The Portable Veblen: Shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016

“Is it possible you wouldn’t like anybody I liked, just because?”

“I could see the possibilities. He’s really nice looking, and he’s not as alpha as he wants you to think.”

Veblen tried to explain her mild feeling of doom, how it was like there was some kind of terrible alchemy under way, how it was like she was rushing toward a disaster, and how it didn’t make sense because she was also excited and happy.

“Just be sure it’s not a growing awareness that Paul’s all wrong for you and will ruin your life,” Albertine said, and then asked: “Have you read Marriage: Dead or Alive?”

Veblen said no.

“It’s the magnum opus of Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig. He says marriage is a continuous inevitable confrontation that can be resolved only through death.”

“How great! Does it have to be that way?” pleaded Veblen, feeling worse than ever. “I’ve already had a continuous confrontation that can be resolved only through death, with my mother.”

“Exactly. All the more reason you’re projecting impossible romantic fantasies onto Paul.”

“Who the heck is Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig?” Veblen snarled.

As her friend told her more about the brilliant Jungian and the ponderous message of Marriage: Dead or Alive (“That a decent, responsible society not only allows, but actually encourages, young people in their complete ignorance to bind themselves permanently to the psychological problems which their vows entail, seems incomprehensible. The more life expectancy increases, the more grotesque this situation become …”), Veblen began to see how ill-equipped she was to hack out a life with someone. Anyone! She’d end up bossing him around like her mother or grinding up his stuff in a wood chipper like her grandmother. Not for her. No way!

She’d been with Paul for about four months, without much of a misunderstanding. Her unvoiced needs were in remission, and Paul was impressively constant. Sure, there had been minor disagreements, moments pinched by disappointment over how to treat squirrels or value material possessions, but overall, she felt that Paul fit her romantic ideal as a man and avatar in the world. She found new things to love about him all the time: the way he always, always dropped his wallet when he pulled it from his pocket; the way he made fires in her tiny fireplace, blowing on scraps of wood and pinecones he gathered on walks; the warm smell of his head; the way he was generous and he’d bring beer or wine or cookies to her house whenever he came; how he’d help her with any chore that needed doing; the way he read the paper every morning, completely absorbed; the way he pored through military histories, biographies of generals, and epics about the sea—hearty, manly tales of bravery and adventure. He agreed it was good to avoid grocery carts with wadded tissues in them. He loved tacos as much as she did. If she sneezed, he’d laugh and say she sneezed like a cat. He took her to classical music concerts and knew all about the composers and the works. When she said she couldn’t go out to a movie or a concert because she had to meet a deadline for the Diaspora Project, he didn’t make a word of complaint.

Look at how tiny their troubles were! One recent evening the winds came barreling through the Golden Gate, down the peninsula from the north, unusually frigid and fierce, tearing flowers from their stems, clearing dead wood from the treetops, and then it hailed. Ice pellets scarred fresh young leaves and made drifts under the rain gutters, and children ran outside to gather them, and screamed in surprise when they discovered how they froze their hands. It was a night for comfort food, and Veblen prepared turkey meatballs for dinner, well seasoned with rosemary and sage, under a tangy homemade ragù, along with artichoke risotto and a salad, but when she mentioned she’d used turkey he blanched, as if she’d revealed she’d made them with grasshoppers or grubs. During the meal, he appeared to devour what was on his plate so fast he had to go to the kitchen several times to get more.

“Mmm, delicious,” he kept saying. “Turkey balls rule.”

“Not bad,” Veblen said.

“But let’s not have them too often, though, or else they’ll lose their impact.”

“Okay,” said Veblen.

Later that evening, as she was cleaning up, she opened the trash container, and sitting on top, almost in rows as if arranged for viewing, were the turkey balls Paul pretended to have consumed. She started to laugh and asked why he didn’t say something. “Alternately, you could have hidden them better, and I never would have known.”

He said he was sorry, that he hadn’t wanted to spoil dinner.

“But you wanted me to find them later?”

“Mmm. I meant to come back and cover them. I spaced out. Sorry.”

The passive-aggressive lapse seemed duplicitously boyish and charming, but Albertine had been quick to tell her it was a missed opportunity for individuation.

