On the way home, he fell into a contemplative mood.  From his house, we could see the city, distant skyscrapers rising like monuments to modern man, and behind them, the last purpling of dusk.  We sat in his backyard, drinking merlot, and listened to the chatter of magpies and cockies.  By now, my uncle had started to relax, rolling his tie into his shirt pocket and undoing his collar.  “I don’t know why things end,” he said.  “We live under the assumption they go on forever.  It’s a dangerous lie we tell ourselves.” 
     “It is,” I said. 
     “I mean, we project ourselves out into the infinite future, but it’s a very small time we get here, isn’t it?” 
     “Very small,” I said. 
     Inside, my uncle led me to closet where he kept Basil’s urn—it was tall and turquoise, trimmed with gold.  He took it out and held it in his lap.  “I don’t know what happens to a person, how their body withers down to nothing more than this.”  He tilted the urn so I could see it.  On its side, it bore a picture of a lion, one that resembled a child’s drawing, all circles and lines.  “You realize,” he said, “that Bas picked this out before he died.” 
     “It’s nice,” I said. 
     “It’s not nice,” he said.  “It’s one of the most hideous, utterly woggish things he ever chose.” 
     “It’s not hideous,” I said. 
     “If you ask me,” he said, “he chose it just to torment me.  He knew I’d look at it every time I needed sheets, and there, sitting next to the pillow cases, would be this god-awful lion.” 
      “You shouldn’t talk about him that way,” I said. 
     “That way?” he exclaimed.  He looked at the urn again, a sadness working across his face.  “He’d hate it if I talked about him any other way.  We had our own life, and we both liked it.” 
      “I understand that,” I said then laid my hand on his shoulder, his shirt damp beneath my fingers.  “Are you going to go tomorrow?” I asked. 
     “If I do,” he said, “can I choose up there?” 
     “Of course,” I said. 
     “And you won’t be upset if I choose not to lay poor Basil’s remains among those pathetic old  mountains, rotting away among blue gums and yubbos.” 
     “Not at all,” I said. 
     He looked at me, his eyes narrow, then he reached for my hand, closing his fingers around mine.  His skin was callused, potting soil wedged under his fingernails.  He lifted my hand, then put it down again.  “I’ll go,” he said, “if you do something for me.” 
     “What?” I asked. 
     “Tomorrow,” he said, “I want you to tell me why you and Taylor really separated.” 
     I put my hand on his shoulder.  “How come you rarely let people see the compassionate side of you?” 
     “Because,” he said, “a man needs to have style.” 

