The Portable Veblen

4 NOTHING ABOUT YOU IS BAD

And so, within a few weeks, the visit to Cobb was upon them. Meet the parents. A classic rite of passage, inevitable, except that the irregularities of her mother’s personality held a certain terror for Veblen. (She reminded herself that all humans were flawed, no family faultless, and whatever happened that day, it was part of the rich tapestry of life.) Her mother would surely rise to the occasion this time, wouldn’t she? And Paul, who routinely dissected brains, could surely endure her mother too.

The couple set off early on a bright Saturday, skirting the traffic-ensnarled Bay Area heading north, past the minaret-like towers of the oil refineries at Martinez, past the ghost fleet of warships mothballed away in the Carquinez Strait, discussing the myriad future. There were so many things to talk about when one decided to get married, and Paul had waited to share some exciting news.

“Looks as if Cloris Hutmacher has offered us her house for the wedding,” he said, his voice crackling mostly with pride, but with an undertone of something else.

He told her he’d seen Cloris that week and announced their engagement. And Cloris had leaped right in. She said, why not her place in May? Small pink Cecile Brunners covered the arbor in May. Every guest could pluck one. The light in May was perfect, the days were long. Her caterer was amazing. Sadly, she wouldn’t be there, she’d be away. But wouldn’t it be wonderful? And Paul quickly understood that if she weren’t there, he wouldn’t have to worry about whatever it was that he worried about with his family around. As such, the Hutmacher venue was a feather in his cap, a long pheasant feather, such as those found on the felted hats of Tyrolean yodelers, and as the plucker of it, he wished to be acknowledged as a plucker extraordinaire.

(Which reminded Veblen, as her mind was quick to fly, of her childhood confusion between peasants and pheasants; it seemed brutal, insane aristocrats brought along “beaters” to sweep through the woods clubbing hedgerows and trees to scare them out and gun them down, which was shocking either way, really, but proved the madness of too much privilege.)

“She sure seems to like you,” Veblen said, jealously.

“Purely professional,” Paul said, clearing his throat.

“But you know, I was imagining somewhere outside, maybe in the redwoods.”

Paul said, “Wouldn’t that be kind of funky and messy? Paper plates crumpling in people’s laps, nowhere for the older people to sit — we should think of their comfort too. This would be so easy, and it’s beautiful there.”

“I’ve never seen it.”

“We’ll go soon. And it’s a real connection for us. It’s not some rented gazebo.”

Veblen felt strangely unmoved. She didn’t know Cloris Hutmacher and didn’t want the Hutmacher trademark on their wedding day.

“It’s nice she offered,” she said at last. “But is May too soon?”

“Not for me,” said Paul, and this made Veblen smile with pleasure on the outside, and churn from within. Yet there was something bracing about moving forward fast. One could even believe in fate and unfaltering happiness. “Please acknowledge she’s been great to me.”

“She knew a good thing when she saw it,” Veblen said.

“I guess. But without her connections—”

“You would have made them yourself,” she said, stubbornly.

“You are dangerously optimistic.” Then added, quickly, “I like that, most of the time.”

“When don’t you like it?”

“Let’s see. Did I get phone calls from the Pentagon before I met Cloris? Did I take trips to Washington before I met her? I was puttering around in a lab. I used to wonder what it would have been like if my parents had been part of some inner circle in Washington or New York — what I could have been doing instead.”

“But what you’re doing is great!”

“Yeah, but I would’ve gone to an Ivy League school, I’d have connections, I’d have that feeling of entitlement those people have. Instead, I’ve had to claw every step of the way. Look how hard you’ve had to work, Veb, you’re a temp!”

“Is that bad?”

“Nothing about you is bad. But if we have children, which I hope we will”—he squeezed her hand—“I want them to feel good about themselves from the start.”

Veblen wanted a scrappy kid with grit, and said so.

“Come on,” Paul said, “haven’t you ever felt grateful to someone for helping you?”

Very much so. There was Wickery Krooth, her high school journalism teacher, who covered her contributions with exclamation points, and wrote things like, Yes! I never thought of it this way! Original! You have a knack for finding just the right word. She’d kept in touch with him until he retired. And there was Mr. Bix Dahlstrom, a very sweet Norwegian man in a nursing home in Napa who’d been her language buddy; she’d visited him three times a week for two years, holding his cool hands while they talked, until she showed up one day with her notebook and was told some very sad news.

• • •

THE MORNING DRIVE abounded with vistas of rolling hills, green only briefly before they’d go golden, ranch land and half-peopled developments spotting the terrain like outbreaks of inflamed skin. Veblen espoused the Veblenian opinion that wanting a big house full of cheaply produced versions of so-called luxury items was the greatest soul-sucking trap of modern civilization, and that these copycat mansions away from the heart and soul of a city had ensnared their overmortgaged owners — yes, trapped and relocated them like pests.

Discussing the wedding created a perplexing hollow in Veblen. She had picked up a copy of Brides magazine since the whole idea came into play; it wanted to fill her mind with wedding souvenirs and makeovers and cake toppers and what she would wear on her head, but none of that stuff captivated her the way she knew it was supposed to, and she wondered if she should make it an actual goal to start relating to all the bridal fanfare in a more happy-go-lucky way so she wouldn’t miss out on something important. How do you know if you’re stubbornly missing out, or if it’s just not for you and that’s perfectly okay?

It was important for Paul and Albertine to know each other, wasn’t it? Yet getting them together the other night had been a failure. They met at the House of Nanking in San Francisco; Albertine arrived in yam-colored clogs and argyle knee socks, her signature look.

“So you two have known each other since high school?” Paul asked, sounding strangely uncharismatic as he peeled the label off his Tsingtao, making a pile of wet paper pills.

Albertine, dipping a plump pot sticker into chili oil, said, “Sixth grade. If I hadn’t met Veblen I would’ve committed suicide,” and then chomped the pot sticker in a peculiarly mooselike way.

“Whoa,” said Veblen.

“Be prepared, she’s a nut,” said Albertine.

Paul didn’t like having his betrothed described so knowingly, Veblen could tell. Then Albertine led Paul into telling about his school days and the pot growers and narcs surrounding him. It seemed to be going well enough. It was a funny world up there where people lived off the grid and paid for everything in cash. Was it criminal or simply the pioneer spirit? They segued into malfeasance in the medical field, and Paul proceeded to describe the difference between idiocy and evil. Idiocy was the family doctor in Placer County who double-dipped a syringe into a large bottle of Propofol and contaminated it with hepatitis C, only to go on and infect dozens of people from this bottle. Evil was the internist in Palm Springs who stole organs during laparoscopic surgeries on elderly patients and sold them on the black market. It was estimated that he had made off with hundreds of kidneys, lobes of livers, sections of intestine, and even entire lungs before anyone caught on.

“Know thyself. Don’t take up space in a medical program if you haven’t dealt with your issues,” said Albertine, and Paul sat up straighter.

Then Paul said, “Am I right in thinking that in Jungian analysis, most of the training is spent on the self?”

“It’s too bad doctors don’t have that kind of training,” Albertine said, pointedly.

Then on the way home that evening, Paul shocked Veblen by imitating Albertine in a pinched, nasal voice. “We went to school together. We are two wild and crazy girls. We love to wear our big heavy clogs and act crazy in the moonlight.”

“Stop it!” Veblen cried out.

