julian kerry it must’ve been your face she had in mind when she’d remind me to hold on tight, hold tight to your friends, the ones who make you feel like yourself. it must be you, after decades of phone calls and visits. i can still so easily place myself in our foyer, standing under grandma’s massive, framed needlepoint, how you’d burst inside, filling the whole doorway, filling every room, booming voice, round belly, thick beard and dark curly hair. pick me up, swing me around. i felt safe in your arms. finally, finally. when tovah was a baby, we sat with her on the green couch and played with her ears, they stuck straight out like wings. she was the fragile one, the first to cry. and then there was deezy who was bald until she was two, who now looks just like you, a dark cloud of hair, wide nose, a expansive warmth, like she walks through life with her arms always open. we went to toronto right after the twins were born. you picked us up in buffalo where we stopped to get bagels, stopped again at the falls. i’d been before but it never gets old, how you can hardly hear over the storm, rainbows glinting off the water... the first time we went, dad bought a book about people who went over the falls in barrels. we read it together over and over, and mom thought we were strange and morbid. helen was in bed with both twins on a pillow in her lap, nursing. i sat beside her. i was about twelve. they already looked so different from each other, sefi like tovah, davi like deezy. helen never seems to age, with her cat-eye glasses and impossibly long eyelashes, purring voice. i still have the star lamp she gave me for my birthday. in college, mom said, you and rich and keith would go to waffle house and stay long past midnight, endless cups of coffee, endless hashbrowns. summers were the best there, she’d say. we owned the whole town. she admitted to me only once when she was drunk that you’d been in love with her. she loved you too but not that way, and it wouldn’t work--rella wouldn’t approve. but at your first wedding, at the temple, they let the tiny blonde shiksa dance with you though it went against tradition. just before christmas you and the twins came down to atlanta to visit saul and rella, before saul began doping her with pot brownies to help her eat. we went out for fried chicken. i wanted to see the numbers on her arm but she wore long sleeves. and then i felt ashamed of myself for wanting to see, for even remembering they were there. that night alex and i dropped by my parents’ house and everyone was sitting in a circle in the living room, laughing, telling stories. the twins were wearing baggy christmas sweaters and giggling at some secret only they knew about. sefi was still my favorite, the odd one, silly but soft; i saw something of myself in her. saul busted out a giant bong and pulled a baggie of hash out of his chest pocket. his gold chain necklace shimmered in the wavering light, so many candles around us. he is just as broad and loud as you. alex and dad were the only ones to abstain. you and saul and mom were so young all of a sudden, cackling, cry-laughing. everyone seemed offended when alex and i decided it was time to leave--we had plans to see dr. strangelove at the plaza. i spent the movie slouched in my seat, awed by everything. everything. when mom told me what you did i could tell she wanted to find some excuse for you. you said they were just some cheap whores, that you promised to tell helen. it was a sour, sick confession you gave to my mother first. she was near tears on the phone. i wondered aloud what in the world you say to your best friend when they do such a thing. i told him i was disappointed in him, she said. i told him i was furious, i told him it was poor character, i told him i was shocked. i told him i still love you but right now i am ashamed of you. i told him how dare you do this to helen and the girls, how dare you. i asked what he said in response. he cried, she said. he cried like a little boy. he said i know you’ll always tell me the truth, al, but it hurts. you came back down to georgia for rella’s funeral. you were in remission, a surprise to us all. when dad and i were alone in the kitchen late at night he said you deserved the diagnosis, you piece of shit. he said it only to me; he’d never say it to mom. but she knows how he feels anyway. he never liked you much; you take up too much room, he says, you expat capitalist, misogynist, going off from across the border. i don’t feel anymore that you deserved it, but in that moment i did imagine the blood draining from helen’s face as she checked the phone bill, i thought of the twins, deezy’s big tender heart like a gaping wound, tovah who might disappear. and she did, and i don’t blame her. and saul, too--you can’t stay here with me, you fat fuck. spun on his heel, his nose turned up, stormed away from you. now helen lives in a cottage somewhere in toronto. mom says you live in an efficiency apartment and have a girlfriend. davi is a chef and tovah has fallen in love. there was a moment when i thought i was going up there--medical tourism, they call it--and i would call you. but i would call deezy first. 211002 what's it to you? who go blather from