I was too staggered by Anthony’s dismissal to move. Then another idea came to me, and I started to dial Sophie’s number, but midway through remembered she was from Leeds and staying on her great-aunt’s sofabed for the summer. Admittedly, I had hit a low point, but I’m too tall to sleep in anyone’s bathtub.
Just as I dissolved into tears, Lily charged into the room. “C’mon, no need for that,” she said gently, rushing over to me.
“What are you doing here? Don’t you have class?”
“Not till noon,” she said. “And even if I did, did you really think I’d make you go through this on your own? I was in Pippa’s office, killing time till you woke up.”
“I’m so glad you’re here.” I sniffled. “I didn’t do anything, nothing on purpose.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Lily said. “I’m sure this’ll blow over eventually, but maybe you should still do as Pippa says and vamoose.”
Once I’d blown my nose a few hundred times and told Lily the whole story, I started to feel different, more optimistic, about the whole situation. Rather than suggesting I sleep in a cardboard box on Oxford Street for the rest of the summer, Lily actually volunteered to put me up in a hotel for the next week.
“No, I couldn’t,” I said. “That’s crazy, and I’ve imposed on you enough already.”
. “Well, then, what?” Lily asked. “Is there anyone else you could stay with? Someone from work, maybe?”
“I hear there’s a spare bedroom at Linda Ross’s,” I said with a snort. And right then something struck me. I jumped up and grabbed my little steno notebook off the floor. Ian Cassidy’s number was scrawled on the back of the hard cardboard cover. He’d given it to me with specific instructions: “If you’re ever in a pinch, Cassidy’s your man.” If this didn’t qualify as a pinch, I don’t know what did.
The second Ian picked up the phone with a steely “Yeah?” I knew everything would be resolved somehow. As calmly as I could, I relayed my fall from grace, with Lily sitting beside me, nodding encouragingly.
“Right.” Ian began humming, as he did when calculating something important, like which route to take or which lens to use. “Try this one on for size. You camp out at Camp Cassidy. We’ll come collect you straightaway.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Ian!” I cried. He had a poodle the size of a horse, a notoriously high-maintenance wife, and, at last count, three kids. “I wasn’t asking you to put me up, I swear. And it’s Friday—don’t you have to work today?”
“Now you listen, I wouldn’t’ve offered if I weren’t being dead straight with you. One of the chief advantages of working at night is the flexible mornings,” Ian said, “and Colleen works from the Peckham homestead. Now come again, where do these Fox toffs live?” Ian sounded ready for a barroom brawl, and how I loved him for it.
“There’s good news and there’s good news,” I told Lily after hanging up the phone. “Ian’s going to come and rescue me, and you’re finally going to meet my favorite person from work.”
“If I’d known this was what it would take,” Lily said with a mischievous grin, “I’d have gotten you kicked out weeks ago.”
An hour later, when the car pulled up out front, Lily and I had already stuffed my clothes into my bags. My size ten and a half red cowboy boots—my all-time favorites—wouldn’t fit, so I stuck them upside down in a shopping bag and then followed Lily down the stairs to the front door, without even stopping for an appreciative last glance at. the Foxes’ Chippendale armoires or giant candelabras or Lucian Freud paintings. I was feeling strangely uplifted, ready to leave it all behind, when I heard Lulu mewling from behind the laundry room door.
“I’ll thank you for this one day, kitty,” I told the cat before closing the door to Bridge House for the last time. Beyond the gate, Ian and a plump woman were clambering out of a large car—not Ian’s industrial truck, but a maroon minivan that looked most un-safari-like. I couldn’t help but smile.
“There she is, poor love,” the woman said, toddling forward to engulf me in a motherly embrace. “I’m Colleen Cassidy.”
Colleen was a big-shouldered, solid woman who was even shorter than her husband. She had puffy brown hair and was wearing a lavender sweatshirt with a bunny rabbit printed on the front and a furry tail printed on the back. Come to think of it, she herself looked not unlike the Easter Bunny, with her cotton-ball cheeks and pointy chin. As she hugged me again, I struggled to identify the harpy who was always chewing Ian out on the phone—that is, until she gave her husband a little shove with her elbow and snapped, “Ian, don’t just stand round like a tit. Help the dear with her bags!”
