Alone with Gwen he mostly ignored or bullied her, idly, correcting her grammar or mocking the blog she kept, on which she re-created key scenes from her week with miniature plasticine figures staged in elaborate shoebox sets. James was represented by a Lego figure of Darth Vader, black-helmeted, sinister, wreaking destruction. Nathan appeared in clay, always hand in hand with his girlfriend, Valentina, a polished and imperious little sprite who stayed over whenever he was home for the weekend from boarding school. Gwen had made Valentina beautiful, had faithfully rendered the girl’s silky blonde hair and prominent bust, but she always made the couple’s clothes match, and put them both in sunglasses, even inside, even at night. This was a clever and irreproachable way of making them look slightly ludicrous. Julia, Philip, and Iris made frequent use of this blog to gauge Gwen’s mood. Once upbeat and sunny, it was now unfailingly despairing, since her mother had fallen in love with Darth Vader.
• • •
“I JUST WANTED TO SAY bon voyage, darling.”
Julia wedged the phone between ear and shoulder and continued to do battle with the zip of her luggage. Poised and unflappable, unfailingly judgmental of those who were neither, Iris had an unerring instinct for Julia’s most chaotic moments.
“Thank you. The voyage part might be a bit stressful, we’re late already, nobody’s downstairs. You’d think we were preparing to go away for a month.”
“Under the circumstances three days may come to feel like a month. Have you and Thing planned anything à deux while you’re there? A little breathing space?”
“No, I don’t think it’s possible this time. It doesn’t seem fair to the kids.”
After a heavy silence Iris observed, “Traveling with babies can be so wearying.”
“Iris”—Julia tried once more and the zip slid effortlessly up to its hilt, several fine threads of her favorite wool scarf snared halfway down between its teeth. She lowered her voice to a whisper: “I took on board what you said. I’m trying not to infantilize her, but there will be a lot happening for her—”
“There will be a lot happening for you, too. Last time I checked you were meant to be having some fun.”
“We will.”
“Well do, please. No martyrdom while you’re there, it would be very unfashionable, Americans don’t believe in it. Channel the national spirit. Be plucky and aspiring.”
Julia promised to try. Neither of these characteristics came easily to her, though they were the twin peaks dominating Iris’s own natural territory. Julia poured the remains of the milk down the sink, scanning the surfaces for anything else that might turn into a disaster in three days of neglect. When the doorbell rang she was squeezing a perfunctory spray of kitchen cleaner onto the hob where light splashes of Nathan’s porridge had already set, hard as concrete. Iris was now describing her own most recent trip to America, and a production of Indian Ink on Broadway. Julia of all people really ought to get tickets to the BSO, and Thing loves music, too, doesn’t he? Couldn’t they sneak off to the Symphony Hall? Didn’t Julia think she might deserve it?
“Oh, God, sorry. Cab’s outside, I’d better go. Oh, wait! Iris?”
“Yes, I’m still here.”
“Are you sure Philip can handle the dog? I know how much he loves him, but Mole’s just so big . . .”
“Philip Alden will be just fine, it’s good for his knees to walk. He’s always threatening to rescue some abandoned scrap from the pound, you know how dotty he is about anything with four legs. They’ll be two alte Kackers together.”
Julia bit her lip. An image arose of the dog bolting after an insouciant London squirrel, pulling slow-moving Philip to the pavement and thence to broken ribs, pneumonia, death. She suppressed this. Mole had not bolted for many years, and his cataracts occluded large items of furniture, so he was unlikely to spot squirrels. His arthritis rivaled Philip’s own.
Julia turned her attention to the thermostat. It had a holiday setting, she was certain of it. She pressed buttons, experimental, pessimistic. Iris interpreted her silence, and responded.
“You want me to say I’ll take him if it doesn’t work out. Julia, that animal reeks. In fifty years I’ve never let a stinking beast into my beloved house.”
“Only if something goes wrong? If Philip seems tired?”
“Nothing will go wrong, but yes, if it makes you feel better, I’ll take him should it seem necessary. Now go, and have a lovely time. Don’t let the ex-wife intimidate you. Remember she’s ex for a reason.”
James had come in and was miming his intention of taking her bag out to the idling taxi.
“Mmm. I can’t really discuss that right now.”
“How subtle you are, darling, a veritable Enigma code. Bon voyage. And bonne chance. And for the love of God have some fun.”