“I’m kidding,” Paul said. “How could I say anything after exposing you to Hans?”

Which led Veblen to realize these friendships were based on a phenotype exchange that occurred only with childhood friends, in which they were simply part of you forever, for better or worse. Veblen had been assigned to the tall, gawky new girl in sixth grade as her Welcome Buddy. In the first few days of their mandated buddy-hood, a boy on the playground was stung by a bee and his foot swelled up like a gangplank. Veblen made an observation about elephantiasis, to which Albertine said, “What’s that?”

“Haven’t you heard of elephantiasis?”

“Why would I? I can’t read your mind.”

“Well, it’s a horrible disease from parasites that makes your body parts look thick and stumpy, like elephant legs,” Veblen pronounced.

“Ha ha ha.”

“It’s not funny, it’s very painful.”

“You’re trying to humiliate me so you can have the power.”

Veblen was intrigued by the girl’s reasoning, as comfortably skewed as her mother’s. “What do you mean?”

“You’re testing to see if I can be manipulated,” Albertine declared, pushing her wire frames up her nose.

“I swear, there’s such a thing,” young Veblen declared, all at once appreciating how elephantiasis could sound as made up as tigerrhea or hippopotomania. They went to the school library and found the disease in the encyclopedia; the new girl shrugged her broom of blond hair and walked off. Veblen refused to believe in the girl’s indifference.

The next day she brought one of her mother’s medical journals to school, an issue chronicling a recent outbreak of elephantiasis in Indonesia. As Veblen calculated, the new girl seemed touched by Veblen’s passion to lift her up on the subject of tropical illness. Not only that, but they discovered their shared inclination to laugh in the face of bizarre and horrible realities they were spared by a twentieth-century California childhood, and they’d been best friends ever since. Almost eighteen years!

• • •

STILL, broad-spectrum uneasiness led to a long lunchtime conversation outside the hospital with Albertine only yesterday.

“Why didn’t you like him?” Veblen wanted to know.

“So you’re having doubts.”

“No, but even if I were, it’s normal, right?”

Albertine, who specialized in doubts, who pointed out the shadow side of human nature at every turn, who swore allegiance to ambivalence and ambiguity, whose favorite color was gray, sounded concerned. “What kind of doubts?”

“No, you’re supposed to say ‘Of course! Everyone feels that way!’”

“I don’t have enough information. Maybe you should listen to your doubts this time.”

“Listen to my doubts?”

Albertine described a vitamin salesman from San Bruno she’d doubted a few times before finding out he was a meth freak. Another recent doubt was over a gambling landscaper from Marin. Veblen sensed a note of triumph in Albertine when she described her apperception of the man’s flaws.

“Is it possible you wouldn’t like anybody I liked, just because?”

“I could see the possibilities. He’s really nice looking, and he’s not as alpha as he wants you to think.”

Veblen tried to explain her mild feeling of doom, how it was like there was some kind of terrible alchemy under way, how it was like she was rushing toward a disaster, and how it didn’t make sense because she was also excited and happy.

“Just be sure it’s not a growing awareness that Paul’s all wrong for you and will ruin your life,” Albertine said, and then asked: “Have you read Marriage: Dead or Alive?”

Veblen said no.

“It’s the magnum opus of Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig. He says marriage is a continuous inevitable confrontation that can be resolved only through death.”

“How great! Does it have to be that way?” pleaded Veblen, feeling worse than ever. “I’ve already had a continuous confrontation that can be resolved only through death, with my mother.”

“Exactly. All the more reason you’re projecting impossible romantic fantasies onto Paul.”

“Who the heck is Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig?” Veblen snarled.

As her friend told her more about the brilliant Jungian and the ponderous message of Marriage: Dead or Alive (“That a decent, responsible society not only allows, but actually encourages, young people in their complete ignorance to bind themselves permanently to the psychological problems which their vows entail, seems incomprehensible. The more life expectancy increases, the more grotesque this situation becomes….”), Veblen began to see how ill-equipped she was to hack out a life with someone. Anyone! She’d end up bossing him around like her mother or grinding up his stuff in a wood chipper like her grandmother. Not for her. No way!

She’d been with Paul for about four months, without much of a misunderstanding. Her unvoiced needs were in remission, and Paul was impressively constant. Sure, there had been minor disagreements, moments pinched by disappointment over how to treat squirrels or value material possessions, but overall, she felt that Paul fit her romantic ideal as a man and avatar in the world. She found new things to love about him all the time: the way he always, always dropped his wallet when he pulled it from his pocket; the way he made fires in her tiny fireplace, blowing on scraps of wood and pinecones he gathered on walks; the warm smell of his head; the way he was generous and he’d bring beer or wine or cookies to her house whenever he came; how he’d help her with any chore that needed doing; the way he read the paper every morning, completely absorbed; the way he pored over military histories, biographies of generals, and epics about the sea — hearty, manly tales of bravery and adventure. He agreed it was good to avoid grocery carts with wadded tissues in them. He loved tacos as much as she did. If she sneezed, he’d laugh and say she sneezed like a cat. He took her to classical music concerts and knew all about the composers and the works. When she said she couldn’t go out to a movie or a concert because she had to meet a deadline for the Diaspora Project, he didn’t make a word of complaint.

Look at how tiny their troubles were! One recent evening the winds came barreling through the Golden Gate, down the peninsula from the north, unusually frigid and fierce, tearing flowers from their stems, clearing dead wood from the treetops, and then it hailed. Ice pellets scarred fresh young leaves and made drifts under the rain gutters, and children ran outside to gather them, and screamed in surprise when they discovered how they froze their hands. It was a night for comfort food, and Veblen prepared turkey meatballs for dinner, well seasoned with rosemary and sage, under a tangy homemade ragù, along with artichoke risotto and a salad, but when she mentioned she’d used turkey he blanched, as if she’d revealed she’d made them with grasshoppers or grubs. During the meal, he appeared to devour what was on his plate so fast he had to go to the kitchen several times to get more.

“Mmm, delicious,” he kept saying. “Turkey balls rule.”

“Not bad,” Veblen said.

“But let’s not have them too often, though, or else they’ll lose their impact.”

“Okay,” said Veblen.

Later that evening, as she was cleaning up, she opened the trash container, and sitting on top, almost in rows as if arranged for viewing, were the turkey balls Paul pretended to have consumed. She started to laugh and asked why he didn’t say something. “Alternately, you could have hidden them better, and I never would have known.”

He said he was sorry, that he hadn’t wanted to spoil dinner.

“But you wanted me to find them later?”

“Mmm. I meant to come back and cover them. I spaced out. Sorry.”

The passive-aggressive lapse seemed duplicitously boyish and charming, but Albertine had been quick to tell her it was a missed opportunity for individuation.

After all, it was unrealistic to expect Paul to be her twin, to think they would react the same way in every situation, always be in the same mood, though there was no denying she craved that. She must withstand all differences, no matter how wrenching and painful. For instance, Paul didn’t like corn on the cob. Of all things! How could a person not like fresh, delicious corn on the cob? And how could she not care?

“I don’t like biting the cob and the kernels taste pasty to me,” Paul had told her.

“Pasty? Then you’ve had really bad corn. Good corn isn’t pasty.”

“Don’t get mad. It’s not like corn is your personal invention.”

“But it’s impossible. Everyone likes it.”

