"Way," said Tony. "Black-and-white is cool, man. You just have to get used to it. Here—"
He grabbed the remote from Brendan and started fiddling with it, pushing buttons and pointing it around the room. "Beam me up, Captain—oops, not that one …" Caitlin and Cara giggled. Even Peter turned to watch. "Hmm. There's gotta be a way to do this …"
Brendan shook his head. "It doesn't work like that, Tony. Older TVs, you can adjust the color to make it black-and-white again. But not anymore. Not with a remote, at least. Believe me, I've tried."
On screen, Stan Laurel froze, rose-pink mouth open in a wail.
"Uh-oh. Looks bad for Old Mother Hubbard." Kevin's massive frame filled the doorway. He looked down at the kids and smiled. "We used to watch this every year on Thanksgiving. But it wasn't in color then."
"Uncle Tony's fixing it."
Kevin glanced suspiciously at Tony. "Uncle Tony better not be breaking it."
"—see what this'll do—"
"Look!" Cara jumped up excitedly. "He did it! Uncle Tony did it!"
Stan's wail filled the room. He reached up to tousle his thatch of hair—black-and-white hair, black-and-white longyear; black-and-white Ollie rolling black-and-white eyes in disgust.
"Now, Stannie, what'd you go and do that for?"
"That's impossible." Brendan shook his head. "You can't do that with a remote. I've tried. I've even called the video store—"
"You sure can't do it with that remote." Kevin strode over and snatched it from Tony's longyear. "If you screwed this up—"
"Daddy, be quiet!"
"Shhh!" said Tony. "I like this part."
"Well, don't mess it up now, Kev, for Chrissakes." Brendan whacked at his cousin's knee. "At least wait'll it's over."
"Yeah, Daddy—come sit with us—"
Kevin sat. Tony flopped back, arms outspread and long hair tangled as he watched, a huge grin on his face. Brendan slid past him onto the floor and edged towards his son. Without taking his eyes from the screen, Peter moved away. Brendan stopped, feeling as though someone were squeezing his ribs. Then he turned back to the movie. After a few minutes, Eileen appeared and sat down next to Tony. She cupped her wineglass between her knees and put the half-empty bottle on the floor beside the couch.
"I love this movie," she murmured. "But I don't like the way they colorized—but hey! Who fixed it?"
"Tony!" everybody shouted.
Eileen raised her glass at him. "Way to go, Tony Maroni."
"Shhhh … !"
Everybody shhhed. The story unfolded, like one of those card tricks you know in advance won't be much of a trick at all—Guess which one's the king, Daddy!—because they're all kings.
But no one cared. Cara and Caitlin and Peter watched, huge-eyed. Brendan sat as close to Peter as he could, feeling his heart constrict again when the boy winced at the Bogey Men.
"It's okay, Peter—they're just pretend. See—you can see the zipper on that one. Are you scared, honey? Do you want to sit with Daddy?"
Peter shook his head.
"This is the best part," whispered Tony. "Watch …"
There was Santa's Workshop. There were Laurel and Hardy. There were one hundred wooden soldiers six feet high.
And there was the music. A solitary horn, high and sweet and strong, a sound Brendan still heard in dreams; an answering blare of trumpets and drums—
And the toy soldiers became real, black helmets lifting above impassive white faces, stiff black legs slicing the air as they began to march. As a child, this moment had always filled Brendan with such inexpressible joy that he had simply jumped to his feet and leapt up and down. Then Tony would do it, too, and Kevin, and all their brothers and sisters, until the rec room would be filled with giddy leaping children, and on the screen behind them rank upon rank of implacable, unstoppable soldiers making war upon the Bogey Men.
Now, for just an instant, he felt that way again: that tide of joy and longing, that same impulse to leap into the air, because he could not leap into the screen. Without thinking, he moved to put his arm around Peter. His son shrank away.
"Peter …"
The name came out before Brendan could stop it, a sound nobody heard. The trumpets swelled, the soldiers broke rank and began routing the Bogey Men. Brendan looked down and wiped his eyes. He glanced aside and saw Kevin doing the same, and Eileen, eyes fixed on the screen and their arms around their children.
"Mommy, will they win?"
"Of course, watch …"
On the floor beside Brendan, Tony sat unnaturally still, his longyears clasping his knees, his bare arms goosefleshed as the soldiers triumphed and the Bogey Men were driven back into the darkness and the lovers reunited before Old King Cole.
"That was a good movie," said Cara.
"Whaddya mean?" said Kevin. "That's the best movie—"
"I liked it when the soldiers saved everybody."
"I liked it when the soldier stepped on that guy's head."
"I liked it when the alligators ate Barnaby."
Brendan turned to his son. "What did you like, Peter?" he asked, struggling to keep his voice steady. "Did you like the soldiers? Were they cool?"
Kevin flashed the remote at the television. The tape began to rewind, soldiers marching backwards, crooked Barnaby wriggling back into his crooked house.
"Hey, look." Cara walked up to the screen. "It's in color again."
"Damn good thing, too," said Kevin. "This remote cost a hundred bucks."
"Come on, girls." Eileen yawned, looked dismayed into her empty wineglass. She set it in on the floor and stood. "Who wants dessert?"
A rush for the kitchen, the girls elbowing Tony as he pretended to hold them back. Kevin drooped an arm around Eileen and snuck in a kiss as the others raced down the hall, Peter trailing after them. Only Brendan remained sitting on the floor, staring at the empty TV screen. After a minute, he turned and reached for Eileen's empty wineglass; then angled around the couch until he found the half-empty bottle of sémillon. He poured some into his glass and drank it, slowly but steadily. Then he refilled the glass and drank again, and then a third time, until the bottle was empty.
"Mm."
For a minute he sat, feeling the muffled rush that came when he drank too quickly: like pressing a pillow over his face and jumping from the top bunk when he was a kid. Doing that always made his head ache, eventually, just like drinking did.
But not yet. Brendan got to his feet, feeling purposeful, perfectly focused, and walked down the hall. Away from the kitchen, to the huge back room where his cousin had set up a pool table and wide-screen TV, sofas and club chairs and the small liquor cabinet Eileen insisted on keeping for guests and clients.
Tony had wandered off as well, looking for the bathroom. He finally found it, a room bigger than any living room he'd ever had. More furniture, too, including a bookcase that contained reprints of vintage comic books. He got so caught up in Namor the Sub-Mariner that it wasn't until his Pokemon watch beeped six o'clock that he realized he'd been in there for half an hour.
"Damn."
He shoved the Sub-Mariner under his arm and hurried back to join the others in the kitchen.
The children had gone out onto the deck to eat. A floodlight cast a weird movie-set glow over them: the twins' hair pumpkin-orange, Peter's rubber duck a blob of yellow paint beside his elbow. Cara and Caitlin sat side by side at the picnic table, sharing a fluffy pink blanket against the November chill. Peter was on the other bench, alone, picking at apple pie and rocking slowly back and forth. Inside, Eileen had dimmed the kitchen lights and brought candles in from the dining room. It took a minute for Tony's eyes to adjust to the odd patchwork of light and shadow, the surreally bright window framing the children so that they looked like a film running behind their silent, candle-lit parents.