Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,152

washed dishes, and when the water turned hotter, I knew he was done. I was cold so I dressed in one of his sweaters, and I knelt alongside him in the living room. He was deconstructing a camera. I had never seen the camera before. I didn’t know where it had come from or what was broken about it. In the action of his hands I tried to follow the action of his mind. He was studying the blown-out mess like it was a chessboard midgame, like he had looked at the pool table with Rob. His hand hovered in studious benediction over the parts before settling on the pieces to replace. I was thinking a fire would be nice.

Later we went to the bedroom and he undressed me before the mirror. His chest was a block of copper; my skin was copper too, both of us dark from sun. His head was inclined and his lips moved down my neck from ear to shoulder. In bed he drew me onto his chest, not letting go, just holding me, and it was there I remained through to morning. I slept very little, him not at all. Anytime I stirred, he would rock me back to sleep.

The next day was normal. I showered like normal, and after Rourke picked up Rob at some house on West Lake Drive, and they got the Cougar from Surfside, he and Rourke acted normal, whatever normal was for them—broken bones and film trivia, plates of eggs and engine options and sisters in trouble. One thing was different—when Rob got into his car to leave for Jersey, he kissed me and said, “I love you too.”

Later that afternoon, when Rourke was driving me to work, he swung the car off Montauk Highway and onto the overlook. He downshifted to the edge of the lot, rolling dangerously close before pulling the brake. It occurred to me with a degree of fascination that maybe he intended to just, like, fly off. It made me happy to think of dying with him; in fact, of all possible ends for us, it was the one I would have preferred. I recalled the guy Jack had told me about when he’d come back from Outward Bound the previous summer, the one who had fallen off the ridge while hiking. I remembered how Jack and I imagined him floating in space, suspended, like a flag flapping to nowhere.

Together Rourke and I confronted sundown, and I collapsed into the shadow of his lap, facing him, tracing my name into the parchment of his abdomen. And he sighed, laying his hand upon my bare back, fingering the straps of my shirt.

31

When I came out of my room and into the kitchen, my mother set down her book and slid it to the center of the table. She was sitting exactly where I’d left her when I moved out in June. I wondered if that was a good omen or a bad one. She leaned back in her chair. The milk in her coffee pooled to caramel streaks at the top.

“How’s the packing going?”

I said, “Almost done.”

“Feel like going shopping tomorrow?”

“For what?”

She thought for a moment, pulling back her lips. “Shampoo. Do you have shampoo?”

“I figured I’d just take some from upstairs.”

“Do you still have things in Montauk?”

“Not really. Anything left will fit into a bag.”

I visited her once a week to do laundry, mow the lawn, call my father. It wasn’t necessary, but it kept my parents from having to ask questions, which they preferred not to do. As far as they were concerned, I was miles ahead of where they’d been at my age—I was working, going to college, and paying my own way. My father had left home at seventeen to join the army, and when my mother turned seventeen, she married my father. They had no means to help me financially, and no intention of finding the means—they were not about to take out loans or find second jobs. So whatever right they might have had to inquire into my affairs had been relinquished.

She rotated her feet at the ankles and stretched her legs, then reached for her book. She caught herself and put it down again.

“Well,” I said. “I’d better go finish.”

“What time does Lowie get here?”

“Four, I think.”

“Okay,” she said. “Try to hurry.”

Lowie and David were going to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, for Labor Day weekend, so they’d offered to take my things into Manhattan to the NYU dorm. All