Anthropology of an American Girl (22 page)

I answered but he did not hear. The music was deafening.

“What?”
he shouted. “Christ, hold on.
Daniel, turn that shit off!”
The music vanished with a flushing
zzzt
sound. “What did you say?”

“I said, I’m not feeling well.”

“We-ll,” Jack said deliberately, as if stating the obvious to a stubborn child, “come over here. Smokey will make you Irish coffee. He’s a master chemist.”

“I think I’d better stay home.” I untangled the knotted phone cord and poked around my mother’s desk, straightening out her papers and reading a few lines from a half-graded essay titled, “Christianity and Salvation in the Works of Flannery O’Connor.”

“You think you’d better stay home,” he repeated.

I pulled at my bottom lip. It had not been a good day. Not a secure day. I said, “Yeah.”

“So then, you’re not going out at all.”

My coat was in hand. Jack had a way of forcing a lie. I said, “No.”

There was a pause. “Fine,” he grumbled. “See you later.”

“Bye, Jack,” I said. Before hanging up, I thanked him. I wasn’t sure why I thanked him, except to say that he seemed to be doing me a favor.

I met Kate out on the path. “That was Jack,” I said. “He’s at Dan’s.”

“You’d better not go over there or you’ll
really
get sick. I bet they’re getting totally wasted.”

Main Street was silent and lonesome. Blanketed in a carpet of white, and alive with the smoke of small wood fires that joined rooftop to rooftop, East Hampton revealed its colonial heritage. Sometimes a place rises up with a memory of itself, like a company of ghosts trumpeting out from the tops of tombstones. It was nearly impossible not to be transported back to the 1600s, to the time the town was settled.

“It’s a miracle, isn’t it?”

“What is?” Kate asked.

“The snow,” I said. “The way it changes everything.” It made the treetops into lace and the branches into panther tails, long and leaning with tiny kinks. On the crooks and twiggy ends of things the snow sat in balls like cotton ready to be picked. The streets were completely carless; it felt as though we were wading through a lake.

“It
is
pretty,” Kate agreed.

As we walked, I kept thinking about “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” wondering what made the story a
legend
. There was one character called Ichabod Crane and another called Brom Bones. Both names were suitable for those living in the post-Revolutionary American countryside, iconoclastic and frightening, calling to mind half-lit lanterns and bitter gusts of wind and leaves that twist inward at the prongs like a witch’s
fingernails. Neither character was particularly sympathetic; the author seemed to be making a point.

I asked Kate if the Headless Horseman story had a moral.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, what does it stand for?” It wasn’t a fable—there were no animals or values.

“It stands for—well, Ichabod Crane was superstitious, and he let himself be run out of town. That’s why he lost the girl. I guess the moral is, ‘Don’t believe in ghosts.’”

“Yeah, but the guy who ran him out of town tricked him. So, there would have to be a second moral, such as ‘Don’t believe in ghosts—but go ahead and use other people’s fear of them to get what you want.’ Or maybe just, ‘It’s okay to be mean.’ And the whole survival of the fittest message doesn’t hold up, since Ichabod was a teacher and Brom Bones was a thug and a cheat, kind of like a used car salesman. Why should
he
get to marry the girl and make more little Brom Boneses?” It wasn’t a very good statement about America—or
was
it?

“I don’t know what to tell you, Evie,” Kate said. “It’s just a story.”

I kicked at the snow. “I’m just saying it’s weird, that’s all.” We were standing at the top of David’s Lane near the Presbyterian church; Coco lived five houses down. I got the feeling Kate didn’t want me to go any farther.

“I told Coco you were sick,” Kate said. “What if someone saw you? I’d seem like a liar.”

I waved, saying, “No problem, okay,” and also, “I understand.” Then I watched her slip away, vanishing into white.

The snow in the empty A&P parking lot looked like the uplands of a layer cake. I cut through the drifts, walking without raising my feet. Under the snow was asphalt, and under that, smothered things. It was comforting to think that you could excavate and plow down and begin the world again, though to be perfectly honest, I didn’t know who “you” might be, unless “you” was Jack. Jack was always trying to return the earth to its original state. He kept trying to organize a mall-razing party at the shopping plaza in Bridgehampton where the drive-in used to be,
modeled after Amish barn
raisings
in Pennsylvania, the ones where everyone gets together and builds a barn in two days. Only in this case, they’d tear the shopping center to the ground.

