Anthropology of an American Girl (38 page)

The car thrust to a laborious and inexact stop at the intersection by the post office in East Hampton. The placid mechanical hum and puckered clicks from the streetlight slit the air, and the bloody electric haze it made warmed Rourke’s face as he looked left into the dead May night. Though he was in profile, I could see his eyes. I could see his fear, and in it, the place where I resided.

Rob’s voice came, soft under his breath, breaking through to Rourke, “Green light.”

When we pulled into the driveway, Mark and Rob stepped out of the car, with Mark helping Kate, asking when she thought she would be heading to college.

Rourke leaned down and gave me his hand, lifting me out. In the slender murk produced by our bodies, his hair touched my hair and his breath mixed with mine. When I turned to go, his left hand caught my waist, cupping it, his body pushing up behind me. Bending slightly, his right hand came down around my front to grab my right inner thigh. I was lifted slightly as his fingers found the run in my stockings, and through the shreds he found my skin, clutching up into obscurity.

T
he families of graduating seniors emptied out of cars, sheepish in uncommon splendor, like milling clans at the origin of a parade. There is something spent about the families of teenagers; possibly it’s the look of exhausted loyalties. Perhaps it’s only right that we grow overbig in someone
else’s space. Perhaps we need to tire and differentiate, leave and adapt.

“Hey, Evie,” people kept saying, and I kept saying, “Hey.”

Sara Eden joined me on the curb in front of the school, where I was sitting, waiting for the ceremony to begin. Sara looked especially pretty all dressed up. Her eyes sloped at the farthest edges, like the opened wings of a tropical bird. Her skin was rich dark brown like a friar’s robes, her teeth perfectly even. A car engine quit alongside us. Sara waved. I listened to the tinkling fuss of her bracelets. “That’s my cousin. Marika.”

“What a pretty name,” I said. “Marika—like a spice.”

Sara pulled her braids back incompletely on the side nearest me in the disarming way that some girls have. Though I had not felt sad before, with Sara there I felt sad. She was going to Georgetown, in Washington, D.C., and D.C. is one of those places people never come back from. They don’t necessarily stay, but they almost always go from there to elsewhere. Sara was asking me about Alicia’s graduation party. I’d already said no, to Alicia and also to her, but it occurred to me that I might not see either of them so much anymore.

“So what do you think? I’ll pick you up at five, okay?”

Sure, I said, five is fine.

I’d remained in place for fifteen days after Rourke moved away, not leaving my house, moving only to touch the things I knew he’d touched—the door frame, the bookshelves, the couch, the paper dolls and the sailboat I’d made, the section of the kitchen counter on which he’d leaned. I kept my schoolbooks on a windowsill in my mother’s bedroom upstairs, where I labored to observe beyond the greening leaves the street his car had traveled. There was a chair, petite with a round swirling mauve seat and painted black wood. It was not a comfortable chair, but it was there that I sat every day until dark, except for brief hours at school, briefer hours in bed. Everyone was good to me and kind, deferring, always deferring. They seemed afraid for me, though it wasn’t necessary. They didn’t know me. They didn’t know that my path had been decided, that when I moved through the present, it was as if through a paraffin corridor. I would have spoken of such things, but it was likely
that I would not have been heard. When anyone asked what I was doing, I would say,
studying
. If no one answered the ringing phone before I got to it, I would lift the receiver and drop it. It was always just someone calling, just a person, not Rourke.

From a quilted, sequined sack, Kate withdrew a tangle of bobby pins. She secured her graduation cap, tilting her head into the light at funny mannequin angles, contemplating space beyond the cafeteria window. An impeccable razor line separated the two halves of her hair. How long ago had the strands at the bottom been by the scalp? Maybe the ones on the bottom were there last time Maman cooked veal for dinner. I’d never thought of hair length as a measure of time. It’s sickening actually, the way hair sprouts from pores, squeezing up like famished worms even after a body is dead.

“Still in a bad mood?” Kate asked.

On my hand I was drawing a cup. I had no idea why a cup. I was looking down, trying to avoid the last circus of my peers. A red construction paper sign on one of the doors had been changed from
PICK UP GOWNS HERE
to
PICK UP GIRLS HERE.
Paulie Schaeffer and Mike Stern were wrestling by the kitchen, Dana Anderson was applying a second coat of nail polish, and Regina Morris was crying because her school ring had dropped behind a radiator—janitors were on the way. Marty Koch was drinking an orange soda. Dressed in his gown he looked like the nebbish cousin of a vampire. Others milled wistfully—Kiki Hauser and Min Kessler, Adam Sargent and Lynn Hyne—each borne down with memories, and yet each preparing to step experimentally into the half-light of a new life.

