by E. Archer
As he returned to his parents, Ralph wondered if he would be like the old cat lady across the street, if he were old and a lady.
Mary had prepared Meat Dish for dinner. As they sat down to eat, Ralph pushed his glasses up his nose and asked them what they thought about the card from Gert. He had left it on the kitchen table, knowing full well it would be read and processed and placed next to the paperclip holder by the time dinner was served.
“It doesn’t take mail at all long to get here from England, does it?” Steve observed.
“No, not anymore. Isn’t that fascinating?” Mary said between chews.
“I looked at the postmark. It only took three days.”
“Amazing,” Mary said.
“How do you think they got it here?” Steve asked Ralph.
“By airplane. There are no land routes and a boat would have taken longer,” Ralph said automatically, eager to be done with his father’s side of the questioning as soon as possible.
“Good, good. So’s the casserole.” This line came out like music.
“Thank you!” Mary said.
“So what do you think about it?” Ralph asked.
Steve Stevens regarded him quizzically. “Absolutely not!” he said.
“But I want to go.” Ralph’s voice caught.
“Nope. And I won’t tolerate any more curiosity about the matter.”
Ralph was seated in a prime position to watch the multi-paragraphed look that passed between his parents. They both knew their son felt abandoned by his peers and had turned sullen. His dream to be a video game designer had been squashed. They knew he had a polyester-focused sense of fashion, and a sense of humor that tended to irritate all but the most devout nerds. Any change was bound to do him good. He hadn’t expressed wanting anything in months, and they knew this was a development that was to be encouraged.
All this was weighed, of course, against the fact that they would be sending their only son into the lair of a killer sorceress.
And wanting — well, wanting could easily lead to wishing, and wishing had to be prevented at all cost.
Ralph’s parents had always considered it safer not to tell him any details of the British family situation, so his curiosity wouldn’t draw him over there. And now they couldn’t start giving him information without firing his inquisitiveness all the more for the length of time it had been withheld.
“Honey,” Mary Stevens said, “the answer is simply no.”
CHAPTER IV
Once Ralph slammed into his room, Steve Stevens’s words were far less mild.
“What are we going to do?” he asked Mary, banging his hand down on the table so hard he caused her to squirt ketchup all over her plate.
“We said he couldn’t go, dear,” Mary said. “So he won’t. He’s a very moderate boy, and so unlikely to go getting himself into trouble.”
“We’ve worked so hard to keep him unspoiled by all this nonsense. And it hasn’t been easy. I don’t need to remind you, I trust, about the TV incident?”
Mary nodded and nervously held her fingers against her cheek the way she would have held a cigarette, back before she had learned better. How could she not remember? A year earlier she had woken up late at night and crept downstairs to tend to the last bite of an éclair she had been saving in the back of the fridge. On the way, she spied her son up way past his bedtime, sitting in his boxers before the glowing TV, watching a program he most certainly should not have been watching.
It wasn’t anything involving bad language — that would have been alarming but nothing on the order of true horror — but rather an infomercial featuring a tabloid British duchess demonstrating the proper way to use a $19.95 electric device to tone one’s buttocks. She was the same tacky, forbiddingly attractive sister Mary remembered from her childhood, only now with hair extensions and a plumpness that gave her fishnetted body an extra, witchy seductiveness.
Paralyzed, éclair halfway to her mouth, Mary had no idea what to do. The family resemblance was definitely there — the overpronounced jaw, the still-lovely eyes set within a puddle of blue-black eye shadow, the whiff of the otherworldy. And if Ralph realized that the duchess-turned-spokeswoman on the television was his mother’s other sister (besides Gert), how would Mary explain herself?
She decided the best plan was to hope her son wouldn’t notice. There was a very good chance of it; he was criminally unobservant. Though he was aware every time the price of RAM dropped in the Korean wholesale market, he obliviously trundled past his parents’ birthdays (not to mention his own, except for that terrible fifth-grade year), and had once taken a full half-hour shower without realizing that he’d forgotten to turn the water on. She finished her éclair, went back to bed, and informed her husband of the situation. They’d wondered ever since if their son now suspected that the arresting pitchwoman he’d seen on television was the real reason for the wish prohibition.
“We simply aren’t allowing it,” Steve said now, sucking in his breath and tucking his hands under his arms.
Mary picked up her novel and opened it to the bookmark, trying, as she balanced the spine on the rim of her plate, to determine whether she had stopped on the left-hand or right-hand page.
She knew, more than her husband did, that her son may have been a geek, but he was a geek with a sense of adventure.
And, as we all know, there’s no way of stopping a geek with a sense of adventure.
CHAPTER V
By the time Steve thumped up to his son’s room to remind him that he was by no means allowed to go to England, Ralph had already boarded a flight and turned his cell phone off.
He checked his email from the airport and discovered a message from Gert instructing him to take the train from Heathrow to Durbanshire upon arriving, connecting in Paddington. These three names displaced him — Heathrow sounded like an elderly man’s complaint, Durbanshire a land of sheiks, and Paddington a bear. He made each connection anxiously, surprised each time a location turned out to be an ordinary area of the world, not a fantastic realm shaped by its outlandish moniker.
