Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,202

it on my finger. I stop him. He takes hold of my waist. “What is it?”

I look into his eyes. I remind myself that I know him, that I’ve always known him, from the first night we met. That is something—something important. “I want you to know that I said yes because every day I pray that the worst has passed. Every day I think I can’t possibly feel as bad as I did the day before, but every day I’m wrong. I said yes because he’s not coming back.”

The ring remains suspended near my finger; I wonder if it can drive off the terrors of the night. I hope it can. “Now you can put it on,” I say. “If you still want to.”

39

He sent one letter, on yellow legal paper, carefully folded. I opened it on an April afternoon as I cut through Central Park in a taxicab, going past dogwoods in full bloom. Every time I see dogwoods in bloom, I go back to the day of the letter, back to being in love, back to Rourke.

It was eight months after he left, back when Rob visited my dorm room, back when I still had hope. I remember thinking, isn’t life amazing—the letter flew on an airplane; the plane touched down. The paper was carried in a canvas sack, delivered to me by anonymous hands. At the end, his name; at the beginning, my own. My name, tenderly rendered. Clear, perfect—Eveline. Proof.

I have one photograph. This came to me much later. In it Rourke is young, maybe seventeen. I keep it with his letter in a box on Mark’s dresser, where my things are kept. I don’t fear discovery; discovery would change nothing. I would never hide evidence of Rourke or lie about him.

I remove the photograph to touch it—sometimes, when I can’t help myself. First it’s strange, like looking at a picture of fire, feeling no heat. Then I fall into the false dimension, and I feel him, warm like flesh, and soft.

He stands on the boardwalk and faces the water at an angle; the sun sets behind him. There are no lines in his face; his skin is clear, his cheeks are mesmerizing hollows. He is lean and solid and tall, self-conscious of his separateness from the crowd around him. I draw my fingertips along the line of his jaw. I want to know him then, kiss him then.

“That’s the Criterion,” Rob told me the first time I saw the photo in his wallet. Rob pointed to the second story of a yellow brick building in back, the one Rourke took me to that day on the boardwalk. “Harrison was 34–2 at the time. Just regional matches, but still, it was an awesome record. He was untouchable.” Rob lifted the wallet closer to my face. “That’s Eddie M. in back there, yanking up his pants. Remember Eddie M.? And over in the corner is Tommy Lydell—that big redheaded asshole. And that’s Chris DeMarco. You had dinner with Chris and his wife, Lee, in Jersey that time. Remember? Take it out,” Rob prodded gently. “G’head, take it.”

I held the photo, thinking, Time is so important. Time is everything. It’s a mystery, the way time for us was wrong when time is right for so many useless things, when things that should be impossible are in fact possible. There are machines that divide atoms, jets that fly at the speed of sound. Flags on the moon. And yet, we could not be together.

“You keep it,” Rob said, folding his wallet back up. “I’ve got the negative somewhere.”

——

The rest is intangible. Events unfolded quickly and unexpectedly, like things exhaled and evaporated, so lacking in exactness and effect, it’s hard to say they even happened.

The phone would ring and I would run. I would know it was him, feel it was him. He would speak, and I could see him sprawled across his couch, lit by the lapis light of his stereo, in his underfurnished living room, wherever that room might have been. I never asked; he would not have answered. If he did say where he was, I would have left, going until I found him. I would hear his loneliness—it was all he would give. Still, I wanted him to be happy, but I wanted him to say that he was not, that like me, he was incapable. Why did you have to go away? I’d want to ask. Why are you back?

But I could say no