M. Gessen

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My family, if I had to give it an adjective, is elastic.

45 years ago, my parents, my little brother, and I came over to this country from the Soviet Union, extending the family across continents.

Over the decades, the family, my father really, stretched to absorb spouses, in-laws, even though they spoke a different language, children both biological and adopted, ex-spouses who chose to stick around, and eventually grandchildren.

Over those same decades, as in any family, people made bad decisions, said things they hoped no one would remember, got mad at each other, felt grudges, came around, and the family stretched as needed.

And then it snapped.

Someone did something that bad, that shocking.

That person was my cousin Alan.

He and his mother, my father's sister Lena, came to the US from Moscow in 1990, when Alan was 15.

They stayed with my parents and brother for almost a year.

By the time they arrived, I no longer lived at home, so I didn't have much of a relationship with them.

Never really wanted to, because I didn't like my aunt.

And as Alan grew up, I realized, even from a distance, that I didn't particularly like him either.

Alan is a clown, a blowhard, a pompous ass.