London Is the Best City in America (11 page)

I didn’t have too long to wrap my head around it, though. Because right then, the front door swung open and out walked Grace’s older version—same jeans, same braid—heading straight toward us.

Elizabeth. She was darker than her daughter was—with sharper eyes, olive skin. She definitely wasn’t as classically pretty as Grace. She wasn’t as pretty as Meryl either, for that matter, but there was something about the way she was carrying herself—this assuredness—that you couldn’t help but notice. It was almost like she was about to teach you something.

This might be part of the reason why when she first saw Josh, unlike Grace, she didn’t start running toward him. Instead, she stopped moving. So did Josh. The only one moving then was Grace, who was looking back and forth between Josh and Elizabeth, almost frantically.

She kept her hand on Josh’s arm, but I think if she had been thinking about it, she would have let him go. She was obviously looking to her mom for clues as to what she was supposed to do. So was Josh, who—even in the intensity of this bizarre standoff—was still smiling ear-to-ear, like a total and complete dumb-ass.

“Hello there,” she said.

“Hello there,” he said back.

Then she looked toward me, and her face softened a little—the lines around her mouth letting loose. And I could see it—what I had almost missed before I could see what her smile did to her—how pretty she really was.

I wasn’t sure what to do, but I felt the need to do so something. So I uncrossed my arms and gave her a small hip-side wave.

She gave me one back. “Hi, Emmy,” she said.

“Yes, thank you,” I said, which made about as much sense as it sounded like it made.

Then she motioned to Josh, and for a second—just a split second—I could tell how happy she was to see him there in front of her. Almost as happy as he was to be there.

“You should move the car out back behind the house,” she said. “We have someone coming to look at the new litter in a little while.” She was already walking away.

“When is a little while?” Josh said.

She turned back around to face him. “You in a rush to get somewhere else?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“You sure?”

I wanted to hide, anywhere, waiting for him to answer.

“Positive.”

She looked at him like she didn’t believe him, but she nodded all the same. And then, when she started walking away from him again, heading in the direction of the dog paddocks, Josh turned around himself and did exactly what she said.

The only other time I’d been at a dog breeder was with Matt, the summer before his senior year of college, when we were down in Delaware at his old roommate’s mother’s house. While the guys helped her with a project in the attic, the roommate’s mother set me up with a pitcher of iced tea on her back porch, and staring out the window, I noticed that the backyard next door was full of slides, and dog pens, and animal runs leading out to an open field. I walked over to the fence separating the yards to try and learn more. It turned out the couple next door were dog breeders, breeding very expensive terriers—the tiniest of dogs, almost doll-like—that, even as adults, were able to fit into the palm of a hand.

On first glance, these bullmastiffs seemed like the exact opposite. The adult dogs were the biggest dogs I’d ever seen—well over 100 pounds, closer to 150—oversize bulldogs, angry and big-cheeked. Open-eyed. And, at first glance, they looked a little scary. They looked more than a little scary. Up close, they looked more sweet-faced than anything else, and I started to remember having read somewhere that, if properly socialized, bullmastiffs were arguably sweeter than terriers—arguably the sweetest breed of dogs in the entire world. They wanted to be your best friends and to protect you and be dedicated to you and—if you asked anyone who had ever owned one of these dogs—to make your life feel more complete.

When we walked into the farmhouse, Grace handed me a pamphlet that explained all this. The pamphlet was blue and gold, with slim, gray writing. It looked so familiar that I couldn’t help but wonder if I had seen it somewhere before—like Josh’s Boston apartment—and had just discarded it, forgotten to ask him why he had it in the first place. Why would I assume it was important? That it hadn’t just been left under his windshield wiper somewhere? I had no reason to assume it would lead me here somehow. Now that I was here, though, I read it carefully. I was done assuming anything for the time being. The pamphlet explained that hobby breeders, like Elizabeth, didn’t make a living raising these dogs—it was almost impossible to—even though the dogs cost upward of $1,500. If you were lucky and doing the job well, you stayed out of the red. This was what you hoped for. This was what you hoped for so you could keep caring for the dogs—raising them and showing them and placing them in homes they’d really like.

