The Path of Minor Planets: A Novel by Andrew Sean Greer Page B

friendly black cat—and that was all. Adam she would remember better; but this conversation in the shifting light of the barn—these words that he would recall so clearly—would be lost to Lydia.
    “She’s been to my house before, I think,” she said, not really sure who they were talking about, although she knew the name. A blond woman?
    He told her that his wife had been a student once, back when Lydia was a little girl, back even before he knew her. Now Denise worked for the government, doing experiments that had to do with the sky, publishing papers when she could. These were boring, adult details, and she wasn’t listening to them at all.
    “You got a kid?” A son.
    “How old is he?” she asked.
    “Just a year,” he told her, and she felt disappointed; she liked the weird toy quality of babies, but she’d hoped there would be another girl her age at this party, instead of the usual crowd of dull, stunned-looking five-year-olds. Somehow she imagined that a young man could have a child of twelve or thirteen for her to talk to.
    They talked for a while in the barn while the other party went on in the house, where there was all the laughing and nervous nonsense while everyone downed their first drink hastily, hoping it would catch and create its effect as soon as possible. Torches were being lit in the yard as the light grew dim, as clouds covered the sun and caused a chill wind to blow across the field, picking up the stray stalks and flowers Adam had broken, scattering them into the road. The two only talked a little while, and she thought he found her interesting, intelligent and fascinating in her vantage in the loft. She mentioned her dance class.
    “What do you do?” she carelessly asked him at one point, leaning on her knees, feeling very adult and clever.
    He merely laughed, saying, “You don’t care what I do, you’re eleven,” and it was very true and made her angry and embarrassed. That’s when he took the dog, said, “Don’t take any wooden nickels!” and walked off through the cool twilight toward the house.
    Lydia sat stunned by her own stupidity; to act so falsely just to impress him, without even thinking. Who was that who had spoken? Her, really? Sometimes, in conversation, it seemed as if she had no control over her own words, as if she were reaping the words that someone else had planted. It happened around friends when she was trying to be clever, and around adults when she didn’t know what they wanted her to say. Who was it talking? It made her nervous; everyone else seemed, like Dr. Lanham’s husband, so easy, so quick and confident with words. It was not that way with her. Perhaps she was what her father always secretly feared: not very bright.
    It would be the Swifts’ catastrophe if it were true; the curse would stay for generations. There was no worse insult, late at night around the fire, than to call a friend or colleague “stupid.” To the family, sitting shocked while sipping their chocolates or brandies (when they were all still together), it wounded the ear, sounded as cruel as “kike" or “nigger.” Someone had to correct the family member and whisper,
That’s terrible, they aren’t stupid, they’re just slow.
And why was it so terrible? Call someone dull or preening or ugly, and everybody laughed, nodded, agreed. But call them dumb, and you had claimed they lacked the only quality that mattered in the world: intelligence. In the Swift household, it showed everywhere: the family Scrabble contests, the math quizzes on their breakfast napkins, the long botanical nature walks (her mother’s doing) where every minute some new branch was bent for identification, the
New York Review of Books
stacked in the bathroom as the only reading material. This wasn’t pressure; to the Swifts, this was fun. You fought at dinner over nothings. You lay in the sun and bothered everybody else by reading your book of poetry aloud. You stood in bookstores and cooed like a child