A few minutes out of their way. What could possibly go wrong?
Though when her uncle was involved, you never knew. Uncle Lucky. Julie remembered the first day he’d shown up at their door, tanned to a crisp and wearing cutoff jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. With a gigantic nylon duffel bag by his sandaled feet and a surfboard tucked under one arm, he was the strangest creature Julie had ever seen. He looked nothing like his sister, except for his sun-streaked hair that fell well beyond his shoulders.
He’d missed her father’s funeral. He’d been in India or somewhere at a surfing competition. But he was here now, he said, and he was staying to take care of his sister and niece.
Her mother said, “Oh, Tony, we’re so lucky to have you.” And from that moment on, he became Uncle Lucky.
And he did take care of them. Sort of. Whenever he wasn’t riding the waves. When the other parts of his life or friends didn’t get in the way.
Her phone pinged: a text from her mother. “Oh man, listen to this address. Route One and Daly’s Junction.” She keyed it into her map app. “I don’t think it’s even a town. Good thing we have a long drive. It’ll give me time to find it.”
“Haven’t you been to visit him?”
“Nope. He used to move around all the time. I figured he still was. I mean, why would he settle down in Delaware? How challenging can the waves be?”
Kayla frowned at Julie in the rearview mirror. “He is getting older.”
“Fifty-two is not that old. Anyway, sorry we’re losing a beach day for what is most likely a wild-goose chase. We’ll probably find him lying on the beach with an open beer and an uncharged cell phone stuck in the sand.”
“Huh,” Aggie said. “Maybe it’s a sign.”
“Of what?” Julie said. “Annoyance?”
“No, that it’s time you broke radio silence.”
“The phone works both ways,” Julie said defensively.
“Maybe, but you started it.”
“Are we really going to beat this dead horse on our first day of vacation?”
“Oh, come on, Jules. It will be great to see him. We all loved him.”
“Yeah,” added Kayla. “He was like a . . .”
“A father?” Julie finished for her. She’d hoped he would be. He’d been like a father to all her friends, but Julie had wanted a father all her own.
“Well, he was . . . kind of,” Aggie said.
“She’s still bent because he missed her college graduation,” Kayla said.
“Am not. And he missed both my graduations,” Julie reminded them. “And I haven’t thought about that in years. We just fell out of touch.”
“No, you didn’t. He called to apologize. You told him you never wanted to see him again and hung up on him, remember?”
She did remember. She pushed the vague sense of guilt that she’d neglected him firmly back where it belonged. He was a grown man. He could have tried harder.
“I remember he sent you that huge bouquet of pink roses to make up for it,” Kayla said. “We were all so envious.”
“Yeah,” Aggie said. “All I got was dinner at Benny’s Pizzeria because that’s where my brothers wanted to go.”
Roses. There had been two dozen and they filled the entire entryway of their house. But Julie hadn’t wanted flowers. She wanted Lucky to be there with the other fathers, beaming proudly as she took her diploma.
“We really had some fun times with him, didn’t we?” Kayla said. “And he saved our bacon more times than I can count.”
“I’ll say.” Aggie twisted in her seat to see Julie. “Remember when we drank the punch at Susie Connor’s party? We didn’t know it was spiked. We called Uncle Lucky to come get us and he sobered us up before he took us home.”
Julie remembered. He’d even fooled Louise on that one. And saved them all from big trouble.
“Yeah,” said Kayla. “And when we decided to paint our camp cabin and you poured paint all over us.”
“The can fell off the ladder,” Aggie insisted.
“We had green hair for weeks,” Kayla said, laughing.
“I thought Louise was going to make me shave my head,” Julie said. “But he convinced her that everyone would think I had head lice.” She laughed. “I’ll never forget her face when he said that.”
“He taught us the hula.” Aggie wiggled in the front seat.
“And how to skateboard,” Kayla added.
And he’d taught Julie how to twirl a baton. Because for some irrational reason, the serious, studious, did-what-she-was-told Julie decided she wanted more than anything else to be on the middle school twirling team.
She didn’t even tell Kayla and Aggie. They were busy planning which outfits to wear and picking out the cute boys whom they might meet at their new school.
Her mother discouraged the idea—Julie didn’t know how to twirl; she didn’t have a baton. And there were all the reasons she didn’t say: they couldn’t afford the uniform or to send Julie on trips if she did make the squad.
Lucky didn’t argue, but the next day while her mother was at work, he took Julie into the backyard and pulled out a baton he’d bought at the local dime store. It had white and pink streamers on each end.
Every afternoon, they practiced in secret, Lucky imparting what little knowledge he found at the public library and by consulting Mrs. McCleary, an overweight matron who lived down the street and who had been a majorette many decades before.
All summer they practiced. Then school started and the day of tryouts came.
“You’ll be there, Uncle Lucky. Promise.”
“Wouldn’t miss it. You’ll be great. They’re gonna love you.”
The telephone rang. Lucky talked a few minutes. Julie didn’t notice his expression when he came back. She was too busy visualizing herself on the squad.
“Bring me one of those hair things,” he’d said. “We’ll put it up like Mrs. McCleary showed us.”
The afternoon of the tryouts, Julie came to the field where they were being held. All the girls had their hair piled in curls on the tops of their heads and had real batons, none of which had streamers on the ends. And they had cute little skirts and matching tops and were doing all sorts of fancy moves as they practiced.
They all watched Julie take out her baton from her backpack, then exchanged looks with one another. Julie looked down at her best shorts and T-shirt, looked for Lucky, but she couldn’t find him seated with the parents along the side of the field.
One after another the girls’ names were called and they showed what they could do. Some even had music to go with their act.
And still Uncle Lucky didn’t come.
Then it was Julie’s turn. She took her cheap baton out before the judges, took her pose, but without Lucky’s encouragement, her fingers turned to clay. She tried to roll the baton in her fingers but couldn’t get the rhythm; it went round and round limping like a flat tire. She couldn’t make anything work. She turned and the baton hit her in the leg, and she almost dropped it. Everyone was watching; she heard someone snicker. Several girls rolled their eyes.
She couldn’t do it. Nothing was working. Where was Lucky? She threw the baton in the air. Her big trick. It went up but arced away from her; she tried to run after it, to stretch out her arms and catch it, but she couldn’t move. The baton bounced and rolled out of reach.