Tales From a Broad (3 page)

“This is such an ego-boosting intervention,”
I said dryly.

Tess’s phone rang and she held out a finger
to pause our conversation. “It’s Landon,” she explained, looking at
her phone. “Work it, Mom.”

“Tell your brother to call me,” Morgan
shouted as Tess walked towards the kitchen. Morgan gripped the edge
of her seat and leaned towards me. “Lucy, listen,” she said in a
hushed tone. “To be perfectly honest with you, this isn’t just for
you. I’m worried about Tess.”

I sat up with a start and clasped my hands
together. “What happened? What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Morgan said with a hand in the
air, “but that’s just it. You heard what she said. All of her
friends have found jobs they love, and there she is, feeling stuck
in that dead end daycare. Then there’s Jack,” Morgan rolled her
eyes and sighed. “I don’t know, Lu. I just worry about her. I feel
like she’s falling into a rut, and she’s too young to be stagnant.
I knew if I encouraged her to take the trip to help
you
,
she’d go. Look at how excited she is! I’m not trying to put
pressure on you, but—”

“Oh no. No pressure,” I scoffed and gave her
a sideways glance.

I sunk into the couch and searched the
ceiling, as if the answer to my life was written somewhere up
there. I closed my eyes in despair and heard her rummaging through
the mail piled high on the table.

“It’s just that...” I cracked open one eye
and watched her slip the unopened wedding response cards into her
bag, completely unaware that she’d been busted. “I don’t know if
I’d be good company. I don’t want to go all the way to Europe only
to drag your daughter down with me. I saw that by the way. Sneaky
envelope-taker.”

Morgan chuckled. “Look, I came here to make
peace with you, not stress you out even more. I’m sorry. I just
think you should at least consider it. Please. It might be
fun.”

Tess had already emerged from the kitchen and
stood behind the couch. “Oh, there’s no might involved.” Tess
squeezed her fists in excitement. “Get this: Landon’s company is
sending him to Florence the same time we’d be there! If we were to
go, of course.”

“Wow. That’s wonderful!” Morgan exclaimed.
“Sounds like fate.”

“No kidding. No pressure, Aunt Lu,” Tess
said, suddenly holding a hand up. “But, how cool would it be to see
Italia
,” she said in a mock Italian accent, “with your only
niece and nephew?”

I smiled fondly at Tess, whom I still saw as
the little girl who had called me with anything newsworthy since
the very first day she learned to use the phone. I’ve been her
personal shopper, psychologist, and guidance counselor and have
loved her like a daughter since the day she was born.

God only knows that Tess could be the closest
I may ever get to a daughter of my own. I knew that while my life
was in shambles, if I didn’t go on this trip, then Tess probably
wouldn’t go either.

“Anyway,” Tess continued. “We’ll stop
harassing you. Why don’t you go shower and get dressed? Mom and I
were hoping to take you for nails and lunch.”

I was overcome with emotion. How lucky was I
to have people in my life who cared so much about me? And to think
I almost didn’t answer the door. I paused for a moment in
contemplation as tears pricked my eyes. Their faces began to blur
in front of me.

“Shower,” I scoffed, blinking rapidly.
“Cleanliness is overrated. Besides, I should probably get used to
skipping a shower here and there,” I smiled mischievously. “They
say backpacking isn’t always so glamorous, you know.”

Chapter
Two

I always thought London would be easy to
navigate. So much for speaking the language. Apparently, I only
speak American.

Facebook Status June 4 at 2:21pm

Two weeks later, Tess and I were on the
redeye from JFK to London and arrived at eight the next morning.
Heathrow International Airport bustled, and being in a foreign
country was like getting an IV drip of caffeine straight into my
bloodstream. Excitement coursed through my veins and gave me the
jolt that I desperately needed.

After drinking two vodka tonics before the
plane took off, I managed to fall asleep by the time we reached our
cruising altitude. But my forty-minute nap actually ruined the rest
of my flight. My subconscious mind had taken me off on a honeymoon
with Cooper, so when I woke up to find Tess drooling on my
shoulder, I wished to God I was still asleep. I desperately wanted
to return to my dream and escape the real world, to go back to a
place where I was a billion times happier.

