Anthropology of an American Girl

by Hilary Thayer Hamann

  I stayed still, letting him regard me. Unlike Jack, he did not seem to be disgusted by what he saw.

  As soon as I was able, I went back down cautiously into the gym. Reaching the end by the doors, I turned back. He had not moved. His elbows were on his knees, his head hanging down, his face turned to me. He was smiling.

  12

  I was standing at the glass doors in the freezing cold foyer of the school, watching the wind do battle with the objects on the ground outside. In just one more day it would be November, and in six more days it would be my birthday.

  Everyone kept asking, “What do you want?”

  “Nothing,” I would say, because it was true.

  I wasn’t even sure what the day meant anymore or how it was supposed to commemorate the fact of me or my existence. I could hardly expect anyone to share in that. When I searched for myself among the memories of the sixteen birthdays I’d had, I found no link between the child I’d been, the girl I was, or the woman I might become. Beyond the obvious connection to my having been present when those days actually occurred, I could think of nothing more meaningful for me in the chain than an attachment to the month itself. In November the sun draws back, the sky goes high, and the wind turns bold. Chestnut casings batter cement paths, broken leaves form long and drifting islands in the streets, and there is woeful noise—the music of decay.

  I reloaded my camera; twenty minutes left before the Halloween pep rally was to start. There was never a shortage of Halloween pictures for the yearbook, but I’d assigned myself to photograph the day anyway, because it gave me an excuse to wear regular clothes and skip classes. As it turned out I made it through three rolls of film before classes started, so I spent the rest of the day reading Pride and Prejudice in Denny’s car and drinking coffee at the rear entrance with the cafeteria workers.

  According to my mother, Halloween was actually a pagan festival of the dead, a day when the threshold between worlds was considered most permeable, and so the deceased would likely visit. “The point of scary costumes,” she said, “was to help the living frighten the dead back to the other side.”

  Sadly, the holiday had drifted from its more compelling origins. Now it represented an opportunity for everyone to dress in toxic plastic and act like assholes. It was especially disturbing when nondescript adults like Toby Parker, the music teacher, or Mr. O’Donnell, the librarian, went about their normal business, such as teaching trumpet lessons or sorting the Dewey decimal classification while dressed as Coneheads or strangled ogres. The office ladies were all wearing fangs, and Ms. Herbst, the typing teacher, was dressed as a German beer wench.

  A blue Mustang reeled expertly into the school parking lot. Ray Trent and Mike Reynolds got out, their doors closing simultaneously—boom-boom. Ray and Mike were from Montauk. Like most people from Montauk, they had nice cars. Unlike others from Montauk, they also had nice clothes and lots of money. They were always going on field trips, or into the city to see concerts at Madison Square Garden. Some people said they sold drugs.

  Troy Resnick said no way. “I never bought drugs from them.”

  “Yeah, well, who would blow their cover dealing to a douche bag like you?” Jack said.

  I didn’t really mind what they did—they were polite and you could have a good time with them without getting molested. I knew because Ray had taken me to the junior prom that past spring.

  Ray had asked me on Valentine’s Day. Jack and I were at lunch, working our way through a bag of heart-shaped cookies Denny had made for us. Denny was an awful cook. He always added stray ingredients—spices, oils, herbs, whatever happened to be around.

  “Perfect timing,” Jack said when Ray arrived, and he pushed the cookies over. “Help us out here before we puke.”

  Ray reached into the bag and checked with Jack about asking me to the prom. “Because I know you’re not going, man.”

  Jack gnawed at a cookie. “Actually, Ray,” he stated, “I’d love to go to the prom, but I can’t afford it. Lobotomies are expensive.”

  “What do you think, Evie?” Ray asked. “You up for it?”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Cool,” Ray said, then he took a bite, gagging instantly. “What’s in these things?”

  “Nutmeg,” we said in unison as Denny came up the aisle with a loaded cafeteria tray.

  “So Ray showed up for some cookies too, huh?” he said brightly. “Thank God I got six milks!”

