No One Could Have Guessed the Weather (2 page)

This was a quality she recognized in herself.

•   •   •

H
E LOVED THE SCHOOL
like he loved New York, immoderately, passionately. Not only was it free, it was great for what he kept calling his sons' “life education,” and even she had to admit that while the prep school in Notting Hill did do an annual charity auction for different countries in the sub-Saharan continent, its idea of diversity among its pupils was white South Africans and the children of the Japanese ambassador. But she gathered herself with her usual rallying cry.

“How will they get into Cambridge University if they never do Latin?”

One night he retaliated.
“What's the point of a degree from Cambridge University if you don't do anything with it?”

This was hurtful, it hit home, but she was glad. She prepared herself to sulk mightily and searched for the magazine articles about child development again, but he simply walked into the bathroom and locked the door. She stood outside.

“I'm like Bathsheba Everdene in
Far from the Madding Crowd
. ‘The stuff of which great men's mothers are made.'”

There was a loud chortle from the toilet that could be interpreted only as a diminution of her maternal skills. Max and Robbie joined in. She was horrified. For if she was not a Good Mother, what on earth had she been doing all this time? She accused him of encouraging a male conspiracy against her. He told her to lighten up. No argument ensued.
What was happening to him?

He was convinced that their new circumstances were good for them as a family. He expressed pleasure at the smallness of their living quarters, delighted at how she had cleaned the tiles round the shower with an old toothbrush and industrial bleach, and described her previous interior design style as “soulless.” They were mucking in together, getting to know each other. When she had stopped trying to decide which of these things was the strangest to say, she wondered whether he was writing articles in glossy magazines about the “Gift of
Time”
under a pseudonym.

Certainly they were seeing more of him. He invented strange ball games and had learned that a washing machine does the clothes and is different from the one that does dishes. He made funny jokes that didn't upset anyone. And although the Mothers at the School in London had predicted he would miss the “buzz” of his brilliant career, he didn't seem to miss the eighteen-hour workdays at all. Sometimes she felt she was going to bed every night with an inspirational speaker of the kind found on DVDs in the lobbies of health spas. And as she had always found
certainty
enormously erotic (she had had a secret two-week crush on George W. Bush in his leather Air Force jacket), she had to admit that their sex life had been transformed. In a good way. She still hated him, of course, but couldn't wait for the weekends.
What was happening to her?

Now that she had no help, she immediately jettisoned her previous sanctimonious rules about children, food, and television. She used to dread the hours between five and seven, but now she would pour herself a glass of wine, microwave a Whole Foods ready meal, and let the boys gobble it down in front of a PBS show set in California involving adaptations of classic novels narrated by and starring a dog. Struck by their rapt absorption one day, she came out of the bedroom, removed her earplugs, and sat between her sons, their warm heads leaning against her, and watched. The story was
Pride and Prejudice
, and once she got past the actress playing Elizabeth Bennet flirting with a terrier called Mr. Darcy and wondering what could be done with that in the adult section of the cable menu, she was hooked. The lessons of Miss Austen were learned during a beach-party social. She had no idea children's programming could be such fun.

In fact, she had entirely forgotten the pleasure of watching television, and now that she had no friends she could see loads of it: daytime drama, documentaries, dinosaur-versus-shark specials. And then she started reading newspapers, taking books out of the library, spotting posters of obscure bands and listening to their music on YouTube. In the evenings they talked to each other. Everything from U.S. economic policy to why Heart were fantastic and how difficult it is for women to rock.

He told her it was good to remember how much she used to love music. How glad he was that she had let it back into her life again, and before she could say anything, he reminded her of the first time they met, aged twenty-seven, at someone's party in a dark basement near Trafalgar Square, and how she had teased him about his record collection. He loved Queen. And Kool & the Gang. Had the twelve-inch disco version of “Rock the Boat” by Forrest (and had never heard of the Hues Corporation). When he finally admitted he couldn't see the point of The Smiths, she insisted he come back to her flat to listen to “Girlfriend in a Coma.” He was excited. He had spotted her several years before, at university, where she wore homemade goth outfits with a Groucho Marx badge pinned to her academic gown, but he had never spoken to her, although he wanted to. It had something to do with the rowing team making fun of her, but they were estate agents now, and he could go out with the pale, clever girl who didn't fit in if he could persuade her to have him.

