Anthropology of an American Girl

by Hilary Thayer Hamann

  Seventeen encounters in six months, and eleven conversations. I thought maybe I should burn the document, but I liked the compact and illegible blocks of handwriting. The dense and inky look of the pages seemed official and purposefully slanted, urgently conceived and textured to the touch, like the original Constitution.

  22

  Someone called my name from the pay phone area. “Hey, Eveline.”

  I froze, though I knew it could not possibly be Rourke. I went slowly to the alcove across the hall from the main office and peeked around the edge of the wall. Ray Trent was there, picking through a handful of change. He wore a black turtleneck and blue jeans, and his blond hair was feathered back. He looked like a handsome Tom Petty. Under his arm was a worn, liver-brown phone book held together by a rubber band. It seemed urbane, the need to make calls from school. I wondered was my number inside.

  “Did I scare you?” He smiled. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “No, I just, no—you didn’t.”

  “That’s a nice sweater.”

  “Thanks, it’s Kate’s.”

  “I’m sure it’s nicer on you,” Ray said, then he held up one finger to me as he told the person he was calling to hang on. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “What are you doing Sunday?”

  Jack would be in Boston with his dad. I said, “Nothing.”

  “Ever been to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Montauk?”

  “No,” I said. I hadn’t.

  “Great,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at nine.”

  At eight fifty-five on Sunday morning there was a knock, and my mom answered the door. Steam was rising from her coffee mug, fanning her face. “Hi, Ray,” she said. They’d met before—the first time was when he took me to the junior prom.

  “Happy St. Paddy’s, Irene.” Ray kissed her cheek.

  My mother raised her cup. “I made coffee. Want some?”

  “A quick cup, sure.” He stepped into the house and followed Mom to the kitchen.

  I had no idea why I’d said yes to the parade, except to say that the invitation had taken me by surprise. Though I knew Ray well, I felt nervous about widening some circle I didn’t intend to widen. Now that I’d experienced being a woman to a man I was in love with, I’d become self-conscious about being a woman to the world in general. Of course, being female is always indelicate and extreme, like operating heavy machinery. Every woman knows the feeling of being a stack of roving flesh. Sometimes all you’ve accomplished by the end of the day is to have maneuvered your body through space without grave incident.

  Ray felt my coat. “Have anything warmer? It’s pretty cold out there.”

  My mother reached into the closet. “Take this, Eveline.”

  “Cool jacket!” Ray said.

  “United States Navy,” Mom informed him as I put it on. The coat was black and straight with a blunt collar and a zip pocket on the left breast. If Jack had been there, he would’ve told us to Put that fucking thing away.

  The coat had belonged to Arlo Strickley, Powell’s navy friend from Tennessee. Once during a stopover in Montauk, Arlo got leave and paid a visit, raging drunk. Jack and I were home alone. “Carolyn’d be just about your age now, Evie,” Arlo cried when he saw me. Carolyn was his daughter.

  “Where is she?” Jack demanded testily. He did not like drunks to cry. “Is she dead?”

  “No,” Arlo sobbed. “She’s in Far Rockaway.” He then launched into the maudlin story of his luckless life—three failed marriages, two episodes of financial ruin, the loss of his parents in a charter bus accident, and a sinus infection that had plagued him for years.

  Jack tried to piece together elusive details. “Hold on, Arlo,” he’d say peevishly, “are you talking about Gloria or Louise?” Then Jack would turn to me. “Are we back in ’74? Didn’t Louise run off with the Cuban chef?”

  “Did I say Louise?” Arlo belched. “I meant to say Lois.”

  When he had finished talking, Arlo stumbled to a stand and began to divest himself of his jacket, tearing his arms from the sleeves and turning them inside out as he did. “You hang on to this,” he insisted, blindly passed it over, missing me entirely. “Carolyn won’t want it.”

  It was no use explaining about the coat to Ray. One fact of life is that it’s hard to explain old things to new people. “That coat will keep you warm,” my mother assured me as Ray and I stepped into the frost-beaten yard. I paused to kiss her goodbye, and her fingers drifted uncertainly to the spot on her face where my lips had lain.

