The Souvenir Museum, Elizabeth McCracken [bill gates best books .txt] 📗

“The wedding’s here?”

“The wedding’s at church,” he said philosophically. “I could be married on a rock, by a buzzard or a bear, but not Fiona. She believes in God. God is everywhere, I told her, don’t you think? But I am an atheist, and so my opinions on God do not matter.”

He carried her bag into the house and pointed her to the bathroom, which had a toilet unconvincingly attached to the wall and a claw-foot tub belly-up in the corner, awaiting its installation. The sink worked. Her toothbrush had rubbed up against something soapy in the cosmetic bag, and it tasted like mint and perfume and incompetence. She pulled on a clean dress, a pair of leggings, clean socks, draped her dirty damp clothing over the top, stowed the suitcase in the snug, and went around the other way to follow the sound of voices to a kitchen. There was Jack leaning against a yellow enameled stove, surrounded by English people, all of them dressed like stable hands. Him, too, in yesterday’s clothing. By sleeping in it he seemed to have achieved the correct level of rumpled. The room smelled of cigarettes and sausage. She studied Jack’s face for some evidence of guilt over abandoning her.

Instead he said, “There she is!”

She went to him, but he did not—as he would in America—put his arm around her. “Sit,” he said to her, his voice full of kindness, she could tell how happy he was to see her, “sit, sit. What can I get you? Let me make you some coffee. This is Sadie,” he said to the English people. They were all women, with the exception of one small boy who abruptly opened the door to the snug and went to bang on the piano and a man with giant hands who was putting away dishes in a cupboard. These were people who called Jack Lenny. They looked just the sort. “Sadie: you’ve met Fiona, and here’s Katie and Eloise, my other sisters. That’s Katie’s husband, Paul.”

Together Jack and his sisters looked like the full toolbox: hatchet, knife, spade, trowel. Sadie, having been sat, understood that she was not to make physical contact with any of the people present. She was about to say hello when an older man came through a door in the corner, shaking water from his hands.

Jack’s father. It had to be. He had Jack’s thick curls, though whiter and tidier. He was a tall man, serrated—Sadie felt cut already, as she would always feel around him—with extraordinarily blue eyes he must have been vain about. He wore a sweater one shade darker—peacock—to bring them out.

“Still there!” he said in a jubilant voice.

“For fuck’s sake,” said Jack.

“It’s not!” said the woman who’d let them in. Fiona. The bride. She was washing dishes and smoking a cigarette. “It can’t be.”

“Well done, Lenny,” said their father.

“What?” said Sadie.

“I think it’s a lovely present that Len has brought,” said Jack’s father. Then he winced.

The man at the cupboards noticed the wincing. “Pie,” he shouted into the snug. “Stop torturing that piano.” The piano stopped for half a second, then started again with more deliberation.

“A work of art, really,” said one of the sisters.

Sadie looked at Jack. He shook his head.

“A very honored wedding guest,” said Fiona.

“Do fuh-kawf,” said Jack, in one of the exaggerated English accents he sometimes slid into. He had dozens of them, similar but for subtly different uses, like the blades of a penknife. He added, “Would you.”

“The lingering log of Len,” said Jack’s father.

Then the little boy was back, and said to Sadie, with the same jubilation, “It’s a turd won’t flush!” He set his hand on Sadie’s knee. She had never been so glad for a human touch in her life.

The assembled Valerts laughed silently. It was a laugh Sadie recognized from Jack: to make noise would ruin the joke.

“It is tenacious,” said Fiona. “It’s quite a tenacious turd.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Jack’s father said to Sadie, as though noticing her for the first time. He regarded her with an intensity she couldn’t interpret. Kindly? Aggressive? Flirtatious? “Americans don’t appreciate the scatological, do they?”

“We do,” said Sadie, thinking, I don’t. The kitchen table was at an angle to the walls, and it gave her a headache. She could feel the sugar from the strawberry sandwich in her molars. How far was town? Could they get out of there? She looked up at Jack. “Coffee?”

“That’s right, I was going to make some.”

“This is my father,” said Fiona. She squinted at the smoke from her cigarette. “Daddy, this is Sadie. I’m sorry you won’t meet my mother.”

“No?” said Sadie to Jack.

“She’s unwell,” said Michael Valert. “Rotten timing.” It was his eyes that confused things, so joltingly blue they seemed to hold every emotion and its opposite. “You must be absolutely shattered,” he told her.

“Not too bad.”

“All that driving. I’d be shattered. I am shattered.”

“S’shame,” said Jack. “About Ma.”

“Can’t be helped,” said Fiona. “We’re videotaping it.”

Jack set a cup of coffee on the table. The little plastic jug in front of her was marked MILK. “Cream?” she said to Jack.

He shook his head. “I’m going to help Piet set up the tables for the reception. You all right?”

She nodded. She understood that she would be, in some way, abandoned to these English people. “What can I do to help?” she asked the room at large.

“Nothing to do,” said Fiona. She dropped her cigarette down the neck of a beer bottle on the counter, which was already filled with cigarettes. “The Dutch have it in hand.”

“We’re going for a walk, if you’d like to come,” said Eloise.

“That sounds nice.”

“You can borrow a pair of boots and a coat.”

As Sadie passed Michael Valert, he said, “It’s a large turd. Impressive. You must be feeding him well.”

The boots wouldn’t go over Sadie’s thick calves, so she put on her wet shoes, a pair of rubber-soled Mary Janes. The coat wouldn’t button over her hips, so she wore it