Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,263

on his bed crying when I saw his collection of albums on the floor. For the first time I thought to look at them, really look at them, and I did, and I, and I—couldn’t believe I, I never—there are milk crates full of—”

She bends over the lectern, supporting herself. I look away. Although she’s standing before a crowd, the moment is her own. I feel Jack in the tent—the leaden livingness, the way it used to be, with a premium on honesty. It comes like a minuscule change in humidity. Her father stands to help. She waves for him to sit.

“Full of rare recordings—seventy-eights, forty-fives, in perfect condition, alphabetized, labeled, exactly the way he left them, because he loved them.” She continues through her tears. “My first thought was to give them to Dan or Evie because I didn’t deserve them. Then I realized that Jack could have sold them when he needed money. But he refused to do that. He preferred to shoot himself. He must have known I would receive them. He must have.”

After helping Elizabeth to her chair, Dan takes her place. Minutes pass before people become quiet again. Dan waits patiently. The more patiently he waits, the more emotional everyone becomes.

“When I first found out,” he states simply, “I thought, I can’t say I lost anything. Whatever I lost, I gave up voluntarily, long ago. I actually felt lucky that I’d gotten out before getting hurt. I figured, nothing’s changed. His absence is his absence, and his presence—the things we did or the music we wrote, that’s still a presence, you know, meaningful and ongoing.

“But after listening to Father McQuail, I think it’s safe to say I fell seriously short.”

Dan tugs his shirt from his chest and adjusts his glasses. “I used to argue with Jack quite a bit. As we grew older, I stopped, because it was easier to not engage, and because I figured it’s what adults are supposed to do. I mean, who wants to be interfered with?

“The bizarre thing is that the more tolerant I became of his extremism, the more extreme he became. It was like he was begging me not to be mediocre, challenging me. Instead of recognizing his tests, I ignored them. The more outrageous his behavior, the more distance I put between us. As Father said, reactions like that terrified Jack. Especially in his frame of mind, especially with the company he’d been keeping.” Dan looks up at us. “I guess I could have worried less about the damage he might have caused me and more about the damage he was doing to himself.

“I’ve known Jack since we were two. Jack did not stumble unconsciously into adversity. Jack chose adversity because he believed himself to be a casualty of prosperity. Unfortunately, heroin use is not the kind of thing anyone can control, and loneliness, well, loneliness accrues. I asked my dad how it happened, how Jack went from using drugs sometimes to using them a lot to committing suicide. My father said it’s a matter of time in. Like becoming a musician. Spend more time in than time out and you become an expert.”

Dan reaches into his pocket and removes a small strip of paper, unfolding it carefully while he talks. “There’s a book of his that Elizabeth gave me yesterday, The Anatomy of Melancholy, by Robert Burton. Here’s a quote Jack had underlined. If adversity hath killed his thousand, prosperity hath killed his ten thousand.”

Dan plays with the paper on the lectern. “Jack could scale any building. He liked to walk as the crow flies, and if a house was in his way, sometimes he would go straight over it and meet me on the other side. He might come down scraped up, but he would tell me how beautiful the stars were from the rooftop. When I heard he killed himself, the first thing I thought was how he always did like to walk as the crow flies. Next I thought, I hope the stars look good from wherever he is.”

From the front, I can see most everyone, though it’s impossible to take them all in. Mr. and Mrs. Fleming are on my left, next to Elizabeth and Dan and Smokey Cologne, who is wearing a suit that’s briny green like a cartoon ocean. Smokey maintained the closest contact with Jack until the end, and there are things he has in his head that he will not share. When he arrived this afternoon, I ran