Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,18

Jack left my feet exposed when he stood to raise the volume.

“I want to cover this song with the band,” he said, plopping back down. He and Dan Lewis and Dan’s cousin Marvin, also known as Smokey Cologne, had a band—Atomic Tangerine. In a moderate shriek, Jack sang along with the radio. “Der ner ne ner ner ner ne ne.”

When the song was over, we heard a sound behind us. We tilted our heads back over the couch arms. Kate was standing in the entry near the front door.

“Katie!” Jack called. He stood and started to step around the couch, probably to give her a hug or say sorry about her mother dying.

“Hey, Jack,” Kate said dismissively, avoiding eye contact.

There was a pause, which made it hard for him to know what to do. He darkened and returned to me. For a while we just sat. Kate craned her neck to regard herself in the mirror over the fireplace, then she removed her sweater and dropped it playfully on top of me.

“How did Drama Club go?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said, shaking her hair loose. “We did improvisations.”

“A school club on a Saturday?” Jack asked with derision. “Is it a Communist club?”

Kate approached the mantel and stepped on the hearth to regard herself more closely. “It’s theater, Jack,” she said. “You have to be committed.” She turned and smiled falsely. “Oh, well. I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone.” She stomped up the stairs, the door slammed, and her stereo switched on. Her stereo, not the house stereo. All of a sudden there were two. We soon heard the sounds of Joni Mitchell’s “Chelsea Morning” blasting through the ceiling.

“Did she flip her lid when her mother died, or what?” Jack looked to the stairs. “Lovebirds? Theater? She’s turning into fucking Blanche DuBois.” He plucked her sweater from my chest, pinching it and draping it across the coffee table. “How long has this been going on?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t remember the time before, or the way it used to be. There were the things we used to do, factual things, and those were easy to recall—playing, biking, singing. As for the things we’d conjured and believed, those were harder to recapture. I wondered if ideals existed only because there was so much to be learned in the loss of them.

Jack pulled me close, kissing my head. “I never thought I’d say this, but let’s get the fuck out of here and go to my house.”

It was almost seven. We had only a half hour to be alone at Jack’s house. His parents were finishing dinner at Gordon’s in Amagansett, where they’d had a six o’clock reservation. At seven-fifteen his mother would deliver his father to the Jitney, and by seven-thirty, she would be home. Mr. Fleming would be back in Manhattan two and a half hours after that. They had an apartment on Madison Avenue and Eighty-seventh Street. He worked at Ogilvy & Mather, the advertising agency.

“Nothing creative,” Jack would say; he was always quick to set people straight before they tried to connect Jack to his dad. “He’s senior account manager for Schweppes. You know, the carbonated sodas. Schweppervescence.”

“How come your father’s going back on a Saturday?” I asked.

“Because I came home today,” Jack said. “He can’t get away fast enough.”

At the Fleming house, Jack’s sister’s dog Mariah barked, so he gave it a kick. Not really a kick, just a kind of dragging push to one side with the top of his foot. Inside, the air was heavy with the scent of cologne. It spooked me to think of Mr. Fleming’s barrel-chested shadow appearing suddenly to block a doorway.

“What perfume does he wear?” I wrinkled my nose. “Lagerfeld?”

“Cat Piss,” Jack said. He yanked open the refrigerator door. It smacked the counter and glass bottles clanked. “He must think he’s gonna get laid on the bus.” Jack grabbed a yogurt, tore off the lid, and flung it into the sink like a Frisbee. He tilted his head back and drank from the cup. Halfway through he paused. “Want some?”

“What flavor is it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t hit fruit yet.” He swallowed a little more. “Not the kind you like. It tastes purple.”

“Blueberry,” I said. “Forget it.”

Mariah skulked past our ankles as we moved to the hallway. “Keep away from that beast,” Jack warned. “It’s an operative.”

I asked what an operative was. He said like a spy.

He started up the stairs, his filthy sneakers knocking into the shallow depths.