London Is the Best City in America (13 page)

And it did something to me—warmed my heart a little. Because I could see it for a second, even if I felt conflicted about admitting it. It wasn’t about which woman Josh ultimately chose—it was about which
Josh
Josh chose. If it were a version closer to this one, that would make all the difference.

I wasn’t sure what to do now. Elizabeth, who had been watching them also for a minute, had left the room. And, so, I followed her out into the living room, where she was sitting on the couch. I sat down next to her, tentatively at first, right on the couch’s edge. There had been none of the
this is Elizabeth, this is Emmy
stuff—not really—and now didn’t seem like the time. It didn’t seem like a time to make small talk for that matter either, and I was fairly certain Elizabeth would have been happy to sit there in silence, but I wasn’t evolved enough for that yet.

“So, I think your daughter’s great,” I said. “She’s your daughter. So I’m sure you know that. Well obviously you know she’s your daughter, but you probably also know she’s great . . .”

“She likes you too,” she said. “I can tell.”

“You think so? That’s nice to hear.” And it was. It was just weird how that could happen—how you could know someone for so little time, but feel like you’ve gotten to know that person in the most important ways. A version of Josh’s five-minutes theory, I imagined. Kind of how you could know someone forever and never really know him or her at all: time not getting to be the only measure anymore of how well you paid attention.

I looked down at my legs, tried smoothing out my wrinkling dress over them.

Then Elizabeth looked over at me. “So, Josh says you are working on a film? About fishermen’s wives, right?”

“That’s right.”

“He says you’re having a little trouble finishing.”

I made myself look at her. “You could say that.”

“Grace and I switched fortune cookies at dinner the other night, because hers said, ‘You can’t finish the things you weren’t supposed to start.’ She was so freaked out that we kept trying to think about all the examples of that not being true. Different relationships or jobs or even movies we’d only sat through half of. A hundred things. But even though I don’t usually take advice from fortune cookies, I have to say, the more we were trying to prove the argument false, the more I started to think there might be some truth to it.”

I didn’t say anything. But inside, I was thinking: This is a reason to dislike her. Isn’t that what I wanted? I had just met her, and who’d asked her to philosophize about my life? Only, looking at her, I couldn’t deny that she didn’t seem to be trying to preach to me. She seemed to genuinely want to help me figure something out. Something about where to go from here.

“How far along are you?” she asked.

I tilted my head from side to side. “Not far enough that I feel like I’m really getting anywhere,” I said. “But too far along to stop.”

She smiled again, the same affectionate smile she had given me outside before, as though she could tell this was the first hard thing I’d said to her. The first thing that was solid. It made the truth seem kinder.

“So the film’s not the reason then?” she said. “That you’re staying in Narragansett?”

I started messing with my dress again, thinking about how to answer that. I could tell her that maybe I was staying in Narragansett because it was so nice there. That would be something she could understand, wanting to live somewhere beautiful. Only, that didn’t sound anything like the truth. “I don’t really know,” I said.

She looked at me and didn’t say anything, but it made me stop fiddling, made me feel comfortable, like I didn’t need to be nervous with her. Like she already knew me. And I couldn’t help but think that maybe she already loved me a little because she loved Josh so much. And maybe I already needed to love her for the same reason.

“I know it’s not my place,” she said. “But be nice to your brother this weekend. You might feel mad at him about all this, but be mad next week. Or the next week after that too, even. This weekend, just try and take care of him a little. He’ll need it from you.”

“Okay.” I said. Then I said something that surprised myself. “Is that when you’re going to be mad at him?”

“I don’t think you get to be mad at someone unless they come through for you. I don’t think you have that luxury. I think you think you can be mad, but really you’re just doing something else.”

“What’s that?”

“Waiting.”

I looked at her, hoping she would give away what she was feeling, but she didn’t seem to be giving too much of anything away. I did see this look in her eyes though, a confident look, like she knew how all of this was going to turn out, like she’d always known, and it was just a matter of time until Josh caught up. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was what love was—believing that someone was going to come through, in the end, and that it would still count.