He laughed and laughed at the memory, started singing and waving two wilted roses from the five-dollar bunch on the table as if they were gladioli. Suddenly, she felt the constriction in her throat again, the tears spurting, and announced that she wanted a Snickers bar desperately and would have to get it. Immediately. Once outside, she fought her way through the throng of pierced young people, and by the Australian Tuck Shop she sat down and wept.

For it was as if she had seen them together that first time. Yes. Really. As if it were that very moment. The two of them on her awful futon in Earls Court, snogging, for that was the only word for it, with her black-and-white collage on the wall. (Actually, wasn't that in her room at college? Maybe it was the poster for the experimental multimedia play she had written?) They had even brought an obligatory traffic cone up with them—her idea, of course. The song had brought it all back to her, but there was more to it than that, it was more than a historical record of an event that a date could tell you, it was a sensation, a feeling that wanted to be felt.

It was
love
.

Love for him, for her children, for this wonderful/terrible/boiling hot/freezing cold city that was going to save her. It had stalked her since her arrival, and now it had her, but she wasn't afraid anymore. She realized that New York, the enchanted island, with its tragedies and its comedies, its endings and its beginnings, will make you part of it whether you want it to or not.

Her throat relaxed, her tears stopped, and through her damp fingers she watched as life walked past her: in Uggs, in Jimmy Choos, barefoot. Then she looked down at her green sneakers and thought,
Maybe I'm not that old? Maybe I will go to the Bowery Ballroom and see Iron & Wine?
And the exhilaration of this idea caused her whole body to tremble. She closed her eyes and felt as if the street were shaking, glasses on tables rattling, and the wings of dirty pigeons flapping as they rose into the sky.

She went back upstairs without chocolate. He was peering at the laptop, amazed.

“Did you feel that?” he said. “There was an earthquake. Just a small one. Magnitude three-point-something, but it went on for twenty seconds.”

Oh,
she thought,
it wasn't me discovering the Real Meaning of Life.

“I didn't notice.”

He tried to smile, but he looked sad.

“You can say it,” she said. “I don't notice anything, do I?”

“Not really, no.”

She walked over and put her arms around him.

“Why didn't you leave me, Richard?”

“I was planning to, Lucy. But then we lost everything.”

There was a long pause. It was certainly dramatic. Then Lucy grinned.

“
Nearly everything
, you mean.”

T
he phone rang as Lucy was in the bathroom with the boys. She was laughing. Robbie had asked for ninety-nine rubber ducks for his sixth birthday, and somehow she had sourced eighty-seven little ones on Amazon and disinfected them before wrapping them up in groups of six, with three left over. The ducklings had arrived a fortnight ago, and every evening they named two more. Tonight they had been discussing which one should be called
“Ugly.”

As soon as Richard appeared in the doorway, she knew something bad had happened. He had that look on his face, but she smiled at him and was about to say “It's okay,” for if he had been fired again they would survive. He told her to come into the bedroom, asked her to sit down, and then said her mother had died.

Lucy's first thought was to ask “Was she on her own?” but of course she was. Her father was happily remarried to the indefatigable Paula, who ran four miles every day in a red tracksuit and drank nothing stronger than an elderflower spritzer, while Mother had lived bitter and alone for years, with only the Sky Arts channel and her drinks cabinet for company.

There was no need to ask what the cause of death was, but Lucy did anyway.

“Eva says she was drinking three or four bottles of wine a day. It was just a case of which one of her internal organs gave out first. I'm sorry, Lucy. That sounds awful, but it's what she said.”

Lucy nodded. Yes, it was just what Aunt Eva would say. Eva always prided herself on not sugar-coating.

“I have to go. Don't I?” she whispered, and Richard nodded. Eva had also not sugar-coated the fact that she did not consider anything beyond distributing the news her responsibility when her sister had two adult children, albeit in far-flung areas of the globe.

Now Lucy had another thought.

“Has anyone told George?”

Richard shook his head.

“Eva doesn't know what the time difference is with New Zealand, and she's too scared to ring him in case she wakes Cordelia up.”

Lucy sympathized. She had been on the receiving end of only one of her sister-in-law's expletive-ridden rants before, but once was enough.

“We should e-mail him. He'd prefer that, anyway.”

Richard said he would make her a cup of tea and then check out the flights. He would even e-mail George. Lucy looked up and said, “Just don't put
Mum dead
in the heading box,” and then she started laughing. Richard went over and held her as she cried. Max and Robbie appeared, dripping wet, in the room. She didn't tell them off for their slippery footprints on the floor, just hugged them.

