It was James who knocked on the door of Gwen’s hotel room and announced they were ready to go. She presumed it had also been James earlier, tapping a maddening military tattoo on the interconnecting wall, which she had ignored. The fight, for the moment, had gone out of her, but she would not join in with the pretense that they were all together on some sort of fun-filled summer camp. So far there was nothing sunny about being here—needles of icy rain had stabbed their faces on the short dash from the airport terminal to the taxi, and the early evening sky was not promising. Nathan’s complaints about London weather did not, on first sight of Boston, make any sense whatsoever.
Gwen stepped into the hallway, where thin floral carpets met elaborately paneled, dark green walls, and pulled the door shut, not quite a slam. Julia stood behind James looking apologetic and, on second glance, unexpectedly stylish. While getting rid of James was her own, ultimate goal, nonetheless Gwen did not want her mother bested by the mysterious Pamela. She knew James’s ex-wife was English (James obviously had a fetish)—this did not stop her from picturing her as American, and therefore sophisticated. Nathan had once hinted that his parents had divorced due to an unmanageable excess of sexual chemistry, and that he would not be surprised if in the future James and Pamela were reconciled. Gwen had not shared this threatening information but had protected Julia from it, and acted on her behalf. She felt a twist of guilt and tenderness for her mother, who seemed vulnerable without her layers and folds of cocooning wool and denim and ancient, sensible silk vests. Instead she was in a black silk shirt with a wide, soft collar, and a black wool pencil skirt that almost, but not entirely, revealed her knees.
Julia had a neat, wiry figure and a clear, very pale complexion. Everything about her was pale—her veins showed grass-green through translucent skin, her eyes were palest blue, and her eyebrows and lashes were almost invisible, a defect that she had long ago given up bothering to correct. Her thick hair was a forgiving ash blonde, the right shade to camouflage, for the moment, the streaks of gray that had appeared by stealth over the last few years. She wore it too long, because she rarely felt strong enough to argue with her hairdresser about highlights and layers, and the other age-appropriate measures he wished her to take, and so avoided going as much as possible. Once employed only for actual hiking, her ancient boots had, somewhere along the way, been appropriated for daily wear, practical both for arch support and for indicating, as clearly as a sign hung in a shop window, that she had closed for business. At forty-six she had known her romantic life was over, and to dress as if she hoped otherwise felt pathetic, and unseemly. Then James.
Julia found herself attired to do battle. Her legs, so long concealed beneath thick, bobbled tights, or shapeless trousers, or sometimes a practical layering of both, were now required to compete. They must look not only amazing, Gwen had decreed, but more amazing than Pamela’s, and as neither of them knew what Pamela looked like, they could not know how high the bar was set. Gwen had insisted that they go shopping, and had folded herself cross-legged on the floor of the small changing room in Whistles on Hampstead High Street, hunched over her phone, tapping, looking up only to issue brief, strongly worded and—Julia had to concede—accurate assessments of various garments. Of the outfit they had eventually chosen Gwen had pronounced, “With heels it will make your calves look amazing. Shoes next,” and had marched her mother up the road to Hobbs. This was the closest Gwen had come to supporting the relationship, and it had at first moved Julia and then seduced her into a folie à deux of anxiety. “You have to wear the heels we got, it’s what they’re for!” Gwen had screeched when Julia, having second thoughts, had begun to pack a pair of black, lace-up flats, rubber-soled and sensible. “Those are like nun shoes. You have to be sexy!” Gwen almost always addressed her mother in the imperative but had seemed even more urgent than usual, and this anxiety was contagious.
It was five p.m. on Thanksgiving and the hotel had not been able to find them a taxi. They could wait an hour for the hotel minibus to return from dropping guests in Belmont, the concierge said, otherwise they could walk. James had reached a pitch of vigorous, impenetrable enthusiasm. “It’s so close, we oughta walk!” he boomed, commanding the attention of the entire lobby. “You guys don’t mind, right? Mad dogs and Englishmen.” His nerves were out of character and Julia, who in any case had no idea how far they were going, felt she must acquiesce. Even Gwen, who did not usually miss an opportunity to cross him, said nothing. She merely tugged the hood of her sweater out from beneath the collar of her coat, pulled it tight around her face, and followed him out into the blustery street.
It was a brief window of respite in a day of near-relentless, pounding rain, and the uneven sidewalks had become a hazard of icy gullies and slick, mulched leaves. Julia watched Gwen’s long form bent against the wind, trudging obediently after James toward this odd, modern encounter. Her uncharacteristic compliance made Julia’s heart hurt. She wanted to scoop up her gangling child and bustle her into the warmth of a taxi or better yet, back into the comforts of the hotel, where they could have a quiet dinner, and then commune with the wondrous, vacuous numina of American cable television. In the lobby’s adjoining restaurant she’d seen aproned waiters ferrying huge Cobb salads; thick, chargrilled burgers heaped with fat-sheened onion rings; and black skillets of steaming macaroni and cheese. Gwen would love these dishes. Julia wanted to pore over the menu with her daughter, to order absurd portions that they could never finish, to compare them with their English imitations—to be, in short, a mother and daughter exploring the New World. It was her own first trip to America, after all, as well as Gwen’s. Julia was filled with sudden regret for the holidays they hadn’t taken in their years alone together and realized, with an unexpected pang, that she might have missed that chance, now that she had James. Ahead, James’s and Gwen’s figures retreated down the dark street. Badly dressed for the weather, Julia was given no choice but to follow.
