Bird in Hand - Christina Baker Kline [62]
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “But surely you read all those ancient Greeks at Harvard.”
“No, actually. I was pre-med for far too long. Chem labs and bio and physics—I never had time to study philosophy. Now I could read this stuff all day.”
Charlie envied Ben’s ability to immerse himself in a book as if it were as real as the world. Sometimes he’d find Ben studying in a library carrel deep in the stacks, his head over his book, his whole body hunched forward in concentration. Ben rarely noticed his approach, even when he came from the front; when Charlie touched his shoulder he’d flinch, as if awakened from a deep sleep. He was interested in what he was interested in, without any sense that he should be more or less interested in anything else. He didn’t seem to need to impress people with his knowledge, though he enjoyed sharing it. Charlie had the sense that Ben had been an unusual child, quiet and bookish and particular, and that someone—his mother, perhaps—had let him be that way without making him feel odd. He took himself seriously in ways that Charlie wasn’t confident enough to do, and for that reason he could laugh at himself in ways that Charlie never could. Charlie was insecure; his sense of himself in the world was too precarious to make light of.
Ben kept a violin in a black case propped in the front hall, and sometimes he’d take it out and disappear upstairs into a bedroom to practice—first scales, and then a haunting series of melodies. Charlie had never learned to play an instrument (unless you counted the tambourine he was assigned in middle-school band), and Ben’s obvious mastery was one more thing that impressed and intimidated him. Now and then, on a Friday night, Ben would take his violin to the White Horse Tavern, a pub on the edge of town, and play fiddle with a ragtag bunch of guys from Cambridge Tech. Charlie would tag along with Claire and a random collection of friends and strangers she’d pulled off the street. She’d sing along and drink Guinness and, after a while, get up and dance. Sometimes she’d be the only one up there, dancing in front of the band, her reddish brown hair backlit like a rock star’s, wearing a long flowing skirt and a black tank top, her skin pearly under the strobe.
Now, sitting on the couch, Claire was quiet for a moment, twisting a strand of hair across her mouth and sucking on the end, one of several odd habits of hers that Charlie had tucked away in his mind for future contemplation. “Maybe Socrates was right,” she said. “If Charlie is a hick and Alison is worldly, and the man who desires something desires that which he lacks—”
“She is rather pretty,” Ben said to Charlie, closing his book. “But let’s not oversell her, Claire. The girl has left North Carolina twice in her entire life; sharing an apartment in New York for six months hardly makes her worldly. And calling Charlie a hick is a bit low, isn’t it? Particularly to his face.”
“Oh, he doesn’t mind, do you, Charlie?”
“I’d hate to hear what you call me behind my back,” he said.
“Behind your back she raves about you,” Ben said. “That’s the funny thing about Claire—she’s meaner as a friend than as a gossip.”
“Stop,” she said, waving her fingers at him. “All I meant is that I thought they’d get along.”
“Anyone can get along with anyone, as long as they have decent manners,” Ben said.
Chapter Seven
“Tell me a story,” Noah said, settling deep into Alison’s lap. His hair was damp from the bath, his plump cheeks flushed and warm. He was wearing his favorite footy pajamas, navy blue with an airplane embroidered on one side of his chest like a badge. Clutching Bankie, a ratty scrap of baby blanket with satin trim, he stuck his thumb in his mouth.
Alison knew she should try to break the thumb habit before he got much older. She also needed to curtail warm milk at bedtime, Noah’s tendency to creep into their bed in the middle of the night, his insistence on having his sandwiches cut into stars and