London Is the Best City in America

And leaving Rhode Island in the first place was something I certainly wasn’t intending to do anytime soon. I felt too safe there. No one expected anything of me, no one expected me to take any chances. Which was a good thing, as I felt ill-equipped to take any.

It seemed like the norm in Narragansett to put your life on hold—so many of the wives always talking to me about what they would do if (and only if) they could get out of town, how differently they would live then. Like Sue #2, for example—she’d always wanted to move to Montana; Nicole #4—Michigan; Theresa #1—Nevada; Beth #3—Arizona. But always somewhere landlocked, always somewhere opposite, as if the opposite held the answer.

Still, my lack of return trips home bordered on unmanageable for my parents, especially for my mother, even with her daily phone calls to me. And they were, always, daily. But she too slowly began acquiescing to our biweekly dinners somewhere in the middle, usually Hartford or Westport. It was just smarter that way. It made it easier for all of us that way to pretend our real lives weren’t so far apart.

I would never admit it out loud, but I did miss coming home. As hard as Scarsdale sometimes was for me, growing up, I’d always loved everything about my family’s actual house: my bedroom exactly as it had been since my twelfth birthday—a grown-up room for back then—no flowery wallpaper or purple carpet. Just soft yellow walls, wide-circle throw rugs and picture frames, long gold silk on the windowsills. The windows themselves were a stainless glass that looked out over the backyard, the hilly enterprise of it, separate from the rest of the house.

The first floor was just one large window-filled room, everything swimming into everything else: living area, dining room, kitchen. Sun area nook.

Then there was the wraparound porch. It was the first thing you’d see when you walked up the front walkway: the large evergreens and small potted flowers, the long pillowed bench running the length of the porch. As Josh and I headed toward it, I saw that someone was lying on it—the bench—a familiar someone. Jaime Daniel Berringer. Josh’s best friend since before I was born. Long and lanky, with a pile of blond floppy hair on his head. Little-boy good-looking in a way that stops you until you know him. Then it stops stopping you.

And like a million times before, there he was, just lying there on his back, his eyes closed, a bowl of cereal on his chest. Berringer always had a bowl of cereal on his chest—his food of choice for as long as I’d known him—a fact that was particularly bizarre, considering that he was now the chef at a nationally renowned French restaurant right outside of San Francisco.

Josh and I stood in the doorway, staring down at him. “You think that he’s sleeping?” I whispered.

Berringer start

ed to smile, but then tried to hide it, continuing to lie there, pretending to sleep.

Josh put his finger to his lips, motioning for me to play along.

“He must be,” he said, as I tiptoed over to the bench, starting to sit down gently on the bench’s edge. But just as I made my final move—my face right on top of his, my chest above his chest—Berringer sat up a little too quickly, banging into me. Forehead first.

“Ow!” I said.

“Ow yourself,” he said, rubbing his head, laughing. His smile was so big now, it took up his entire face.

Somehow, he had saved his cereal.

This was when he first really looked up at me, his smile gone. “Emmy,” he said, holding his hand to his chest, the one that had just been on his forehead. “Wow.”

I touched my face, wondering if there was ketchup there, grape Popsicle stain. Josh certainly wouldn’t have noticed and told me. “What? Do I have something?” I asked.

He sat back, moving farther from me, pulling his knees toward him. “Not at all. You just . . . you look so different.”

I felt that in my chest. That he meant it. It had been years since we’d seen each other—since before I’d ended up in Rhode Island. I knew I looked different than I had then. I had slimmed down a little, and I let my hair grow out, learning slowly to leave it alone, letting it curl up the way it wanted. I was tanner, too, not quite so breakable-looking. I couldn’t help it—I started to blush. But before I could say thank you, he interrupted me.

“You really look your age,” he said.

“I really look my age?”

“Yeah,” he said, touching the lines around my eyes gingerly. Then, as if remembering something, he turned and looked at Josh. “Josh, if your little sister’s looking so ancient, how old does that make us?”

I slapped his hand away. “Thanks, Berringer,” I said. “That’s so nice of you to say.”

Josh started to laugh. He was sitting on the ground across from us, leaning against the window. I looked over at him and then back at Berringer, who was also laughing now, his ear-to-ear smile back in full effect.

“Whatever,” I said, standing up.

“Emmy, c’mon,” Josh said. “He’s just kidding around with you. He didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Honestly,” Berringer said. “You look good. You know you do. I barely recognized you.”

I guess this was supposed to be nicer. “I really don’t care, Berringer,” I said, even though I did, a little. He must have known it too. I’d had a huge crush on Berringer most of the time that I was growing up, right through my last year of junior high, right until he headed off to college. I remember trying to keep my mouth closed when I saw him, covering my braces, as if they were the problem. I tried to dress the way the older girls dressed. I kept my hair down. I used to daydream that he’d come home from school and see how different I was. Decide I was old enough. Now, I wasn’t even sure he was.

I made my way to the front door, opening it quickly.

“So what’s this I hear about a tackle shop?” he called out, stopping me. “You like fishing now?”