You Know Who You Are by Ben Dolnick

Author:Ben Dolnick [Dolnisk, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-74200-1
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

One night that spring, Charlotte (she was Charlotte by then, even in Jacob’s mind) came to the Vines’ for dinner. Jacob had seen her occasionally since the night with Emily, a nod and hello in the kitchen or on the porch—but never for dinner, and Jacob had begun to imagine, to hope, that his life and his father’s might travel on parallel tracks, the relationship of each unexamined on the periphery of the other’s vision. No luck.

It was only April, but for a week it had been as hot as summer, and Charlotte arrived in a white dress embroidered with blue flowers. “Is this what they call a sundress?” Arthur said, hugging her as if after a long separation (they had seen each other that afternoon), taking from her a bottle of wine.

Emily was over too; most Sundays she and Jacob ate at one or the other of their houses. She had come over earlier in the afternoon and, carrying conspicuous loads of notebooks, they’d retreated to Jacob’s bedroom. The familiar starving delight had given way to disaster—the condom burst. She must have nicked it with her fingernail taking it out of the package, or he must have forgotten to squeeze the air from the tip. Her period was starting in three days, and Jacob now understood what that meant. The two of them, Jacob in particular, came back downstairs too much in shock to mind having to eat with Arthur and Charlotte.

Dinner would be outside, although it was just hot enough that this wouldn’t be entirely a treat. The garden, left to its own devices over the past year, had become dense and tousled from all the rain they’d been getting. Mosquitoes had begun to circle endlessly, almost invisibly.

Cara slowly carried three full water glasses over the threshold onto the patio (“Careful, careful!”), and then, on a separate trip, the white plastic silverware rack that was the emblem of outdoor dining. The pieces clinked together like wind chimes. She was ten years old and, though she still wore plain T-shirts and shorts that had belonged to her brothers, she was just beginning to experiment with the powers that came with being a young woman. She had braces that were now green and white, for the softball team. She baby-talked with her girlfriends but could sound as haughty as a teenager when she talked to boys. She loved guests, loved occasions.

Arthur had mentioned the day before, haltingly, that Charlotte would be coming over for dinner, and he’d like for all of them to be home to spend some time with her. Immediately they’d all schemed to get away. Jacob had called Emily to plead especially for her to come, and if he hadn’t done that, then Emily wouldn’t have come over beforehand, and if it hadn’t been for that…

Arthur stood now in the middle of the kitchen, a glass salad bowl cradled against his side, and nodding toward the colander full of spaghetti, he said to Charlotte, “Grab a plate and get started, before the hogs get in here and eat it all.

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