     At one the next day, we closed the nursery, leaving a group of well dressed pensioners sitting at the bus stop out front, though none of them had any intention of catching a bus.  Disregarding posted hours, Sunday 10-1, my uncle often kept the nursery open to three, even four, allowing them to remain inside, at sandstone tables that were for sale despite the fact that these tables had been there since my last visit, three years before.  It was for this reason then that their faces held disappointment as they watched us leave, all of them looking at us as though we had betrayed them, especially Mary.  At five minutes to one, she had bought one of the three remaining hydrangeas as a way of distinguishing herself from the others.  Looking back, Susan said, “You didn’t have to charge her full price, Will.” 
     “Well bloody hell,” my uncle said, “I’ll give her another free tomorrow if it will make you happy.” 
     “It would,” she said. 
     Having heard this, my uncle turned to them, his group of regulars, all dressed in their church clothes.  After my uncle had their attention, he tapped his watch repeatedly.  With great exaggeration, he mouthed, “We Close At One.” 
     Seeing this, Mary began to perk up, as did two or three others, thinking my uncle might at last launch into his antics, but the only entertainment forthcoming came by way of a constable.  One of the uniformed station police wanted to see what my uncle had stashed in the cardboard box. 
      “Holly Mother of God,” my uncle said, “it’s an urn.” 
      “An urn?” the constable repeated. 
      “A bloody urn,” my uncle said, opening the box, “for a body’s remains.  They’re very popular nowadays.  Even tacky woggish specimens like this one.” 
      The constable stared at the lion’s outline, particularly at how the lion seemed to be smiling, before stepping back and waving us through.  We walked to the ticket window, where we purchased three return trip tickets to Katoomba, then continued to Platform Number Four, where an old Lebanese gentleman sold gum, candybars and the Sunday papers.  My uncle bought The Telegraph-Mirror, which was the more tabloidish of Sydney’s two papers.  After returning, he looked at Susan and me, how we stood together, watching him. 
     For most of the morning, he had kept a careful eye on us, trying to decide if, in fact, we were attracted to each other.  By now I was beginning to wonder myself.  I had started to come to the conclusion that I was just a lonely man wandering in a foreign country, a man in need of family, but as always I was not particularly good at finding this.  I had left home because I wanted to remember what it was like to be a bachelor: I had wanted to try on those clothes again, but like many things I used to own, the fit was a little tight, the legs too short, the chest narrow, the pants somewhat difficult to zip.  Susan turned towards me, a gentleness evident in her, and after a moment, placed her hand on my shoulder. 
       My uncle took a seat on one of the green benches and opened the paper onto his lap.  He began to read the front page: a boy—age 8—had spent the night in a K-Mart after seeing an American movie where another boy, though older, was locked in a department store all night.  In the movie, the kid had nothing but good times.  This eight year old, however, ate four candybars, drank two warm Cokes, threw up in housewares then passed out in a dressingroom.  After my uncle finished skimming the story, he stared out at twin rails stretching towards the mountains.  His face was serious, and as he looked at us, it was clear he finally saw the attraction between Susan and me as nothing more than a transient emotion, a feeling that, for years to come, might possibly define my love life, flitters of hope floating away. 
     When the train did finally come—ten minutes late—we stepped onto the last car and took the last seats.  “You know,” Susan said to my uncle, “you don’t have to do this.” 
      “What,” my uncle said, “and be raked over the coals for going back on my word.”  He folded the newspaper over his knee.  “I’m going to stand at Echo Point, and once there, I’m going to see how I feel.” 
     “Why Echo Point?” Susan asked. 
     My uncle leaned toward us to explain, his features now having warmed, his face holding a new life, a promise, a gentle anticipation filling his body, like a child who, after having the flu, is allowed outside for the first time in weeks.  “Bas didn’t say where in the Mountains,” he began.  “Just the Mountains.  Across from Echo Point there is a proper garden and I believe he would like being by that.”  With that, he looked out the window.  The suburbs sprinted past, rows and rows of brick houses, many with backyard pools, in the distance, brown fields, and beyond them, the magical plane where sky and earth merged into one inseparable line.  “You know,” my uncle said, “I used to feel bad about wanting to fall in love again, but don’t any more.” 
     “Well good on you,” Susan said. 
     “It’s a mixed bag,” my uncle said.  “Years back, I thought if I kicked off first, I’d want Bas to grieve away, but that was a terribly selfish thought, wasn’t it?” 
      “It was,” I said, “but romantic too.” 
      “It’s strange,” he said, “that I can think about being in love again.” 
      “I’m not sure I understand what love is any more,” I said, and at this, Susan put her hand on my knee. 
      “Oh I do,” my uncle said, “it’s when you see some trendy Turk, like Bas, posing next to a rented car and, two minutes after thinking, ‘I’d be a fool to fall for him’, you find yourself in the passenger’s seat being driven out to the beach.  That’s what love is,” he said, “it’s when things open up unexpectedly and you find your life in suddenly sharp focus again.” 
      “I’m not sure I believe that any more,” I said. 
     My uncle looked at me, then rather pointedly looked at Susan, who looked back at him. 
     Because it was clear what my uncle thought, I said, “He thinks we’re attracted to each other.” 
     “Attracted?” Susan said.  She took my hand and held it, though it was more an offer of compassion than of romance.  “I imagine your uncle thinks many things.”  She squeezed my hand once before lowering it into the space between us.  “Yesterday,” she said, “I might have agreed, but today—well today I don’t.” 
     “Americans,” my uncle said, “are terribly brash.” 
     “Not all Americans,” I began to say. 
     “Most all,” he said.  “I see it on the telly, and in other Americans I’ve met.  I saw it in your mother after she went to The States.” 
     “I like brashness,” Susan said.  “It’s an interesting quality.” 
     “In ways,” my uncle admitted, “but it can lead a person to believe he knows more than he does.” 
     “Better to believe that,” Susan interjected, “than to believe the other way.” 
     Around me, I felt the air grow thick, the atmosphere taking on a certain heaviness.  I heard only the sound of wheels rolling over gaps in the track and the joints between cars moving together.  My uncle leaned toward me, his arms folded around the box.  Beside us, windows opened to blue gums and wattle, black ash and banksia.  We passed out of the suburbs and were beginning to ascend the mountains.  “So give it a fair go,” my uncle said to me. 
     “Give what a fair go?” Susan asked. 
     “We had a deal,” he explained.  “I’d drag my sorry self up to the Mountains, if he told why things went ka-put back home.” 
      “It’s like he already knows,” I said to Susan. 
      “Do you?” she asked, turning to him. 
      “Not a clue,” he said.  “And it’s odd I don’t.  I don’t even know where to begin any more.” 
     She turned to me.  Behind her, I could see large rocks precariously balanced like cosmic tinkertoys, and behind them, slopes forested with trees older than anyone I knew.  “Want to know the reason my ex and I split?” she offered. 
     “Sure,” I said.  “Why not?” 
     “He slept with my best friend.  Trashy, yet true.” 
     “That’s just it,” I said.  “There’s no big betrayal, just all these little things that added up.”  I folded my hands into my lap then unfolded them.  “What I mean is this, neither of us realized how hard love could be and we weren’t very well prepared for it.  Do you want to know what we did our last night together?” 
     Susan nodded. 
     “We made dinner together then she helped me pack the last of my clothes.” 
     “She helped you pack your clothes?” she mused.  “It would be nice to break up like that, very proper and civilized.” 
    “If Bas and I were to break up,” my uncle said, “I would’ve broken his nose.  Odds are, he would’ve let me.” 