“Thank you. Lots of love, Iris, thank you.”
From upstairs Gwen shouted, “Is that Granny? Can I speak?”
“The cab’s here! Sorry, Iris, one sec, Gwen’s yelling at me.” Mother and daughter met in the hall, where Gwen, still shoeless, was extending her hand for the phone. Her hair was in a fat and sopping plait from which a halo of drying curls escaped, glinting copper and gold; she held three packets of polymer modeling clay in white, cherry red, and peacock blue. Nathan thundered down the stairs, flung open the hall cupboard, and began throwing out items, like a dog turning up garden dirt. A pile of hats and gloves and scarves grew behind him.
“Mum, are these ‘gels or liquids,’ d’you think? Can I carry them on the plane?”
“Please put some shoes on. Iris, sorry, I’ll call you when I’m back.” As she was speaking she heard Nathan, his head deep between coats, muttering, “I think it ought to be fairly clear they’re not liquids, given that they’re solid.” It was going to be a long weekend. “Found my scarf!” Nathan added, in triumph, and disappeared outside to the waiting car.
Gwen put a sharp little chin on her mother’s shoulder and bellowed, “I’ll call you from the airport, Granny! Love you!” as she handed her deafened mother the plastic-wrapped clay and then slid off down the hall in search of her sneakers while Julia poked in hopeless uncertainty at the thermostat. It read ++ENTER SUMMER MODE?++. That would have to do.
In her kitchen in Parliament Hill, Iris poured herself a second cup of coffee and dialed Philip Alden. Someone in the family had to listen to sense.
• • •
WHEN THE PHONE RANG, Philip had been napping. Since his eightieth birthday sleep had been an evasive and unsatisfying business and he now rose each morning at five a.m., unable to bear the racing of his mind while trapped in stiff and supine immobility. Better to be in physical motion, however tentative and ponderous. By now—just after eight a.m.—he could sometimes manage forty winks in a chair.
His basement flat was touched by brief morning sun, thick yellow beams that poured in through high windows and showed, briefly, the motes of dust that swarmed and rolled in dense clouds around the battered furniture. Otherwise the living room was murky, illuminated only by a pair of fringed, tangerine silk bedside lamps that had been re-homed on the large and middle-sized segments of a nest of laminate tables on either side of the sofa, a low-backed cube upholstered in threadbare, milk-chocolate velvet that had been the proud centerpiece of the Aldens’ living room in the seventies. An Anglepoise stood beneath the bookshelves, raised off the floor only marginally by four hardback copies of the Physicians’ Handbook of Obstetric Intensive Care, VI Edition, edited by Philip. Last summer Gwen had taken quilting lessons in a Kentish Town church hall, and her only quilt now lay across her grandfather’s knees, a garish herringbone of purple and mustard cotton stuffed with a sheet of thin foam. “I love you, Grandpa” was embroidered in its center, surrounded by glittering, cross-stitched hearts pierced by glittering, cross-stitched arrows. In his lap a printout of a short story by Stefan Zweig, e-mailed to him by Iris with instruction
s to analyze it so they could disagree about its intention.
By the time Iris had swept into his life Philip was a confirmed bachelor of thirty-six, a new consultant in the Obstetrics and Gynaecology department of University College Hospital, his limited spare time spent overseeing a clinical study of the use of forceps in persistent occiput posterior births. Iris was interviewing physicians for a feature on the first anniversary of the Pill. She had whisked Philip to the Pillars of Hercules, fed him whiskey, made him laugh. She had sharp gray eyes and glossy hair, carbon black, that slipped like satin through his fingers. She was furious, vivid, fearless, young. He had awoken, and learned happiness. Iris had brought a wonder and confusion that had thrilled and dizzied him, but he had never trusted that it could be his, lifelong.
When after three decades their marriage had finally ended, when Iris had decided that Philip ought no longer to ignore her long-standing affair with Giles Porter, her section editor, Philip had acquiesced without great protest. He bought a modest basement flat on Greencroft Gardens, off the Finchley Road. It was a return, in some senses, to a familiar routine. He knew life to be quiet, to be a serious and solitary business. His late son’s family, as well as his friendship with Iris, were precious beyond measure and more than he had ever hoped for, or expected.