  “Oh,” she said, surprised. “Bye, Eveline.”

  Ray tapped the horn of his Mustang as he backed out. She waved through the hedges. “Your mom’s pretty. She looks like the actress from Dr. Zhivago. Julie Christie.”

  I told him thanks. “Lots of people say that.”

  Ray’s car was clean and lush: it rolled like mercury onto Route 27. I wondered if lush was right. Maybe lush meant drunk. If lush meant drunk and lush also meant luxurious, that would be strange. The Allman Brothers’ Eat a Peach was playing and it was perfect for the wintry world streaking past. Driving in the morning is like having wings, like today is connected to yesterday.

  Meanwhile I ain’t wasting time no more

  ’Cause time goes by like pouring rain and much faster things—

  The village of Montauk is largely horizontal: it has the appearance of being deflated, like something dropped from the sky. There was nothing pompous or false about it. As we descended into the town, I got the same feeling I always got when I visited, that there was no place in the world I would rather be.

  “You like pancakes?” Ray asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Eggs?”

  “No, not eggs.” Chickens inside.

  He parked halfway up Main Street. “I know what you need,” he said. “Coffee.”

  “Coffee would be good.”

  John’s Pancake House was full of people and fogged up with sausagey smoke and smells. We unbuttoned our coats at the door, and several conversations lapsed. “Must be your hair,” he whispered. We squished through to a table in the far corner, and I picked the seat facing the wall. Ray collected the dirty dishes and carried the pile to the counter, where he greeted someone he called “Captain.”

  “What do you want, Evie?” Ray called back to me.

  “She’ll have pancakes, of course,” the captain said, as if Ray were missing the obvious. He tucked his neck into his chest and bellowed, “Stack of blueberry! And you, Raymond?”

  “Sorry about that,” Ray said when he sat. “I ordered eggs so you can have the toast.”

  “It’s okay,” I assured him. “Maybe they’ll like me better if I eat the pancakes.”

  A harried waitress appeared over our tiny table. She wiped it roughly and deposited two worn mugs of coffee with cheap spoons sticking out. She withdrew a mass of napkins from her apron and plopped it between us.

  “Busy, Deirdre?” Ray asked.

  She blew out some air. “It’s just me today. And town is packed for the parade.”

  “Guess you’re buying tonight,” Ray joked.

  As she walked away, she said, “Don’t hold your breath.”

  He tore the tops off of two sugars. I took the packets from his hand and tipped them at an angle above his cup. We watched the boxy grains cascade and disappear.

  “When we walked in,” Ray said, “it reminded me of that Bob Seger song ‘Turn the Page.’”

  “Yeah, me too.” I leaned forward and began to sing.

  When you walk into a restaurant, strung out from the road,

  And you feel the eyes upon you, as you’re shaking off the cold—

  “You have a nice voice,” he said.

  “It’s an easy song for me to sing.” Jack always made me sing that song, even though he didn’t like Bob Seger.

  “You in chorus?” Ray asked.

  “No. I hate that chorusy singing style.”

  “With the parts that are supposed to co
me together.”

  “But they never do.”

  “And the shitty songs they give you,” Ray added heatedly. “When my sister was in chorus, she had to sing the theme from Oklahoma!”

  “I quit with ‘Eleanor Rigby.’”

  “‘Eleanor Rigby,’” Ray said. “Jesus. It’s depressing enough when the Beatles do it.”

  Deirdre was back with hot plates, and so Ray and I leaned back, the partly reluctant way you do when your food arrives and you’ve been leaning in having a good time. Being in Montauk was like being on vacation in America. Nothing looked the same as it did at home, though nothing was very different either, except there were no phones to answer, and you weren’t sure where your next meal was coming from.

  “I’m glad you came,” he said, trading his toast for pancakes off my stack.

  “Me too,” I said. It was true, I was glad.

  “It’s called Massacre Valley.” Ray pointed west over the top of the parade route. We had parked on a slight bluff behind the crowd. “It was the last battle site of the Montaukett Indians. Fort Hill is there to the right, and behind us is Montauk Manor.”

