Nearly a year later, on a soggy November night, I left my Fulham flat and made my way to the Ritz to meet my father and Elisa. The Tube was stale with unwashed commuters and the damp of the still night air. I came out of the station at New Bond Street wearing the only decent dress and jacket I had in London, feeling waiflike next to the chic coiffed mannequins lording it over every single shop’s window. The Ritz stood in the distance in all its cheesy extravagance. Would she be familiar, Elisa, I wondered? “I think you’ll like her,” my father had said several times over the phone. “You two have a lot in common.” I had no idea what to expect.
Between completing a series of installations, finishing my MA program, and signing a lease for a shared art studio with a group from Chelsea College, I’d been too busy to engage much with family matters. I’d managed to keep my promise to myself, mostly steering clear of romantic relationships, although the difficulties I’d experienced with British men had certainly aided me in this goal. From what I could tell, no one actually dated in London; they just got drunk at a pub, stumbled home, and “shagged.”
The Brits’ romantic side, such as it was, expressed itself through a cultural phenomenon that seemed unique to them: unrequited love. In England, everyone pined for someone—a lost love, a married love, or some other form of the impossible, and I was no exception. While at Chelsea I’d become infatuated first with Trevor and then with an artist who taught in the MA program: John Hilliard. And yet we were only friends. We often met at gallery openings and afterward would occasionally go to his house for a drink, where I’d put one of my favorite Bob Dylan albums on the record player—The Times They Are A-Changin’. John was the last person I knew with a cherished (and unironic) vinyl collection, all alphabetized. Substantially older than I, and with a successful international career as an artist, John seemed a role model, though, in truth, I found him at least as hip as any of my actual contemporaries. We’d sit on his Italian sofa and talk about art, films, bands, about all the people we knew who were doing noteworthy things.
And yet, as with so many men I’d met in London, John maintained a flirtatious remove that was unsettling, and I began to suspect that my unrequited feelings might simply be part of the cultural soup in which I found myself. I was learning to speak a new language—the language of calibrated distance—with the hope that our carefully monitored exchanges would somehow lead to more closeness.
In spite of how lonely this was, my life would undoubtedly have appeared, to the outside observer, rather glamorous—full of parties, dinners, gallery openings, and interesting friends. Life moved quickly in London, and with all the distraction, I’d found one could easily spend a year or two—or five—and still be alone.
And so a part of me felt relieved that my father wasn’t alone. Though I spoke with him less frequently since Elisa had entered the picture, I realized his preoccupation was a recognizable sign of happiness. My grandmother, whom I badly missed, was the only family member with whom I spoke regularly. The rest had gradually stopped calling to report on my father’s comings and goings. But when my father called in October to say he was bringing Elisa all the way to London just to meet me, I knew things must be serious.
Stepping into the hotel, I recognized Elisa immediately. She and my father were sitting on a round silk sofa beneath an enormous crystal chandelier at the center of the lobby. “Christ,” I said to myself. “It’s Eat the Rich.” In high school, I had never known her actual name. I remembered standing outside a heavy glass door by the school’s parking lot with the smokers, cracking jokes between drags and getting laughs from the crowd gathered there, Elisa among them. She wore the same clothes every day—a moth-eaten army fatigue jacket with the words Eat the Rich embroidered on the back in fiery sweeps of red and blue. Her suede lace-up moccasins just reached the knees you could see exposed through shredded holes in her jeans. Her deep voice and towering height would have deemed her an important member of the crowd, though I rarely heard her speak. She seemed always to be lurking in the hallways or striding angrily across the school’s lawn as if chased by tiny devils with blazing pitchforks. And that emblazoned message . . .
My father waved me over, and I felt my legs propel me forward with involuntary momentum. This girl’s style had certainly changed, I thought to myself, taking in her fitted tweed suit, nude stockings, and brown tasseled loafers, a single strand of pearls around her rather thick neck. My lips strained into a smile. I watched her eyes. They were, I saw, the eyes of a cornered animal. Was she hoping I wouldn’t remember her? Though both of us were nervous, clearly, I felt worse for Elisa somehow.
My father stood up, smiling, and leaned toward me for a hug, his pipe clenched between his teeth. “Hello, Franny,” he said with determined cheer. “I like your hair!”