Iris remained in the house in Parliament Hill, with Giles. The three had maintained a cordial relationship, and Philip had still, on occasion, come for dinner, or cocktail parties, or for drinks on the terrace of the garden he had planted. It was Iris and Giles who had started to argue almost as soon as they had begun to live together, and three years later Giles retired permanently to his house in France after which the fighting had stopped, aided by the civilizing separation of the Channel. When Giles had died not long after his move to Provence (a maddeningly predictable heart attack, Philip felt, after years of taking dogged, perverse pleasure compounding atherosclerosis with bacon sandwiches and unfiltered cigarettes), Philip had been genuinely saddened, and sorry. If Iris had had other relationships since then, they were not discussed, and though he visited Iris often, Philip had seen no evidence.
• • •
MANY NIGHTS ON CALL had trained him; the phone would be at his ear, the other hand dutifully taking dictation of a patient’s name, her complication, the state of the baby, before the fog had fully lifted. He sounded awake, professional.
“Iris?”
“Gwen is still bullying the American. And I have a bad feeling about this Boston business.”
Philip considered. “Surely not bullying.”
“She barely speaks in his presence, and she still won’t touch his cooking, or even Julia’s cooking if he’s served it to her. And now apparently she pretends she hasn’t understood anything he’s said because of his accent. That part is rather ingenious, actually, but it can’t go on. And they’re meant to be going for a jolly weekend jaunt with the insufferable son.”
“I really don’t think James can be bullied. He trained under Steingold at Harvard, after all.”
“But she can’t get a taste for it. These early days matter.”
“He’s got teenagers of his own, he must know she’s having a hard time. He’s a very nice man, Iris. I liked him long before—before all this.”
“Yes, well. I’m not interested in him,” said Iris, primly. This was an outrageous lie. Iris was consumed with curiosity about James Fuller and his family. “I’m interested in Gwen’s happiness, and she can’t be allowed to behave so badly he finds her intolerable. People have long memories for that sort of thing. And now they’re going to be piled on top of one another, and this evening they’ll be fresh off the plane and going to Give Thanks at his ex-wife’s house. It’s a thoroughly bizarre expedition. If they wanted a romantic break, then Julia and Thing should be off frolicking in a country hotel somewhere, not forcing their warring children to pretend to be civilized.”
“I think he wants to show her a little of Boston.”
“Yes, well, that’s one thing, but showing her the ex-wife is quite another. Why do they have to see her?”
“She’s Nathan and Saskia’s mother. And they’re apparently on very good terms.”
“It’s distinctly odd,” Iris declared, with finality. Neither alluded to their own long years of devoted and easy friendship, risen as it was from the ashes of their intermittently tempestuous marriage. It had long been agreed that they were the exception. Instead, Iris moved swiftly to the purpose of her call. “I want Gwen to come to the Puccini with us next week, not that her taste for melodrama needs encouragement. I plan to stage a subtle intervention.”
“Your interventions are never subtle. Will you ask her, or shall I?”
“You’ll ask her. They’re en route to you as we speak, to deliver the slavering beast. Now listen, I know you adore that creature but if Mole wears you out, stick him in a taxi to me. And don’t invite. Insist.” She rang off.
3.
It was James who knocked on the door of Gwen’s hotel room and announced they were ready to go. She presumed it had also been James earlier, tapping a maddening military tattoo on the interconnecting wall, which she had ignored. The fight, for the moment, had gone out of her, but she would not join in with the pretense that they were all together on some sort of fun-filled summer camp. So far there was nothing sunny about being here—needles of icy rain had stabbed their faces on the short dash from the airport terminal to the taxi, and the early evening sky was not promising. Nathan’s complaints about London weather did not, on first sight of Boston, make any sense whatsoever.
Gwen stepped into the hallway, where thin floral carpets met elaborately paneled, dark green walls, and pulled the door shut, not quite a slam. Julia stood behind James looking apologetic and, on second glance, unexpectedly stylish. While getting rid of James was her own, ultimate goal, nonetheless Gwen did not want her mother bested by the mysterious Pamela. She knew James’s ex-wife was English (James obviously had a fetish)—this did not stop her from picturing her as American, and therefore sophisticated. Nathan had once hinted that his parents had divorced due to an unmanageable excess of sexual chemistry, and that he would not be surprised if in the future James and Pamela were reconciled. Gwen had not shared this threatening information but had protected Julia from it, and acted on her behalf. She felt a twist of guilt and tenderness for her mother, who seemed vulnerable without her layers and folds of cocooning wool and denim and ancient, sensible silk vests. Instead she was in a black silk shirt with a wide, soft collar, and a black wool pencil skirt that almost, but not entirely, revealed her knees.
