Family Man

My mother invited her estranged brother to our house on Long Island when I was six years old. I remember pink rhododendron, a white dress with yellow flowers. I remember the not-unpleasant sense that something important was happening. But I don’t remember my uncle himself or the specifics of that day. I assume we all had dinner together. What did we talk about? Was there dessert? I later learned that as my parents were going to bed, after what must have been a long evening, he asked for wine and my mother told him to help himself to whatever he wanted—aside from one special bottle in the basement that they were saving; it had been a wedding present. He drank that bottle. We never saw him again.

Doesn’t this story sound improbable? When I’ve said as much to my parents