Mind the Gap, Dash and Lily

by Rachel Cohn

  Instead of sitting in the sitting room, she took me to the kitchen, where a late breakfast awaited us on an old wood table. As we sipped tea (hers “flavored” with a “dab” of whisky) and ate pastries, we caught up on the past nineteen years of my life without mentioning my parents in anything other than passing. When I felt I was talking too much about myself, I’d steer the conversation her way; she’d dole out a fact or two (she worked in the arts; she wasn’t seeing anyone in particular at the moment but had a few suitors), and then she’d steer the conversation back to me. I told her what I really thought about Oxford, and she didn’t scold me for ingratitude or tell me to get over myself. Instead she said, “Well, Oxford can only give you one part of your education; we’ll have to work on the rest.”

  We stayed talking in her kitchen for hours. She told me she liked Lily, from the sound of her. And she told me she didn’t like my neighbor John, from the sound of him. Then, lastly, when we came to a natural pause, she told me, “I have to say, I like you very much, Dash. I’m so glad our paths have unfolded in this way.”

  I felt glad; I felt grateful.

  I returned to Oxford with an open invitation to London, and as the weeks passed and the walls of my dorm room seemed to close in on me more and more, I took my grandmother up on it frequently. She introduced me to her friends and took me to art exhibits, concerts at the Royal Albert, and theater on the West End. She told me to call her Gem, like her friends did; since I’d never really called her Grandmum out loud, it was an easy enough transition to make. When we met her friends or acquaintances, she always introduced me as her grandson, which didn’t particularly take my notice until Carl, one of her painter friends, said, “You have to understand how much that means; it’s the closest to acknowledging her age that I’ve ever seen Gem go.”

  Gem and I never talked about my father, and I certainly never told him that I was seeing so much of his mother. When my own mother came to visit over Thanksgiving (since she had a break and I didn’t), I debated whether or not to take her to London. But Gem insisted (“I always liked your mother, even if I questioned her taste in men,” she quipped), and miraculously, Gem won over my mother as well. Before Thanksgiving, when Gem had told me, “You simply must stay for Christmas,” I had thought, Yes, I simply must. Now my mother, who often went away for the holidays herself, understood my reasoning.

  Lily didn’t take it as well. I called her, because I knew it would be something that required conversation, not the noël cowardice of a text or email. She didn’t try to hide her disappointment, and I appreciated that—we were still being entirely honest with each other, and all the long-distance trust was built on that. I offered to fly her over, but she said she needed to be with her family, and I couldn’t argue with that.

  I missed her so much. The fact that I was staying for Christmas didn’t contradict that. I told her this, and told her I just needed to get my footing here. Oxford was battering my soul to a pulp, and London was the only balm I had for that. New York would have brought me Lily, but it also would have brought me a hundred other obligations. She said she understood.

  A few days later, a homemade Advent calendar arrived in the mail. Her way of being here, and of helping me through.

  Hallmate John and his Oxford cohort—led by Azra, Queen of Snide; Olivier, King of Glide—thought the Advent calendar was “cute” … an adjective I sensed they usually reserved for animals that fit into a teacup. This cohort partied far harder than it studied, and they managed to be impressing the tutors far more than I was.

  I refused to let them make me feel bad about Lily’s creation (though I did hide the gift certificate for cuddling far, far in the back of my sock drawer). I remembered that first box that Gem had sent me and decided to re-create it for Lily. I bought Cadbury chocolates, a toy lorry, some childhood-favorite tomes in their British dressings, and an Oxford sweatshirt. Not a gift for no reason but a gift for reason. I wrapped it in brown paper, tied it in string, and sent it across the ocean.

  Then I stared down the hardest exams I’d ever faced. And instead of staring them into submission, I blinked. And blinked. And blinked some more. By the end of it, I felt like I was all eyelid and no pupil. And I must have looked gutted as well, because when I showed up on Gem’s doorstep immediately after my final exam, she took one look at me and said, “Oh, dear.”

