I have a picture of the whole family, plus Steve. That’s not fair to say – of course my brother-in-law is family – but since I predict Emily will leave him I only admit him as a temporary member. However, I have a picture of all eight of us, and I’ll try to describe it.

I remember when it was taken. Last Thanksgiving, after a contentious meal. Laney had done a lot to spoil it with her vegan lectures about animal cruelty. I tried to lighten it up with a metaphysical question, but that only served to further sour relations.

“Given an infinite number of coin tosses,” I prefaced, “must it come up tails at least once?” Laney and Liz have heard it before; they looked impatient. The others, all except Emily and Ned, mouthed various reasonings and declarations, like “Well, yeah, if there are infinite attempts;” and “A lot more than once; it would have to come up tails about half the infinite time;” and “No duh (what a stupid question…).”

Actually, the answer is no. It might never come up tails. I tried to explain that each coin toss is a discrete event. I even told them that if, given infinite attempts, any result that can happen will occur, then that means the proverbial monkeys will in fact accidentally duplicate, on their little word processors, the complete works of Shakespeare, given infinite time. In fact, they’ll do it not once but many times. An infinite many times. If the answer is not no, then we live in a multiverse where everything that can possibly happen does happen, repeatedly, and since that is manifestly not our situation, the answer must be no. It is possible to toss a coin an infinite number of times, and have it always come up heads.

They weren’t interested. That’s an understated way of describing how they received my words. So I stopped speaking. I didn’t tell them the truth about the material world. But we were in bad attitudes when we sat for the picture.

We’re grouped on and behind the couch. I don’t know if Dad meant it, but we’re arranged with the blondes seated and the dark heads standing. Left to right the couch holds Laney, Mom, me, and then Liz. I have my arms stretched out on the back of the couch, but I’m not touching anyone. Laney’s hair is her natural dark ash for a change, she’s dressed in raggedly mismatch, and she looks pouty. Her legs are crossed at the knee and although she’s thin, her flank is pocked above her fishnet hose. Cleaned up she could be a girl-next-door bubbly cheerleader; as she is, she’s just as common but less appealing.

Next comes Mom, looking frumpy. Her short arms are crossed above her humongous mammaries, and her thighs look like they expand infinitely from the point of her small knees pressed together at the bend of the couch, backwards to somewhere among the old popcorn husks and pencil stubs in the crevices of the upholstery. She wears a long white-on-black dotted top above a denim skirt and clogs; her bleached hair is teased away from her face.

They made me sit next to her but I look as disconnected as I remember feeling. My eyes appear half-closed but that was because I was looking down at the way the legs of the tripod so surely met the floor. I was not stoned. I recall wishing my family could be as stable as that tripod. I think I look pretty good. I’m wearing my black leather jacket. Even though I’m inside. I felt better then with the jacket always on – all my important things were in the pockets – but I know now I wore it as much to annoy Mom and Laney as anything else.

Liz is next to me, the last on the couch. The lost. She has her right hand on my left thigh, to annoy me. Liz is my decadent sib: the wild one, the one who has danced topless, shot heroin, sucked cock for money, starred in at least two low-budget neighborhood-made porno films. She likes to act like she’s coming on to me, but it’s a big-sister tease and no other kind of tease at all. She isn’t feeling well. In the picture she is dressed demurely, in jeans, turtleneck, socks. Her hair is very short and she is so thin that she reminds me of a young Mia Farrow.

Behind the couch, left to right and all brown-haired, are my father, Ned, Emily, and Steve. Dad looks unsettled, like he’s bothered about something, but it’s really just the fact that he got confused setting the timer and almost missed getting in place before the camera shutter clicked. He’s leaning a little over Laney and Mom, looking straight forward.

Ned’s next to him, as handsome and upstanding as ever. Ned is tall and dark and regular-featured. He is fastidious and exacting. He is very kind and caring. I’m certain he’s gay but he doesn’t seem to know it yet. He’s still dating girls, unsuccessfully. I don’t think he’s gone with anyone longer than two weeks.

I will not comment about Emily except to say that she looks beautiful in the picture and that it bothers me to see Steve’s hand on her neck like that. It seems like he is always touching her. I don’t like imagining them at it. Steve is dark-haired and handsome but he has a tendency to pudginess which will certainly mature into fat. I can easily envision him portly, with a perpetual cigar and perhaps gout.

Everyone in the picture is tall, except my mother. My blonde sisters measure over five and a half feet, and Emily is five nine. No one in the picture is fat, except my mother and, potentially, Steve.

I remember how after we took the picture we had desserts. Mom had made the usual pumpkin and mincemeat pies. Watching the bronze-orange pumpkin meat tremble on the plate, waiting satin glossy for its dollop of thick whipped cream, I tried to resume the discussion. I wanted to tell them that, sure, parallel lines meet at infinity. That’s also where Zeno’s paradox is true. At infinity. In the immaterial world. But as soon as the world becomes material (energy converting to matter to perceive itself), then dimension rears its measurable self. The material world is by definition gross, sloppy, imperfect.

I wanted to tell them, but they would not listen to me. Everyone except Laney ate pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Even I pushed the side of my fork into dense white fluff, smooth golden mousse, firm floury crust while I gazed at my family and tried, I don’t know why, to memorize the way they looked.