As Ralph had made an earlier train connection than Gert had thought him able to, he anticipated a long wait to be picked up. He lined up his belongings with care on the tartar-colored stone steps in front of the Durbanshire station and wondered what the Battersby car would look like; he pictured a pert motorcar with goggles draped on the windshield and, in place of a side-view mirror, one of those horns that sends out cheery blasts that send geese flapping up from ponds.
He was surprised, therefore, to be picked up by a talent search contestant in a hatchback. The boy who peered out of the car had that arrogant charm, that leer, that said he was certain you would love him all the more for the frankness of his self-love. The neckbands of at least four different T-shirts crowded the V of his partially zipped sweatshirt. His face was a slick riot of red and white.
The boy — no more than fifteen — careened to the curb, opened the driver’s side door, placed an arm on the roof, and removed his aviator sunglasses. “You’re Ralph?” he asked.
“I am.”
“Figures. Get in.”
Once Ralph did, they shot out of the parking lot and down a sleepy town street. The boy played his reggae loudly enough to exert an almost physical presence, and between that and the car’s breakneck speed, Ralph was too distracted to make conversation. The boy was focused on the road, periodically tweaking his cool expression into new variations, as if reacting to cues from a music video director.
“You’re Cecil?” Ralph finally prompted.
“Yup. Mother and Father were busy, and I’m the only one of the kids allowed to drive. Well, I don’t actually have a license, but they don’t worry about stuff like that. They’ll pay the fine or whatever if I get caught. I’ve got to have the car because I work at a clothing shop in town — I don’t think we should be out of touch with the laboring people, you know? Mother was all intent on having us secluded for the summer — she’s big into �
��family’ — but I talked her into letting me have a car. She didn’t even bother to ask about the license part. She’s totally daft.”
“I’m Ralph,” Ralph said after a pause, before remembering this was already traveled ground.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“What’s this castle like?”
Cecil shrugged. “It’s a castle. I dunno. We’re not heading there, anyway.”
“We’re not?”
This reaction was surprising enough for Cecil to lower his sunglasses. “You don’t know? Why did you fly in today, then?”
“I don’t know. Why did I?”
“We’re going to a funeral. I wondered why you were wearing trainers.”
Ralph nodded knowledgably.
“Those,” Cecil explained, pointing to Ralph’s feet.
“Oh. Sneakers.”
“Have it your way.”
Ralph had never been to any funeral before, especially not a British one. He knew little of what to expect, and had no idea whatsoever who had died. Funerals didn’t seem like something one could ask curious questions about, though. So instead he stared out the window and let the blasts of reggae water his eyes.
“What do you do at the clothes store?” Ralph finally yelled.
“I work there. I’m an em-ploy-ee.”
“Yep. Just wondering what that involved.”
“Oh. I do stock. I put in lightbulbs, change the mannequins’ outfits, all that.”
“No way. That must be kinda fun.”
“It’s the working life. It’s not supposed to be fun.”
“Okay.”
Then: “So back-to-school season is starting, right? And I’m in charge of getting the mannequins ready for it. I’ve got this stack of just-shipped clothes, and I’m heading to the front of the store. There are these round windows, and the mall is so crowded because it’s back-to-school, and I have to undress the mannequins in front of everyone.”
“Huh. Weird.”
“That’s not the end. I’ve got to get right behind this girl and unbutton her blouse from behind, button by button —”
“This is on a mannequin, right?”
“Yes, on a mannequin, are you following me?”
“Totally.”
“And so then I have to wedge the jeans off her hips. All the kids from school and their mums are watching from outside. So now I’ve got this naked plastic woman in front of me, in this crowded little window, and I have to dress her somehow.” Cecil shook his head ruefully and bopped his fingers on the steering wheel.
“You got it done?” Ralph prompted.
“Yeah. It was so embarrassing.”
“Well, it can’t have been too embarrassing, if you’re telling me and I just met you.”
Cecil grunted and pulled up short at a red light that, judging by all prior evidence, he would generally have run. “Who are you?”
“I’m your cousin. We met before. A long time ago. I was seven.”
“And you’re what, hanging out with us for the summer?”
“Yeah. I’m helping set up your network.” Ralph laughed through a clenched silence. “Just helping set up the network.” He paused, waiting for Cecil to say something. “It’s not too hard, really —”
“It’s a little weird, don’t you think, to say I’m lying about my story being embarrassing.”
“Oh! Sorry.”
“No, it’s totally fine — but it’s weird, too. It’s like, someone’s really putting himself out there when he tells you something, you know? You have to respect that.”
“Okay. It’s different in America, maybe.”
“No, it’s cool. We’re going to be friends no matter what.”
With that, Cecil pulled into a damp cemetery. He placed a finger over his lips, though he did nothing to quiet his music. They bumped along a muddy willow-hemmed road until they arrived at a somber crowd surrounding a casket. Cecil parked at the end of a line of cars, respectfully removed his two baseball caps, placed them over his heart, and opened the car door.
