Abel who, though? As the news asks around on the questioning wind: whether to bundleup, or stay inside and under the covers — everyone wants to know; they tug coats, they pull ears, beg favors of their connections. They invent, against the polysemic Semitic. Give them pause. Given a chance, they’ll choose fictions over patience if just to keep hold of their sanity, the firstborn of verity and honor. Swaddled in a hat. Suckling bald. Bow your head, particularly. Asking in a whisper, who is this schmuck; importantly, who does he think he is — this usurper, this attentionhog, Abel this singular Steinstein?
O, okay, sure, Ben’ll eventually relent…give Him a cup of coffee, He’s about to break. Sugar in the teeth, jam at the dregs. He knows Abel through Adam, there’s no harm to admit it — on the advice of bunkmate counselors, a parttime mallcop, his partner by day a stayathome broker — knew him through His Steinstein, Adam, you know him…who you sent my way, whom I should hasten to say never liked to spend time with family. Abel wasn’t around much, don’t know if Steinstein ever wanted him around and, anyway, the two of them they look the same around the eyes, especially through Ben’s, poor as they are, they looked, and, let’s be honest for a moment — hope that’s not too much to ask — isn’t one Steinstein enough? Abel this evening the first of the month to end all months, the last night of food to sate them through the difficult fast, this last even on the Shabbos indulgence, seated and as always behaving himself in his assigned seat at his assigned table in the midst of the Meat Commissary (the Dairy’s for the day’s earlier meals) — a squared portion of black bench marked off and stenciled with number in warning yellow paint; Abel just a young, always smiling kid (in the obits and their nightly discussion of them, it’s always mentioned, this smiling, one of those defining details required to humanize, and at the same time, to distance, bury amid the ultimate back page), you never knew what he was thinking, if, with blond hair and twinkling blue ices for eyes and a nose scrunched to mischief, a tinkling laugh, huge ears like wings as if any praise overheard would send him flying to the sky, only after an acknowledgement given from a mouth shaped like a kiss; sitting erect and at attention throughout the initial prayers, that business with the wine and bread, the two loaves of challah, Gardenbaked never enough for the table, his silverware held aloft, how he’s ready to be served and eat, familystyle, the tradition of the Garden; the table’s “father”—rabinically rachitic, a gruff, glassesed mensch with a whitened scrofulous scruff about the taut cheeks and recessive chin — serving first the table’s “mother,” a younger, preternaturally gray mensch, slight, suited and tied, corporately consumptive, made sick through idleness, he can’t digest a thing; then serving the kinder of the table: FBs ranging in age from twentysix to six, Abel one of ten middle kinder, at thirteen the kind most middle, and so used to being passed over in favor of the shining eldest or most demanding youngest, angelic in his stupid patience, old beyond his years; ladled and scooped, fork and knife dripping with sublimated urge, as if the tine and blade are both made mouths connected as continuation of his throat; then, juicy gravy swathing the brute constancy of that smile, bubbly baubles of grease, glistening oil as if planets stilled to slime out of orbit then dribble off into void; his head servedup atop the starved plate, garnished in round whiteness, a newest specialty: a dead, embarrassing grin; “father” collapses in a faint, “mother” throws himself upon his own fork; then the Angels — those matrons wimpled formless in white sheets, with little ineffectual wings attached; flightlessly old and unmarried, lately redeemed from Upstate nunneries found default on their mortgages, ingathered then trained for this very contingency — come quickly, in through the illuminated emergency doors at the end of the unified entrance hallway before the screened part into commissary meat and commissary milk: a rush of booties and rustling habits, without the rattle of harps or distracting halo of sirens.