  “I think I need to sleep for a few weeks,” I told her. “Can you wake me up when it’s midnight on New Year’s, and then let me go back to sleep?”

  “You have four hours to nap,” she replied, “and then I’ll wake you up with a plan.”

  Precisely four hours later, there was a knock on my door. I was still too sleepy to know whether I called out “Come in” or just thought about doing so. Either way, she came in.

  She said, “I’ve looked into my crystal ball” (this is what she called her smartphone), “and I believe I’ve found an event that will put the bubbles back in your champagne.”

  “Does it involve other people?” I grumbled.

  “Certainly.”

  “Nooooooo,” I replied, mostly to the pillow I was pulling over my face.

  “Dash,” my grandmother said in her most leveling voice, “you must come to grips with the fact that you’d make a very inept monk. Tonight you get to be the dandy and I get to be the wayward contessa. And instead of teaming up to solve country-house crimes, we’ll go on a literary escapade. If that’s not a tonic for your ills, I don’t know what is.”

  Even in my world-weary, sleep-deprived state, I had to admit that, put in those terms, it sounded like a pretty good plan.

  “You sound like Mrs. Basil E.,” I mumbled, referring to Lily’s great-aunt, who also liked a proper turn of phrase.

  “Groovy,” Gem said, dispelling any aura of Mrs. Basil E. she might have gathered, since I doubted highly that Mrs. Basil E. would have used that word even at the height of its innovation. “Now let’s get going.”

  I groaned my agreement and peeked out from under the pillow to see my grandmother gripped by a fervor she usually saved for her love of Eric Clapton and David Thewlis and her loathing of Damien Hirst and the Tories.

  “Lovely!” she chirped. “I’ll gather the accoutrements.”

  Soon the Red Hot + Blue album—a favorite of hers—filled the air. I got out of bed and walked over to Lily’s Advent calendar, which had been the first thing I’d unpacked before my nap collapse. I looked at the doorway that led to today’s gift and felt I didn’t yet deserve to open it; this was the drawback of an Advent calendar, because I felt that I actually needed to have done something on that day to be worthy of whatever small piece of affection Lily had packed inside. I figured I still had a few hours left and could open it when I got home.

  Next I went into the bathroom and made the grave mistake of (a) turning on the light and (b) looking in the mirror. I knew, intellectually, that my aversion to finding an Oxford barber and my inability to find time for a haircut had led to a certain follicular expansiveness. But now I realized that I had veered from Bright Young Thing territory straight into the land of Robinson Crusoe.

  “It’s time for a lather and a shave!” I called out to Gem.

  “And how about a snip and a style when you’re through?” she called back. (This was how I found out she’d worked for three years as a hairdresser at a posh salon.)

  Two hours later, I bore a better resemblance to an older me, the one my university self had bamboozled, bedraggled, and balderdashed. Gem’s wardrobe included a few upscale suits that fit me beautifully. (This was how I found out she’d worked as a consultant to Liberty for two years.) She even had a top hat on reserve, left behind by a not-quite-gentleman who’d left her behind as well.

  I went into my room and put on my duds; when I emerged I found Gem in a similar suit of a much more flamboyant color.

  “Aren’t we just the pair?” she said with a smile.

  “Swellegant, for sure,” I parlayed.

  If school had become
a dirge, this was a blast of sonata. I half expected a carriage to be waiting for us when Gem opened the front door. But instead we rode on the Tube, reveling in the bemused looks we got from The General Population. I took a picture of us to send to Lily but didn’t have reception underground. I imagined Gem pulling out a third suit for Lily to wear and the three of us taking the town together. It could happen.

  We got off at Marylebone and paraded to Daunt Books. I had spent a good amount of time at Waterstones Piccadilly, which looked like a flagship that had sailed in from the Jazz Age. Daunt, meanwhile, looked like a place where Jane Austen and Charles Dickens would have hung out to thumb-wrestle or brood on the state of the novel, such as it was.

  “Who’s reading tonight?” I asked as we approached, still in the dark.

  “Not a reading. Something else,” Gem replied. Then: “Oh, look at that.”