“People with dentures don’t like it.”

“What are you trying to say? Do you have dentures?”

“No! I’m just saying they are a sizable slice of the population.”

“Not anymore. These days most people get implants.”

“Not in rural areas.”

“Okay, fine, whatever! But eating corn together, we’ll never be able to do that?”

“I like other vegetables!” Paul practically yelled.

“Corn is more than a vegetable, it’s practically a national icon.”

“I’m unpatriotic now?”

“If you don’t like corn, it means I’ll probably stop making it. We won’t go on hunts for the best corn stands in summer, driving all over until we find them. You won’t be motivated to shuck it for me. The sound of me gnawing on it will annoy you, so I’ll stop having it. It’ll gradually become a thing of my past, phased out for good.” Veblen was almost ready to cry, and she had reason. Anything and everything her mother disliked had been phased out of her life for good.

“So it’s me or the corn?”

Then she snapped out of it, and they laughed about it, and she came to understand that this recognition of otherness would occur over and over until death they did part, that she couldn’t despair every time it occurred, and that anyway, Paul wasn’t a dictator like her mother… yet it was clear that your choice of mate would shape the rest of your life in ways you couldn’t begin to know. One by one, things he didn’t like would be jettisoned. First squirrels, then turkey meatballs, then corn, then — what next? Marriage could be a continuing exercise in disappearances.

• • •

NO TIME TO THINK about this now, for they had reached the long driveway of Veblen’s childhood home, the handle of the hammer, flanked by elephant-sized hummocks of blackberry vines, where Veblen used to pick berries by the gallon to make pies and cobblers and jam. She’d sell them at a table by the road, and help her mother make ends meet. In the fall she put on leather gloves to her elbows to hack the vines back off the driveway, uncovering snakes and lizards and voles. In the spring the vines would start to come back, the green canes growing noticeably by the day, rising straight like spindles before gravity caused them to arc. They grew on the surface the way roots grow underground, in all directions, overlapping, intertwined. The blackberries defined her life in those days — their encroaching threat, their abundant yield. All her old chores came to mind as they rolled up the drive to the familiar crunching of the tires on gravel.

“I never would’ve imagined you growing up somewhere like this,” Paul announced.

“Really?”

“Really.”

No time to think about this either, for Veblen saw her mother advancing out of the house in her best pantsuit, an aqua-colored Thai silk number beneath which new (as in twenty-five years old but saved in the original box for special occasions) Dr. Scholl’s white sandals flashed. She wore them with wool socks. Linus too came out coiffed and ironed, in a blue oxford shirt. They appeared normal, attractive, almost vigorous.

Yet how stiff and formal Veblen’s mother’s posture was, and how tall she stood! She had nearly six inches on her daughter.

Maybe everything would be fine!

“You must be Dr. Paul Vreeland,” her mother said, in a formal style of elocution heard mostly on stage. “Melanie Duffy.”

“Linus Duffy,” said Linus, joining in the hand-grasping ritual.

“We have prepared a nice light lunch to eat outside. Paul, if you would be so kind as to help Linus move the table into the sunshine, we’ll sit right away.”

The men took off behind the house, as the women went inside.

Veblen smiled. “Mom, you look pretty.”

“I’m absolutely miserable,” her mother said, with the men out of earshot. “My shoulders are buckling under the straps of this bra, and my neck is already ruined. I never wear a bra anymore. I despise my breasts. They’re boulders. The nerve of god to do this to women! I’m going to be flat on my back with ice as soon as you leave.”

“You don’t have to wear a bra for our benefit. Take it off. Be yourself.”

“No man wants to see a woman with her breasts hanging down to her navel.”

“Take the straps off your shoulders, then.”

“I’ll try that.”

“I love your suit.”

“Paul’s very good-looking,” her mother said. “But I haven’t sensed the chemistry yet.”

“We’ve been here for five minutes.”

“I hope he’s not in love with himself,” Melanie said. “Oh, good lord.”

Melanie was looking at the ring. They both started to laugh.

“Don’t hold it against me,” Veblen said.

“What was he thinking?” Melanie said. “It’s not you at all.”

“Yeah, I’m trying to get used to it.”

“It’s the ring of a kept woman. Come in the kitchen, I need your help.”

The oatmeal-colored tiles, the chicken-headed canisters, the wall-mounted hand-crank can opener over the sink, gears and magnet always mysteriously greasy, all were in place as they had been for years, and Veblen was proud of her mother’s artwork on the walls around the table — the abstracts in oil and pastels, of landforms and waterways and rocks, sure-handed and dreamy. She sniffed the scent of linseed oil, and from the cupboards a trace of molasses.

Her mother removed a casserole dish from the oven, her hot mitts clenched around it. “This is a delicious recipe I discovered recently using artichoke hearts and bread crusts and just a little Asiago cheese and butter,” her mother said. “Very special.”

“Nice.” Veblen cracked open a head of red leaf lettuce. Her favorite part was the center of baby leaves, and she removed it quickly before her mother could see and ate it.

“Before I forget, I have a strange lump on the back of my neck. Will you look at it, please? Linus doesn’t have an eye for this sort of thing.”

“How about later after we’re out of the kitchen?”

“Now!” her mother said.

Veblen placed the lettuce on the counter, and parted her mother’s hair with her wet hands. She saw a dime-sized swelling. “Yes, you have a little bump here, does it itch?”

“No. Is it red?”

“Pinkish.”

“Is it indurated?”

“What’s that?”

“Is it hard, with clearly defined margins?” asked her mother.

Veblen squinted at the bump. “You tell me.”

“Is the texture peau d’orange?”

“What’s that!” Veblen asked, exasperated.

“The texture of orange peel.”

Veblen squinted again. “I’d say it’s more like the skin of an apple, or maybe a pear. Maybe Paul can look at it,” she said, sighing.

“As long as he doesn’t talk down to me, that’s all I ask,” her mother said.

Veblen finished making the salad and brought it out like a victim. Linus had furnished Paul with a beer.

“Local brew, one of those designer jobs,” said Linus.

“I taste some lemon,” Paul said, nodding.

“We make our own blackberry wine on good years.”

“How is it?”

“Sweet, nice for a dessert wine. We end up with thirty bottles or so, give them to friends. I’ll send one home with you.”

“Great,” Paul said. “Love dessert wine, especially with some nice Gruyère.”

“I like it with pie.”

“Luncheon is served,” called Melanie, bringing out the casserole and placing it on a woven Samoan mat on the table. “Paul, I want you here. Veblen, at the head. Linus, would you open that special bottle of champagne?”

“Right,” said Linus, returning to the kitchen.

“No, out here!” Melanie yelled. “Watching the cork fly is festive.”

Linus shuffled back with the bottle, untwisting the wires around the cork.

“Don’t aim it at us!” Melanie cried.

“It’s not ready yet.”

“You’re aiming it at us!”

Linus turned toward the house.

“Not at the wall! We want to watch the cork fly! Turn around.”

Linus turned and began to wiggle the cork.

“Wait, you need a cloth.”

Veblen handed him a napkin to put under the neck of the bottle. Paul tapped his fork on the table. The cork popped, and shot all of about three feet.

“Bravo!” Melanie cried. “Now, let’s make a toast to your visit. May there be many more!”

Glasses clinked and Paul and Veblen smiled at each other across the table. If Paul were gracious about this day, she’d love him forever.

