“Here, help me get the old photo albums boxed up,” he says as he directs me toward the built-ins.
He sits down and opens the cabinet at the bottom of the left one. It’s packed full of albums. He pulls one out and opens it. He quickly closes it.
“What?” I ask as I reach for it. He holds it up and places it in a box on the far side of him.
“What?” I ask again trying to get it, but he blocks me. Before I can try again, Kylie walks by and takes it out of the box.
She opens it to the first page and starts laughing. “Oh shit, this is awesome. Hey, Di, Lanie, come look at these.”
Everyone stops and walks over, crowding around the book. I push up to my feet and lean over it. They are baby photos of Clark and he is naked. Now, I know why he didn’t want me to see them.
“Ah, look at little Ben Franklin,” Kent says with a laugh.
Clark pulls out another photo album and then another and finally opens it and turns it around. “Quid pro quo, brother,” he says with a smirk.
I start laughing as I look at what I assume are naked baby photos of Kent.
“Awww! Let me see,” Kent’s wife, Tabby, says as she grabs the photo album. “You look so much like Vera.”
“Look at this one,” Di says as she opens the album and smiles. Everyone leans forward. They are photos from when we were kids and teenagers. Di and Lanie are in Halloween costumes dressed as giant pumpkins. The rest of us were dressed up as musicians.
“That’s the year we went as Sonny and Cher,” I state as I start laughing. It had been Lanie’s idea.
“Oh man, I forgot about that,” Clark admits as he looks at the photos. There are many with me in them in this album. I had forgotten all the things we had done together. I mean, we were always together, but the day-to-day things you do slowly move to the recesses of your mind as the years go by, and then one day they just disappear altogether.
“You two were so cute when you were little. Remember when they were two or three and we dressed them up like a flower and bee?” Di says with a laugh.
“Or the year we made them that dog from the Toy Story movies and connected them with a giant slinky,” Kent says, laughing.
“I don’t remember that,” Clark interjects.
“Me either,” I state. Several albums later, we find the photos proving Kent’s memory is accurate.
“Well, shit, we were pretty fucking cute,” Clark admits as he looks at the old photo of us. It hits me at that moment just how many years we’ve known each other. Our whole lives. Except for the last three years of being passing ships in the night, we’ve always been around each other. Even when we were in constant competition in high school, we were still always around each other. How was I so blind? Why did I let myself hate him, or pretend I hated him? I curse myself internally once more at having wasted so many years where we could have been friends or more.
Clark
I watch as Meg helps Di carry boxes into the living room. She’s so at ease around my siblings. I don’t know why she wouldn’t be. It hadn’t dawned on me until we went through those old photo albums that she was practically another Moore for fourteen years. Hell, our families even had spent many summers in Ocean City, Maryland, together at a house owned by our aunt and uncle.
She knows me in ways that other girls never could. She knows my deepest, darkest secrets, well, most of them. She also knows most of my most embarrassing moments. There’s no worry about laying my soul bare to her because it’s always been laid bare to her since we were babies.
I leave the ladder by the built-ins as I go to grab another box to carry into the living room.
“Uncle Clark, check out my new toy!” Ash says as he comes whipping into the room with a sword. I have to say the sword looks completely legit.
“Wow, nice, little dude.”
“It’s heavy too, so it’s like real,” he says as he swings it around.
“Careful, Ash, there are a lot of people in here. What did I say about that?” Lanie scolds.
Ash groans. “Play with it outside.”
She nods and motions to the glass sliding door before giving her husband a pointed look. I stifle a laugh as I carry the box into the living room which is quickly filling up with items. I find a place and turn back around. Ash is on the ladder swinging his sword.
“Ash!” Lanie screams.
Ash loses his balance, grabs the top rung, and thrusts his sword up and into the drywall of the ceiling.
“Oops!” he says and then goes to climb down but his sword is stuck in the drywall. He yanks on it and looks up, realizing what he’s done.
I step over and grab the handle of it, yanking it free and pulling down a giant chunk of drywall in the process.
I can see the imminent waterworks starting. I fucking hate it when kids get upset. It may be worse than when girls cry.
“It’s cool. We have to take down the ceiling anyhow,” I lie as I purposefully poke another hole in it with the sword.
Ash’s tears turn to giggles. “Uncle Clark!”
“Clark!” Lanie chastises as she tries to grab the sword from me, but now I’m a man on a mission. I poke a few more holes until Kent grabs it from me.
“Fuck, C-Dog. We weren’t going to rip out the whole ceiling, we just wanted to add a few lights,” he says with a sigh as he runs his hand through his hair and huffs.
I grin because the perfect idea has struck me.
“Oh no. Nope. I know that look,” Kylie states as she glances over at me.
“I have an idea.” Everyone stops and stares at me. I sort of like it. It’s not often one can command all this attention in my family, but apparently poking holes in the ceiling with a giant hard plastic sword and then saying you have an idea gets their attention. “What if we put constellations in the sky? Like a planetarium.”
Kent frowns. “Like, little lights?”
I nod. “We could map out Mom and Dad’s favorite ones. You know the ones they always made us look for first and then we could get the electrician to drop little lights there. We could wire them separately so you can turn on each constellation just by itself, like a planetarium.”
“I don’t hate it. But it sounds expensive,” Lanie admits.
“I think it’s romantic. I love it,” Di says as she puts her hands over her heart.
I roll my eyes. “First,” I start, looking from Kent to Kylie’s boyfriend, Levi, “some of us have a lot of money, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. And second, look around, people. We’re already gutting this part of the house. A few little lights shouldn’t make a massive difference on the budget.”
“OK, fine. But no more holes in the ceiling. I’ll go talk to the electrician. I think he’s downstairs checking the fuse box,” Kent says.
“Fine,” I agree before poking one more hole. Ash giggles and Kent glares at me.
I shrug and hand the sword back to Ash. “Maybe take that outside before your mom kills both you and me.”
He salutes me and runs to the sliding door, throwing it open and then slamming it shut.
Lanie groans. “I swear to God there is not enough patience for mothering on days like today.”
As if on cue, I hear my niece wailing on a baby monitor that is sitting on the coffee table.