The Portable Veblen

8 EIGHT KNOTS

To some, the in-law family is a burden and a curse. But to others, it’s a close-knit group with a new opening just for you, and that’s definitely how Veblen looked at the Vreelands, who were in her eyes the kindest, most admirable family she could hope to become part of. She formed this estimation in faith that it would be so, because that was what she wanted, a family at ease, a family free from the heat of a central beast, traveling through vents to cook you in every room.

Back in December, before they were engaged, she met Paul’s parents and brother in San Francisco. The family had made the trip for a business deal, which involved the dropping off of a brown unmarked package during a brisk stroll through Aquatic Park. She learned that Bill and Marion and Justin called themselves “the tripod,” and any tasks they shared their “tripodial duties,” and Veblen felt the bud of love open for them right off.

Paul, it seemed, would have preferred having his toenails pulled off, though he refused to explain why his spirits sagged so notably before the innocuous get-together, nor his reproachfully sluglike posture and defensive outbursts during it, nor the round of maniacal cackling he gave way to coming home in the car.

Justin Vreeland stood slightly shorter than Paul, weighed around 250 pounds, and had some kind of disorder that rendered him challenged in more ways than Paul could adequately describe. Paul couldn’t even tell her what his brother’s condition was called. He’d said: I don’t care what it’s called, it’s just my nightmare.

Over the course of that evening, Veblen learned Bill had once been an oarsman in the Grand Canyon, a river guide with a love for the cliffs of Tapeats Sandstone, Bright Angel Shale, Redwall Limestone, and Vishnu Schist. A place you could still find tender spots on the earth, untouched. He had been subjected to a strict upbringing in the sprawling, postwar tracts of Orange County — his Marine Corps dad had served in the First Marine Regiment at Guadalcanal, and took no shine to fanciful daydreams, and Bill had not been his father’s favorite (Imagine, Veblen thought, having to deal with that, on top of everything); his brother Richard had been the favorite, an athlete and marine himself, so Bill went his own way and saved his earnings and married his college sweetheart and bought a place on ten acres in Humboldt County, where they could have a small farm and build an adobe oven for bread, throw pots in a kiln, operate a forge, and cultivate their own vegetables as well as a fruitful marijuana patch. Paul’s childhood, not something he liked to talk about.

Marion grew up outside St. Paul, Minnesota. Her father was a loyal 3M salesman with a two-inch wedge in his left shoe to boost his shorter leg. He favored plaid jackets of polyester, and carried a small silver flask of whisky in the breast pocket, along with a comb full of Brylcreem. Marion’s mother had been a beautician, and spent most of her off-hours huddled in the kitchen with her two sisters, who lived nearby, smoking and gossiping about unhappy marriages and wayward kids in the neighborhood. Marion took off to discover her true self in the West and became a nurse, her natural calling. Now in semiretirement, she still substituted and did case management for the county, and was, of the three, the one Paul seemed closest to. Veblen had been quick to decide they were all good and kind, and the fact that they’d kept Justin at home and cared for him all his life was great proof of it.

It was the Ides of March. They were here to celebrate Paul’s thirty-fifth birthday.

“Brace yourself,” murmured Paul, as they pulled into the Wagon Wheel Motel parking lot on El Camino.

“Hellooo!” Marion ran waving across the lot.

“Couldn’t they have stayed at your place?” Veblen suddenly wondered.

Justin pounded on Paul’s hood. His shirt was rolled all the way up to his mouth, where he was chewing on it, revealing his white and doughy abdomen.

“No,” Paul said, with surgical precision.

In the cool air Marion hugged Paul, while Justin pressed Veblen against the moist quadrant of his shirt.

“Let go,” Paul barked, pulling Justin roughly.

Marion said, “You look wonderful, Veblen!” She was a solid woman in her sixties, with a blondish-gray pageboy haircut and steady blue eyes that gave the impression she had never seen a catastrophe that could unglue her.