  Ray and I ended up having a great prom night, dancing and mingling and driving around in the Mustang. I talked about my dad’s sign shop and gypsy moth infestation and films I loved, like Rossellini’s Rome, Open City, and he spoke of his sister Kerrie, a competitive gymnast, and the giant television set he and Mike had just picked up in Smithtown for Mike’s grandmother. Ray did offer me cocaine, but the proposal came more or less as a courtesy, just in case I’d had certain expectations in regard to the evening. He didn’t do any himself, not that I could see, and not once did I observe him exchanging packets for cash. After the breakfast party, he returned me safely home and kissed me goodbye, giving me his Grateful Dead Terrapin Station tape.

  “Thanks for coming out with me, Eveline,” Ray said, “and for not being afraid. Most girls in school are—” He broke off and rattled his arms at hip height like he was pretend-spooked, “Whoa, like, weird.”

  “Yeah,” I said. It was true. Most girls in school were Whoa, like, weird.

  “But you see the beauty in people, so people feel beautiful around you. You don’t have any fears or hang-ups,” he said.

  Tempting as it was to contradict him in regard to fears and hang-ups, I said nothing. It’s impolite to refute a compliment. When people need to be nice, you need to let them. Force yourself. Practice.

  I hid behind a square brick pillar on the school steps. Through my telephoto, I followed Ray and Mike as they eased around the cars in the lot. They were wearing business suits, I figured the suits were their costumes. Mike banged on the fender of a muddy Dodge Dart, and a girl in an aggregate of shredded purple rayon bounded from the passenger side, Instamatic in hand. It was Laura Migliore, also from Montauk, dressed as Stevie Nicks. Laura passed her half-spent cigarette back through the open window to the invisible driver, and she waved one witchy arm, directing Ray and Mike to come together for a photo. I got a shot of her taking a shot of them and a few more of Ray leaning on the car, bending furtively to talk to the driver, with Mike flanking him protectively, staring into the fields. Mr. Cuneo, the algebra teacher, called the fields lots. He was always talking about having grown up in the potato lots.

  The boys came up the school steps, and autumn leaves whipped their ankles, halfway mounting the lengths of their legs.

  “Hey, hey, it’s the beach bunny,” Mike said, referring to a day I’d spent in Montauk, the day I’d lied to Kate when Maman was dying. The day I’d taken a break from hospital visits.

  That day Ray and Mike had found me alone at the beach at the end of Essex Street, in Montauk Village. I seemed down, so they tried to cheer me. They bought me espadrilles and a sundress at the Surf Shop since I’d come by train just in my bathing suit and shorts. We went to the Montauket for sunset, the Yacht Club for dinner, and to Tipperary for darts. Because it’s difficult to leave Montauk when the moment for leaving presents itself, Ray and I spent the night together on his boat. In the morning we had breakfast at the Royale Fish in Amagansett. I didn’t feel guilty about Ray, since it ended up being a good time when I needed one most. It had been a lonely summer, and I was grateful to the someone somewhere who had taken pity on me and sent relief in the form of friends and fun. Someone somewhere—people say that as though it means something other than God.

  Ray held the door for me. “Where’s your costume, Evie?”

  “Don’t tell me,” Mike said, referring to the camera. “You’re a private detective.”

  “You better go easy on the eye-spy stuff,” Ray teased. “I don’t want to have to buy you a new camera wh
en Mike busts that one.”

  A crowd of kids was cramming into the gymnasium, and we joined them. Ray threw one arm around me, and with the other tousled my hair. “That’s some chop job,” he shouted over the shouting. “Very sexy.”

  “You working?” Mike shouted too. “Or you wanna sit with us?”

  “Working,” I yelled. As they waved and walked off, I called out, “What are you guys supposed to be, anyway?”

  “Ourselves,” Mike hollered, “in a couple years.”

  I withdrew to the wall beneath the basketball hoops, climbing onto a stack of folded exercise mats. Each grade filled its own section of bleachers, then the cheerleaders burst into the center of the gym, flipping and triple high-kicking. They performed their two best cheers with incomparable gusto, then came that Queen chant—We will, we will, rock you. Everyone joined in, stomping their feet, one, then the other, ending with a clap—one-two, three, one-two, three. I searched for Ray and Mike through my telephoto lens. They were at the base of the senior section, talking nonchalantly, as if they happened to have met on the street. I wondered why I’d chosen Jack instead of Ray, when Ray was good-looking and polite and much better to sleep with than Jack, and he had a car instead of a skateboard.

