A Taxonomy of Barnacles Read online

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Part One: Nature

  Prologue: Heredity

  1. Long Legs

  2. Well-Defined Lips

  3. Blue Eyes

  4. Excellent Peripheral Vision

  5. Insomnia

  6. Promiscuity

  7. Addictive Tendencies

  8. Hearing Better Than Some Wolves

  9. Killer Instinct

  10. Predisposition to Flight

  Part Two: Nurture

  11. Killer Backhand

  12. Musical Talent

  13. Calculated Hair

  14. Mean Streak

  15. Double Vision

  16. Persistence

  17. Fear of Mondays

  18. Telepathy

  19. Wanderlust

  20. Brittle Bones

  21. High IQ

  22. Endurance

  23. A Good Arm

  Copyright

  For Mom and Dad

  Acknowledgments

  I owe a huge debt to my editor, Elizabeth Beier, and my agent, Joy Harris, for their perfect advice, elegant examples, and life-changing belief in me.

  I am grateful to Alexia Paul for her endless patience, and to the following people for their time and encouragement: Dan Chiasson, Rashida Jones, Ben Wilcox, Isabel McDevitt, Daniela Lundbergh, Casey Thinnes, Celine Rattray, Gaella Gottwald, Walker Allen, Dana Wallach, Angela Wilcox, Sarah Bacon, Amy Larocca, Sophie di Sanctis, Alexia Landeau, Sam Lipsyte, Brad Watson, Lan Samantha Chang, Nicola Kraus, Galaxy Craze, Rosemary Mahoney, Claire Danes, and Lucinda Rosenfeld.

  I am thankful to my family for their love and inspiration: Mom, Dad, Susan, Elaine, Katie, Rand, Victoria, Artemis, Kira, Magnolia, Rocket, and Lucky.

  I could not have written this book without my darling Jim, who drew me a diagram of the outline in that restaurant in Porter Square and has helped me ever since.

  Whilst this planet has gone cycling on … from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have … evolved.

  —CHARLES DARWIN, On the Origin of Species

  Part One

  Nature

  PROLOGUE

  Heredity

  Heredity works in mysterious ways but in the case of the Barnacle sisters, it was downright weird. All six of them were perfectly normal girls and their parents were anything but. Parent and child were so unalike as to seem like two different species. The Barnacles were Darwin’s case in point, proof there is simply no way to predict how children will turn out.

  Miraculously, most of the parents’ worst traits had passed over the girls. Both parents had brown eyes. All the girls had blue. Barry was severely nearsighted. The girls had perfect vision. Bella’s eyebrows were bushy and brown and furrowed even when she was in a good mood. The girls’ were thin and arched in a way that made them look curious even when they were bored. Barry was plagued with insomnia. The girls enjoyed vivid dreams every night. Bella was tormented by depression. The girls were graceful and tall. There was simply no way, friends and neighbors whispered, to credit these parents with their girls’ traits. Surely the girls were adopted. Perhaps they had been misplaced. Such drastic divergence took several centuries.

  As though to invite still more gossip, the girls varied greatly among themselves. Benita, age ten, was a natural athlete; Beryl, thirteen, had a musical ear; Belinda, sixteen, could transform hand-me-downs into a stylish outfit; Beth, nineteen, was a science nerd; Bridget, twenty-five, boasted the best looks; and Bell, twenty-nine, though competent at many things, at the moment, could not remember a single one at which she was particularly good. Of all the girls, Bell varied most from her parents. Her IQ was higher, her laugh was louder, and, though neither parent boasted this trait, her legs were predisposed to flight. Never was a girl so tall and nimble, so bold and yet so very graceful, so skilled at hoisting herself from her window into the city night.

  “Someday,” her sister Bridget would warn her, “this window will be locked when you get back.”

  “Someday is not soon enough,” Bell would scoff as she wriggled down the fire escape.

  We’re not related, Bridget would decide. And nurture would spit in nature’s eye.

  She was adopted, Bell would resolve. And nature would get the last laugh.

