The Border of Paradise: A Novel Read Free Page A

said.
    “Yes. It was shocking what a ridiculous little man he revealed himself to be. He introduced himself, briefly. Apparently he’s an accountant, and the whole family is from Chicago. He came to ask if he could buy a baby grand for three-fourths the price.”
    “Three-fourths? What on earth would make him think you’d say yes?”
    “I said something to that effect. He said, ‘Because our sons are in the same class.’ As if this made us family. David, do you know his son?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “And what do you make of him?”
    “Marty? I don’t know him well. He gets in trouble a lot with the nuns, I guess. He’s stellar in Latin.”
    “Well,” Ojciec said, sawing into a pork chop, “if he’s anything like his father, I’d say you’d best stay away from him. It would be one thing if Mr. Orlich were merely foolish, but I could tell from ten paces that the man has a temper. Though he knew better than to duke it out with me.” He shook his head. “Imagine! As if we were a charity.”
    “I loathe Chicago,” Matka said. “It’s so cold there in the winter.”
    “Whenever a new family moves in, it’s like a roll of the dice,” said Ojciec.
    Yes, it was a roll of the dice, or can we say it was Fate that brought the dysfunctional Orlich clan to Greenpoint. It was Fate that the Orlichs should have a daughter, too, named Marianne, whom I would love, and still do love, with my utterly fallible—my utterly human—heart that is still beating.
    The first time I saw the Orlichs as a family was at Christmas. Our little clan—at first just Daisy and I, then with William and, later, Gillian—has had a number of Christmases, but the sort of Christmases I had as a boy were nothing like the ones we’ve enjoyed. These were loud affairs. Crowded. Upward of eighty people were invited to the Pawlowskis’ Christmas party on a yearly basis, and everyone who was invited came. It was a lavish show for George and Vicky Pawlowski, especially for Mrs. Pawlowski, who used her pent-up maternal energy spending days decorating their home in tinsel, votive candles, glass ornaments that broke if you so much as gave them a stern look, and a gigantic tree by the staircase, which hung heavy with what she explained every year was inherited Mazowsze glass. When I was very young I saw the Pawlowski party as a family obligation and a bore, but the older I became, I sensed that there was a desperation that haunted the Pawlowskis, and this desperation came to a shrill plateau from Advent to Epiphany. The hunger for adoration, forfestivity and friends, was played out in the party itself, with too much high-pitched conversation and people posturing, and the tension dissipating only when all hosts and guests had imbibed a healthy amount of booze.
    On that particular Christmas we were the Pawlowskis’ first guests, and Mrs. Pawlowski immediately descended upon Matka as I drifted into the sitting room.
    “We invited the Orlichs,” Mrs. Pawlowski said.
    “Oh? Are you friendly with Caroline?” Matka asked, and there was a tinkling of wineglasses in the kitchen.
    “No, I don’t know Caroline, and George barely knows Benjamin—I mean Bunny. They sort of invited themselves. You know how the Christmas party is our special occasion, but they approached it as though it were the ball drop. A sort of ‘come one, come all.’ I didn’t know how to say no. I didn’t want to be impolite. I fear it will be strange for everyone else, though. No one really knows them. No one in our circle, I mean.”
    My mother said, “So many people are coming, though. It won’t make a difference.”
    “Caroline basically insisted that her daughter sing at the party. She flat-out assumed that we would want to hear her sing. So now her daughter is going to sing ‘O Holy Night,’ I think.”
    “I love that song.”
    “I do, too. It’s my favorite carol. When done well, it makes me cry. I honestly shed tears, real ones. But you should have heard her,