by Ivy Pembroke
Jack had the nerve not to look the slightest bit ashamed of the way he was acting.
“Have a little dignity,” Bill told him under his breath, and peered through the door.
It was the new American boy from next door. Bill wondered if Americans were constantly knocking on people’s doors, disturbing all their peace and quiet. Was this how it was going to be from now on?
Bill sighed heavily and, resigned, opened the door. “Well?” he prompted gruffly.
“Hi,” said the boy, laughing a little as Jack bounded over to him and proceeded to lick him a lot.
Dignity, thought Bill, feeling ashamed for Jack.
“I was wondering if Jack could come out and play,” said the boy, patting Jack enthusiastically.
“I don’t own Jack,” Bill said brusquely. “He does as he wishes.”
“So are you making more cool little figures?” the boy asked.
“Whittling,” Bill said. “It’s called whittling.”
“The little dragons were cool. I think you should make wizards to go along with them.”
“Wizards,” Bill repeated flatly. What was this child even talking about?
The boy nodded. “Dragons need wizards, I think. They can be the wizards’ pets.”
“Dragons aren’t pets,” Bill said automatically, and then wondered why he was even having this discussion. “Never mind. Take Jack.” Bill went to go back inside.
“Oh,” the boy said, causing Bill to pause. “My dad wants to know if you’re going to come to the barbecue.”
“I already said no,” Bill replied.
“Yeah, but . . .” The boy shrugged.
“I’m not going to stand around with strangers eating hot dogs.”
The boy frowned, lifted his chin, pushed his shoulders back. That stubbornness that Bill remembered. He said, “I think the barbecue is stupid, too, but my dad is really excited about it, so you’re not allowed to be mean about it. Okay? He’s just trying to be nice.”
And with that the boy turned away from the door and walked firmly down the front step and through the front garden.
Jack stood on the step a second longer, looking between Bill and the boy, before letting out a bark and following the boy.
Bill frowned, thinking, Mad Americans, we never had any of these issues before they showed up, and slammed the front door.
* * *
Sam had a shopping list that now read: hot dogs, hamburgers, buns, ingredients for beetroot salad (garlic, white wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, shallots, salt, pepper, hard-boiled eggs, beetroot, olive oil, pine nuts, salad leaves), lots of crisps, ALCOHOL.
He considered it, then added at the end, Also nonalcoholic drinks, because he supposed he should have something on hand that was more appropriate for people like his eight-year-old son. And just because he thought he needed a lot of alcohol didn’t mean he needed to assume on behalf of everyone else.
He found Teddy rolling over in the garden, while Jack sat and stared at him.
“What are you doing?” Sam asked.
Jack, seeing him, immediately came bounding over to give Sam a greeting more appropriate for a deity suddenly appearing on Earth.
“Yes,” Sam said to him, trying to pet him while Jack contorted all over in such ecstatic greeting that it was almost impossible to get a good head scratch in. “Hello. How are you?”
“I’m teaching Jack how to roll over,” said Teddy, from his back on the grass.
“I thought Jack already knew how to roll over.”
“He seems to have forgotten,” said Teddy.
“Well, that’s not what it looks like,” Sam remarked. “It looks like you’re rolling over and Jack is thinking you look ridiculous.”
“Jack doesn’t think I look ridiculous!” protested Teddy.
Sam walked over to look down at Teddy. “No, you’re right, he’s probably impressed at what a talented human being you are.”
Teddy grinned.
Sam said suddenly, “But does Jack know about tickling?” and then dropped to the grass in a tickle attack.
Teddy laughed uproariously and Jack ran around them barking and Sam thought it was absolutely, by far, the nicest moment they’d had in England so far. Maybe the nicest moment they’d had in years.
Sam sprawled on the grass with Teddy and looked up at the gray sky over their heads. Jack flopped down beside them. Teddy’s head was just brushing against Sam’s shoulder and it was nice. Grounding. Sam had spent a long time feeling like he was running flat-out just to keep up with everything he had to keep up with. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d stayed still and breathed and let sink into him the recognition of how miraculous it was to have a child and to have that child be Teddy.
