Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,19

There was something wretched about the sight. “I’ll wait here,” I said. Mr. and Mrs. Fleming didn’t like us to go upstairs when they were out.

Jack reached for my hand. “C’mon, Evie. I swear, we’ll just be a minute.”

On the southwest side of the attic, Jack had constructed a retreat for himself. He liked to say it was the only room in the house uncontaminated by damask and deodorizer. The windows were shuttered, the paint on the walls was charcoal gray, and the floors were bare wood because three months after we’d met, Jack had torn out the rug. It was the day before he was supposed to leave for boarding school—Labor Day Sunday, 1978. He’d intended to destroy the whole room and after that, the whole house, including the carport.

“Especially the carport,” he’d declared. I had no doubt that he meant it. Unlike most people who say they hate their parents, Jack really did.

He’d tried in all sincerity to talk to them, to apologize for certain things, to reason with them about his feelings, to ask them to please let him spend his junior and senior years in East Hampton, to not send him away. I’d gone with him for moral support—only not all the way. I waited at the end of the street, on the porch of the Presbyterian Church. I brought a book, figuring it might take a while. But Jack reappeared in ten minutes.

“That was fast,” I said. “What happened?”

“What happened,” Jack repeated. “Hmmm, let’s see.” He took my book from me and began to slap it against his thigh. “I try to reconcile. I swear to conform. I sit there, totally fucking humiliating myself. I tell them that I don’t want to lose you.”

“And,” I prodded softly.

“My mother’s sure we’ll stay friends. She says, ‘You can write.’”

I hated to hear his voice sound desperate and alone when it did not have to be, not when I was right there.

“Then,” Jack said, “the fat bastard goes to the barbecue grill, totally ignoring me, and says, ‘C’mon, Susan. I don’t want those ribs to char.’”

“Char,” I said, “Wow. Who uses a word like char?”

“Fat bastards,” Jack stated. “Ad agency homos. Neocons. That’s who.”

At dawn the following morning, he took a knife to his room. After cutting the curtains and shredding the carpet, he’d intended to start on the walls, but beneath the rug in the center of the room, he’d discovered a very old Christmas card with stained edges that looked like it could have been from around the early 1900s. Inside, in childish handwriting, it said, Eveline.

He jammed the open card into my hands. I was in my underwear and a T-shirt, and we were standing in the driveway by the garage because it was early and that was the back way to my bedroom if you didn’t want to wake up other people. He was winded from running and covered in the fine white matter of demolition. He yanked me into the sunlight, handed over the card, set his hands on his thighs, and bent to catch his breath.

I looked from the card to his face. “I don’t understand.”

“I found it! In my room. I was pulling out the carpet.”

I asked was he sure.

“Of course I’m sure!”

“Maybe someone put it there,” I said. “Like, planted it.”

“That rug’s been there for years,” he said. “Besides, no one we know is that interesting. What would be the point?”

He dropped to the dew-soaked grass. I dropped too.

“Listen,” he instructed. “I’m cutting and tearing out the rug, I’m throwing the pieces down the stairs, and I’m raising all kinds of dust and shit to really piss them off, and just when I’m about to bust the windows or pry off the molding, I see this paper on the floor.” Jack gestured with his hands as he spoke, which he almost never did. “I go to the paper, I lift it. It’s a Christmas card. There are angels on front. Did you see the angels?” he asked.

“I saw them,” I said.

“Look at the fucking angels,” he insisted, pushing the card back at me.

“Yes,” I swore. “I see.”

“And this, did you see this?” Jack opened it again and tapped at my name. It was scrawled in loopy script that dipped to the right, in old-fashioned penmanship—Eveline. “I might have killed him,” he said. “I might have done it this time, if he came up those stairs.” He looked at the ground, numb. “You had to see me. I had a knife