There is what looks like a French-Canadian family on the train this morning, one father wearing a very thin wedding band, so thin I can’t tell whether it’s silver or gold, and four children. There are three girls, all with the same low-slung, almond-shaped blue eyes and upturned mouths; one is a teenager close to adulthood, sitting quietly with her legs crossed and her stare fixed forward; another is a teenager close to childhood; and the third is a child who at present sits with her head tilted rightward into her father’s lap, legs in dingy cream-colored corduroys wrapped around the middle post of the bench seat, her thumb in her mouth, too old to still be doing this by any developmental standards but so content and comforted I can’t imagine anyone would dare take the finger out from between her lips. There is a boy, too, but this morning I am not interested in him. In fact, I am interested almost exclusively in the middle daughter, and in the contrast between her and each of her sisters.
Brilliant Marianela. Truly.