was one big sound box, wasn't it? There wasn't any point in arguing – he might have done it if he was at home. But he wasn't home and the normal rules of their relationship had been temporarily suspended. Her sister came silently into the room and stood behind her with her arms crossed. Mix turned, opened the front door and left. This wasn't the time or place to argue about it…an hour of driving seemed to clear the air.
The air seemed freer out here in the front yard – maybe because out here you got away from the smell of stale cigarettes and fossilized grease. Bob's house reflected one of the realities of old male bachelors: they didn't age well. As Mix pulled away, his cell phone vibrated in the cargo pocket of his shorts. It was her, calling to continue the argument. He let it go to voicemail, knowing it would just make it worse when they spoke again. He needed the break more then the fight.
He'd take hour-long cruises throughout the city. With the tunes and the AC cranked in their rented Dodge crackerbox, he'd explore Tempe, Mesa or Scottsdale. Rock or pop, he was positively allergic to country music and this was another point of contention with his in-laws. For fun, he'd try to get lost – the squared-off grid made that almost impossible. The natural beauty of the red rock mixed obliquely with the grungy strip malls down on McDowell. The lights were timed in the downtown area and he could go for miles without having to stop.
At random, he'd turn down a side street looking to see if the view got any better…it never did. Miles of dusty tract houses with dirt yards, or low-maintenance yards or drought-resistant grass that look a lot like crab grass. Pickups in the driveway with paint-splattered beds and trees in the yard with trunks painted a solid white. Lawn gnomes that looked like they were picked up on sale back in 1976. It was a different place, to be sure, and a different culture, too. It could be either a curse or a blessing but family was family. You turned a blind eye to the alcoholism or the cousin doing some time in county.
"It's a different place, man," Carlton said.
His time running out on the cruise but still not able to bear going back, Mix called a friend who'd moved out to Gilbert about a year and a half ago. Some nice subdivision house that cost about half of what he would have spent in Sacto – he transferred out of Roseville to join a new team with HP. Mix had to admit, it was nice. Carlton had a massive house while Mix was feeling hemmed in by the thousand square feet he shared with his wife and the rug rat.
Carlton lit a smoke as soon as he stepped out into the yard. Mix was watching the heat lightning as it crackled in the eastern sky. Carlton's Zippo clinked and he sucked at the Camel hungrily. "Geographically, it's closer to the West Coast but culturally, it's closer to the Midwest," he said.
"Family is family is family," Mix said bitterly.
"Yup. It's what holds them together."
"The hand you hold is the hand that holds you down."
Carlton looked puzzled. "Now where have I heard that before?"
"It's a line from an Everclear song," Mix replied.
"Oh, right." He punctuated his statement with a burp and took another pull from his beer. "Anyway – the point is that they got a way of doing things that, just by living and breathing you put a wrench into."
"So how is it that you survive?" Mix asked.
"Oh, I don't go down there," Carlton replied. "Are you kidding? I wouldn't last an hour."
"My family's not racist…" Mix felt obligated to defend them. They might be poor and surly, but they weren't bigots.
"I didn't say they were. People do things for a lot of reasons besides being i'gnant Crackas." Carlton smiled as he said it…he wasn't a 'Street' kind of guy but Mix liked him for being able to drop into it in a heartbeat and then back out of it again like it had never been there. "If you aren't from here, you get treated differently. If you aren't from here and you're doing better than they are – you might as well be giving them the finger every time you walk into the room. They put up with you 'cuz you married into their family but they wouldn't be as patient with me."
"Like guys from South Boston," Mix said.
"Nah – Southie guys'd kill you," Carlton said. "You'd just disappear. Out here it's more like 'Death by Trailer Park Rec Room'. You'll be eating Jello salad and cold fried chicken at that 23rd baby shower and then just snap and shoot yourself."
Mix considered all of this. He always suspected that this was how it went but never had anyone confirm it for him. "Weird," is all he said.
"'Zona Trash," Carlton said, mid-puff.
"Huh?"
"'Zona trash," Carlton said. "You've seen white trash in California. White trash in Arizona is a whole 'nother ball game."
"Yeah, but these guys aren't racist," Mix said.
"They are to people outside of their area," Carlton said. "White, Black or Chinese – if you grew up here, you're cool. Everyone else is suspect."
"So how do you do it?"
"I just hate people," Carlton replied, pointing the hot end of his cancer stick at Mix. "I make them work to get along with me. You work to get along with other people and that's what makes you stupid."
"Stupid?"
