“I don’t know why you’re grinning,” she said. 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!” Lord knows I don’t want you to sound any more pathetic than you already do.” Mary’s infant daughter, comically bundled, stirred in the stroller, chaotic even in her sleep. 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. 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. The apartment building is now in a state of ruin. Then it will be no different from any ordinary clan. 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. The absence of the siblings doesn’t matter much either, even though the son will love them hopelessly. The absence of the father doesn’t matter one bit. And this - of the girl closest to him, her expression as breathless as his own - this is my cousin. Yes, that is my mother, his presence announces. Like everything else in the image, he never changes. 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. 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. You might find yourself taking one or two steps backward to absorb the harmonious perfection of the entire image. Remembering such a time feels like gazing at a masterpiece in an art gallery. There are times when a family has an aura of completion.
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