Instead, while listening to Tess snore, I
obsessed over the fact that my wedding day would have been two days
away. I’d planned not to dwell on it, but the dream felt so real,
and with the date looming in the air, my mind raced the entire
flight.

Tess, on the other hand, slept like a baby
and was perfectly rested by the time we landed. After months of
succumbing to complete and utter lethargy, I struggled to keep up
with her as she raced through the terminal, awestruck by the shops
that surrounded us. I followed two paces behind, listening to the
airport announcements that were being made in various languages
while drawing in deep inhales of the eucalyptus citrus scent that
wafted from Molton Brown.

Once we retrieved our backpacks and cleared
customs, Tess and I clinked passports to celebrate our first stamps
and our arrival. We hopped into the back of a Mercedes taxicab and
gave the driver the address to our hostel.

Even though the car smelled like stale cigar
smoke, I still felt a bit like royalty. Between the driver’s
three-piece suit, his crisp accent, and the fact that I was being
whisked away in a luxury vehicle, something felt quite right as we
drove on the wrong side of the road.

But when we got to the hostel, my grandiose
delusions became more blandiose, and I suddenly felt like a poor
college kid. There were about a dozen twentysomethings crowding the
entryway to a dilapidated building. Its once-white cement,
blackened from age, had dirty windows that opened up to rusty fire
escapes. The building reminded me of the neglected low-income
housing back home. Then again, that’s basically what it was.

What did I expect for 20 euros a night? You
get what you pay for, and that’s exactly what we got. Two beds. Two
of six beds in one very cramped room. But buttered toast was
included. Thank goodness.

* * * *

An hour later in the cafeteria, I felt like a
fish out of water among the hostel’s much younger clientele. There
was a definite style here—lots of tattered denim, sneakers, and
greasy hair. Was that a current trend in London or just a dirty
look accepted among the backpacking community?

A young guy sat in the middle of the room and
strummed away on his guitar. Some of the diners sang along to his
rendition of “Like a Rolling Stone” as they contributed to the
already overpowering odor of marijuana that filled the air.

But since it was still the middle of the
night back home, I imagined I was in a bread bar listening to an
acoustic band. Plates were piled high with burnt toast while crumbs
lay scattered all over the tables and floor. For some reason, as I
sat on a chipped bench that was sticky from grape jelly and munched
away on stale bread, I was suddenly feeling pretty psyched.

A voice in my head spoke as if it were an
announcer at a Broadway show.
The role of Type A, anal-retentive
Lucy Banks, will be played by her free-spirited twin sister. The
two girls had been separated at birth
.

I always did the right thing in the right
order. I finished college, went on to graduate school, and had a
job lined up before I even had my diploma in hand. Not only did I
lack the confidence to just take time off and go, it hadn’t even
crossed my mind. It wasn’t an option. That wasn’t on the road map
of what was supposed to happen in life. People like me didn’t do
things like this.

I looked around and a slow smile spread
across my face. I may not have looked the part, but I
was
a
part of that freewheeling scene around me. Just like Mick Jagger’s
rolling stone, I was a complete unknown. I looked around at the
young adults poring through travel books and maps. We all had the
same thing in common. We were here to see the world.

“So, what do you want to do today?” Tess
said. She popped a piece of crust into her mouth and opened her
guidebook.

“Other than carbo-load? I think we’ve
consumed enough bread to run a marathon.” I laughed and brushed off
the pile of crumbs accumulated on my lap. “Do you want to hit a
museum? Or take one of those architecture walks?”

“Hmm,” Tess drummed her fingers on the table
and looked down at her book.

The thought of a walk sounded fun to me and I
was pleasantly surprised I even wanted to take one. Fitness had
always been a top priority of mine, but since the break-up, I had
become overcome with a constant state of fatigue. My limbs had been
feeling just as heavy as my heart, and I had never gone this long
without actually wanting to move my body.

Tess snapped her head up. “I’d love to take a
walk.” She paused, thinking. “But how about we stroll through
Regent Park instead? It says here we might see Madonna on one of
her runs. Or have a David and Victoria Beckham sighting!”

