Julian mostly stayed with Charlie those days, unless Evan swore on a Bible we’d hit Taco Bell, but Tony came along with us now and then, especially if it was anything to do with dance, or seeing a play, or anything with music. We had that much in common anyway, but we didn’t get to talk about it a lot, what with Sally and Evan both working so hard at being stepparents. Sally kept asking Tony about his school and his grades, and about his studying dance, and how he thought he’d like living in Dorset. I got the feeling early on that he felt more or less the same as I did, but I was trying not to look straight at him, because my damn skin, that Sally had told me the English air would be great for, started acting up as soon as we arrived. Tony answered all the questions, talking softly and not volunteering a thing. He’s really shy, even now—Julian’s the least shy person in the whole world, but Tony definitely makes up for him.
But he got me alone once, when we were wandering around the rose garden in Regent’s Park and Evan and Sally had gotten a little way ahead. He took my arm and pulled me over to a rosebush, so we’d seem to be talking about it, and he said, “Look here, Jennifer, I do wish you’d try to remember, this is every bit as hard and—and strange—for Julian and me as it is for you.” He didn’t have Julian’s cute croaky baritone, but his voice was so intense you could have struck a match on it. He said, “We never asked to have our dad and mum split up and her marry a Frenchman and go off to live with him and his kids in Bordeaux. And we didn’t exactly ask to have him run off to the States and come back with your mother and you, and just whisk everybody right out of London to some bloody farm in Dorset.” He was trying to keep cool, but he doesn’t do cool much better than I do, and I could feel his hand trembling on my arm. He asked, “Do you understand me, Jennifer?”
“Don’t call me Jennifer,” I said. “I’m Jenny. And yeah, I know it’s all really tough for you, and I’m really sorry, but at least you’re still in your own damn country. You didn’t have to leave everything that ever meant anything to you and start your whole life all over in someplace where you don’t belong and never wanted to be in the first place. And I want my cat,” and with that I just started crying. I told you I’m not a big crier, but when it does happen it’s always like that, without warning.
Tony did a nice thing then. He moved around me so Evan and Sally couldn’t see me, and he gave me his big blue, perfectly folded handkerchief to bawl into. I never cry long, but I make it up in volume. That handkerchief was absolutely soaked by the time he got it back.
He never said anything dumb like “Don’t cry.” He waited until I’d finished, and then he just said, “They’re waving, we’d better be walking on.” And that’s what we did, with him talking away to me about however many kinds of football they play in Great Britain as we came up with Sally and Evan. Sally stared hard at me for a moment, but I’d been having allergies, and my nose and eyes were red half the time anyway. So we all walked on through Regent’s Park, and Tony explained to me what a googly is in cricket. Cricket is the only game duller than baseball, because it lasts longer, but that was another nice thing.
Sally and Evan got married the day before we left for Dorset. It was a civil ceremony in a judge’s chambers, over in ten minutes, with just Charlie and a court clerk for the witnesses. Bang-bangbang, kiss the bride, sign here, best wishes, long and happy life, off to dinner, absolutely painless—and that fast I had a stepfather and two stepbrothers. I didn’t speak to anybody all day, but nobody noticed that, not even Sally.
And the next day, way too bright and early, we were packed into Evan’s little car—a gray Escort, matched the overcast perfectly— luggage in our laps stacked up so high Evan could hardly see out the back window, and the whole car sagging until I swear I felt my butt bounce on the road whenever we went over a bump, and we’re actually off for Dorset, wherever it is. I knew it was somewhere south, that’s all. And sort of west.
We were in the backseat, Tony, Julian, and me. Julian grabbed one window right off, and Tony let me have the other, treating me exactly like Julian, and letting me know it. I just lay back and tried to get comfortable under a suitcase and a box of kitchen stuff, and closed my eyes.
I actually dozed a little bit on the drive out of London, and maybe a bit more than that, because I only woke up when Julian started to sing “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” which I had no idea they sang in England. We were still in the suburbs, which look just about the same there as they do in New York— malls and McDonald’s and cineplexes and garages and TV antennas sticking up from so many red roofs your eyes go funny. I don’t know why they’re all red, even today.
Evan told Julian he might want to reconsider his repertoire if he had any plans for his eleventh birthday, so Julian sang “I Am the Walrus,” all of it, straight through, and then he was going to sing “Come Together,” but Tony got a headlock on him. Julian loves the Beatles the way he loves enchiladas and pizza. It still takes a headlock to stop him.
Sally wanted me to sing with her, some of the old stuff we used to do together, like “The Water Is Wide,” or “Plaisir d’amour,” or “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” but I wasn’t about to, not in front of these people, no chance. That hurt her feelings, and I felt a little bad about that, but I was also starting to feel sick, because of the car wallowing so much, and because we kept hitting one roundabout after another just going in circles and circles until I had to shut my eyes again and think about nothing. Sometimes I thought about Mister Cat, and sometimes about Jake and Marta, but thinking about nothing’s better for your stomach. I guess I slept some more.
What woke me this time was Evan singing by himself. It was a long, slow, really sad song about a fisherman and a mermaid, and his accent was funny, different from how he usually sounded. I listened to him, trying not to, and now and then Sally would come in, harmonizing in a couple of places where she knew the words, and my eyes would start to fill up, and you’re just going to have to imagine how much I hated that. Because it wasn’t the damn song that was making me cry—it was something in Evan’s voice that wasn’t sad at all, but peaceful, and it was me having to face the idea that he and my mother had been making this other world for themselves that didn’t include me for one minute. Oh, it did, in a way—I knew that, Sally’s my mother—but now there were places in it where only they went, places where I just wasn’t and Norris wasn’t, and there wasn’t any history but theirs together. And that’s what I hated, and that’s why I didn’t talk to anybody or sing a damn note on that whole absolutely endless drive to Dorset.
It’s a pretty drive, too, now that I know it. We took the freeway from London, and once we were out of the red roofs and roundabouts, the country started becoming country, with cows and a lot of sheep, and stuff growing in the fields, which I can mostly identify now, but I couldn’t then, so there’s no point pretending. The land turned rolling after a while, but in a nice rocking-chair sort of way, and the sun even came out, practically.
This first part of the trip was Hampshire—that I did know, but only because of Sally. She kept turning around in the front seat every other minute to tell me something like, “Jenny, look, we’re coming up on Winchester—you remember, ‘Winchester Cathedral…’” and she sang a lick from that dorky song. “It’s really old—it was the Saxons’ capital, and then King Alfred was crowned here, and William the Conqueror built the cathedral.” And a moment later it’d be, “Jenny, quick, over there, Evan says that’s a Roman camp!” She was like a damn tour guide—“Baby, look, look, on the horizon, that’s Salisbury, doesn’t it look like the Constable painting we saw?” And Tony and Julian would look at each other, and Evan would sort of murmur, “That’s Southampton, love, we’re a good bit south of Salisbury.” And Sally would just laugh and say, “Shows you what I know,” and I didn’t know who I was madder at—her for sounding like such a total idiot, Evan for being right and gentle, both, or the boys for having good manners and looking so embarrassed for my mother and me. Boy, Meena’s right— you start writing something down, and it all comes back.