Part 26: The Brixtons

The eldest Brixton girl, Catherine, had majored in Psychology; Elizabeth, two years younger, to prove that she was not her sister, decided instead to major in Sociology instead. But she started to regret this decision when she was informed, at a party a few weeks into her freshman year, that Sociology was basically just Psychology-lite, psychology for people who weren’t smart enough to actually understand psychology. Since then, her main conversational aim had become explaining the differences between the two, with the slight implication that sociology was actually more difficult and more important.

She didn’t realize it, but this was basically her modus operandi. In high school, she had gone through a lengthy affair with “empathy” and “sympathy.” No, she wasn’t just being sympathetic when she listened to you talk about your problems; she was actually being empathetic because she was feeling what you were feeling.

“Oh, okay, thank you, that really helps,” was the usual response.

In middle school, it was compare and contrast. Fourth and fifth grade were a prolonged lecture on simile and metaphor. And, way back in second grade, in something of an origin story, mini-Lizzie had come home and proudly announced to the whole family that butterflies didn't come out of a cocoon but a chrysalis.

But Elizabeth’s family had heard the whole psychology versus sociology debate enough times that now they steered clear of both words when they talked to her, or anything that would remind her of them. This was difficult, since even a word as innocuous as “world” or “self” could lead down a sociological rabbit hole. Talking to her was a minefield.

Once, Victoria had something to the effect of, “Oh, that’s my cup,” and Elizabeth had gone off on a rant about how private property is a social construct of the bourgeoisie, which Victoria figured was related to “booze,” and thought her sister was bragging about how much she drank in college.

But having Hannah there would make the whole thing more tolerable. Even Mrs. Brixton recognized that, although she also kind of hated herself for it. She shouldn’t need a buffer to see her own daughter. But the presence of an outsider kept things nice and light. The real danger with bringing Hannah around was that each time made her a little bit less of an outsider, which meant soon she would cease to be effective. But you can’t always keep your ships in harbor.

They were meeting for lunch, which was good because it gave the meeting an end point. Not at the college dining hall, which was apparently fascist, but at a small, local restaurant run by a cooperative that grew all the vegetables in recycled trash barrels out back and cut each other’s hair. Elizabeth was evidently trying to ingratiate herself with this group, figuring that if she hung around the restaurant enough they’d eventually just invite her to join.

“Locally-sourced food just tastes better,” Elizabeth said by way of explanation, as the four of them walked across the gravelly parking lot to the small, shack-like building.

Mrs. Brixton could feel that her threshold was particularly low today. The restaurant had been hard to find, and her headache had never really gone away. “It also costs three times as much, I’m sure.”

“Not this place,” Elizabeth said, with the air of a tour guide. “This isn’t one of those fake collectivist sustainable places, it’s the real thing. They serve water in mason jars. They only charge enough to keep the restaurant running. But why do you have to be such a capitalist about everything, Mom?”

“Why’s Socrates got to be such an Ancient Greek?”

“Actually, mother, Socrates was charged with heresy for questioning the existence of the gods. He wasn’t exactly a perfect product of his time. You could have chosen a better example.”

“Isn’t he the one who fucked little boys?” Hannah asked.

“If you’re referring to the practice of pederasty,” Elizabeth said, pulling open the screen door to the restaurant and holding it for the others, “it was commonplace in the culture, and while I don’t personally approve of it, I also don’t think it’s right to pass judgment upon another culture’s practices.”

“Four, please,” said Mrs. Brixton to a young woman with a pixie cut standing near the door, anxious to get this lunch over with.

“Sorry about her,” Elizabeth said to the same young woman, who remained impassive throughout the whole thing. She didn't even blink. Victoria wondered if she was sleeping with her eyes open. “This isn’t one of those fascist places where you need to be told where to sit and led there like a sheep to slaughter. Here, you sit where you desire. What space speaks to us today?”

“Are you asking where we want to sit?” Victoria asked.

“In a sense.”

“Why don’t you just say that?”

“How about that corner table?” Mrs. Brixton suggested, indicating with her finger a wooden table that looked only charmingly-wabbly rather than actually-frustratingly wobbly.

