Out front, mounted above the porch with three screws into shingle siding, the automatic light, equipped with a motion detecting, sensorial device type thing — Hanna says to Israel how after Shabbos he should replace it, the bulb — has burnt out. Nitz passes them as unknown as ever, I’ve never. Through the rest of his long, slow ailing walk — an attack of the heart once with the wind, his breath coming harder, was he always this old, without wings — his disappearance down the narrow, wooded slate path heading straight for the gate he forsakes for its intersection with the asphalt of the serpentine drive, from the two, maybe, difficult to tell in this light, three, four, five vehicle garage, then out into the open, just vacuumed street, the still air richly rarefied in its emptiness, and then through it, intruding, imposing and onto the next house, always the next, a mensch as much Elijah material as anyone going on to take in this entire tallhoused, widelawned hemisphere, a world itself in Development, new houses being put up by the day to the west, playgrounds and parks between them cleaved from the earth, lots amenitized with diamonds and turfs, making his way to the Koenigsburg’s, which is across the way though the daughters say always Nextdoor, their walk slated to face in on the looparound, the turnabout, Nitz faces down, shuffling his spindles through puddles of oil prismatic, in a funny, shuddering hunch. Josephine gives a laugh, as he wills himself again to the nerve of his spiel.
In their chairs still, they bench: quickly, murmuring thanks, gratitude formulaic; one part conversation to one part actual prayer, the grace after meals, the mealy, measly gratuity Blessed art Thou King of the belch, the flatulent lounge, each of them though — meaning the guests and, too, the daughters, though never their hosts, the parents, who are immovable, like the boxes, crates, and trunks here at home — seated in a chair other than the one in which they’d eaten and drank, placed now at settings over coffee and coffeecake and tea more appropriate to their talking and dealings, more polite and refined and less of this shouting and screaming diagonally, over heads, under table, all over the room; presently directly across from, or more intimately next to, those whom in the course of these courses their interests have chosen, nearer to those with whom they share the most common worries or the interests of business, with whom they’re most compatible culturally, or if it has to come down to hobbies, pastimes, or the sharing of peeves.
Slowly, gradually amassing but then all at once risen, as if invited, requested by clap, or another bell rung, no one wanting to be the last to leave, to be a nuisance, a pest or worse: to be needed at the sink for the doing of dishes, to be called there without notice or chance for escape; a seizure to fake, a doctor’s note written, a lawyer’s exemption — the guests gather themselves, holding their stomachs full, then shuffling their chairs back under the table; and then: in wary glances and whispers the discharge of last pleasantries, fulfilling the barest, the basest, the least expectations; them offering to help with whatever needs helping: the cleaning, the sweeping or mopping, the prodigious returning of chairs; all gesture no followthrough, and, just as ritually, their offers are refused, refuted: they wouldn’t have offered if there was even the most remote hope of anything otherwise — and so they leave as they’d wanted to leave, with every excuse in the world at the ready and yet, having done the right thing, with their reputations still intact and appreciated, slowly, gradually, too, these goodbyes, and then toward the door, with their coats returned to them by the daughters from the bed of any spareroom upon which they’d been wrinkled.
We trust your girls, who wouldn’t, but they check their pockets anyway, you’d better believe. And then again, goodbye, and all over again this good-nighting, this hug and kiss, Shabbat Shalom and an entire family of finally gratuitous partings, separation leavetakings, you know the Thank You’s, I’m sure — some attractive and likable, others ugly and not. Misses Feigenbaum leaves without her husband, alone. And so maybe some silverware’s missing. Dessertplates, dessertspoons, are cleared, cups, nondairy receptacles, saucers and spoons, the tablecloth’s kissed, to be shaken out outside for the birds, curbside scavenge, washed in the washingmachine, dried in the dryer; it’s stained, Wanda’s bleached prohecy, it’ll come out, Hanna, I’ve forseen it, envisioned such from the detergent’s advertisements and packaging…who spilled, not me, says the eldest, not me, says the second eldest, not me, what about the boy in her belly, a punch or a kick, impossible, maybe, incredible — this pregnancy, it’s known stranger.