Veblen liked their eccentric car, thick with dust and activism. Love Your Enemies: It really messes with their minds. Don’t Just Hug Trees: Kiss them too. Ran out of Sick Days So I’m Calling in Dead. She had yet to visit the family homestead, but one night, loosened up with the help of a bottle of wine, Paul embroidered for her the hellish landscape of his youth, replete with prowling DEA agents and infrared photo sweeps from the altitude of gnattish copters, the sweet smell of jasmine and bark and paranoia in equal measure. To Veblen, it sounded wonderfully complicated and alive.

Paul’s father charged out of the room, hair wet and spiky, a child again at the sight of them. He was a robust man in a red bird-of-paradise Hawaiian shirt, with a close-clipped gray beard and silver caps on his canines, and he doted on his family as if they were his favorite characters in a story he’d written himself.

“Hey, son,” he said, kickboxing at Paul with his Tevas, while his arm swung out like a gate to pull him in, then, with the other arm, Veblen, as she worked to understand the niche a father could take in a family. “Hey, you. Let’s see the new machine.” He circled Paul’s car as if NASA had engineered it. “Never set foot in one of these in my life. How’s it run?”

“Oh my god, Dad, it purrs. Wait and see. You can’t even tell it’s on.”

“What’s the hp?”

“451 at 6800 rpm.”

“Wow. What you got for music?”

“Twelve speakers, Dad. Twelve! Get in, sit in front.”

“Let your mother.”

“No, you. And, Mom, you sit in the middle in back.”

“I should sit on the hump,” said Veblen.

“There is no hump in this car,” Paul declared. “I’ve made a reservation at Aubergine.”

“Hope it’s good food, not just fancy,” Bill said, with a grunt.

“Maybe you’ll find out it’s delicious,” Paul said.

Bill fell in front, Marion wiggled to the middle between Veblen and Justin.

“By the way, I got a fleet discount from the hospital,” Paul said, with a momentary quiver in his voice. Was he shy about its luxury, vulnerable to criticism? Something to ask about later.

Paul had previously been the owner of a trusty forest green Subaru, dusted with scrapes and scars of what she assumed were youthful adventures. Veblen thought the status car diminished him somehow, as if constipation and gout and general decay of the flesh requiring extra comforts were just around the corner.

“Old Betsy’s still kicking. She’s got three hundred thousand miles on her,” Bill pronounced.

“You and Mom need a new car.” Paul looked over the seat to Veblen. “They have an old Dodge truck with holes in the floorboards, a death trap. When I did my time in the ER, I don’t want to tell you how many people I saw all chewed up because they were in lousy old junkers.”

“Honey, we only drive her locally,” Marion said. “We always take the Toyota on trips.”

“We’ll drive her until she drives no more,” said Bill.

At the fancy, expensive Stanford mall, built over a vineyard in the 1950s and only a matter of yards from where Thorstein Veblen’s town shack had stood off Sand Hill Road, Bill sprang out nimbly and opened the doors for the backseaters. Marion walked with Justin, whose feet were so large they occasionally crossed and tripped him. Bill offered his arm to Veblen. Paul bounded forth into the restaurant as scout, and the hostess gathered the menus and brought them to a table by the windows, which looked out at an enclosed courtyard built around a fountain, under the cancan skirts of fuchsias that swished from pots.

“Justy, you know that flattened chicken you like, scaloppine? They have it,” said Marion.

“Pork chops,” said Justin.

“Let’s see,” said Marion, with the help of her glasses. “Yes, they have pork chops.”

“I want pork chops,” said Justin.

“You always want pork chops,” Paul said.

“Who doesn’t?” said Veblen gaily.

“Veblen, you have to get used to the rhythm of this family, we’re a little slower than most, but we get there,” said Bill.

“Bill, did you finish that order?” Veblen remembered.

Bill nodded. “The five hundred peace sign belt buckles. I did. Whew, was that a marathon. Justy helped a lot on that big order, didn’t you, buddy?”

“I helped a lot.”

“Dad, please order a full dinner tonight,” Paul said. “He holds back, then he leeches.”

“Evidently I’m a leech,” Bill said.

“It’s nice to know the world still wants peace signs,” Paul said.

“It’s a start.”

“Dad, if you got an order for five hundred swastikas, would you make them?”

Veblen wondered what he was getting at.

“Um, no. I would not.”