  Mike Reynolds tapped the keg that he’d been setting up in the back of his van. Two sleepy German shepherds were inside curled on scraps of shag carpet. After breakfast, we’d met Mike and the dogs at his grandmother’s house near the golf course at Montauk Downs, where it would have been hard to argue that you were not in Ireland. Generally when people speak of natural beauty, they are referring on the one hand to livingness and on the other to masterlessness. In Montauk nature was not indifferent, nor was it servile. It was as if every blade of grass, every tree and hedge, was clinging to existence. Whether emboldened by the proximity of the ocean or by the blunt beginning of the nation, the landscape had a vitality that things elsewhere seemed to lack.

  “Across the street is Fort Pond,” Mike said, handing out cups of beer, “and above it—”

  “America,” I said, and together Mike and Ray said, “Right.”

  We toasted and stared out. I didn’t really see America, or, for that matter, much of anything through the mist, but I squinted and imagined I did. I asked myself what would it be like to head blindly into it, blindly west? Would it be easy to vanish? I hadn’t even begun, and yet the instinct was in me to start over.

  There was the sound of motorcycles; three bikes drove up and stopped to our left. They made a row when they parked, like they were poised to race off the edge of the hill. Mike walked over, and Ray and I followed. It was nice, the way they got excited to see people. They introduced me to their friends—Ralph LaSusa, a fish counter for the National Marine Fisheries Service, and Will and Jane, from England, husband and wife pub owners who’d lost their place outside London in a fire.

  “They took the insurance money and came here,” Ray said. “We’re going to open a bar together. My father’s backing us.”

  Will was well-spoken despite his scrappy looks, and Jane was a tall, chesty blonde with a pie-shaped face. Ralph was lame. His left shoe had one of those shoe-shaped blocks on it.

  “How about a ride, Eveline?” Will offered. “Before the parade kicks in.” People with motorcycles always assume that everyone without one wants a ride. I didn’t want to offend him, so I said sure. “Be a love, Janey, lend us a helmet.” He snapped his fingers at her.

  Jane cocked her head. “Lend a helmet? What, so she can ride with you?” Her leather jacket emphasized the curve of her hips and the gentle roll of her buckled belly.

  “S’right,” he responded.

  “Do you think I’ll allow you to nick up that face,” she asked, referring to me, “or those legs?” She threw an arm around me. “I’ll take her out.” Jane thrust her hand at him, and Will surrendered his helmet with a grin, seeming to cherish her all the more for her minor victories.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “More beer for me.”

  I followed Jane to her bike. It was shimmering crimson. “What kind is it?” I asked.

  “A Ducati,” she said. “It’s the only thing I carried over from home—besides Will.” Jane offered her own helmet to me and she kept her husband’s, which I took to be a display of biker etiquette. The helmet wobbled on my head like a globe of ice cream on the tip of a pin. “Have any gloves? You’ll need them.”

  “Just one,” I said. I’d lost the other. Maybe at breakfast.

  She started the engine with two powerful thrusts of her right leg. “Don’t be nervous. Will’s reckless, but I’m not.” I climbed on. “How about you?”

  I looked to locate the foot pegs and I wrapped my arms around her waist. “About half.”

  “Half-reckless,” she said, and laughed. “Yes, I can see that.”

  Jane flexed her wrist, and we took off. The drive off the hilltop made a slight corkscrew, and when we leaned into it, we went low, maybe forty-five degrees off the road. Angels must have seen us, drilling into the earth, wending our way, rotating conchoidally. We emerged alongside the parade, which was just beginning, then we cut behind the crowd, heading north toward the docks. She opened up the engine, and the bike accelerated in shifts, winding out to the full capacity of each gear. It felt good, like purging yourself of pent-up feelings. I didn’t think I’d had pent-up feelings until I experienced the sensation of purging them. It’s true what people say about the way bikes vibrate between your legs. Jane’s hip bones met the pale backs of my forearms, and my clenched hands burrowed into the pillow of her middle. I wondered what it’s like to love a woman. I wondered—Is it nice, like this?