After all, it was unrealistic to expect Paul to be her twin, to think they would react the same way in every situation, always be in the same mood, though there was no denying she craved that. She must withstand all differences, no matter how wrenching and painful. For instance, Paul didn’t like corn on the cob. Of all things! How could a person not like fresh, delicious corn on the cob? And how could she not care?

“I don’t like biting the cob and the kernels taste pasty to me,” Paul had told her.

“Pasty? Then you’ve had really bad corn. Good corn isn’t pasty.”

“Don’t get mad. It’s not like corn is your personal invention.”

“But it’s impossible. Everyone likes it.”

“People with dentures don’t like it.”

“What are you trying to say? Do you have dentures?”

“No! I’m just saying they are a sizable slice of the population.”

“Not anymore. These days most people get implants.”

“Not in rural areas.”

“Okay, fine, whatever! But eating corn together, we’ll never be able to do that?”

“I like other vegetables!” Paul practically yelled.

“Corn is more than a vegetable, it’s practically a national icon.”

“I’m unpatriotic now?”

“If you don’t like corn, it means I’ll probably stop making it. We won’t go on hunts for the best corn stands in summer, driving all over until we find them. You won’t be motivated to shuck it for me. The sound of me gnawing on it will annoy you, so I’ll stop having it. It’ll gradually become a thing of my past, phased out for good.” Veblen was almost ready to cry, and she had reason. Anything and everything her mother disliked had been phased out of her life for good.

“So it’s me or the corn?”

Then she snapped out of it, and they laughed about it, and she came to understand that this recognition of otherness would occur over and over until death they did part, that she couldn’t despair every time it occurred, and that anyway, Paul wasn’t a dictator like her mother … yet it was clear that your choice of mate would shape the rest of your life in ways you couldn’t begin to know. One by one, things he didn’t like would be jettisoned. First squirrels, then turkey meatballs, then corn, then—what next? Marriage could be a continuing exercise in disappearances.

NO TIME TO THINK about this now, for they had reached the long driveway of Veblen’s childhood home, the handle of the hammer, flanked by elephant-sized hummocks of blackberry vines, where Veblen used to pick berries by the gallon to make pies and cobblers and jam. She’d sell them at a table by the road, and help her mother make ends meet. In the fall she put on leather gloves to her elbows to hack the vines back off the driveway, uncovering snakes and lizards and voles. In the spring the vines would start to come back, the green canes growing noticeably by the day, rising straight like spindles before gravity caused them to arc. They grew on the surface the way roots grow underground, in all directions, overlapping, intertwined. The blackberries defined her life in those days—their encroaching threat, their abundant yield. All her old chores came to mind as they rolled up the drive to the familiar crunching of the tires on gravel.

“I never would’ve imagined you growing up somewhere like this,” Paul announced.

“Really?”

“Really.”

No time to think about this either, for Veblen saw her mother advancing out of the house in her best pantsuit, an aqua-colored Thai silk number beneath which new (as in twenty-five years old but saved in the original box for special occasions) Dr. Scholl’s white sandals flashed. She wore them with wool socks. Linus too came out coiffed and ironed, in a blue oxford shirt. They appeared normal, attractive, almost vigorous.

Yet how stiff and formal Veblen’s mother’s posture was, and how tall she stood! She had nearly six inches on her daughter.

Maybe everything would be fine!

“You must be Dr. Paul Vreeland,” her mother said, in a formal style of elocution heard mostly on stage. “Melanie Duffy.”

“Linus Duffy,” said Linus, joining in the hand-grasping ritual.

“We have prepared a nice light lunch to eat outside. Paul, if you would be so kind as to help Linus move the table into the sunshine, we’ll sit right away.”

The men took off behind the house, as the women went inside.

Veblen smiled. “Mom, you look pretty.”

“I’m absolutely miserable,” her mother said, with the men out of earshot. “My shoulders are buckling under the straps of this bra, and my neck is already ruined. I never wear a bra anymore. I despise my breasts. They’re boulders. The nerve of god to do this to women! I’m going to be flat on my back with ice as soon as you leave.”

“You don’t have to wear a bra for our benefit. Take it off. Be yourself.”

