The Awkward Age Read online

  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.”

  4.

  Gwen stuck close to Saskia, who had ambled downstairs moments after Julia’s kidnapping. This meant remaining regrettably close to James, who had not seen his daughter since the summer, though they spoke, as far as Gwen could tell, nine million times a day. She ate sugar-coated peanuts, crossly, and waited for her mother. She had been promised family time in America; obviously she had misunderstood Julia’s definition of family.

  “I missed you. Let me see you.”

  “Same as when you saw me on Skype yesterday.” Saskia pulled away from her father’s bear hug and gave a lazy twirl, and then a slow dipped curtsey. She tucked her long loose hair ineffectually behind her ears, and it fell forward over her face again.

  “You look beautiful, kiddo, you really do. Did your mom book your Christmas flights?”

  “Not sure, I’ll ask her. Is that sorted? Am I definitely coming?”

  “You’re coming. Tell me if Pamela hasn’t and I’ll do it, I need my girl back home with me for a few weeks. I tell you something, your brother’s a pain in my ass. Enough with all this college and independence bullshit, come home already. How are you? How was the drive back? How did the paper go, did you turn it in on time in the end?”

  Saskia rested her head on James’s shoulder and smiled mildly. “So many questions.” She yawned, as if merely hearing them had exhausted her. “I told you stuff.”

  “Tell me more stuff about stuff. Tell me about the term paper.”

  Gwen gave her studied attention to a bowl of potato chips on the mantelpiece, between a photograph of small Saskia and smaller Nathan on bicycle and tricycle respectively, and a burnished ebony statue of what looked like, but surely could not be, a vagina. She hoped James would take his revolting display of paternal concern elsewhere, but he had noticed her turn away and took his arm from his daughter’s shoulders and drew Gwen back into the conversation. “If you’re looking for some impressive small talk, that guy,” he whispered, raising a blonde eyebrow toward the far wall where a round, white-haired man in frameless spectacles sipped a large tumbler of whiskey and studied Pamela’s straining bookshelves, “holds a gastroenterology chair at MIT. He’s the world’s leading expert in flatulence. Seriously. Enjoy.” He then strode off, promising to return with sodas.

  Gwen had liked Saskia from the beginn
ing, the single ray of pale sunshine to penetrate the bank of black cloud that James had cast upon their former life, and was slightly in awe of her calm and serenity in the face of life-altering family developments. Saskia was three years older, a solid girl with unkempt dark blonde hair, broad shoulders, and a bust (an unimaginable asset to Gwen, who hoped that her own might burgeon into noteworthiness when she reached seventeen). An entirely different creature from rangy, high-strung flame-haired Gwen, she moved in languid slow motion. Her detachment was radical, and thrilling. It wasn’t that she didn’t notice what her parents did but that, having noticed, she then returned, unfazed, to the concerns and interests of her own life. Gwen, in the active process of collecting characteristics with which to furnish her future adult self, coveted this one in particular. For as long as she could remember, her mother had seemed in constant danger of error or accidental self-harm, and only Gwen’s anxious vigilance and interference could stave off certain disaster. Wasn’t this evening, coming to James’s ex-wife’s Thanksgiving, evidence of Julia’s poor judgment? Gwen ought to have put a stop to it.

  “It’s awesome you’re here.” Saskia put a plump arm around Gwen’s waist and squeezed.

  “Is it not superweird for your mum, having my mum here?”

  “No way, Pamela loves having the house full of randoms, and FYI you are not the most random of randoms here. I think she dated that professor of farting. She’s beyond that you guys are visiting. How’s it been?”

  “Weird. Whatevs. The same. Mum and your dad obsessed with each other, it’s ongoing. It’s beyond foul.”

  “It’s such a weird thing to study. Like, I think I’m going to study gas?”

  Gwen gave an indistinct reply and returned to what preoccupied her. “They’re literally obsessed.”

  Saskia shrugged. “But if they’re happy together . . .”

  “Also your brother hates me,” Gwen went on with her gloomy update, “and Valentina hates me, and whenever they’re back at weekends she’s like, there, all the time, flicking her hair around and being evil. It’s like a hate-fest, they officially hate me.”

  Nathan came up behind them, startling Gwen, who felt her cheeks flush. He was in skinny, faded jeans, gray suede sneakers, and a large, bright purple hooded sweatshirt, bearing the same brand name across its oversized pockets as the black one she herself wore, which displeased her. He was gallingly attractive despite a painful-looking spot on his forehead, for which Gwen did not judge him, as she fought her own sebaceous battles. Unlike his sister’s, which sounded enviably American, Nathan’s accent hovered diplomatically mid-Atlantic, tending East or West depending on the company and his mood. To Gwen, this suggested fickleness, and a more general unreliability. A large set of neon-green padded headphones was slung around his neck, like a DJ, off-duty. He was always disconcertingly sure of himself. “It’s true,” he said, and as she watched he hung his head briefly on one side and passed a loving hand through his dark hair to encourage its wave. “Officially. I filed paperwork to make it legal just this week. I officially hate you.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Aww, guys.” Saskia put an arm around each of them and drew them into a group hug. Both had to bend down to her height. “Be friends! Feel the love!”