Richard chivvied the boys out and, sensing something in the air, they changed into their pajamas without dissent and almost leapt into their beds. They were clearly determined to make it as hard as possible for Lucy to leave them. She lay back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. The blades of the fan were thick with gray dust. She walked into the kitchen, picked up a damp cloth, then stood on the bed and started wiping them. Richard made no mention of this as he walked in and took a weekend case out of the wardrobe.

The car would be coming in half an hour. She was going back to England, and she had lost her mother. It had been four hundred and eighty seconds since the phone had rung. She looked at Richard.

“Call the car company back,” she said. “Tell them I do not want the driver to have the radio on.”

He nodded, but she knew he didn't understand. She grabbed his hand.

“I don't want there to be a song that reminds me of what this feels like.”

•   •   •

S
INCE THE BOYS WERE BORN,
Lucy had sometimes wondered what it would be like to go to an airport without them, without feeling like a beast of burden under the mounds of stuff that seemed to be required for their happy transport. One day when they were both tiny she had received a call from a former work colleague of hers, a woman she had liked and admired who appeared to have given birth twice without any obvious derailment to her pre-child self. The woman had rung Lucy
“for a chat”
while waiting for a delayed flight in the business-class lounge at Heathrow.

Lucy, who had one child threatening to head-butt himself on the marble fireplace, the other gnawing on her right breast, somehow managed to grunt vague assents to the chatting while gripped with an overpowering sense of hatred that arose from her naked jealousy. Oblivious, the woman sipped her gin and tonic (Lucy actually heard the ice clinking) and opined on how much she enjoyed traveling these days, as she appreciated being on her own. Lucy had resolved never to speak to this person again and demolished her personality when she met up the next day with the mother's group, but today she knew exactly what the woman had meant.

Despite everything, she felt euphoric as she walked into the terminal building. She got a large cup of flavored coffee and a sheaf of magazines, including one that promised a “cellulite special” featuring the dimpled thighs of celebrities on their summer vacations.

“Lucy?” a female voice reverberated at her shoulder. “It's me. Julia Kirkland.”

Lucy said nothing.

“Our boys are in third grade together,” she added, although Lucy knew exactly who she was and suddenly became aware that, under the hat, Julia was beautiful.

Julia glanced at the pictures of orange-peel-like buttocks in Lucy's hand.

“What on earth are you buying that crap for?”

Lucy responded truthfully.

“I can buy whatever I want today. My mother just died.”

Julia didn't apologize or commiserate; she just put her arm around Lucy's shoulders. She was going to London herself, she said, a coproducer had come on board for a film she had written and he had some
ideas to share
with her (from her tone, it was clear that this was not a good thing). Maybe they were on the same flight? Lucy did not move, so Julia looked in her bag for her boarding card, grinned when she realized they were indeed traveling together, and deposited Lucy up at the checkout, telling her to buy her magazines and wait by the chewing-gum stand.

Then she disappeared. Lucy was obedient. Something strange was happening to her now. Every sensation around her was magnified. Lights were too bright, noises too loud, people's faces distorted. The strange exultation had vanished, and she felt she was trapped in a Primal Scream video. Into this psychedelic landscape loomed Julia, returning.

“I upgraded you with my air miles. We'll sit together at the front of the bus, but you don't have to talk unless you want to. You need to try and sleep.”

Julia took the plastic bag from Lucy. It was heavy. (“I can tell you bought the September issue,” she said.) Then she gripped her hand firmly and led her to Security where she knelt down on the floor and took off Lucy's shoes, and her belt and her silver bracelet. Then she organized a neck and shoulder massage for both of them, and when they eventually turned left instead of right to their seats on the airplane, she asked for extra pillows and blankets to make Lucy the most comfortable bed she could.

“You're very maternal, Julia,” Lucy said, curling onto her side by the window.

“Hush,” said Julia. “It's our secret. I don't want to lose my cult status up at that school.”

Lucy fell asleep almost immediately. It was a relief to escape from the vividness of her consciousness, and she did not surface until the cabin lights went on and breakfast was being served. Lucy, who had not traveled in business class for a long time, was amazed by the choice: fresh fruit, cereal, bacon. It was all a long way from the boulderlike scone perennially served on long-haul flights. She reminisced humorously about the scone with Julia. (“You don't even get the cream nowadays.”) Only then did she talk about her mother, who had died.

