Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,126

guessed she would do fine. Lots of women are out there, doing fine.

“Isn’t this pretty?” she said of her dress. “It’s chambray.”

When she finished packing, we took Mom’s car for a drive down Three Mile Harbor Road to the bay. Darts of sun pierced the trees, breaking up the retiring darkness with pools of apricot. We listened to “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” by The Beatles, hitting rewind on the tape deck whenever it ended. First I did it once, then twice, then she did it. And when she did it, it was different. It was like pouring bronze over a bird’s nest, casting the moment in metal. There was this understanding that of all the songs we’d heard together, that one would be the last. The beach was empty, despite the early June heat. She parked near the fishing station, by the channel, where the strip of sand was curved and rocky.

“Careful,” she said to me. “There’s a broken bottle.”

We lay on the stony sand and watched the boats return to harbor. The water was twinkling and distinguished. In the theater you can make water by waving bolts of silk from one end of the stage to the other, and sometimes real water looks that way.

Kate began to cry; I thought about the song. But instead she said, “I keep thinking about Harrison.” Her tears congealed in her eyes like pudding. I was thinking what a simple creature she was—we were. Maybe I would take her hand and lay it on my neck, make her say his name again, have her feel my throat convulse. Feel the acid echo, the disease in me.

“Here,” I said, stretching my shirt to wipe her eyes. Above us the birds soared triumphantly, arcing, diving, chasing each last swoop.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, “for ruining our last afternoon.”

I rested my head on her middle. Her babies would come from there. How sad, not to know them. “Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry.”

Sara asked if I was okay. She was driving. I said I was fine. If I said it uncertainly, it was because the armrest was pressing into my spine. I was facing her, not the street—I could not bear to face the street. The street was like a plank shooting off into nothing. There’s this cartoon where the main character drops black vinyl circles onto the ground behind him for his pursuer to fall into. It’s a scary concept—circles being holes, and strange to explain, but in fact that was exactly how I was doing.

“I’m sorry I missed Kate,” she said. “Was it hard to say goodbye?”

“Not really. The baby was crying.”

There were no more places to park by Alicia’s, so we drove to Apaquogue Road and walked back. The Ross house was shaped like a sideways barn, only it was a mansion. On the right was a screened terrace room, and on the left was the driveway, which, like the walkway, was lined with paper bags filled with sand and burning candles.

“Look at this tree,” I said, pointing up as we passed it. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Is it a maple?”

“No,” I said, “it’s a copper beech.”

Though we could see that guests were gathered on the lawn behind the house, we went through the main entrance. The porch was gracious and white with pink geraniums. Sara put her pocketbook in the front hall closet, and she handed a graduation gift for Alicia to a uniformed woman. I offered a bunch of wildflowers I’d picked from the garden near the barn.

The woman said, “Sí, sí, gracias.”

“Gracias, Consuela,” Sara said, introducing me in Spanish.

Consuela replied in English, “Yes, hello. Yes, hello. Yes, this way.”

We were escorted through an impeccable hallway and down two stone steps into a living room with an ivory carpet and furniture that was snowy and low as if it had settled in a frost. Wooden stairs without risers went up to our right, and, on the far wall, single-pane glass doors faced the eastern end of a crowded brick terrace. Consuela led us through the formal dining room, which was attached to an enormous kitchen by a skylighted butler’s pantry. Here, the doors to the patio were open: a reggae band was playing on the other side. Consuela set my flowers on the kitchen table and looked for a vase. She made a fuss over how beautiful they were, but I couldn’t help feeling the gift was not right, that it was primitive, and me too, that I was also