That's right, stupid," Carlton repeated.
"Screw you, man!" Mix was getting pissed.
"Exactly…if you said that to them at the start you wouldn't be here." Carlton stared calmly at Mix. "Am I moving too quickly?"
Mix calmed down – Carlton usually behaved like this when he knew something that Mix didn't. For a long minute, all you could hear in the backyard were the cicadas. The perfumed smell of orange trees mixed with the dry, dusty smell of the wind. It was time to listen.
"Yes," Mix replied.
"Look. You went out here, being a nice guy and saying 'Hey, let's be family!' They didn't know what to do about that. Truth is, neither did you. Things aren't working out the way you hoped and so your response is 'be nicer'. That's not working out so hot and now you're essentially out of ideas. You can't be Santa Claus and you don't want to be a jerk, either."
"So?"
"So my point is, stop trying. It's not going anywhere. Just take care of you and your family, man."
"But they're my family, Carlton!"
"No…no, they're not," Carlton peered at Mix. "Could you count on these people in a crisis, Mix?"
Silence fell over them…it wasn't something Mix had thought about. He knew the answer but was afraid to voice it before now. "No, I guess not."
"Would you go to them if you needed help because you lost your job? House burned down? Baby was sick?"
"No."
"You guys get together for visits and dinners and stuff?"
"I'm here now, aren't I?"
"On a regular basis?"
"…No."
"That's not family, man. That's more of what you'd call 'an acquaintance'. Family's there for you and not to just ask you to show up and pay for some greaseball's funeral."
"But they don't know how to do it-"
"People will only treat you as well as you expect them to." Carlton's beer was sweating and he paused to drain it. "If you don't care enough about yourself to insist on a certain behavior, why should they?" He stood and went back into the house, calling back over his shoulder, "Want another beer?"
"Sure." Mix sat there, gazing toward the hairy collection of radio towers on South Mountain. His cell phone buzzed again in his shorts – it was her again. "Yeah?"
"Where are you?" she was ticked.
"Out," he replied. "I'll be back in a few."
"Well, we're done for the day so as soon as you can make it – I'd like to go back to the hotel," she bit the end off of every word.
"Whatever," he said, and hung up. His phone buzzed again almost immediately and he shut it off. He needed time to digest and think…introspection was something he couldn't do in Bob's house.
"Reciprocal altruism," Carlton said as a greeting when Mix went into the house. "Your family understands it instinctively but it seems you need a few lessons."
"What is it?"
"Look it up," Carlton said. "I can't give you the whole story." Mix and Carlton made small talk long enough to finish the beers and Duncan was on his way back to Bob's house a few minutes later. The heat burned off the alcohol and he barely felt them. He kept digging himself deeper into the pit, no matter which way he turned…Might as well be comfortable.
He slid to a stop in front of Bob's house a few minutes later. She was standing at the door with her sister, he could see that them stop their conversation to watch him. When those two get together, it's like lions watching a gazelle, he thought.
"Where have you been?" Beatrice, his sister-in-law asked. Before, he would have answered immediately and the fight would have been on. He felt a little better-equipped and simply stared silently at her. It was the longest two minutes of his life, he decided. Not speaking and not running…he had never tried it before. She was becoming visibly upset at his lack of response and finally flared out a "Well?"
He stared another half of a minute. "Let's go," he said to his wife. Without another word, he turned back to the car. He didn't need to look behind him to see her caught between the two of them. It wasn't what he wanted, of course, but there wasn't another way.
The next several days were very tense and he spent as much time as possible out of the house. Bob had no assets and his funeral was going to be very spare. Mix suggested a simple cremation but this was shouted down, literally. When this happened, he skipped shouting back. Shrugging his shoulders, he turned and left…when he came back it was as if nothing had ever happened. No one raised their voice to him again, however. As the 'guy from California', he was dreading getting pinched to cover some of the costs. This trip had been expensive, in more ways than one.
"You make it sound like they're bad people," Mix said to Carlton before he left that evening.
"They're not bad people, Mix. They're just people. These are they rules they follow to get along in this world."
"And their world is based on keeping their heads in the sand?"
"If that's what it takes."
"That doesn't work for me," Mix said.
"Me neither." Carlton started humming the 'Diff'rent Strokes' theme song.
"What is that?"
"'Diff'rent Strokes', dude." An ominous silence followed. "Don't you know 'Diff'rent Strokes? Gary Coleman?"
"The paycheck cashing guy?"
"I need a beer," Carlton said, heading for the fridge.
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