DAPHNE MERKIN
403
"Dwayne Hickman played Dobie Gillis," Eric says all–
knowingly. "Dwayne Hickman."
"Benjamin's always making things up that he doesn't know," I
say. "George Reeves is the one who killed himself."
"Everyone knows that," Benjamin says. "The guy who played Super–
man jumping out the window because he was afraid of heights. It's
an old story, and that's not what I was talking about."
"Shut up," Eric says. "I'm trying to listen."
"Big shot," Benjamin says, snorting.
Eric flushes; "big shot" has hit the mark, reducing him to his
own place on the left side of Mr. Hans, who spurns him in favor of
my father.
"Pass the cookies," Lily says. "Please."
Rachel plucks a sugar cube with a pair of silver tongs from out
of the bowl and puts it in her mouth, under her tongue, holding it in
place until she can follow it with a bath of hot tea. I don't know
where she developed this homely habit of sucking sugar while sip–
ping tea, but whenever she does it, it is as though someone has slipped
into her chair at the table. Instead of my sister - Rachel Lehmann of
the glasses and brown hair - there appears in front of me the figure
of an elderly Eastern European Jew. Frail and modest, he is a Jew
I'm not actually acquainted with, but who is to be found in stories
and novels, bent over a cup of tea at one of those large, well-lit
cafeterias, Dubrow's or Famous, grasping a cube of sugar with the
remnants of his teeth.
"Your children seem so marvelously close," Mrs. Hans says.
But hasn't she noticed that we are all miles apart even as we sit
together at the Shabbos table? That Eric holds his tie up close and
studies its pattern of polka dots as though someone has asked him for
an exact count? That my youngest brother Arthur says nothing
when he is here and that he disappeared from the table a while ago?
My mother smiles briefly - I think of it as her hostess smile–
and says, "When they're not fighting."
"Well, they'll never be lonely," Mrs. Hans says. "So many! You
must have had your hands full when they were little."
"You have children of your own?" my mother asks.
"Just two," Mrs. Hans says, as though she had secretly longed
to produce a horde like my mother's. "A boy and a girl. My daughter's
married."
"Oh, how nice," my mother says. "One of each."
"The lay of the land," my father is saying.
