toilet. Dad put it in at Easter when Mum got really bad, and I told him I’m not going back in there until he takes it out again.
“Why?” he asked.
“It makes me feel like I’m in hospital,” I told him.
“In a hospital, you mean,” he said.
Six days earlier I’d had the same conversation, but in the other direction.
“My mother’s been in the hospital for almost three weeks now,” I’d said to Fiona.
And she said, “‘In hospital.’ We leave out the ‘the’ here.” She offered me another Mayfair. “So what’s she in for?”
“Cancer of ovaries,” I told her.
The Globe was on a Thursday. On Friday we took a day trip to Oxford, which the history club wankers practically wet themselves over, and just as we returned to London, at half six English time but twelve thirty in Missouri, my mother died. We were scheduled to fly home on Saturday, so rather than ruin the rest of my trip, my dad didn’t tell me until we saw each other at the airport. I actually can’t stand anyone in the history club so didn’t really mind that they saw my stupid father weeping like a girl at the baggage claim. I said to him later in the car, “Do you have to be so American about this? I mean, really. It’s not like you didn’t know it was coming.”
Something Fiona had noticed and I completely agree with is that people in the States are entirely too sentimental. They really will cry at the drop of a hat, partly because they’re babies and partly because they’re too attached to things. Not me, though. “Keep calm and carry on,” that’s my motto. I bought a mug that says so, and it’s absolutely the only thing I’ll drink my tea out of. I’m mad for tea.
Due to the jet lag, I was knackered out of my mind for the funeral. Not that it mattered, really. Like I wrote to Fiona, it was absolute rubbish. There I was, dying for a Mayfair, while all these people who hardly even knew my mother came up to say how much they were going to miss her. If I had a dime for every time I heard “Look how big you’ve gotten!” I’d have enough for a first-class ticket back to London and a whole year’s rent on a flat. Two years’ rent if I shared it with a flatmate.
After the funeral, scores of perfectly dreadful people came by the house. Luckily my grandmothers were there to help. Well, one was a help, the other just sat there like a toad and blinked. I only had a few chances to slip away, and when I did I went to my room and checked to see if I’d gotten any e-mails. I’ve written Fiona eighteen times since returning home but haven’t heard anything back quite yet, probably because she’s uncomfortable. English people are completely different than we are, especially about money. While Americans are all “Look what I’ve got!” the Brits are a lot more British about it, a lot more stoical and private. It wasn’t easy for Fiona to ask me for that loan. The whole subject was a complete embarrassment for her, I could tell. Especially given that she was so much older than me, in her thirties at least, not that that makes any difference. Due to my maturity, I have all kinds of older friends, or could if I wanted to. Fiona walked me to three different ATMs in order to get the money—so while the history club was at the Globe, being tourists, I was seeing the real London and falling desperately in love with it.
I was hoping that after graduation two years from now I could go to college there, but it turns out I’m already in college. Brits call high school “college,” and what we call college they call “uni.” Fiona says it’s strictly for gits and arseholes, but at least it would be a foot in the door. My father won’t like the idea one bit, but he’d better start getting used to it. He’s too preoccupied to realize it now, but in a lot of ways, I’m already gone.
A Cold Case
There are plenty of things I take for granted, but not being burglarized was never one of them. Whether I was in a good neighborhood or a crummy one, in a house or apartment or hotel room, every time I walked in and found my dresser drawers not emptied onto the floor,