  On one such night, Bell found herself in the throes of this age-old fistfight. Unable to sleep, Barry paced the halls. Plagued by anxiety, Bella stirred from bed to pour herself a drink. Unfortunately for Bell, Bella drank in the pantry, the window of which overlooked the fire escape. At the sight of her daughter, Bella raised her glass in a hearty toast. But Barry was far less forgiving. Hearing the creak of the metal grates, he rushed down the hall, rang for the elevator, and intercepted Bell on the sidewalk.

  For a time, nurture took the lead in the Barnacle house. Bell adapted quickly to these constraints, selecting a different window and befriending the night doorman. But soon enough, the incumbent rallied against the favorite. The Barnacles’ next-door neighbors jumped into the ring and the tussle turned into a fight.

  The Finches and the Barnacles lived on the same floor but the two families had diverged drastically. The Finches were not Jewish, did not have six children, did not appreciate being Darwin’s family of choice. The Finches’ apartment did not have an indoor jungle, did not need whole rooms to display trophies, nor collections of conchs. The Finches’ couches were not called “couches”; Mrs. Finch preferred the word “sofa.” The Finches were not excluded from membership to New York’s prestigious Colony Club; on the contrary, Mrs. Finch was its proud president. Mr. Finch was not known as Brooklyn’s Pantyhose Prince; he was known as Dr. Finch. No books could be found in the Finches’ kitchen. No forks could be found in their bedrooms. No one in the Finch family shared a room with his sister. And, of course, no girls marred the birth order of the Finches’ two handsome sons, who boasted, in addition to their gender and good looks, the shocking perk of being identical twins.

  Twins are, of course, heredity’s favorite lab rats, unwitting test tubes for variation, walking displays of environment’s force. But Billy and Blaine were less malleable than most. Even those who had known them since birth struggled to tell them apart. They often got headaches at the same time, ran fevers of the exact same degree, ordered the same salami-and-swiss sandwich for lunch, finished each other’s sentences, honed the same tennis strokes, felt the same sadness when they were apart, even fancied the same girl. By the time they were teenagers, the boys had differed only slightly, Billy falling head over heels for Bridget while Blaine nursed a crush on Bell.

  Barry Barnacle, of course, did his best to thwart love’s progress. The twins were two large thorns in his side, two jabs at his virility, two monuments to nature’s threat. From this moment on, he patrolled the halls with new vigilance. He scrutinized the boys as a scientist, watching for even the most minor distinctions, hopeful of stifling romance. Gradually, Barry’s laboratory moved into his apartment. Friendship blossomed between the girls and the twins, the boys delighted by the auspicious boy-girl ratio and the girls happy to experiment with such attractive specimens. Throughout, Barry was resolute: the twins could be teased apart. Divergence need not dally so. Variation could be forced. So, it was with great joy and relief that he disco
vered his first batch of evidence when, on a routine patrol of the halls, he found Billy clambering up the fire escape without his twin in tow. For the first time, Barry checked his urge and allowed the teenagers their mischief. As far as he was concerned, this was cause to rejoice. Nurture had thrown a new punch.

  1

  Long Legs

  Trot had just arrived at the Barnacles’ when he was tackled to the ground. A large mass moving at a breakneck speed clipped him at the knees. He lunged to avoid what he thought was a dog, but tripped and landed on his side. Winded, he remained still for a moment then stood up cautiously. The dog, Trot realized with some surprise, was not a dog but a man. The man was Bridget’s father Barry, rolling rapidly and, it seemed, dangerously into the living room.

  “Pardon me,” Barry said once he’d come to a full stop. He lay on his back, both arms outstretched, eyes scanning the ceiling as though for cracks. His odd choice of dress, red pants, yellow T-shirt, and a stained seersucker jacket contributed to Trot’s confused sense that this was all part of some beloved family joke onto which he would soon be let in.

  Trot stared curiously at Bridget’s father.

  Barry stared curiously at Trot.