On the back of the pamphlet was a photograph of Elizabeth and a small bio that said she was a holistic veterinarian. What the pamphlet didn’t say was that, for Elizabeth, breeding was a life she’d fallen into right when she met Grace’s father at nineteen. And now, even all these years since he’d left their life behind, she happily stayed. Every Monday through Wednesday, she drove down to her veterinary practice in Providence and saw her patients. And her patients’ parents. The rest of the time, she was here. I didn’t find out that part until later. All I did know for sure walking around the farmhouse was that it seemed like a different world here. And I knew part of it was coming from me, coming from how I often idealized things that weren’t familiar. Still, it was like I was seeing everything through the lens of a smoke screen: the landscape coming through the windows candied and iridescent—the farm both taking on this magical quality, and being more definite than any place I could remember visiting.

I followed Grace into the kitchen, which looked like the inside of a boat cabin. There was a lot of dark wood and photographs, an old record player. Flowered candles were everywhere. It was all very pretty, but it also smelled a little funny—like something was burning.

“Sorry about the smell,” she said, as if she could hear my thoughts. “I was working on a science project last night. I had to make glue from scratch.”

“How did that go?”

“Fantastic,” she said. “If glue doesn’t have to stick.”

I smiled at her, probably bigger than I meant it. Josh and Elizabeth had gone for a walk somewhere, and I had no idea when they were coming back. Which left Grace and me to fend for ourselves, at least for now. But I wasn’t entirely unhappy with this arrangement. I couldn’t imagine that they were having a very pleasant conversation, and I figured having us around for it wouldn’t help too much. One look at Elizabeth before, and I knew that she knew what Josh was supposed to be doing this weekend. I guess the question was whether she also knew he was going to show up here first, and what, if anything, that might change.

Grace opened the refrigerator door and started taking out supplies—vegetables and meats, a thick loaf of bread. “I thought we could make some lunch, maybe,” she said. “How do turkey clubs sound?”

I could still feel the bacon in my stomach. If we didn’t cook, though, what were we going to do? Sit here and talk about Elizabeth and Josh? Me just grilling her on all the details that didn’t matter as much as the main two: Josh was supposed to get married tomorrow; he was still here now.

“Turkey clubs sound great,” I said.

“Great,” she said, and smiled at me. Then she handed me a package of bacon, and a large yellow pepper. “So did you guys drive all the way here from New York this morning? I mean, did you do it all in one day?”

I unwrapped the bacon cover, started separating the strips. I was about to answer her that it had taken us just under four hours—not really so bad—when she started talking again.

“Because the time Josh and I did it, we hit traffic right around New Haven. Some sort of ten-rig truck accident. And it ended up taking us forever. We ended up missing the play that we were going to New York for in the first place. We ended up driving all the way there for a cheeseburger.”

I stopped moving, the bacon in my hand now midair. “Just the two of you?” I said before I could stop myself.

Damn. I felt bad as soon as the words were out. But hearing about the two of them planning something like a trip to New York City was like an enormous reminder—as if I needed another one—of how deep this situation with Elizabeth really ran. How involved it all was. He had taken her daughter to New York. He had come back here to take her home. To take them home. Upstairs, in the master bathroom, there was probably cream that only he used. There was probably an extra holder for his toothbrush.

Grace closed the refrigerator door and reached into the cabinet for cutting boards, two oversize knives. “It was a really good cheeseburger,” she said, almost apologetically.

I immediately tried to change my expression so she wouldn’t feel judged by me. The only person I was judging wasn’t even in this room, and it wasn’t even that I was judging him, exactly. Or maybe I was, a little. And maybe that wasn’t helping anything either.

“Look,” she said, all the equipment still in her hand. “Maybe we should make a rule that we don’t talk about either of them. Or else I’m going to say something else you don’t want to hear, and you’ll keep looking at me in a way that makes me realize you don’t know much of anything about me. That whatever Josh has told you, it hasn’t really been about me. And that will just make me feel bad.”

