Sorry, track practice. Can I just come visit on the weekend?
Phoebe
October 18, 2017, 9:33 A.M.
Will be at board retreat in Virginia. Suggest 10/28 6:30 Harvard Club.
Cc’ing Flora who will confirm.
H.
And on like this for another half dozen go-rounds, with his proposed dates stretching into November. At last he suggested I meet him at Fox News the following Saturday, then come back to his apartment. Whether or not he’d finally sensed there was something of possible consequence I wanted to talk about I wasn’t sure, but naturally I accepted. Not the Fox News part, though. Waiting for him in a limo in front of the studio was about as close as I could bear to get to Fox News.
After Ithaca I’d taken a few days to think through Sally’s various revelations; they were intense, intermittently distressing, and, in complete contrast, somehow also a great relief, as the previously invisible pegs of my own secret history began to drop into their appointed holes. I’d also decided to stop wondering why this was apparently my job, this reweaving of the shredded fabric of our family, the figuring out what was owed to whom by whom and how we were all supposed to become unstuck with one another. Maybe I just wanted it more than any of the others did, or was better able to understand that I wanted it, or to say that I wanted it, or all of that at once. But the bald fact was that there wasn’t anybody else volunteering to make it happen. Our father was dead. Our mother was basically estranged from Lewyn—despite his physical proximity—and Sally, and not terribly interested in me （except, at the moment, in where I was going to college and how far behind I was on my applications）。 Sally and her brothers did not speak, Harrison and Lewyn were locked in mutual disdain. I had a real sense that if things didn’t improve by the time I graduated Walden and （presumably） left home, the center—whatever center remained in our family—would not hold, not for one moment longer.
If not me, in other words, who?
If not now, in other words, when?
“I hear you’re going to see Harrison appear on Fox News tomorrow,” our mother announced on Friday afternoon, as I made my post-practice tea.
“Well, yes and no. Yes to Harrison, no to Fox News. I cannot deal. How do you stand it?”
“He’s entitled to his opinions. You can’t say he isn’t well-informed.”
I could if I wanted to, I thought. Instead, I hedged. “I doubt they’re very proud of him at Walden these days. He’s like a one-man repudiation of everything they hold dear.”
“I sent my children to Walden to be educated. Not indoctrinated.”
“Fair point.”
“And one thing I have always admired about Harrison is his self-awareness, and his drive.”
That’s two things, I thought, but I didn’t interrupt.
“He knew from an early age what he wanted, and he worked very hard for it. I wish Sally and Lewyn had had a bit more of that.”
I got a spoon from the drawer and lifted my tea bag out of the mug, depositing it in the trash. There was no point in noting that Sally, too, had chosen an occupation at a relatively early age, or that she ran a hale little business which more than supported her and more than fulfilled her. Or that Lewyn, after some undeniable wandering, had found work commensurate with his talents and interests.
“Drive is fine. But not everyone knows what they want as early as Harrison did. I don’t know what I want, for example.”
I don’t even know where to apply to college, I almost said. I didn’t. It didn’t matter.
“Have you decided where you’re applying to college?” she said, meeting my expectations.