  “I feel it.” Nathan dropped his head, overcome with the evangelist’s fervor. “I feel it. All is healed. Sas, listen,” he whispered, now that they were close enough to confide, “don’t leave me alone with Wentworth again, he’s seriously dry.”

  His phone began to ring, and he broke free of the huddle. “Amore mia.” There was a long pause, then, “Yes, can I call you later—you’re right, I’m sorry, you’re up very late. Can we Skype tomorrow? I know, I said I was sorry—” He stopped, grasping a fistful of hair, holding it back from his forehead. A few moments later he murmured, “I love you, cara mia. Saskia and Gwen send love. A domani.”

  “Hiatus continues,” he told his sister in an entirely different tone, putting away the phone.

  “What, you’ve broken up, you mean?” Gwen demanded. She was surprised. A recognized fact of teenage life was that relationships would end, and whether they lasted days or years did not change this expectation. Yet Nathan and Valentina had seemed exempt, their union entirely established, and unalterable. Like adults. Valentina had talked openly about their wedding, had once even been heard to say that their first daughter would be called Fabia. This development was extremely interesting. “Why were you calling her cara blara if she’s not your girlfriend?”

  “It’s only a hiatus.” Nathan sounded irritable. He moved Gwen aside two steps to check his appearance in the antique mirror behind her. “She wanted us to stay at your mom’s house for the weekend while you all came here, which is classic Valentina insanity as obviously I’m going to visit my mother and sister for Thanksgiving. I’m taking some time to reconsider.”

  “It didn’t sound like you were on a hiatus. And we didn’t send love.”

  “I would have,” Saskia protested, mildly.

  “We’re not just going to stop talking after two and a half years.”

  “So basically you just decided not to see each other this weekend when you couldn’t see each other anyway because you were on opposite sides of the Pacific. How radical.” She felt pleased by her appropriation of what she felt was his own, airy manner. “And you literally spend more time looking at yourself than I do.”

  Nathan made a final, invisible adjustment. “I’m not sure that’s anything to boast about. And it’s the Atlantic, but don’t let the details bog you down. Come, let’s get food.”

  “It was raining,” said Gwen, crossly, trying to tame the frizzing corkscrews that she saw had escaped from her ponytail. Admired and envied by older women, her hair was disobedient, far too thick and wiry, and an appallingly bright color, but to master it and make it serve her would take a patience she lacked. Together with her height it made her obtrusive, and to be obtrusive at sixteen was the unhappiest of states. Nathan had departed in the direction of the buffet table and beside her in the mirror she saw Saskia shaking her head, looking sorrowful.

  “You two are so mean to each other!”

  “He’s mean to me.”

  Saskia held out a bundle of plastic cutlery wrapped in a paper napkin printed with prancing turkeys. “Poor Valentina. It will be a major deal if they break up.”

  “She’s had a lucky escape, if you ask me,” muttered Gwen, but when she noticed Saskia’s crestfallen expression she apologized and resolved to save her abuse of Nathan for private moments with her mother, or her grandparents, or her friend Katy who simultaneously fancied Nathan and hated him, and therefore made a satisfyingly insatiable audience. They discussed him at length.

  • • •

  GWEN WAS DISTRESSED to see Julia descending the stairs bare legged, and in sagging purple mohair bedsocks. She abandoned her plate on a sideboard and rushed over.

  “Mum! You look so weird.”

  “It’s all she gave me, darling, I couldn’t get out of it.”

  “Take them off!”

  “I took my shoes off, too, to be companionable,” said Pamela, appearing behind Julia with a flourish, her hand extended to clasp and squeeze Gwen’s. Gwen looked down to see naked white feet, the toenails vermillion, a toe ring in black-stained silver shaped like a serpent and wrapped, sinuously, around the second toe.

  It was the first sight of this toe ring that led Julia to understand that James had sold to her a picture of family harmony that was not wholly accurate, or possible. She and Pamela would not, she saw, be friends. Pamela did not seem the kind of woman who was a successful friend to other women, whatever proclamations she might make about sisterhood. It was unimaginable, and indeed now was not at all the time to be imagining that James had married and had his children with this expansive, threatening person.

  “I love that you’re with us,” Pamela whi
spered, as if Julia had been at death’s door and had rallied bravely to attend her party. She linked her arm through Julia’s and squeezed, like a confiding schoolgirl. James, who had been across the room helping himself to one of the many untouched M&S mince pies that Pamela had requested he ferry from London, hurried over to Julia’s other side and took her fingers. Julia felt for an odd moment as if they were parents leading her toward an altar, possibly marital, possibly sacrificial. Pamela summoned over the man who had let them in.

  “I’m going to introduce you to everyone. This is Wentworth.”

  “Wentworth Hale.” He nodded and offered a hand to Julia for the second time, doffing an imaginary cap to Pamela. Behind one ear he’d tucked a hand-rolled cigarette, and a small white badge pinned to the breast of his leather waistcoat read STAMP OUT REALITY. His gray ponytail was held back with a thick blue elastic band that looked as if it had once held together a bunch of asparagus.