Anthropology of an American Girl (87 page)

I know that. That’s why we didn’t stop at my mother’s after meeting in the rain. Why Rourke drove straight to the city. Why we are here, unable to leave without a plan.

“Next time he comes,” he says, “I don’t know what I’ll do.”

I think of the trust Rourke has always placed in me, the constancy of it. I consider the elusiveness of happiness, and the fact that the reason I don’t have it is that I have not yet earned it. Rourke is not alone in his guilt; I am also to blame. From the start I’ve been content to remain more conscious of his effects than his cause, which is like admiring a bridge without acknowledging the land the structure joins. He never once expected more than I could give, and yet I abused that. I gave away what he would not take.

I confront the myth of self-determination. Independence has not made me free, nor has it diminished my devotion. In spite of my liberty, I loved him—I love him. I think what it means to love. First, of course, there is the fact of you, then the sensation of loving a person, then somewhere along the way, there is the fact of the person. This last fact you cannot ignore. What you do with it—accept, adore, deny, or suppress—determines everything. There are points of intersection, these divine assignments of the heart that complete you.

“My mother lost one of us to fighting,” he explains, slowly. “I can’t let her lose another.”

I tell him that I understand.

“I need to get back to work. I need two months to get through the Olympic Games. I have obligations. I need to know you’re going to be all right until I get back.”

“I can stay with Denny.”

“No. Mark’s too credible to the outside world. He’ll get reckless and irrational. He’ll blame others for whatever mess he makes.”

Rourke waits a minute or two, then he draws my hands down. “You said at the funeral that you should have done something when you had the chance, that you should have held Jack accountable.”

The funeral. He was there.
They
were there. Rob saying,
You seem shaky. You shaky?

Jack’s name from Rourke’s lips. Him saying
“Jack”
like he knew him.

I sit up, coming next to him. “What do you think we should do?”

Rourke says, “I was thinking Spring Lake.”

The phone call he made from the hotel room when we first arrived. His mother. The house, the baking, the books, the furniture, the attic. A policeman’s widow. Mark wouldn’t stand a chance. If she called for a restraining order against him, there would be no question. Besides, she probably has a gun in the house—no, she
definitely
does. And she knows how to use it.

“The Games end mid-August. I’ll be back then. You can come visit me anytime. With Rob, without him. Whatever you want.”

“Does she expect me?”

“I think she’s been expecting you since you two met.”

It would be nice, I think, to spend a summer there, drawing flowers in the yard, listening to her typing. “I’d like to go to your house,” I say. “It’s a nice house.”

One thing I never thought I’d see is tears. Even the bad eye, it cries.

The sheets are soft and dry, like cooking flour when you are little and you dig in with a metal spoon. Lying there with him is like unfurling in clouds or swimming in silk or crossing from air to water. He holds
me like he is unwilling ever to release me, and though his face is rough, I feel no roughness. He braces himself on one elbow, his fingers going down each rib, counting them as though I might have lost one since last he checked. His palm trails the underside of my left breast. He secures my hips; his knee slips up between my legs, bracing them apart. He looks into the gap between our bodies. I look too, at his chest tapering into the drum of his waist, at his abdomen, at the curvature of me beneath.

He breathes in. “The first time I saw you,” he says, “it was like seeing a river. Something that could be touched but not held. Something there but not there. I never wanted anything so much in my life.”

Before checking out, I spoke to Mark’s father. My instinct was that it would be right to call, and Rourke agreed.

I reached Mr. Ross at his office. His secretary put me through directly, which broke my heart. I didn’t mention Mark, I couldn’t. I guess he couldn’t either, because he didn’t.

“And your things, Eveline?” Mr. Ross asked.

“I guess they’re still at the cottage.”

“What would you like me to do?” he asked.

“Maybe someone can take them to my mother’s.”

“I’ll take them myself,” he said. “I’d like to see your mother.”

I thanked him. I felt Rourke’s hand on my shoulder, staying, waiting.

