Jacob Lawrence, The Apartment (1943)

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Elderly woman, flabby, slack-jawed, weak. Smiles, but there's something supercilious about that smile that renders it invalid in your eyes.

"I don't like updated Shakespeare," she says, cutting you off.

The judgement is a surprise to you and for a moment you're taken aback. You haven't explained enough, that is, provided enough information, to make judgement possible, so that this firm statement is at best premature, at worst clueless. Maybe there's another way you might approach the conversation?

"But," you say, "it's by -- "

"I don't like updated Shakespeare," she says, smiling, cutting you firmly off.

That smile is so odd. She doesn't seem to be trying to be confrontational, and the tone of voice is not unfriendly. But her rudeness is so inescapable, it's as though it's been slapped across your face, admittedly more like a pat than a punch, yet impossible either to ignore or understand.

"If you'd keep an open mind," you say, fumbling, looking impossibly into the same odd smile.

"I don't like updated Shakespeare," she says, so firmly that this is the end of discussion.

You'd intended to suggest more options. Instead you swallow your anger, turn on your heels, and leave, thinking to yourself in passionate silence, "There aren't going to be many more of these conversations..."

How many of your relatives would you choose as friends, if you weren't related?

In my own life I think the answer is, "none." And I wonder if the time isn't coming when I will choose to boycott the last of them, which is to say, the one among all of them who's responsible, with her incompetence and obliviousness, for this antagonism.

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