Sam said abruptly, “I’m glad you’re here with me.”
“Where else would I be?” asked Teddy, sounding bewildered.
“Somewhere else, soon enough,” said Sam, and kissed the top of Teddy’s head before pulling himself off the grass. It wasn’t as easy to do as it once had been. “We have to go shopping.”
“Shopping for what?” asked Teddy.
“The party,” Sam said. “The super-fun party we’re going to host in this very back garden in a couple of days.”
Teddy sighed extravagantly, but stood up and said to Jack, “You should go back to Mr. Hammersley’s. Dad and I have to go shopping.”
Jack wagged his tail, then slipped his way through the fence that didn’t border the old man.
“He’s probably going to see that girl,” said Teddy darkly.
“Which is totally allowed,” Sam said. “He belongs to everyone, remember?”
“I guess,” grumbled Teddy, as they headed inside together. “So what are we going to buy at the store? Ice cream?”
Sam, tucking his shopping list into his pocket, pulled it back out and scribbled, Pudding????? onto the end of it.
* * *
Sam had grown up in England, so you would have thought that he would remember where everything was in a British supermarket. For instance, he should have remembered that they didn’t keep eggs refrigerated in British supermarkets.
He didn’t remember, until he stumbled upon them.
Teddy said, “Why are they here? They don’t put them in the fridge here? Is that safe?”
“It’s perfectly fine. Would they do it if it wasn’t safe? Since when do you care passionately about the temperature of eggs?” Sam asked.
“I didn’t know I had to care about it,” Teddy said. “England makes me have to care about weird things.”
“Indeed,” said Sam. “Now, where do you think they keep the beetroot? Produce, right?”
Teddy’s eyebrows would have fallen entirely off his forehead if they could have. “Beetroot? What are you doing with that?”
“Making a salad.”
“A salad? A salad requires lettuce. Not beetroot.”
“I’m being impressive. A salad with lettuce is not impressive. A salad with beetroot, however—”
“Is hideous.”
“It’s going to be delicious. And healthy.”
“Oh, exactly like all of the food we always eat,” said Teddy.
“You’re going to be insufferable when you’re a teenager,” said Sam.
“Does this have to do with Aunt Ellen? I bet she’s behind the beetroot. I mean, who are we even trying to impress?”
“Our guests.”
Teddy shrugged, like impressing their guests wasn’t very high on his list. And probably Sam should be praising that lack of desire to conform and play pointless one-upmanship games with people. He wanted Teddy to grow up to be his own person, unafraid of what people might think of him. That was absolutely what he wanted.
But he also wanted to impress their new neighbors.
So Sam said, “See that?” and drew a circle in the air in front of Teddy’s dubious face. “That is exactly the kind of negativity that we are working on getting rid of with this party.”
“I just d
on’t think beetroot is a good way to impress people. I mean, not the type of people you’d want to be friends with. Not fun people. I’m really only worried about you, Dad,” said Teddy earnestly. “You’re just so very bad at making friends.”
“Cheeky,” said Sam. “You are a cheeky child. And I am making a grated beetroot salad, which I think sounds pretty darn impressive.”
“If you say so,” said Teddy, with his special brand of skepticism firmly intact.
“I do,” said Sam, refusing to be rattled. “Run and pick out some chocolate biscuits for pudding and meet me in the produce section. And stop sulking. You can’t sulk when you’re on your way to chocolate biscuits. You have to smile.”
Teddy gave him an angelic smile.
“Brat,” Sam said, and gave Teddy a little shove on his way past him.
Teddy grinned and then took off in search of the biscuits.
Sam contemplated if he should offer something better than chocolate biscuits. Maybe some ice cream to go along with it. Baking a cake was probably beyond him. He should probably stick to just the one overwhelming ordeal: the grated beetroot salad.
Newly determined to tackle beetroot, Sam went to the fruit and veg section. Where he quickly discerned that beetroot, in its native form, was terrifying and looked as if it required effort to be rendered edible.