Cameras were flashing—
zic-zhing, zic-zhing
.

Have a great summer!

Good luck out there!

See you next life!

Jack appeared. I didn’t see from where. He thrust his gown at Kate. “Fix this piece of shit. The snap’s busted.”

“I can’t believe you broke it already,” she said.

“The snap sucks. All snaps suck. Snaps are for fags,” Jack said blackly.

As Kate hunted for a safety pin, he turned to face me. It was like meeting a puppy I’d given away. I found myself searching for signs of neglect. Wine-colored sacs hugged the undersides of his eyes, attaching like nesting cocoons, like bloody slings. The knuckles of his right hand were badly scraped. Skin flapped over in certain parts and was missing entirely in others. The blood looked dry but not old. His T-shirt said
, It’s cool to love Jesus
. I was surprised to see him. I had not expected to see him.

“How are you?” he wanted to know.

“I’m okay.” I extracted a strand of hair from the corner of his mouth. “You? You okay?”

“Me? Oh, yeah, sure. I’m okay.”

He’d come before dawn, just six hours before graduation. I was sleeping lightly. I heard the barn door creak. He climbed the ladder, and from halfway up he tossed a bottle of liquor onto the bed. I could feel it hit the mattress; I could hear the cramped slosh of fluid. It sounded one-third empty.

“What time is it?” I asked, sitting up.

He said, “Night.” His legs swung off the ledge of the loft. I had the idea he might jump, though he would not have gone far. If I could have taken his pain, I would have, because my love for him was undiminished. You hear of paralyzed people who send signals to sleeping limbs. Or amputees who feel phantom tingling in parts that no longer exist. Despite his violent removal, all the space around me that he had occupied still belonged to Jack. Not a day passed without me sending signals to missing pieces.

“I could cut my wrists,” he said, “put a bullet through my skull. If I thought I could reach you. But nothing can reach you.”

I guided his head to the basin of my lap. I brushed back his hair, and unraveled the many knots. If I was cruel, I did not feel cruel. I felt new. I’d met the darker side of life; I’d met its animal. The animal came to me because it knew me. Jack understood what I’d become. I could tell by the wonder and the disgust in his eyes.

“Every time I see a flower,” he said as he wept, “it’s your favorite.”

——

Kate fanned the air as she fastened his robe. “You reek of alcohol.”

Jack lifted his chin. “Quick,” he said sarcastically, “hand me a mint.”

“Where’s your cap?” she asked him as we stood to take our places in line.

“Daniel!” he bellowed. Dan’s head emerged from the crowd. Jack clapped, going, “Chuck it.” Dan snapped his wrist, and the hat came gliding over like a square Frisbee from line L-Z to line A-K.

The band began to play the school song, and we all inched through the halls in two lines. Andie Anderson and Brett Lawler were each the head of a line, and the first to reach the auditorium doors. They stopped, and we all stopped in succession, crashing somewhat. Andie’s legs were jiggling beneath her gown as she waited for her cue—her knees were poking like horse noses running a race in tandem. At the first note of “Pomp and Circumstance,” Andie and Brett received the signal to go, while every next person was held by the shoulders for a count of two, then released with a solemn press to the small of the back.

Inside, the auditorium was inky and stifling. Parents and extended families filled the seats, and teachers papered the walls, craning their necks, fanning themselves with programs—all eagerly bearing witness to our indoctrination. We were being given over, who knows to what. The sad truth is that there is no original future. From my chair on the platform, I had an unobstructed view of Denny’s mother, Elaine, who was weeping in the front row. The shank of doughy flesh under her arm wagged as she leaned down to hunt through her pocketbook for a tissue. To prevent Denny from being late, she had changed all the clocks in the house, and she got him to the school two hours early. Unfortunately, it was so early that Denny went downstairs to sleep in the wrestling room and nearly missed the whole thing anyway.