  A few steps away from us, a cat was walking without an owner attached to its leash.

  As Gem stooped over to check the cat for a tag, I asked, “Is that a British thing, to keep a cat on a leash?”

  “No more or no less than anywhere else.” Gem shook her head. “No identification. So careless. Perhaps she belongs to someone inside—it’s cruel to keep her out here, so let’s take her in.”

  As we walked into the store, we saw that we were catching the evening’s activity in medias res. All eyes turned our way—perhaps because of the cat?—and Gem made the most of the moment, drolly asking, “Are we late?” To which I replied, “Never, my dear. The world waits for you.”

  After the dread of exam season, the dark cloud of wondering if I really belonged at Oxford, I felt such delight in the dialogue, delirium in our flight of fancy. I still had no idea what we were doing here, but I instinctively knew that whatever it was would be far better than a night of stress and sensibility in my dorm room. I honestly didn’t think things could get any better—and then I scanned the crowd and saw Lily’s face looking back at me.

  At first I thought: This can’t be possible. I must still be napping.

  Then I thought: This must be Gem’s surprise. She is a magician.

  If it wasn’t a dream, it must have been planned. But if it had been planned, why did Lily look so confused?

  I headed straight to her and wrapped her in an embrace.

  “I can’t believe it!” I said. “You’re here!”

  “I’m here,” she said, hugging me back, sounding (yes) a little confused. Then, when we pulled apart a little, she added, “I thought you had a beard? And long hair?”

  Gem’s voice came from over my shoulder. “A momentary lapse that shan’t be repeated.”

  I smiled at her. “How did you do this? How did you get Lily here without telling me?”

  Gem’s eyes grew wider. “This is Lily?! Well, that explains a lot.”

  “I got here myself,” Lily said. “Who’s this?”

  “This is my grandmother!” I told her. “Gem, meet Lily. Lily, meet Gem. This is too amazing—two of my favorite people in the world in one place!”

  Neither of their smiles seemed to match my own.

  I felt something startling against my leg, then realized it was just the cat.

  “Is she yours?” Lily asked.

  “Just a foundling,” I said. “We should probably see if anyone here claims her as their own.”

  But nobody made any move to take the leash. The mood had quickly shifted from curiosity to impatience. Another familiar face came into view—that of Lily’s disputatious cousin Mark. I’d forgotten he’d moved to London.

  “He isn’t going to be on our team, is he?” Mark asked, cordial as ever.

  “We’d love to be on your team, Lily,” Gem said, swatting at Mark’s gnat-like words.

  “Oh,” Lily said.

  I reached out and took her hand.

  But still, it took a few seconds for her to reach her decision.

  three

  December 21st

  I wanted Dash to be on my team, of course. That’s why I came to London.

  But this Gem person?

  Not so sure.

  I should have been happy for Dash that he finally had a family member he genuinely liked, not just someone he loved (Mom) or tolerated (Dad) out of obligation. But it required a complete shift in my perspective of Dash to see him getting on so well with his grandmother. Dash is someone who avoids family members. That’s who he is. It’s how I understand him. That’s why he evolved into such a book person from childhood. Books were his escape from them.

  “You look very fancy,” I told Dash, admiring his posh clothes and clean-shaven face, while also missing his now-shorn scruff.

  He tipped his hat to me. “Thank you.”

  Gem put her arm around me like we’d known each other for years, not minutes. “You are an impossible sausage of adorable,” she pronounced.

  I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t … I couldn’t help it! I was immediately falling into potential deep dislike of Dash’s beloved grandmother. Who doesn’t like a senior lady who used to be a very cool groupie who now carted her grandson to literary challenges? Who is that evil and unkind? Possibly, me.

  Also, who brings a cat on a leash into a bookstore?

  “There you are, Moriarty!” said Julia, who had found her way over to our group. She picked up the cat, who swatted Julia’s face in protest but then nestled his head into the crook of her neck with great affection, a very feline game of love me/love me not. “He belongs to the bookstore owner. I left him in the office an hour ago. I don’t know how he got out.”

