Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,237

driven. I too was driven.

I wish to speak, to say something. But things that are legible to the senses are often captive to language, such as the dizzying faraway feeling you get from the way daylight pools on the kitchen floor, mesmerizing you in the midst of sudden misfortune, making you think of the frailty of life—and the beauty. Or the shimmery persistence of a perfume that lingers in the air, filling you with longing when you pass through it. No words can describe what it means to lose someone you love, or tell what it is to grieve.

And loneliness. I should say something of loneliness. The panic, the sweeping hysteria that comes not when you are without others, but when you are without yourself, adrift. I should describe the filthy province of mind, the blighted district inside, the place so crowded you cannot raise the lids of your eyes, and your chest is bruised by the constant assault of your heart. I want to convey the burden of despair, the ruin of compromise. Be brave, I should say to the girl in the glass, the way brave used to be—desperate to live and to love. I want her to prepare for the curse of perseverance. She may not know about resiliency. That she will last.

My belly still hums from coming. I wonder—can she see me? I hope not. I don’t want her to know that sex here is loveless, that here I achieve a goal, an end, like reaching for a ring. But no—she sees nothing. She recedes, slipping back to the chamber of my heart where I reserve the essence of her, and of him. Secretly I keep us, a rustling quilt of madness unfolding like pealing chapel bells that go gradually softer and further, twining in and around, extending beneath and beyond anything anyone can perceive. I cannot say that I loved him—it wouldn’t be enough. I can say that I’ve watched myself die, and that I’ve seen my lips form his name with my final breath.

45

There are those who attempt to manipulate fate. There are those who gamble for purposes of self-deception. They are stranded on their paths but want to feel otherwise. They want to feel the thrill of determination. They play with chance. They live a reality in which the potential of any single win pales in comparison to the game. This sort of risk is not for the faint of heart. This is Rob.

There are those who leave nothing to chance. They will not be seduced. They connive and hoard to distend the aggregate of what they are, all the while straining down the world to something small, like a stone to clench. The refusal to be enticed is a means of control, a way to guarantee they are not violated, a way to exploit the business about them. It is a matter of determining truth before it determines you. Mark.

There are those who risk to ascertain that they have nothing, that they need nothing. They are open to prospect and blind to hazard because they’ve been hurt, which is just another way of saying informed. They are bodies moving through space, inviolate and impermeable. They are full on the inside; nothing beyond can speak on their behalf. They require no validation; they are owners of themselves. That is Rourke. At one time, it was me too.

I don’t know whether life is pre-decided. Perhaps it can be better conceived of as a series of hallways, growing wider or growing narrower, depending upon your receptivity to chance. The trick is to stand always at the crest of fate, to become proficient at response. Never get stuck thinking small, thinking slow, thinking any one state a finality; otherwise, life turns stagnant—the hallways narrow. This is an abuse of the gift of mobility.

When I lost Rourke, I shut down to chance. I risked nothing. I left the table. Once out, you do not get invited back. You have to charm your way, muscle your way.

I look like a whore. On the way downtown everyone stares at the way I’m dressed. At home I tried on several outfits, but no matter what I chose, I looked like a whore. The problem is, I don’t know how to be. I don’t know whether to be the girl I was, the one who came alive through his eyes, or the other one, the one I’ve become, proof of the mistake he made in leaving me. Anyway, I won’t go