“Am I overstepping if I ask whether you’re all right?” Mr. Ross asked. “I’ll keep your confidence, of course, but I do feel—well, you understand. It’s as though you’re—”

“I’m all right. I’m fine.”

“You’re with Harrison?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Well, then,” he said, and he repeated, “Well, then.” He didn’t sound sad, but he didn’t sound happy; he sounded like he felt what I felt, which was a little of both. “I suppose it was meant to be.”

“Yes, I think so,” I said, and I thanked him again, from the bottom of my heart. Those were the last words we ever spoke. Six months later he was dead.

——

The GTO is brought around to the hotel entrance, and he helps me in. The door closes and also the trunk, and those closing sounds join other closing sounds from other cars and cabs with other luggage. In the heat it all makes a thick and thumping collage.

We regard the changing landscape as we drive from Manhattan to the airport. There is that colossal cemetery in Queens with all the forgotten dead, looking like a knee-high metropolis, with its skyscraper tombstones. We pass beneath furry tails of jet exhaust, letting every other car go by. Even school buses outpace us. If he is trying to miss his plane, he won’t. Not today. Today I feel a way I’ve never felt. In a cup on the dashboard are the pieces of beach glass we found that first day in Jersey, the day at the shore. I reach for them, pouring, palm to palm.

My mind draws pictures. The house I was born in—a brownstone, a door leading to an apartment on the left, another door, a couch behind it, the television my father watches at night, the one my mother collapses in front of, crying when the president is assassinated. The tub where I play when I bathe, twirling and sliding, up and down; and my mother—when she walks past, she sings. I remember a tune that haunts me still.

Mornings are cold. My clothes are warmed on the open oven door, me sitting in front, wrapped in a blanket while she moves, singing still. There is one dress of magenta velvet, a dress she made for me. It has a tiny trail of pale yellow flowers on the collar. To this day I try to paint the colors.

In another home, I am five. Five is not three. Three is when you see things and do not know enough to remember. Five is when you see and try to forget. My parents stand together, though they are no longer married, which means I am sick. A doctor is there. Another Sunday in that same room, my father returns me after a weekend spent with him, and my parents talk in the hall. And I draw and draw, my face very close to the paper, and when I erase it all, my dad comes to say goodbye, towering over me.
Not too fast, Evie, you’ll tear the paper
.

And other places, other homes, all with the same reeling loneliness I felt until Rourke.

“The first time I saw
you
,” I confess, “I had a premonition. I had the feeling I’d found the thing I’d been waiting for. The next time I saw you, it was the same. And every time after it’s been the same.”

His hand reaches for me.

“I don’t want to lose you again.”

“You won’t,” he says. “You can’t.”

At the terminal, we get out. The sun beyond the concrete awning is high and the hot air is brutal, though there is wind. There is always wind at JFK, even in suffocating heat. I tie my sweater around my shoulders. I slide my sunglasses to the top of my head, and wait—for nothing. There is no more next, no more longing, no more separation of the soul. The feeling of nothing is so profound, so sure, it’s a guarantee.

Rourke draws his bags from the trunk. There are two; one is a garment bag. The trunk closes,
thoom
. One of his hands holds the luggage straps, and with his free arm he reaches for me. When we hold each other I feel it everywhere, low and high. I go closer, and he comes in as well. I remember how I used to look out the window for animals in the night, for creatures keeping warm beneath leaves; I remember being relieved that they could. I hope that we are that way, he and I, that we’ll be okay. I hope that love is a miracle, this love and all love and love like ours that is contingent upon nothing—and enriched wholly by concessions.

Rourke looks at me with gratitude, as if he knows what I’m thinking.
Every man wants the secret of your eyes
, Jack wrote.
It’s better to love than be loved
. Rourke kisses me—once, twice, his lips to my cheek.

He hands me the keys to the car. “So you know where you’re going?”

“Yeah,” I say, touching the GTO—careful, like it’s alive. “I know.”

“August,” Rourke says.

