Life Among Giants by Bill Roorbach Page A

one way or the other about the game, but he cared, all right. Th e game was the reason he’d come home. He and Mom were cozy through the long Friday night of cocktails and promises. After we’d eaten, the old man showed us how the recording machine worked, a complicated threading of tape around rollers and heads, chunky steel microphone on a stand. We took turns recording our voices—weird to hear your own—and then we sang a Beatles song, “Yesterday,” which Dad had always loved abjectly, playing it over and over again, none of us too tuneful. Mom kissed his neck, kissed each of his fingers: martinis.
    Dad pushed the buttons on the Wollensak. “Got it for a steal,” he said.

4
    Kate’s college at Yale was a medieval cloister, except that the girls emerging from the portico wore blue jeans and peace signs. Th ere wasn’t a bra in the bunch, not that I was looking. My absurd entourage and I had picked up Emily at the enormous carriage house her family occupied on the grounds of the manicured and extensive estate her parents managed, the home of the ambassador to France and former Secretary of State Arnold Walton Wadsworth.
    Some date: Emily erect in the sumptuous back seat of the High Side Bentley between my chattering Mom and mysterious Sylphide. Linsey and I were up front with the taciturn chauffeur, poor guy with a bandage across the bridge of his nose where my dad had popped him. Visions of Sylphide’s little breasts in Georges’ louche piano hands leapt into my mind as they had all morning. And here she was, dressed like anyone else going to a football game, deflecting my Mom’s conversational gambits, asking Emily about her teachers, about her plans, about her stretches, her shoes. Emily only murmured in reply. Linsey plucked at his nose, wiped his hands on me. Th e chauffeur hummed, clearly unhappy to have me in his car.
    â€œI’ll go up,” I said, but my door had been remotely locked, no way to escape.
    â€œNo, no,” Mom said. “You stay here and entertain the dance committee!”
    Dr. Chun—that was the chauffeur’s name—was already opening her door.
    Emily helped Mom get the trailing edge of her big, borrowed, thoroughly absurd fur coat out the door behind her. I looked back and shrugged. Sylphide didn’t seem to mind my gang, but only shrugged back, disconcertingly direct eye contact. Just when I would have turned away, she made binoculars with her long hands, put them to her eyes, wriggled a forefinger as if to focus.
    Whoa.
    Mom had only been gone a minute when she reappeared in the college portico with Kate. Oh, sister! She’d always been tall and blond, but a kind of luster had come over her. She was no longer lanky and pale, no longer too thin, twenty pounds heavier at least than when I’d last seen her back in August, all filled out and muscular, shining with health. She’d been playing tennis for three and four hours daily—her legs were as tanned as in high summer, her face bright with sun. She scanned the yard happily, pleased hostess, looking for the Malibu wagon and Dad, no doubt, but the Blue ’Bu wasn’t there. You saw her scan past the Bentley two or three times—some rich kid’s parents—and then you saw her actually register us. Instantly she turned on Mom, stomped her foot, threw her hands in the air, shouted something indistinct.
    â€œUh-oh,” Emily said.
    â€œKape!” said Linsey, growing upset.
    Th e chauffeur muttered something about the time, put his arm out to keep Linsey in his seat. I tried the door handle again: my first electric locks, like I was in a trap.
    Kate’s dormmates pooled around her, carefully excluding Mom, who made placating gestures, reached to touch Kate’s shoulder. An Asian girl—Ling-Ling Po?—actually pushed Mom away. “Fucking assholes !” Kate cried, slapping Mom’s hand. Th en she repeated it, poor Mom,