Elijah is thirty years old and standing in a backyard watching fifteen or so nine-year-old girls attempt to beat the crap out of a pony piñata. They'd probably have better luck with it if only they'd stop shrieking with laughter, but he knows this is not likely to happen.

There isn’t much else to do but watch the girls swing and miss. There are only three crowds to mingle with at this particular birthday party: relatives of the birthday girl, said birthday girl and her friends, and finally parents of the guests that have stayed to help out. This last group is divided between women standing around in khaki shorts and brown tinted sunglasses, and men standing around in khaki shorts and poking at things on the grill.

Elijah is not in khaki shorts, but jeans. Jeans, old sneakers and an old dress shirt over a white tee. He's dressed too young, and to most of the adults here he is too young. He tries very hard not feel out of place. He stands by the girl's uncle and they watch in silence as the pony gets whacked repeatedly, swinging away from each blow, dented and maimed but never broken. The girls shriek each time the poor thing is hit, wanting it to be the 'big one' and then laugh when it proves to be another false alarm.

The pony's nose has been bashed in and one leg is about to go. There is a brief pause in the carnage as the girls switch turns, the birthday girl takes hers now that the pony has been sufficiently softened up.

"This is pretty brutal," Elijah says.

And Mack chuckles once through his nose, looking over at Elijah. "After seeing this I'm thinking that they should have made Lord of the Flies about girls."

He considers it, "Nah, would have been a bit too terrifying."

Lizzy holds the piñata whacking stick (Elijah tried to find a better term, but that was the best he could come up with) and Sean, who has been pulling on the rope the entire time, goes easy on her.

The girls, their parents, and assembled relatives clap and shout random bits of encouragement for Lizzy. It looks like she’s taking it all quite seriously. She holds her stick straight up, lifts all the way behind her head, and puts the full force of her sixty-pound little body into it. It's a killing blow, she takes the leg off and the piñata rains down its candy and confetti glory.

The shrieking goes up a notch as they grab with small greedy hands the candy and plastic toys. The adults all act properly impressed.

Elijah leans over while still clapping, "Do Lizzy's birthday parties always end in violence?"

Mack laughs, and as usual seems vaguely self-conscious about it. "Mm, just since elementary school."

They go quiet again, not having much to say.

This is the first birthday Elijah has ever attended. Everyone seems to know what comes next and what to do. All the parents stand in their tight-knit, secretive circles, clutching their adult refreshments and gossiping about people Elijah doesn't know.

"Did you know," he hears one woman say in an urgent, excited whisper. "Mary and Mike Kelly had to have the police over last week?"

Elijah knows that he and Sean were once a "did you know." And if they still are, the others are doing a passable job at being subtle. He looks over at Sean, who is laughing and telling the girls to be nice about divvying up the prizes. Sean notices that he is being watched and smiles at Elijah.

Elijah smiles determinedly back.

"Pretty soon you're going to be looking for every way out of having to come to these," Mack tells him.

Elijah shrugs, "It's not like I was begging to come." He is not here under duress, but neither is he here out of any deep personal desire. "Really, I'm here for Sean."

Mack looks off at the girls, nodding absently, "You and me both."

Elijah can sense that this is true, that they are somehow outside of the party. He supposes it isn't surprising that the two men who have never had a wife and children have formed an alliance of passive observation in the corner of the yard.

Now that all the girls have their hot little hands on some toy or bit of candy, it is present time. The hope is that now that each of them has a prize they will be less jealous of Lizzy as she works through the small pastel mountain of gifts beside the birthday cake. She tries to go for the biggest first, but is quickly routed to the smaller gifts by Christine.

The stack of unwrapped toys begins to pile up, most of the boxes pink, dolls behind plastic and stuffed animals with small, black eyes, electronic trinkets that serve no real purpose. Christine announces who each gift is from so that every child and relative can be personally thanked. Lizzy to her credit seems to find none of the gifts boring or confusing, she thanks everyone sincerely.

"This is from Elijah," Christine says eventually, nothing different in the sound of her voice, but maybe she told Lizzy a little more directly this time.

All adult eyes flit to him and linger, but Elijah looks at Lizzy.

She glances at him bashfully under her lashes and looks down at her present. Sean's youngest daughter has always been noticeably shy of him. Unlike Ali there was never a time when Lizzy called him uncle, no New Zealand where he watched her grow an entire two inches, no three years of subsequent premieres where they might have played games during the long waits.

