The She Read Online Free PDF Page B

doesn't want to drive up here on Thanksgiving."
    I flopped into Emmett's reading chair and groaned. Opa had open-heart surgery the year our parents died, which had thrown his diabetes over the top, forcing him to sell his business and take it very easy, though he still enjoyed monthly trips to Philly to see us. I didn't like to think of Opa in pain, but I liked my family traditions un-tampered with. Opa had taken Aunt Mel, me, and Emmett to the Park Hyatt for Thanksgiving dinner for the past seven years. It was a great spread, with everything from turkey to Maine lobster on the buffet.
    "He can get a massage in the spa before we eat," I argued. "Besides, he doesn't drive. He gets driven. What the hell is the difference?"
    "I guess that's what happens when one lives in a society where some have more money than others. Those with the money get to make all of the decisions. The decision is ... drumroll ... we are going to East Hook. He's having dinner catered at the house."
    I shuddered, watching Emmett's back as he turned to face his monitor again. Aunt Mel was a philosophy professor who had "discipled" Emmett, as they loved to joke, and both were socialists. It sounds crazy to your average American, and I'd found out not to broadcast it. But it seemed there were a lot of people like that at universities, especially in the philosophy departments. What made our situation even funnier to average people was Opa. He had an endless, sprawling house and had owned an endless, sprawling business. We're talking major capitalist here. Emmett told me once that his wealth exceeded that of two recent presidents.
    Emmett disliked my grandfather's house even more than I did. The place was right on the bulkhead of the harbor and it had huge windows in every room. If you looked out any one of them, you would think you were on a boat.
    "I hate being inside that house," I told him, shaking my head in disgust. "Everywhere you look, there's water."
    "Yes. It could make you seasick. I'll pack us some Dramamine." He typed a few words and stuck up one finger: "Actually, the water doesn't make me as bilious as the collections. It's inconceivable to me why one man needs fifteen ship models, and all the while his housekeeper has to rely on that ridiculous excuse for a public school down there to educate her offspring." He spun around and grinned sympathetically, watching me glare and chomp. He pointed again. "Sign, signifier. If the relationship between the thing and its word is arbitrary, that makes language
everything.
"
    "I don't want to go. Maybe I'll go to Harley's. Thank God I never went out with her. That's one friendship I'd hate to ruin."
    "
Everything,
Evan. You don't get it." He spun back again, having some sort of subtle, educated glee-fest. "It means that if we didn't have language, we couldn't think, at least not in concepts. We wouldn't know anything."
    "So?" I turned the pear around and looked at the chomped part. I didn't know if I agreed with him. "I'm starved. And even if I didn't know this pear was called a
pear,
I would still eat it. Aunt Mel leave anything in the microwave?"
    "She said to order in Chinese."
    I groaned and reached to pick up the cordless beside him. "I'm going to turn into a Chinese person if I eat any more beef and broccoli."
    "Now, now." That was Emmett's shortened version of a lecture on how Americans ought to not complain about all their food choices. "If you're sick of Chinese, try Japanese. That sushi place is delivering now—"
    I shook my head at his brilliance. "Why would I want to eat raw fish tonight, when I've just been informed I'm going to the shore on Thursday, and I'll have to smell it wafting off the beach?"
    "Then get a pizza! It's food. Food is for the belly. Language is for the mind. And that's what I mean when I say everything is learned through language. If language is the source for every idea you have, then there
is
no other source."
    I hit speed dial ten, which was pizza. "Pepperoni?"
    "That's