Bookweirdest (28 page)

The sound of a car pulling up on the driveway interrupted his thoughts. He crossed the hall to the study and looked out. A silver station wagon was pulling up. The yellow sign on the door read Taxi. The man who opened it and stepped out wore black jeans and a leather jacket. His black hair was pulled back into a ponytail. While the taxi driver removed his luggage from the trunk, the man in black frisked himself for some money to pay the fare. From Norman’s angle, it was impossible to see the man’s face, but he soon obliged by looking up, scanning the upper windows of the Shrubberies as if he was expecting someone to be waiting for him. The man in black smiled when he saw Norman standing there, the familiar crooked smile of his uncle. Kit waved up to him from the driveway, and Norman couldn’t help waving back. It was a reflex.

T
hat summer in England seemed so much longer than a few months. Norman had been in and out of half a dozen books and had experienced a lifetime’s worth of adventure, so it didn’t seem like a vacation. The strange old country house they called the Shrubberies had begun to feel like home, and now they were leaving it, returning to their real home so that Norman and Dora could start the school year and Edward Vilnius could return to teaching at the university.

The road back to the airport was like all the other roads in England, narrow and twisty, causing his head to sway in the back seat and occasionally hit the window. Up front, his mom and dad bantered as usual, laughing at their own stupid jokes and pointing out “interesting” bits of scenery.

Beside him, Dora rattled along about whatever came into her head. “Tell us how you met again,” she demanded. She’d heard the story hundreds of times, but like all little girls, she loved the romance of her parents’ meeting.

“Oh, that was a very long time ago now,” her mother replied, pretending not to want to tell the story. But in truth, she liked to tell the story, even if she said only half of it out loud. Norman knew the unspoken parts now and could fill them in himself. It was
interesting to him to realize that you could tell half the truth and still not reveal most of the story.

“My father knew her father,” Edward began. “They worked together after the war.”

“Grandpa Jespers was a university professor too,” Meg continued. “He was sent to Eastern Europe to help re-establish their universities. He stayed with your father’s family, and they became good friends.”

“Do you remember that time, Dad?” Norman asked. He wasn’t trying to be mischievous. He was curious to know what his father remembered.

“Oh, I was very young. I remember only little bits of it. I remember a little courtyard garden. I remember my father teaching me English. It seemed like such a strange language. Most of all, I remember the old archive where he worked—a dark, dusty room filled with rare books and scrolls.”

Norman remembered that room a little better, and could tell him a few things about it, but if Edward remembered Godwyn as his father, Norman wasn’t going to contradict him.

“But that’s not how you two met. Tell me how you met,” Dora insisted, eager to dive to the heart of the story.

“My parents tried to help Edward’s family defect. The borders were closing—the Iron Curtain and all that—and intellectuals like your father’s father were being persecuted. They needed to get out. The family split up. Edward came across the border with my parents. They used Kit’s passport and pretended he was their own son. His parents were supposed to come later, but something happened. There was a car crash. They might have been chased.”

“So you’re an orphan,” Dora said solemnly. It pleased her to feel sorry for her tragic dad.

“I hardly remember my birth parents. Mostly I remember growing up at the Shrubberies with the Jespers. They were very kind to me, and the Shrubberies was a magical place to grow up.” He didn’t sound at all bitter about the tragedy in his past. “And that’s where I met your mother. She was my best friend. The best
memories of my childhood are of the days we spent in the imaginary worlds we created together: great adventures in the desert, shipwrecks, forest kingdoms.” He lifted his hand from the gearshift to touch hers gently.

Norman caught his mother’s eye in the rear-view mirror. She was smiling contentedly.

“Your father eventually went to school in America on a scholarship. I came a few years later.”

“She followed me,” Edward said with mock arrogance.

“My mother got a job in America and I followed
her
,” Meg contradicted him. “But it hardly matters. I knew eventually we would end up together. It was fate, you see.”

“A storybook romance,” his father said. He meant it ironically, but Norman knew better.

They drove along a little farther without saying anything more. Norman wondered if this was really what his father remembered, or if he was going along with the cover story too. Did he really not remember his childhood in San Savino? Did he really not realize that he had been born and had lived among the crusading knights?

“Do you think you’d know if you were a fictional character?” He blurted out the question at the end of the long conversation he’d been having with himself in his head. It was the sort of out-of-context remark that made him a figure of fun in class back home.

His mother for once seemed to know what he was thinking, but that didn’t stop her from answering the question, as she often did, with another question.

“Do you think you’d know if you were half-fictional?”

He hadn’t thought of it that way.

“Do you know what?” Dora asked, moving from topic to topic as only a child obsessed with her own thoughts could. “I’m going to be a writer when I grow up.”

“Oh, really?” her dad said. “Not a show jumper or a ballerina anymore?”

“That’s kid’s stuff. When I’m a famous writer like Uncle Kit, I’ll buy myself a stable of horses.”

“A famous writer like Uncle Kit, eh?” Their uncle had only joined them for the last few days of their summer in England, but he had obviously made a huge impression on Dora. “And what are you going to write about?”

“I’m going to write about Esme, the magic rabbit, and how she looks after all the orphan children in her house in the countryside and rescues them when they go on adventures.”

“That’s a book I’d definitely like to read,” their father said with a chuckle.

“Oh, everyone will,” Dora assured him confidently. “Then I’ll be able to buy my own horses. I’ll have a jumper and a hacking horse and an Arabian for show …” Norman stopped listening to the list of horses she would one day possess. The list ended at some point, and thoughts of her future fame and fortune were enough to keep her quiet for a while.

Norman watched the countryside fly by the window—the hills, the viaduct, the winding roads that were so familiar to him. At one point, he thought he spotted a big estate that looked exactly like Kelmsworth. He had hated it in England when they arrived, but the site of the familiar estate on the hill actually made him sad to leave.

“Mom,” he said, opening his mouth to ask the question before it was even completely formed in his mind, “I was wondering if maybe I could come back and spend next summer with Uncle Kit.”

His mother gave him a sidelong glance of warning, then seemed to soften. “Maybe. We’ll see how you do in school this year. It might be nice for you to get to know your long-lost uncle.”