The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth Mckenzie Page B

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, asif 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 likeher mother . . . yet it was clear that your choice of mate would shape the rest of your life in