Free Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl Page A

matter—nosing around his study, because the most devastating aspect of the Lepidoptera was not their color, or the unexpected furriness of the Polyphemus Moth antennae, not even the gloomy feeling you felt whenever you stood in front of something that had once zigzagged madly through the air, now still, wings uncouthly spread, body pinned to a piece of paper in a glass case. It was the presence of my mother within them. As Dad said once, they allowed you to see her face in greater close-up than any photographic likeness (Visual Aid 4.0). I'd always felt too that they held a strange adhesive power, so when a person looked at them, it was difficult to yank his/her gaze away.
    "So how do you like it?" he asked cheerfully, lifting out one of the cases, frowning as he inspected the corners.
    "It's perfect," I said.
    "Isn't it? The perfect surface on which to draft an admissions essay to make any Harvard graybeard shiver in his dress slacks." "But how much did it cost for you to buy it again—and then the shipping!" He glanced at me. "Hasn't anyone told you it's blasphemous to ask the price of a gift?"
    "How much? In total."
    He stared at me. "Six hundred dollars," he said with a resigned sigh, and then, returning the case to the box, squeezed my shoulder and moved past me, back up the stairs, shouting at Brass and Woodwinds to speed up the tempo of their last movement.
    He was lying. I knew this, not only because his eyes had flicked to the side when he'd said "six hundred" and Fritz Rudolph Scheizer, MD, had written in The Conduct of Rational Creatures (1998) that the cliché of a person's eyes flicking to the side when he or she lies is "utterly true," but also because, while surveying the underside of the desk, I'd spotted the tiny red price tag still knotted around the leg in the far corner ($17,000).
    I hurried back upstairs, into the foyer where Dad was looking through another box, BOOKS LIBRARY. I felt bewildered—a little upset, too. Dad and I had long put into effect the Sojourner Agreement, the understanding we'd always give each other The Truth "even if she was a beast, frightening and foul smelling." Over the years, there'd been countless occasions when the average dad would've cooked up an elaborate story, just to preserve the Parental Ruse, that they were sexless and morally flawless as Cookie Monsters—like the time Dad disappeared for twenty-four hours and when home, sported the tired yet satisfied look of a ranch hand who'd successfully horse whispered a touchy Palomino. If I asked for The Truth (and sometimes I chose not to ask), he never let me down —not even when it let me hold his character up to the light and I could see him for what he sometimes was: harsh, scratchy, a few unexpected holes.
    I had to confront him. Otherwise, the lie could wear me away (see "Acid Rain on Gargoyles/' Conditions, Eliot, 1999, p. 513). I ran upstairs, removed the price tag and kept it in my pocket for the rest of the day, waiting for the perfect checkmate moment to fling it at him.
    But then, just before we left for dinner at Outback Steakhouse, he was in my room examining the desk, and he looked so absurdly cheerful and proud of himself ("I'm good" he said, animatedly rubbing his hands together like Dick Van Dyke. "Fit for St. Peter, hmm, sweet?"). I couldn't help but feel to call him out on this well-intentioned extravagance, to embarrass him, was sort of unnecessary and cruel —not unlike informing Blanche Dubois that her arms looked flabby, her hair dry and that she was dancing the polka dangerously close to the lamplight.
    It was better not to say anything.
     
    V
    The Woman in White
     
    We were in the Frozen section of Fat Kat Foods when I first saw Hannah Schneider, two days after our arrival in Stockton. I was standing by our shopping cart, waiting for Dad to choose which flavor of ice cream he preferred.
    "America's greatest revelation was not the atom bomb, not Fundamentalism, not fat farms, not Elvis, not even