How to Be Both

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

One weekend, George’s father interrupts her as she watches some vintage French films gifted to her by H’s mother. He has taken to drinking since his wife’s death, and he laments that George will leave him too someday soon. Feeling for him, George tells him about the leak in her bedroom ceiling as though she had just noticed it. He rushes off to examine it, and soon the roof is repaired and evidence of the water damage erased. In her next session with Mrs. Rock, George admits to having lied in a past session and opens up about how much she dislikes some of the counselor’s conversational techniques. George silently regrets refusing to kiss her mother goodbye the last time she saw her at home, and she looks forward to the trip abroad they’ll be taking this summer to finish scattering her mother’s ashes in places that were meaningful to her. Mrs. Rock tells George about the importance of speaking truth to power, George corrects her grammar as she was wont to do prior to her mother’s death, and the session ends amicably.

Since moving to Denmark, H began by texting George facts about Francesco del Cossa. When she ran out of those, she started texting George the titles of classic songs translated into Latin. George puts the songs into a playlist and enjoys hearing them in everyday life, as if each one is a message from H. For the first time in her life, she feels like someone is trying to speak her language instead of expecting her to speak theirs. She finally replies to H with her own translated song titles and facts, and H tells her that it’s good to hear her voice. George travels two miles on a cycle trail that lays out the sequence of a whole human gene in colored paving slabs between two statues of DNA, recording a video of her ride. She sends the film to H with a promise that they’ll cycle the path together when H returns to the UK, and speculates about how long it would take them to cycle the whole of a human genome in the same manner. She also confesses to H in Latin that she returns H’s romantic feelings.

Henry has recently developed an interest in geography, and he tells George that every time he remembers their mother is dead, it feels like an earthquake. He reads his geography textbook at the breakfast table, morose, and when George teases him, he responds with the old rhyme “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Taking his words literally, George collects a handful of twigs and pebbles from outside and throws them on him. To her delight, Henry laughs both at the joke and at her tickling him, and is cheerful even as they clean up the debris.

George now skips school several times a week to spend the day at the National Gallery looking at a painting of Saint Vincent Ferrer by Francesco del Cossa. The first time George visited the gallery, the employees at the front desk were delighted to find the painting in their system and to give her directions to the correct room. Initially, George was unimpressed with the piece, but the more time she spends studying it, the more interesting elements she sees in it, and the better it seems in comparison to the other paintings from the same era around it. George plans to conduct a statistical study of the people who enter the gallery, counting them and timing how long they spend looking at Francesco del Cossa’s painting. Unbeknownst to George, Lisa Goliard will enter the gallery that afternoon and make a beeline for Francesco del Cossa’s painting. George will take this as proof that Lisa was indeed monitoring Carol, and that Lisa may have developed feelings for Carol despite her assignment. George, unrecognized and unnoticed, will follow Lisa out of the gallery and to Lisa’s home. She will take photos of Lisa’s house and watch her in honor of her mother.