“No man wants to see a woman with her breasts hanging down to her navel.”

“Take the straps off your shoulders, then.”

“I’ll try that.”

“I love your suit.”

“Paul’s very good-looking,” her mother said. “But I haven’t sensed the chemistry yet.”

“We’ve been here for five minutes.”

“I hope he’s not in love with himself,” Melanie said. “Oh, good lord.”

Melanie was looking at the ring. They both started to laugh.

“Don’t hold it against me,” Veblen said.

“What was he thinking?” Melanie said. “It’s not you at all.”

“Yeah, I’m trying to get used to it.”

“It’s the ring of a kept woman. Come in the kitchen, I need your help.”

The oatmeal-colored tiles, the chicken-headed canisters, the wall-mounted hand-crank can opener over the sink, gears and magnet always mysteriously greasy, all were in place as they had been for years, and Veblen was proud of her mother’s artwork on the walls around the table—the abstracts in oil and pastels, of landforms and waterways and rocks, sure-handed and dreamy. She sniffed the scent of linseed oil, and from the cupboards a trace of molasses.

Her mother removed a casserole dish from the oven, her hot mitts clenched around it. “This is a delicious recipe I discovered recently using artichoke hearts and bread crusts and just a little Asiago cheese and butter,” her mother said. “Very special.”

“Nice.” Veblen cracked open a head of red leaf lettuce. Her favorite part was the center of baby leaves, and she removed it quickly before her mother could see and ate it.

“Before I forget, I have a strange lump on the back of my neck. Will you look at it, please? Linus doesn’t have an eye for this sort of thing.”

“How about later after we’re out of the kitchen?”

“Now!” her mother said.

Veblen placed the lettuce on the counter, and parted her mother’s hair with her wet hands. She saw a dime-sized swelling. “Yes, you have a little bump here, does it itch?”

“No. Is it red?”

“Pinkish.”

“Is it indurated?”

“What’s that?”

“Is it hard, with clearly defined margins?” asked her mother.

Veblen squinted at the bump. “You tell me.”

“Is the texture peau d’orange?”

“What’s that!” Veblen asked, exasperated.

“The texture of orange peel.”

Veblen squinted again. “I’d say it’s more like the skin of an apple, or maybe a pear. Maybe Paul can look at it,” she said, sighing.

“As long as he doesn’t talk down to me, that’s all I ask,” her mother said.

Veblen finished making the salad and brought it out like a victim. Linus had furnished Paul with a beer.

“Local brew, one of those designer jobs,” said Linus.

“I taste some lemon,” Paul said, nodding.

“We make our own blackberry wine on good years.”

“How is it?”

“Sweet, nice for a dessert wine. We end up with thirty bottles or so, give them to friends. I’ll send one home with you.”

“Great,” Paul said. “Love dessert wine, especially with some nice Gruyère.”

“I like it with pie.”

“Luncheon is served,” called Melanie, bringing out the casserole and placing it on a woven Samoan mat on the table. “Paul, I want you here. Veblen, at the head. Linus, would you open that special bottle of champagne?”

“Right,” said Linus, returning to the kitchen.

“No, out here!” Melanie yelled. “Watching the cork fly is festive.”

Linus shuffled back with the bottle, untwisting the wires around the cork.

“Don’t aim it at us!” Melanie cried.

“It’s not ready yet.”

“You’re aiming it at us!”

Linus turned toward the house.

“Not at the wall! We want to watch the cork fly! Turn around.”

Linus turned and began to wiggle the cork.

“Wait, you need a cloth.”

Veblen handed him a napkin to put under the neck of the bottle. Paul tapped his fork on the table. The cork popped, and shot all of about three feet.

“Bravo!” Melanie cried. “Now, let’s make a toast to your visit. May there be many more!”

Glasses clinked and Paul and Veblen smiled at each other across the table. If Paul were gracious about this day, she’d love him forever.

“Paul, we’re certainly impressed by your research project,” Melanie said. “I imagine you’re already heavily involved, preparing to dig in?”

“Absolutely,” Paul said. “I’m getting a lot of support from Hutmacher, basically anything I want. We’re going to get off to a good start.”

“There’s got to be a bucket load of red tape for those babies,” said Linus.

