Everything except the money,Anne would be quick to remind me. Mum received a handsome settlement in exchange for absenting herself from our lives.
“London,” I answer Amelia Blue finally, though now that she’s recognized me, she certainly already knows that. “I grew up in London.” The third oldest private residence in London, in fact. When the family’s not in town, they give tours to the public, pocketing the funds to put toward the property’s upkeep, though of course the money’s not nearly sufficient.
Amelia Blue’s small hand disappears into her enormous handbag and digs around until it emerges clutching a pink pack of gum. She offers me a piece, but I shake my head. Anne and I weren’t allowed to chew gum as children. For years I sought it out like other kids sneak cigarettes and alcohol. Gum was so gauche, soAmerican. (Cigarettes and alcohol, Anne and I were given freely.)
I press the heel of my hand into my left thigh.
We drive past one mansion after another. In summer, these houses would be hidden behind elaborate landscaping, but this time of year, one can see through bare hedges up long, winding driveways.
“It’s hard to imagine owning a home like this and only using it for a few weeks out of the year,” Amelia says, the artificially sweet scent of her breath filling the back seat of the car.
I wonder if she realizes that in addition to the property in London, my family owns homes in Windsor, Edinburgh, and the Scottish Highlands, each larger than the mansions we’re currently passing, and none lived in year-round. Technically, the family owns my apartment in Tribeca, too, though perhaps they’ve already sold it and the possibility of my return is a ruse Anne’s using to keep me in line.
“No one who can afford it would be here this time of year,” I point out. In the winter, they vacation in Switzerland or Aspen, the Caribbean or the South Pacific. Anne, her husband, and my nephews recently returned to London from Zermatt.
“Except for us,” Amelia Blue points out.
I pretend to sleep for the rest of the drive—through the village of Sag Harbor, across the bridge to North Haven, onto the ferry that will take us to Shelter Island. Would Amelia Blue be surprised to learn that a bloke from London knows his way around, or has she heard about the time I spent here last summer?
The ferry sways in Long Island Sound, the current so choppy that it’s hard to imagine that whoever named this particular body of water wasn’t being ironic. Anne said that I wouldn’t be able to run away from the recovery center like I did from Eton, from Choate, from Columbia. Where would I go, trapped on a small island surrounded by frigid water? She made my destination sound less like shelter than prison.
I find myself thinking,Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban.
Fiction,Anne would say disdainfully,a children’s story.
The ferry rubs against plastic bumpers on either side as it pulls into port, groaning as though this is the last place on earth it wants to be.
Okay then,I imagine myself parrying,therealcriminal Frank Morris escaped from therealAlcatraz.
Anne would point out that Frank Morris was a good deal more able-bodied than I am. Then she’d add,Did you just call yourself a criminal?pleased to have caught me in an accidental admission of guilt.
As though there’s any denying what I’ve done.
8Amelia Blue
Sitting next to Lord Edward is like being in the back seat with someone who isn’t quite real, a person designed in a lab or dreamed up in a fairy tale. His light-brown hair falls across his foreheadjust so. His gray-blue eyes are narrowed slightly so I can tell that despite his good manners he isn’t pleased to share his car with a stranger. After a few minutes in the car with me, he pretends (I think he’s pretending) to sleep—exaggeratedly slumping his shoulders (otherwise, he has perfect posture) and trying to stretch his legs, his feet wedged awkwardly beneath the driver’s seat. He looks more like a picture of a person than an actual human being. I wonder, if I touched him, whether his skin would be warm and pliant, or rubbery and smooth like an oversize Ken doll. If Georgia were here instead of me, she’d reach across the back seat to find out.
He didn’t seem to recognize me, though strangers usually don’t. A good thing, according to Georgia. Not because she cared about preserving my privacy (she used to say privacy was overrated) but because people might recognize her old nose on my face, and then what would she do? Didn’t I know that I was supposed to have inherited Dad’s cute little button nose? What did I think she’d married him for?
You married him for his nose?
I married him foryournose,Georgia corrected, as though a husband was no more than a series of features laid out for the picking.Because I didn’t want my daughter to have to do the things I did.
My body’s first failure, then: being born with the wrong nose.
I glance at Lord Edward, his eyes still closed. Like me, he was famous at birth, but the progress of his life was recorded not in grainypictures on D-list celebrity blogs but in posed official portraits. I know about his parents’ affairs and subsequent divorce when he was probably still in diapers. I know who designed his sister’s wedding dress (Georgia hated it) and which boarding school he was kicked out of and what he wore to his father’s second, and then third wedding. If he cared enough to search the internet, he could see what I wore to my father’s funeral when I was five years old, to my mother’s when I was seventeen.
The Range Rover wends down a narrow, gated driveway, finally stopping in front of a modern, glassy house. The driver opens the door on my side of the car.
“Ms. Harris,” he prompts. I guess this is my stop.
“Well, bye,” I say awkwardly, and Lord Edward opens his eyes so quickly that I’m certain he wasn’t really asleep. “Thanks for the lift.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he points out, gesturing to the driver.
Right. Add that to the list of things I’ve done incorrectly today. I bet evenGeorgiathanked the right person when she got here.
Actually, she probably didn’t thank anyone. She wasn’t the sort of parent who singsonged about manners and saying the magic word.