“Awright.” A humbled Ian took my suitcase and hoisted it into the back of the van. “You can sit in front with me. You’re in the rear, dear,” he told his wife.
I introduced Lily to the Cassidys, then hugged my friend goodbye. With one last murmured thank-you, I slowly climbed into the front seat of the Cassidys’ car. As we pulled away from the curb, I looked out the window to see Lily, then the rows of grand homes, recede into the distance. It was like watching the final credits in a movie.
“You all right?” Colleen asked me from the back seat.
“Completely,” I assured her. “I can’t thank you enough for coming to my rescue.”
“Think nothing of it, love. Now there, do you fancy a nosebag now, or shall we just carry on straight to Peckham? I’m sure we can scrape something together. There’s bacon and cheddar and last night we had some lovely pasta.”
“You know,” I said, “for the first time in my life, I don’t think I’m hungry.”
Ian snorted. “Famous last words,” he told his wife. “This girl’s got quite an extraordinary appetite. Which is funny, innit, ’cause when I first met her, I thought she was one of those anemic lasses.”
“Bulimic,” Colleen corrected him. “Anemics are the pasty ones, isn’t that right?”
“Well, I’m neither,” I said. “Just insatiable.”
“I know the feeling,” said Colleen amicably. “I’ve been known to put away a whole box of Quality Street chocolates in a single go. I get sick the day after our anniversary every year.”
The traffic stalled at the periphery of Regent’s Park. It was a glorious summer day, with a cloudless bluish gray sky. The park’s trees were thick with leaves, and groups of respectable old ladies strolled in identical sensible black shoes. Colleen was telling me about their sons, Hugh, Robby, and Roddy. Hugh had just turned six; Robby and Roddy, the twins, were eight. Another set of eight-year-old twins? A bit rich, as Ian might say.
“They’re quite good lads, really,” Colleen told me. “Don’t set things on fire, don’t give me any cheek.”
“Take after their mum they do,” Ian said. He was fiddling with the radio dial and after a few false stops settled on an inane talk show on BBC 4. A group of men were joking around about the afterlife—or, more specifically, whether they’d prefer to turn into earthworms or mosquitoes when they die. “Blimey, what a question!” Ian cried indignantly. “Mosquitoes have a crap life span—only about three weeks, innit? That’s scarcely time enough to reach Manchester.”
Colleen was of another opinion. “So you’d rather live underground, would you? No, thank you—I’ll take a mosquito’s life any day, even if I end up squished between Roddy’s fingers.”
From my seat up front, I had an impressive view of London in all its mind-boggling immensity, and I leaned forward to take in the panorama of old buildings, brightly colored storefronts, and endless majestic monuments that whished by outside my window. The stately Strand, the gentle arches of Southwark Bridge, the hungry crowds jostling their way through Borough Market, then into quieter residential sections of South London, with modest semidetached houses and well-maintained commons.
“Now keep your eyes peeled,” Ian said as we turned down a street of empty car lots and a dilapidated mosque—scenery Sam would no doubt love. “You’re about to get a taste of Peckham. Hold on to your seat.�
��
I’d always assumed Ian lived in the neighborhood equivalent of himself: working-class, old fashioned, and one hundred percent English. But in London, I was beginning to learn, there was no such thing. Peckham was a wild jumble of languages and colors and smells, a place where betting parlors and traditional English sandwich shops alternated with produce stands carrying hairy root vegetables and cell phone stores specializing in “mobile phone unlocking.” A sign in one off-license said MONEY FOR GHANA, and another down the block advertised MONEY FOR SUDAN.
Ian downshifted on Alpha Street, parking the car in front of a white terraced house that was a twentieth the size of the Foxes’. “Here we are then,” he said, gesturing at the bright façade. The trash cans waiting to be collected out front had cat images spray-painted on them, and a bird feeder dangled from the tree in the front yard.