  Next the football players jogged out in full uniform and greasepaint, coming together in bungling formation. After one final gargantuan roar, everyone descended to the gym floor, and soon the whole frenetic assembly was urging itself to the doors. I hopped down and let myself be transported in a swilling back and forth motion, until I was ejected into the lobby.

  Kate ran up alongside me. “Did you see him?” Her massive hoop earrings clanked as she spun her head left and right. Kate was a gypsy. Not a gypsy, a “Bohemian.”

  “See who?”

  “Harrison. He was just here. C’mon!” She took off down the hallway, dragging me. “Let’s see if he posted the roles. Hurry!” Once the auditorium doors were in sight, Kate squealed. The list was there. She spun and buried her face in my shoulder. “Oh, my God, Evie, I think I got it.”

  I hugged her. Her eyes were closed, screwed up tight in their sockets, like lavender bottle caps. We were like finalists in a beauty pageant—Kate’s breath on my face, the cushiony weight of her breasts against my breasts, the perfumed fragrance of her hair.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “I’ll go check.”

  On the door was a sheet of yellow legal paper carelessly taped. It hung tilted to the right as though it had come in forcefully from the left. The letters were blocky and sure; the ink was red. As I dragged my hand down the page, I could feel the architecture of Rourke’s handwriting, the reservoirs and alcoves made by the pressure of his pen.

  “Did you find it?” Kate asked.

  “Not yet,” I murmured, reaching again for the top, mesmerized.

  “Come on.” She stomped.

  “Oh,” I said, “here.” I traced the grain of the letters. He had pressed so hard, I didn’t need my eyes to read. “Ready?” I asked, stalling once more. “Emily Webb … Kate Cassirer.”

  Her eyes popped open. “I knew it,” she whispered, and she leaned back against the wall.

  I observed her from across the portal; I was thinking what to say. I was probably supposed to say something. It was weird, but I didn’t feel as glad for her as I had at first, when we were hugging. All I could think was that he had written her name.

  “You worked hard,” I said, striving to sound convincing. “You deserve it.”

  Then I nodded for no reason, the way people do when they pull their lips slightly into their mouths and set aside the magnitude of their own very exceptional feelings. My fingers remained on the paper, feeling every crease and notch, hunting for the weight of his hand, the breadth of his wrist, the bulk of his forearm, as if I could detect within the marks a message to myself.

  13

  Jack slid the barn door open, and his left arm in a cherry-red windbreaker jerked the handle right, two times, reminding me of a madman reloading a shotgun. First there was darkness, then the darkness changed to light, and, suddenly, all the faces.

  A chorus of voices screamed, “Surprise!” A cold beer made its way into my hand. There was music, the birthday song by the Beatles. Damp lips grazed my face and many hands held me, hugging, touching, kissing.

  “Happy Birthday, Evie!”

  “Congratulations!”

  Kate tried to steer me into the lurching pack, but I resisted. Denny took my hand. “I’ll take you around. Okay, honey?”

  Lots of people were there—Jack’s friends and Kate’s and Denny’s, and a few who could possibly be classified as mine, like Ray and Mike and Marty from the yearbook and also several cheerleaders. Part of my brain, the thinking part, appreciated everyone’s excellent intentions. But the remainder, the loose piles of random brain shavings and brain bits, feared the lazy swag of streamers and the humiliated balloons and the smell of spilled beer on the buckling barn floor. I burrowed under Jack’s jacket, hiding there.

  After the Beatles came a loud laser beat—zung, zung, zung. Then plunging whistles, tripping bweeps, manufactured claps, aboriginal whoops, and the deep fishy vociferousness of disco.

  “Let’s dance!” Denny called from the center of the room, and everyone joined him.

  Jack threw his palms over his ears. “Who put this shit on?” he shouted.