  “Open window?” I suggested.

  “Probably,” she said, unconcerned that her error could have caused CAT-astrophic consequences for Moriarty if he’d slipped out the window and then gotten hit by a car.

  “Why does he have a leash?” I asked.

  “A leash?” Julia looked confused.

  “A lead,” Mark said. “That’s what they call a leash here.”

  Calling a leash a lead? Now that was an impossible sausage of adorable.

  “I guess I left his lead on after taking him for his walk,” Julia said, again unconcerned by the inconvenience she’d caused to the cat, both left to fend for himself on the streets of London, and with an unattended leash attached to his neck that could cause any number of problems. Humans. I don’t understand them. So many of them don’t think things through when it comes to our fur friends.

  “Is he the house cat here at the bookstore?” Gem asked, leaning in for a pet of Moriarty, which was greeted by another swat. I was starting to really like this Moriarty.

  “Our best employee,” said Julia. “Keeps the rodents at bay and keeps the boss calm.”

  Mark said, “Are we ready to hit the streets, Team Strand?”

  I wasn’t ready, especially not after Gem said, “I was so excited when I read about this literary challenge. I knew it was exactly what Dash would love to do.”

  Wait. Gem thought bringing Dash here was her idea?

  “Did you open today’s Advent calendar box?” I asked Dash.

  “Not yet,” he said cheerfully.

  That was the box that contained the message directing him here. So he was here because Gem brought him, not me. He didn’t seem concerned at all that he’d neglected my day’s Advent gift to him.

  I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t … I couldn’t help it. I was jealous and enraged. I traveled thousands of miles across an ocean and left my dog-walking business in the care of my brother, who doesn’t even like dogs that much, so I could take Dash on this literary adventure. Not so Gem could think it was her idea!

  I imagined biting into a delightful piece of chocolate cake baked by British grande dame baker Mary Berry herself to avoid a sourpuss expression appearing on my face. Dash looked so happy. I didn’t want to ruin it.

  I didn’t have to. The couple I’d been worried about Dash noticing now made themselves noticeable, coming over to greet our group.

  “Dash, old fellow! You
look inappropriately dapper,” said Dash’s classmate. I remembered how Dash had told me he cringed every time Olivier called him old fellow, because he suspected Olivier said it only so he would sound like the aristocratic British prick stereotype he expected Americans wanted to hear.

  Dash didn’t exactly frown, but his eyebrows furrowed, in a way I knew to express displeasure, as if someone served him green tea when he is strictly a black-tea-only old fellow.

  “Hello, Olivier,” said Dash. “Hello, Azra.” His voice sounded a bit dead. He gestured to me and then to Gem. “This is my girlfriend, Lily. And my grandmother, Gem.”

  “And I’m Lily’s cousin Mark,” my cousin Mark added. “I’m Dash’s favorite of Lily’s relatives.”

  He’s not, of course. Insulting or annoying Dash is usually my brother’s favored sport, but when he’s not available, Mark is always keen to step in. I’d feel bad for Dash except I think he expects them to give him a hard time and would be disappointed if they didn’t. Langston and Mark are like the brothers Dash never had and never wanted. It’s a relationship that works for them, so I stay out of it.

  Dash ignored Mark and told Gem, “Olivier and Azra are my classmates at Brasenose.”

  “Marvelous!” said Gem. “Are you playing the Daunt Books Bibliophile Cup Challenge also?”

  “We are,” said Azra.

  “And we intend to win,” said Olivier.

  “How predictably overcompetitive of you, Olivier,” said Dash.

  “I had no idea a bibliophile cup could be so fraught with tension,” said Mark. He nodded to Olivier and Azra. “Team Strand will crush you, of course.”

  “Team Brasenose is not concerned,” said Olivier.

  I could feel Azra staring at me. She was so effortlessly chic and smart-looking that I felt intimidated, like I wanted Team Brasenose to win because she was so innately cooler than me, and I had no idea why. Finally, she said, “Are you … Lily Dogcrafts?”