Chapter 2 Lord Edward
I’m late to meet my sister for lunch. Each step I take through Midtown Manhattan is agony. The restaurant is only a block away, but I might as well be heading to China for all the progress I’m making.
I picture Anne waiting for me, her long brown hair coiled neatly into a bun at the nape of her neck.
She’s wearing a woolen blazer over pleated trousers, a belt cinched at the waist, a tailored white blouse, no wrinkles.
She studies the menu, her face placid, her expression giving nothing away.
Strangers wouldn’t know how angry she is at her little brother’s tardiness, wouldn’t recognize how she works her jaw when she’s annoyed, the way her pale white skin flushes pink.
She’s pretending she can’t hear the people at the adjacent table staring, whispering, gasping.
Can it really be her?
What’s she doing in the States?
Didn’t you hear they sent the brother to school here?
Oh, that’s right. I read he got kicked out of Eton.
That was years ago, I want to tell them. Since then, I’ve also been kicked out of Columbia.
Did they kick me out, or did I drop out? My leg hurts so much that I can’t concentrate enough to recall. It doesn’t matter. The result is the same. Lady Anne’s good-for-nothing, undereducated baby brother, well into his twenties now, and utterly useless.
Anne studies the menu like it’s a thousand-page novel, though she would never waste time reading fiction.
Frivolous, I can hear her say, voice dripping with disapproval.
Our mother’s favorite book was Wuthering Heights, one of the few facts I know about her, and that only because it’s a running joke between Anne and our father, who took it as proof of the former duchess’s foolish romanticism.
When I was a teenager, curious what all the fuss was about, I tried reading the novel myself.
It didn’t strike me as a romance so much as a cautionary tale.
Anne taps her fingers against the table, a subtle but sure sign that she’s furious.
Outside, I crumple to the ground, right in the middle of East Fifty-Seventh Street, but no one offers to help.
Everyone is looking at me and I want to scream at them to fuck right off.
They have their phones out, they’re taking photos, recording videos.
There’s the sound of brakes screeching in the distance, and everyone starts to run, leaving me in a heap on the sidewalk, an out-of-control car coming straight toward me.
I hear the crowd screaming for the car to stop, but it only moves faster, as though the driver mistook the accelerator for the brake pedal.
“Please fasten your seat belt, sir. The plane will be landing soon.”
I open my eyes, shaking myself awake. I’m not in Midtown.
I’m not in New York City. I’m not on the earth at all.
I left London this morning, flew to JFK, then boarded a small private plane to East Hampton.
Anne wouldn’t let me go back to my apartment in Tribeca.
She said everything I need will be waiting for me when I arrive.
Anne believes she knows what I need, whether or not it’s what I want.
I rub my left leg, digging the heel of my palm into my thigh until it aches.
Aches more. It already hurt. It always hurts.
“I have to use the bathroom first,” I say, and the attendant nods obligingly, walking away briskly in high heels, her gait easy and sure. She tucks an absent strand of blond hair behind her right ear.
I make my way to the back of the plane. Bringing a water bottle would’ve been too obvious, so I use water from the tap; it tastes sour. I wait a few moments and then flush, in case the attendant is listening.
It’s not true that painkillers eliminate pain. They only make it seem far away, as if it’s happening to someone else and you have no choice but to watch.