The Moviegoer

edification.
    Further: I am a member of my mother’s family after all and so naturally shy away from the subject of religion (a peculiar word this in the first place, religion; it is something to be suspicious of).
    Reticence, therefore, hardly having a place in a document of this kind, it seems as good a time as any to make an end.
    The day before Lonnie died, Kate took a notion to pay him a visit. Ordinarily I pick her up at Merle’s office, drop her off at her stepmother’s and drive downtown where I transact a few odds and ends of business for her, my aunt, at Uncle Jules’ office. But today we have only to walk across the street from Merle’s office to Touro Infirmary.
    I had my doubts about Kate’s idea. It was an extravagant womanish sort of whim, what I call privately a doubling, or duplication: like the time she took a notion to fly to Dallas in a state of rapture and hear Marian Anderson; it sounded to her like the sort of thing one might well do. I don’t mean she worries about what is the fashionable thing to do; no, it just sounded like a good thing to do—what one does under the circumstances if one is the sort of person who etc etc—so she did it. Also: she had not seen Lonnie since the onset of his illness and although I tried to prepare her for the change, she was not prepared.
    Afterwards in the street, she went stumbling ahead of me, knuckles in her mouth and blind with tears.
    â€œOh my God, how dreadful.”
    â€œI shouldn’t have let you go.”
    â€œIt was like a blow in the face.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    â€œThat poor little boy—he’s so hideously thin and yellow, like one of those wrecks lying on a flatcar at Dachau. Why is he so yellow?”
    â€œHe’s got a hepatitis.”
    â€œHow can you be so cold-blooded? Are you going to be thick-skinned and bumptious like a medical student? How I hate that! He’s dying, Binx!”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œWhat was that he whispered to you?”
    â€œHe told me he had conquered an habitual disposition.”
    â€œWhat is that?”
    â€œHe also said you were a very good-looking girl.”
    â€œHe breaks my heart!” We walk in silence. “And his poor parents. Did you see the way Mr Smith stepped out into the hall and dashed the tears from his eyes like a countryman?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIt is so pitiful.”
    She stops to blow her nose. Her heavy gunmetal hair is separated by a wide ragged part. I kiss the thick white skin of her scalp. “You are very good-looking today.” In the past year, she has fattened up; her shoulders are sleek as a leopard.
    Kate is horrified. “Please don’t.” She plucks at her thumb. “There is something grisly about you.”
    â€œI have to find the children.” When Lonnie took a turn for the worse early this morning, my mother had to bring all the children with her, all but Jean-Paul. They’ve been sitting in the car since eight o’clock.
    Thérèse catches sight of me and sticks her sharp little face out the window. “How is Lonnie?” she asks, trying a weaving motion.
    â€œHe is very sick.”
    â€œIs he going to die?” Thérèse asks in her canny smart-girl way.
    â€œYes.” I sit around backwards to see them. Kate smiles in at them and stands a ways off. “But he wouldn’t want you to be sad. He told me to give you a kiss and tell you that he loved you.”
    They are not sad. This is a very serious and out-of-the-way business. Their eyes search out mine and they cast about for ways of prolonging the conversation, this game of serious talk and serious listening.
    â€œWe love him too,” says Mathilde with a sob.
    â€œKiss us first!” cry Donice and Clare from the back seat.
    Mathilde sobs in my neck and Thérèse eyes me shrewdly. “Was he anointed?” she asks in her mama-bee drone.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œVery good.”
    Only the two girls are sad, but they are also secretly proud of having caught onto the tragedy.
    Donice casts about. “Binx,” he says and then appears to forget. “When Our Lord raises us up on the last day, will Lonnie still be in a wheelchair or will he be like us?”
    â€œHe’ll be like you.”
    â€œYou mean he’ll be able to ski?” The children cock their heads and listen like old men.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHurray!” cry the twins, but