Strangers and Cousins by Leah Hager Cohen

Author:Leah Hager Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-05-13T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

“ANY FOURS?”

“G’fish.”

“Any jacks?”

“G’fish.”

“How ’bout sevens?”

It’s a kind of music, the slip-slap of cards being laid on the rug, gathered up, fitted into fans in children’s hands.

Glad sits on the gold settee, her small bony feet up on the footstool Tom so thoughtfully brought her. Tom that gallant boy. They are gathered in the living room, the whole ever-expanding lot of them; she has all but given up keeping track of which ones are her blood and which ones strangers. Bennie (she of course is blood, not only blood but the very heart that pumps it, the very keeper of the hearth) sits at the other end of the settee, her face clouded, though when Glad inquires if anything’s the matter she replies she’s just a touch tired. Walter in the Morris chair, bottle of beer on his knee, also looks tired. Carrie and Lloyd and Tom have claimed the sofa, and Clem and her clan are either on folding chairs brought in from the barn or sprawled on the rug, all except the bearded fellow, rocking the baby in the rocking chair. The tall boy is strumming a miniature guitar. It has its own name, she used to know it. A lute, maybe? No. A yule? Not that either. There’s a dog, too, queer-looking creature—like one of those flip-book chimeras, part bear, part sheep, part camel, or like a piece of licorice allsorts (they sell these from a big glass jar next to the cash register, five cents for a little paper bagful).

“We used to gather in just this way.” Glad addresses the room in her clear, oratorical kindergarten teacher’s voice. “Back when it was the post office. And Erlend’s Store.”

From the way they turn to her, nodding and smiling, she has the impression she must have said this before, perhaps just minutes ago, and she blushes, less from embarrassment than chagrin. To be caught out, discovered in a memory lapse, is no great shame in itself. It’s the loss of currency she minds, the understanding that each time such a lapse registers on the others, she is placed in their minds a little farther apart, sent floating down the current of irrelevance, set adrift . . .

The little ones don’t notice her gaffe, so deeply immersed in their game of cards on the carpet. Really it’s a pretty sight, the circle of them sitting crisscross-applesauce there under the stained-glass lamp. (In her day you said “Indian-style,” but that’s frowned upon now.) Though I don’t know why, she says aloud. Daddy played an Indian in the pageant, she reasons, and the big boy sitting nearest her offers a smile without (she can see) understanding what she’s talking about. (At least it might be a boy; to be honest she isn’t sure. The hair’s worn short as a new recruit’s but under the bib of the overalls—is that a bosom?) A Wappinger Indian, she goes on. Mother sewed his costume herself—she put a row of fringe on each leg of his trousers.

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