“Paul, we’re certainly impressed by your research project,” Melanie said. “I imagine you’re already heavily involved, preparing to dig in?”

“Absolutely,” Paul said. “I’m getting a lot of support from Hutmacher, basically anything I want. We’re going to get off to a good start.”

“There’s got to be a bucket load of red tape for those babies,” said Linus.

“More than I realized,” Paul said.

“Several of my medications are made by Hutmacher,” Melanie added.

“Hurrah!” Paul said gamely, raising his glass.

“And Veblen tells us you’ve been looking at houses?”

“Oh. That’s kind of a hobby. Looking. I was raised on a commune, by the way.”

“Are you planning to have a commune?”

“No, the opposite, I want to live behind a gate that no one can get through.”

“You’ve got to escape the way you were raised,” Linus said. “Boy, do I know it.”

“I just want you to know that Veblen is going to be living in comfortable surroundings,” Paul said.

Melanie said, “Well, Veblen, you’ll really have surpassed me. I don’t know if Veblen has mentioned it, but I’m very interested in medical matters, having a complicated history myself. You can never be too prepared when dealing with the health care system, wouldn’t you agree?”

“That’s right. Patients really need to advocate for themselves these days,” Paul said.

“That’s a refreshing attitude.”

“I know you’ll find it difficult to believe, but most doctors feel that way.”

Veblen’s mother dished out steaming mounds of her creation. “I’ve received atrociously condescending treatment over my recent migraine business,” she said. “It’s a wonder cads like these stay in practice.”

“What seems to be the nature of the condition?” Paul asked, and Veblen’s dread distributed itself through her limbs.

“Well, starting four years ago, just after my yearly flu shot, I experienced an array of symptoms ascribed to migraine equivalence or transient ischemia. Obviously, and as you know, many known foods and chemicals precipitate the condition.”

“Absolutely,” Paul said. “Sodium benzoate, cyclamates, chocolate, corn—”

“Peas, pork, lamb, citrus, onion, wheat, pears, the list goes on. Symptoms of mine have included imagery, hypothermia, aphasia, a feeling of rotating. Further, I’ve had facial paralysis, paralysis of the upper limbs, and narcolepsy. I don’t believe this fits in the typical migraine profile.”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it typical,” Paul said, hesitantly.

“Now, I have learned in time that a middle-aged woman with unusual symptoms can easily be labeled a crackpot, a psychosomatic case, a malingerer. Further, my general physician recently told me I’m ‘too observant.’ How can I agree with that? If not me, who, then?”

Veblen was breathing rapidly.

Paul looked at Veblen and said, “Yes, patients need to be proactive.”

“I can’t tell you how pleased I am to hear a doctor say that!”

“Now, the cause could be nonorganic—” Paul began.

Veblen winced.

“Nonorganic? Psychosomatic, is that what you’re saying?”

“No, not in that sense—”

“What do you mean? If a migraine falls outside their specialty, many physicians don’t realize that it is no longer considered psychosomatic.”

Veblen said, woodenly, “Mom, let’s eat.”

“I can’t speak for ‘many physicians,’” Paul said, “but I’m a neurologist and—” He stopped abruptly to sip his champagne, temples pulsating. His jaw was seizing like a tractor, and Veblen’s stomach ached. “You sound like you know more about it than I do,” he said, mildly.

Perfect answer!

“That’s very likely true, which is a sad story in itself. I have this central stationary scotoma when in hot or warm showers, and with exercise. I see a blur, followed by an irregular opaque gray area. Rest restores normal sight. But if I walk on a cold day, the central scotoma is lighted and nonmoving.”

“Interesting,” Paul said.

“Oh, another piece of the puzzle!” Melanie exclaimed, almost gaily. “Two years ago, I found an area on my chest that was dead—numb without feeling. Located right here—” She pointed to an area at the top of her left breast. “It was about five by five centimeters. That large! It remained dead until about six months ago, when suddenly… Remember, Linus, I realized that my dead spot had feeling again. Is that related?”

“Mmm. Could be,” Paul said.

With that, Melanie swiveled in her chair and reached for a few typed sheets of paper that had been stapled together, hidden behind a ceramic bowl full of miniature pinecones.

“This is a complete list of my medical history,” she announced.

Paul looked surprised. “My, arranged almost like a CV!” he said.

“You don’t need to ridicule me,” Melanie said, making Veblen jump up and retreat into the kitchen, breathing short and fast. She bit her forearm so hard she left teeth marks in it.

The risks had been known. She returned outside.

“No, not at all, I think everyone should have one.” Paul was scanning the first page. “Measles, scarlet fever, tick fever, tonsillectomy, appendectomy, and histoplasmosis, all before you were fifteen?”

“That’s right.”

“Mmmm.” He continued. “Possible exposure to gamma radiation from a Nevada test site?”

“Yes, it’s well documented. I was part of a class action suit.”

“Mmmm. Thyroidectomy for papillary and follicular carcinoma, I-131 ablation — neck injury, acute degenerative arthritis of neck resultant… pancreatic insufficiency — how did you become aware of that?”

“I had tests! How else would someone become aware of it, through a crystal ball?”

“Ciguatera poisoning, with permanent irreversible anticholinesterase?”

“Yes. I assume you know what that is?”

“I do, though in all my years in medicine I have yet to hear of anyone with this condition.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing, just that it’s rare. Let’s see, then atrial fib, tetany, transient Cushing, psoriasis, double vision, empty sella, secondary hyperparathyroidism, primary aldosteronism—” Paul stopped reading. “Well. Very complicated. Very — impressive.”

Linus sat entirely still, clasping his hands together, as if praying.

“I’m thinking there’s an eye test you could have, but it must be performed when the scotoma is present,” Paul offered.

“But it is present,” Melanie cried. “I told you, it’s right here, right now.”

Paul’s voice was pinched. “Yes, you’ve had a complicated history of vasomotor instability with severe neurological manifestations, including paralysis and ocular difficulties, haven’t you?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, then, I will write down the name of this test, and I suggest you ask your doctor about it.”

“I see. I see exactly.” Melanie smacked her lips and rose from the table, with the imperious and sullen bearing Veblen ascribed to Napoleon departing for Elba.

Veblen and Paul and Linus remained, in punishing silence. An intonation, an insufficiency of deference, or the way Paul’s lips looked slightly pursed as he read — something had inevitably gone wrong. Linus twisted his napkin and tossed it onto his plate. “Excuse me a moment, folks,” he said, getting up and following his wife.

“Oh, man,” Veblen said.

Paul glared at her. “What the hell?”

Veblen looked sidelong into the house. No wonder translation came naturally to her. In the past, when her mother yelled at someone in a public place and ran away, Veblen would swallow her shame and go up to the person who had been yelled at and say, “I’m sorry. What she was really saying was that she’s not feeling well and that when you took her parking place, she felt like you didn’t care.” When her mother yelled at someone in a restaurant and stomped out, Veblen would remain behind a moment and tell the waiter, “What my mother meant was that being corrected on what type of salad dressing to order reminded her of being scolded all the time by her mother, who was really mean.”

“What she’s really saying—” Veblen stopped. What was she really saying? “She reaches this point of certainty that new people won’t like her and then she kind of freaks, but it’s temporary.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“You’re doing great,” whispered Veblen. “Really great. It’s going to be fine.”

