Family Secrets by Rona Jaffe Read Free Book Online Page B

them was smiling in it, no matter what the photographer said; they knew better than that. Suitably solemn and dignified, they were the very image of a refined, intelligent, prosperous American family.
    Aunt Becky had been with them for a long time now. Lavinia remembered when she came, looking like a little girl, with a big box full of pretty dresses that were all much too big for her. Papa had gotten Aunt Becky a job in a factory, but she hadn’t liked it, and so she would come home in the middle of the day, saying: “I had a vision that one of you children fell out the window and so I had to rush home.” After doing that once or twice Aunt Becky would lose the job, and Papa would have to find her another one, but it was always the same. She would be back home by lunchtime, insisting she’d had “a vision.” Finally Papa just gave up and let her stay home. She learned English at night school, and Lavinia tried to help her, although she was too young to be of any real help. Mama helped Aunt Becky fix the dresses so they would fit, taking them in at the seams and shortening them. Aunt Becky told the children the story of Aunt Bena, how she wouldn’t get on the boat at the last minute and so Aunt Becky had come in her stead. The cousin who had been intended to marry Aunt Bena had taken one look at Aunt Becky and run away, which was fine as far as Aunt Becky was concerned because she didn’t like him either.
    The years went by and Aunt Becky stayed on in their home, content, but Papa had begun to worry about her, and thought it was time she had a husband. Since she couldn’t seem to find one on her own, he would have to find one for her. She was nearer thirty than twenty, no longer a silly girl, and some good man would be glad to have her.
    The children split into cliques: Lavinia and Melissa were together, Hazel had no one, Andrew chased after Lavinia; and Basil and Rosemary, being close in age, were close friends. Lavinia would have thought that Andrew and Basil, being brothers, would have been close, but they were very different in temperament and there was jealousy between them. Andrew was a worrier, a conniver, a planner. He wanted a pony and he asked for one; Papa gave it to him. Basil, on the other hand, wasted his time feeling sorry for himself. “Andrew got a pony,” he would whine. “I wanted a pony, but Papa never gave me one. Papa gave Andrew a pony, not me.”
    “You never asked him for a pony,” Lavinia said.
    “Papa likes Andrew better than me.”
    “Quitter,” Lavinia said. “You’ll never get anywhere in life if you don’t fight for it.”
    “Andrew gets everything. I never get anything.”
    Much as he delighted in his pony, Andrew was busy thinking of something new to wish for, to ask for, to get, to prove that he, not his brother, was the favorite.
    He admired Lavinia because she was older and had a way of taking over. Because he admired her, he teased her, pleased to have found a way of getting close to her. Andrew knew that Lavinia wanted them all to be American, that she hated it when anyone spoke Yiddish in front of strangers. He only knew a few words, but it was his delight to chase her down the street in front of amused onlookers, imitating a goat. “Tsigeleh maaaaa!” he would bleat, while Lavinia, all dignity forgotten, ran away from him, her face red. It was not the goat baa she minded, it was the “tsigeleh.”
    “Play with Hazel,” Lavinia would tell Rosemary. Rosemary had her kitten in the doll carriage, and Lavinia had put a doll’s dress on it.
    “No,” Rosemary said.
    “Don’t be selfish.”
    “She’s stupid,” Rosemary said.
    “Shh! Shame on you. Sisters should love each other.”
    “Then you play with her,” Rosemary said. “My kitten has an appointment to see the doctor. She’s going to have puppies.”
    Before they moved to the new house the old grandmother died. She had been their link to an old and vanished time, and now she was gone and buried. Gone