Close Relations Read Online Free PDF Page B

fur like fox or coyote. Aunt Estelle explained that in my case “petite” meant short. My mother asked if I wanted my copy of
The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot
or should she donate it to the library because I hadn’t looked at it since college and she needed the space on the bookshelves. Aunt Estelle whispered that her friend Miriam Zackheim’s sister had had a mastectomy and, lowering her voice even more, that a girl who was my age who also went to Queens College was a homosexual and she wouldn’t mention names because she had sworn not to but this had been a nice girl, a sorority girl who had never had any problems meeting boys.
    And two cups of tea and a slice of jelly roll.
    “No fruit, Marcia?”
    “No, thanks, Aunt Estelle.”
    “I ripened the peaches myself. They’re not hard.” I took a peach and was about to bite into it when I heard: “There’s a fruit knife right next to your plate, darling. That little knife with the mother-of-pearl handle.”
    I took a few stabs at the peach and then excused myself, walking back through the central hall toward the bathroom. But on my way I was drawn by Aunt Estelle’s wall of pictures, a floor-to-ceiling gallery of photographs of every relative born since the invention of the camera. Each photo was matted and framed, whether it was a snapshot or a full-fledged portrait, like the one of my cousin Kenny, the littlest Lindenbaum, taken when he received his doctorate from M.I.T. The photographer had airbrushed out Kenny’s acne scars, so he looked quite handsome, like a fat-faced Montgomery Clift. Kenny lived in New Mexico, where he worked as a biophysicist for the army, doing some research that made him terribly nervous. During his annual Passover visit, his left cheek twitched and his hands trembled so that he could barely break a piece of matzoh. He was not his parents’ favorite.
    There were other pictures too: Grandma Yetta cuddling baby Estelle while three-year-old Hilda stared at the floor, her toddler shoulders slumping wearily; Uncle Julius as a boy in Bensonhurst, slouching, trying to look cool and American. And Cousin Helen in her middy blouse, waving; Great-aunt Bertha, whose breasts were so huge, like two giant knackwursts, that her belt fit over them; Cousins Morty and Harold, grinning, their eyes obscured by the shadow from the peaks of their Brooklyn Dodger caps. There was even a picture of my parents pushing me in my carriage; I was sitting up but kept in place by a harness that attached to the carriage. I must have been less than a year old. I was bald and unsmiling.
    But most of the photographs were of my cousin Barbara, the finest flowering of the family tree. There was Barbara as a child, pudgy-cheeked, in her Brownie uniform. Barbara on roller skates. Barbara dressed in a pink, gauzy strapless prom gown, a corsage of orchids on her wrist. With a tennis racket. With a bridal gown. With Buckingham Palace behind her. With Philip, her husband, beside her. With Michael and Peter, her sons. And again with tennis racket, this time on her private court.
    On her wedding day, Barbara had turned to me, her matron of honor, and whispered, “Isn’t life wonderful?” I found myself smiling instead of gagging. She had seemed sincere. Barbara had been born happy and lucky. When she smiled, the world beamed back.
    Aunt Estelle somehow wafted into the hallway, landing right beside me. I did not realize she was there until she touched my arm.
    “Marcia,” she said, taking my hand into hers. Her hand was padded and soft, like the softest part of a baby. “Don’t be depressed, darling.” I turned to meet her eyes, but they were gazing at a silver-framed snapshot of her grandsons, dressed in identical blazers and slacks, the uniform of their country day school. “You’ll meet someone right. Your time will come too.”
    It wasn’t until later, on the way home, that I realized I had been so upset with my aunt that I had forgotten to go to the