  “Doctor’s orders,” Barry said blithely, extending his hand toward the ceiling.

  Assuming Barry wanted to shake his hand, Trot offered his in return.

  “No,” Barry scoffed. “Help me up.”

  Trot recoiled in embarrassment. Bridget glared at Trot impatiently and, before Trot had time to respond, extended a hand to her father and hoisted him to his feet.

  Though his hip had been replaced three years ago in May, Barry still preferred this mode of transportation to more traditional ones. Finding his mobility severely compromised after the surgery, he had taken to rolling around the house whenever he was in a rush. Rolling, Barry found, diminished impact to his hip, enabled him to make dramatic entrances, and when necessary, disoriented guests who were already ill at ease in the Barnacle apartment. Barry rolled into rooms as he did most things in his life, without apology or awareness of its idiosyncrasy, as though rolling were one of many ways to enter a room, as though one might choose to walk, roll, or dance into a room depending on one’s mood or the time of day.

  No doubt, this willingness to choose an alternate path accounted for Barry’s success. One did not get to be New York’s Pantyhose Prince without a penchant for innovation. Indeed, Barry Barnacle clung to his business more feverishly than his products did his customers’ thighs. (At times, he also seemed to cling to his customers’ thighs as feverishly as his products.) But, like all great businessmen, he knew when to hold and when to sell. The same force that projected him across the living room floor propelled his course in life. After changing his name from Baranski to Barnacle, Barry catapulted from Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach to Manhattan’s garment district, where he quickly made his fortune and proceeded, at a tumble, to the Upper East Side.

  Like many sons of immigrants, Barry worshipped at the altar of hard work. He lived in a world ordered only by the invincible logic of cause and effect. Of course to most, Barry’s logic seemed quite illogical, compelling him to use socks as gloves, to wear the first two shoes he came across in his closet—even if both belonged on the same foot, to leave the house in clothes that betrayed not only his bad eyesight but perhaps early signs of color blindness, to mix plaids and stripes with such abandon that one could easily mistake his attire for a parody of a certain country club type, to eat so rapidly and with such neglect of his napkin that his daughters refused to dine with him, to retain such a heavy Brooklyn accent that “daughter” came out as “doowater,” “mister” as “mistah,” and “salt” as “soowalt.” And, at the moment, to choose to roll into a room for a reason that made perfect sense to him while it seemed, to everyone in his vicinity, to have been designed for comic effect. All of these behaviors could be expected when Barry adhered to common sense. When he threw common sense out the window, Barry was indisputably eccentric.

  “Hello, Bridge,” Barry chirped once back on his feet with the jollity of a proper English gentleman.

  “Hello, Dad,” Bridget said. “You remember Trot.”

  Trot tried to seem as unfazed as Bridget by Barry’s odd entrance.

  “Of course,” Barry said without making eye contact. “How’s your painting going?”

  “Not very well,” Trot admitted and then, when he was sure Barry wasn’t listening, he added, “Because I don’t paint. I’m a writer.”

  Bridget turned to Trot and shrugged a quick apology.

  Trot did not return the shrug. He only stared at Barry, smiling politely. Barry’s black bushy eyebrows, Trot couldn’t help but notice, would benefit from being clipped.

  “Very good,” Barry barked with more incongruous formality. He surveyed the room, glanced quickly at Trot, then turned to walk out of the living room, beckoning Bridget to follow. Before disappearing, Barry swiveled on his heels and looked expectantly at Trot.

  Confused, Trot looked expectantly at Barry.

  “Bridget?” Barry’s eyebrows raised an inch.

  “Christopher,” she said, smiling apologetically.

  Trot braced himself; Bridget only addressed him by his real name to reprimand him or deliver bad news.

  She paused for a moment, as though he had failed to comply with a perfectly reasonable request. “Trot,” she whispered, now irritated, “would you mind taking off your shoes?”

  “Yes, of course. I mean, no. No, I wouldn’t,” Trot stammered. “I wouldn’t mind one bit.”