Lizzy opens the gifts like all the others, but Elijah finds himself feeling strangely apprehensive. He has no idea what this little girl thinks of him, no idea what Sean has told her. He knows his gifts have been erratic, late some years, altogether absent others, bad years when he thought he could not do this.

"Hey look at that!" Sean says as Lizzy pulls off the last bit of paper. He knows exactly what it is of course, having helped Elijah wrap it earlier.

It is a small dollhouse bought with Sean's advice and Hannah's reminiscing on her favorite toy as a child. Ali and Lizzy are quiet girls at heart, readers and thinkers who do well in school. Whereas Ali had some strange mix of pragmatism and rebellion, Lizzy is a straight daydreamer, the kind of girl who when playing with dolls is less concerned with dressing dolls up than giving them a story to act out.

The other girls come up to look at it, bending down with hands on their knees. "Oh, Lizzy! There's a little kitchen, and a bathroom, and a fireplace," one tells her.

The little wooden house is painted up like an old Victorian mansion. Lizzy likes small, well-made things, Sean has told him, and will spend quiet hours fiddling with music boxes, or her mother's jewelry. There is tiny wooden furniture to arrange, tables and chairs, beds and nightstands, little cloth rugs, a little porcelain bathtub, all the things a house needs. A perfect little family came with it as well, mother, father, a little girl and boy, and a dog. The irony of this is not lost on Elijah.

Lizzy is still fingering things with mute fascination, nodding to the other girls as they say things for her. Christine bends down next to Lizzy and says, "Thank Elijah, honey."

She looks at him, and to the gift, making some connection or final assessment. "Thank you," her smile is missing three teeth, two up top and one on the bottom.

Elijah smiles softly, not showing the gap in his own teeth. "Happy birthday, sweetheart."

Other gifts are opened and Elijah suddenly desperately wants a cigarette. Five minutes to himself and some deep breathing. He watches Sean giving his gifts, largely promissory. "Pick any day this week and..." though of course, he has gotten her a fair number of toys.

Lizzy wraps her small, soft arms around her father's neck and Elijah feels a twist he knew to expect. There's some ache that comes from knowing how much Sean loves his daughters.

The great climax of the presents is done, and everyone looks to the cake expectantly. While Sean takes armfuls of gifts into the house, Christine handles the business of the cake. She and the mom brigade have an assembly line of cake cutters, plate distributors, and a woman insisting every child take a napkin.

Sean comes up to Elijah for the first time since they got here. Elijah finds himself not quite sure what to do. In Hollywood, he and Sean are not so much a secret but a thing not talked about. He does not know what they are here. The strangers are bad enough, but this is in plain sight of Christine.

Sean touches his lips to Elijah's temple, discreet but sincere. "Lizzy loved it."

Elijah finds an almost entirely genuine smile on his face, "Hannah said it's one of those things girls tend to forget they want."

"From the looks on the other girls' faces, it would seem so." Sean is speaking to him but his mind is elsewhere, he is flush from having a chance to be a good dad for a day.

Elijah smiles and touches his fingers to Sean’s elbow. Sean watches his daughter a moment and then swings his gaze back to Elijah. “I’m glad you’re here. I know it’s not the ideal way to spend a weekend, but thank you.”

Elijah is not glad to be here and this is mostly because he doesn’t really know why he is here. Lizzy has been thoroughly insulated from him by the gaggle of girls around her. He’s talked to no one there but Mack and Sean, and Christine and her friends are giving him a wide berth. He feels cranky and superfluous, but does his best to help Sean continue not to notice.

"Don’t fuss, Sean.” He nudges Sean with his shoulder, “It’s fine.”

“I know. It’s just, I know it isn’t easy, yet, but it will be.” Sean’s face cannot help but be earnest, something Elijah has always found endearing. He does his best to believe with Sean.

They are quiet for a moment, before Christine motions Sean over for a photo of her, his daughter and the cake.

“You want a piece, Lij?”

Elijah shakes his head, “Not really.” He’s always thought the icing on store-bought birthday cakes tasted funny.

Sean steps away still smiling, “Your loss. As for me, it’s time for my bi-yearly indulgence in super-refined white flour.” Elijah waves his hand dismissively. Unlike Sean, he refuses to acknowledge anything about carbs, and has recently begun to refuse to acknowledge that he might need to.

He watches Sean jog over to his ex-wife and daughter. They stand together while a parent snaps a picture. "I know you like to have your cake and eat it, too,” he says to himself, feeling very clever and unpleasant.

