dietary habits a symbolic dimension, but she's been starving herself on and off since the Vietnam War.
When Collin reaches his sister's apartment and sees her face, he comes apart like a three-dollar umbrella in a gale. Brooke scoops up the wrecked steel ribs and shredded black nylon and walks the whole mess inside.
When he has regained his composure, she is boiling water in the former coat closet that passes as a kitchen.
“I didn't know you knew how to boil water,” he says.
“You're thinking of Mom,” she says. “I learned this in prep school. Actually, it's not as difficult as it looks.”
“Just please don't say I'm better off without her.”
“Only because it would arouse your chivalrous instincts. I have no desire to provoke you into defending her.” She looks like the poster child for anorexia, in the oversized Middlebury sweatshirt that Collin gave her about twelve years ago, with her hair swept back in a ponytail, her thin freckled hand resting on the handle of the kettle. If only he were allowed to fall in love with his sister, maybe they could save each other.
“She took her diaphragm, Brooke.”
Brooke sighs, nodding gravely. “Could it be she was just anticipating the possibility that her plane might go down, stranding her in a remote snowbound region with five or six male survivors who might force her to have sex? And, thoughtfully, she didn't want to be pregnant with some nameless homunculus when the snow finally melted and she was at last rescued and reunited with you, her only true love?”
“What about disease, for Christ's sake? If she was so concerned about me, she could have carried a gross of triple-strength condoms.”
“It's possible she packed those, too. God, you smell like Lynchburg, Tennessee.”
“I've been drinking.”
“I'm shocked.”
“It doesn't help.”
“I wish you'd tell that to Dad.”
She hands him a Beethoven mug full of steaming water floating a green herbal-tea bag. Collin slaps his hand against the wall. “I don't understand how she could be so eager to run off and fuck some other guy when I have to beg to get it once a week. It's not fair.”
“I know.”
A Parable
Later, Brooke strokes her brother's hair. “Remember how we could never get Rogue to eat his dog food? Remember the only thing that would get Rogue to eat? Clio. As soon as she stuck her whiskers in his bowl, he went wild. He'd bark and growl and run in circles around the bowl till she'd had her nibble, then he'd rush in and devour every last bit of it.”
Collin takes the point, but is too unhappy to acknowledge it.
“When I talked to you in August, you said you supposed that you should get married but that you didn't really want to. Hardly the stuff of sonnets and chansons. But now that someone's got his nose in your bowl you're howling. I hate to say it, but this is a guy thing. You boys think you want virgins, but what you really want is to put your peepees where the other peepees have been.”
“Why can't I just marry you,” Collin asks.
A Call from Mom
“Hi, honey. How's every little thing with you?” The annual parental Manhattan pilgrimage commences the day after tomorrow.
“Swell,” I say. Mom has such a dreamy and ethereal disposition that I try not to puncture the bubble. The last, miraculous child of ancient parents, she grew up in an atmosphere of benign and privileged neglect in Charleston, then wafted through Bennington until my father brought her to ground, briefly, after a mixer at Williams. When he graduated, a few months later, they married and moved into my paternal grandfather's house in Florida, where Mom resumed the life she'd led as a child—painting landscapes, tending the garden and riding. One hates to worry her.
“What do you want for Christmas,” she asks.
I can't think of anything I want from central Florida, except maybe a lemon to suck on. “Just your own sweet self,” I say, pouring myself another drink.
A Typical Morning in the West Village
10 a.m.: Collin wakes. Headache. Remembers that Philomena has abandoned him and is waking with someone else. Heartache. Back to sleep.
11:15: Wakes again. Realizes that Philomena is still gone. Guilt at sleeping so late. Crawls out of bed. Surveys disorderly, depraved bed-roomscape. Vows to clean this up. Soon.
11:20: Showers. No shampoo. No soap. No toilet paper. Mental note to buy some. Files it next to yesterday's identical mental note.
11:45: Newsstand for the Times and the Post. The Times because Collin is a serious guy