She reached across the table for his hand, squeezed it. She’d brought a boyfriend home only once before, resulting in the flash incineration of his male pride and a near immediate breakup.

Linus appeared. “Veblen?” With unnatural cheer and strained, clasped hands he said, “Would you go in and talk to your mother? You are so good with her.”

She excused herself from the table and went inside, scared that Paul might be wearing thin with less than an hour of exposure. This pattern, of going into her mother’s room and sitting on the edge of her bed in the middle of the day, had been going on since Veblen was a young girl. She thought back to all the times she sat starboard of her mother after bringing in a heating pad or an ice pack or little bouquets of dandelions and alyssum.

“Mom?” she said, at her mother’s door.

“Come in here,” her mother said, from beneath the covers. “Sit down.”

“You okay?”

“No, I’m not.”

“What happened?”

“That man is a complete narcissist.”

Veblen counted to ten, her usual restraint. “Why are you saying that?”

“He wouldn’t look me in the eye. He barely noticed you at all. He only hears the sound of his own voice.” Her mother thrashed as if trying to annihilate a small creature in the bed.

Veblen swallowed, having none of it. She caressed her mother’s arm through the blanket and spoke gently. “Mom, you know what? He’s been nervous about meeting you, and you know why? Because he knows how important you are to me. He wants to make a good impression.”

“He didn’t.” Her mother coughed, slowing down.

“He’s really sweet, actually. You’ll see when you get to know him better.”

“I want you to tell me how that man’s sweet.”

“He fell in love with me the first time we met.”

“That’s not a feat, Veblen. You’re very lovable.”

“People often don’t get me, and Paul does.”

“How dare you say that! You are a beautiful, sweet, smart girl.” She began to sniffle. “How have I failed? Where have I gone wrong?”

“Mom! Stop it. Please!” She continued to pat her mother’s whalelike hip.

“My beautiful girl is going to marry a narcissistic prig?”

“I beg you to stop talking about him that way, and be patient and just get to know him.”

Her mother sniffled awhile. “Life is more than big houses and garish diamonds.”

“Of course. Did you really want him to prescribe the test himself? Is that what upset you?”

“No. That wouldn’t be appropriate. But he might have offered at least.”

“That would be stepping over the line for him, wouldn’t it?”

“No one ever steps over the line for me, and that’s how it’s been all my life. Will you help me up, Veblen? My back is in a spasm.”

Veblen pulled. Her mother rose to her feet and stalked into the bathroom. When she came out she’d put on some fresh lipstick and styled her hair.

“I’m only doing this for you,” she said. “Nothing else would impel me to spend another second with that man.”

“Come on, it’s okay.” No use getting mad, making things worse. Veblen’s words were cloaked in her gentlest voice, her hardy optimism, her subtle sorcery. All her mother was trying to say was that she was afraid of change.

• • •

VEBLEN HAD BROUGHT so few people here. In the living room she beheld the walls covered in bookshelves, crammed with more volumes than they could properly hold, for both her mother and Linus had many interests and were voracious readers, as well as collectors of rare and lugubrious artifacts such as masks from New Guinea and ceremonial headdresses from Fiji and Aboriginal weapons from Australia and so on. Further, Melanie was unduly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite William Morris, and scorned store-bought furniture. She and Linus had made the sofa themselves, out of long walnut planks and foam cushions cut to the right shape and covered with an orange burlap fabric, without caring how uncomfortable it was and that no one liked to sit on it. The only factory-produced thing in the room was the old upright piano, on which Linus could play anything by ear in the unlikely key of F-sharp major, and which was flanked by an enormous collection of LPs on a heavy mahogany shelf, stacked with scores of great choral works that he liked to sing, basso profundo.

The Veblen collection sat on the top shelf, still radiating “redemptive truth and moral splendor.” That’s how Richard Rorty described the special books on his own parents’ shelves, and Veblen couldn’t have said it better about the power these books had on her in her youth. The collection consisted of at least sixty volumes, made up of anything by or to do with Veblen. Melanie’s incomplete PhD dissertation, not officially bound but in a regular notebook, was the end piece. All of that energy for Mr. Veblen in due course siphoning into her daughter, Veblen.

Linus was now showing Paul his collection of fossils and arrowheads. Paul was nodding politely. “This one I found in Utah, just outside Moab, sticking out of the red soil like a thumb.”

“Nice,” Paul said.

“I had a beauty, seven-tiered, about eight inches long, red jasper, and I made the mistake of turning it over to the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. Well, they have a warehouse, and they cataloged it, and it disappeared, never to be seen again. Never displayed the thing. I wish I’d kept it.”

“Well, don’t blame the institution. It’s a repository of artifacts, and, even so, it adds to the body of knowledge. It was a good contribution,” Paul said.

“I don’t suppose I could entice you to help us with a chore, Paul,” Melanie interrupted, “with some Key lime pie as a reward?”

“What chore?” Veblen asked, suspiciously.

“Well, last winter, a full year ago, we had that massive storm that ripped the roof off our chicken house, which I want to use as a studio, and the roof flew down into the ravine. I can’t go down there because of my ankles. But Linus could easily bring it up if he had the help of a strong fellow like Paul.”

“Don’t say that around my dad,” Paul said. “He’ll give you a list of chores I’d mess up owing to my supposed laziness. Where is it?”

Linus said, “Come on, Melanie, that’s a terrible job. We don’t want to subject Paul to that.”

“It’s in the ravine?” Paul asked.

“At the very bottom. Past the still.”

This was a mysterious rusted hulk they had discovered down there years before, deciding it had to be an old moonshiner’s still.

“Let’s take a look,” Paul said.

They moved outside. Lake County was coming up in the world, and to the north one could see newly planted vineyards ringing the hills across the valley. On site the land dropped off sharply around the hammerhead, giving way to the gnarled thicket of blackberry brambles, twelve feet deep in some places, harsh and naked in winter, like a farm of cat-o’-nine-tails. Somewhere below lay the tin roof.

“We’ve got overalls,” said Linus. “It’s not that heavy, but the shape’s awkward.”

“Gloves?” Paul requested, as if asking for a scalpel.

“Good leather gloves.”

“Hmm. What about boots?”

“I’m a size thirteen,” said Linus.

“Better big than small.”

“Are you sure?” Veblen faltered. Her mother’s gall affronted, and yet she was deeply gratified that Paul was rising to the occasion, and strangely, his affability made her feel loved.

“I’ll get the gear,” Linus said.

Paul followed him inside and emerged shortly in mechanic’s overalls, the big paint-stained boots, the heavy gloves. Linus came next, in his version of the same outfit. “The path starts over here,” Linus said. He held two machetes and some clippers and handed one of each to Paul. “Just hack away.”

“All right, let’s do it,” Paul said.

“Thataway!” said Linus.

The men began to fight and hack through the brambles. Veblen watched Paul trying to free his sleeve from a rack of thorns.

Her mother murmured, “This is a very good sign.”

They went back inside, and Veblen’s mother lay down on the couch.

“That job’s about the worst you could have cooked up,” Veblen complained.

“Paul is an able-bodied man. He should be able to help his future father-in-law with this. So what are you going to wear for the wedding?”

“Wait here.” Veblen retrieved her purse and removed a picture of a dress she’d printed. Talking about clothes, they always got along. “Something like this.”