“I have an idea,” he would say at Atomic Tangerine concerts, slipping into his popular imitation of a real estate developer. “Let’s destroy the character of the nation! Let’s tear down trees and fill open space! Let’s build cheaply and irresponsibly! Let’s increase tax and real estate revenue by moving shopping off Main Street and into barren roadside plazas! Let’s lease to an endless stream of monster chains that can survive exorbitant rents by selling cheap goods at top dollar to ignorant consumers.” Jack’s voice would deepen, reverting to his own. “And assholes like you will burn fossil fuels driving to buy bounceable dinnerware and fireproof pajamas on credit.”

As Jack spoke, Dan would play chords and Smokey would beat the drums, sometimes playing bongos throughout, and the room would go wild, with everyone shouting, “Down with the Man!”

As luck would have it, one house they played at was Pip’s, and Mr. Harriman was a school board member and an employee of Tamco, a mall developer Jack liked to refer to as a “terrorist group.” When the guys got called to Principal Laughlin’s office that Monday, Atomic Tangerine was given a
cease and desist
order.

“It’s over with,
Fleming,”
the principal said. “No more Hammer and Sickle Society.”

According to Dan, Jack froze back in his chair, with his hands pressing into the armrests. Smokey would add, “Like Lincoln glued to the Memorial.”

“If Mr. Harriman had a legitimate problem,
Laughlin
, he should have thrown me out himself. And unless there’s something you’d like to share, I don’t think the school owns his house,” Jack reportedly said. “So why don’t you commit your fascist demands to letterhead, and I’ll review them with an attorney. Or better yet,
the press
. Make sure the letter includes the part about a public school official pulling students from classes to harass them on behalf of a private citizen.”

I stomped the snow from my Timberlands and looked at my tracks. They made a twining design, like a maze. It was funny that I’d made it
while thinking of Jack. It looked the way Jack would think, if, in fact, his thinking could have a look. It looked like a meltable wreath. For the rest of the way home I tore through every untouched snowbank, thinking,
Humans ruin everything anyway, so why pretend otherwise?

The cats converged on my ankles in the driveway, lifting their legs high and prancing like miniature show horses. They shoved past me through the front door and bolted into the living room. I changed into dry clothes and turned on appliances again. I wished we had a dishwasher. Dishwashers can be really noisy.

I built a fire, wondering whether the record store was the last time I’d ever see Rourke. The time before that was the last time for quite a while, for weeks. One day would be the last, I informed myself, perhaps today. The way he looked at me through the window was strange, as though I’d caused a dramatic impasse in his day. Inside he examined me as if for flaws. Maybe he was looking for a way to release himself.

It was odd that we’d never spoken but we understood each other. Sometimes you work hard to understand someone; sometimes you don’t work at all. Some people are advocates of shrewd choices. They choose partners more carefully than careers. My mother’s college friend Nonnie is a sleep lab technician who ran a classified ad to find a husband. After studying the resumes and photographs of dozens of applicants, she dated all the men from the A pile, and half of the B’s, before choosing Brian from the middle of the B’s. Within seven years they’d had four children.

“You can never be too careful,” Nonnie would caution. “Never.”

Mom would smile and say, “Nonnie, you’re a brave woman,” which, knowing my mother, could have meant any number of things.

At nine-thirty, the front door opened, and Jack and Dan came in. I felt I hadn’t seen Jack in so long, though in fact I’d seen him just the night before. Behind him Dan was slender and tall and high-haired, tipped like a pencil engaged in the act of writing. Jack kicked off his boots and scuffed in floppy socks to the fire. He was wearing a blue plaid flannel shirt over a shredded wool sweater. His cheeks were two red circles and the hair that had come loose from his ponytail was frozen in strips. Dan flopped onto the couch, saying “Happy New Year!”

Jack’s eyes surveyed the room gloomily. Everything transformed beneath
the dismal heft of his regard. He narrowed his eyes to view me. I didn’t move. It was like standing still to let a bee buzz past.

“We passed your tracks,” he said, leadingly.

