So I got introduced to Charlotte again—she’s red-haired, I said that, and short, and everyone calls her Charlie, and she looked as though she’d been minding other people’s children all her life. And I shook hands with Tony, and I noticed he had sort of brownish-greenish eyes and was trying to grow a mustache, and I remember thinking—and Meena says I should absolutely not put this in—all I could think was, “Well, is it incest if he’s your stepbrother?” That’s the truth, and it goes in, and I’ll worry some other time about what Tony might think if he reads this. Dancers don’t read a lot, that’s one good thing.

That’s it for Heathrow, because it all starts getting hazy around this point. I was really tired, and really upset about Mister Cat, and maybe that’s why I just sort of sleepwalked the rest of the way. Because the next thing I remember is waking up in the London hotel bed, with Sally bending over me asking if I’d like some tea to start our new life with. She knows I hate tea—I still do, after six years in England—but that’s exactly Sally for you, she never gives up, she never quits on anything. I just went back to sleep. Sometimes that’s the best thing you can do with my mother.

Five

We stayed in London five days, with Sally and me sharing a room in a bed-and-breakfast place off Russell Square, and Evan bunking in at Charlie’s with Tony and Julian. I liked that part, once I got over being tired, and as long as I could make myself believe that we were just being tourists, summer people, people who go home. But all I had to do was see real tourists—sometimes all it took was a plane going overhead—and everybody says I’d turn between one minute and the next into a sullen little hemorrhoid with feet. And I know I did. I meant to.

Julian took me over from day one. It didn’t matter how I acted—he was going to show me everything in London that he liked—later for the National Theatre and the Tate Gallery and the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. And practically everything Julian liked was American-style stuff—the Pizza Pie Factory in Mayfair, the video arcades around Earl’s Court, the Taco Bell in Soho (you can’t buy Julian for Mexican food, but you can definitely rent him). Which was all fine with me, you couldn’t make anything too American for me. I kept trying to make England not be there all around me, and Julian, ten years old, was the only one who seemed to understand, even though he didn’t really. Maybe that’s why we’re still vatos, as Marta would say—still buddies—even though he’s sixteen now, and completely impossible.

I liked London right off, though I wasn’t going to admit it for one minute. It did feel like New York—tense and crazy, but in a slower sort of way—and it looked just familiar enough to be exciting. (You don’t realize how many movies you’ve seen about a city until you’re actually in it, recognizing all kinds of places you haven’t been to.) The only thing I didn’t like was the driving on the left—it made my stomach feel weird when Charlie was zipping us around London. One time, crossing the street, I almost got totally creamed by a bus I never saw. Tony snatched me back at the last minute, and Julian told him that now he’d have to be responsible for me forever, the way the Chinese or someone believe. Poor Tony.

Sally kept asking me every night, after the others had gone back to Charlie’s flat, if I liked England any better now. And every night I’d say, “I like London. I really wish we could stay in London, if we have to be here.” And then Sally’d get tears in her eyes and say something like, “Baby, I know, but you’ll love Dorset, I promise. If you’ll just give it a little time, just not make up your mind before we even get there. Can you do that, darling?” I didn’t want to lie to her, but I didn’t really want her to be miserable—only at the same time I really did—so I’d usually mumble something about wanting to see Mister Cat. Which wasn’t lying, and at least that way we’d both get to sleep.

I’m going to skip over where we went and what we saw. Anything you can see in London in five days, just figure we looked at it. Probably had lunch there, too—it seemed like we were always eating, that first time in London. When we weren’t running to catch the tour bus.

Julian mostly stayed with Charlie those days, unless Evan swore on a Bible we’d hit Taco Bell, but Tony came along with us now and then, especially if it was anything to do with dance, or seeing a play, or anything with music. We had that much in common anyway, but we didn’t get to talk about it a lot, what with Sally and Evan both working so hard at being stepparents. Sally kept asking Tony about his school and his grades, and about his studying dance, and how he thought he’d like living in Dorset. I got the feeling early on that he felt more or less the same as I did, but I was trying not to look straight at him, because my damn skin, that Sally had told me the English air would be great for, started acting up as soon as we arrived. Tony answered all the questions, talking softly and not volunteering a thing. He’s really shy, even now—Julian’s the least shy person in the whole world, but Tony definitely makes up for him.

But he got me alone once, when we were wandering around the rose garden in Regent’s Park and Evan and Sally had gotten a little way ahead. He took my arm and pulled me over to a rosebush, so we’d seem to be talking about it, and he said, “Look here, Jennifer, I do wish you’d try to remember, this is every bit as hard and—and strange—for Julian and me as it is for you.” He didn’t have Julian’s cute croaky baritone, but his voice was so intense you could have struck a match on it. He said, “We never asked to have our dad and mum split up and her marry a Frenchman and go off to live with him and his kids in Bordeaux. And we didn’t exactly ask to have him run off to the States and come back with your mother and you, and just whisk everybody right out of London to some bloody farm in Dorset.” He was trying to keep cool, but he doesn’t do cool much better than I do, and I could feel his hand trembling on my arm. He asked, “Do you understand me, Jennifer?”

“Don’t call me Jennifer,” I said. “I’m Jenny. And yeah, I know it’s all really tough for you, and I’m really sorry, but at least you’re still in your own damn country. You didn’t have to leave everything that ever meant anything to you and start your whole life all over in someplace where you don’t belong and never wanted to be in the first place. And I want my cat,” and with that I just started crying. I told you I’m not a big crier, but when it does happen it’s always like that, without warning.

Tony did a nice thing then. He moved around me so Evan and Sally couldn’t see me, and he gave me his big blue, perfectly folded handkerchief to bawl into. I never cry long, but I make it up in volume. That handkerchief was absolutely soaked by the time he got it back.

He never said anything dumb like “Don’t cry.” He waited until I’d finished, and then he just said, “They’re waving, we’d better be walking on.” And that’s what we did, with him talking away to me about however many kinds of football they play in Great Britain as we came up with Sally and Evan. Sally stared hard at me for a moment, but I’d been having allergies, and my nose and eyes were red half the time anyway. So we all walked on through Regent’s Park, and Tony explained to me what a googly is in cricket. Cricket is the only game duller than baseball, because it lasts longer, but that was another nice thing.

Sally and Evan got married the day before we left for Dorset. It was a civil ceremony in a judge’s chambers, over in ten minutes, with just Charlie and a court clerk for the witnesses. Bang-bangbang, kiss the bride, sign here, best wishes, long and happy life, off to dinner, absolutely painless—and that fast I had a stepfather and two stepbrothers. I didn’t speak to anybody all day, but nobody noticed that, not even Sally.