World and Town by Gish Jen Page A

she always thought them. An expression Carter himself taught her, although not for his eyebrows, of course, but for the real pup tents he and his brothers used to pitch in their backyard.
    “Bú duì! —wrong! You loved to say that. You never said, ‘Try that one more time’ or ‘You need to purse your lips’ or ‘Try touching your tongue to your palate.’ You just said, Bú duì! ”
    “Well,” she says, collecting herself a little—Carter did always make you have to collect yourself. “I suppose no one else ever told you you were wrong, did they?”
    “ Bú duì. ” His crow’s-feet are more pronounced than his frown lines, she’s happy to see; and his plaid shirt is missing its second button—so that’s why the two unbuttoned buttons. White thread ends sprout from the flannel like the hairs that could be sprouting from his ears but, she sees, are not. “Many people told me. You just wanted to tell me yourself. Though here’s what I’ve been meaning to ask you all these years—why you never said it to Reedie. He told me that to him you always said, Hĕn bàng! ”
    “Well, you know.” She gestures vaguely. “Reedie.”
    “Did you hear he got killed in a car accident last November?”
    “Reedie?” She freezes.
    “Driving drunk. Hit a beech tree. We tried to reach you, but no one knew where you were.”
    “Oh my god.”
    “I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you.”
    And indeed, where was Judy Tell-All to warn her? Shouldn’t Judy Tell-All have warned her?
    “No,” she says. “No.”
    “I’m sorry,” he says again. “And here you were right in Riverlake. As we would no doubt have heard had Reedie’s ashes been buried here and not elsewhere.”
    “No.”
    “His wife said it was his unequivocal choice to be buried with her family.” He looks off. “Dear Sheila. I heard about Joe, by the way.” He stops. “The Turners told me.”
    She waves a hand.
    “I’m so sorry. Two years ago?”
    She nods.
    “So young.”
    She nods again, or thinks she does. If there is any point in bringing up Lee, she can’t anyway.
    “Joe was a good man.” Carter hesitates in his Carter-like way—not looking away, as other people do, but fixing on her again instead. “It was a shock, as I hardly need tell you.”
    Reedie’s death, he must mean. Anyway, she cries and cries.
    Really she should ask him in, but Carter has already settled himself, leaning back against the porch railing as if against his desk. His elbows are bent, and his shoulders raised up, one hand sitting to either side of his hips. Much the way that a dog or cat sits, according to a little neural sub-routine, he arranges himself the way he always has; he’s ready to talk. And even as her chest heaves, she finds that her arms and legs have answered his on their own, crossing themselves and leaning sideways against the doorframe as if in his office doorway. It’s the force of habit—these patterns embedded, no doubt, in their very Purkinje cells. A disconcerting idea, in a way. And yet what a comfort it is right now—knowing the same dance, and knowing that they know it. It’s a comfort.
    “I used to tell him it wasn’t worth trying to catch up to me,” he begins. “That there was nothing to catch up to. But he had that idea, and it made him feel pressured.”
    She nods, numb.
    “He didn’t care about Anderson. I guess Anderson was too far out of his league.”
    “Anderson he worshipped.”
    “Precisely. But me.” He laughs a short laugh, pressing his long fingers into the railing, which flakes a bit; it needs paint. “I guess he thought anyone should be able to catch up to me.”
    “You really think it was your fault?”—her mouth talking without her.
    “No.”
    “You just wonder”—her shirt sleeve is rough—“if you contributed.”
    “Yes.” Carter’s voice still falls like an ax, but there is something new in his gaze—something lanternlike and reflective. “There are few subjects about which one dares