Sam stared at it and wondered if he should switch to the aubergine recipe instead.
Which was when a woman next to him said, “Excuse me, you’re looking very angry at the beetroot and clearly have something to debate with it, but if I could interrupt for just a moment to grab some carrots . . .”
Sam said automatically, “Oh. Of course. Sorry. Totally my fault,” and stepped back a little bit.
Not quite enough space for the woman to reach the carrots. She had to brush against him on the way past, which meant that Sam was aware of the perfume she was wearing, light and fresh. And then she turned to him, carrots retrieved, and gave him a smile. She had a radiant smile, bright eyes, and dark red hair that she’d tucked under a newsboy cap.
Sam, standing amongst vegetables clutching a useless recipe and contemplating the absurdity of beetroot, had a moment he’d experienced only once before in his life, an oh, it’s you moment, as if they’d been scheduled to meet right here in this supermarket, as if he ought to say, hello, remember me? even though they were, theoretically, complete strangers.
The woman brandished her carrots in a little salute in Sam’s direction and said, “Ta,” and Sam thought that that was it, she would walk away with her carrots and he would turn back to the beetroot and the rhythm of the world would click into place again and Sam would find himself rushing again, desperately, just to keep up.
And for this one small moment in this supermarket looking at a ginger woman holding a bag of carrots, Sam felt like it was finally still enough to feel when he took a breath.
So he said, “The beetroot and I are engaged in a negotiation.” Which . . . made some sense as a pickup line in some universe that was not this one, Sam supposed.
Except that it did what he had hoped it would, and kept the woman suspended in the moment, instead of rushing off into the normal pace of life. She said, “Are you? Over what?” and smiled at him again. She had adorable dimples.
For a moment Sam forgot what he was supposed to be talking about.
The woman said, “I hear beetroot is tough as a negotiator. Don’t want to be facing it across the table when you’re negotiating settlement terms.” She looked very serious about this.
And this woman was either mad or delightful. Or possibly both.
Beetroot, Sam remembered, smiling back at her helplessly, and said, “Yeah, I am supposed to be turning that”—he gestured at the offending vegetable—“into something edible.”
The woman looked at the beetroot briefly and then back at Sam, which Sam preferred. She was still smiling, which Sam also preferred. “The key is bacon,” she said.
Sam glanced back at the beetroot. “And, presumably, removing the stalks, right?”
The woman laughed. Sam was not being ridiculous in deciding that this woman’s laugh was composed of puppy kisses and rainbows. She said, “Ah, I see, we’re starting right at the very beginning.”
“I don’t make beetroot very often,” Sam confided, leaning ever so slightly closer.
The woman lifted an eyebrow. “No? So why are you engaging with it now?”
“I’m trying to be impressive.”
The woman’s smile widened, one corner of her lips twitching. “Is beetroot impressive?”
“Isn’t it?” countered Sam. “Would you not be impressed at someone managing to tackle that into submission?”
The woman glanced at Sam’s trolley and said, “I am more impressed by people who have decided to stock up on every type of crisp this store carries.”
“Yeah, but the beetroot balances the crisps,” Sam said. “If you have some beetroot, you can have as many crisps as you want. And people with packs of spotted dick in their shopping trolleys shouldn’t throw stones.”
The woman smiled, dimples deep, and said, “Escalating the conversation, are we?”
“Sorry,” Sam said innocently. “Should I not have brought up your dick preferences just yet?”
“Oh, no, that would have been fine,” the woman replied. “It’s my dessert choices you shouldn’t have criticized.”
Sam laughed. He stood in the middle of the produce section of a supermarket, on a Friday night, with a trolley full of hamburgers, hot dogs, and every type of crisp in the store, and looked at this woman with a carrot in her hand and thought, Let’s do this again sometime, which sounded ridiculous even in his head. Come here often? also sounded ridiculous. He needed something smooth and charming. Surely Come over to my place and I’ll make you beetroot stepped over the creepiness line.
