“Mother, did it need to be so high?”

personal essay

artist: Raphael Soyer — “The Artist’s Parents” (1932)

Outside was summer.

Musical notes hung in the air.

Our eyes darted around, from the plastic covering stretched across the kitchen table, to the wallpaper, to the coffee percolator on the stovetop, to a basket of home-baked biscuits, then back, occasionally meeting another set of eyes, another blank stare.