Paul made a show of choosing an appropriate wine from the list, an Edna Valley Chardonnay, and the waiter made a show of presenting him the bottle and decanting him a taste, and Paul made a show of tasting and approving, and the waiter made a show of pouring for everyone, even Justin.

“No, no, no,” Paul said.

“Just this once?” Marion pleaded. “For a toast?”

“Come on, you guys. It doesn’t mix with his medications.”

“Just let him live,” said Bill.

Paul wasn’t happy. She could see it in the set of his face, the way he was squeezing his glass.

Marion adjusted her sweater with an air of eternal pluck. Bill leaned forward, his lips turned up.

He raised his glass and said, “Everyone, listen, please. I have something to say. Justin, listen.” He cleared his throat. “In the words of the great writer and environmentalist Edward Abbey, ‘A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.’ I speak not only of our chance to be together tonight and lift our glasses, but of Paul finding peace within himself and the right woman to spend his life with.” Paul’s expression was one of great suffering. “I believe, son, that you have found a wonderful woman in Veblen and that your heart will open and be filled with the joy that I have known with your mother. Sorry to be so mushy, but that’s how I feel. We love you, boy. We love you, Veblen. Here’s to Paul and Veblen!”

They lifted their wineglasses. Veblen smiled so hard her cheeks cramped. She held up her ring.

Justin collapsed, to stare at the tabletop point-blank. “You’re shaped like a worm,” he mumbled.

Bill said, “First I’m a leech, now I’m a worm?”

“I love you, Veblen,” Justin said. “I love you.”

“Did you want a ring like that, Veblen?” asked Marion.

“It’s really fancy, isn’t it?”

“My goodness,” said Marion. “Look at my old rings.” She held up her hand to display a set of silver bands on plump knobby fingers. “I can’t get ’em off. They’re part of me now. Someone’s going to have to cut ’em off with a saw when I die.”

Bill showed his modest band too. “Will we have the wedding up on the land?”

“Thanks, Dad, but we’ll have it here. Our friends are here.”

Bill said, “We could throw you a great wedding at the house, don’t rule it out. If you add up the costs and discover it’s all too much, consider it. We’ve got the space, full of flowers in the summer, a meadow, beautiful. You could stand under the gingko.”

“And all get arrested when the feds raid the property. Thanks, Dad, but our life is here,” Paul said.

“We have a lot of close friends who will want to be there,” said Marion.

“The real friends,” Paul declared, with feeling. “I don’t want every derelict who’s ever camped in the backyard.”

“Of course just the close friends,” said Marion. “We don’t want a circus.”

“And I don’t want Cool Breeze, no matter what you say. He freeloaded in a tree house on our property for eight years, terrorizing us with bags of excrement.”

She noticed real tension in Paul’s jaw, his mandibles pulled back like catapult slings.

“It’s your wedding,” persisted Bill. “You know, I was thinking Caddie and Rich could sing.”

“You want a Jefferson Airplane cover band?” Paul said.

“They’re terrific,” Marion said. “Caddie sounds exactly like Grace Slick.”

“And looks exactly like Miss Piggy,” Paul said.

“Your wedding,” said Bill. “We don’t want to butt in.”

“No, you don’t,” Paul said.

Justin’s head hung low. He huffed on his silverware, and watched the moisture of his breath contract.

“You okay?” Veblen reached for his shoulder.

He nodded his head but wouldn’t lift it.

Paul whispered: “Don’t. He’s pissed I’m getting some attention.”

Was it true? The salads arrived and Justin began to bite at the lettuce.

As they ate, Bill and Marion rained affectionate questions on Veblen — she described Cobb and the scruffy little hammer-shaped parcel her mother bought years back because it was so rocky and so oddly sliced, no one else wanted it.

“Wait — hammer or hamster?” asked Marion.

“Hammer. The driveway is the handle, and then we have this area bordered by ravines where the house is, shaped pretty much like a hammerhead.”

“Hamster might have been better. In terms of space,” Marion commented practically.

“I guess hamster-shaped parcels weren’t available that year,” Paul said.