  She downshifted at the entrance to the wharf, and the air began to slacken. We coasted into a spot by the fishing boats. She hit the kickstand, and I removed my helmet, reacquainting myself with the planet’s peculiar serenity. It’s humbling to travel by motorcycle, to suffer the cost of time travel, to earn the distance covered. We crossed over to the dock and began to walk.

  Jane drew a vivid breath. It seemed like she might sing a song. “Will’s good enough,” she said. “Good enough.”

  I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets. They were frozen.

  “Are you in love, Eveline?” she asked.

  I said that I was.

  “Not with Ray, though.”

  The ships squeaked resignedly against the wooden pier. “No, not with Ray.”

  “I am in love,” she proclaimed, unperturbed by the aches and grunts of the boats. “With Martin. He lives in Devon, England.” Ma-tin, she said, without the R. The first syllable sounded maternal, almost bored. The tin was crisp and close; it barely escaped her mouth. At the end of the dock, near Gosman’s, she turned a quarter-turn to the right, eastward. “I come to look,” she said. “You understand, toward England.”

  Her resilience fell away as she conjured her loss, and the loss animated her. It was a delicacy she revealed, that she’d been longing to reveal. I wondered how she had recognized me as a pitiful equal. Will’s good enough, she’d said, reminding me of the savage enormity of the world, the interminable length of life.

  “And yours?” Jane asked. Her face was serene, immune to the stiff bite of the wind. “Where does he live?”

  I did not think of Rourke as mine, though I supposed Martin was not Jane’s, not really. I liked that she reserved for him the best of herself—her imagination. That’s like a work of art. She slept with her husband, but, in giving her body, she gave nothing of consequence, not when secretly holding the rest in check. I wondered if Will knew but didn’t care, and if she despised him for that, or if secretly he despised himself.

  “I’m not really sure where he lives.”

  “Ah,” she responded, seeming to absorb in full the meaning of pretty much everything. “It’s not an easy one then, is it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Find out where he lives,” Jane solemnly advised, “so you’ll know which way to face when you lose him.”

  We returned to the weaselly and gaunt pitch of bagpipes. The notes shot into the air, the sound at once both
solitary and allegiant. Will was waiting alone by his bike. He folded Jane into his arms, and I slipped off to find Ray and Mike, with the two dogs following me.

  I stopped to look down at the parade. The avenue was packed: a long stream of green bodies and floats slithered past. I came alongside a man with a child on his shoulders, and both the boy and his father had waxy kelly clovers painted on their cheeks. I wondered why I felt no will to express myself that way. Maybe it was because other than my parents, I have no known ancestors. In fact, my ancestry is just the span of my parents’ lives plus the span of mine—about fifty years.

  There was a piercing whistle, and I turned to see the dogs bolt back to the van, where Ray was waiting. Directly behind me, only feet from where I stood, was Rourke.

  How mysterious to see him, mysterious and gothic—with the wind and the water, the bluff and the bagpipes. The space between us was precarious, like a ropeway between two landforms. Sixteen days had passed since I’d seen him last, since I’d begun to avoid him. And yet, by his eyes I could see that nothing had changed.

  There was a car behind him, cherry-red; the paint looked new. A guy appeared from the periphery, wiry with a handsome haggard face. He looked like maybe he was from Brooklyn originally. He wore a green baseball shirt that read Katie O’T—O’Toole’s, maybe. The last letters fell beneath his unzipped sweatshirt. He placed a bottle of Beck’s in Rourke’s left hand.

  “Better watch out,” he warned me. “Your boyfriend’s gettin’ nervous.”

  I thought he might have meant Ray. I wasn’t sure. I said, “My name’s Eveline.”

  He leaned back onto the hood of the car. “Yeah, I know who you are,” he said. His accent was concentrated and compressed, and somehow familiar to me; I liked him instantly. He took a pull off his beer and minimized his eyes. He extended the bottle in my direction. I stepped forward, taking a mouthful and handing the bottle back.