Julia had a neat, wiry figure and a clear, very pale complexion. Everything about her was pale—her veins showed grass-green through translucent skin, her eyes were palest blue, and her eyebrows and lashes were almost invisible, a defect that she had long ago given up bothering to correct. Her thick hair was a forgiving ash blonde, the right shade to camouflage, for the moment, the streaks of gray that had appeared by stealth over the last few years. She wore it too long, because she rarely felt strong enough to argue with her hairdresser about highlights and layers, and the other age-appropriate measures he wished her to take, and so avoided going as much as possible. Once employed only for actual hiking, her ancient boots had, somewhere along the way, been appropriated for daily wear, practical both for arch support and for indicating, as clearly as a sign hung in a shop window, that she had closed for business. At forty-six she had known her romantic life was over, and to dress as if she hoped otherwise felt pathetic, and unseemly. Then James.
Julia found herself attired to do battle. Her legs, so long concealed beneath thick, bobbled tights, or shapeless trousers, or sometimes a practical layering of both, were now required to compete. They must look not only amazing, Gwen had decreed, but more amazing than Pamela’s, and as neither of them knew what Pamela looked like, they could not know how high the bar was set. Gwen had insisted that they go shoppin
g, and had folded herself cross-legged on the floor of the small changing room in Whistles on Hampstead High Street, hunched over her phone, tapping, looking up only to issue brief, strongly worded and—Julia had to concede—accurate assessments of various garments. Of the outfit they had eventually chosen Gwen had pronounced, “With heels it will make your calves look amazing. Shoes next,” and had marched her mother up the road to Hobbs. This was the closest Gwen had come to supporting the relationship, and it had at first moved Julia and then seduced her into a folie à deux of anxiety. “You have to wear the heels we got, it’s what they’re for!” Gwen had screeched when Julia, having second thoughts, had begun to pack a pair of black, lace-up flats, rubber-soled and sensible. “Those are like nun shoes. You have to be sexy!” Gwen almost always addressed her mother in the imperative but had seemed even more urgent than usual, and this anxiety was contagious.
It was five p.m. on Thanksgiving and the hotel had not been able to find them a taxi. They could wait an hour for the hotel minibus to return from dropping guests in Belmont, the concierge said, otherwise they could walk. James had reached a pitch of vigorous, impenetrable enthusiasm. “It’s so close, we oughta walk!” he boomed, commanding the attention of the entire lobby. “You guys don’t mind, right? Mad dogs and Englishmen.” His nerves were out of character and Julia, who in any case had no idea how far they were going, felt she must acquiesce. Even Gwen, who did not usually miss an opportunity to cross him, said nothing. She merely tugged the hood of her sweater out from beneath the collar of her coat, pulled it tight around her face, and followed him out into the blustery street.
It was a brief window of respite in a day of near-relentless, pounding rain, and the uneven sidewalks had become a hazard of icy gullies and slick, mulched leaves. Julia watched Gwen’s long form bent against the wind, trudging obediently after James toward this odd, modern encounter. Her uncharacteristic compliance made Julia’s heart hurt. She wanted to scoop up her gangling child and bustle her into the warmth of a taxi or better yet, back into the comforts of the hotel, where they could have a quiet dinner, and then commune with the wondrous, vacuous numina of American cable television. In the lobby’s adjoining restaurant she’d seen aproned waiters ferrying huge Cobb salads; thick, chargrilled burgers heaped with fat-sheened onion rings; and black skillets of steaming macaroni and cheese. Gwen would love these dishes. Julia wanted to pore over the menu with her daughter, to order absurd portions that they could never finish, to compare them with their English imitations—to be, in short, a mother and daughter exploring the New World. It was her own first trip to America, after all, as well as Gwen’s. Julia was filled with sudden regret for the holidays they hadn’t taken in their years alone together and realized, with an unexpected pang, that she might have missed that chance, now that she had James. Ahead, James’s and Gwen’s figures retreated down the dark street. Badly dressed for the weather, Julia was given no choice but to follow.
The Awkward Age Page 2