“Beautiful!” said her mother, examining the picture. “Very simple and elegant.”

“I’m going to make it myself, I think,” Veblen said, deciding right then.

“Yes, you could copy the pattern easily. It’s cut on the bias and it’s very flattering.” With a sudden burst of energy Melanie jumped up, taking Veblen back into the bedroom to her closet. “I might wear this.” She showed her a midnight blue silk dress.

“Very nice! Where did you get it?”

“That estate sale I told you about. And over here are the things I found for you. I want a fashion show.”

A heap of discarded garments, which Melanie believed to be diamonds in the rough, and therefore evidence of her superior skills in the gem fields of garage sales and the Rescue Squad Thrift Store, sat on the chair in the corner. “Wow,” said Veblen. She began to sort through the items, which appeared to have belonged to an aging society woman in the 1970s. Lots of prints and polyester. “Funky.”

“That’s Coco Chanel. See how the pockets are sewn closed?”

“Yep.”

“Finely tailored items arrive with the pockets sewn closed. I’m sorry our budget didn’t allow you to experience that. You can open them gently with the seam ripper I gave you.”

“Okay.”

“You still have the seam ripper I gave you?”

“It’s in my sewing stuff.”

“That’s a very expensive Swiss seam ripper. Be careful, it’s sharp.”

“I know, Mom.” Veblen paused the appropriate number of seconds necessary for Melanie to feel appreciated.

Melanie pointed to a pantsuit with a waist sash, a bright green Marimekko cotton print. “Try that. With your shoulders, it’ll look smashing on you.”

Veblen sat on the edge of the bed, removed her shoes and socks, and dutifully unzipped her jeans. This seemed to be one of her mother’s only joys, so how could she refuse? Her mother said, “Veblen, haven’t I told you to shave the hairs off your toes? Toe hairs are very unattractive.”

Veblen looked down at her feet. “Where?”

“On the first joint of your big toes. There.”

Veblen doubled over and detected a few blondish hairs she’d never noticed before. “So?”

“I’m remembering one of the last things my grandmother told me before she died, oddly,” Melanie said.

“What do you mean?” Veblen slipped on the pants part of the Marimekko pantsuit, but the cut was very matronly, the way the top of the pants went over her hips. She continued with the masquerade, familiar with the routine of thanking her mother profusely, then stuffing the clothes in the back of her closet when she got home or tamping them into a plastic bag and kicking the bag like a football into a Goodwill bin.

BAG OF UGLY CLOTHES.

“She had opinions.”

“What other great advice did she have?”

“She’s the one who taught me how to cook, the right way to cut each vegetable, and she was interested in civic matters. Very practical, after her first husband died so young. Thought a woman should accept an imperfect marriage.”

“What’s perfect anyway,” Veblen said.

“No!” Melanie cried. “You’re too young to think that. If you don’t think Paul’s perfect, don’t marry him. You don’t have to marry at all, for that matter.”

“That’s not what I mean. Nothing’s perfect. Is your marriage to Linus perfect?”

“I’m very lucky to have him.”

“But perfect?”

“Her point was that you make a choice and stick with it. That you make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. She gave me a lot of grief when I left Rudgear. She had no idea that any meeting of the minds was impossible. You see, in her day, matches that bad didn’t happen unless youths were foolish and unsupervised. You will never hear that kind of advice from me. When is this event happening?”

“We haven’t decided yet.”

“What does Albertine think of him?”

“Um, still getting to know him.”

“What are his friends like? Do you like them?”

“They’re fine,” Veblen said curtly.

“What about your ideals? Do you share the same ideals? That’s crucial!”

“I think so.”

“You’d better be sure. There’s nothing worse. I’ve never changed my values or principles for any man.”

“That’s really cool, Mom. I admire you for that. I’ve always said that.”

“In the end, that’s all you have.”

“I get it.”

“That ring really doesn’t seem like you,” her mother observed.

Veblen sighed. “It’s a little big,” she said, though she’d been happy to have someone err on the side of surplus for her.

“I hope it doesn’t represent Paul’s values,” her mother said. “And what about your career? Are you happy with it?”

“It’s fine for now,” Veblen said.

“Are you ever going to be paid for your translation work?”

“That’s not the point, at least not now. I feel lucky I get to do it,” Veblen asserted.

“Maybe you could translate for someone else too, someone who treats you like a professional.”

“The only thing I wish is that I’d gone and lived in Norway for a while. Then I’d be fluent.”

Possibly feeling guilty over standing in Veblen’s way years back, Melanie changed the subject. “Well, what about that other idea, about starting your own magazine?”

“Yeah, I still think about that.”

“I would love to advise with the design.”

“You would?”

“I think helping you would be thrilling. We’d have so much fun collaborating.”

They chatted amiably then, Veblen in her ill-fitting pantsuit bouncing a few ideas off her mother and nestling into the curve at her hip, just as she had a thousand times, viewing the glass of water at the ready for pills, the corroding gooseneck lamp, the large oak chest of drawers filled with her mother’s mysterious things. For some reason the chest always reminded Veblen of a long ago moment when she glimpsed her mother’s underarm as she set about applying some kind of cream from a jar. The armpit was a hitherto unknown landscape of fleshiness and stubble, and it struck Veblen as an armpit so vast and cavernous it could smuggle a pup. She’d been relieved when the arm came down and the armpit receded from sight, though, alas, not from memory.

The afternoon sun streamed past the chest in motey beams, unbroken except for a dark silhouette in the unexpected shape of a squirrel.

“Oh my god, Mom, look!”

Her mother lifted her head. “Scram!” She clapped her hands together.

“Why should it scram?”

“Why is it staring in the window?”

Veblen rose and felt a spike of adrenaline, a jab, as the squirrel leaped off the sill.

“It’s checking in.”

Her mother sat up. “Veblen, come here. Right now.”

But Veblen moved to the window.

“Mom, I’ll be right back.” And she took off after the squirrel, despite her mother’s calls.

Out the door, she searched for her ally, arms to the sun.

The cottonwoods shivered up an arm of the ravine, the grasses whispered. A hawk circled in the upper reaches of the sky. And all else was quiet, even the sound of Paul and Linus hacking with their machetes was faint. She scanned the trees around the house, starting with the gnarled, arthritic crab apple. There was a lot of dead wood covered in pale olive lichen. Then the old plums, the cedar, and the handsome, muscular madrone. Hours of her young life had been spent out here, busy mixing up potions or else very still, watching sunlight filter through the trees, or storms coming in across the hills, and graying everywhere, and the clip of birds dipping from tree to tree. Beetles and dark jelly newts had lived under the rotting logs by the chicken house. On some days a thousand robins would alight in the treetops for an hour, then leave in a great upward rush. Toadstools popped up in moist corners in the rainy months, and somewhere in the ravines was a plant with cotton-winged seeds that took flight through the air in unexpected spirals. A fox used to peek up at her, ears spry and soft, and wild boars came rumbling through in packs, and lone bobcats, and, once in a while, a wild mule.

At the madrone she heard a noise, and spun around.

“Come out! Are you here?”

