Now, half a century later, he 's been thinking what it must have cost her, her transformation from little Jewish girl in Kishnieff in the early years of the century to a modern American woman — a career woman in New York — and then to fade, like a shooting star burning out, into marriage with "your poor fool of a father."
The staircase to his study is lined on both walls with family photographs. One side of the family on each side of the stairs — his father's side, his mother's. Facing each other now: his father in shirt sleeves, an idealistic-looking boy; and his younger brother with tough, cynical grin — against a brick wall in Chicago — and with them their father in short hair and moustache, dapper little man, his hands on the shoulders of his sons. And across the stairway, Ben's mother, black hair in ringlets, older brothers and sisters surrounding her, she the youngest, the pet. Her father, in skullcap, with heavy beard and intense, wise eyes. Her mother looks thick like a peasant; hard work shows on her face even in this studio portrait. His father's family looks American; his mother's, like immigrant Jews. Black coats, heavy silk dresses. For his mother to turn herself into a bright, gay woman of the late twenties, a successful fashion buyer, must have been like skipping a century. To love and marry and relapse into her mother's role must have been a relief as well as a failure.
Return to Radiance Table of Contents Return to Home Page