Close Relations

Close Relations Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: Close Relations Read Online Free PDF
Author: Susan Isaacs
Women accepted his suffocating embraces, pulling their lips inside their mouths so as not to smear lipstick on his shirt. Men fought not to wince as Uncle Julius shook their hands and squashed their knuckles. Did you ring his bell, collecting for Cystic Fibrosis or the Heart Fund? He’d bellow a “hi, sweetheart” and tear off a fast twenty or two from his roll of bills and stuff it into your hand. Was your son having trouble getting into medical school? Don’t worry, Dave, I’ll speak to a couple of people. Uncle Julius, apolitical, not even registered to vote, understood power. In Jamaica Estates, he was a mover, a doer. And he demanded no quid pro quo, although obviously, if he had managed to get your semiliterate daughter a summer job at the local library, you bought your lynx at Julius Lindenbaum Fine Furs Ltd. when the leaves began to fall.
    “How is Barbara?” I asked him. His daughter, my cousin, was six months older than I.
    My Aunt Estelle glided up behind me and answered. “She’s fine, darling. Just finishing a diet with a special metabolism doctor on Fifth Avenue, near the Guggenheim Museum. How are you?” Like my mother, she wore brown, but hers was a tissuey wool, finely tailored with a soft pleated skirt and high collar. It flattered her short body; she looked rich and well turned out, like an expensive roast.
    “I’m fine, thanks.” My aunt leaned her head to the left, offering me her right cheek to kiss. I did so.
    “Now,” she said, lowering herself into a straight-backed chair that was upholstered in a creamy silk, “tell me what happened today.” Her pale, fleshy arms rested on the carved mahogany ones of the chair. She was a queen granting an audience.
    “Well, some woman offered him a knish—”
    “And he took it, just like that?”
    “Yes. I mean, it was an impulsive gesture.”
    “It never occurred to him that she could be a Red China spy with poison?” My mother and uncle simultaneously pursed their lips in thoughtful expressions and, separately, nodded at my aunt’s sophisticated insight.
    “Well, the woman looked ordinary.”
    “How did they know it’s a knish? You turn on the radio in the kitchen and all you hear is knish, knish. It was probably one of those square cocktail egg rolls, full of shrimp and all those vegetables they use and God knows what other dreck.”
    “Aunt Estelle, it looked like a knish to me.”
    “Darling, have you ever heard of anyone choking to death on a knish?”
    In my family, caprice always triumphed over logic, opinion slaughtered fact. Normal conversation was impossible because all rules of reasonable discourse were suspended. I found a five-minute discussion of my vacation plans more exhausting than a month’s worth of intense political campaigning.
    Maybe it’s universal and there’s dementia released whenever two people from the same gene pool meet. I’ve rarely seen anyone who didn’t look paler returning from a family gathering than leaving for it.
    “Aunt Estelle, let me explain what I saw.”
    “Later, Marcia darling. It’s so upsetting. Come over here and let me see that necklace.”
    I walked across the thick, spongy carpet and bent toward her.
    “What a sweet locket,” she said, peering closely for a thorough inspection. “Is it new?”
    “Jerry gave it to me. For Christmas.”
    Silence. Sorry, my fault. My mother glanced down at the buff-colored carpet, ashamed. Uncle Julius stuck his paws in his pockets.
    “Would you like to hear some more about this afternoon?” I offered. “About Gresham? I was only about ten feet…”
    But Aunt Estelle endured. “Let me see it,” she cooed, lifting the dainty heart. “How nice. Did he pick it out himself?”
    “Yes,” I snapped. I didn’t know what she had planned, but sensed it couldn’t be good.
    “Real gold?”
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t think so, darling. I mean, I’m sure he paid for real gold but I think it’s electroplated.” She rubbed it between her fingers
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