I said “oh,” and I moved past the couch. “I’m making coffee. You guys want some?”

Dan grabbed at my leg. “Hold on. The ones in the parking lot. You really made them?”

“I guess.”

“And Jack figured it out? That’s fucked up. You two are totally fucked up.”

“It’s a small town, Daniel,” Jack barked. “A gnat’s-ass town.”

Jack followed me to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and began to hunt around. I jumped onto the counter and waited for the coffee to finish. “So you must be feeling better,” he said, plucking olives from a jar, “seeing that you went out.”

I ignored his question and turned to watch the coffee bubbles burst through the spout of the pot. “How was rehearsal?” I asked.

“We fucked with the music for that stupid play, and by the time we got to Tangerine, those guys were too wasted to rehearse. Dan puked twice and Smokey passed out on the floor,” Jack muttered in disgust. Jack did not like people to pass out or vomit. He said it defeated the whole point of getting high. Why waste money and drugs, he would say, when you could lick raw chicken to achieve a similar effect. “I tied Smokey’s ponytail to the drum stand,” Jack said, “so he’s in for, like, a totally rude awakening.”

“I’m glad you came,” I told him, which was true; I
was
glad.

That seemed to make him happy. “I came up with a decent melody—want to hear it?
Da-da da-da da-da dum dum da da-ah da.”

“God, Jack. That’s really beautiful.”

We listened to Ella Fitzgerald singing “Cow Cow Boogie,” and every time the song ended, Jack would lift the needle back to the beginning.

We were staring at this candle we really liked. Each side depicted the same scene in a translucent mosaic of eggshell-white, moon-yellow, lapis-blue: the seashore, with equally spaced planes of sand, sea, and sky, and directly in the center, a flying bird. Because the landscape was collapsed, it was hard to tell whether the bird was flying over the beach or over the ocean.

Dan looked inside. “Are you sure that’s the original wax?”

“Positive,” I said.

“It’s the candle that Jesus blessed,” Jack said caustically.

Dan respectfully replaced it. “It’s
definitely
over the beach,” he declared, referring to the bird. He wiped his wire-rimmed glasses with the hem of his shirt. “If it were over the ocean,” Dan speculated, “it’d be closer to the line between sand and sea.”

Jack agreed. “If the bird had been positioned at the bottom of the middle instead of at the top, you would think low—small.
Small
, meaning
farther away
, meaning
over the ocean.”

“But it’s high in the middle,” Dan went on, “meaning
big
and
near
. It’s over the sand.”

“Exactly.” Jack sucked on a joint as he spoke, his voice constricting with a chestful of smoke. He offered the end of it to Dan, and Dan accepted it gingerly.

It didn’t seem exact to me. The candle had no converging lines, no infinite distance, no vanishing point. There was no inferred single light source—after all, it was a candle. There were three flat planes and a bird within a field with no apparent dimension. Comparatively the bird was huge. And it was on the central plane—the water.

Dan screwed his face to one side and coughed. “She doesn’t seem convinced, Jack.”

Jack squeezed my shoulders. His cheek on my cheek. “No? Why not?”

“The way it looks. I suppose you can apply laws of perspective to something without perspective, but why bother? Meaning can be conveyed perfectly well without math and science. After all, Giotto painted gold rings on the heads of saints—the rings are obviously halos, not sunrises.” I pointed to the candle. “There’s no reason to think about close or far, over, or under. There’s just
on.”

“You are very fucking high,” Jack said to me. “Aren’t you?”

Maybe I was. “Where did you get that pot? It’s pretty trippy.”

“From Frankie,” Jack said.

“Fat
Frankie?” He was always talking about Fat Frankie.

“Yeah, except he’s not fat anymore. He lost fifty-five pounds.”

“Fifty-five!” Dan exclaimed. “That’s almost half my body weight.”

“He went on that Moonie thing. That thing Dennis does.”

“The
Scarsdale Diet?”
I said. “That’s weird.”

We were interrupted by a thump at the front door—Kate. We all called out, “Kate!” She stomped her feet on the mat and unwrapped her scarf. Behind her through the glass was a wall of white, like a down quilt. “Oh, no,” she moaned, “not the candle, again.”