“Probably rock candy. But it’s pretty bad for your teeth,” said Annie.
What, she wondered, was her immediate ambition here? Did she want to become the wanton lover of a rocker, or a home-care nurse? Because she suspected that the two careers were incompatible.
“Thanks,” said Tucker. “I’ll watch out for that.”
She looked at him, to see if there was anything in his expression other than impatience and sarcasm. There wasn’t.
The elevator pinged, and the door opened. Tucker and Jackson strode out onto the street, and immediately they started trying to hail cabs.
“How do you know when they’re busy? I can’t remember,” said Tucker.
“The yellow lights.”
“Which yellow lights?”
“You can’t see it because they’re all busy. Tucker, listen…”
“Yellow light, Dad!”
“Cool.”
The cab pulled over, and Tucker and Jackson got in.
“Which railway station do we need?”
“King’s Cross. But…”
Tucker gave the cabdriver complicated instructions involving a west London address, which Annie presumed was Lizzie’s place, and a long journey back across town to the station. She was pretty sure they’d need to stop at an ATM. He had no money and he’d be shocked by the fare.
“You coming with us?” said Tucker, as he tugged on the door handle of the cab. It was, of course, a rhetorical question, and she was tempted to decline the invitation, just to see what he said. She jumped in.
“We have to get our luggage from Lizzie’s place first. Do you know the train schedule?”
“We’ll miss the next one. But probably we’ll only have to wait half an hour or so for the one after.”
“Time for a comic book, a cup of coffee… I don’t know if I’ve ever been on an English train.”
“Yes,” said Tucker mildly. “Annie?”
“Are you okay?”
“I feel fine.”
“I mean, are you allowed to just walk out of hospital without telling anybody?”
“How do you know I haven’t told anybody?”
“I’m just guessing. From the speed at which we left the hospital.”
“I said good-bye to a couple people.”
“Who?”
“You know. Friends I’ve made in there. Hey, is that the Royal Albert Hall?”
She ignored him. He shrugged.
“Have you still got any balloons inside you? Because you won’t find anyone to take those out in Gooleness.”
This wasn’t turning out right. She was talking to him as if she were his mother—if, that is, he’d been born somewhere in Yorkshire or Lancashire in the 1950s, to parents who ran a boardinghouse. She could almost hear the bare linoleum and the boiled liver in her voice.
“No. I told you. I might have some little vent thing left in there. But it won’t bother you.”
“Well, it will bother me if you keel over and snuff it.”
“What does ‘keel over and snuff it’ mean, Dad?”
“Doesn’t mean anything. English crap. We don’t have to come and stay, okay? If you’re uncomfortable, just drop us off at a hotel somewhere.”
“Have you seen all your family?” If she could just get through her list of questions, she would turn herself into a host—a good one, welcoming and worldly and obliging.
“Yep,” said Tucker. “We had a jolly old tea party yesterday afternoon. Everyone’s fine, everyone got on, all good. My work there is done.”
Annie tried to catch Jackson’s eye, but the boy was staring out of the taxi window with a suspicious intensity. She didn’t know him, but it seemed to her that he was trying not to look at her.
She sighed. “Okay, then.” She had done her part. She had checked on his health, and she had checked on whether he had fulfilled his paternal responsibilities. She couldn’t refuse to believe him. And she didn’t want to do that anyway.
Jackson was happy enough on the train, mostly because he was taking a crash course in English sweets; he was allowed to go to the cafe car whenever he felt like it. He came back with “pastilles” and “biscuits” and “crisps,” and he rolled the exotic words around his mouth as if they were Italian wines. Tucker, meanwhile, was sipping litigiously hot tea from a Styrofoam cup and watching the little town houses roll out in front of him. It was all very flat out there, and the sky was full of ill-tempered dark gray swirls.
“So what is there to do in your town?”
“Do?” And then she laughed. “Sorry. The combination of Gooleness and an active verb took me by surprise.”
“We won’t be staying long, anyway.”
“Just until your children have given up on you and started traveling the thousands of miles back home.”
“Ouch.”
“I’m sorry.” And she was. Where was this disapproval coming from, all of a sudden? Wasn’t his checkered past half the attraction? What was the point of becoming attracted to a rock musician, if she wanted him to behave like a librarian?
“How was Grace, anyway?”
Jackson flashed his father a look, and Annie caught it, before examining it and lobbing it along to its intended recipient.
“Yeah, Gracie’s doing good. Living in Paris with some guy. Studying to, to be something.”
“I know you didn’t see her.” Shut
“I did. Didn’t I, Jacko?”
“You did, Dad, yeah. I saw you.”
“You saw him seeing her?”
“Yeah. I was watching all the time he was looking at her and talking to her.”
“You’re a little fibber, and you’re a big fibber.”
Neither of them said anything. Maybe they had no idea what a fibber was.
“Why that one?”
“Which one?”
“Why Grace?”
“Why Grace what?”
“How come you don’t mind seeing the others, but she scares you?”
“She doesn’t scare me. Why would she scare me?”
Maybe Duncan should be sitting on the train listening to this stuff. She knew already that Duncan would give an eye and several internal organs to be sitting on the train listening to this stuff; she meant that it would do him good to be here, that his obsession with this man would dwindle away, perhaps to nothing. Any relationship, it seemed to her, was reduced by proximity; you couldn’t be awestruck by someone sipping British Rail tea while he lied shamelessly about his relationship with his own daughter. In her case, it had taken about three minutes for passionate admiration and dreamy speculation to be replaced by a nervous, naggingly maternal disapproval. And that, it seemed to her, was a pretty good description of how some of her married female friends felt, some of the time. She had married Tucker somewhere between the hospital room and the taxi.
“I don’t know why she would scare you,” said Annie. “But she does.”
