Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,271

outwardly by my appearance and inwardly by the ungainliness of my aspirations, the ugliness of my compromise. I was rendered most precise not by what I possessed, in fact, but by all that I had not yet attained. In the end, I was left only with an obscene sense of having participated in one long masquerade.

Mark was reminding me of my obligations to his sister, his parents. “They have to supersede,” he said, “any conceivable obligation you might have had to this, this—”

“Jack.”

He was right. My obligations to Alicia and to Mr. and Mrs. Ross did supersede my obligation to Jack: they were living and he was not. They had treated me as family and I had agreed to be a member of the wedding party. However, these obligations did not supersede my obligation to myself—and this was something I needed to understand: the ongoingness and the wholeness of the self regardless of external circumstance. I tried to think about what I wanted. I considered the toll of my continued avoidance and denial: I’d lost everything—home and Jack and Rourke. Though I might have been passive, beneath my passivity there had been agency. My life had never been Mark’s version versus mine—rather, it had been one of my creations versus another. Nothing had happened that I had not allowed to happen. I had been stronger than I’d realized. Now I felt like I needed time. The coincidence of Jack’s death afforded me exactly that. Jack would not have minded. He would have insisted. Part of me wondered if he had not arranged the entire thing.

“I’m sorry, Mark. I just can’t.”

When Mark left, everyone in the living room took a break from telling stories about Jack to discuss Mark.

“What a straight shooter!”

“He’s not so bad!”

“And I always thought he was kind of an asshole!”

Except for my mother, who hadn’t spoken more than a few dozen words since my speech at the memorial. From midway up the stairs, she brought conversation to a halt when wearily she stated, “If you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to bed.” Then she turned and went, moving uncharacteristically slow as if there were marbles in her shoes, as if she dare not move as she usually moved, as if she feared shooting off to someplace faraway.

Jonathan and Mark appear from behind the ivied trellis. They are joined by the groomsmen who had been ushers. Mark looks like a movie star in his tuxedo. He winks. Poor Mark, with Rourke looming directly behind me. Rourke, I think, clinging to consciousness, trying not to drift.

I fix my dress, flattening the thin cross of ribbon that binds the bodice. I’m in gray, dove-gray, like a bound dove. He likes me in gray, though I didn’t think to make him like me. I didn’t intend to think of Rourke today. I don’t want to live any more of my life in absentia. Such living is cruel to those who need you truly. When the service commences, I listen carefully. I never want to forget how close I’ve come.

Outside the tent, guests assemble loosely before forming a line to congratulate the families. Musicians disband and begin their exodus to the patio near the pool so that the ceremony tent can be reconfigured for dessert and dancing. The wedding planner and her staff appear, dressed like the parking attendants in white oxfords and khakis. They move us out with false smiles and stiff backs and stretched-out arms as if they belong to the Secret Service. Mrs. Ross asks me to escort her parents to the kitchen, where they can rest until the reception.

“Thank you, darling.” Mr. Sacci’s head goes in circles like it is following the trail of a tightly flying fly. He grasps for his wife’s hand, and she grasps for his, both of them missing repeatedly. I take a hand of each and walk them slowly behind the altar to the kitchen, the province of tea and cookies, and Consuela.

Unlike at the funeral, there are children—wearing pluffy taffeta dresses and little-man suits, running, swinging, climbing. Jack did not know any children or anyone with children. I suppose in his circle he was the last child.

After the memorial service cleared out, Jack’s mother had summoned me privately into the house and given me a shoe. A baby shoe. White with a soft graying lace and scuffs by the heel and toe.

“For you,” she’d said breathlessly. One foot remained on the lowest rung of a stepladder, and in her hand was a