They hurried along streets of South End brownstones, their broad, steep front steps intermittently decorated with fall paraphernalia. On one, a small scarecrow in overalls and a straw hat slumped drunkenly on a hay bail, rain-battered and sodden. Several stoops displayed a series of knobbly, unadorned pumpkins and squashes, lined like Russian dolls on one side of the front door. Fairy lights trailed like ivy around spade-headed railings. It was, indeed, a short walk, but the wind felt arctic, already beginning to freeze a thickening crust onto the black surface of the puddles.
Moments away from Pamela’s house came the minor calamity. In England there is no weather with the muscle to warp and weft brick pavements into roller coaster humps and valleys; Julia, used to mild, English puddles polite enough to plunge only half an inch, stepped off the curb and into a pool that engulfed her up to the ankle in a slurry of filthy, iced water. She screamed with shock.
James had been charging ahead, describing buildings and restaurants, encouraging a moderately responsive Gwen to tell him of the various gifts she planned to buy her grandparents. He hurried back to Julia looking shamefaced.
“God, I’m so sorry, we should have waited for the van. I’m a putz. I’m nervous. This suddenly seems insane, I’ve lost my mind dragging you both to Pamela’s. We could have taken the kids and all gone to Mexico for Thanksgiving instead of— Did you hurt yourself? Can I carry you the rest of the way? Should we ditch it and go for Chinese food?”
Julia shook her head. Her right foot was burning with the cold, and pain radiated up through her marrow. She kicked several times, and then began to limp onward, leaning on James’s arm. The shoes that Gwen had pressed upon her, undeniably flattering, horribly expensive soft gray suede, were ruined beyond repair, and even immediate use. Julia felt the right one loosen and slacken with every sodden step she took. She had lost all feeling in her toes, a welcome relief from the burning. It began to rain.
On the doorstep, Julia prepared for Pamela, carefully arranging her face into an expression of openness and enthusiasm, but it was an older man who opened the door. He was extending a hand to shake James’s when he was pushed aside, rather violently, by a large woman wearing voluminous, autumnal robes. Pamela—blonde, buxom, a whirl of loose wraps and silken items and alarming glimpses of flesh through folds of draped fabric, came upon them. She wore Thai fisherman’s trousers in raw plum silk, huge and flowing and tied in an elaborate bow at the waist, and a silk vest in bright tangerine. The sleeves were so deeply cut that when she raised her arms the side of her torso was visible almost to the waist, as well as the fold of a rather pendulous breast. A raw amethyst buried in silver hung on a formidable chain around her neck. Every surface, and she had many, was glistening faintly—the jewels, the raw silk, the loose blonde hair. Her face and décolletage shimmered faintly with sweat. Gwen, who had felt violent hatred for several people in recent months, took an instant, vehement loathing to Pamela. Her hair was too long for an old lady. She ought to have worn a bra.
Julia found herself clutched to Pamela’s bosom and was immediately and unexpectedly distressed by the image of James, in earlier days, enjoying the comforts of precisely this musky declivity. The amethyst was pressed painfully into her clavicle. Pamela looked very young, the extra weight she carried smoothing and plumping her face into girlishness. She did not look like the mother of teenagers. Julia felt conscious of her rain-frizzed hair and of her sopping, painful foot.
“Sister!” Pamela cried, releasing Julia and holding her out at arm’s length, as if she were a garment under consideration at a market stand.
“Not sister,” said Gwen involuntarily, louder than she’d intended, and saw a tired expression cross her mother’s face. Pamela rounded on her, beaming. “We’re all sisters in the same fight, lovely girl. Gwendolen.” Gwen in her turn was embraced by Pamela, rescued by her height from the same suffocation as her mother. Over the top of Pamela’s head she tried to catch Julia’s eye, but caught only James’s; he smiled, looking rather manic.
“Julia needs dry footwear,” he told Pamela, who freed Gwen and spun round, silks flying, and bent over Julia’s feet. Julia was afforded a clear view down the front of her shirt, beyond the swinging crystal.
“Boston’s brutal. It’s brutal. It took us two winters—you remember, two long winters?—to get it, really. You have to be dressed like Shackleton to survive. I did a whole winter the first year with a coat from Marks and Sparks, I nearly died, I was so unhappy and I kept begging James to go back to miserable old England with me, or transfer to Stanford or anywhere. And then he came home one day with a fur hat, and I thought, well, I might just about survive. Fur, I know,” she addressed the gray-haired man who had let them in. “You’d have been shocked to know me then. But those creatures died so I could live. I still have that hat, I was going to give it to Saskia but perhaps I should bury it. Take those impractical things off immediately,” she commanded. Several other guests were visible through the open door of the living room and Julia was aware that people to whom she had not been introduced were now looking on with curiosity. “James, you didn’t tell her! Boston’s not a town for pretty little heels. Come upstairs, there’s no rush at all, everything’s out. We were far too many to sit down, I’ve flung together a buffet. Start, people! Go, start!”
Julia was now in stockinged feet in the hallway and Pamela held her shoes captive, suspending them by their ankle straps like a pair of shot birds. “Come up here, lovely lady,” she commanded, surging up the stairs, holding Julia by the wrist. “I’ll introduce you once you’re sorted out. Jamesy, just man the bar till we get back.”