CHAPTER IV
A Sunday repast and its repercussions
The family spent obligatory Sunday afternoons with Irwin’s only sibling, his taller, uglier brother Lionel, eleven years Irwin’s senior, never married, childless, and devoted to Irwin and his gang. Retired after thirty-seven years of replacing the rotted boards of the boardwalk, east to west, cosmopolitan Liny read the free Coney Press weekly, unlike Irwin, who believed what he heard on his radio. Liny still lived in that stifling apartment above the venerable pizza-bakery on Neptune Avenue; his Sunday contribution to Ekes dining was a half pound of cinnamon-raisin-pecan bar cookies, the very same that their mother, Liny’s and Irwin’s, bought for special celebrations, and that mother’s mother had forever slandered: crummies.
How curious that all five would squeeze around Liny’s tea wagon, the only surface consistently cleared, when the family lived in a roomier two-bedroom walkup. Sorry. After Dilly was born, Mrs. Ekes quit cooking; sure, Liny was alone, she didn’t mind feeding him sometimes but didn’t Irwin understand?
Irwin said, “He’s got money.”
Invite him for dinner he shows up for lunch and begs for breakfast in a bag.
“He’s leaving it to me. For the kids.”
She reconsidered. She’d cook at home and haul it over to Liny’s. They were free to leave, fast, when eating was over.
Cornelius obeyed his parents, sat between them, always opposite Dilly and Uncle, and watched everyone eat. Dilly amused herself with Uncle’s bashful cat until cat lost patience with tango lessons and hid in the cabinet under the sink; cranky, sleepy Dilly tugged at Irwin, cried to go home. Lionel sympathized with his brother. The little girl seemed fine. What a shame the boy was so peculiar. Anything Uncle could do? Yes, he decided that mid-June Sunday, after compote, crummies and tea. He sat beside his stunted nephew and clutched the boy to him. An acute spasm of generosity overwhelmed him. Short of breath, he beckoned to his brother and sister-in-law, whispered, “Come closer,” and then, “I’m giving him my harpsichord.”
Precisely what he needed. They dared not offend.
Uncle didn’t play, knew nothing about that sort of music, or any, nor did the Ekes parents, but the instrument was his treasure, vestige of his ancient romance with a fair tinkerer who had abandoned him, he knew not why. It was hers, an eighteenth century Flemish replica which she and Lionel had built together from a kit, protected in the corner under a clear plastic sheet, removed from the little sunlight that found Liny’s window in the late afternoon.
The children knew better than to touch it; Dilly showed no interest. Cornelius liked to look at the picture painted on its always open lid: under the trees, in summer, the beautiful lady wore the puffy yellow skirt and laughed in the swing while the tall, fancy man in skin-tight bermudas pushed her into the sunny blue clouds that never sprinkled anything but romance. The lady’s wavy hair looked like Julie’s, in math.
Liny promised a surprise for cute Dilly too, if Irwin paid for shipping.
Irwin paid.
Dilly sensed something amiss, for Cornelius’s gift was big. She got a hatbox with the zebra toy pillow that Uncle squashed on his armchair. She cried.
The harpsichord was reassembled in the living room, where Cornelius slept. “It’s a midget piano for a midget,” Dilly said. Tomorrow she would beat him good; she kept that to herself.
It was Dilly’s further misfortune that her brother liked his new toy. The picture led to the keyboard. Cornelius could play any melody he heard; his fingers knew. Dilly insisted on trying. Cornelius didn’t mind.
When Dilly finally crowned him with her hatbox, he squatted to protect himself. Ow! Stop! He wasn’t hurt, really.
Mrs. Ekes proposed ballet lessons, or better, oil painting for Dilly.
With music in his hands and a swing in his eyes, emboldened Cornelius ate on the sly. Rather than sabotage his conscientious abstainer leverage at home, he nibbled at school; within a year he’d grown two welcome inches. Arms and thighs filled out to match the proportion of hands and feet. He was still dreadfully short and his head too big but his parents never looked into his pony mouth. They were thrilled and grateful, whatever the miracle, that their boy was becoming a man.
Dilly sincerely hoped he’d continue to grow, for she perceived an inverse ratio between her brother’s height and parental love and attention. An additional fourteen inches would have pleased them all, including Cornelius, who began eating in their presence, gaining no more in height but developing muscle, mainly in his arms, from practice.
As his playing improved, Irwin’s sympathy dissipated. He blamed music; even pop tunes, by the fiftieth rendition, irked him. His son’s potential growth was channeled into all that fingering, an unwholesome expenditure of youthful energy, Irwin theorized, a singularly unnatural diversion for any child, especially his, during precious, fleeting years. “The boy’s a creep! A sixteen-year-old creep!” Twitching with schadenfreude, Dilly put both ears to the closed parental bedroom door as Cornelius serenaded them from across the hall. “Banging twanging what’s he doing to himself? And us!” Joy tickled Dilly’s shoulders. “Ten years no eating! And he sits at that thing. Liny’s junk!”
Mrs. Ekes said: “Your brother.”
“You’re the mother. The point is, get him out. With other kids,” he told his wife, and recalled his own magical boyhood.
“So now you love the world.”
“It’s adults that stink.”
No reply from Mommy.
“She goes out all the time,” Irwin said. Dilly loved compliments, and Daddy.
“With a new one every week,” Mommy said, and hadn’t he noticed? Dilly loved Sally on Monday, and by Friday dumped Sally for Sully.
“She’s like me,” he said. “Friendly.”
“Your parents wanted you out, too.”
Mrs. Ekes took it upon herself to recommend, so very mildly, that Cornelius try a walk on the beach, a short half hour, if only to please her. Benefits of exercise aside, he might accustom himself to the company of his peers and enjoy it, should the right peer happen along.
He enjoyed his own company.
Parents dining with Uncle on a January Sunday, sophisticated eleven-year-old Dilly out romping with friends, Cornelius alone but not lonely, and not the naïf they all thought him to be. He memorized toccatas, ignored the painted gentleman and watched the lady in the swing.
He lifted the lid, secured it on its prop, leaned toward her and began their familiar suite: Allemande, he bent over the keyboard; Saraband, eyes closed, Aire; Minuet, a peek at her pointed shoes; his anxious knees jumped as he paused before the lively, intricate Gigue. He began with a brisk allegro, swaying, bobbing, bouncing on his bench, thighs slapping, keys hot under his fingers, left hand quick as his right. Wrists loose for the final cadence -- forte! The lid rattled. Fortissimo! Tacit. She was still swinging.
Exhausted, and a little embarrassed without knowing exactly why, he heeded his mother’s advice that afternoon; as he wiped the keyboard with his sleeve he decided: it was time to go for a walk.
Although Oca never heard from Sergeant Moss; the academy sent her a letter of warm rejection. When Dilly learned that political science was next on Oca’s list of career choices, she articled her to servitude at Treatment for several weeks of candied geriatric affection. Oca laughed and hugged; Dilly observed, and formulated propensities of a more pragmatic nature for her maturing, cooperative, well-schooled, fervently ambitious daughter.