A bass-studded measure of rump, rump, iza gonna thump ya rump blasted over the gathered mourners. They turned to glare and took in not Cecil, who was protected from view by the vehicle, but Ralph, jet-lagged and puffy, jabbing at the radio in alarm as he simultaneously placed one ragged trainer/sneaker and then the other onto the wet grass.
He beamed an apology to the indignant funeralgoers and then joined Cecil in crossing the lawn to assemble behind the rest of their huddled family. Gert — so serene as to be almost motionless, silver hair piled high — reached a hand out and pressed Ralph’s shoulder in much the same way one tests whether a roast beef has gone cold. The touch was soon over, and when he smiled at her, Ralph saw Gert pat her powdery hair with a liver-spotted hand. He nodded solemnly, stared at the shining casket, and wished he had a tie around his neck and a comb in his back pocket.
If any event calls for silent reflection, a funeral surely does. Ralph did his best to think tragic thoughts.
It appeared that the corpse was a close friend of the Battersbys, since they lingered while the other attendees shot their regards and rushed back to their cars. Eventually Ralph; Gert; a man he assumed to be her husband, Gideon; and their three children were the only mourners left. Once the last guest’s car door slammed shut, Gert dropped all decorum and rested her arms on Ralph’s shoulders.
“Welcome. Sorry about the funeral. Terrible timing. We’re so glad to have you. Everybody, this is Ralph. We all remember Ralph. His parents are Mary and Steve Stevens, who weren’t invited.”
Everyone murmured a greeting except Cecil and the taller daughter, who kept her dark liquid gaze fixed on the shovelfuls of black earth being tossed on the coffin.
The smaller daughter, a frilly little girl whose role in life was evidently to counter her older sister’s gloom, took Ralph’s hand and patted it as she bent into a mini-curtsy.
“Hello, Daphne,” Ralph said. “We’ve never met, but your mother told me about you. I’m your cousin, Ralph. Have you heard of me?”
“I’m Daphne!” she said, quite as if he hadn’t spoken. “Pleased to meet you. The sad girl is my sister, Beatrice. You drove in with Cecil. Those are Daddy and Mummy. I’m seven.” Daphne leaned closer and sparkled. “Some lady Daddy used to know died. And that dead lady, she’s Beatrice’s real mummy.”
Gert’s husband inserted himself between them. “I’m Gideon Battersby. Remember me?”
“Your parents are Americans, aren’t they?” Daphne asked, peering at Ralph from around her father and pronouncing “Americans” like “Martians.”
“Uncle Gideon. It’s been some time,” Ralph said. He tried to dredge up a memory of this stuffed eagle of a man, but came up short.
“I swear,” Gideon said. “You were only a boy when I last saw you, and now look! I’m sorry I haven’t been over to the States very regularly. I tend to travel to the Far East when I go anywhere. Have you ever been, I wonder?” It sounded like the beginning of a speech, and sure enough, the rest of the family inched away, leaving Ralph alone when he politely answered that he hadn’t.
Gert lifted six silver inches of stiletto heel from the muddy grass, only to see it stab back into the earth when she lowered her foot. “Ooh!” she exclaimed with a twitch, effectively shutting down Gideon’s blooming oration on Indonesian politics. “Let’s go home and warm up. We’ll have some hot chocolate.”
“Yay!” Daphne squealed, taking her father’s hand and clapping it.
The family processed toward the two remaining cars.
Gert and Gideon managed to fold themselves into their vehicle without ever disengaging from Daphne, who hung from them like an oversize pendant. Her dress, Ralph noted as the ruffled seams disappeared within, was all pink crinoline: a Valentine’s cookie.
“Love your sister’s funeral outfit,” Ralph said as he slid into the passenger seat. Cecil was already inside, and the reggae had started pounding its rump poetry again. Beatrice took the back, her chin c
radled on her palm as she stared out the window. Her torso was fully in the seat, but her face was pressed against the door, as though she were split by equally strong urges to exist fully in the car and to dash herself on the road. In her mind, she was writing rhyming verse full of gray adjectives and deep feeling, in which every crow is called a raven.
“That princess costume?” Cecil asked. “She bought it from British Home Stores. At first Mother refused to allow it in the house, but Daphne wants to be a princess, and, well, that means Daphne gets to be a princess. She’s got a chip on her shoulder because a lot of her friends actually are princesses. It was all Mother and Father could do to rip her scepter away for the funeral.”
The tides of conversation would have called for Beatrice to speak next. But when Ralph glanced back, he caught her staring at the dingy shopping centers outside the window, her plain face impassive, her marble eyes shining and impenetrable under the sheaves of hair that almost covered her face. Perhaps she was trying to think of a word to rhyme with “anguish.”
“So she wears pink frilly stuff all the time?” Ralph asked distractedly.
“Sleeps in it, too, except when Mother puts her foot down.”
“Well, that’s good,” Ralph said.
Beatrice snorted, her first social interaction for the day.
“Dad had a special room constructed for Beatrice in her wing,” Cecil continued mutedly, after swerving around a loping tractor. “It’s got all her books. She’s big into trilogies with yellowed pages. She’s a total dork. Aren’t you, Ugs?” Cecil glanced at her and turned up the music. “I think she really wants to be the characters she reads about.”