It feels strange to linger as the other guests make there way out. Mack claps Elijah on the back, and there’s an apologetic smile on his face. “I’d stay to keep you company -“

“Well, I wouldn’t.” Elijah says, nudging him away. He smiles. “Leave. Go have a beer and swear and scratch some place inappropriate. Do it for those who can’t, Mack.”

Mack laughs his self-conscious laugh, ducks his head and shrugs. “Hey, only if it makes you happy, you know?”

Mack is entirely too deferential, a trait Elijah tends to find annoying, but annoying in the endearing sort of way that anything Sean does that qualifies as “a habit” can be. Mack’s departure serves as the cue for the two of Sean’s step brothers that could make it to leave as well.

That was probably the trouble with this whole party, he decides. Too many family friends, not enough family, and Elijah now knows he likes Sean’s family so much more than his family friends. Sean’s family tends to run on the nuttier side of suburbia, crazy in that refined way of Old Hollywood, but the parents of Lizzy’s schoolmates, the neighbors all seem to be so perfectly put together.

When all the other guests have left, and Elijah sits on the couch while Sean and Christine put the house back to order. While his ex-wife does the dishes, Sean sits on the floor with a screw driver and a pile of batteries trying to assemble whatever toys have “some assembly required.”

Elijah would offer to help but doesn't, feeling somehow he has no right to interfere with the upkeep of this house.

He thought of the house as Christine’s now, but in reality it is Sean's. Sean’s name was put on the deed when he bought it, years ago when he and Christine were still married, and thought about the long term and making good investments. They chose a big, white house in an excellent neighborhood, an enviable school district. Ali had friends across the street, Lizzy played soccer every Saturday in the community’s park with the other neighborhood girls.

He bought it with the bonus money from Rings, lived here for two years and went to visit Elijah in New York on a whim. And when he came home it was only so he could leave. He left his house, left Christine because she wouldn't have him, left the girls with her because he thought that was the best thing to do. But he refused to sell the house after the divorce; this was still the place he wanted his daughters to grow up. Christine fought it, wanting to move, wanting a new start, but acquiesced when Ali threw a tantrum any time she heard something about moving.

"Ali," Christine says, her voice coming from the kitchen, high and strong.

Her daughter is upstairs, and comes to shout down while hanging over the rail. "What?"

"Honey, go get the rake from the garage and rake up all that confetti and junk in the backyard? I don't want the dogs getting into it."

She sighs and her knees seem to buckle under the inconvenience of this task. "Right now?"

"Sooner you start, the sooner it's over."

She sighs again in exasperation and her heavy feet on the stairs let everyone know that she is not pleased. Elijah lets his head fall back against the couch. The living room ceiling is two stories high, a white wall meeting a white ceiling, no variation at all except in texture. He feels strangely dwarfed by the architecture and closes his eyes, listening to the plates clink and the long pauses between Sean’s frustrated muttering. The garage door slams suddenly, and Elijah opens his eyes. A moment later it is opened and closed loudly, and soon after the backdoor slams, too. Ali is as subtle as her father.

He left Sean because of this house, because of the bitter taste that came with knowing that Sean’s family would always come first and the Christine would always be a part of it. Some part of him knows this is as it should be. Still, he hated every holiday, going alone to his mother’s while Sean came here to play house.

“The girls need me there. It wouldn’t be fair to them to miss this.”

And Elijah knew that. But he wanted to know why Christine hadn’t married again, too. And where Sean considered his home to be, the house he shared (for the most part) with Elijah, or this place?

“I don’t want to keep you from your family.”

He left Sean in a melodramatic huff and was strangely pleased with himself. His relationships had never worked before and why should they now? He went back to New York, and told himself he wanted a life more simple and straightforward. He found that he was out of practice with living alone.

“You can’t keep me from my family, Elijah. I just. I wish you’d be a part of it.”

Elijah hadn’t fully realized that Sean isn’t the kind of person to give up love very easily. Most people would have never spoken to their mothers again after the kind of childhood Sean had, but he spent years trying to figure her out, to make his peace with it. After the divorce, he worked doggedly at shaping his relationship with Christine back into something healthy. To this day he insisted that she was still a good friend. Elijah vehemently opposed to the idea of “staying friends,” but Sean would not let him just disappear. Sean had Elijah back within the space of a year.

“Sean… I wanna come home.”

So he is back in California and back with Sean. It is annoying how few people thought that it was really the end of them, but he has been pleasantly surprised at Sean’s capacity to trust and to forgive.

“I think it would be a good idea to come to Lizzy’s birthday party this Saturday.”

And he has come, and so far has felt no different at all.