     For the rest of the trip, I thought about my last night with Taylor, how we made rigatoni, how we sat side by side at the dinner table, me still unable to throw anything or storm off, though I did not feel much like that any more.  She said, “I’ll miss the way you make pasta.  You were always very good with food.”  She put her hands on my shoulders, touching me gently as though she were trying to confirm our decision, that we should in fact separate, and something about that touch, as with thousands before, convinced her we were doing the right thing.  If you ask me, we both knew our marriage was broken, that we’d lost something we should not have lost, but neither of us knew how to go back and fix it. 
     In the Mountains, we walked down a narrow, poorly paved road that would, in a mile, take us to Echo Point.  My uncle, a few feet in the lead, carried the box.  Whenever he passed an elderly couple he said, “a fine afternoon, isn’t it?” as though they might possibly be old nursery customers he did not remember. 
     Susan walked with me, her arm looped through mine, but I knew this gesture was nothing more than courtesy of a different kind.  We passed old Victorian houses, most of which had been refurbished into Bed and Breakfast Inns, the more elaborate ones coming right before we reached the point, their lawns neatly cut, their windows decorated with stained glass, their reader boards no longer displaying the “no vacancy” placards I remembered from my childhood.  By the time we got to the valley, my uncle had grown contemplative again, his eyes holding a meaningful distance.  Before us, we saw the stateliness of the view, a cliff dropping off to the stone floor below.  We were at one end of a glacier cut valley, a long, narrow expanse, shaped millions of years before, carpeted with gum trees and massive gray rocks.  It was the type of sight which reminded me how small I was in the big scheme of things.  Experience was always before me, large and potentially meaningful, filled with subtleties I could not often decipher, though during this one moment, I could. 
     We looked at this for a while, how the earth was carved away, before my uncle stepped to the rail and stood by himself.  “This is not such a bad place to be,” he said as a breeze lifted up the cliff and chilled us. 
     “You don’t have to do this,” I said, “if you don’t want to.” 
     Turning to me, my uncle said, “Americans are very strange.  They talk you into doing the right thing then try to talk you out of doing it.” 
     “They’re just bad with guilt,” Susan said. 
     We watched as my uncle took the urn from the box.  For a moment he stood there, rather stiffly.  “You know,” he announced, “Bas would’ve been happier if his ashes were sprinkled over a Porche dealership.” 
     “To hear you talk,” Susan said, “one would wonder why you ever took up with him in the first place.”  She walked to him and placed her hand on his shoulder, a soft, gentle gesture which caused him to lean towards her.  I saw compassion between them, an emotion they needed, but could talk about, a new thing that, right then, was as shapeless and unformed as clouds above us. 
     “I took up with Bas,” my uncle explained, “because I was terribly bad at stopping myself and doing otherwise.” 
     With this a sadness entered him, a sadness I did not see or hear, but felt, as sure as I felt my own life, and in that moment, overlooking the valley, I saw how the future would lay: Susan would stay at the nursery; my uncle would tinker with the idea of romance though in the end would remain as single and celibate as a monk, his love for plants and the pensioners sustaining him for many more years.  In a week, I’d see Taylor again, but by then the innerworkings of our love would be unmade, the cogs recalibrated, the old parts sold off to a junkyard I’d never find, though I’d search for some time.  On that day, I understood my sadness was not ending, but beginning, which was something I had not known until just then.  I stepped up to the rail, joining Susan and my uncle, as he opened Basil’s urn and released his remains.  The wind carried the ashes far from us, lifting them towards the horizon, like smoke, until at last we could no longer distinguish them from the air, the trees, the sun. 
 

Pierce home page 

Smoke, Part 1  

Dinner at Charlie's, Part 1 

Dinner at Charlie's, Part 2 

Dinner at Charlie's, Part 3 

The Last Good Night