Over the phone, my brother, like me, is often mistaken for a woman. As we continued shopping, he told us that his van had recently broken down and that when he called for a tow truck the dispatcher said, “We’ll be right out, sweetie.”
“So how are you doing?” my father asked. “How’s your health?” This was possibly the tenth time in two days that he’d asked me this question. “Fine.” “You feeling pretty good?” “I guess.” I can see him doing the same thing I am, trying to make some sort of connection. We’re like a pair of bad trapeze artists, reaching for each other’s hands and missing every time. Meanwhile the stage crew has gathered below us and begun to roll up the safety net.
The neighborhoods near the sound are so Southern that people will sometimes wave to you from inside their houses.
“It’s what’s become of my signature,” I told him, looking at the scrawl in front of me. You could sort of make out a “D” and an “S,” but the rest was like a silhouette of a mountain range, or a hospital patient’s medical chart just before he’s given the bad news.
The key, I learned, is to speak with authority. It’s never “Are you a Libra?” but, rather, “It’s about time I had a Libra up in here.” Every now and then I’ll be right, and the person will be shocked. “How did you know my sign?” they’ll ask. “The same way I know you have a sister.” If I’m right about the sister as well, the person I’m talking to will become like a cat released into a new setting, very low to the ground and suspicious. “Who were you talking to? Did one of my friends put you up to this?”
My stomach didn’t ache, exactly. Rather, it let its presence be known.
There we met up with my sister Gretchen, who had a cast on her right forearm and held it aloft, like someone perpetually being sworn in. “It helps ease the pain,” she explained.
“Must meet Fitbit and watch requirements,” I moaned between clenched teeth, staggering forward. “Must be mentally and physically ill at the same time.” Two miles later I boarded my flight and put what little energy I still had back into fearing I might shit in my pants in front of a planeful of people. How is this my life? I asked myself as I settled into my seat with a bottle of Gatorade, perhaps the greatest indignity of all. “What flavor is that?” the man beside me asked. I looked at the bottle. “Blue.”
In Australia a few years back, I was surprised when a woman I’d very much enjoyed talking to described me as “bonsai-size.” This didn’t offend me. Rather, I was taken aback. She might have been an inch or two taller than me, but it’s not like I came to her knees or anything. I’ve been called “diminutive” as well, and “elfin,” as if I sleep in a teacup.
I normally don’t believe in drinking coffee in the car. Most often, I spill more than I swallow, but without it I’d have fallen asleep and then had to revive myself once we reached the house.
She looked like she’d taken her clothes off a long-dead Gypsy whose grave she had just now unearthed, and I smiled as she approached, thinking I would say to her, What an interesting skirt.
“Are you hearing this?” I called to Hugh. He was sitting on the porch with his mother and sister, no doubt recalling the time they chased a hippo from their tennis court back when they lived in the Congo. God, those Hamricks can reminisce.
One afternoon toward the end of our vacation, settling into my seat at a tempura restaurant in Shibuya, I looked across the table at Amy, who was wearing a varsity sweater from Kapital that appeared to have bloodstains and bits of brain on it, and at Gretchen, with her toilet-brush hat. I was debuting a shirt that fell three inches below my knees. It was black and made me look like a hand puppet.