Josh walked back in, and we both stood up as if he had caught us in the middle of something. Grace snuck past Josh in the kitchen doorway and went to stand by her mother. I figured that this was my clue to go and stand next to Josh, but I didn’t much feel like it. I wanted to stay where I was. I wanted to have dinner here. I wanted to go swimming in the lake. Okay, well, maybe I didn’t want to go swimming in the lake, but it was looking a whole lot better than my alternative. But Josh gave me a look like it was time to get going, and so I nodded my head in agreement, because really, what other choice did I have?

“I’ll talk to you later,” he said, turning to Elizabeth, who didn’t really make a move toward him from where we were standing.

“All right,” she said. If I was right, though, and I thought I was, she said it in a way as though she didn’t believe him. Or maybe it wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, but more that talking later wasn’t the point. The point had already passed, today, with him
not
doing something, and they both knew it. This was just what you did afterward.

I started to follow Josh outside, but then I turned back around. I turned back around to face them. “I can’t believe how great it is here,” I said. “I really love it. Maybe more than I’ve ever loved any place in my whole life.”

Of course I didn’t say this out loud—only in my head. Out loud, I still couldn’t seem to say a thing.

Elizabeth did it for me.

“It was good to meet you, Emmy,” she said.

“It was good to meet you,” I said.

Then I turned and looked at Grace. I wanted to run over and hug her, tell her again that she was more than welcome to take the drive forty miles south, and I’d show her around URI. That I’d get some people if it would make her come quicker. I wanted to tell her that even though I’d just met her, I so much wanted to know how things were going to turn out for her—with her boyfriend, with school, with everything. I wanted to know it, even at the very moment it was happening.

But when she looked up and met my eyes, she gave me the hang-loose sign—thumb out, pinky up—and this seemed more right.

So I hang-loosed her back, like it was something I knew how to do, and let that be my good-bye.

In the car, Josh wouldn’t talk.

He gave me the keys and got in the passenger side, reclining the seat all the way back. I took a right back onto the dirt road and then the two lefts off of the property, heading toward the highway. Everything was still a little smoky, and hidden in the heat. I didn’t look in the rearview mirror or over toward Josh, even once. Meanwhile, the blinker—my broken blinker—was acting up again and nonstop blinking again and making me crazy.

“You want to turn that off?” he said, irritated.

“I am trying here,” I said, gripping the steering wheel more than a little too tight, making nothing happen.

The interstate was creeping up on our right. I was going to turn onto it. For better or worse, I was going to move us farther and farther away from this place. I was going to have to go home and promise our mother that I hadn’t let him do anything bad. I was going to have to take a shower. I kept waiting for Josh to stop me, to say something. But he didn’t. Once I merged on—once all that was ahead of us was interstate—I ended up being the one to break the silence.

“Did you have sex with her today?” I said.

“What?” He shook his head, disgusted. “What does that even have to do with anything, Emmy?”

“Well, I want to know, Josh,” I said. But the truth was, I didn’t want to know if that happened. Not really. It was just the only thing I could think of that was concrete, certain, that might give me a clue as to what he was going to do.

He kept his eyes window-side. “No.”

“No, you didn’t? Or no, you’re not going to answer me?”

“Emmy, I need a minute here, okay? I need like sixty seconds to pull myself together.”

I wanted to tell him he had 180 miles worth of seconds to do that, but then he’d be put in a position to answer much harsher critics than me. And, more importantly, if he didn’t talk to me now, he might not talk at all. He might just let this go, too, because there wouldn’t be enough time in his mind to do anything else.

“Look,” I said, “when this is all said and done, I’ll have driven eight hours with you today, and met two really interesting people, who obviously mean a great deal to you. Who seem to make you a different you, if that makes any sense. And now I have to go back to Scarsdale and deal with all of this, too, so I’d like it if you’d let me know where your head is at. Whenever you’re ready.”

