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.
When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez, and it’s Eastertime too—
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.”
Acknowledgments
As 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 indebte
d 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.
Permissions Acknowledgments
LITERARY WORKS
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.
7. SONNET 94, William Shakespeare, c. 1609.
8. STRANGERS TO OURSELVES, Julia Kristeva, translated by Leon S. Roudiez, © 1991. Reprinted by permission of Columbia University Press, N.Y.
9. THE MASS ORNAMENT: WEIMAR ESSAYS, Siegfried Kracauer, c. 1920s. From THE MASS ORNAMENT: WEIMAR ESSAYS by Siegfried Kracauer, translated and edited by Thomas Y. Levin, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), © 1995 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press.
10. THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS, Albert Camus, 1942. From THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS, by Albert Camus, translated by Justin O’Brien, © 1955, renewed 1983 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
11. SOME MEMORIES OF DRAWINGS, Georgia O’Keeffe, edited by Doris Bry, © 1974, 1988 (Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press). Originally published in 1974 by Atlantis Editions, N.Y.
12. THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING, John Ruskin, 1857. Reprinted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc., Mineola, N.Y. Originally published in 1857 (London: London, Smith, Elder & Co.).
13. TAO TE CHING, Lao-Tzu, c. sixth century BCE. From TAO TE CHING, A NEW ENGLISH VERSION, WITH FOREWORD AND NOTES, translation by Stephen Mitchell, © 1988. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, N.Y.
14. SONNET 87, William Shakespeare, c. 1609.
15. ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, Richard Burton, c. 1621. A New York Review Book, published by the New York Review of Books, 2001.
16. THE JOURNEY OF THE MAGI, T. S. Eliot, 1927. Published by Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, Fla., and Faber & Faber, Ltd., London.
MUSICAL WORKS
17. FOLLOW YOU, FOLLOW ME, Words and Music by Tony Banks, Phil Collins, and Mike Rutherford. Copyright © 1978 Gelring Ltd. and Hit & Run Music (Publishing), Ltd. All rights controlled and administered by EMI Blackwood Music, Inc. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
18. CAN’T FIND MY WAY HOME, Words and Music by Steve Winwood. Copyright © 1970 (Renewed) F.S. Music, Ltd. (PRS), All rights administered by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.
19. YOU’RE ALL I’VE GOT TONIGHT, Words and Music by Ric Ocasek. Copyright © 1978 Lido Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
20. COW COW BOOGIE, Words and Music by Don Raye, Gene DePaul, and Benny Carter. Copyright © 1941, 1942 Universal Music Corp., Bee Cee Music Company and Hub Music Company. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
21. HERE I AM, COME AND TAKE ME, Words and Music by Al Green and Mabon Hodges. Copyright © 1973 Irving Music, Inc., and Al Green Music. Copyright renewed. All rights controlled and administered by Irving Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
22. WHO’S GONNA BE YOUR SWEET MAN WHEN I’M GONE? Written by Muddy Waters. Copyright © 1972 (Renewed 2000) Watertoons Music (BMI). Administered by Bug Music. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
23. AIN’T WASTIN’ TIME NO MORE, Words and Music by Gregg Allman. Copyright © 1972 by Unichappell Music Inc. and Elijah Blue Music. Copyright renewed. All rights for Elijah Blue Music administered by Bug Music. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation, and of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.
24. TURN THE PAGE, Words and Music by Bob Seger. Copyright © 1973 Gear Publishing Co. Copyright renewed 2001. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
25. JESUS MET THE WOMAN AT THE WELL, Adapted and Arranged by Peter Yarrow, Mary Travers and Milton Okun. Copyright © 1964 (Renewed) Pepamar Music Corp. All rights on behalf of Pepamar Music Corp. (ASCAP). Administered by WB Music Corp. (ASCAP). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.
26. ROCK ON, Words and Music by David Essex. Copyright © 1973 Stage Three Music Ltd. Copyright renewed. All rights in the U.S. controlled and administered by Stage Three Music (U.S.), Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
27. BERNADETTE, Words and Music by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Edward Holland. Copyright © 1967 (Renewed 1995) Jobete Music Co., Inc. All Rights Controlled and Administered by EMI Blackwood Music Inc. on behalf of Stone Agate Music (A Division of Jobete Music Co., Inc.). All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
28. TELL ME SOMETHING GOOD, Words and Music by Stevie Wonder. Copyright © 1974 (Renewed 2002) Jobete Music Co., Inc., and Black Bull Music c/o EMI April Music Inc. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
29. BENNIE AND THE JETS, Words and Music by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Copyright © 1973 Universal/Dick James Music, Ltd. Copyright renewed. All rights in the United States and Canada controlled and administered by Universal—Songs of Polygram International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
30. MAINSTREET, Words and Music by Bob Seger. Copyright © 1976, 1977 Gear Publishing Co. Copyright Renewed 2004. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corpor
ation.
31. WHAT’S GOING ON? Words and Music by Renaldo Benson, Alfred Cleveland, and Marvin Gaye. Copyright © 1970 (Renewed 1998) Jobete Music Co., Inc., MGIII Music, NMG Music and FCG Music. All Rights Controlled and Administered by EMI April Music, Inc., on behalf of Jobete Music Co., Inc., MGIII Music, NMG Music and FCG Music and EMI Blackwood Music Inc. on behalf of Stone Agate Music (a division of Jobete Music Co., Inc.). All rights reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
32. HEY YOU, Words and Music by Roger Waters. © 1979 Roger Waters Overseas Ltd. All Rights for the U.S. and Canada administered by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
33. MADAMA BUTTERFLY, from the opera by Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). Based on the play “Madame Butterfly” by David Belasco, story by John Luther Long.
34. FIRE, Words and Music by Ralph Middlebrooks, Marshall Jones, Leroy Bonner, Clarence Satchell, Willie Beck, James L. Williams, and Marvin Pierce. Copyright © 1974 by Play One Music Publishing, Rick’s Music, Inc., and Segundo Suenos Music. Copyright renewed. All rights for Play One Music Publishing administered by Unichappell Music, Inc. All rights on behalf of Rick’s Music, Inc., administered by Rightsong Music, Inc. All rights for Segundo Suenos Music administered by Bug Music. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation and of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.
35. LET THE SUNSHINE IN, Music by Galt MacDermot. Words by James Rado and Gerome Ragni. Copyright © 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970 (Copyrights renewed), James Rado, Gerome Ragni, Galt MacDermot, Nat Shapiro, and EMI U Catalog, Inc. All Rights administered by EMI U Catalog INC. (Publishing) and Alfred Publishing Co., Inc. (Print.) All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.
36. CAN’T TAKE MY EYES OFF OF YOU, Words and Music by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio. Copyright © 1967 (Renewed 1995) EMI Longitude Music and Seasons Four Music. All rights reserved. International Copyright Secured. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
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