“More than I realized,” Paul said.

“Several of my medications are made by Hutmacher,” Melanie added.

“Hurrah!” Paul said gamely, raising his glass.

“And Veblen tells us you’ve been looking at houses?”

“Oh. That’s kind of a hobby. Looking. I was pretty much raised on a commune, by the way.”

“Are you planning to have a commune?”

“No, the opposite, I want to live behind a gate that no one can get through.”

“You’ve got to escape the way you were raised,” Linus said. “Boy, do I know it.”

“I just want you to know that Veblen is going to be living in comfortable surroundings,” Paul said.

Melanie said, “Well, Veblen, you’ll really have surpassed me. I don’t know if Veblen has mentioned it, but I’m very interested in medical matters, having a complicated history myself. You can never be too prepared when dealing with the health care system, wouldn’t you agree?”

“That’s right. Patients really need to advocate for themselves these days,” Paul said.

“That’s a refreshing attitude.”

“I know you’ll find it difficult to believe, but most doctors feel that way.”

Veblen’s mother dished out steaming mounds of her creation. “I’ve received atrociously condescending treatment over my recent migraine business,” she said. “It’s a wonder cads like these stay in practice.”

“What seems to be the nature of the condition?” Paul asked, and Veblen’s dread distributed itself through her limbs.

“Well, starting four years ago, just after my yearly flu shot, I experienced an array of symptoms ascribed to migraine equivalence or transient ischemia. Obviously, and as you know, many known foods and chemicals precipitate the condition.”

“Absolutely,” Paul said. “Sodium benzoate, cyclamates, chocolate, corn—”

“Peas, pork, lamb, citrus, onion, wheat, pears, the list goes on. Symptoms of mine have included imagery, hypothermia, aphasia, a feeling of rotating. Further, I’ve had facial paralysis, paralysis of the upper limbs, and narcolepsy. I don’t believe this fits in the typical migraine profile.”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it typical,” Paul said, hesitantly.

“Now, I have learned in time that a middle-aged woman with unusual symptoms can easily be labeled a crackpot, a psychosomatic case, a malingerer. Further, my general physician recently told me I’m ‘too observant.’ How can I agree with that? If not me, who, then?”

Veblen was breathing rapidly.

Paul looked at Veblen and said, “Yes, patients need to be proactive.”

“I can’t tell you how pleased I am to hear a doctor say that!”

“Now, the cause could be nonorganic—” Paul began.

Veblen winced.

“Nonorganic? Psychosomatic, is that what you’re saying?”

“No, not in that sense—”

“What do you mean? If a migraine falls outside their specialty, many physicians don’t realize that it is no longer considered psychosomatic.”

Veblen said, woodenly, “Mom, let’s eat.”

“I can’t speak for ‘many physicians,’” Paul said, “but I’m a neurologist and—” He stopped abruptly to sip his champagne, temples pulsating. His jaw was seizing like a tractor, and Veblen’s stomach ached. “You sound like you know more about it than I do,” he said, mildly.

Perfect answer!

“That’s very likely true, which is a sad story in itself. I have this central stationary scotoma when in hot or warm showers, and with exercise. I see a blur, followed by an irregular opaque gray area. Rest restores normal sight. But if I walk on a cold day, the central scotoma is lighted and nonmoving.”

“Interesting,” Paul said.

“Oh, another piece of the puzzle!” Melanie exclaimed, almost gaily. “Two years ago, I found an area on my chest that was dead—numb without feeling. Located right here—” She pointed to an area at the top of her left breast. “It was about five by five centimeters. That large! It remained dead until about six months ago, when suddenly … Remember, Linus, I realized that my dead spot had feeling again. Is that related?”

“Mmm. Could be,” Paul said.

With that, Melanie swiveled in her chair and reached for a few typed sheets of paper that had been stapled together, hidden behind a ceramic bowl full of miniature pinecones.

“This is a complete list of my medical history,” she announced.

Paul looked surprised. “My, arranged almost like a CV!” he said.

“You don’t need to ridicule me,” Melanie said, making Veblen jump up and retreat into the kitchen, breathing short and fast. She bit her forearm so hard she left teeth marks in it.