I nodded in agreement. I didn’t want a sixteen-year-old trying to make me feel better. And I certainly didn’t want her doing a better job of making sense of this situation than I was able to do.

“I think that’s a good idea,” I said.

Grace smiled. Then she handed me one of everything—cutting board, knife. I leaned up against the counter and began cutting—and tried to do exactly what she’d asked for. Each strip was the same size, sandwich-ready.

It seemed really important to have something to focus hard on because I knew when I looked outside the window, I’d see something I didn’t want to see: Josh and Elizabeth out in the distance, up on the hill. I couldn’t help it. I looked anyway. And there they were: sitting cross-legged across from each other. Close, but not touching.

Josh was leaning forward, listening intently to whatever Elizabeth was saying. The weirdest part, though, didn’t have anything to do with Elizabeth at all. It had to do with Josh. He looked older sitting there—or maybe older is not the best way to explain it. He looked like he was trying harder. There was just something missing in his face—that cocky look, that absence-ness, that, even if I couldn’t always name it, made me think he’d never fully grow up.

Meryl liked to joke that being with Josh was less like dating a doctor and more like having a child. She would do the laundry, most of the cleaning, most of the taking care of. But she never seemed to mind it—the opposite was true, if anything. Elizabeth, on the other hand, already had a real child to care for. And just watching Josh and Elizabeth now—watching how he was the one leaning in to her, how he was the one concentrating—I had an inkling that despite the messiness of this situation, Josh didn’t have that same dynamic with Elizabeth. That, here, he wanted to be the one to do the caretaking. And I couldn’t help but wonder if that was part of the reason that he was in his current situation—he both longed to be the type of partner Elizabeth would need, and feared he couldn’t be.

I turned toward Grace, who had started frying up the bacon. “How are you doing over there?” I asked.

“Good,” she said.

“Good,” I said.

When I’d left Matt, Josh was the one who went into the city and got the rest of my things: my clothes, my photo albums, my favorite books and movies. He was the one who brought everything to me in Rhode Island, helped me begin to settle in there. And he didn’t ask me any questions. Not then. He didn’t make any judgments. He just stayed with me until I told him it was okay for him to go. One way or the other, who was I to judge him now?

“Hey,” Grace said, “Could you grab me the peanut butter out of the fridge?” she said. “I need to grease the pan a little.”

“You can use peanut butter? In a frying pan?” I said.

“Well, we’re out of oil, and we’re not doing the weekly market run until tomorrow. So I’m thinking it’s either that or the non-sticky glue,” she said, shrugging.

“My choice?” I said.

She nodded. “That’s what I’m trying to say.”

After we finished preparing, Grace and I sat across from each other at the kitchen table. We had matching monster sandwiches on our plates, oversize scoops of sweet potato fries. Through large bites, Grace explained to me that even though she was only sixteen, she had already finished high school—Elizabeth had let her skip first and eighth grade—and was University of Rhode Island bound in the fall. She was going to study marine biology there. She was accepted into the honors program to do it. She was given a scholarship to do whatever she wanted.

“I’m just commuting for now, though,” she said. “I’m not sold yet on the whole college and academics thing.”

“Yeah, I can tell you must be pretty lousy at it.” I smiled at her.

She shrugged. “No, I guess I want to go. I just feel like I’m a better learner outside of school, you know? I know that sounds stupid, but I think I’ll learn more around here or heading to the ocean. But my mom says I need the degree, and I know she’s right.”

I picked up my sandwich, nodding, but also trying not to be too vehement about it. I didn’t want to undermine what Elizabeth had instilled in her, but I did totally understand what she was saying. I was someone who was pretty lousy at school. I did what I could to get by. But my goal was never really to learn anything that they wanted me to learn. In fact, as soon as I was supposed to learn something, I spent all my time trying to figure out something else. The immigration paper I was supposed to write in high school turned into my quest to understand elevator construction. My freshman-year foray into Pavlovian psychology turned into a quest to learn about ballroom dancing in China. I could only look into things well when someone wanted me looking at something else.