Elijah decides that he’s had quite enough of this house. He goes outside for a smoke, checking to see that Christine and Sean are properly occupied before slipping out to the backyard. The girls are probably upstairs. Between the fence and the west side of the house is a strip of lawn that serves no purpose but to hide the air conditioning unit. It’s the perfect place to smoke when you don’t want to get caught.

And Elijah is apparently not the only one who knows this. He turns the corner to see someone standing there, flicking on a lighter and lifting it to a cigarette pressed between tight lips.

“Ali!” Elijah shouts, without really thinking. He lowers his voice, “What are you doing?”

She freezes, lighter poised to touch the end of the cigarette. Her eyes are wide and rimmed with thick eyeliner as she stares up at Elijah. After a moment, she sighs and lights her cigarette. “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me.”

“I should hope so.” Elijah takes her shoulder and steers her further away from any windows. He puts his hands in his pockets, feeling his pack and lighter but suddenly feeling weird about it. He bites back a swear. “Your dad is going to kill me if he finds out.”

“Why would he be mad at you? What do you have to do with this?” She takes a fairly practiced drag, but when she exhales the smoke drifts into Elijah’s face. “Sorry.”

Elijah waves the smoke away, “I don’t know. He just would. He’s not always rational about the smoking thing, you know. Just to warn you.”

He takes out a clove, and lights it quickly. “Aren’t you a little young to have picked up a bad habit already? I mean, you’re like fifteen.”

“Fourteen,” she corrects. “And anyway, when did you start?”

“Sixteen, thanks,” Elijah says with a raised eyebrow. “And it wasn’t so much an act of rebellion as social smoking gone horribly awry.” He pulls in a deep inhale, “And that is what you’re doing, you know. Rebelling. But that’s good ‘cause it means you’ll quit eventually.”

She rolls her eyes at him, like she’s being told to build character or take out the trash.

“Anyway,” Elijah says after a pause. “Whatever you do, do not get caught. Cause if he finds out he’s probably going to finally make me quit.”

“I won’t get caught,” she says, snappish.

She looks away from his face, and for a brief moment Elijah misses the days when Ali was a little girl of two or three. He was better able to handle her then, and he liked it when he would go over to Sean’s house in New Zealand, his hotel room in some premiere city and she would exclaim, “Uncle Elijah!” like he was the best surprise.

He has no idea what to do with an Ali that smokes, an Ali that doesn’t seem to want him around. “What did you think of the party?” he asks lamely.

She shrugs. “It was okay. Not too thrilled about having to stay at home all day today, but yeah.”

Elijah purses his lips, that wasn’t exactly what he meant. “Did you mind that I was here today?”

She smokes instead of reacting, finally she shrugs again and shakes her head. “Not really. I mean, I don’t know why you’re just… suddenly coming to these things, but I’m not like, angry or anything.”

Glowing praise, indeed. Elijah sighs and thinks again of the little girl he knew. “You used to call me uncle.”

“No offense,” Ali says very quickly. “But you’re not my uncle. And anyway, I have enough uncles.” Between Sean’s extended family and Christine’s, Ali has six.

“What do you wish I was then?”

A sullen shrug is his only answer.

He presses his lips together against a sigh. “Sean wants me to be a part of the family.”

“Is that what you want to be?”

He shrugs, “If I can be. But I don’t know what role to take anymore. I used to be Uncle Elijah, and then-“

“You stopped coming around.” She says this in an entirely neutral tone.

Elijah nods and takes a short, deep drag, smoking for nerves now. “What role am I supposed to take if I’m not Uncle Elijah anymore? I’m not a stepparent. I don’t want to be a stepparent.”

This seems to amuse Ali, “I wouldn’t worry about that.”

Elijah’s not sure what she means by this and does not respond. There’s a lull in the conversation while they finish their cigarettes.

Ali looks at him for a moment, and Elijah does her a courtesy by pretending not to notice. “You don’t need a ‘role’ anyway. I don’t mind what you already are.”

Elijah tests her. “The fag who took away your dad?”

She is taken clearly aback, but attempts not to show it. “I doesn’t bother me that he’s gay.”

He shakes his head, laughing. “Oh he’d hate to hear you say that.”

“Why?” She seems genuinely confused. “I mean. He’s never hid it from us. I mean, he’s never said it. But we sort of knew. About you.”

No, of course, not. It’s not in Sean’s nature to hide things. His secrets are few and far between, and usually short lived. “It’s just so retroactive,” he says, trying to explain. “Like what he had with your mother wasn’t real.”

