Good Family Read Free Page A

hands are clipped down to the tips, pitifully naked and colorless.
    “Miriam,” I say, jerking my head toward the window, where there’s a clear view of the lake, “can’t we move her over there?”
    Miriam briskly adjusts a pillow, then squirts some lotion into her hand and starts massaging Mother’s arms.
    I persist. “It’s so stuffy in here. She might like the breeze.”
    Miriam pulls her brows together, but she seems resigned. “You hear that, Evelyn? You’re going for a ride.” She rubs the rest of the lotion into her own arms and gives me a nod. Together, we heave the hospital bed across the room so that the breeze coming through the window can touch my mother’s face. She’s had so little touching in her life. My theory is that she went to the hairdresser every week because someone would run his fingers across her scalp, massage her temples. Breathing from the exertion, I drag my hand across her forehead. Her open eye closes with the touch. At this moment, I wish I could sing to my mother, sing her something low and soulful to ease her way, but I have only a two-note range and can’t find the words.
    I an?” I almost whisper into the phone.
    “Oh, my God! The prodigal Maddie! Have they locked you up yet?”
    I make a sound like oy , something vaguely Jewish just to make me feel like I’m back in New York. “It’s not just my family,” I tell him. “It’s me. It’s like having your childhood smack you across the face and say, ‘See! This is who you are!’”
    “Yes, but have the cousins arrived?” The thought of my cousins makes Ian almost rapturous—poor only-child Ian from Minnesota who grew up a voluptuary in the midst of Lutheran pragmatism. No thespian, coke-sniffing cousins for Ian like my cousin Sedgie; no paint-encrusted heartthrobs like Derek; nor any who, like Adele, believe they are the reincarnation of Mary Magdalene. “A- dele ,” says Ian, his voice lascivious, evoking Sedgie’s glamorous sister. “Is she there yet?”
    “Ian,” I say, “I’ve got to book an earlier flight. I want to get back to work.”
    Ian, my partner in film production, ignores me. “You’ve got to tell me what she’s wearing.”
    I sigh. “No one’s here, Ian,” wanting to add, For which I am grateful. “It’s quiet, for once.”
    Ian starts incanting, “MaddieAddieAddison. It’s only a place.”
    But what does Ian really know about Sand Isle? I have tried to paint for him a picture of exclusivity that doesn’t allow for much variation in race or religion. The dour descendants of Anglo-Scottish ancestors purged their souls with bracing morning swims, retired to prim, sober sleep each evening after vespers. Only at the turn of the century were non-Presbyterians allowed. By then, the climate was distinctly less sober, especially during Prohibition when the denizens had their own bootlegger who came by rowboat after dusk. My great-grandmother, famous for having lost her mind and regaining it, ascribed this to pernicious Episcopalian influences, but before she succumbed to cancer in 1935, the Catholics had appeared, about which Grannie Addie was aggrieved. Since then, interfaith marriages (Presbyterians to Episcopalians, Episcopalians to Catholics) became de rigueur, and, for the first time ever, a divorcée was allowed to take title of the cottage she had inherited from her parents.
    Sexual orientation ? Ian had inquired after hearing all this. Do they care if you’re queer?
    Now I hear someone coming out of the kitchen. I tell Ian I will call him back. Hanging up, I stare at the wall. Bead-board is a hallmark of these cottages. Some owners have painted theirs in an attempt to “brighten,” some have Sheetrocked over the studs. Our house is mostly intact, the dark wood in front of me a gallery of framed pictures. Some are tens of decades old—nameless and yellowed. There is my grandfather as a boy in bloomers sitting in a rowboat, his long, blond curls falling past his shoulders. There