In his valedictory speech, Stephen Auchard spoke of promises and responsibilities while everyone was thinking primarily of the rewards of lunch. He could not say what he really thought, whatever it was that that may have been, if in fact his real thoughts were even known to him. But he had not been singled out for the inventiveness of his sentiments. He’d been chosen as the one most brilliantly weaned of idiosyncrasy. Stephen
returned to the seat next to mine, and I bumped against him, giving him a small thumbs-up. Poor guy. He wanted to be a surgeon. One day we would meet again, one day in the distant future, one day when I required surgery, though at the time it was hard to imagine what part of me might need to be cut.

Principal Laughlin beamed and shook my hand like he meant it when he presented my diploma. On it, my name had been carefully written in veering script:
Eveline Aster Auerbach
. People shouted that name exactly as I read it—people I knew and others I did not know, all clapping loudly. Clapping is bizarre. Powell says in certain places people do not do it. In certain places they call out in repetitive hoots, going,
loo, loo, loo
.

Afterward, my parents were in the lobby, Marilyn and Powell too. It was strange to see them there, representing me. From a distance they seemed credible, semi-sociable, and nicely dressed, making it hard to tell strictly by the look of them that they knew nothing about me. They were standing with Coco’s parents, discussing college acceptances as though they’d played some part in the process, as though they’d helped with applications or offered money. Mr. and Mrs. Hale had visited ten schools with Coco, often staying at four-star hotels, where Coco got
massages
.

“I can’t believe Coco’s going to Amherst,” Denny said one day during finals when he came to see me at my window in my house. He pulled his chair closer to mine. “For political science. Bitch.”

He came every day to keep me company, bringing presents—chocolates and hyacinths and rocks he’d painted, these portraits in gouache. I had eleven, all propped against the window screen: Alicia, Sara, Kate, Stephen Auchard, Lilias Starr, Mom and Powell and Denny’s mother—all on one rock, Eddie from the record store, Marty Koch holding the new yearbook, Coach Slater, the new logo Denny had designed for Atomic Tangerine, and of course, Elvis. “Which is your favorite?” he asked.

I pointed to Elvis. It looked exactly like Denny.

“Really? I happen to like Coach Slater. I mean, I know she’s not your favorite person, but the workmanship is by far the best. Do you know she sat for three hours? Did I tell you?”

He reached into the pocket of his windbreaker and removed the latest. There wasn’t much room left on the window. I’d have to start a second row.

“Your father mailed me a photo,” he said as he placed it in front of me. On the irregular saucer-sized rock was a masterful replica of Chihuahua Man. He was wearing a starched yellow dress shirt, and all four dog heads were floating around him like alter egos. “I used a toothbrush to do the fur,” he said. “I cut off all but ten bristles then melted back the toothbrush wall with a blowtorch.”

I thanked him, and together we looked out the window.

“I forgot to tell you,” he remarked soberly. “L.B. got off the waiting list at Tulane. He’s going for pre-med. I mean, can you imagine getting him as your gynecologist? Or Coco as a lobbyist for the lumber or sugar industry? It terrifies me to think of these people with checking accounts and voting rights. They’ll reverse the progress of the entire preceding generation! We’re doomed.”

I pressed my Chihuahua rock against my cheek. It was warm. Denny must have had it on the dashboard in his car. It
was
strange how much things had changed since we were kids, or since we’d started high school. No one was liberated, not the way my mother and her friends had been—free from consensus and imitation. No one wore homemade clothes or marched on Washington anymore. The closest we’d come to history was Jack and Smokey getting arrested at Shoreham power plant for climbing the fence during an anti-nuke demonstration.

Record store Eddie hadn’t received a single inquiry in the “Ask Eddie” box for months. Everyone just read
Rolling Stone
as if there were nothing to learn about music beyond what magazine editors saw fit to present, as if published information could ever truly be free of advertiser influence. “It’s not that they don’t care about answers; they don’t even know how to ask questions anymore,” Eddie told me and Kate.

Even feminism had been stripped of its legitimacy and relegated to tasteless jokes about women picking up dinner date checks or carrying their own luggage or standing on buses while men sit. There’d been some collapse, some shattering of invisible walls, some backlash from liberalism, some conservative revival. And yet, no matter where you stood idealistically,
your involvement couldn’t be willed away: everyone bore some responsibility. If Denny, Jack, Kate, Dan, and I represented one extreme, and Coco, L.B., Pip, and Nico represented the opposite, we were still relatives of the hour. Society had never felt more like a bizarre arrangement.