IT IS THREE o’clock on Saturday when the phone rings. Hannah is reading about sixteenth-century Iznik tiles, has talked to no one since Friday night, and is expecting Jenny’s voice on the other end when she picks up the receiver. Now that it’s warm, she and Jenny have been getting frozen yogurt together on Saturday afternoons. Instead, it is Hannah’s cousin Fig who says, “So I’m calling to check on Granny.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, God,” Fig says. “Oh, no. Oh, that’s horrible. Yes, of course.” In a whisper, Fig adds, “Play along.” Resuming her loud voice—her abnormally, theatrically loud voice, Hannah realizes—Fig adds, “Yeah, I guess I should. I don’t know, maybe if you can come get me. Really, you don’t mind?”
“Fig?”
“The house where I’m staying is in Hyannis. You basically have to follow Three South and then you pick up Six, and then once you get into town, you take Barnstable Road—are you writing this down?”
Hannah is silent before asking, “Is that a pretend question or are you actually talking to me?”
Again in a whisper, practically hissing, Fig says, “I’m with this professor, but he’s being really lame and I want to leave. I need you to find Henry and get him to drive here. He’s not answering his phone, but if you go over to SAE, he’s probably outside playing Frisbee, or just ask someone where he is. Oh,” she adds, now loudly and forlornly, “I can’t believe it, either. It happens fast sometimes.”
“You’re acting bizarre,” Hannah says. “Is something dangerous going on?”
“I’m pretending Granny just died,” Fig whispers. “Can you leave right now?”
“You mean Granny who’s been dead for four years?”
“Hannah, what did I just tell you? Play along. Were you writing down the directions before?” Fig gives them again, and this time Hannah does write them down, though Fig is going fast in her strange voice. “You’ve been to the Cape, right?” Fig asks.
“Cape Cod?”
“No, the Cape of Good Hope. For Christ’s sake, Hannah, what do you think?”
“Sorry,” Hannah says. “I’ve never been. Does Henry know how to get there?”
“Oh, please don’t be upset,” Fig says. “Hannah, it was her time.”
“You’re kind of creeping me out.”
Whispering again, Fig says, “I’ll explain it in the car.” Then, louder, “Drive safely, okay? Bye, Han.”
“Give me the number there,” Hannah says, but Fig has already hung up the phone.
IN THE MIDDLE of switching T lines to get from Davis Square to the BU West stop, it occurs to Hannah that perhaps she should have taken a cab. Is time of the essence? Is Fig in danger? Sigma Alpha Epsilon turns out to be a redbrick townhouse with a semicircular front stoop and, over the stoop, a roof, also semicircular, supported by skinny Ionic columns; two guys, one shirtless, sit on the roof on lawn chairs, the chairs taking up almost all the space behind a black wrought-iron railing. Holding her hand above her eyes, Hannah squints up at them. “Excuse me,” she says. “I’m looking for Henry.” She realizes she has no idea what Henry’s last name is. She has met him just once, a few months ago, when she was visiting Fig’s dorm room. He is a senior, two years older than Fig and Hannah. He was handsome, which was not surprising, and nice, which was; unlike any of Fig’s previous boyfriends, he asked Hannah questions about herself.
“You gotta tell us what Henry did before we tell you where he is,” one of the guys says. “That’s the rule.”
Hannah hesitates, then says, “I’m his girlfriend’s cousin—Fig’s cousin.”
“You’re Fig’s cousin,” the shirtless guy repeats, and both of them laugh. Hannah is tempted to say, It’s an emergency, but she doesn’t know if it really is, and also it feels awkward to change the tenor of the exchange so drastically. The guys are friendly, and it’s her own fault for not conveying urgency sooner.
Trying to sound cheerful, she says, “I’m so sorry, but I’m sort of in a hurry. I heard he might be playing Frisbee?”
The shirtless guy stands, leans over the railing, and points inside the house. “He’s watching the game.”
