Friends till the End by Gloria Dank Page B

who had grown up into a pale shifty young man with a nervous face. His intellectual prowess had not counted for much while he was growing up, and he had become used to the cries of Nerd and Cauliflower Brain, but it had come in surprisingly handy later when he found himself enrolled for a doctorate in mathematics at Princeton. Jonathan was the Abramses’ idea of what their child should be. He taught math at Princeton and had the uncomfortable habit of staring at you palely when you asked him a question about his work.
    “Believe me,” he would say scornfully, “you couldn’t
possibly
understand.”
    Ruth and Sam were very proud of him. He came home occasionally for visits and sat around the dinner table thinking Large Thoughts about his work. Heather had watched Jonathan grow up, and she had always privately considered him a difficult child. He was spoiled by his parents and led to believe that the intellect was everything; that as long as you were smart, you didn’t have to be a good or kind or interesting person as well. Secretly she cherished a fondness for Marcia, the outcast, the rebel. Marcia who, when Melvin was born, imperturbably slung him on her back and carted him along on the road with her.
    “My daughter,” Ruth would confide in a nervous whisper, “is a—a
hobo.
”
    “Marcia is a lesson for you, Ruthie. Dealing with her is meant to teach you something.”
    Ruth didn’t know what that could be, except perhaps the true meaning of the word “frustration.”
    “Maybe,” she would say politely. “Maybe.”
    Inside she felt resentful. Heather didn’t know what she was talking about, with all this talk of karma and lessons. Heather had Little Harry and Charlie and Linus, threeperfect children, none of whom had ever given her a day’s worry in her life.

    Aloud she said, “Sam can’t figure Marcia out.”
    “It’s a lesson,” Heather responded sagely.
    Occasionally Marcia would show up on her parents’ doorstep and expect to be fed and housed for as long as she wanted. Of course they always took her in and gave her her old bedroom back and made up the guest room for Melvin. Ruth was always secretly delighted to see her. She
was
their daughter, after all! And they were always happy to spend time with their grandson, who was now five years old and a tiny demolition machine. Melvin’s infrequent visits were trying times for the cat, which spent its time trying to elude Melvin’s grasping hands and slink away out of sight behind the furniture. Melvin also had a habit of biting people, which Marcia did not seem to consider a negative quality in her child.
    “He’s uninhibited,” she would explain vaguely while Melvin sank his teeth into his grandmother’s leg. “I’mraising him without
restrictions.
” She said the word fastidiously, as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.
    “Melvin,” Ruth would say, trying to disentangle her grandson from her leg. “Melvin, darling—
ow!
—Melvin, now, don’t
bite
Grandma—”
    Sam, his grandfather, would object to this.
    “I’ll give him some restrictions,” he would growl. As mild-mannered as Sam was, the sight of his grandson hanging onto Ruth’s leg would send his blood pressure rocketing. He would stride forward and struggle to break Melvin’s leechlike hold. Once he even added a hearty wallop, which was the beginning of a fierce argument with Marcia.
    “I won’t have him hit,” she said furiously.
    “I won’t have him biting your mother,” Sam growled.
    “I’ve
never
spanked him, not once.”
    “That’s obvious.”
    “You think he needs a spanking, don’t you?” Marcia said. “You think he needs to be spanked?”
    “Yes, I do!”
    “Well,” said Marcia, “you spanked me when I was little, and look how
I
turned out!”
    She was well aware what a disappointment she was in their eyes. This answer left her father momentarily fuddled. Marcia scooped up Melvin and vanished upstairs.
    Ruth recalled unhappily how, on their last