After school Mom and I had a little talk in her office. The weekend Trib was on her desk. She tapped the JUST HOW SAFE ARE THE LEAFY SUBURBS headline.
“Why do I somehow see you mixed up in this?” she said.
“Mom, I am. I’m in a lunch foursome with Little Lord Calthorpe. He’s not a lord till his daddy pops his clogs or hits a reef, but that’s what everybody calls him. He’s the Honourable Hilary Evelyn Calthorpe, but you never say it.”
Mom watched my mouth, trying to decode what was coming out.
“You’re in a lunch foursome?” Mom said. “Who are they?”
“Hilary, Esther Wilhelm, Lynn, me.”
“Lynn who?”
“The former Lynette. New school, new name. She was never really a Lynette.”
Mom looked at me thoughtfully. “A lunch foursome. Where is my little boy? You’ll be playing bridge next.”
“Mom, it could happen. Golf, even. I could tee off at any time. And we can eat in the food court since Reginald has cleared out the criminal element. It’s suddenly the hottest place in town. You can’t get a table.
“Mom, we’re feeling a lot better with British muscle on the case.”
“I wish I did,” she said. “Sit down, Archer. I’d like to run a concern past you. The British Consulate people believe that the school my taxes pay for is too dangerous to attend without a . . . hit man.”
“Basically,” I said. “Also Hilary’s in a wheelchair. He was differently abled by an Uber car because we drive on the wrong side of the road.”
Again, Mom watched my mouth.
“But they’ll probably keep Reginald on even after Hilary’s back on his feet. Reginald has diplomatic immunity. You know what that is, Mom? He could break you in half, and they couldn’t touch him.”
Mom sighed. “Archer, spell this out for me as simply as you can. Why can’t the school protect its own students with its own resources?”
“That’s easy. Bullies have parents too, and schools don’t have diplomatic immunity.”
Mom searched the ceiling in her thoughtful way. “I suppose when you get to high school, Archer, you won’t tell me a thing about it.”
“Not a word, Mom. My secrets will be safe from you. I’ll let you know when graduation is, so you can come. But not a peep out of me till then.”
“All things considered,” Mom said, “I think that’ll be the best way.” Then she went into what she really wanted to talk about. “Speaking of high school,” she said, so it was going to be about Holly.
“Mom, I haven’t seen Holly in days.”
“Neither has the school,” she said. “I got an actual call from them, not an e-mail. She’s checked out of school half the time for college visits. She and Janie Clarkson seem to be hitting the open road in the Clarksons’ Lexus, making lightning raids on colleges, collecting admissions forms.”
College? Holly?
“How can Holly go to college? Look at her record.”
“Well, I know she failed chemistry. I thought they ought to let her repeat it.”
“Mom, she blew up the lab. You had to pay for the windows. Some of her classmates still don’t have their eyebrows back.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” Mom said, and right then the front door banged downstairs. Holly was home from high school, or somewhere.
“Is Uncle Paul coming for dinner tonight?”
“I believe so,” Mom said.
“Is Mr. McLeod coming with him?”
“Apparently not. I didn’t like to ask.”
“Mom, I hope Uncle Paul doesn’t mess this up, with Mr. McLeod. You can wait too long, you know, and all the good ones are gone.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Lynn Stanley. But it’ll work out, Mom. Dad and I are on the case.”
“You? Your dad?” Now Mom looked really worried.
• • •
According to Hilary, the greatest talent the English have is for “administering less well-organized peoples.”
And that would be us. At lunch he’d say to Esther, “Sit tall, Esther. Throw back those shoulders. Be as tall as you can be. Don’t crouch. It’s too late to be short.”
I figured her best chance was a basketball scholarship to the U of I when the time came. But dribbling down the court in big shoes wouldn’t be Hilary’s idea.
“You’re not jealous, are you?” I asked Lynn. “Hilary and Esther?”