“Thanks.” Hannah quickly climbs the steps. The door is painted red, propped open with a tan plastic wastebasket, and as she pushes the heavy wood, she hears one of them say, “Bye, Fig’s cousin.” She is glad, because it must mean she didn’t seem completely humorless.
It is darker inside than out, and the television is enormous. She stands in the threshold of the living room—one guy looks over at her, then looks away—and observes the backs of perhaps seven guys’ heads. The guys are arranged on various chairs and sofas. She’s pretty sure the one who’s Henry is a few feet in front of her, and she walks around the side of the sofa. “Henry?” she says—it’s definitely him—and when he turns, she sets her hand against her collarbone. “It’s Hannah,” she says. “I don’t know if you remember me—we met before—with Fig—?”
Whatever she imagined he’d do—jump to attention, maybe—he doesn’t. “Hi,” he says, and he looks quizzical.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” Hannah gestures to the entry hall. “Out there?”
When they’ve retreated from the television, Henry stands before her with his arms crossed, though not unpleasantly. He’s about six feet tall, wearing a plain white T-shirt and blue athletic shorts and flip-flops. His hair is dark brown, almost black, and his eyes are also brown. He is so cute, so exactly the image of what you think a boyfriend should be when you are nine or ten years old—what you think your own boyfriend will be, your birthright—that he breaks Hannah’s heart a little. She hardly knows him (maybe he isn’t that great), but it’s still unfair that only some girls grow up to get boys like this.
Hannah takes a breath. “Fig needs us to go get her. She’s with her professor.”
“What are you talking about?”
She’d assumed he would know everything, and then be able to explain it to her. That he is reacting exactly the way Hannah herself did is unnerving and intriguing.
“She called me”—Hannah glances at her watch—“about an hour ago. She wants us to go pick her up. She’s in Hyannis.”
“Is she with Mark Harris?”
“Is that her professor?”
“Her professor—yeah, right.”
“He’s not?”
Henry regards Hannah for a few seconds. “Fig and I aren’t really together anymore,” he says. “I get the feeling she hasn’t told you that.”
So therefore what? Does Hannah go back to Tufts now? She’s not expected to rent a car and get Fig on her own, is she? It’s conceivable that this is the errand’s abrupt termination. Yet she also can feel that Henry is not completely averse. He’s not saying no; it’s more like he wants to be on the record as reluctant.
“I don’t think Fig is in danger,” Hannah says, and is half disgusted with herself for being so accommodating. Here, my self-centered cousin, and here, her wishy-washy quasi-boyfriend, allow me to simultaneously push the situation toward the outcome you both desire while alleviating any discomfort you might feel. “But,” Hannah adds, “she didn’t sound quite like herself.”
“Hyannis is like seventy miles from here,” Henry says.
Hannah says nothing. She holds his gaze. Whatever convincing Henry is an exercise in, and however compromising to Hannah herself, she’s surprisingly good at it.
Finally, Henry sighs and looks away. “You have directions?”
Hannah nods.
“My keys are upstairs,” Henry says. “I’ll meet you out front.”
SHE WISHES SHE had sunglasses, but otherwise it’s so nice to be headed down the highway on a perfect late-April afternoon, so nice just to be going somewhere. She hasn’t ridden in a car since she was home for spring break over a month ago. And she was prepared for Henry to listen to some terrible kind of male music—heavy metal or maybe pretentious white-men rappers—but the CD that’s playing is Bruce Springsteen. Quite possi
bly, this is the happiest Hannah has ever been in her entire life.
Henry does have sunglasses, with a faded purple strap, a sporty strap, around the back. He keeps an atlas in the car, already folded open to a two-page spread, also faded, of Massachusetts. “You’re navigating,” he said when they got in the car, and when Hannah saw how far away Hyannis was, a flash of excitement went off inside her.
