That Particular Sunday
Image by BOM KIM, via Pexels There are times when a family has an aura of completion. Remembering such a time feels like gazing at a masterpiece in an art gallery. You might find yourself taking one or two steps backward to absorb the harmonious perfection of the entire image. Or you may be lured by it, drawn to it, inching closer to study every fine detail of composition, the faultless poise with which each element confirms the necessary presence of the others. Take the figure of the son, who hurtles into the foreground of the picture, claiming his position in a web of femaleness, affixing himself to the very center of its adhesive heart, because he belongs there, or so he believes with the wild unblemished certainty of a boy’s imagination. Like everything else in the image, he never changes. Yes, that is my mother, his presence announces. And those are my aunts, he seems to say. And this — of the girl closest to him, her expression as breathless as his own — this is my cousin. My companion. My closest friend. Her soul is the identical twin of mine. The absence of the father doesn’t matter one bit. The absence of the siblings doesn’t matter much either, even though the son will love them hopelessly. Recklessly. They belong to a different elsewhere, a time yet to come, with another father to come, and the circumstances of their lives will frenzy the family, purpling it, cloying it until it is spoiled. Then it will be no different from any ordinary clan. Unpleasant to regard. An eyesore.
The apartment building is now in a state of ruin. Last month, on a Sunday too recent to be called the past, my cousin Mary stood with me on Adelphi Street, in front of the place where my mother and I lived when I was a boy. It was a brisk autumn Sunday, unusually seasonal, the afternoon bleared by a thick, dun blanket of cloud, by the livid shadows of new high-rises.
Mary’s infant daughter, comically bundled, stirred in the stroller, chaotic even in her sleep.
“Come on,” I repeated.
“Do we have to?” she asked. “It’s so silly.”
“I’ll beg, you know I will. Don’t make me do it.”
“Fine,” Mary said. “Let’s just get it over with. Lord knows I don’t want you to sound any more pathetic than you already do.”
On the count of three we sang together, the way we used to on Sundays, literally music to my ears: “Four-B, that’s me!”
Mary frowned and shook her head. “I don’t know why you’re grinning,” she said. “I really don’t. We sound awful.”
I laughed at her.
“Well we do. Like a couple of strays in heat.”
“Two cats, caterwauling,” I said, indulging myself.
“And the song — if that’s what you want to call it — it’s so embarrassing. It’s just . . . a nothing. Less than nothing.
Is that all we could come up with?”
“We were children.”
“Oh, were we?” she teased. “Like that justifies it. We must have been two of the dumbest kids who have ever lived. I pray Nina doesn’t take after me, if that’s the case. And if that’s the case, that means you might be a bad influence. So maybe it turns out to be a good thing that my baby’s grown cousin, who claims to love me, and who has all the time in the world, makes absolutely zero effort to spend time with her, much less help out.”
“Grown going on geriatric.”
“That’s your excuse? What, you have some infirmity I don’t know about? What is it, arthritis? Dementia?”
“I don’t know,” I said lazily, lawlessly. Underneath the canopy of the stroller, the baby continued to dream. Her sinister little fists contracted, two knots spasming at the ends of her coat sleeves. I looked at the cracked stoop of my old home. The peeling paint on the facade giving it the appearance of scales. “Kids just aren’t very fun at this age,” I found myself muttering. “I didn’t even know you were bringing Nina along.”
“I’ll be bringing Nina along pretty often for the foreseeable future. Doesn’t matter how I or anyone else feels about it. It’s kind of a part of the bargain.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not unhappy to see her. It’s really nice to see
