The Curious Neighbor

Chapter 2

I drove through a set of deep woods, down into a valley, up a few hills, and cradled Lake Erie to my left. My uncle’s cabin sat approximately five miles away from civilization, except for one neighbor to the west of the residence. Snow and thin February ice covered the dirt road. It had been a hard winter, and the trees looked freezing cold, barren of life, useless to the world in producing oxygen to breathe. Wind kicked up, blowing funnels of snow around me as the Mazda traveled the remaining mile to the cabin. Ghostly howling circled the Mazda, welcoming me away from the city and into its winter grip.

The five-room cabin (living room, kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms) stood exactly where I remembered it. My last visit to see Uncle Michael had been during middle school. Pine trees circled the log structure’s wide front. The blue-green, tempestuous lake provided a picturesque backdrop. The hard-packed dirt driveway led up to the cabin’s front stoop, and two windows looked out at me from the one-story building, questioning my arrival. The cabin appeared as barren as its surrounding trees. There were no garden gnomes decorating the sleeping gardens. No tire swing to the right of the property, ready for use. I didn’t see logs used as seats positioned around the empty fire pit. The cabin and its property seemed as if it had died along with my uncle, leaving a wasteland behind, instead of good memories.

A firm cold swept along the back of my neck as I walked from the parked Mazda to the cabin’s front door.

Mother had made me a key to the place, bitching at me, “You’re to go up there and get the job done. Then you come home. I don’t want you to create a wreck of things while you’re there. Make a swift and productive visit, Dalton. Do you understand me?”

I understood many things about Cecile Brewer-Prie, finding her pushy, opinionated, direct, and annoying most of the time. Nothing remotely kind had exited her mouth that I could remember. My father left her twenty years ago and lived on the West Coast with a family of Mormons, somewhere in the hills of Los Angeles. She had behaved badly with him, treating him more like a child than a man, and scared him away.

As for my three older sisters (Denice, Deidra, and Darby), they wanted nothing to do with our mother. They stayed clear of her, objecting to any type of “normal” relationship with the sixty-five-year-old woman for fear of Cecile doing damage in their lives by prying, asking too many questions, and judging their ways of life. She dismissed her daughters as sinful and unsatisfactory women.

I must admit, it made me cumbersomely sad to know I, alone, tolerated Mother. Youngest children sometimes get the brunt of things, I guessed. Plus, my gender, the only boy of four children, had something to do with the fact that Mother relied on me as her familial confidant. Being gay only enhanced my position as her emotional caregiver, stereotypically speaking and thinking, of course.

Bottom line: I became stuck with Cecile, her best friend since no one in my family wanted anything to do with her. More bottom line: sometimes you get to do the f*****g, and sometimes you get f****d.

Unfortunately, I became the winner of my latter statement. Damn.

Mother’s relationship with her older brother, Michael Brewer, hadn’t been healthy by any means. They’d fought regularly about politics, the weather, sporting events, religion, their parents when they were alive, Michael’s novels—Mother called them irritating and pieces of drivel—and just about everything two people could discuss.

Although they’d been close as children, I couldn’t recall a single day in my entire life when Michael and Cecile ever got along. Never. Cecile admitted to me once, some few years ago, that she loathed Michael, calling him insatiable, a hooligan, and strung out on m*******a.

She’d added, “He’s a hippie living along the lake. One of those members who join a cult and live on a compound. He barely has a home in the woods. And those books he writes, they’re worthless and unentertaining pieces of trash. This is the reason why I keep you away from him, Dalton. It’s all about safety and my care and love for you.”

She did keep me away from Uncle Michael, whom I didn’t know in the slightest. Frankly, I knew more about our mailman as opposed to my mother’s brother. Michael Brewer had been off limits to me as a child and an adult due to my mother’s hate and loathing for her sibling. My memory of the man entailed a gray caricature comprised of chalk, smeared of features and delicate lines, undistinguishable. Carefully and with much skill, my mother protected me from the man, unwilling to let me spend quality time with him along his lakeside cabin where I could understand his past, present, and future predictions in his life, whatever they detailed. Mother had built a wall between uncle and nephew, keeping me to herself.

* * * *

Once inside the log cabin, after dropping my single duffle bag to the oak floorboards, I looked around. Wooden paneling surrounded me. A stuffed faux elk head hung above the stone fireplace in the living room, which was decorated with an assortment of Adirondack-like chairs built from heavy walnut logs. The small kitchen to the left boasted wooden block countertops and a table and two chairs. A closet-like bathroom was straight ahead, minus its wooden door or canvas drapery hanging on an expandable curtain rod. Two bedrooms were to the far right, both similar in size and decorated in dark woods and navy blues.

Upon further inspection, the cabin’s interior resembled a thrift store of sorts. Shelves, end tables, counters, furniture, and appliances were covered in a bounty of trinkets and collectables. Ceramic Disney figurines, jars of marbles, carnival glass vases, Wade pieces of pottery, salt and pepper sets galore, dishware in cardboard boxes, paperback and hardback novels everywhere, bells, candle snifters, picture frames, art supplies, plastic fruit, and a variety of other collectable goods were scattered about the place, his precious belongings and property.

I had boxes, a tape dispenser, jumbo-sized Sharpies, and shipping tape in the Mazda. Just as Mother had told me, my goal entailed boxing up Uncle Michael’s collected goods, tote a few boxes back to Pittsburgh in my Mazda, and let Mother arrange a team of movers to take care of the rest. Eventually, my uncle’s property would be sold, including the cabin and the land.

Although Mother prevented me from knowing all of my uncle’s financial business since she held the position of executrix of the estate, I did know Uncle Michael had been loaded. He had seven million dollars stashed away in the bank, none of which he used, all royalties from his twenty-six nonfiction books about the Iroquois. Not only would Mother gain some of that money, my sisters and I would someday be able to cash in our shares, minimal amounts due to taxes, but nonetheless recognizable.

While none of us had established relationships with Uncle Michael, he’d been quite generous and shared his wad of cash posthumously. I assumed some men were like him in life: damaged by their sisters during their long lives, but still respectful of them, including her four children.

* * * *

I settled inside the cabin as best I could, taking one of the bedrooms. Thereafter, I prepared a hot cup of tea and added some honey to it that I had found in one of the kitchen closets.

I told myself, “You can get through this. Pack a few boxes now, clear some furniture off, and make yourself at home. Maybe before nightfall you can have the living room boxed up. Make the best of your seven days here, Dalton.”

My plan worked, of course.

I built a crackling, orange fire in the hearth to stay warm and worked on the living room first, boxing up Pez dispensers, a collection of Beanie Babies, porcelain dolls, and a variety of china pieces. I had a few cups of honey-flavored tea during the process, relishing the cabin’s February cold mixed with the fireplace’s heat.

Eventually, the furniture became visible and useable. And after three hours of intense labor, I decided to take a nap on the sofa, a battered, secondhand piece from what I had guessed to be from the early seventies—not very comfortable, but available. My home away from home for the time being.