Gargoyles by Bill Gaston Page B

vest over a bright red long-sleeved T-shirt and clutch himself, saying, “
Brrrr
.” He enjoyed being watched. His hair was always wild, standing up in strands that shifted comically as he moved. He would stay the whole day in that hunting vest — it had bullet holders and was apparently the real thing. On its back was a big yin-yang symbol, though two shades of blue rather than the typical black and white. Philip knew what it meant — it meant opposites that made a whole. Though odd on a hunting vest it was one of the more sensible ornaments.
    He hated it when people said
ying
-yang. He hated people who used “phenomena” as the singular even more.
    Philip backed out of the room when his uncle found a lighter in a vest pocket. But the smell of smoke followed him, almost instantly it seemed, as he walked past his sister and brother to open a window and the door to the patio. Though he performed these acts of ventilation quietly he felt awkward, a sissy in his mother’s camp. Plus it was clear that these openings simply pulled the smoke more quickly out of Uncle Phil’s bedroom and on into everyone’s noses. No matter, Philip’s mother would smell it, and tonight there would be more hissing out in the parking lot.
    â€œSo,” said Uncle Phil, ambling out of the bedroom with cigarette blazing, unaware of his rebellion. “This famous ‘Long Beach.’ Will it have a mosh pit?”
    â€œFor sure.” Ever since his uncle found out that Philip knew what a mosh pit was, and that his mother and father didn’t, he talked this way. So does this famous “Grade 7” of yours have a mosh pit? So does this so-called “seafood restaurant” we’re off to have a mosh pit? Philip and his uncle refused to reveal to the others what a mosh pit was. Aunt Sally, who had tattoos, would just sit quietly smiling. Philip could tell she didn’t want to be here. Her eyes were steady with waiting. She was younger than Uncle Phil, and Philip knew they weren’t really married, though they had been together for as long as he could remember. Uncle Phil sometimes called her “Aunt Silly,” which made Sasha and Tommy laugh, especially when Aunt Silly pulled a face to match, but it also confused them, because their parents never made fun like that in front of children.
    Leaving for the whale-watching, his mother had taken Philip aside, both his shoulders under her hands, steering him into the rhododendron grove bordering the parking lot.
    â€œYou are at a beach, with very, strong, undertow,” she’d said. “
Adults
drown there.
Never
let Tommy and Sasha out of your sight. Do
not
let them go in over their ankles. Today it’s
sand-
castles.” She looked over her glasses toward the condo and raised her eyebrows. “
You
are the boss.” She squeezed his shoulders and repeated, “
You
.”
    Philip resented his mother for standing in the way of him and Uncle Phil. It was becoming clear to him that you could have a special feeling for relatives, beyond seeing the play of genes. This year, Philip had come to understand that Uncle Phil visited each year not just to see his only brother but also, more and more, to see him too. The way he’d hugged him second at the airport, the way he said, “
Hell
o, Namesake.”
    Philip liked this about his uncle, this potential and blossoming uncle-ness. Though already familiar with the word, he had reviewed “avuncular” in his
OED
.
    It was a twenty-minute drive to Long Beach and Uncle Phil did only one joke about driving on the wrong side of the road, veering over the double yellow line when there was no other car in sight, then a goofy “Oops!” and gently veering them back. Philip’s brother and sister were thrilled, though only Sasha, eight, had any sense of there being a left or a right side to anything.
    â€œI
can’t
believe in one month you’ll