Cousin Gerald

Cousin Gerald

By Laura McHale Holland

We had no idea how clueless our cousin Gerald was.

When I was a girl of seven, my boring cousin Gerald graduated from high school, joined the phone company (there was only one back then), married his girlfriend, Pauline, and started a family.

Decades later, we lived thousands of miles apart, and Gerald, now a lumbering dad of five, wrote that he had something important to tell me—in person. He planned to visit my sisters, too, sharing his news with us one by one.

What could good old Gerald have to say? I wondered. Hoping for a juicy family secret, I welcomed his arrival.

In my living room, after long pauses between small talk, he said he planned to retire soon and leave Pauline.

"That's too bad," I said, "after all these years."

"No," he replied. "I'll be free. I can marry again."

"You could, I guess."

"I want to marry one of you girls."

"You mean my sisters and me?" I repressed a laugh.

"Any one of you would do. It doesn't matter. It's legal, you know. Our fathers were half brothers so it's legal. I researched it. It would be okay."

"Okay for you, maybe," I muttered before asking if he'd like a ginger ale for the road.

My sisters and I realized cousin Gerald wasn't boring like we'd thought. He was demented. Not long after, I opened a letter from Pauline. Two weeks shy of retirement, cousin Gerald died in his sleep. He left his wife, just not in the way he'd planned.