“You don’t want to hear me right now,” he said. “You just want to be mad at whatever I say. And maybe you should be. Maybe it was wrong to ask you to come today. But can you please just focus on getting us home in time for tonight’s dinner?”

I started to ask him if he was still planning on going to tonight’s dinner—as if that cemented anything either way. But before I did, before we could get into it, one way or another, I saw police sirens flashing behind us. I looked back down at my dashboard. I was barely five miles over the speed limit. I was barely even three.

“That can’t be for us,” I said.

Only it was becoming more apparent that it was absolutely for us. The state trooper was on our tail, still flashing, the sirens making their noise now, waiting for us to respond.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me with this,” Josh said, looking in the rearview mirror.

Then he turned and shot me a dirty look.

“What?” I said, pulling over onto the divider. “This isn’t my fault.”

“Am I the one driving?” he said. “Am I?”

I shook my head, slowly rolling down my window. On the other side was one of the oldest police officers in the history of any police force, ever. He had a curled white mustache and was wearing a hearing aid and a police officer’s cap—not to mention a pair of old-school Ray-Ban sunglasses on a cord around his neck. He was a few ten-minute steps shy of a walker.

“I’m Officer Z,” he said, pointing at the nametag on his jacket that said OFFICER Z in block-brown letters. “I’m going to need all your information, miss.”

Josh leaned across me, handing my registration over. “Can you tell us why we were stopped, Officer?”

I gave him my license. I could see Z reading over it carefully, and I knew he was doing the math in his head. Was I even old enough to drive? Out here on the highway?

“Excuse me,” Z said, picking up his walkie-talkie, which had gone from full-fledged static to mumbled talking.

I took the opportunity of the distraction to turn toward Josh and say something to him. But he stopped me with his hand. “Just,” he said. “Don’t.”

Z put his walkie-talkie away and returned his attention to us. “Do you realize,” he said, handing the license back to me, “that your blinker is still blinking? And has been for the last several miles?”

“I know, officer,” I said. “I’m sorry. My brother and I will get it fixed as soon as we get home.”

“Where’s home, dear?” Z said.

“New York.”

Josh closed his eyes and slowly began shaking his head.

“There will be no driving to New York in this automobile,” he said. “That would be a considerable hazard.”

I turned toward Josh, who I was sure by this point was having visions of us wandering down the highway, calling Berringer and waiting the three hours and change for him to come and get us.

Which was when it occurred to me that this would only ever happen today—this nonsense with Officer Z, being pulled over for this blinker crap—that the universe only delivered up moments like this in the
one
moment when what you needed was the exact opposite.

“Oh, I’m sorry, officer,” I said. “Did I say New York? I meant the next exit. Home is the next exit. See, I’m in graduate school near here at the University of Rhode Island. I’m not driving to New York right now. No, sir. I just meant that we’re not going to get the blinker good and properly fixed until we get home. But we’re staying in Rhode Island tonight. We’re staying in Rhode Island for the whole week, in fact. I promise. We’re off at the next exit.”

Z looked skeptical, but slowly he handed me back my papers. “I’m going to have to escort you to there, I’m afraid. Just to make sure that no one’s feeling inclined to take any chances.”

“That would be good, Officer,” I said. “More than good. Great.”

Z started to walk away, but then—just as I was about to tell Josh that we’d get back on the Interstate on an exit three exits away from here, less than twenty minutes away—Officer Z turned back around.

“Don’t let me catch you on the interstate further down the line,” he said. “I have friends all along the way. Believe you me, you’ll be sorry if that happens.”

Then he offered a final nod and began the inevitably disheartening walk back to his automobile. Josh was taking maps out of the glove compartment.

“Now what?” I said.

“Now,” he said, picking one of the maps out of the bunch on the floor, “I hope you know some back roads.”

“Back roads? Josh, we’ll never make it home in time that way. We barely were going to make it in time taking 95.”

He didn’t even answer me, shaking his head fiercely, eyes scouring the map.