“It’s so weird how people like hamsters so much better than squirrels,” Veblen added, knowing that hamsters were hindgut fermenters and coprophagists, whereas squirrels were nothing of the sort.

Maybe to veer away from the further comparison of rodents, Paul coaxed Veblen into telling them about her translation work, and her interest in Thorstein Veblen. She described the article she was translating now for the project: a history of Thorstein Veblen’s Norwegian family in Minnesota.

“Sounds interesting!” Marion said. “There were many Norwegians where I grew up.”

They talked about Norwegians for a while.

Paul said, “I think he helps you justify your Spartan upbringing.”

She nodded. “Maybe.” Something had flashed past the window. “There’s a lot about him to like.”

“He endures,” Bill said. “He’s still widely read.”

“Is it okay if I say this? Veblen has a very dysfunctional family, possibly more than ours,” Paul blurted out.

“What the heck!” Veblen yelped. Was this necessary?

“Dysfunctional my ass!” cried Bill. “You’ve got parents who love you and your brother more than anything. What do you want?”

“Don’t get worked up. I’m just saying, Veblen has a real handful.”

“Yes, Paul’s told us a little bit,” said Marion, sympathetically. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“What has he said?” she asked, her cheeks ablaze.

“Well—” Marion collected her thoughts. “Your mom has a lot of health issues, I guess? And your dad’s in a mental hospital? And your stepdad is kind of, I don’t know, a eunuch or some such? And you had a grandma who wouldn’t talk to your mom, with a little megalomania? And I think there was someone else. Let me think. Oh, yes, the pilot, your grandfather, who was nice but had a second wife with a wicked temper who dressed inappropriately? And they all depended on you over the years?”

“You thought Linus was a eunuch?”

“No!” Paul blushed. “I liked him. I never said that.”

Veblen found herself hiccuping and giggling. It was all rather confusing, being held accountable like this. “Well. Sounds like he’s been very comprehensive.”

MUUMUU.

“You know, my folks were alcoholics,” said Marion.

Bill said, “We’ve seen it all. You stay open to your friends and you’ve seen everything.”

Just then a squirrel crossed the flagstones, leaving a wet trail. The trail had a natural flow and, with only the slightest pooling of the vitreous fluids, looked like a secret message.

“Look,” Veblen blurted, “it’s spelling. I think it says muumuu.” As if the creature were aware that women on the cusp of marriage were subliminally frightened by the word, carrying its associations of matronly bloat and housewifery, such that repeated exposure during the engagement period led to a great increase in cold feet. Was it the squirrel from Tasso Street?

“Where?” asked Marion, putting on a different pair of glasses. “How can you tell?”

“Even the squirrels around here are brainy,” said Bill. “Here’s to Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, and MuuMuu!”

Justin began to laugh and pound his thighs, expanding and contracting like a man-sized accordion. He bumped the table, causing glasses and goblets to rock. He was in a convulsion. Bill jumped behind his son and jerked the solar plexus.

“Come on, boy! Cough it out! You can do it! Cough it out!” Bill yelled.

A woman in a lavender blouse rushed from her crab cakes. “I’m an MD.”

“So is he!” Bill yelled, as Paul fished into his brother’s throat.

They barreled around Justin and squeezed. Paul drew away and pounded on his back, as a tarp of romaine flew from Justin’s mouth like a parasail, making landfall a meter away.

“Thataboy,” cried Bill.

“There’s something else,” Paul said.

Justin’s wet eyes gazed blankly at the ceiling.

“Put him on his side!” yelled Marion. “Pat him on the back!”

Justin gurgled. Paul fished in his throat. Bill pounded Justin’s back. A mouse-sized chunk of bread came up and landed on the floor.

The rattle was gone. Justin swallowed air. Color returned to his skin.

Marion said, “Honey, should we take you back to the room and let you rest?”

“I’m okay,” said Justin, hoarsely.

“You take it easy, son,” said Bill, massaging his boy’s shoulders. “We’re fine, everyone, thanks.”

Justin sat up, runny-nosed. Marion dabbed him with her napkin. More towels went whipping around. Linens flashed, cutlery chinked, they returned to their seats. Someone picked up the mouse.

“You never know,” said Bill, finishing his wine. “You gotta keep on your toes.”

