Growing Up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Fiction About Learning to Be American Read Online Free PDF Page A

done. He was always on the hook for something. They never thought his time was important. They never thought every favor he got was one he had to pay back. Appliances, records, watches, china, opera tickets, any goddamn thing. Call Jack.”
    “It was a matter of pride to him to be able to do things for them,” I said. “To have connections.”
    “Yeah, I wonder why,” my brother said. He looked out the window.
    Then suddently it dawned on me that I was being implicated.
    “You should use your head more,” my brother said.

    Yet I had agreed once again to write a letter from the desert and so I did. I mailed it off to Aunt Frances. A few days later, when I came home from school, I thought I saw her sitting in her car in front of our house. She drove a black Buick Road-master, a very large clean car with whitewall tires. It was Aunt Frances all right. She blew the horn when she saw me. I went over and leaned in at the window.
    “Hello, Jonathan,” she said. “I haven’t long. Can you get in the car?”
    “Mom’s not home,” I said. “She’s working.”
    “I know that. I came to talk to you.”
    “Would you like to come upstairs?”
    “I can’t, I have to get back to Larchmont. Can you get in for a moment, please?”
    I got in the car. My Aunt Frances was a very pretty white-haired woman, very elegant, and she wore tasteful clothes. I had always liked her and from the time I was a child she had enjoyed pointing out to everyone that I looked more like her son than Jack’s. She wore white gloves and held the steering wheel and looked straight ahead as she talked, as if the car was in traffic and not sitting at the curb.
    “Jonathan,” she said, “there is your letter on the seat. Needless to say I didn’t read it to Grandma. I’m giving it back to you and I won’t ever say a word to anyone. This is just between us. I never expected cruelty from you. I never thought you were capable of doing something so deliberately cruel and perverse.”
    I said nothing.
    “Your mother has very bitter feelings and now I see she has poisoned you with them. She has always resented the family. She is a very strong-willed, selfish person.”
    “No she isn’t,” I said.
    “I wouldn’t expect you to agree. She drove poor Jack crazywith her demands. She always had the highest aspirations and he could never fulfill them to her satisfaction. When he still had his store he kept your mother’s brother, who drank, on salary. After the war when he began to make a little money he had to buy Ruth a mink jacket because she was so desperate to have one. He had debts to pay but she wanted a mink. He was a very special person, my brother, he should have accomplished something special, but he loved your mother and devoted his life to her. And all she ever thought about was keeping up with the Joneses.”
    I watched the traffic going up the Grand Concourse. A bunch of kids were waiting at the bus stop at the corner. They had put their books on the ground and were horsing around.
    “I’m sorry I have to descend to this,” Aunt Frances said. “I don’t like talking about people this way. If I have nothing good to say about someone, I’d rather not say anything. How is Harold?”
    “Fine.”
    “Did he help you write this marvelous letter?”
    “No.”
    After a moment she said more softly: “How are you all getting along?”
    “Fine.”
    “I would invite you up for Passover if I thought your mother would accept.”
    I didn’t answer.
    She turned on the engine. “I’ll say good-bye now, Jonathan. Take your letter. I hope you give some time to thinking about what you’ve done.”
    That evening when my mother came home from work I saw that she wasn’t as pretty as my Aunt Frances. I usually thought my mother was a good-looking woman, but I saw now that she was too heavy and that her hair was undistinguished.
    “Why are you looking at me?” she said.
    “I’m not.”
    “I learned something interesting today,” my mother