My mother’s father was a jeweler. He was a handsome, shrewd-looking man; he was an accomplished amateur musician. He spoke excellent English, but he could hear his own accent and he knew there was something comical about it.

Buddy said he did not want to be an accountant and his father told him he had no idea the amount of work it took to be a professional musician. Five years you studied the violin his father said and did you practice five minutes? Five years piano.

Something looked through my grandfather’s eyes and it said Werner and du and mein Kind in tones of tenderness and authority. Buddy could more or less understand what was being said but he could not argue back, he tried to think of something from Schubert lieder or Wagner but it all seemed too melodramatic. Something looked through my grandfather’s eyes. It said Being an accountant, it’s not the end of the world.

Something looked at my Uncle Danny. Something looked at my aunts and it said A secretary, is that so terrible?

Linda had seen four before her do something that was not so terrible and already there was something about them, their whole lives ahead of them and the best thing cut off, as if something that might have been a Heifetz had been walled up inside an accountant and left to die.

Doom. Doom. Doom.