Mission to America Read Online Free PDF Page B

house together with a husband.”
    We sat there in silence as Paul replaced his rocks in a tissue-lined shoe box whose lid was marked “Prehistory.” I should have known by his presence that his big sister had decided not to say hard things to me or repeat hard things she'd heard from others. But he needed to go now, because this wasn't over yet. I pointed at him. He knew. He took his box away. We'd given him plenty to chew on as it stood.
    â€œIs that all you wanted to say to me tonight? I think there might be more,” I said.
    â€œI wish it weren't so simple,” Sarah said. “I'm wrong for you. Just please don't always hate me.”
    â€œImpossible.”
    â€œThank you.”
    â€œThis is nonsense, Sarah. It's me who's not fit for you, and you know why. You're sparing me because you think I'm weak. You think I don't know what people say about me and you don't want to be the first to tell me.”
    A snorty chuckle, rich with nose juice. Sarah covered her mouth with her left hand.
    â€œListen to me,” I said. “Be serious. Sarah, I am a different kind of man. I am a man who can't . . . I mean who doesn't—”
    Wiping her eyes and trying to hold in laughter. Rubbing away the juice under her nose. Finally saying, “Don't cook things up—just
say
things. You know what I wanted to spare you from, you goofhead? Wait—just let me laugh and get this over with.” It took about a minute. “Done,” she said. “What I wanted to spare you from, you silly knothead, was this, this whole ridiculous performance. Mason LaVerle, the tortured secret dandy!”
    â€œSomeone told you. Recently,” I said. “Last week, when we talked about mammoths, you thought I was one. And it made sense to you. I use the library.”
    â€œAnd then I paid a visit to your proud father.”
    The midwife's thumb.
    â€œWho hated the plan all along and told me this: ‘I know you don't have any way to judge, but I can assure you, young lady, my only son was specifically crafted in Preexistence to deliver mighty carnal pleasure to the most tender depths of womankind.' He's a poet, your father.”
    â€œNot usually,” I said.
    â€œOn the subject of his son, he is.”
    â€œI'd like to leave on a mission. May I?”
    â€œDo.”
    â€œYou shouldn't wait for me.”
    â€œI won't. We're incompatible and I want a Saab. The All-in-One made this work out perfectly. Go declare it, Mason. Tell the world. ‘Our habit of wishing backward from what is to what might have been,'” she said, quoting the Seeress, “‘is the soft but persistent tapping that cracks the crystal.'”
    â€œI need to memorize that one.”
    â€œYou need to go.”
    We kissed goodbye on the front steps. I thought back to the Frolic, under the mosquito netting, when we'd breathed for each other. We'd managed the feat again. Maybe we can all do it, at certain times—any willing, good-hearted two of us. Maybe we're all fine matches for one another and someone should just throw us in a sack and shake it until we're jumbled up together and then pick us out in pairs and send us off. Maybe everything would come out the same. But things would have to come out somehow, surely, and when they did we'd have the choice we always have, and our only choice, really: approve or disapprove.
    Once I'd obtained my release, events moved swiftly. One half of one moon cycle later, on June 10th, after an outdoor party and a feast attended by every living person I knew, all of whom lined up to wish me well and many of whom stuffed money in my pockets or verses they'd copied out or little charms they'd made, I left my home with another AFA whom I had not chosen or been chosen by to show a people quick to disapprove (or so we'd heard, and so we both believed) that constant approval had a faction, too. We'd invite them to join it. Come along, we'd say. And if they asked us why