Paul remained silent, and in another minute the crisis dissipated over his plate of baby back ribs in a sesame ginger sauce with garlic kale and frissoned yams.

“Gotta stay on top of things,” Bill said.

“That’s right,” said Marion.

“He’s okay,” said Bill.

“You okay, Justy?” asked his mother.

“I’m okay,” Justin said.

They got around to the subject of Paul’s new job, and Cloris, and how she had recruited him. For reasons that were about to become clear, Paul hadn’t told them about his personal relationship with her yet. A Hutmacher.

“What’s a Hutmacher?” asked Marion.

“From the Hutmacher family, she’s incredibly wealthy,” Paul replied.

Bill said, “I don’t care how much money her family has, is she an accomplished and ethical human being?”

“She’s amazing, Dad. She gives money to everything you believe in, you’d approve. Actually—”

Bill said, “Hutmacher of Hutmacher Pharmaceuticals.”

Paul nodded. “Actually, she wants us to have our wedding at her house.”

“Great connections, boy.”

“Stop it,” said Marion. “He’s telling us he’s being appreciated for his hard work, that’s all.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“It’s not for sure,” Veblen said quickly, but when Paul glared at her, she said, “but probably.”

“Profiteers!”

“Dad, this is something entirely different, I’m not testing drugs, they’re licensing my craniotomy device, and that’s a good thing for everybody.”

“Don’t let them steal your integrity,” Bill said.

“I won’t.”

“Then stick to your guns,” said Bill.

“That, Dad, I will.”

“I have a hard time trusting big pharmaceutical companies, you understand? It’s my nature.”

“I know, Dad. But give it a break. She’s a very smart and discerning person. Hutmacher puts billions into life-saving research every year.”

“Those people are sharks.”

“Dad? Cool it.”

Bill placed his hand on his heart and winked at Veblen.

“I pledge allegiance, to the marketplace,

of the United States of America. TM.

And to the conglomerates, for which we shill,

one nation under Exxon-Mobil/Halliburton/Boeing/Walmart,

nonrefundable,

with litter and junk mail for all!”

“Bill? Let’s not spoil the evening,” said Marion.

“Oh, no problem. I’m not the one selling my soul to Hutmacher Pharmaceuticals. Did you know in the paper today, they’ve just paid three billion dollars to settle a civil and criminal investigation?”

“Tell me something new!” Paul said. “You’re such a hick.”

“Dad’s a hick,” Justin said.

“Okay, Mr. Bigshot: three years ago, an executive at your sponsor, Hutmacher Pharmaceuticals, by the name of Leonard Byrd, filed a qui tam suit against the company — have you heard any of this?”

“Somehow I’ve missed it.”

“And I take it you know what that is?”

“A whistle-blower suit. Duh.”

“Yes. He revealed that the FDA was rubber-stamping Hutmacher’s toilet paper because of personal relationships between top management and high-level FDA and other government officials, and this is the part I want you to listen to, Paul. Paul, are you listening?”

Paul was draining his second glass of wine, and he brought his empty glass down on the table hard. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I have no choice.”

“Here’s the part you need to know, Paul. Do you know what happened to Leonard Byrd?”

“Let’s guess. Veblen?”

“Um,” she said awkwardly. “He was found dead in a ditch?”

“Nobody knows. He’s missing. Vanished off the face of the earth.”

“Where did you hear this?” Paul asked.

“I found it. It’s been hushed up, you can only find snippets about it on the net.”

Thankfully at that moment the waitstaff surrounded them, and began to sing. They were offering up a piece of cheesecake hastily stabbed with a generic white candle, along with a blustery rendition of “Happy Birthday,” and other diners joined in, perhaps with real emotion because of Justin’s near-death experience. Applause followed the puff of Paul’s breath, which extinguished the teardrop flame.

Justin groped beneath the table and pulled up a gray cardboard tube.

“Paul. Happy birthday. You’re thirty-five.”

“Thanks.” Paul dismantled the tube, which yielded a knobby twig with bright-colored yarn tied on at various intervals. Bill and Marion watched expectantly, to add gravity to the gesture. Justin worked a long time on this — react accordingly! Paul smiled and looked at the stick, and Veblen hoped that he sincerely liked it. “This is great.”

