“No. I would have remembered. Because it would have been the first time I ever heard of your cousin Ben.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. I know I wanted to. Reminded myself to tell you, after I met him. Anyway, I hadn’t seen him for ten years, probably more. Maybe not since Catherine’s funeral. And I heard this guy, running from the lobby, yell ‘Hold the elevator. Press the “Door-open” button.’ So I pressed the button and in comes Ben. We were both so surprised we even kissed each other’s cheeks. I was on my way up to see Hector Lewis. Ben then lived in that building. But according to the newspaper, my mother says, he has another address now, or maybe he gave a phony one to the police. But he was on the top floor, Hector on the eighteenth, and Ben said, as we’re going up, ‘Guess what I’ve become in life?’ I said ‘Well, according to Aunt Ruth you went into the dress business, so I suppose you’ve become a millionaire.’ He said ‘A bookie, isn’t that amazing? I hated the guy, but I end up doing just what he did, and I think I’m going to do even better than him.’ Maybe, after taking a beating in the dress business, he took what experience he’d learned just from watching Nate all those years and started taking book, running gaming tables, which I don’t think Nate ever did, and also numbers and stuff, my mother said my cousin Holly told her. Or maybe he was never legit — a word my father like to use — before he became a bookie. I know that as a teenager he was thrown out of a few boarding schools for causing trouble and then in this city got arrested for drunken driving, without a license, but I don’t remember hearing of anything worse.”
“No wonder you never talked about them. Actually, that’s not fair. Because though I can’t picture Cecile very well from everything you’ve said, Catherine seemed very nice.”
“She was. And to me, sonofabitch that he was, Nate was still kind of interesting in a way. And look what that poor kid went through — Ben. If I’d had his life as a kid, would I now be much different than he? No matter what — why I also never mentioned Catherine, I don’t know. I was never closer to one of my cousins. Then, when she was around fifteen, she got big and fat, and stupid, it seemed, when before she was always curious and perceptive, and I couldn’t talk to her about anything except our playing together as kids. Last time I saw her she was so sad she made my cry. She’d lost about a hundred pounds, but it wasn’t, and I don’t say this to be funny, an improvement. No, forget that. She had no hair. She was wearing a wig. Her speech was slow. She’d gone through operations and one chemotherapy session after the other. My heart bled for her. She acted retarded. But she was so sweet. I don’t ever remember her being as sweet as she was then, though she was always a very kind person. Generous. She had about a month to live. In fact, all this took place at one of Cynthia’s daughters’ weddings. And it’s not that she got big and fat and stupid. She got heavy, that was her business, but after everything she went through as a kid, and then was still going through as a fifteen-year-old, you could understand why. She was pretty smart too, in her own way. She was a good businesswoman till she got sick. And whatever I might have suggested, I don’t think her sickness was Uncle Nate’s doing — hitting her on the head. Or if it was his doing for Cecile’s cancer either. I don’t know about such things. But what that family’s gone through is unbelievable.”
“It’s still difficult for me to understand how I never heard about any of them. From you, from Ruth. But this card. What’s it mean? Who’s it from? Who is this Cecile?”
“I don’t know. Someone’s playing a joke. What’s the postmark say? It’s this city. Sent yesterday. The mail’s faster than I thought. I don’t know any Cecile. My Aunt Cecile is the only Cecile I’ve known. Or that I can remember having known. But certainly no Cecile for years. And this Cecile is talking about today, isn’t she? Someone’s cracked. Someone’s trying to start trouble between us. You’re the only person I love and love being in bed with and the only person I go to bed with and there isn’t any other woman, and hasn’t been since maybe a week or two after I met you, whom I’ve known in that kind of way.”
“I’ll accept that,” and she tears up the postcard. They kiss. He says “No, a long one, not just a hello, back-from-work kiss.” They hug and kiss. Then she says “Like to split a beer?” and he says “Why not?” and follows her into the kitchen.
Windows
Nothing’s on his mind. Can’t read, doesn’t want to sit around the apartment and snack anymore. If he stays here any longer he’ll uncork a bottle of wine and drink it down while he looks out the window, stares at the walls, ceiling light fixture and the floor. He gets up to go out. But if I go out, he thinks, where will I go? Take a walk, see what you’ll see. Don’t stick around here doing nothing, ending up sleepy from all the wine, overstuffed from all the snacks, asleep by seven or eight so up around four or five in the morning and then what’ll you do? More staring, eating, drinking. Maybe try the newspaper again.
He sits down, opens the newspaper. Explosion someplace. A woman shot. A woman raped. Two boys find a decomposed body on a beach. Milton Bax wins Endenta Prize. New movies. Spy grabbed. Two dozen pregnant whales run aground. Famous physicist dies of mysterious disease. A young woman crossed the ocean in a canoe. Television listings. Sports. Ads. Juniper Holland’s “perfect brownie” recipe. He crumples up the paper, sticks it into the fireplace. Lights the paper, watches it bum. An ash floats through a hole in the fireplace screen and he grabs it in the air. His hand’s smudged from the ash. He rubs his hand on his pants. Now his pants are smudged. He brushes his pants till only an indelible spot’s left. He sits in the chair. Think about something. Let something just come to mind. Daydream.
He remembers a real event. It was a number of years ago. Three. He was married then and was changing the baby’s diapers. Esther. “I peepee,” she liked to say, and he or Jill would change her. “If you know when you peepee,” he used to say, “then you should try to peepee and kaka into the toilet.” “Toilet?” she used to say. “Potty,” he used to say. “Potty and toilet, same thing.” “Same thing?” she used to say. “Sweetheart, don’t repeat everything I say.” “Don’t repeat?” she used to say. Though it only sounded a little like “Don’t repeat.” Like her “toilet” only sounded a little like “toilet.” “Potty” she could say. “Dough repee,” she used to say. “Toyet. Same sin.” She didn’t peepee into the toilet till she was three. People said that was very late. He and his wife didn’t mind her not using the toilet till then. Some things one gets used to. And he liked changing her most times. The softness of the diapers, patting her crotch and bottom with a warm washrag, drying her, pinning the diapers on her, the rubber pants, the long pants or stretchies or shorts. She would be on her back on the changing board and he would be sitting in front of her on the same bed and he would often lean over and kiss her forehead or the top of her head or her cheek. Sometimes he’d say “Kiss daddy,” and she’d kiss his cheek. Then he’d finish dressing her, if he hadn’t already finished, and stand her up on the floor or just lift her off the board and put her into or back into bed.