  Bridget smiled gratefully and paused again. Trot stared back, still confused. Finally, realizing Barry required physical proof that his orders had been followed, Trot knelt down, removed his shoes, and displayed them to Barry for inspection while he stood in his socks. Satisfied, Barry nodded with an utter lack of emotion and headed from the living room down the hall with Bridget trailing behind. For the next several moments, Trot stood perfectly still, trying to decide whether standing or sitting was the more appropriate choice. Opting to stand, he noted that the room, due to its size and acoustics, was more a great room than a living room. The nearest hall, Trot decided, was more of a corridor. The nearest door was not a door but a potential for escape.

  Early in March, Barry Barnacle had asked all six of his daughters to come home for Passover, which is to say he asked his ex-wife, Bella, to contact them and ominously summon them home. On receipt of this invitation, the girls sensed trouble. Barry was an atheist and never celebrated Passover. He only called all six girls together to inform them of an illness in the family, to dispense with cryptic information about the family’s finances, and, once, to showcase a new invention of which he was especially proud. The girls, though they spoke and e-mailed frequently, had scattered across the eastern seaboard like a handful of tossed coins. Still, each one heard and heeded the call and planned her return to the Manhattan apartment, eager to surprise her beloved sisters with the length her hair had grown, the new music she’d acquired, and the number of boys she had kissed since the sisters were together last. The Barnacle sisters, though they pretended to grumble, liked nothing better than to put on ugly pajamas, cram into one of their twin beds, lie together like egg rolls, and stay up until four in the morning discussing the mysteries of life.

  Bell, the eldest, was living in Brooklyn. She claimed she preferred to look at Manhattan than live in it. Lately, she’d been feeling strangely disoriented, as though she’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed, when, in point of fact, she had simply woken up in someone else’s bed. Though no one had actually spoken to Bell, everyone was hopeful she would attend. Her sisters had left numerous messages on her answering machine. One had even reached a human voice, a roommate who claimed, with understandable aggravation, that he only saw Bell on those rare occasions when she bothered to pay her share of the rent. Bridget lived in the West Village with Trot, her boyfriend of three years. Though Bridget routinely declined his proposals, her sisters
felt it was fair to say Bridget was on a ring watch. Beth was at college in Massachusetts, studying rigorously. Belinda was at boarding school in a town near Beth, rigorously studying boys. Beryl and Benita, the youngest girls, still found boys insufferably boring, a sentiment for which Barry was duly grateful since both girls still lived at home.

  Of all the girls, Bell was the most skeptical of her father. Since adolescence, she had filtered him through a sieve of sorts, evaluating his various notions with mixed curiosity and mistrust. Due to the degree to which she had been privy to her parents’ divorce (and, as a result, her parents’ worst qualities), she was far more irreverent than the others. Accordingly, she was wary of the general opinion that Barry was eccentric, believing instead that her father was borderline insane. She dismissed most of her father’s claims out of hand, combating them with wild teenage logic while he, in turn, dismissed everything she held dear. Bridget was simply too busy to be bothered with her father. The most conventional of the bunch, she was instinctively embarrassed by Barry and learned early on that an arm’s-length attitude kept him at a healthy distance. Beth, though she understood and, in some way, respected her father’s imagination, was too preoccupied by her own peculiar thoughts to bother with her father’s.

  Belinda, hostile even before adolescence, sometimes seemed to go out of her way to antagonize her father. Even as a toddler, she bristled at her father’s demands, rolling her eyes, shaking her head, and holding up her tiny palms defiantly. Beryl’s thinking was too abstract to register much from the literal world. When she did, she considered her father with the vague pity of a fortune-teller. Benita, the youngest and, by all accounts, the most promising of the six, enjoyed the majority of her father’s attention and aspirations. She was caught between two opposing forces; too impetuous to side with her sisters and way too eager for her father’s praise to defy him. As a result, she catered to her father in a way her sisters found quite nauseating. They routinely and fairly singled her out, accusing her of being a goody-goody and a sympathizer.