“He looked for days for the right piece of wood.”

“It’s from the Japanese cherry,” said Bill. “Big limb came down in a storm.”

“We planted it when Paul was born,” Marion added.

“Cool,” Paul said. “So it comes with a lot of feeling.”

“Tell him what the knots signify,” Marion said.

“The knots are for your birthdays,” said Justin.

Paul looked. “Eight knots. Must be dog years.”

Justin laughed. Paul returned the stick to the tube.

“Here’s something for you.” Marion handed over an envelope.

“We thought you might like this better than some crapola you don’t need,” Bill said.

Paul opened the card. Veblen glimpsed a small wad of cash inside. Paul looked at it quickly then tamped it back.

“Thanks, Mom, Dad.”

“This is for Veblen.” Justin pulled up a small box, and she took it from him and opened it carefully.

“Oh, wow, thanks!” Inside was a small ingot, like an artifact from the Iron Age.

“I melted it and I made it,” said Justin. “And you know what it is?”

She gazed at its little curves and flourishes. “Is it a duck?”

“Yes!” cried Justin, with some drool.

For once, everyone at the table seemed happy.

“I love this,” she declared.

Bill and Marion looked on with evident gratitude.

“And here’s mine,” said Veblen, handing Paul her gift.

It was a picture of the two of them on the beach in Pescadero, framed. In essence, a picture of them beaming at a passing stranger.

“Were we smiling at her, or at us looking at ourselves in the future?” Veblen asked philosophically.

“At the great open maw of eternity,” Paul said.

“Let me see!” Justin cried, and grasped it with his greasy hands, and Paul left the table.

Back at the motel Justin stood by the rough gray trunk of the old oak in the parking lot, holding a golden acorn in his palm.

Just then a squirrel spiraled up the tree, leaping out to the end of a tapering limb. (Veblen wondered if squirrels were stirred when humans slowed to admire the nubby cupules, the voluptuous cotyledons, and the lustrous seed coat covering the pericarp, which indicated a peppery flavor. She had tried it.)

“That’s it,” said Justin.

“The one from the restaurant?” She peered closer, surprised to discern a certain sly wrinkle in its brow.

“MuuMuu,” Justin said, laughing.

Indeed, with the orderly rows of whiskers on its cheeks, the darkened follicles at the roots, the cascade of lashes on its brow, the cleanliness of its ears, the squirrel was unmistakable. “I think you’re right! How did it get over here?”

“Veblen, come in. Now!” Paul gestured from the door. What difference did it make if they stayed outside a moment more to watch a squirrel on this winter evening with their breath escaping in plumes?

“Look, you can see the squirrel’s breath,” she said, and Justin said, “I see the squirrel’s breath. I see it too!”

“Veblen?” called Paul.

“Want to see the squirrel’s breath?” called Veblen.

“NO, I DON’T WANT TO SEE THE SQUIRREL’S BREATH.”

“All right!” she said.

• • •

“PAUL? ARE YOU OKAY?”

It should be known that Veblen hated sharing events with people who didn’t enjoy them as much as she did. Nothing could bring her down faster, or make her feel more acutely that an hour of her life had been forlorn. Maybe it was because anytime she and her mother attended a gathering in her youth, no matter how wonderful and festive it seemed, Melanie would scorch it afterward.

One time they attended a rockhounding fair in Santa Rosa. Veblen was jubilant. She had won a raffle at the door and picked a grab bag full of polished agates, seen glorious specimens of pyrite and amethyst, and met kids whose parents obviously had something in common with her mother, people her mother could not possibly object to, people they might form bonds with and see again. But in the car going home, Melanie said bitterly, “What a circus. Those nitwits have no concept of the environment. Did you hear that idiot talking about the way they stripped that hill of every last particle? What a horror show. Nobody there had our values.”

“They do like collecting rocks,” Veblen said, her voice rising. “That’s why we went there!”

“It’s not what I was expecting. Never again!”

Veblen let out a blood-curdling scream, enabling her mother to feel like the normal one.