They don’t talk at first, except Hannah saying, “Do you need to take Ninety-three to get on Three?” and Henry shaking his head. Almost half an hour has passed by the time he turns down the volume on the car stereo.
“So she just called you out of the blue and said ‘Come get me’?” he asks.
“More or less.”
“You’re a good cousin, Hannah.”
“Fig can be pretty persuasive.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Henry says. Hannah does not point out that he, too, is in the car.
They don’t speak—“I got laid off down at the lumberyard,” sings Bruce Springsteen—and then Hannah says, “I think I got frustrated with her more when we were younger. In the beginning of high school, especially, because that’s when Fig would get invited to parties by juniors and seniors. Or I’d hear people talking about something that had happened, like she’d been doing Jell-O shots in the parking lot at the basketball game, and I’d think, wait, my cousin Fig? That Fig?” The fact that Henry seems vaguely annoyed, and the fact that he’s Fig’s—even if he and Fig are broken up, he’s still Fig’s, and off-limits to Hannah—are both liberating, and Hannah feels uncharacteristically chatty. It’s not like she’s trying to appear attractive to him, or to impress him; she can just relax. “Of course, I’m not sure I even wanted to go to junior and senior parties,” she continues. “Probably I wanted to be invited more than I wanted to go. I’m kind of a dork, though.”
“Or maybe Jell-O shots aren’t your thing,” Henry says.
“I’ve actually never tried one.” She wonders if this seems to him like a confession. If so—ha! Given that she still hasn’t even kissed anyone, Jell-O shots are the least of what she’s never tried. “But my main point about Fig is that you don’t expect her to meet you fifty-fifty,” Hannah says. “You sort of appreciate her good qualities and don’t take it too personally when she blows you off.”
“Which good qualities are you referring to?”
Hannah glances at him. “You’ve spent time with her,” Hannah says. “You know what she’s like.”
“True,” Henry says. “But I’m curious about what you mean specifically.”
“Why don’t you go first?”
“You want me to say what I like about Fig?”
“That’s what you’re asking me to do.”
“The two of you didn’t just break up,” he says. “But I’ll play.” He switches into the left lane, passes a Volvo, switches back. He is a good and also a confident driver. “First of all, she’s gorgeous.”
Blah, blah, blah, Hannah thinks.
Henry looks over. “That’s not offensive, right? I’m allowed to say that a good-looking girl is good-looking?”
“Of course you’re allowed to,” Hannah says. The only thing that could be more boring than talking about Fig’s prettiness is talking about how Henry’s entitled to talk about it.
“It’s not only looks,” Henry says. “But I’d be lying if I claimed that’s not a factor. Also, she’s a wild card.”
This, Hannah suspects, is a euphemism for good in bed.
“She keeps you guessing,” Henry continues. “She has so much energy, and she’s up for anything. If it was three in the morning and you said, ‘I want to go skinny-dipping in the Charles right now,’ she’d be like, ‘Great!’ ”
Okay, Hannah thinks. I’ve gotten the idea.
Then Henry says, “All of which I guess makes it not that surprising that she sees me as a big fuddy-duddy.”
“Yeah, but Fig likes fuddy-duddies.”
“You think so?”
“She needs an audience. It’s like she’s defined in contrast to whoever’s around her.” Hannah has never discussed this, but she’s pretty sure she believes what she’s saying. “When we were in sixth grade, there was a girl named Amanda on our softball team who was always goofing off—she could play ‘Yankee Doodle’ on her armpit, or she’d be doing cartwheels while the coach was trying to explain stuff to us, but it was obvious he still liked her. When we drove in the van, Amanda sat in the front seat and chose the radio station. She’d say, ‘Drive straight, Coach Halvorsen,’ and then he’d swerve. It was like Amanda was out-Figging Fig. And Fig hated her.”
“Wait a second,” Henry says. “This girl played ‘Yankee Doodle’ on her armpit?”
“It was sort of her special trick.”
“Well, no wonder Fig was threatened.”
