Free The Tender Bar by J. R. Moehringer Page B

was suing his father for child support, and McGraw would have to testify in court. McGraw would be called to the witness stand, where he’d have to swear on the Holy Bible that Uncle Harry had left his wife and six kids to starve. McGraw moaned and put his hands over his ears and ran out the back door. I ran after him and found him behind the garage, sitting in mud. He could barely speak. “I’ve got to stand up and say bad things about my father!” he said. “He’ll never want to see me again! I’ll never see my father again!”

    “No,” I told him. “You don’t ever have to say anything bad about your father if you don’t want to.” I would smuggle him to Shelter Rock before I let that happen.

    The case never did go to court. Uncle Harry gave Aunt Ruth some money and the crisis passed. But there were no more visits between McGraw and his father for a long time after that. Quietly McGraw took off his conductor’s hat, put on his Mets helmet, and we all went back to riding the bicentennial sofa for free.

    In the spare bed we shared in a far corner of Grandpa’s room, McGraw and I would lie awake at night and talk about everything except the subject that bound us, though sometimes that subject would intrude. Grandpa liked to sleep with the radio on, so every few minutes a deep-voiced announcer would make me stop and listen. And every train going by in the distance would make McGraw lift his head. After McGraw fell asleep I’d listen to the radio and the trains and watch the moonlight fall through the window in wide canary yellow stripes across McGraw’s chubby face. I’d thank God for him, and I’d worry about what I’d do if he weren’t there.

    And then he was gone. Aunt Ruth moved the cousins to a house some miles up Plandome Road. She was determined to escape Grandpa’s house too, though it had nothing to do with the conditions or the overcrowding. After a nasty fight with Grandma and Grandpa she left in a blaze of temper, staying away and keeping the cousins away. She forbade them to visit.

    “Did Aunt Ruth
kidnap
the cousins?” I asked Grandpa.

    “You might say that.”

    “Will she ever bring them back?”

    “No. We’re em, em, embargoed.”

    “What’s embargoed?”

    I’d heard this word many times in 1973. There was a Middle East embargo, meaning the Arabs refused to sell us gas, which was the reason you couldn’t buy more than ten gallons at a time at the Mobil station next to Dickens. What did that have to do with Aunt Ruth?

    “It means we’re on her sh, sh, shit list,” Grandpa said.

    Furthermore, Aunt Ruth had barred me from her house. I was prohibited from seeing McGraw and the cousins.

    “You’re on her shit list too,” Grandpa said.

    “What did I do?”

    “Guilt by association.”

    I remember the McGraw Embargo of 1973 as a time when I too ran out of gas. I moped through the days, listless, glum. It was October. The sugar maples throughout Manhasset turned into torches of red and orange, and from the highest hilltops the town looked as if it were on fire. Grandma was always telling me to go out and play, enjoy the autumn colors and the crisp weather, but I would just lie on Uncle Charlie’s bed, watching TV. I was watching
I Dream of Jeannie
one night when I heard the front door open, followed by Sheryl’s voice.

    “Anybody home?”

    I ran out of Uncle Charlie’s bedroom.

    “What’s this?” Grandma cried, hugging Sheryl.

    “You’re behind enemy lines?” my mother said, kissing her.

    Sheryl waved her hand. “Pshaw,” she said.

    Sheryl feared no one. Fourteen years old, she was the prettiest of Aunt Ruth’s daughters, and the most defiant.

    “How’s McGraw?” I asked her.

    “He misses you. He told me to ask what you’re going to be for Halloween.”

    I looked down.

    “I can’t take him trick-or-treating,” my mother said. “I’m working that night.”

    “I’ll take him,” Sheryl said.

    “What about your mother?” Grandma