The land was flanked on the western side by short hills. Wind liked to race over the crest of those hills, gaining speed as it swept over them, and it was not surprising that the roof of the chicken house flew the coop. She used to watch the heavy sunflower heads banging in the wind. Try whistling when it’s windy. The grass waving, the burrs flying, the foxtail so affectionate to your socks. You could spin until you lost your compass. You could pull together thinking: This is only the beginning. One day it’ll come around. She believed it, that she would one day find her way. Her ears would prick to the sound of it coming on the wind.

Was it arrogant to think a squirrel was following you around? Or to think your parents cared about you?

And yet — with those well-marked whiskers, and that topcoat, and the notable scruff, a squirrel who cared and followed you everywhere — wouldn’t that be nice?

“Don’t get lost!” she called into the wind.

She came back inside and had a slow drink of water, before returning to her mother’s room.

“Sit here right now,” her mother said.

Veblen sat next to her mother, the room darker than before.

“Don’t start this now. You have everything to look forward to.”

“I know I do.”

Her mother stared at her, and stroked her hair. “Sweetie. What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy?”

“Yes! I’m very happy.”

“You’re having one of your attacks,” her mother said.

“No, I’m not.” She held her mother’s hand, as entrenched as the tides. From the men outside came a few echoic yelps.

“You make me feel guilty,” Melanie continued. “Like I did something wrong.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“And I get frightened,” said her mother. “That you might have some of Rudge’s genes.”

Veblen felt she was now required to reassure her mother how few genes of Rudge’s she possessed. “I do have some of his genes,” she said today, trying something different. “You mated with him, how can I help it?”

“Don’t blame me!” cried her mother.

“Okay, well, what’s done is done.”

“Veblen, he is certifiably insane. It’s something to look out for.”

“I’ll try to keep on top of it.”

“As you know, all kinds of treatments are out there nowadays, the world is different, you have nothing to be ashamed of — unless untreated.”

“You don’t think I’m insane, do you?”

Her mother sat up. “Only when you talk about squirrels following you all over California. You’re the bravest, strongest girl in the world,” said her mother, squeezing her hand.

“No, I’m not.” She wanted to say: Maybe compared to you. Not compared to anyone else.

“I won’t argue about this,” said her mother. “Now pull yourself together. You’re about to have a grand adventure. If you can’t enjoy it for yourself, enjoy it for me!”

“Wait a second. I’m insane but I’m brave and strong, I shouldn’t marry but it’s a grand adventure…. Do you even know what you’re saying?” Veblen asked, irritably.

“Stop being so literal!” said her mother, who always had to have the last word.

Shortly they stood at the edge of the ravine, calling down to the men.

Linus called up:

“The Eagle has landed!”

Veblen and her mother hooted back.

“Paul?” Veblen called.

“Yes?”

“How you doing?”

“I’ve been better,” he called back.

“Oh, you’ll be tired tonight!” Melanie cackled, an obvious sadist.

“Moving the roof should be easier, now that we’ve cut the trail,” called Linus.

They could hear the sound of the buckling sheet and the grunts and instructions going back and forth between the men for almost ten minutes before they could see any sign of the roof wiggling up the bank.

“This is a bitch of a job,” yelled Linus, with earned ferocity.

“I second that,” yelled Paul. They seemed to be getting their strength through yelling.

“What seems to be the problem?” called Melanie.

“We’re being shredded alive,” Paul called. “Get out the rubbing alcohol!”

“Honey, it’s just very heavy and we have to hold it over our heads, and the weight shifts and our legs catch on the canes. You have no idea!” Linus called up. “We should’ve hired someone with a winch.”

• • •

IT WAS COOLER, the sunlight weak and broken, near dusk, when the men mounted the crest of the ravine, the roof flashing triumphantly. Paul’s clothes clung to him, his hair full of leaves and brambles, scratches seeping blood across his cheeks and neck.

Melanie said, “Let me get a picture!”

When her mother handled a camera, she acted like some kind of hip photojournalist following a rock band. She took a few shots of the men standing lacerated by the corrugated sheet.

“We’ll get it up on top another day,” piped Linus.

“Paul, you’re going down in our hall of fame,” said Melanie.

“Shower,” Veblen said. “Come with me.”

She herded Paul into her childhood bedroom, with its sea green walls and old corkboard, retaining some of the flavor of that era, such as a faded quote from somewhere she’d once typed and stuck in with a now-rusted thumbtack:

The greatest luxury in life is loneliness. All you have to do is furnish it with the inner life.

These days the room was used to store her mother’s art supplies and fabrics, but the way the sun came through the windows was exactly the same, creating nostalgia and melancholy in equal measure.

He collapsed onto the twin bed, clutching a towel. “I can barely speak. Oh my god.”

“They ambushed you.”

“Oooooh. Yes. They did.”

“I’ll have to think of a good reward.”

“Yes, you will.”

He tried to kiss her. She whipped a pitiful thin pillow at him. He jetted it back. They mounted repeated attacks, displacing air that made her territorial map ruffle on the wall. “What’s that?” Paul asked.

So she told him. The map represented a place called Wobb, with all the topography and various special places sketched in. No, it wasn’t quite like Cobb. It was a place where animals had been gathering to reinstate their rights, and where a runaway girl lived by herself in a tree house and was somehow an important part of their world. Humans simply could no longer see the intrinsic value of anything. Squirrels, for instance, had thought that after fifty million years on the North American continent, it was safe to let down their guard. They had made a bad contract with people in innocence and trust, and had paid the price.

And yes, the girl had been shocked to learn that squirrels were under contract. But of course they were. They didn’t get to coexist in cities and towns for nothing. Everything was under contract, they told her. Every inch of soil, every animal, every plant. Frustration was rife. The Nutkinistas had been gaining stature among the downtrodden. The teachings of Nutkin had become widely accepted.

Wobb even had its own language. “Hibere wibe spibeak Wibobbean.”

“Whoa,” Paul said. “Like the Brontë sisters, out on the moors with your little world.”

“Who says it was little?” she replied.

His head flopped to the side, where he caught sight of something else. “Is that your old typewriter?”

“Yeah.”

“I want to see it! That was one of the first things I knew about you.”

Veblen could see the scruffy case under the desk. She was superstitious about the typewriter.

“It’s really old and musty.”

But she pulled it out, and Paul rolled over to get a look at it. Fading stickers still held to its sides.

“Bring it back with you. I think you need that typewriter.”

“Why?”

“It belongs with you. Not sitting here in the dark.”

She pushed him toward the shower.

• • •

MELANIE WAS ARRANGING the plates on the table by herself, a sign that she was on a first-class flight of fancy. Her eyes were bright and excited. Veblen remembered the hopes that look had inspired in her when she was a young girl wholly dependent on her mother, when Melanie wore her hair in a long braid, and was thin and impulsive, and they would set out on the spur of the moment with some aim, like finding a warehouse where they were selling pinto beans in bulk, or locating a printing press that was filling its Dumpster with old broadsides printed on fine cotton rag, or driving down to Berkeley, where one of Melanie’s former professors was giving a lecture on Thorstein Veblen.

“He’s great!” she said. “What a surprise to find a man like that, someone who’ll roll up his sleeves like that…. I wasn’t sure, Veblen, but he’s real.”

Despite herself, Veblen felt joy rise in her gullet, and her cheeks levitated, not for the benefit of her mother but for her own victory over the odds. “I told you.”