They never found a soul with the same values. The moral fiber of others was always weak and frayed as far as her mother was concerned. Other people were insensitive and crass. Other people crashed through the world like barbarians, lacking manners, lacking taste, lacking sensitivity, lacking any regard for Melanie C. Duffy.

So when Paul’s mood did not match hers in the car driving home, she felt a painful flutter in her chest.

“What’s wrong?” she asked again.

His eyes darted in the dark. “How can I explain?”

“Well, try,” she coaxed, though she was having trouble hiding her distress.

“It’s just them,” he whispered.

“What did they do?”

“You didn’t notice?”

And she bit into her forearm so hard she almost cried out. Strife in the family she wanted to love wholly and fast was a catastrophe for Veblen.

“It’s just that Justin’s been trying to sabotage me since the day I was born,” Paul finally managed.

“How?”

“You don’t get it,” he growled. “See? I knew you wouldn’t.”

“But he’s disabled — how can he help it?” She bit her arm harder, steadying her jaw.

“Helen Keller was a spoiled brat until Anne Sullivan came along. My brother needs an Anne Sullivan, see what I’m saying? They’ve let him terrorize me all my life and never stopped him! You know what I realized tonight? He’ll probably sabotage the wedding. He won’t plan it, but he’ll erupt, he’ll act out, and why not, no one blames him for anything, there are no consequences, he’s free to do anything he wants.”

“But, Paul, don’t count on the worst. He couldn’t sabotage the wedding, it’s not possible!”

“You want to bet?”

Paul drove catatonically, a deeply wounded look in his eyes. “Veb, this thing against me, it’s all he’s got. So believe me, it’ll happen, one way or another. It’s hard for me to feel like it doesn’t matter.” As if aware of Veblen’s resistance, he added, “I’ve been to counselors far and wide over this. He’s got my parents catering to his every whim, he doesn’t have to work or face the world, he gets their undivided attention and benefit of the doubt, and no matter what he does to me, I’m always the one in the wrong. I know it sounds paranoid, but it’s real. I’m sorry to drag you into my personal hell, but there it is.”

This is the price you have to pay. To be connected.

“You’ve never mentioned this before,” she said, feeling betrayed.

“Look where he gets it,” Paul went on. “You heard my father. His digs about Hutmacher? It’s insane. He’s this close to being one of those guys who drive around in a van with a megaphone.”

“No, he’s not!”

“He did say I was a doctor. That was something. Remember in the restaurant?”

“Well you are.”

“To be healthy, I have to get rid of this baggage,” he admitted.

“It’s like a scar,” she offered, to cocoon the matter.

“It’s worse than a scar. I’m practically crippled.”

“Everybody has sore spots,” she whispered.

“Yep. Thank you for allowing me to have scars and sore spots.”

“Mmm,” she said, biting her arm higher up, where there was more flesh.

It would have been very helpful if Veblen could have been honest with herself at this point, if she had been able to admit that scars and sore spots terrified her, that she’d been helplessly driven by someone’s scars and sore spots all her life, bleating like a lamb as the scars and sore spots nipped at her heels, sending her willy-nilly in directions she didn’t need to go, and that she’d wasted so much precious time that in the future she really, really didn’t want to be chased by any more scars and sore spots. But this she had yet to grasp.

THORSTEIN VEBLEN, C. 1904.

Later she found herself catching her breath in the hallway, gazing at a mustachioed Norseman.

“Why are you always looking at him?” Paul said, irritably.

It was here, before Veblen’s portrait, that she came when she needed to find her best self, to remind herself there were many ways to achieve one’s ideals, not just the conventional ones.

“He makes me feel good,” Veblen said.

This appeared to further unsettle him, which she rather enjoyed, a cool slap on the buttock of assumption.

He plunked down on the edge of the bed, kicked off his shoes and socks. His shoulders sagged and his hair stuck out in spikes. Wait a minute, she loved him. She didn’t want to be mad about his attitude about his brother, or make him jealous of Thorstein Veblen.

“You make me feel better,” she added quickly.

Now Paul pulled the covers up under his chin. “You know they used to be nudists, don’t you?” he said.

“Who?”