“I’d say we’d probably have more of a chance
seeing those guys at Madame Tussauds,” I said with a chuckle. “Have
you been to the one in New York?”

Tess wrinkled her nose and shook her head.
“Nah. Wax museums are boring.”

“Not this one. The statues looked so real.
Especially with all the Botox the celebs are doing these days.”

Tess didn’t look too convinced. She giggled
and turned her attention back to her book.

I rested my chin on my elbow and looked
around the room. As my gaze fell on the Union Flag that hung on the
wall, a red flag of my own went up in my mind. We had only been in
Europe for two hours and already we couldn’t seem to agree on our
first outing. Not a good sign. It hadn’t occurred to me that our
ideas for the perfect trip might not be the same.

“So, is it wax museums you find boring or all
museums?” I said with an eyebrow raised. My voice sounded casual,
but I braced myself for her response.

“I have nothing against museums,” Tess
replied.

Oh, thank God.

“In fact,” she added, “I’m dying to go to
this one.” Tess thumbed through her book and stopped when she found
what she had been looking for. She turned the book around to face
me.

I leaned across the table for a closer look.
“The Dungeon Museum?”

“Yep. ‘Gruesome events that span two thousand
years of London’s history’,” she read aloud. “A museum of simulated
horror from history.”

I felt despair as I sunk back onto the bench.
Tess looked at me with a glimmer in her eyes. “What do you
think?”

I quickly shook my head. “I’m sorry. I’ll
never be able to sleep again. Especially here,” I whispered. I
pointed my chin towards an overweight guy who was cleaning his
fingernails with a knife. Something that resembled a dog collar was
wrapped around his neck and had a chain that connected to piercings
in his ear and nose.

“Yikes,” Tess said with grimace.

“Yeah ... terror’s not my thing.”

“Okay, fair enough.” Tess handed me the book.
“You pick.”

I took the book and turned the page. “How
about the Tower of London, famous for the execution of Anne Boleyn?
I’ve become obsessed since I read
The Other Boleyn
Girl
.”

I filled Tess in on the tragic lives of the
Boleyn sisters. She had been nodding her head politely, but I
noticed that her eyes had glazed over.

“Or ... we can do a little shopping?”

Tess clapped her hands with delight. “Now
you’re talking. I’m dying to see the secondhand shops on Portobello
Road.”

Although, I had more of a firsthand
experience in mind, I was happy to find something we would both
enjoy.

She told me about a store called The Cloth
Shop, where she had hoped to pick up some unique fabrics for her
sewing. We headed in that direction and stopped in a few of the
thrift shops along the way. While Tess found Nirvana perusing racks
of worn clothing, I, on the other hand, felt like I needed to
shower upon leaving each store.

“Tell me again what it is that you like about
used clothing?” I hung a frayed skirt back up on a rack and reached
into my bag for a bottle of sanitizer.

“They’re vintage,” Tess corrected, “and
they’re clean!” She held up a sleeveless shirt missing a button.
“You can’t find these kinds of things in department stores.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” I muttered.

She shot me an amused look. “I heard
that.”

I smiled and squirted Purell into my cupped
palm. “Tess.” I paused to swallow. “Would you mind if we went our
separate ways for a few hours?”

“You mean hang out alone?” Tess peered at me
from behind a pile of hats and pushed out her lower lip in a
pout.

“Well ... even though we’ll be flying out of
London at the end of the trip, we’re only here for two days this
time around. I kind of think we both should see what we want to
see. Don’t you?” I said apprehensively.

“I guess... Where are you going to go?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I’d like to pop
into a museum or an old church. Get a little culture.”

Tess suddenly looked like she had just dodged
a bullet. She pulled a pair of jeans from the rack and nodded
enthusiastically. “You’re right. It’s probably best we go our
separate ways. Maybe I’ll hit that Dungeon Museum after all,” she
mused.

She turned to face the pile of clothes that
spilled out of her cart. “When you do find that church, please say
a prayer for me that I don’t lose my shirt in this store.”