Uncle John was a bullshitter through and through. People always came up to me and said, astonished, things like I didn’t know your uncle was in vaudeville or why didn’t you tell me your uncle John was once engaged to Judy Garland or when my grade five teacher couldn’t get over his poet laureateness I stormed home he was standing loudly on our porch, his scarf in the wind like fire. I was still hot and started yelling half-way up the driveway having remembered the Harvard one, the Paris one, the Elizabeth Taylor, the Tennessee Williams, the Fred Astaire, the Hemingway. I don’t give a shit about the lies I said but you gotta warn me I mean I didn’t even know what a poet laureate was and I’m gonna blow your cover and we’ll both look like idiots. He turned. Everything about him was moving in the current but his face was still and his eyes flashlights he walked down the front steps in clicking tap shoes, his moustache terrifically coiffed, his wild scarf, and suddenly I knew – it was like I’d stepped in a waist-deep puddle – I knew it was all true.
