In The Days Of My Youth I Was Told What It Means – Tom Junod

And so when I see her, my eyes stay past their welcome, and she flinches even as she keeps smiling. She is gaunt, yes, so gaunt that her face has been narrowed and slightly rearranged, her white teeth and her green eyes gaining prominence under the multilayered bonnet of hair that is as thick as my mother’s but has always been a source of friction between them—my mother is never happy with my sister’s hair. But Cathy is also the only one of us with a touch of my father’s dark skin, so she’s already deeply tanned, and Stacey and Scott move to hide against her, peering out protectively from behind her hips.

She certainly does not look sick, at least not in the way I imagined. She just looks different, and the difference registers in her smile, which is defensive and evasive and at the same time conspiratorial, and in her eyes, which turn wobbly at the height of their color, as if her pale green irises are made of some shuddering jelly.

The difference is that she is onto me, that she is aware of my scrutiny and doesn’t want to be scrutinized any more than Blanche DuBois did. Cathy generally doesn’t give me, or anyone else, a kiss; she just offers her cheek, accepting whatever tokens of affection come her way. I step forward to kiss her but as I do she whispers, in the gruff Brooklyn voice she sometimes puts on, “Whaddaya think you’re looking at?” It’s late.

Cathy retreats to her bedroom, followed by Janet, who might live with me but is not allowed to sleep with me for my mother’s sake. I stand in the kitchen, hungry, and soon enough Mom finds cookies. “How do you think Cathy looks?” she asks. “She looks okay,” I say.

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“anyone lived in a pretty how town” copyright © 1940, 1968, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust, from Complete Poems: 1904–1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Book Two photograph: Marion Ettlinger Epilogue photograph: Janet Folk Junod LCCN 2025020113 ISBN 9780375400391 (hardcover) Ebook ISBN 9780385543224 penguinrandomhouse.com | doubleday.com Cover photograph courtesy of the author Cover design by Oliver Munday The authorized representative in the EU for product safety and compliance is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68, Ireland, https://eu- contact.penguin.ie.

ep_prh_7.3a_155318468_c0_r0 OceanofPDF.com CONTENTS Dedication Epigraph PROLOGUE BOOK ONE In the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man BOOK TWO Now I’ve reached that age I try to do all those things the best I can BOOK THREE No matter how I try, I find my way into the same old jam EPILOGUE Acknowledgments OceanofPDF.com For Janet, without whom… OceanofPDF.com What about the boy? He saw it all. —The Who, “Tommy” Yet why not say what happened?

—Robert Lowell, “Epilogue” OceanofPDF.com PROLOGUE Everybody knew. — Uncle Johnny knew. Mike Labella knew. My aunt Ceil knew, and so did my uncle Harry, my mother’s brother. My father’s surviving sisters—Liz, Ellie, Millie—all knew, and had known pretty much all their lives. Mr. Rudolph, our next-door neighbor, might not have known, but his wife, Ina, sure did. My older cousins Billy and Betty Ann knew, because of what their parents told them, and my younger cousins Mitchell and Michael knew because my father told them himself, when he was regaling them with his stories, which is to say when he was telling them his secrets.

And what about me?

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• Title: –
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• ISBN: 9780375400391, 9780385543224
• Pages: 461
• Language: English (en)

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