“The funny thing is,” she said, “I don't remember her drinking when I was little, though Dad says she did. Apparently she once put vodka into a plastic water bottle when she came on the school trip to the zoo, and my brother's friend Louis drank it by accident and got sick and the headmistress told my father she could never come again. No one talked about it, though, and as we grew older, she was like, you know, that Loudon Wainwright song ‘White Winos.'”

“Drinking
‘just to take the edge off
,'” said Julia softly
.

“Indeed,” said Lucy. “Eventually Dad and Paula, who was George's friend Louis's mum and who knew all about everything because of the vodka and vomiting at the zoo, ran off together. Dad sat George and I down and told us he couldn't take it anymore and he wanted us to come and live with them in West Sussex, but we knew we couldn't leave Mum. The week before she'd tripped over the front step and broken her wrist. But as George always reminds me, I only had another year of it. I left home when I was eighteen, and I never went back. Mum and George visited me in Cambridge occasionally, and we had a couple of disastrous holidays where I treated George to my views on how he should deal with her, but he was stuck with the mess and now he is
very angry
. He thinks that Dad and I abandoned him. And there's nothing I can say to that. Because we did.”

“You were a young woman, Lucy. If it was anyone's responsibility, it was your father's—”

“You're right, of course. But George was younger. Only fourteen then. And he was such a good son. He went to university nearby so he could live with her, and he stayed for a few years after that. But then he was offered a job in France, which he took, and then one in New Zealand, where he got married. He told me it was my turn. I'd have to visit Mum, check up on her. ‘It's only thirty-eight miles from London door to door,' he said; he'd driven it himself to check. I did it at first. Occasionally. Grudgingly. Almost always disastrously. So it became less and less, and over the last year I didn't . . . I rang once a week. Usually early in the morning so I could leave a message. Then we moved to New York, and truthfully, leaving it all behind was the only thing I was glad about. I've never met George's kids.”

The few times she had told people this they had all said
“How sad.”
Julia did not, for which Lucy would be eternally grateful.

“I have spent years in therapy and learned to comfort myself with the ‘there's no such thing as a perfect family' mantra . . . But . . . God, how I would hate history to repeat itself, you know, for Max and Robbie to despise me or Richard or each other. Yet the truth is, when you throw in all the anxiety disorders on Richard's side, my children come from a shark-infested gene pool.”

She paused.

“That just came to me, and it's not a bad image, is it?”

Julia nodded. “You're a born writer, Lucy. I won't steal it, I promise.”

The pilot's voice came over the loudspeaker. They were to fasten their seat belts as he was commencing the descent. Julia picked up the safety instructions from the pocket in front of her and quickly reread them.

Lucy stared at her.

“I always do this in case there's an emergency. I want to be the cool, heroic person. The one who knows the exit doors open inward.”

“Do they really?” said Lucy. “I never knew that.”

“You should. The survivors of plane crashes are the ones who read the instructions. If a panic started, smoke billowing through the cabin or something like that, most people, apparently, would trample over their children to get to the exit doors, but it wouldn't do them any good if they couldn't open them.”

“Good point,” said Lucy, thoughtfully. Others might have dismissed Julia's vision as overly pessimistic, but Lucy knew it was true. After all, when disaster struck hadn't her mother and father both trampled over her and George? The only difference was that her father had read the instructions on how to escape.

For a moment, Lucy wished for a small airplane accident, nothing too scary, a couple of seagulls plucked and diced by the front engine, say, just enough to force an emergency landing on the sea, a spot of floating around in the life rafts for the afternoon. Anything so she didn't have to go to a mortuary with Aunt Eva or choose an outfit for Mother to be buried in. The sudden thought of wrestling support stockings onto a dead body was so horrific that Lucy resolved to risk Julia's wrath and grab her handbag before they jumped down the inflatable shoot to ensure her passport ended up in the water. Perhaps, post-rescue, Immigration would have to put her in some holding facility for at least forty-eight hours.

Unfortunately, the plane landed without a hitch, and Julia did not get the opportunity to demonstrate her crisis-management skills until it turned out her bags had been left at JFK. She walked Lucy to customs, and they hugged. Then she turned and marched away, Lucy recognizing from the stiffening of Julia's back that all hell was about to break loose at the lost luggage desk. Bits of paper flew out of her bulging handbag like sparks, so Lucy ran forward to pick them up: old tissues, a Starbucks receipt, a subway ticket, and then a credit card slip.