“No, you buffoon,” she said. “He’s prepubescent, and she’s seven feet tall and weighs twelve pounds. Give me a break.”
Besides, his best talent was for administering the unorganized, so we all had a turn. He didn’t play favorites.
But I don’t care what Lynn said; she watched Hilary like a hawk. She missed one thing, though. We thought he lived in the consulate on Michigan Avenue and came out from Chicago every morning. Then somehow we learned he didn’t.
“Live in the consulate?” Up went his eyebrows. “That would be rather like living over the shop, wouldn’t it?”
“Queen Elizabeth lives over the shop, doesn’t she?” said Lynn. “More or less? Of course it’s Buckingham Palace.”
“Cousin Elizabeth? Yes, I suppose she does, really.”
Cousin Elizabeth?
“You’re a cousin of the Queen of England?”
“Lots of people are. She has cousins by the dozens. And we’re twice married into the Harewood family, who would be her aunt Mary’s people.”
Lynn made a quick note on a food court napkin:
Google Harewood fam.
“So you could end up on the throne?” we asked.
“I shouldn’t think so,” Hilary said. “I’m ninety-second in line.”
But that didn’t explain where he lived.
“Here in this town,” he said. “Why would I be driven all the way out here from Chicago?”
“Because we’re the center of the universe?”
“Hardly,” said Hilary. “We’re used to rather large houses, so Lady Christobel is renting one nearby. It belonged to a couple now divorced, I believe. The Showalters?”
“Noooo,” we said. I saw it all again in my mind. The marble floors, the chandelier gleaming on Jackson Showalter’s skinned head.
“We’re cursed,” Lynn said. “We’re doomed. We’ll never be free of those people, and that includes Natalie.”
• • •
We told Hilary a few things. All he’d noticed about Ms. Roebuck was that she was the worst-dressed teacher in the system.
“Maybe she’s paying off a college loan,” Lynn said, but it was worse than that.
What I thought was awesome about Ms. Roebuck was her allergy to the computer. She could set it off by walking by it, as we know. And the printer. And forget scanning.
This reminded Hilary of a chauffeur his family had once. “He was allergic to the steering column of the car. He once drove Lord Horace’s Jag into the fountains of Trafalgar Square with all my brothers and sisters in it.”
“We thought you were an only child,” we said.
“I am now,” said Hilary.
And one time Lynn said, “Archer has a gay uncle.”
“Who doesn’t?” said Hilary.
“It’s his uncle Paul, and he’s been seeing our teacher from last year, Mr. McLeod,” Lynn said. “The two best-looking guys in, like, Illinois.”
“Wow, wow, wow,” Esther said out of the blue, which made Hilary look.
“Archer’s worried their relationship isn’t going anywhere.”
“I’m not worried,” I said. “Don’t put words in my mouth, Lynn. It is what it is and it’ll work or it—”
“He’s worried,” Lynn said.
And now it must be October, because all around us in the food court eighth graders were taping up posters and black and orange balloons and artificial fangs. It was all about the school Halloween party, a big Memorial Middle tradition.
In elementary school, Halloween wasn’t that big a deal. Cookies in shapes, a paper cup of apple juice, and make your own mask. But here it’s an event: in the evening with music, dancing if you can, major costumes.
The first grown-up party of life.
Hilary may have noticed all the orange and black going up around us. Or not. He said to Esther, “Esther, you have to stop wearing that backpack. It’s giving you a case of Dowager’s Hump. Borrow a purse from your mother. There’s no earthly need to carry all those books around. You never open them.”
Then lunch was over. The bell rang, and Hilary jumped out of his skin. “I wish to heaven they’d stop ringing that thing,” he said.
Reginald appeared out of nowhere, and we all scattered to fourth period.
• • •
And so went our days. They began for us all when Hilary drove his battery-powered wheelchair down the ramp out of the consular van. He seemed battery-powered himself: a mechanical mini British schoolboy in one gray sock and the uniform of a faraway school. We forgot all about how life used to be.