Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,285

he finds my waist and pulls me closer.

“I should never have asked Mark for help in the first place,” I say, and I add. “He said I did it to hurt you.”

Rourke’s eyes close. The bad one is healing; the blood has gone down. I touch it every day, running my fingertips across, dragging them over, bringing the nerves back to life. “I know what he said.”

“Mark says I used him.”

Rourke looks at me, dipping over. I don’t have to wonder what it is he sees because I feel myself appear. Like a flare cutting through space, erupting into a sea of stars, I see me. He says, “Use is the thing he exchanges.”

In the muscles on his chest, there are shapes. Beneath his collarbone, a whale, surfacing. By his abdomen on the left, a flattened swan. I move in, coming in around his hip bone, resting my head on his thigh. I know he feels guilty, for going against his own instinct, for thinking somehow I’d be better off with Mark. Deep down it made sense to Rourke that Mark should win. It proved his worst fears—the value of money and lies, the uselessness of strength and character.

His throat stretches to the ceiling. “I’m not sure how far back to go,” he says. “How much to ask.” When he speaks, his manner is steely but not disapproving. It seems we have come up against something he understands better than I, something at the hands of which he has suffered uniquely—me. “You could have been hurt Saturday.” Rourke waits, but not for an answer. “Once I leave, he’ll be back.”

I know that. That’s why we didn’t stop at my mother’s after meeting in the rain. Why Rourke drove straight to the city. Why we are here, unable to leave without a plan.

“Next time he comes,” he says, “I don’t know what I’ll do.”

I think of the trust Rourke has always placed in me, the constancy of it. I consider the elusiveness of happiness, and the fact that the reason I don’t have it is that I have not yet earned it. Rourke is not alone in his guilt; I am also to blame. From the start I’ve been content to remain more conscious of his effects than his cause, which is like admiring a bridge without acknowledging the land the structure joins. He never once expected more than I could give, and yet I abused that. I gave away what he would not take.

I confront the myth of self-determination. Independence has not made me free, nor has it diminished my devotion. In spite of my liberty, I loved him—I love him. I think what it means to love. First, of course, there is the fact of you, then the sensation of loving a person, then somewhere along the way, there is the fact of the person. This last fact you cannot ignore. What you do with it—accept, adore, deny, or suppress—determines everything. There are points of intersection, these divine assignments of the heart that complete you.

“My mother lost one of us to fighting,” he explains, slowly. “I can’t let her lose another.”

I tell him that I understand.

“I need to get back to work. I need two months to get through the Olympic Games. I have obligations. I need to know you’re going to be all right until I get back.”

“I can stay with Denny.”

“No. Mark’s too credible to the outside world. He’ll get reckless and irrational. He’ll blame others for whatever mess he makes.”

Rourke waits a minute or two, then he draws my hands down. “You said at the funeral that you should have done something when you had the chance, that you should have held Jack accountable.”

The funeral. He was there. They were there. Rob saying, You seem shaky. You shaky?

Jack’s name from Rourke’s lips. Him saying “Jack” like he knew him.

I sit up, coming next to him. “What do you think we should do?”

Rourke says, “I was thinking Spring Lake.”

The phone call he made from the hotel room when we first arrived. His mother. The house, the baking, the books, the furniture, the attic. A policeman’s widow. Mark wouldn’t stand a chance. If she called for a restraining order against him, there would be no question. Besides, she probably has a gun in the house—no, she definitely does. And she knows how to use it.

“The Games end mid-August. I’ll be back then. You can come visit me anytime. With Rob, without him. Whatever you want.”

“Does she expect me?”

“I