She says nothing for a while, but Elijah waits. Ali is so bad at hiding her emotions, Elijah can even tell that she is trying to hide them. Eventually, she admits, “It’s a little easier to think it of it the other way.”

He nods, and thinks of his presence here. “I’m sorry.”

She takes a deep breath and shrugs. “It’s fine either way. It’s not keeping me up at night.”

Maybe. “Is it why you’re out here smoking?”

She rolls her eyes at him again, “Yeah, that’s it. Sometimes I feel like the only kid in the world whose parents got divorced.” She shakes her head, “Even if they were still together they’d still expect me to be perfect”

Elijah puts up his hands in defense, “Alright, alright. We should get back in.” Ali nods, and as they start towards the door, he asks. “What do you do about the butts?”

“Back in the pack,” she says, doing just that. “And then I throw the whole thing away in the dumpster behind the school.”

“Good, good.” There’s something strangely paternal about this exchange even though it is the opposite of what a good father would say. “And the pack?”

Ali clears her throat, and shrugs a little uncomfortably. “I keep it in an, um, old tampon box. Why?”

“Making sure you don’t get caught, remember?” he asks, nudging her shoulder. “I’m going to quit when I’m good and ready and not because Sean thinks you got the idea from the smell on my jacket.”

She snorts and slides open the back door. Sean had been talking to Christine in the kitchen and both parents seemed surprised to have seen Elijah and Ali come in at the same time. Ali heads toward the garage to put up the rake and Elijah smiles at Sean.

“What do you say, Elijah? Time to go?” Sean asks.

Elijah shrugs at them, and when Christine looks away, nods his head.

Sean takes five minutes to say goodbye to his youngest no matter what the occasion. Elijah stands on the front steps trying not to look impatient to leave, and Christine stands in the foyer waiting to close the front door.

At last there seem to be something final to the way he hugs Lizzy. “I’ll see you in a few days, sweetie.”

She nods and seems to trust this implicitly. “Good-bye, Daddy.”

It seems odd to just leave, and even though Elijah had already said good-bye when Christine first opened the door he says again, “Good-bye, Lizzy. I hope you had a happy birthday.”

She smiles up at him, and says, as she said to all her guests. “Thank you.” For a moment it seems like she has nothing else to say, but quietly she adds, “I like my doll house.”

“I’m glad you do, Lizzy.” He hesitates a little, thinking how awful it would be to have it rejected, but goes down to one knee and holds open his arms. Lizzy is almost too shy to come to him, and Elijah starts to regret being so bold, but she comes to him. He folds his arms lightly around her, “Happy birthday.”

She nods and very quickly hugs him, and breaks away. He stands up again and Christine and Sean say good-bye.

She has begun to shut the door when she says, “Good-bye, Elijah. Thank you for coming, and for a lovely gift.”

“Thank you for having me.”

The door, once closed, makes the house seem suddenly impenetrable. It isn’t until they get in the car that Sean feels entirely his again.

While still in the neighborhood, Sean asks him, “Well, what did you think?”

Elijah shrugs, “It was nice, Sean.” How could it not be nice? It was a kid’s birthday party, a whole afternoon dedicated to making Lizzy feel special. “But I do feel unnecessarily wholesome. We should do something decidedly dirty tonight.”

Sean laughs and pretends to consider it. “Well, if we have to.”

Elijah nods emphatically, “We have to.”

“So…” Sean seems to be broaching the subject carefully. “You think you’ll make this a habit?”

Elijah thinks and about how much closer Christine seemed to Sean today. But also of Lizzy and Ali and there’s a fond feeling no longer only associated with the little girls that called him uncle. “Yeah, I think so.”

Much later, on the highway and halfway home, Sean asks him another question. “Did you figure out what it was you were running from all this time?”

Elijah looks over and tries to gauge the moment. Sean’s voice is not serious, nor forcibly nonchalant. Both eyes are on the road, he hardly seems to be waiting for a response at all.

He does not try to deny that he was ever running. “The usual.”

Sean looks away from traffic for a moment, “And?”

Of course, Sean is angling for the answer he insisted was right all along. “It was silly to run.” For as long as he had felt apart, he had been keeping himself apart.

Sean nods, trying to seem much too sage. “It generally is.”

“Oh and suddenly you’re so wise.” He sits back comfortably and enjoys the smile Sean gives him. “I love you,” he says, and it’s one of those times where he especially means it. A moment later he thinks to add, “And the girls.”

The smile on Sean’s lips fades to something more subtle, becoming just a hint of some real contentment. “I know you do, Elijah. I always knew you did.”

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