“You have bird feeders!” I squealed as I got out of the car. “I’ve always wanted a bird feeder. Do you get a lot of birds?”
“Hooligans, chiefly,” Ian said. “Of the Homo sapiens variety. We had to plug up the seed dispenser.”
“It’s terrible, really,” Colleen jumped in, “just dreadful—I keep telling Ian we’d best move out to Ealing, or another part of town more suited for children, but we do have our roots here.”
“Here’s where we met, back when we were still teething,” Ian said. “She was my first sweetie.”
“Peckham was completely different back then,” Colleen told me. “Flowerpots on every doorstep, and you knew everybody, you know? Nowadays we’ve got race riots and—”
“There are no race riots,” Ian said. “Just a bit of friction now and again.”
“And then these awful yobs from down the road were coming round in the middle of the night and leaving us little surprises,” Colleen went on. “Once they put in loo paper and another time it was chocolate birds, which is quite sick if you think about it—birds for the birds to eat! That’s like cannibalism, innit? It’s not as if we couldn’t afford to move, mind you,” she told me. “It’s just Ian’s a stubborn bugger, and he’s happy as Larry having the odd pint with his old school chums. And I suppose it’s rather convenient, with my mum down the road . . .”
In front of us, Ian was unlocking the door. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he grumbled as a squawking noise issued from inside. “She let the canary out again, did she? Bloody hell.”
Colleen looked at her husband sharply. “You’re free to hire a proper child minder while you’re gallivanting around London all night and day. Otherwise, Mum can bring whomever she likes round the house, so you be civil, or you’ll get an earful later.”
“Yes, but why can’t she keep the bloody thing in a cage?” Ian muttered. But another sharp glance from Colleen did the trick and he nodded, chastised. “You’re right, love. I don’t know how we’d manage without your mum.”
A small kid, presumably Hugh, rushed out to greet us. “We’re playing lethal ninja terminator,” he told his mother, then ran back inside, screaming the whole way.
Ian led us into the house, where a scene from a wildlife program on the Discovery Channel played at fast-forward. A tiny woman lay stiffly on the living room couch with closed eyes, sleeping through a radio program I recognized to be The Archers, a long-running soap opera about a farming community. Above her, a canary swooped in frantic circles while a trio of chubby miniature Ians whirred back and forth, thwacking each other with plastic machine guns. A black curly-haired poodle of brontosaurus proportions shambled over and energetically sniffed my inner thighs. “That’s Sylvia,” Ian told me. “Behave, Sylv!” he snapped at the dog on his way back out.
“Get back into the death chamber, go on then!” one of the twins shouted to his younger brother, packing him into the coat closet.
“Hugh, out here!” roared Colleen behind me. “Don’t wind me up now!”
Once the boys had lined up before her, their mother addressed them. “Mimi here will be staying with us for a spell,” she said sternly. “If you’re not perfect little angels with her, they’ll be no video games for a fortnight, you hear? Mimi, I’d like you to meet the sprogs: Roddy, Robby, and Hugh.”
Ian returned heaving my suitcase and simultaneously muttering into his cell phone. “Mm-hmm, Rachel from Lonsdale and her new squeeze?” he said to whoever was on the other end. “The café at Harvey Nicks? Right, then.” After hanging up, Ian looked at us with sparkling eyes. “I’m off, then—back in a bit!” He nodded at me, kissed his wife on the cheek, and ran out the door.
“His tipsters, I reckon,” Colleen said, moving an ottoman aside to make room for my bags.
In the kitchen, she made me a pot of strong tea and a cheddar-mayo sandwich. The kitchen table was overrun with photography equipment, scattered lens caps and film rolls that reminded me of Barrow Street. Amid Ian’s clutter were invoices and catalogs from Loose Ends, Colleen’s employer. When she asked me if I’d heard of the company, I had to shake my head no.
“I’m quite fond of Loose Ends,” she said. “But then I would be, wouldn’t I? I’ve a bit of a knack. Last year, I was the number four seller in the Greater London area, and Ian and I got a free weekend holiday at this lovely B&B in the Cotswolds.”
