Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,63

arm bobbing wretchedly to chase the able bird. I could see his arm attached to his body, his body connected to the ground, the ground not spinning. I wanted to close my eyes and go back to the place in my mind. Things were better there. Oh my God, I thought—Jack, me—the tragedy of us.

I turned, saying, “Jack,” but before I could say more, he stopped me.

He rolled nearer to me and pressed his forehead to mine. “The way you say my name. I can hear myself in it.”

We returned to town with him leading; Main Street seemed particularly immense. I had my hand in his coat pocket and the seam of the pouch cut against my wrist. His jacket smelled waxy; it had that special coating to block the rain. Jack was unusually quiet; I wondered if he could sense the space between us.

As we walked past the window of Rose Jeweler’s I noticed an iridescent egg-shaped opal framed by a brocade of gold and attached to a chainlike thread. The necklace rested securely in the cinched center of a sapphirine cushion, like a bug in a palm. I stopped dead, pulling back my hand. It looked just like one of Jack’s eyes.

“What is it?” he asked, turning. He came up slowly behind me. The reflection of his eyes joined the jewel in the glass, all three swimming.

I couldn’t help myself. I began to cry.

“What’s wrong?” he asked again.

I pointed to the opal. “Don’t you see? It’s the color of your eyes.”

I pulled the necklace from the deflated balloon. Jack was behind me, removing the chain from my hands, unclasping it, hanging it about my neck, arranging it on my collarbone. I felt its frail burden. I did not like the bubbling sputters the people made or the thoughts they were surely thinking. They knew nothing about the warbler or the eye, nothing about Rourke.

“Speech, speech!”

I said nothing. Jack’s lips met mine. His kiss was flat. “Here,” he said, handing me something blue and small. I swallowed it.

When quiet came, it came loudly, like an explosion, like an avalanche of nothingness.

Denny laid the gifts on my lap. I looked to see the people, but the people had gone. Okay, okay, Denny kept saying to no one in particular. Hold on, and, I’m not ready, or I’m coming.

Kate was there on the floor next to us, with me on the bench, and Jack across the room leaning against a broken dresser. Jack was watching me with the living-dead look of a portrait. I wondered what it was in me that interested him so.

Denny dropped down next to Kate. He was exhausted, he said. I thought he should sleep. I thought we should lie down and I would pull the threads from the hem of his dress shirt and say all the things I’d never said. That I loved him. That it didn’t matter to me that he was gay, which I’d never said, which of course I did not have to say. I wanted to tell him he did not need to hide himself from me or from anyone. That he was chivalrous and so very handsome.

Save the ribbon, Denny said with a wink. I’ll make you a hat.

I pushed my back against the wall and bit at the rubber tag of my tongue. I opened the first gift. Everything felt a little imperious, a little rigid but also light, like a Japanese tea ceremony, though I had never been to one. I wondered when would I get to Japan, how would I ever find the time? Denny and Kate were at my feet, Jack still at the dresser. Packages were coming apart, their innards passing off to the right and the left before I could even see.

Don’t worry, Kate said. I’m making a list.

Open the heavy one, Denny said. It’s from me.

It was a Janson’s History of Art. Between the beige twill covers, the sheets were cool and superior, unlike newspapers which are cheap with leaking ink because their origins are local and insurgent, as if they have been made in basements by the thinking people you know.

I thanked Denny, I thought I did, I definitely did because he nodded several times, and he blew a kind of kiss. He was eating a baked potato. I did not know where it had come from. When he lifted it, it sagged in the center and curled at the edges like a canoe.

Now mine, Kate said, handing me a box with