PAULIE HARDLY KNEW HIS cousins before that first family reunion in the mountainsof North Carolina, and within about three hours he didn't want to know them anybetter. Because his mom was the youngest and she had married late, almost allthe cousins were a lot older than Paulie and he didn't hit it off very well withthe two that were his age, Celie and Deckie.

Celie, the girl cousin, only wanted to talk about her beautiful Arabians and howmuch fun she would have had if her mother had let her bring them up into themountains, to which Paulie finally said, "It would have been a real hoot towatch you get knocked out of the saddle by a low branch," whereupon Celie gavehim her best rich-girl freeze-out look and walked away. Paulie couldn't resistwhinnying as she went.

This happened within about fifteen minutes of Paulie's arrival at the mountaincabin that Aunt Rosie had borrowed from a rich guy in the Virginia DemocraticParty organization who owed her about a thousand big favors, as she liked tobrag. "Let's just say that his road construction business depended on some wordswhispered into the right ears."

When she said that, Paulie was close enough to his parents to hear his fatherwhisper to his mother, "I'll bet the left ears were lying on cheap motel pillowsat the time." Mother jabbed him and Father grinned. Paulie didn't like thenastiness in Father's smile. It was the look that Grappaw always called"Mubbie's shit-eatin' smile." Grappaw was Father's father, and the only livingsoul who dared to call Father by that stupid baby nickname. In his mind, though,Paulie liked to think of Father that way. Mubbie Mubbie Mubbie.

Late in the afternoon Uncle Howie and Aunt Sissie showed up, driving a BMW andlaughing about how much it would cost to get rid of the scratches from theunderbrush that crowded the dirt road to the cabin. They always laughed whenthey talked about how much things cost; Mubbie said that was because laughingmade people think they didn't care. "But they're always talking about it, youcan bet." It was true. They hadn't been five minutes out of the car before theywere talking about how expensive their trip to Bermuda had been ha-ha-ha and howmuch it was costing to put little Deckie into the finest prep school in Atlantaha-ha-ha and how the boat salesmen insisted on calling thirty-footers "yachts"so they could triple the price but you just have to grit your teeth and paytheir thieves' toll ha-ha-ha like the three billy goats gruff ha-ha-ha.

Then they went on about how their two older children were so busy at Harvard andsome Wall Street firm that they just couldn't tear themselves away but theybrought Deckie their little accident ha-ha-ha and they just bet that he andPaulie would be good friends.

Deckie was suntanned to the edge of skin cancer, so Paulie's first words to himwere, "What, are you trying to be black?"

"I play tennis."

"Under a sunlamp?"

"I tan real dark." Deckie looked faintly bored, as though he had to answer thesestupid questions all the time but he had been raised to be polite.

"Deckie? What's that short for? Or are you named after the floor on a yacht?"Paulie thought he was joking, like old friends joke with each other, but Deckieseemed to take umbrage.

"Deckie is short for Derek. My friends call me Deck."

"Are you sure they aren't calling you duck?" Paulie laughed and then wished hehadn't. Deckie's eyes glazed over and he began looking toward the house. Pauliedidn't want him to walk off the way Celie had. Deckie was two years older thanPaulie, and it was the important two years. Puberty had put about a foot ofheight on him and he was lean and athletic and his moves were languid and Pauliewanted more than anything to be just like Deckie instead of being amedium-height medium-strong medium-smart freckled twelve-year-old nothing.

So naturally he tried to cover up his stupid duck joke with an even lamer one."Have you noticed how everybody in the family has a nickname that ends with ie?"Paulie said. "They might as well hyphenate that into the family name. You'd beDeck Ie-Bride, and Celie would be Ceel Ie-Caswell."

Deckie smiled faintly. "And you'd be Paul Ie-Asshole."

Paulie stood there blushing, flustered, until he finally realized that this wasnot a friendly joke, this was Deckie letting him know that he didn't exist. SoPaulie turned and walked away from Deckie. Did Celie feel like this when shewalked away from me? If she did then I'm a rotten shit to make somebody elsefeel like this. Why can't I just keep my mouth shut? Other people keep theirmouths shut.

Later he saw Deckie and Celie hanging around together, laughing until tears randown Celie's face. He knew they were talking about him. Or if they weren't theymight as well be. That was the kind of laughter that never included Paulie, notat school, not at home, not here at this stupid family reunion in this stupidforty-room mansion that some stupid rich person called a "cabin." Wheneverpeople laughed in real friendship, close to each other, bound by affection ormutual respect or whatever it was, Paulie felt it like a knife in his heart. Notbecause he was particularly lonely. He liked being alone and other people madehim nervous so it wasn't like he suffered. It hurt him because it was exactlythe way people were with Mubbie. Nobody liked him and he still kept joking withthem as if they were friends, even Mother, she didn't like him either, any idiotcould see that, they were probably staying together for the sake of "the child,"which was Paulie of course. Or rather Mother was staying for Paulie's sake, andMubbie was staying for Mother's money, which was always useful for tiding himover between sales jobs, which Mubbie always joked his way into losing afterhaving piled up an impressive record of lost sales and mishandled contracts. I'mjust like him, Paulie thought. I joke like him, I make enemies like him, peoplesneer at me behind my back the way they do with him, only I'm not even studlyenough to get a rich babe like Mom to bail me through all the screw-ups that lieahead of me in life.

If I could just learn to keep my mouth shut.

He even tried it for the next couple of hours, being absolutely silent, sayingnothing to anybody. But of course the moment he wanted to shut up, that was whenall the aunts and uncles and the older cousins had to come up and pretend tocare about him. No doubt Mother had noticed that Paulie was by himself and toldthem to go include Paulie. People did what Mother said, even her older brothersand sisters. She just had a way of making suggestions that people startedfollowing before they even had a chance to think about whether they wanted to.So when Paulie tried to get by with nods and smiles, he kept hearing, "Cat gotyour tongue?" and "You can't be that shy" and even "You got something youshouldn't in your mouth, boy?" to which Paulie thought of about five funnyanswers, one of which wasn't even obscene, but at least he managed not to saythem out loud and completely scandalize everybody and make himself thehumiliated goat of the whole reunion, with Mother apologizing to everybody andsaying, "I can assure you he wasn't raised that way," so that everybodyunderstood that he got his ugly way of talking from Mubbie's side of the family.Of course, Mother would no doubt end up saying that sometime before the week wasover, but maybe Paulie would get through the first day without having to hearit.

Dinner was bad. The dining room table was huge, but not big enough foreverybody. Naturally, they had to have Nana, Mother's grandmother, at the table,even though she was so gaga that she had to be spoonfed some poisonously blandgruel and never seemed to understand anything going on around her. Why didn'tthey send her to the second table with the little children of some of the oldercousins, nasty little brats with no manners at all and a way of whining thatmade Paulie want to insert silverware really far down their throats? But no,that was Paulie's place.