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Authors: Dyan Sheldon
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what my family calls my little hobby.”
Hobby? Stamp collecting? Boats in bottles? Knitting? She’d have to be knitting a car.
“My painting.”
“Oh, right.” Jake is only a part-time artist because we need to eat and stuff like that, but she would never call it a hobby. She says it’s the heart of her life. “I saw the portrait of Mr Bean in the dining room. It’s really cool.”
“Thank you, Cherry. Sometimes I worry that it’s a bit silly, painting pets.” The umbrella and the head both bobbed and more water dripped down my back. Caroline sighed. “But there isn’t much time for that sort of thing, of course. Even when my mother can walk the dogs herself there’s always so much to do looking after Robert and the children and the house.”
I sympathized. “Jake says that’s one of the reasons all the really famous artists have always been men. You know, because they never had to do anything else.”
“Does she?”
Robert suddenly materialized at the French doors.
“Caroline!” he called. “Caroline. I thought we were going to eat.”
She gave me a look. “I suppose one could say the same about writers.”
I Meet the Czar Who Escaped the Revolution
L unch wasn’t exactly the Mad Hatter’s tea party (everybody stayed in their chairs and there weren’t any rodents in the teapot or anything like that), but it was still pretty peculiar.
There we were in the dining room with a real cloth on the table and the vase of flowers and everything like it was Thanksgiving or something and we had twenty people for this big, fancy meal. Only it was just the three of us and we weren’t having a big, fancy meal. We weren’t even having something typically English like boiled cabbage or crumpets to celebrate my first day in London.
“This is great.” I looked from my plate to Caroline. “I love pizza.”
“I thought you might.” She passed me the salad. “Make you feel a bit more at home.”
The feeling at home thing only lasted for as long as it took me to realize that the cutlery beside my plate wasn’t just for the lettuce and tomatoes. (I figured this was another point for Mr Young and his belief that the English are so terrifically civilized. I mean, how far away from our hunter-gatherer past do you have to be even to think of eating pizza with a knife and fork?)
“Wow,” I said. “In Brooklyn we just pick it up with our hands.”
“You also drive on the wrong side of the road,” said Robert.
“It’s so messy, though, isn’t it?” Caroline daintily speared a small triangle of pizza. “What with the sauce and all.”
I picked up my knife and fork, and dug in. A big chunk of pie jumped into the air and landed cheese-side down on the immaculate tablecloth.
“Oh, I’m
so
sorry.” (That was Caroline not me.)
“It’s Sod’s Law, isn’t it?” asked Robert.
I didn’t know who Sod was.
“Sod was some poor bloke who worked out that if someone throws you a knife you’re going to catch it by the blade.”
“We call it Murphy’s Law.” (Sky says it would be an Irishman who figured that one out.)
“See what I mean about you Americans?” said Robert. “You always have to be different.”
After that, Robert went into writer-brooding-over-his-book mode (a state I recognized from my dad, who was once so preoccupied thinking about what he was going to say about Arizona that he didn’t even notice that the stove was on fire), so it was left to Caroline and me to keep the conversation going. We talked about the weather and the garden and school and what vegetarians eat and her mom’s back and stuff like that. So this was normality. Eating lunch in the dining room with Robert sitting there like he was in a trance and the extra plate and cutlery across from where I was sitting. My gran has a friend who always sets an extra place in case Jesus happens to drop by, which is pretty weird since it isn’t like he’d show up because he was hungry, but this was even weirder. It
Hobby? Stamp collecting? Boats in bottles? Knitting? She’d have to be knitting a car.
“My painting.”
“Oh, right.” Jake is only a part-time artist because we need to eat and stuff like that, but she would never call it a hobby. She says it’s the heart of her life. “I saw the portrait of Mr Bean in the dining room. It’s really cool.”
“Thank you, Cherry. Sometimes I worry that it’s a bit silly, painting pets.” The umbrella and the head both bobbed and more water dripped down my back. Caroline sighed. “But there isn’t much time for that sort of thing, of course. Even when my mother can walk the dogs herself there’s always so much to do looking after Robert and the children and the house.”
I sympathized. “Jake says that’s one of the reasons all the really famous artists have always been men. You know, because they never had to do anything else.”
“Does she?”
Robert suddenly materialized at the French doors.
“Caroline!” he called. “Caroline. I thought we were going to eat.”
She gave me a look. “I suppose one could say the same about writers.”
I Meet the Czar Who Escaped the Revolution
L unch wasn’t exactly the Mad Hatter’s tea party (everybody stayed in their chairs and there weren’t any rodents in the teapot or anything like that), but it was still pretty peculiar.
There we were in the dining room with a real cloth on the table and the vase of flowers and everything like it was Thanksgiving or something and we had twenty people for this big, fancy meal. Only it was just the three of us and we weren’t having a big, fancy meal. We weren’t even having something typically English like boiled cabbage or crumpets to celebrate my first day in London.
“This is great.” I looked from my plate to Caroline. “I love pizza.”
“I thought you might.” She passed me the salad. “Make you feel a bit more at home.”
The feeling at home thing only lasted for as long as it took me to realize that the cutlery beside my plate wasn’t just for the lettuce and tomatoes. (I figured this was another point for Mr Young and his belief that the English are so terrifically civilized. I mean, how far away from our hunter-gatherer past do you have to be even to think of eating pizza with a knife and fork?)
“Wow,” I said. “In Brooklyn we just pick it up with our hands.”
“You also drive on the wrong side of the road,” said Robert.
“It’s so messy, though, isn’t it?” Caroline daintily speared a small triangle of pizza. “What with the sauce and all.”
I picked up my knife and fork, and dug in. A big chunk of pie jumped into the air and landed cheese-side down on the immaculate tablecloth.
“Oh, I’m
so
sorry.” (That was Caroline not me.)
“It’s Sod’s Law, isn’t it?” asked Robert.
I didn’t know who Sod was.
“Sod was some poor bloke who worked out that if someone throws you a knife you’re going to catch it by the blade.”
“We call it Murphy’s Law.” (Sky says it would be an Irishman who figured that one out.)
“See what I mean about you Americans?” said Robert. “You always have to be different.”
After that, Robert went into writer-brooding-over-his-book mode (a state I recognized from my dad, who was once so preoccupied thinking about what he was going to say about Arizona that he didn’t even notice that the stove was on fire), so it was left to Caroline and me to keep the conversation going. We talked about the weather and the garden and school and what vegetarians eat and her mom’s back and stuff like that. So this was normality. Eating lunch in the dining room with Robert sitting there like he was in a trance and the extra plate and cutlery across from where I was sitting. My gran has a friend who always sets an extra place in case Jesus happens to drop by, which is pretty weird since it isn’t like he’d show up because he was hungry, but this was even weirder. It
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