“August,” I say, “yes.” August. “Or sooner.”

I go on my toes, and he comes down—and in the middle we meet. My lips print against his lips, soft. There it is, the stain of my devotion. And once more, then, he goes. And I follow him through the lens of the terminal glass, watching him fold in and away. How meager the bags
look, how small the crowd. The bodies and faces are real, and the colors real, and the stories real, and yet, only he stands out.

Three planes mark the horizon. It’s roulette to guess which is his. Planes are modern angels, silver-winged and supernatural, carrying away cargo that is precious. I don’t like to think of him up there, in airborne machinery, though it is right somehow for him to vanish this way, cutting through the flat dividing lines of time, soaring West.

And him. Does he search the paling membrane of the planet from the brightness of his cabin? Does he find me—minuscule, anonymous? Does he see me the way I once was, or the way I have become? In August I will thank him—for leaving me rich, for leaving me courageous, a fighter. For leaving me with everything I have ever wanted. I am an American girl. I stand with my feet firm on the soil of a nation.

“Oh, Jack,” I say out the car window, the world flying by. “Now that you’re gone, I swear to be filled with twice the life.”

A
s Eveline says, “Everywhere there are angels.” And since I have received more than my fair share of divine assistance during this process, I close with expressions of gratitude to those earthbound angels who extended themselves to help me achieve my purpose.

I am thankful to Meghan-Michele German, one of the original novel’s first readers, who arrived by my side in 2007 during a particularly rough moment and provided me with the encouragement and practical support I needed to give
Anthropology of an American Girl
new life. Next, I am indebted to my sister, Penelope Leigh Hope, who has read the manuscript in its various incarnations so many times that surely she knows it as well as I do myself. Penelope has given her time and attention unconditionally, and in doing so, she has helped me through more difficult moments than she will ever know.

I am fortunate to have a remarkable set of friends on whose daily support I was able to rely during the course of rewriting and editing. I am grateful to James Benard, for his early and continued faith in this project and its author; to Deborah Silva, for her loyalty; to Tucker Marder, for his steadfast friendship; to my parents, for their willingness to gamble once again on my competence; to my eldest daughter, Vee, for her uncanny ability to remain rational and advise well in the face of chaos; to my youngest children, Emmanuelle and Rainier, for their tireless cheer and inspirational artistry; and to Silas Marder, whose tender attentions on my behalf to each and all of the aforementioned gave me the safe space I needed to complete the manuscript.

My experience with Spiegel & Grau has been overwhelmingly positive. I thank everyone there for their kindness—in particular, Julie Grau,
for making me feel welcome, and Hana Landes, for maintaining her serene composure while giving me very real support.

I am most obliged to my agent, Kirby Kim of William Morris Endeavor, for his level-headed enthusiasm, sound judgment, and artistic intuition. The success of this version of the novel can be attributed in large part to his conscientious willingness to read my submission cover to cover within days of receiving it.

And finally, I thank Cindy Spiegel, my editor and publisher, under whose careful guidance this book was reshaped.
Anthropology
has been as improved by her insights and influence as I have been by her friendship. I could not have done this without her.

1.
 
LITTLE GIDDING,
T. S. Eliot, from The Four Quartets, © 1943. Published by Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, Fla., and Faber & Faber Ltd., London.

2.
  From Kurt Vonnegut’s Introduction to
OUR TIME IS NOW, NOTES FROM THE HIGH SCHOOL UNDERGROUND,
edited by John Birmingham
,
© 1970, Praeger (Greenwood Publishing Group), Santa Barbara, Calif. Reprinted by permission of the author’s agent, Donald Farber.

3.
 
EVANGELINE
, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, c. 1847.

4.
 
SEDUCTION,
Jean Baudrillard, © 1990 by Jean Baudrillard. Reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Press, LLC.

5.
 
A VISIT FROM SAINT NICOLAS,
Clement Clark Moore, c. 1823.

6.
 
THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON,
Emily Dickinson, c. 1858. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson, (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College.