tell him. “They’re in the middle of a huge project in our backyard, and they’d love to join in, but you know how it is, and they told me to bring you
this,
” I say, lifting up a bottle of vermouth I grabbed from the kitchen cupboard.
Mr. Foote examines the dusty green bottle a moment, and it suddenly occurs to me it’s not really nice enough to be a gift. The label’s old and wrinkly, and come to think of it, the bottle’s only half full. I think Mom used some for cooking chicken.
“Well, thanks much,” Mr. Foote says, and gives me a solid pat on the back. “You’re welcome around here anytime.”
“Oh, good, thank you.”
“Now get yourself out back and onto one of those teams!” he commands.
“Right!” I make it my business to look as enterprising as possible, a team player, someone you can count on, someone who never lets you down, and I weave my way out through my neighbors, a whole roomful of them, even ones from around the corners and other streets nearby, all of us citizens of this moment, unanimous in our desire to lift our glasses to the Footes’ new room.
We Know Where We Are, But Not Why
During the . . . summer season, 27 employees and 35 overnight guests at Grand Canyon, Arizona, acquired febrile illnesses compatible with relapsing fever. Sixteen cases were confirmed by finding Borrelia spirochetes in peripheral blood smears or inoculated Swiss mice. Acquisition of illness was significantly associated with persons sleeping in rustic log cabins and acquiring bites of “unknown” insects. From rodent nesting materials found in the walls and attics of cabins where cases had occurred, infective
Ornithodoros hermsi
ticks were recovered. This outbreak, the largest yet identified in North America, establishes the North Rim as an endemic source of tick-borne relapsing fever.
—American Journal of Epidemiology
What are you doing this summer?” I asked my friend Raoul, one spring day at lunch as we paced the perimeter of the schoolyard.
“Committing suicide,” he said.
“Oh,” I said. “What else?”
“Probably helping my mother around the house,” he added.
“What a drag,” I said.
“She speaks in monosyllables and has no idea what’s going on in the world, but she’s otherwise pretty decent.”
We stopped and lit cigarettes, at the farthest point from the gym. “I’m like my mother’s guinea pig,” I told him.
“Why?”
“I’ve told you already about our summer plans. It’s like she’s set up an experiment and wants to see what it does to me.”
We were putting our hands through the chain-link fence, sticking our lips out through the openings, so that officially speaking we weren’t smoking in the schoolyard.
Raoul said, “Did you know, in Spanish, we call them little rabbits of India?”
“What?”
“Guinea pigs.
Conejillos de Indias.
”
“That means guinea pigs?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“There’s no direct translation of
guinea
or
pig
?”
“Nope.”
“Wow,” I said. “Instead of stupid, experimental drones—” I looked back. I could see Mr. Poplick, the English teacher, who had mentioned the word
orgasm
almost every day since the beginning of the year, coming across the grass toward us.
“Yes,” he said. “We imbue them with a certain exoticism.”
We flicked our butts into the street outside the fence, dug our hands into our pockets, and turned to face Poplick, who would snidely cut us down for favoring tobacco over marijuana. How could something be a pig in one place and an exotic little bunny in another? It made me wonder what I could be, if I ever had the chance to switch worlds.
It was the year I turned sixteen, the year my mother, who had been for some time housebound in the smallest world she could fashion for herself, suddenly accomplished an amazing feat. She decided to be cheerful—all the time, no matter what. “I use self-discipline to pick you up from school on time and make dinner every
this,
” I say, lifting up a bottle of vermouth I grabbed from the kitchen cupboard.
Mr. Foote examines the dusty green bottle a moment, and it suddenly occurs to me it’s not really nice enough to be a gift. The label’s old and wrinkly, and come to think of it, the bottle’s only half full. I think Mom used some for cooking chicken.
“Well, thanks much,” Mr. Foote says, and gives me a solid pat on the back. “You’re welcome around here anytime.”
“Oh, good, thank you.”
“Now get yourself out back and onto one of those teams!” he commands.
“Right!” I make it my business to look as enterprising as possible, a team player, someone you can count on, someone who never lets you down, and I weave my way out through my neighbors, a whole roomful of them, even ones from around the corners and other streets nearby, all of us citizens of this moment, unanimous in our desire to lift our glasses to the Footes’ new room.
We Know Where We Are, But Not Why
During the . . . summer season, 27 employees and 35 overnight guests at Grand Canyon, Arizona, acquired febrile illnesses compatible with relapsing fever. Sixteen cases were confirmed by finding Borrelia spirochetes in peripheral blood smears or inoculated Swiss mice. Acquisition of illness was significantly associated with persons sleeping in rustic log cabins and acquiring bites of “unknown” insects. From rodent nesting materials found in the walls and attics of cabins where cases had occurred, infective
Ornithodoros hermsi
ticks were recovered. This outbreak, the largest yet identified in North America, establishes the North Rim as an endemic source of tick-borne relapsing fever.
—American Journal of Epidemiology
What are you doing this summer?” I asked my friend Raoul, one spring day at lunch as we paced the perimeter of the schoolyard.
“Committing suicide,” he said.
“Oh,” I said. “What else?”
“Probably helping my mother around the house,” he added.
“What a drag,” I said.
“She speaks in monosyllables and has no idea what’s going on in the world, but she’s otherwise pretty decent.”
We stopped and lit cigarettes, at the farthest point from the gym. “I’m like my mother’s guinea pig,” I told him.
“Why?”
“I’ve told you already about our summer plans. It’s like she’s set up an experiment and wants to see what it does to me.”
We were putting our hands through the chain-link fence, sticking our lips out through the openings, so that officially speaking we weren’t smoking in the schoolyard.
Raoul said, “Did you know, in Spanish, we call them little rabbits of India?”
“What?”
“Guinea pigs.
Conejillos de Indias.
”
“That means guinea pigs?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“There’s no direct translation of
guinea
or
pig
?”
“Nope.”
“Wow,” I said. “Instead of stupid, experimental drones—” I looked back. I could see Mr. Poplick, the English teacher, who had mentioned the word
orgasm
almost every day since the beginning of the year, coming across the grass toward us.
“Yes,” he said. “We imbue them with a certain exoticism.”
We flicked our butts into the street outside the fence, dug our hands into our pockets, and turned to face Poplick, who would snidely cut us down for favoring tobacco over marijuana. How could something be a pig in one place and an exotic little bunny in another? It made me wonder what I could be, if I ever had the chance to switch worlds.
It was the year I turned sixteen, the year my mother, who had been for some time housebound in the smallest world she could fashion for herself, suddenly accomplished an amazing feat. She decided to be cheerful—all the time, no matter what. “I use self-discipline to pick you up from school on time and make dinner every
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