Free Family Affair by Caprice Crane

brings the Foster Family Autumn Barbecue—some say Famous, but I’ve taken to saying Notorious—and Layla’s famous (I say notorious) strawberry-rhubarb pie, made with strawberries and rhubarb that she grows in a scrubby patch of dirt in our backyard. It was charming for a while, her playing Young MacDonald in the back forty square feet, but like all things charming, it eventually started to irritate the shit out of me. I don’t want to sound like an asshole; it’s not the idea of growing things in the backyard that gets me. It’s the sanctimony, the “look at me.” And then she puts strawberries in everything. Strawberry shortcake, strawberry cheesecake, strawberries and cream. I swear, one cold night we had strawberry stew. I know everybody else in my family loves the stuff and eats it up, but what about me? I’ve given up saying anything, because it does no good. I just live with it.
    The family barbecue is something of a legend around town. Mostly because there are only nine Fosters—my mom and dad,Scott, Trish, and me; Layla (Foster in name only); and then my dad’s brother, Nate, his wife, Allison, and their daughter, Lucy—yet our little event has over the years morphed into a block party for practically all of Los Angeles.
    Nate and Allison are crunchy granola folks. Allison refused to go to a hospital when Lucy was being born and gave birth underwater with a midwife and a lot of bad music playing. They believe in holistic medicine only, which essentially means
no
medicine. Lucy wasn’t even vaccinated, and she’s never had a shot in her life. I guess if she’s healthy, that’s all that matters, and she is. I call it dumb luck. Just not to their faces.
    Now, I’m not one to judge—or, rather, I try to keep my observations mostly to myself—but they don’t feed the girl breakfast. They give her chicken noodle soup or purees of vegetables and brown rice in the morning. That’s
not
breakfast. I mean, that’s just un-American. As a favorite uncle, I find it my duty to corrupt her whenever possible. Therefore, the barbecue is one of her favorite days of the year.
    But we’re not why it’s legendary. Rather, it’s because the entire neighborhood and several crashers from adjacent neighborhoods come every year, resulting in the transformation of Riverside Park into the Foster “Extended Family” Zoo. It’s become not just a family tradition but a local convention, so busy that food trucks and vendors show up like clockwork and generally make a killing.
    Layla and I roll up to Riverside Park at eleven-thirty a.m., and it’s already packed. She’s telling me again about this great deal for her and my sister, something about PETCO maybe franchising her photo-booth rights, but it doesn’t sound like it’s set in stone yet. I nod, thinking I’ll believe it when I see it. I’m still thinking about my team’s last game and how they’re not doing as well this year as last.
    I bust out my mitt and head over to the baseball diamond as Layla heads toward my dad’s annual poker game. Layla’s been apart of that game since we were juniors in high school, and she and my dad’s friends take their card playing
very
seriously. As seriously as anyone can take a poker game where there’re potato-salad droppings on the table.
    Layla says that they all have certain tells and she knows when someone’s bluffing nine times out of ten. She says my dad purses his lips and flares his nostrils and tries to look worried when he has a good hand. When he has a bad hand he massages his earlobe and smiles. Get it? He does the
opposite
. She says that Crazy John DeMarco will hum Sinatra when he has shit for a hand to bluff happiness, and if he’s quiet he may actually have something. Elvis Presley songs can go either way. Rick Bennett keeps looking at his cards if they’re bad, and looks around the table if they’re good. And so on. I think she’s full of crap—but then again, there’s a reason I’m not part of