The Faflicks

I was nine.
It was fall, early evening.
Perched on a high stool,
feet raised and balanced on a wooden rung,
I cradled
a hot bowl of Chef Boyardee Spaghettio's.

Straddling the boundary between kitchen and dining room,
underneath an overhead hutch,
a small rectangular table protruded from a wall,
with a bench for the children on one side,
and cushioned chairs for the grown-ups opposite.
The Faflick's and I were having dinner

Carl, the father,
an engineer,
crewcut, glasses, mildly handsome,
direct, bright, unimaginative,
a youthful, elder-brother patriarchal figure.
Simone, the mother,
a housewife,
pretty, open-faced, French,
simple, empathetic, cheerfully sensitive,
laughed and smiled often and easily,
a devoted wife and an indifferent parent.
Madame Boulanger, the grandmother,
a widow,
silent, aloof, haughty,
spoke halting, incomprehensible English,
treated by all as an exotic, invalid pet.
Annick, the eldest sister,
aged 14,
brainy, inquisitive, insecure,
troubled
by what to her were
jagged, capricious,
emotional and biological impulses,
rarely smiled.
Philip, the brother,
my age,
mature, self-effacing, uncoordinated,
an outward conformist who
lived vicariously
through his friend's juvenile behavior.

Monique, the youngest, age 6,
plump, lively, spoiled,
insensible to everything
but her simple guileless pleasures,
prattled incessantly
with great inconsequence to all
save her doting father.
She was the only child of this marriage,
Philip and Annick being from Simone's deceased husband.
(A man revered, but rarely spoken of,
for he alone, or rather the memory of him,
was the only thing that could and would
darken her irrepressible, sunny disposition).

With eager anticipation
of dining on what I then considered a rare culinary treat,
of canned Chef Boyardee,
I blew on the bowl
and audited the Faflick dinner conversation.

Philip,
his breaking voice registering
an oxymoronic blend of
resentment and obedience,
read from a newspaper clipping.
This was his chore,
before every dinner,
to make a report on a current event.
(I had great respect for his discipline,
but buttressed by an underlying dread of being asked to do the same,
I experienced no envy).
While shooting me meaningful glances,
Carl asked curt, probing, pointed questions,
to see if his step-son had thoroughly read the article.
Finally,
distracted by the insistent Monique
who cooed and monkeyed on his lap,
the cross-exam was over and
all could eat.

As I ate
and remained nimbly monosyllabic to any query,
I looked around the dinner table.

Madame Boulanger,
a fastidious hen,
tilted her head, cast a skeptical eye,
and pecked reproachfully at her food.
The odd matriarch,
muttering incoherent French under her breath,
had a deranged, far-away look only a strait-jacket could embrace.

Annick,
wantonly despondent,
leaning on one elbow,
took listless, sporadic bites
as she gazed with dead eyes at her play-absorbed father and step-sister.
Only a hidden, disapproving pinch from her mother
or a sudden spasm from deep within
briefly awakened a heightened state of alertness,
but inevitably
the dense fog of her melancholic adolescence rolled back in,
and she sank back to her elbow and cadaverous stare.

Philip,
a face masked by an impassive innocence,
rolled the newspaper article into a spitball,
surreptitiously placed it in my hand,
and with mischief stealing from his every pore,
silently beckoned me to perform an outrage.
Happy to oblige, I launched the missile,
and after a short lift-off, it landed,
unbeknownst to all save the wide-eyed, smirking boys,
in Grandma's bowl of Spaghettio's.

Simone,
a human yo-yo,
with an indefatigable aura of good cheer
made sure
plates were replenished, backs were straight, talk light and continuous,
all the while,
casting bittersweet glances at her wayward husband and frolicking daughter.

Carl and Monique,
enveloped in a glutinous, cloying cocoon
of circular, nonsensical, childish gamesmanship,
were like two drunk-with-play felines,
who,
blissfully oblivious
to the misery, jealousy, indifference and insanity around them,
wallowed in the intoxicated belief that
what they were doing and what they were,
was nothing short of the cat's meow.

My left foot now asleep,
I begged off the table,
and as I limped gingerly away on my carbonated leg,
I sensed wordlessly
I had eaten too many Spaghettio's
and drunk too deeply from the
an unspoken,
yet manifest,
family dementia.