  “What is it?” Dan asked. He raised his head and furrowed his brows as though trying to discern one particular ingredient in a complex stew. He was on the ladder to the loft, rewiring a broken light. He pushed his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose with his wrist.

  “It’s the fucking Salsoul Orchestra!” Jack complained bitterly.

  “Actually,” Dan said, “I think it’s Parliament.”

  “Whatever it is,” Jack said, heading to the stereo, “it’s gotta go.”

  I grabbed him, saying to wait. “Maybe it will keep them all, you know, occupied.”

  Jack relented—partly because it was my birthday, partly because it pleased him when I was intolerant of others. He wrapped his arms about me from behind, and together we gazed at the shocking and incongruous sight of disco dancers in the barn. It was somewhat like watching your house burn to the ground from the opposite side of the street. Aunt Lowie always says the two biggest concerns about throwing a party are worrying that no one will come, then worrying that they’ll never leave.

  Denny kept calling me out to the dance floor. He loved to show off what we’d learned from Uncle Archer. Denny’s uncle was a retired Broadway choreographer and dance teacher. We’d been taking lessons for years, ever since Saturday Night Fever.

  “Maybe later,” I suggested.

  “Go ahead,” Jack insisted, though he was being insincere. He hated me to dance in public. Once he’d gone to Teen Night at a local club with me, and when he saw me and Mike Stern dancing to “Brick House” on a platform, he had some kind of an optic seizure. His left eye stayed bloodshot for days.

  “What’s an optic seizure?” Kate had asked afterward.

  “I guess your blood pressure goes up and your veins pop.”

  “That’s a stroke!” she’d exclaimed.

  “Yeah,” I’d said, “maybe it is.”

  On the far side of the barn, past the writhing trunks and ticking heads of the dancers, I noticed what appeared to be a cardboard playhouse. “What’s that?” I asked Jack, and when he didn’t reply, I wiggled past the loose gate of his arms and crossed the room. Against the wall near the door was a refrigerator box with a window cut into the center of its face. Painted above the hole was a message: To Evie from Jack. The writing looked like spilled nails.

  There was clapping. Voices calling, “Open it, open it.”

  I lifted the flap. Hanging from a pink ribbon, in the dead center of the box, was a large, uninflated balloon. I looked back to Jack. He stood as I’d left him, leaning a little to his right. I touched the balloon tentatively. Inside was something resistant.

  “Pull i
t off,” Denny yelled.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Kate said. “Open it. Aren’t you curious?”

  I shook my head. I was not curious. I knew exactly what it was.

  Earlier that day, we were reclining in the sun on a wooden footbridge in back of the nature trail at the end of Huntting Lane. It was where we always went; once Jack had carved the outline of our joined hands there, chiseling them into wood. We would close our eyes and pretend we were hanging by our backs from the belly of the earth, and we could almost feel the spinning. It was as though we were riding; we felt so light. We weighed a flawless weight, a liquid and inconsequent weight, like cylinders half-filled and lying on their sides. We swore we would never impress too deeply, never demand too much.

  “Listen,” Jack whispered. “A warbler.”

  With my eyes closed, I found it: the high stutter, the tiny drill. I could hear it, but also I heard nothing. In my body was a quiescent dizziness, a chiasma of consciousness and unconsciousness. I felt myself float. Listen, he’d said, a warbler. How beautiful Jack was in my mind, how striking and direct. How good it must have felt to be him, so intellectually capable and morally sure. The way his ideas were clever and his pronunciation clear. The way his integrity was not dormant but volatile. The way his beliefs switched over into language. To know Jack was to know there would never be anyone like him. I love him, I thought. I’ll always love him.

  “There it is Evie, look.”

  Jack nudged me twice and I forced my eyes open. The winter light coming in was burning and bright, like first opening your eyes underwater. He was pointing into the air, his thin arm bobbing wretchedly to chase the able bird. I could see his arm attached to his body, his body connected to the ground, the ground not spinning. I wanted to close my eyes and go back to the place in my mind. Things were better there. Oh my God, I thought—Jack, me—the tragedy of us.