“Oh, no, we can’t sit there,” Elizabeth said, as if this was self-evident. “And please don’t point. It’s considered rude in some cultures.”

“Oh-for-two,” Mrs. Brixton sighed. “Why don’t you just pick one?”

“If that’s what the group desires.” Elizabeth led the way to a round, glass table that looked like it had once been on someone’s patio, which was because it had. It was surrounded by four stools of different heights and shapes.

“You really think it’s alright to fuck kids just because you give it some fancy name?” Hannah asked as they sat down.

Mrs. Brixton picked up the menu and began to examine it intently.

“Different cultures have different beliefs and practices. Just because we don’t understand them doesn’t mean we have the right to judge them. Maybe the ancient Greeks believed that the sexual act was a way to transfer wisdom from the old to the young.”

“Yeah, maybe they believed it, but that doesn’t make it true.” Hannah was angry. She’s really talking to James right now, Victoria remembered suddenly.

“What is truth, though?” Elizabeth figured that would settle the matter. It usually did in a sociology class.

“Love is truth,” Victoria said, trying to defuse the situation before Hannah accused her sister of blocking her.

“Love is truth,” Hannah agreed. It was a line from an OBM song, one that Xander Cross had tattooed on him, and that both girls wanted to have as a tattoo as well (ideally in his handwriting) - though they both knew only one of them could get it.

“But what is love?” Elizabeth offered. That one seemed to do the trick. If it didn’t work the first time, try again.

“So what are we going to get?” said Mrs. Brixton after a moment’s pause.

“Here we are, trying to talk about love and truth, and Mom comes in and asks what we’re going to eat,” Elizabeth said, sounding amused. “No, it’s great. I love it. That’s what Moms are for, making sure everybody eats. Like we wouldn’t eat if you weren’t here to remind us. It’s great. I love it.”

“I’m not hungry,” Hannah declared, folding her arms. “I miss Benji.”

“Hannah.” Victoria looked at her intently, seriously, trying to have a conversation with her using just her eyes, a skill they had practiced at school and during countless family meals like this one.

But Hannah wasn’t interested. She declined the invitation to the private chat. “What? I’m not.”

“We must follow our instincts,” Elizabeth advised. “They are often wiser than received wisdom. Meals are a social convention, of course. I personally am fasting this weekend as part of a spiritual cleanse, so I won’t be ordering anything, either.”

“Well, I’m not eating if Hannah’s not,” Victoria insisted.

“Solidarity. I respect that, little sister.”

“So we came here for lunch and no one’s going to eat?” Mrs. Brixton burst out.

“Well, I can’t,’ Elizabeth said. “But you should, if your body is telling you it’s hungry. Plus it is important to support this local business with a purchase of some sort, since we do sadly still live in a pre-revolutionary world.”

“Well, I’m not going to be the only one sitting here eating. Victoria, Hannah, stop being ridiculous and get something to eat.”

“How come Elizabeth gets to be ridiculous?” Victoria protested.

“She doesn’t. She’s going to eat, too. Aren’t you, Elizabeth?” Mrs. Brixton had a sudden flash of memory: when these girls were nine and four instead of nineteen and fourteen, and she was first trying to rope Elizabeth into that adult role of “playing along” for the sake of the little kid. Maybe that’s all being an adult is, she thought.

“Well . . . technically my fast only prohibits prepared foods,” Elizabeth said. Look at her, coming through. Under all that pretension there was evidently still some kernel of a real person. “So I suppose I could order a sweet potato or a zucchini, perhaps.”

“Is that on the menu?” Hannah scoffed. She still wasn’t appeased, that was clear. But Victoria would get her back, the way her mother had done with Elizabeth. She and her mom were on a team here. They both wanted to make things good again. And Hannah was her responsibility, especially since it was kind of her fault Hannah was feeling down, wasn’t it? She had fought with James on Victoria's behalf, hadn't she?

“That’s not a menu, it’s just a non-exhaustive list of suggested food combinations,” Elizabeth explained. "All of which are entirely chemical-free, so no worries on that front."

"Everything is chemicals," Mrs. Brixton muttered under her breath.

