Close Relations Read Online Free PDF

and let it drop back to my neck. I stood upright. “He probably just walked in off the street. I mean, he doesn’t have a relationship with a jeweler, does he?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Probably not,” she said, smiling again. She turned her head toward my mother. “They leave themselves wide open, unless they can afford to go to Tiffany’s, and then they pay for the name.”
    “Aunt Estelle—”
    “I’m sure he means well, Marcia.”
    “He does mean well.”
    “Good, good,” enthused my Uncle Julius, who began pacing the room, trying to escape the inevitable clash.
    “He more than means well. He makes me happy.”
    My aunt looked at my mother and demanded, “What is happiness?” My mother shrugged.
    “Look,” I snapped, “every time we get together it’s the same thing. Can’t you just accept that I’m content?”
    “A minute ago it was happy,” my mother observed.
    “Goddamn it, you refuse even to meet him, to give him the chance—”
    “He wouldn’t feel comfortable here,” my Aunt Estelle said. “Anyway, Marcia, before you lose your temper again, just remember that we don’t like these scenes anymore than you do. But you say you’re happy and what do we see in your life? Nothing. What does this man have to offer you? Marriage? Children?”
    “Where will you be five-ten years from now?” my mother chimed in.
    “Let me do it, Hilda,” my aunt said. “Marcia, he may be very sweet for all I know, but he could wander off to a bar and grill one night and never come back. Did you ever think of that? What would happen to you then?”
    “Nothing would happen. Listen to me, try to understand. I can take care of myself. I’m doing that now. I have a wonderful job, friends—”
    “Friends? Your friends are political people who stab friends in the back for a living.”
    “Aunt Estelle, please—”
    “Taking care of yourself! In an apartment without a doorman where any rapist could walk right in.”
    Uncle Julius refereed. He pulled out an exceedingly large handkerchief and blew his nose.
Honk!
Aunt Estelle rose, said “Dinner,” and gave my cheek two light pats.
    The big rectangular dining room table was covered with a pale linen cloth trimmed with brown lace at each of its four corners. It was nearly obscured by the place settings and the platters and bowls of gold-leafed china, silver, and cut crystal. These serving pieces, as my mother and aunt called them, were filled with the usual Lindenbaum cuisine: rolls and white and rye bread, pot roast and tiny potatoes, kasha and varnishkas. Four thick slabs of stuffed derma steamed under a heavy blanket of flour-thickened pot-roast gravy. My family may have moved up to English bone china, French crystal, and Belgian linen, but in food, good taste remained strictly Eastern European.
    Someone once described Jewish food as a brown cuisine, which is essentially true, although that definition did not allow for the ruby red of borscht or the deep forest green of sour pickles. That night, the table was further accented with a shimmery orange ring—a gelatin mold—and a crimson blaze of pickled peppers on Florentined Wedgwood.
    “Hilda darling, another piece of meat,” my aunt urged. My mother only took one slice of meat at a time, although she’d invariably make two or three return trips. “What will happen now that he’s passed away, Marcia?”
    “Gresham? Well, there will definitely be a primary. You see, the lieutenant governor really has a very narrow political base.”
    “That should be exciting,” my aunt remarked. “Hilda, you’ve hardly eaten anything.”
    “All right, one more,” my mother said, accepting the platter of meat my uncle placed on her uplifted palms.
    “Do you want to hear about what happened this afternoon?” I asked.
    “Later, Marcia,” Aunt Estelle said soothingly. “Not at the dinner table.”
    Conversation did not cease, of course. Uncle Julius volunteered that I was too “petite” for a long-haired