Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,231

make a lot of money.” Rob flips the key. “Frankly, I’m in a bit of a situation. I asked your fiancé there to lend me some money, but nothing doing. Meanwhile the vig is killing me. You remember what that is?”

“Yes,” I say. “Interest.” Thinking, Rourke’s coming back.

“Exactly,” he says. “I would’ve told you about it, only Mark told me not to say anything. And until Pinky’s last night, I wasn’t sure where you stood with things.”

“When will it be?”

“Soon as I can swing it,” he says as he turns the ignition off. “Just be careful.” He nods toward the figure approaching on the grass. “She’s pretty touchy about fights.”

“She’s not going to mention fights to me—is she?”

“Hard to say.” He leans to open his door. “She’s got, like, ESP. It’s weird.” He swings around to my side, snap-jangling his keys and stretching a bit. He helps me to a stand, then tosses an arm over my shoulder, bending down into me. “Ready?”

Our footsteps clap on the crisscross brick. There is the thsst-thsst-thsst of a sprinkler and the thwock of a ball and a voice—“Gloria-aaa.” And again, birds. Maybe the same birds as the other times I came, maybe different ones. I’ve forgotten the life span of a bird. Kate once had an African finch that lived for five years, but that is not the right type of bird. Funny to think of Kate’s bird, but not Kate.

Rob says hi. She offers her cheek. He kisses it. “This is Eveline. Evie, this is Mrs. Rourke.”

She plucks off her gardening gloves and extends a hand. “Eveline. Happy to meet you.”

Her skin is the softest I’ve felt not on a baby. Her smile, her hair, her eyes—it’s really very hard. I bite the bottom skin of my lip, inside my mouth where no one can see. Like her son, she projects an aura of radiant health. Her manner of speaking is faintly aristocratic. She married beneath herself, I think—she married for love. Rourke has that kind of beauty, the kind that comes from people in love.

“How are your parents, Rob?” she inquires.

“They’re at each other’s throats, so they must be okay.”

“That’s right. It’s when they stop scrutinizing each other that you have to worry,” she says with regal detachment.

Rob reaches for a cigarette, then recalls his hand. I’ve never seen him so edgy, except the time with Uncle Tudi. “Listen, Mrs. R., I gotta grab some stuff from the basement.”

“Help yourself,” she says. “When you’re finished, I’d like you to carry down some boxes from the attic. They’re stacked beneath the street-side window.” She turns to me. “I’m giving everything away. You’d be shocked by what accumulates over a lifetime.”

“A lifetime,” Rob chides. “From the look of it, you’ve got at least two more of those to come, Mrs. Rourke.”

“Careful with the compliments, Rob. You’re liable to make me suspicious. Eveline and I will be inside. Come find us when you’re finished.”

He falters as he backs away, nearly tripping over a row of boxwoods. He straddles it, asking me, “You gonna be all right?”

“I won’t rough her up, Rob,” Mrs. Rourke says. “Promise.”

She takes my arm to climb the porch. Each broad step of the five we mount is one upon which Rourke sat or walked, as a child, as an adolescent. Surely, at some point, the outline of my foot fills the melted-away outline of his foot.

Inside is cool. The corridor walls are papered with frail caramel pinstripes and columns of cyan. Tucked behind the curve in the base of the mahogany banister is an oval writing table with a silver-and-white pitcher full of purple irises.

The kitchen is airy and brightly lit, and what is wood is a pallid milk-ice blue. It is a cook’s kitchen, spacious and fully implemented, with inflections of red—the clock, the dish towels, the moiré swirls in platters. I am seated at a table for eating, and in the corner to my right is another for working, which has a cherry-checked vinyl cloth. It is covered with an assortment of split-open cookbooks and textbooks with frayed paper page markers. She puts heat under the kettle and busies herself, withdrawing cups and plates from the china cabinet and a beer glass for Rob. Although I would not have expected her to be lonely, I’m amazed by how busy she is—the pile of mail, the ringing telephone. The world whirls about her.

I watch for signs of Rourke. They have a physical resemblance, but the bond between them is