Hannah smiles. “I guess you’re right that it was unusual, but I never thought about it,” she says. “Amanda would pull up her shirt and flap her arm, like she was pretending to be a chicken, and her armpit would squeak.”
“Geez, and I thought I was cool because I could turn my eyelids inside out.”
“I remember that,” Hannah says. “That’s what the boys I rode the bus with would do, and all the girls would scream.”
“So what was your elementary-school talent? You can’t say you didn’t have one.”
The only thing Hannah can remember right now is not what you say to a cute guy. But again: He’s Fig’s. She isn’t trying to lure him. “In fourth grade,” she says, “in the middle of social studies, I once sneezed and farted at the same time.”
Henry laughs.
“I denied that it was me. I was sitting near the back of the room, and all the kids around me had heard and were like, ‘Who was that?’ and I said, ‘Obviously it wasn’t me, because I’m the one who sneezed.’ ”
“That was very clever of you.”
“They probably thought it was Sheila Waliwal, who was this scapegoat for everything gross or weird in our class. She was the first one to get her period, when we were in fifth grade, and all hell broke loose. Sheila was hiding in a stall while the rest of the girls were freaking out, running in and out of the bathroom. And Fig was at the helm—she was like the director and producer of Sheila’s period.”
“That actually sounds sort of sweet.”
“I guess all the girls did rise to the occasion. I think we were just so happy it wasn’t one of us who’d gotten it first, although looking back, for all I know, there were girls who had gotten theirs already but just didn’t tell everyone. But Sheila told Fig, which was the same as making a public announcement.”
“When my twin sister got her period,” Henry says, “my dad congratulated her at the dinner table. I almost couldn’t finish eating. We were thirteen, meaning I looked and acted about nine and Julie looked and acted about twenty-five.”
“I didn’t know you’re a twin,” Hannah says. “I always thought that would be fun.”
“You and Fig are almost like twins. You’re just a couple months apart, right?”
“She’s three months older,” Hannah says. “But it’s not the same. We grew up in different houses, with different parents. Besides, the cool part of being a twin—”
“Are you going to say the ESP? Because Julie and I can’t do that at all.”
“Actually, I was going to say the slumber parties. I used to think if I had a boy twin, he’d invite his friends over and I could eavesdrop and find out who they had crushes on.”
“More like when Julie had slumber parties, I’d be banished from the house. One time that I was supposed to stay over at my friend’s, he got sick at the last minute and I couldn’t go. My mom just wigged out, like, ‘Don’t make Julie’s friends uncomfortable. Don’t play any tricks on them.’ Not that I was planning to—I was probably more uncomfortable than they were. But my mom made me sleep in her and my dad’s room, in a sleeping bag on the floor by their bed. All night long, every few hours, she’d sit straight up and s
ay, ‘Henry, are you still there?’ ”
“Where did you grow up?” Hannah asks.
“New Hampshire. Live free or die.”
“I grew up outside Philly. Well, duh—the same as Fig. I have no idea of the state motto, though.”
Without hesitating, Henry says, “ ‘Virtue, liberty, and independence.’ ”
“Really?”
“Massachusetts: ‘By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty.’ That’s a tricky one.”
“Are you making these up?”
“We had to memorize them in social studies,” Henry says. “That’s what some of us did while others were busy farting.”
Hannah hits his arm with the back of her hand. It’s light, more of a tap, but right away she has the highly unpleasant memory of her father’s warning never to touch the driver. “Sorry,” she says.
“For what?” Henry asks.
Still thinking of her father, Hannah wonders, are there situations, long-term situations, where conflict does not wait around every bend, where time does not unspool only in anticipation of your errors? It’s like imagining an enchanted mountain village in Switzerland. Aloud, she says, “I’m sorry for doubting you. What about Alaska—do you know that one?”
“ ‘North to the future.’ ”
“Missouri?”
“ ‘The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law.’ Some of these are translated from Latin.”