“—you couldn’t bring yourself to,” says Viv.
He knows it’s the way a woman can be most profoundly hurt, “and maybe that’s my fucking problem,” he mutters, more to himself, maybe it’s the problem with all of us (whoever we are) when it comes to dealing with them (whoever. .), a softness, no killer instinct, mush for fortitude. “She didn’t have any problem telling me I have no sense of responsibility.”
“I know,” Viv says, and takes his hand.
~ ~ ~
The flight is half an hour late into London, eating into Viv’s connection time that’s precious to begin with. In the midst of the mindboggling bazaar of Heathrow’s duty-free shops, Viv has only the time to say, “I’ll email,” then, “I’ll call,” then she and Zan seem to realize they’ve no idea when they’ll next see each other and have spent most of what time there was bickering.
Viv grabs the kids goodbye then kisses Zan, and “O.K.” is all he can say. Shaking off the Benadryl stupor, Sheba begins to wail and Viv is slightly stricken. “It will be O.K.,” Zan says to Viv as he scoops up Sheba, nodding in a way that means, Go. Both will remember how quickly all this happened.
~ ~ ~
In her usual manner, Sheba begins making her presence known to London as soon as she, Zan and Parker are in the car that’s been arranged to take them from the airport. “I WANT MAMA!” she screams, and the driver jumps in his seat, eyes filling the rearview mirror. “How long is Viv going to be gone?” asks Parker.
Zan says, “A few days,” and turns his gaze outside in a way meant to preclude further explanation. It’s been more than twenty-five years since Zan last was in London, and as has become true with so many things, it doesn’t seem so long ago at all, and even as it doesn’t seem so long ago, it seems another lifetime, before Sheba, before Parker, before Viv. At the time he just had finished what would become his first published novel and still was more than a year from selling it and nearly three years from publication. Turning in the backseat of the car and craning his neck to take in this and that, he realizes he’s seeing less what he’s looking at than whatever memory it marks in some mental almanac that’s already begun to crumble.
~ ~ ~
The driver of the car clears his throat and ventures into something that Zan guesses he’s been considering since Heathrow. “Well done, then,” he says, “you Yanks.”
“Sorry?” says Zan.
“Well done,” the driver nods in the rearview mirror, a tentative smile, “the new top man. You did it!”
Zan looks at Parker, and Parker looks back at his father and shrugs. It’s a few seconds before Zan understands; everyone wants to talk politics these days. I should introduce this guy to the woman who harangued me on the plane, he thinks. See how “well done” she thinks it is. “Oh,” Zan says, “yeah, it’s. . kind of unbelievable, really.”
“Think he’ll turn it all around, then?” says the driver.
“Everyone hopes so. Almost everyone, anyway.” Zan realizes that, seeing Sheba, the driver assumes he knows how Zan voted: Is this cause for indignation? An assumption made solely on the basis of Sheba’s color? On the other hand, well, the assumption happens to be correct, if not the reasoning. “She was for the other guy,” Zan jokes to the rearview mirror, pointing at Sheba in his lap.
The driver laughs, maybe with some relief that he hasn’t given offense. After a pause he says, “Funny place, the States. Given the bloke you had before, I mean.”
“Yeah,” says Zan, “funny place.”
~ ~ ~
Politics, such as it is, doesn’t come up again until the car nears the hotel in Bloomsbury, where Zan and his children have been put up by the university. The driver has taken the long way to show off the city, turning south to come into London by way of Hammersmith, then cutting through St. John’s Wood to Regent’s Park where he slows and points to a distant, grand red-brick mansion with white columns. “Winfield House,” the driver says.
Zan says, “I don’t think that’s our hotel.”
The driver chortles. “Your ambassador lives there. Or used to,” he adds, suddenly a bit unsure.
“Really,” Zan says with all the enthusiasm that politeness can muster. He looks at his kids to get a more accurate reading of just how boring this is; Parker’s expression confirms that it’s somewhere around Def-Con Two. Sheba has fallen asleep again. The inventor of Benadryl, Zan thinks, should get the Nobel Peace Prize. “I heard your President Kennedy lived there, didn’t he?” says the driver. “That’s what someone told me.”
Zan realizes the driver might be correct. “I believe so. As a boy.”
The driver does a double-take. “He was ambassador as a boy?”
“No, of course not. He wasn’t ambassador, his father was ambassador.”
The driver gazes at the red mansion. “They say the new man is like him, then?”
“Who?”
“President Kennedy?”
“Uh,” Zan shrugs, “maybe.” He says, “The campaign was more like his brother’s.”
“Was he the one shot?” Parker says.
“Both of them were shot.”
“The heck?”
~ ~ ~
Zan is shocked by the tactlessness of the conversation, but it’s history that’s been tactless. “The father was ambassador,” he says, looking at the house, “before World War II. One of his sons became president. He was shot. A few years later his brother ran for president and he was shot too. Some people think the new president’s campaign was more like the brother’s.”
“Would the brother have become president,” says Parker as the driver starts up the car, “if he hadn’t been shot?”
“Hard to know. Some people think so.” Zan says, “I’m not so sure.”
The driver pulls out into traffic. “Funny place, the States.”
In the small Bloomsbury hotel, Zan and his children have a room on the third floor. The woman at the front desk says, “Are you Alexander Nordhoc, the author?” An international warrant must be out for my arrest, he thinks. WORLD’S MOST OBSCURE AUTHOR FLEES DEBT COLLECTORS reads the headline in his mind, INTERPOL ON THE HUNT. On their first day the father and children wander the neighborhood, submitting to fish and chips at a corner stand; twice Zan yanks Sheba from the path of oncoming taxis. “We’re not in the canyon,” he admonishes the kids, “this is a big city, a real city. Not like L.A.”
~ ~ ~
That night in exhaustion Zan and Parker try to sleep, only to pay the price for all the peace Benadryl bought on the flight over. Sheba is fully awake and on California time. The next day Zan drags them onto a double-decker bus, the four-year-old snarling, “Out of my way, old man,” and then a boat that sails up the Thames, finally crossing Millennium Bridge to ride one of the glass pods of the Eye, the revolving wheel on the river’s other side. That night in the hotel, Zan’s laptop finally hitches a ride on some unsuspecting wireless network nearby to find an email from Viv. Reading it to the kids, he tries to feign cheer.