The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing - Melissa Bank [3]
The museum was like the house of a rich old woman who didn't want you to visit; everyone had whispered and stepped lightly, as though trying to pretend they weren't really there. The guest book requested comments, and my mother, who never missed a chance to compliment anyone, had written how finely curated the exhibit was. I'd written, "Bored nearly to death."
I experienced this anew listening to them talk tableware. They loved the same plates for the same reasons with the same enthusiasm, and I thought, Henry is going out with Mom.
—•—
When I told Henry, he said, "My sister the Freudian." Julia was doing my jobs in the kitchen, setting the table and helping her soul twin prepare an early supper. I was sitting on Henry's bed, while he packed to go back to New York. He always did something else while we talked—changed the station on the radio, flipped through a magazine, tuned his guitar. He didn't have to look at me; he knew I'd still be there, with my next question.
"You should read Freud," he said, and went to his bookshelf to see if he had any Freud handy. He didn't, but went on saying what a great writer Freud was, as though this was what I wanted to talk about in our only moments alone all weekend.
I remembered to thank him for the last book he'd sent to me from work, by a Norwegian philosopher, and he said, "Did you try it?"
"Yeah," I said, "I spent about a month reading it one afternoon."
He turned to me and said, "Do you know that your IQ goes up and down about fifty points in every conversation?"
I didn't know if this was a compliment or an insult, but I didn't like how he was looking at me—as though from the great distance of his new life. I said, "No one likes being talked about to their face." Then I felt bad. "Anyway," I said, "E=MC2."
Henry smiled and opened a drawer. He told me that he'd gone to hear the Norwegian lecture. "Imagine trying to understand that philosophy through the thickest accent you've ever heard," he said. "Now add a harelip."
But everyone was pretending to understand the lecture, he said, and he imitated serious note scribbling. Then he interrupted himself—he'd spotted Freud on the bottom shelf.
He flipped through the book for the passage he wanted me to hear and found it. "Okay, Freud says: 'In sending the young out into life with such a false psychological orientation' about sex, it's 'as though one were to equip people starting out on a Polar expedition with summer clothes and maps of the Italian lakes.' " He shook his head. "And that's a footnote," he said. "A footnote."
I said, "You look like Commodore Peary with your beard."
He touched his face, absently, the way bearded men do. Then he handed the book—Civilization and Its Discontents—to me.
"So," I said, "does Julia talk about exquisite plates when you're alone?"
He told me to go easy on Julia; she was nervous about meeting Mom and Dad. "Try to think of it from her side."
I decided I would later.
He picked a purple shirt out of his closet. "Want this?" He tossed it to me. "I bought it at a thrift shop in Berkeley," he said, referring to his last internship, a behavior-modification lab where he'd trained herd dogs not to herd.
I said, "I think I saw you more when you lived there."
He told me that he and Julia would come to the shore again in a few weeks.
"I might not recognize you by then," I said. "You'll probably show up in a suit and tie."
"What are you talking about?"
"You seem older," I said.
"I am older."
"Three months shouldn't make this much of a difference," I said. "Your whole personality has changed."
Finally, he stopped and looked at me.
"You're Hank now," I said. "You bring Mom and Dad a bottle of wine."
Then he sat down on the bed with me. "I might be growing up," he said. "I'm probably not, but let's say I am. Is that a reason to be mad at me?"
I looked at the purple shirt in my lap. It had a big ink stain