—Mummy is there anyone you like?
—Don’t you get lonesome living all by yourself? Jonathan asks.
Toby says, When I marry I’m going to live in a big house in the country with animals and have lots of children and I won’t send them to boarding school.
—So what are plans for the summer?...But Mom, aren’t we going to Europe with you?...But why?
—Because it’s Daddy’s turn this summer...
—Have you planned things for us to do for the month we’re in New York? Toby asks.
—Mom, I wish I could go to Europe with you, Joshua sighs. We’ve had such nice times together...Remember Greece? And the boatride from Dubrovnik to Venice?...The first time I was on a boat and you tied me to some post on a dog-leash—oh, I remember that so well! Was I only two? Wasn’t Yugoslavia cool, and remember the house of the Turk on that long bus trip we took...Yes, Mostar—remember when he showed us his grandmother’s underpants, big enough for an elephant, to show us what women used to be like in the good old days? Oh it was gross and we had to pay for the rosewater; and you wouldn’t let me dive off the bridge when the local boys were doing it for money...And remember in Ibiza in that farmhouse the night the bottle of butane gas burst into flames; Toby and Jonathan were asleep upstairs and I was so scared I started screaming; you said we had to get it outside the house because it could explode and you told me to go outside and wait and I saw you come out carrying that thing all in flames I was so scared it was going to explode before you threw it down the cliffs and afterward when I asked you whether you weren’t scared and if it could have killed you, you just said, “It didn’t explode so why talk about it? Now go to bed”...Yes you did, in exactly that tone. God!...and then in the Barcelona flood, oh I’ll never forget that—the water streaming and crashing down and you were pulling me in the dark, remember it happened while we were in the movie the water was up to our waist—
—Don’t exaggerate.
—Listen I was only seven, it was up to my waist and then I stepped into some kind of hole and the water came up to my chin and I said, “Look, Mummy, look!” and you looked at me perfectly calm like everything was normal and said, “Joshua, stop screaming, this is a flood.” God! I couldn’t believe it. My own mother...Well you know you were not an easy mother...you have to remember that I was just a little boy and you were this big tall silent woman in black with angry eyes and hair like a witch—Mom, you were scary!
—Anyway, Joshua, you were always a good traveler. Remember the time we missed our train connection on our way to Rome from Brindisi?
—Oh yes, the great chess game! We got off at this place in the middle of nowhere at midnight and played chess till three in the morning and I won!
—Who is that? Is that you? Voices call from the living room. The box of old photographs spilled on the floor.
—Mummy come here you have to tell us; we don’t know most of these people. Tell them about Omama and Grandfather Moses...
—My ancestor. Cool. Joshua fascinated by the picture of Reb Smuel of Nyitra. —He has a face just like Lenin.
—No other resemblance I’m afraid.
—And he was a very great rabbi?
Tell them what a creep; petty provincial reactionary...
—Look Mom you have to think of the times he lived in, you can’t judge him by our standards...So he was for the ancien régime...
My tolerant American children.
—I mean when you study history you realize...Take Stalin for example...
—C’mon Mummy show us all the pictures. What happened to the ten children? Tell them the sins of the fathers; the sons whose teeth turned on edge. —I guess our grandpa is the only one who made it...
—Uncle Joske isn’t a failure. Look, he did his thing. A professional soccer player, that’s not a bum. Now he’s over eighty and still working as a doorman for a swank hotel. I bet he is happier than Grandpa because he isn’t so lonely...
—What’s a concentration camp? Were they your cousins? Did they really do that to people? But why? Why did they want to...The look of incomprehension and horror on Jonathan’s face like my father’s.
—What about the three daughters? Did he ruin their lives too?...You mean they couldn’t marry anyone they liked...Oh gross! I’m glad I don’t have to live in those times...Oh here you are!...Mummy and Daddy gazing at each other tenderly.
—Yes, just after we were married.
—Was that the style?
—Did you and Daddy ever take a vacation together? Tell them about the summer in Maine—the one time Ezra came with me, only because a French Hegelian was there, hitching to the post office twice a day hoping for a letter from a colleague when he wasn’t talking en-soi and pour-soi with that Paris pothead...the one time he came to walk with me on the beach at night, doing me a big favor, it was full moon, I begged him, dragged him, and he stood behind the tide-line, wouldn’t take off his shoes and after a moment’s profound meditation said, Nature is silent. And turned back...
—Not even before you started fighting? Toby asks. But how come?
—You know Daddy; he liked to be in cities with libraries and bookstores and cafés, to sit around and talk.
—God! Joshua exclaims, why did you marry him then—I mean you’re
