The Visit on Monday

Chapter 1A Place Beside Him

Mendy saved the chair beside him in his imagination long before the family celebration began.

His grandfather was turning seventy. On Sunday afternoon, uncles, cousins, aunts, and children would gather in his grandparents' house. The boys would sit in the dining room while the women and girls had their table in the room beside it.

There would be food, speeches, and enough relatives for someone to ask Mendy the same question four times.

It would be much better with his cousin Shloimy beside him.

Shloimy had moved two streets away in the autumn.

They studied together sometimes, and on Mondays they often played a board game at Mendy's house.

On Thursday Mendy asked whether he was coming.

"I don't think so," Shloimy said.

Mendy stopped winding the string around the game box.

"Why not?"

Chapter 2The Answer He Didn't Like

"I asked my parents if I could stay home," Shloimy said. "My older brother will be there with me."

"But it's Zeidy's birthday."

"I know. I visited him yesterday."

"Everyone's coming."

"Not everyone."

Mendy pulled the string too tight. It left a pale line across his finger.

"You could sit beside me."

"That's kind, but I still don't want the big gathering."

Shloimy wasn't angry. He wasn't asking Mendy to fix the room or rearrange the tables. He was telling him what he had decided with his parents.

Mendy didn't like how little there was to argue with.

"You never come to anything lately."

Shloimy looked at the game between them.

"I came here on Monday."

Chapter 3The Bigger Meaning

"This is different," Mendy said.

"Yes. It is."

"I thought we'd go together."

"You didn't ask before today."

Mendy wanted that to sound like a small detail. It didn't.

He had pictured Shloimy beside him so clearly that it felt as if Shloimy had agreed and was now taking it back.

"Fine," he said. "Do whatever you want."

Shloimy stood up.

"I should go home."

Mendy put the game on the shelf. He did not ask about their next Monday. He wanted Shloimy to wonder whether there would still be one.

After the door closed, the house was quiet.

That was what Shloimy wanted more of, apparently.

Mendy couldn't understand why it felt so unpleasant to him now.

Chapter 4The Chair at the Table

On Sunday Mendy sat beside his younger brother.

Shloimy's parents came. His mother wore a pale green tichel that covered all her hair. Mendy's father spoke with them by the doorway.

Nobody brought Shloimy.

Mendy heard his uncle ask where he was. Shloimy's father said he was at home with his brother. The uncle nodded and carried a platter to the dining room.

No argument followed.

The afternoon was busy. Mendy laughed at a cousin's imitation of the way their grandfather always checked a book's binding before opening it.

He helped bring empty dishes to the kitchen.

He enjoyed parts of the gathering. At other moments, he wished Shloimy were beside him.

The wishing did not fill the chair. It also did not prove that Shloimy had done anything to him.

Chapter 5A Question for Father

Afterward, Mendy helped his father stack the chairs.

"Wouldn't Shloimy come if he wanted to be with me?"

His father stopped with two chairs in his hands.

"Does being with you always have to mean being in this gathering?"

Mendy looked at the long table.

"I offered him a place beside me."

"That was an offer. Could he say no?"

"He did."

"And afterward?"

Mendy lifted the next chair.

"I said he never comes to anything."

His father waited.

"He came on Monday."

"Then never wasn't right."

Mendy put the chair against the wall. The things he'd said on Thursday had not been an invitation anymore. They had become something Shloimy was supposed to pass.