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By Root 516 0

though not for materialistic reasons but just much more so because one of my favorite things is being taken for long drives, and because I’m afraid of trains. I want what I’ve had, when it made me happy before, even though for whatever reasons it didn’t last. I want someone who likes art and who would never dream of referring to Christo as ‘that dude in the park with those flags.’ I want someone who likes books more than he likes football. I want someone who will make me mix tapes. I want someone who doesn’t think it’s weird and/or wrong that I’m a Catholic Jew or a Jewish Catholic and that really, I’m no religion at all so much more than I am both. I want a Unitarian Universalist. I want someone who cares about me and about something else, who cares about the environment and people and while he’s at it, social security. I want someone who is good at percentages, and someone who is good at tossing things coolly from one hand to another. I want a non-hairy chest. I want lanky. I want someone who will go to Woody Allen movies with me, and who, afterward won’t feel the need to talk my ear off about how Woody Allen was a better filmmaker years ago, but is rather just happy Woody Allen is still making films at all, and who will maybe say something positive about how nice the apartments were. I want Patrick Dempsey. I want Zach Braff. I want Joaquin Phoenix. I want Adrien Grenier. I want Jon Stewart. I want Ed Helms and I want Stephen Colbert. I want David Duchovny. I want Jason Bateman!”

But I wouldn’t say that. Besides for maybe the thing about the airport, I know enough now to know you can’t get that specific. Really, I think I want just what everyone else wants. I want love. And I want finding it not to be so hard.

I look out at all the sailboats, and I’ve always loved the sailboats, and I think that I want someone who would maybe take me sailing. I think I’d want that, too.

“Hope?”

“Uh,” I say, and I don’t want to tell her anything. But I feel, right now, like it’s so important that I tell her something, if for no other reason than to make her be quiet. I want to tell her something so that we can have silence, so that we can just listen to the sound of the water splashing against the side of the boat. Even if it is intermittently interrupted by my mother saying, “Betsy, look, look at the seagull,” at least it’ll be mostly silence, at least it’ll be mostly just the sound of water splashing against the side of the boat.

My eyes fall on Mrs. Gerard’s tote bag. There’s an elephant on it. I look closer at the elephant: it’s red, white, and blue. I look up and say, “I want a Democrat.”

Mrs. Gerard takes in a little breath, and then she doesn’t say anything else, and for just one moment I can hear the sound of the water splashing against the side of the boat.

Betsy starts barking and I try, for what seems like forever, to catch Mom’s eye. Mom looks over at me, and then looks over at Mrs. Gerard, and before she says anything, for this one really tiny, but really important moment, I feel understood. She turns to my father, and says, “Henry, it’s enough already. Let’s keep moving.”

I close my eyes and turn my face to the sun. I listen to engine sputtering as it turns over and at last, starts back up.

chapter thirty-two

Ready?

“Ready?”

It’s six in the morning and Dad is standing in the doorway of my room. Right, I remember, we planned this yesterday. Yesterday, after Darcy had arrived and everything had turned awkward, after we’d all spent the afternoon skating around the subject it seems we all spend a tremendous amount of time thinking of. But no one brought the commune up to Darcy, and she didn’t mention it either, which I have to say is something. But still, all the skating we were doing, it felt very much like it was on the thinnest kind of ice.

Of course a few times during the afternoon, I felt ever so compelled to point out that I just didn’t think that a person who arrived with a manicure and pedicure, a fresh set of highlights, and what looked suspiciously to me like quite a bit of collagen, was the same