Family Reunion by Caroline B. Cooney

Author:Caroline B. Cooney [Cooney, Caroline B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-56753-6
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2004-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

The family room off the kitchen had television, VCR, stereo, compact disc player, two computers, exercise bike, rowing machine, bookcases full of paperbacks, CDs, tapes and videos, and a fireplace with a raised hearth. Your old-fashioned people could start a fire and toast their toes or their marshmallows while your up-to-date people could check their e-mail, and your fitness people could slim down while your musicians could wear headphones. Wedged among this equipment were three enormous recliners, which, when tilted back with footrests up, missed the various components by an inch. Once positioned in a recliner, you stayed there, wrapped in a hand-crocheted afghan, while the person closest to the kitchen fed you.

Uncle Todd's recliner was dark and leathery, while Aunt Maggie's was ruffled and flowery. Carolyn, Annette and I fit on a double recliner, rather like an upholstered hospital bed that bent at the knees as well as the waist. Annette looked as nervous as somebody using a ski lift for the first time, perhaps expecting to be flattened inside the mechanism. The moment I tried out that recliner, I was addicted. It was the most comfortable, wonderful way to sit/lie/slouch. I felt decadent, a Roman aristocrat reclining for a feast. “All we need are the slaves,” I told Carolyn.

“Angus?” she suggested. “How well trained is he?”

Annette and I laughed.

Angus of course was busy trying out headphones, synthesizers and the latest computer games, sorting through video selections and also starting a fire. Grandma said what with the air-conditioning and so forth, perhaps we didn't need that many logs, but Angus was safe inside his earphones and added every piece of kindling standing upright in a hammered-brass basket on the hearth. Grandma sat in a straight-backed kitchen chair. She can't slump now or it's permanent. “Aren't little boys wonderful?” she said of Angus.

Annette and I reserved comment.

Aunt Maggie said, “They are. I wish Brett would still—” She broke off. “What is everybody going to wear tomorrow night for the reunion party? Not that it matters, with Charlie not coming. I don't know how I'm going to face everybody.

I feel like the youngest kid in this room. All I want is to slug my big brother.”

“Then this is a good time to tell Uncle Charlie stories,” said Carolyn. She passed Annette an unappealing homemade snack—Cheerios, broken pretzels, peanuts and onion salt making a mess in the bowl—and Annette passed it along to me, and I passed it to Angus, who is an excellent garbage bag for food nobody else wants. I could hardly wait to hear all the wonderful Uncle Charlie stories.

“Uncle Charlie,” said Carolyn happily, “is the black sheep of the family.” She heaved herself out of our recliner and crawled over her father's extended feet, explaining that we needed a higher quality of snack down at our end of the room. “Everybody was always mad at Charlie,” she said, heading for the kitchen, “and he was always having to run away or get divorced in order to escape.”

Annette said she thought that was an oversimplification of the facts.

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