Which was when Teddy said curiously, “Hi?”
Sam startled and looked at Teddy, who was holding chocolate biscuits and looking between Sam and the woman. Then he stared at Sam and lifted his eyebrows in his all-knowing eight-year-old look.
“Hi,” said Sam. “Hi.”
Teddy’s eyebrows got higher.
“You got the chocolate biscuits,” said Sam.
“Yeah.” Teddy put them in the trolley and looked pointedly at the woman with the carrots.
Who said of the chocolate biscuits, “Good choice. My favorite.”
Teddy said, “Better than beetroot.”
The woman smiled at Teddy, and the terrible thing was that that smile at Teddy was the best moment of Sam’s entire evening. Any woman might smile at Sam, but a woman who smiled at Teddy had smiled at the more important person.
She said, “Give the beetroot a chance. It drives a mean bargain.”
Teddy looked perplexed.
The woman looked at Sam and said, “Good luck with your negotiation. I hope you manage to form an alliance. Remember the bacon.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Enjoy your carrots and your spotted dick.” Oh, my God, he thought, the supermarket can swallow me now.
The woman smiled at him and said, “Thanks,” and then moved off, pushing her trolley through the fruit and veg, over to the next aisle.
Sam watched her.
“Who was that?” Teddy asked.
“I have no idea,” Sam said. “A woman who wanted carrots.”
“Probably you were supposed to ask her for coffee,” said Teddy frankly.
Sam, in the middle of pulling a beetroot out of the pile, promptly lost his grip on it and sent several bouncing to the floor of the supermarket. Sam ignored that. He looked at Teddy and said, “Why would I ask her for a coffee?”
“Because you liked her,” said Teddy.
“I didn’t like her,” said Sam. “I just met her.”
“You were smiling at her so much, it was embarrassing.”
Oh, Christ, thought Sam. “You’re exaggerating.”
Teddy looked appropriately dubious.
Sam leaned down and gathered beetroot into his arms.
“What are we doing with all those beetroots?” asked Teddy. “Is that how many we need for the salad?”
“I don’t know,” said Sam distractedly, dumping them haphazardly into the trolley, where they probably crushed all the crisps. “So you’d be okay? With me . . . going for coffee with someone?”
Teddy looked across at him, and Sam was aware that they probably shouldn’t be having this conversation in a supermarket. “Dad,” he said, like it was obvious, as obvious as Sam being an idiot ordinarily was. “Why not? I want you to be happy. Of course I do. That’s why I’m here in England, so you’ll be happy.”
Sam reached out suddenly and pulled Teddy into a tight hug.
“You’re strangling me,” Teddy croaked.
“Bloody vegetables,” Sam muttered into Teddy’s hair. “They make me emotional.”
“What?” said Teddy.
“I want us both to be happy,” said Sam, and released Teddy and then crouched down to be on his level. “I wanted to give you . . . a new start. And . . . more of a family. More than I could manage alone and . . . I know you feel like this was all me, but I—”
Teddy put a hand on Sam’s shoulder and said, “It’s okay, Dad. I know. I get it.”
“I’m sorry you hate it here,” Sam said, “but I really think that—”
Sam didn’t know what he looked like, but it must have been pathetic because Teddy said, “I don’t hate it here. It’s okay.”
Sam gave Teddy what he hoped was an older and more mature version of Teddy’s dubious look. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah. At least we have a dog here.”
Sam sighed. “We don’t have a dog here.”
“We kind of have a dog here,” said Teddy.
It wasn’t even worth the fight about it, Sam thought. Especially not if the dog was the first thing Teddy named when talking about good things about England. So Sam said, “Fine. Okay. Whatever. We kind of have a dog.”
Teddy grinned, triumphant, and said, “Good. Can we get him some dog treats, then?”
Sam groaned and stood up. “Fine. Yes. You win.”
“Thanks.”
They walked side by side for a second. Sam thought he should consult his shopping list but it seemed like the least important thing in the universe at the moment. Too much else had happened at this supermarket.