“Come on, let’s pick a food combination,” Victoria tried, reaching for the menu. “Let’s pick the grossest thing we can find and see if we can stomach it.” Clearly this wasn’t going to be a regular-good lunch, but maybe they could make it a memorable one. She had to find Hannah could put in her profile. If she took something from today and put it in her profile, then it wouldn’t be a total waste. “What about this one?” she pointed at something that seemed to be in another language.

“La loup de jour,” Hannah read. “That’s French.”

“Isn’t French kind of like Latin?” Victoria knew the answer, but Hannah would feel better if she got to explain something to her.

“Yeah, it’s a type of Latin. French Latin. There’s all different types of Latins.”

“What type does Xander use?”

“Regular Latin. There’s regular Latin and then there’s all the special types of Latin, too.”

“It’s a joke in French,” Elizabeth cut in. “I could explain it, but you wouldn’t appreciate it the same as if you just grasped it.”

“Loup means wolf,” Mrs. Brixton said. “It’s a play on soup du jour.”

“Hilarious,” Hannah said dryly, and exchanged eyerolls with Victoria. She was back; Victoria had won.

“See? I told you,” Elizabeth said. “Humor can’t be explained, mother.”

“Or it’s just not funny ,” Mrs. Brixton responded. “What’s a wolf got to do with food, anyway? Seems to me like they were just searching for a rhyme for ‘soup.; And you can knock it off with this pretentious ‘mother’ crap. We’re not British. Despite your names."

“Ohmygod, is that where Victoria comes from?” Hannah said, excited now. “That’s awesome. Queen Victoria was a fucking badass. Ohmygod, and Elizabeth? Even better. Elizabeth cut off people’s heads,” she explained to Victoria.

“So did Victoria, in her own way,” Mrs. Brixton added. The conversation was flowing now; all was well.

“Are you not familiar with the expression to wolf down one’s food?” Elizabeth cut in.

She had interrupted the flow. “Elizabeth, we’re past that.”

“Of course we are. Whenever I want to talk about something, it’s pretentious or not the right environment. So what is the right environment to bring up uncomfortable truths about capitalism and the patriarchy, let me ask you that. Oh, the patriarchy didn’t give us one? Shocking!”

Victoria made a mental note to ask Hannah later what “patriarchy” meant. She couldn’t ask now, because it would mean a boring lecture from her sister. “Capitalism” didn’t interest her, because she was pretty sure she had heard the word at school.

“So does someone come take our orders here, or is that tantamount to slavery?”

“No, they’ll be by when it fits into the natural rhythm,” Elizabeth reassured her anxious mother, that matron sainte of timetables and lists.

Victoria’s mind started to wander. Now that Hannah was herself again, she could leave her alone to talk about smart-people things with her mom and sister. Hannah was like a computer that just needed to be rebooted once in a while. Now it really seemed possible that she might put an inside joke from today (loup de jour?) in her profile, and everyone would know that she had spent her Saturday, her only Saturday, coming to visit Victoria’s boring sister at college. 

Suddenly, Victoria thought of her own profile and felt a frantic, desperate need to change it. She hadn’t even put anything about the OBM concert in there yet. What did it say right now? She couldn’t remember, and it felt like she had forgotten her own name or how old she was. Like when they go around on the first day of school and ask you to share something interesting about yourself. How could she have been so careless? How could she have forgotten something so important?

Did this have something to do with why James hated her?

As soon as she got home, she would fix it. She would get rid of whatever was in there now, and she would put something about the concert, and maybe something from today, too (could she use that French thing if Hannah didn’t? would Hannah think it was funny?), and some new OBM lyrics, and maybe something about James and how he was just jealous because she was Hannah’s real best friend, or how he was in denial about liking her, or how she didn’t deserve any of this, or how Hannah would be so much better off without him - or was that going too far? What was Hannah thinking now? Did feeling better mean that she wasn’t mad at James anymore? Was she just going to forgive him next time they talked? Probably. She had done it before.

Victoria looked at her best friend, who was currently drawing a crude penis-shape in the condensation on her mason jar of water and play-arguing with Elizabeth, and wondered how she did it all.