For the rest of the afternoon, Colleen, an expert hostess, went out of her way to make me feel at home in Peckham. She gave me keys and a stack of matching towels and washcloths, and instead of just telling me where the nearest railway station was, she walked me there and back so I could repeat the journey on my own. When he returned early that evening, Ian invited me to join him for trivia night at his local pub, but I decided to stick around for Colleen’s Loose Ends party. The boys took their gravity-defying bouncing upstairs while a dozen or so women, including Colleen’s mom, Jackie, and her free-flying canary, Diana, crowded into the living room to drink Blue Nun wine and examine the new “aquatic undertones” sweater collection Colleen was selling. When she’d finished her presentation, I impulsively ordered a blue cardigan with starfish, waves, and porpoises for my mother. A devoted Freudian, she was partial to clothing with symbolic content.
After the guests left, Jackie put down the glass of sherry she’d been nursing all night and went upstairs to check up on the kids. Colleen and Lremained in the living room to tidy up. “Oh, Sharon must’ve left this behind,” Colleen said, plucking a pink sweatshirt out from underneath a couch cushion. “Try it on, will you?” She threw the garment at me and waited for me to put in on before walking me over to the full-length mirror.
“Nice with your eyes,” she said from my side. “I say you keep it.”
Looking in the mirror, I saw the sweatshirt was emblazoned with foil hearts. It then struck me that Colleen’s face resembled a heart, with her pointy chin and sandbag cheeks. “You like it?” she asked me, and stood there looking slightly nervous as she waited for my verdict.
“Like it?” I asked her reflection. “It’s perfect.”
To: “Rogmahal”
From: “Mimicita86”
Date: August 1, 7:43 p.m.
Subject: Luv-Jub
Dad,
I hope you haven’t been worrying about me—and please, for the love of burritos, don’t start worrying now just because I put the word “worrying” in the first line of this e-mail. I promise everything’s fine, but maybe you should sit down before reading on, OK?
So here’s the deal: the Foxes sort of evicted me. I’ll tell you the whole story in person or on the phone or whatever—I don’t really feel like going into it now, frankly. Just know that I didn’t do anything too objectionable, at least not on purpose. Also, before you freak out, let me assure you that I’ve found a new and improved host family: the Cassidys. (I’m writing from their house and I’ll put their number at the bottom of the letter.) Ian Cassidy is a friend from work and, as he himself would say, you two would get along “like a house on fire.” He’s a photographer at the magazine and his family is wonderful. They live WAY south of the river in Peckham, which is officially part
of London but can only be reached by an extraspecial aboveground train that connects to the Underground. I’m sleeping comfortably on the downstairs sofa (though I do get woken pretty early by the Cassidy “sprogs” and Sylvia the ginormous poodle). I wish you could meet everyone here, I really do. Don’t really know what my plans are, but I’ll call you ASAP, OK? Or better yet, you call me!
Lovely-jubbly (that’s an English expression for who-knows-what?),
Mimi
From: “Unclesam9”
To: “Mimicita86”
Date: August 4, 12:14 p.m.
Subject: re: Life Sucks
Mimikins,
I’m so sorry to hear about your recent catastrophe. Your crapola luck doesn’t seem fair, does it? The new family sounds great, but you still must be pretty freaked out. You want me to call you? Let me know when and where, and I totally will.
Things are cool with me, more or less. Back from the Birkenstock state. Spent the weekend, against my will, at the bat mitzvah of the daughter of my mom’s most tedious friend (which, as you know, is saying a lot). The service was nine hundred hours long and beyond boring—even my dad, King of Dullsville himself, was nodding off. The party was out of control in a completely different way. It seems little Jocelyn dreams of becoming a movie star (fat chance of that, trust me), so the whole deal was Hollywood-themed, with trunks of movie star costumes and old-fashioned photo booths. Because I had nothing better to do, I chose the Humphrey Bogart duds and my parents opted for Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra—funny, right? I uploaded the pics and am attaching for your amusement.
Foreign Exposure Page 21