“He’s real. He’s solid,” said her mother, and Veblen watched as she opened the bottom drawer of the chest and pulled out the real silver, the Gorham Chantilly Veblen’s grandparents had bestowed on their only child when they sent her to Vassar and dreamed of pairing her with a future captain of industry. (Sure enough, there had been a Dartmouth boy named Dave Dandridge, a fine captain of industry in the making, but when he proposed after two years of dating, her mother broke up with him because his expectations were way too integrated into the systems Melanie was suspicious of.)

“Very nice guy,” noted Linus, with a glass of wine. “We had a great talk down there about all kinds of medical advancements and so on. He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”

Veblen looked at Linus, with his square shoulders and worn belt, a solid man himself, someone who didn’t manipulate, who didn’t think of himself every two seconds, who had always been reliable and kind to her, year after year. He took care of her mother like a nurse, chauffeur, secretary, bodyguard, accountant, and loving friend, all in one.

In short order Paul presented himself, refreshed, smelling of Dove soap, his face full of color, his skin shiny, his hair groomed and slick. He was beautiful!

And they sat for Key lime pie, with a buttery graham cracker crust, in wedges on the Limoges china plates.

“We survived,” said Linus.

“Conquerors,” Paul said.

“I didn’t think we’d make it at one point.”

“When my leg went into that snake hole, I thought that was it.”

“When I took the vine in the eye, that was my low point.”

They liked him, and he liked them! Tears of joy made her blink.

“Delicious pie,” Paul said.

“My grandmother’s recipe,” said Melanie.

“Veblen’s a great cook too,” Paul remarked. “She must have learned from you.”

Some people liked her mother and Linus. For instance, the Yamamotos, a visiting couple from Japan, the wife an artist, interested in textiles and art paper, whom her mother had pursued and won over. And the librarian couple from Sacramento, the Gilberts, interested in Native American artifacts and books. But one year the Gilberts house-sat for them and evidently snooped around, and Melanie felt violated and terminated the friendship. The Yamamotos remained friends, likely because they had crossed the Pacific Ocean for good. They still sent handmade Akemashite omedetou! cards. If Paul liked her mother and Linus, maybe there was a change coming on the wind.

“Well,” said Melanie. “A wedding.”

Paul looked at Veblen expectantly, so Veblen found herself saying, “Actually, we’re thinking maybe as early as May.”

“May. That’s very soon!” Melanie regarded Paul with respect. “Your folks, are they excited?”

“God, yes. They think Veblen is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to our family.”

“They do?” Veblen said. Unfortunately, this fed into her disproportionate need to take responsibility, causing her to start worrying about all the ways she’d have to behave to continue to be the greatest thing that had ever happened to the Vreeland family.

“Well, she is,” said Melanie.

“Mom!”

“This girl is very special,” said Linus. “I couldn’t be prouder of her.”

“If you’re not good to her, we’ll have you for dinner!” said her mother.

“Yikes,” Paul said, but Veblen was touched by the display.

Then at last, the long, milling good-bye by the car. Veblen drove, and they pulled away, down the driveway rutted and full of deceptive puddles. Paul reclined in the passenger seat. He said, once they had traveled about a mile, “Jesus god.”

“That was so heroic of you!”

“I had no choice,” Paul said, groaning. “She was totally pissed at first, wasn’t she? Wasn’t she about to explode?”

“That was normal. She liked you a lot.”

“Really?”

“She did! Did you like her okay?”

He made a noise that could be interpreted as a yes.

“Really, you did?” she ventured to ask. It was like losing your balance to pick a daisy. She began to hiccup deeply, needing to keep hearing that yes, to pin it down for all time.

• • •

MEANWHILE, ON A hammer-shaped parcel outside of Cobb:

“Oh, my. My goodness.” Melanie sat and took up a tissue from her command center, which consisted of her chair, a bear-sized fabric- and foam-covered stump with a back, next to a hand-fashioned multitiered table stuffed with magazines about art, travel, and cooking, volumes about Georgia O’Keeffe and William Morris, and a regularly grabbed Merck Manual from 1998. A magnifying glass, tweezers, a mirror, and several tubes of antifungal ointment lay scattered like gear in a miner’s camp. The telephone also sat there, its handle worn dull in the center where Melanie gripped it daily when she called her daughter. “Linus, come!” she cried out, without enough breath behind it, a kind of sucking gasp. When Linus didn’t materialize instantly, she screamed, “Linus!”

“Yes?” He appeared in the doorway, a damp dish towel thrown over his shoulder.

“I just don’t know what to do. I can’t rest.”

“Honey, there’s nothing you can do. She needs to work this out on her own.”

“But we know something that she doesn’t. Isn’t it our duty to protect her?”

“Dear, is it possible he meant nothing by it? Maybe he was trying to hurry up.”

“Damn it! Do we have to go through this again? I’ve made my case.”

“Sorry, honey, I’m not convinced.”

“Listen to me. When a man wants to make a good impression on a woman’s family, he bends over backward to do it. He thinks ahead. He leaves nothing to chance. This is not something he overlooks. Never in a million years.”

“It is hard to believe it happened, I agree.”

“You look around the bathroom, you clean up the hairs you left in the sink, you make sure you didn’t leave your underwear on the floor, do you know what I’m saying?”

“I do.”

“You do not leave your wet towel wadded up on the floor for your future mother-in-law to find. No, you do not. Not unless you’re a psychopath trying to drive a dagger into her heart!”

“Hmm. Yes and no.”

“What do you mean?”

“You might make a mistake, is all I’m saying. Maybe he’s just a clumsy oaf?”

“If Veblen knew this, it would change everything. She’s a very refined person. She would not stand for it.”

“Let me ask you this,” said Linus. “Let’s say you thought he was perfect for Veblen. And then this happened. Would you have felt the same way?”

“It wouldn’t have happened. A man perfect for Veblen would not do this.”

Linus sighed.

“And the squirrel thing — that’s a sure sign she’s feeling stress. We worked so hard to help her through that. For nothing! I don’t know what to do,” said Melanie, and commenced again to cry.

“Come now, things will work out. If he’s really an awful person, she’ll learn it herself.”

“What if it’s too late?” cried Melanie. “She’s rushing into this. That’s what happened to me and Rudgear. I didn’t know how bad bad could be!”

“But then everything turned out, didn’t it?” soothed Linus. “You ended up with an adorable baby girl, and then I bumbled into your life. Let me make you some tea.”

“Thank you,” said Melanie, holding a blanket against the side of her face.

• • •

BUT IN THE CAR driving home, Veblen continued to rhapsodize over the day’s success.

“You were so nice about all her medical stuff!” she said.

“Yeah, I tried.”

“You understood her? You saw her good side?”

The pause was so long she might have panicked. But with a sudden snap of his neck he said convincingly, “She’s a character. Smart definitely. Really fascinating.”

“Paul! That makes me so happy! Did I ever tell you, I actually talked to squirrels when I was little?”

“That doesn’t seem incongruous.”

She reached down and pulled a foxtail from her sock. “I did. I really thought they were listening. I’d squint at them really intensely and will it to be true.”

“Huh. What about it?”

“It came up today. My mother thought I was insane. Also because of how my real father is in an institution. Do you think wishful thinking is a psychiatric condition?”

Paul was notably quiet. “I don’t know, Veb. I’m totally exhausted.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I bet you’ll be sore and stiff later.”

“I am already.”

She lowered her visor to the setting sun, with warm hopes for times yet to come.