“My family.”

“No! You never mentioned that.” She had noticed an endearing pattern: whenever Paul felt guilty or in need of affection, he’d tell a painful story about his past.

“Oh, yes. When I was in about fifth grade, for about a year or so. I’m telling you, I’m lucky I still have normal sexual feelings for women. Or anybody, for that matter.”

“Gee.”

“You’re in fifth grade and suddenly you start seeing your mother naked all the time? And your dad too? And your older brother? Sitting cross-legged on the floor? Walking around, leaning over, reaching for things in cupboards? Grotesque.”

She nodded with earnest sympathy. How many times had she borne witness to her naked mother, running to the bedroom after a shower with a towel pressed to her front? But repeated viewings of her mother’s unclad emotions had been way worse, and had led Veblen to fear depressives. Back then she’d run for cover outside, where she would help frightened grasshoppers escape into the ravine, in danger of her mother’s shears. (When she was in a bad mood, and even when she was in a good mood, Melanie liked to hunt them down and cut them cleanly in half, which made Veblen scream.) She’d pretend she was part of the resistance during World War II, helping grasshopper comrades escape across the border.

“So — that’s why you think squirrels are horrible?” she asked suddenly.

“Why?”

“Because they’re nude?”

He chuckled. “That’s it. Exactly.”

She kissed him and loved him intensely then, as she always did when they laughed about something together.

• • •

DRIFTING TO SLEEP, Veblen reflected on how she was sensitive to jealousy and hypervigilant over situations that created it, though in recent years she’d taken to exploring how much jealousy a normal person could stand in comparison to her mother. The rigor of her training had sharpened a fine etiquette scarcely necessary with others.

Take a classic example of her emotional training. Veblen had once slept over at her friend Joanie’s house. Veblen’s mother didn’t like Joanie for a number of reasons, including her manners, her dress, her religion (practiced in a group setting on Sundays), and her family. Joanie’s mother had been a sorority girl at Chico State, had married a contractor, and, though not wealthy, they had built a phony castle of a house. Joanie’s mother curled her hair every day before Joanie’s father came home. At this sleepover, she had the girls make a salad for dinner, and showed them how to peel a cucumber, then run a fat-tined fork down the sides of it so that when it was sliced it looked scalloped, and when Veblen came home from this sleepover and was next helping her mother make a salad, she excitedly displayed the new trick. To her dismay, her mother began to cry and ran out of the kitchen, saying how this was a special thing she’d wanted to teach Veblen herself, and if Joanie’s mother was such a domestic superstar, then maybe Veblen would rather live there?

Linus was drinking a martini and eating peanuts at the kitchen table. Veblen said, “I don’t understand why she’s mad.”

Linus rattled the ice in his martini glass, and took a sufficient swallow. “Your mother cares about you very much, and probably feels she’s lost an opportunity to teach you something. Why don’t you go into the bedroom and give her a pat and make her feel better?”

Veblen dried her hands on a dish towel. Heading for the bedroom she tightened her core muscles, assessing what would be needed for peace. “Mom?” she whispered.

It was dark in the bedroom. “What is it?”

She forayed into the dark, leaned over the bed. “Mom, sorry you couldn’t show me how to decorate cucumbers.”

Her mother grunted from under the covers.

“You showed me how to make radishes look like roses, remember?”

“Yes, I did,” said her mother, and she opened the covers to allow Veblen in for a cuddle.

Her mother hugged her to her chest. “Does that woman still wear those curlers around the house?”

“Yes,” Veblen said, seeing a way out. “Big pink ones that look like shrimp.”

“And talk about her glory days at Chico State?”

“Yeah!” Veblen howled. “She’s a hollow shell living in the past!”

Her mother laughed. “That’s what I always thought. A very superficial woman. No interests outside the home.”

“No interests at all!” Veblen exclaimed, and her mother tickled her, and they rejoined Linus in the kitchen, and when her mother turned her back for a second, Linus gave her a grateful nod, and tossed down a funnel of peanuts from his palm.

• • •

WHAT A LOT of work it had all been, she thought. Still was. Paul wasn’t going to make her work that hard. He’d better not, she thought.