Meg Cabot - Queen of Babble

“There she is!” Marnie is screaming, pointing at me. “Jennifer Garner! Jennifer Garner!”

I keep walking, my head down, trying to ignore her. But both Andrew and his father are looking over at her, bemused smiles on their faces. Andrew does look a bit like his dad. Will he, too, be totally bald when he’s fifty? Is baldness a trait passed on by the mother’s side of the family or the father’s? Why didn’t I take a single bio course while I was designing my own major? I could have squeezed in at least one…

“Is that child speaking to you?” Mr. Marshall asks me.

“Me?” I glance over my shoulder, pretending to notice for the first time that a small child is shrieking at me from across the garage.

“Jennifer Garner! It’s me! Marnie! From the plane! Remember?”

I smile and wave at Marnie. She flushes with pleasure and grabs her mother’s arm.

“See?” she cries. “I told you! It really is her!”

Marnie waves some more. I wave back while Andrew wrestles my suitcase into the small trunk, swearing a bit. Since he’s been wheeling it along the whole time, he had no idea how heavy it is until he bent to lift it.

But really, a month is a long time. I don’t see how I could have packed less than ten pairs of shoes. Shari even said she was proud of me for being sensible enough not to bring my lace-up platform espadrilles. Although I did manage to squeeze them in at the last minute before I left.

“Why is that child calling you Jennifer Garner?” Mr. Marshall wants to know as he, too, waves at Marnie, whose grandparents, or whoever they are, still haven’t succeeded in herding her into the car.

“Oh,” I say, feeling myself begin to blush. “We sat next to each other on the plane. It’s just a little game we were playing, to pass time on the flight.”

“How kind of you,” Mr. Marshall says, waving even more energetically now. “Not all young people realize how important it is to treat children with respect and dignity instead of condescension. It’s so important to set a good example for the younger generation, especially when one considers how unstable many of today’s family units really are.”

“That’s so true,” I say in what I hope sounds like a respectful and dignified manner.

“Christ,” Andrew says. He’s just tried to pick up my carry-on bag from where I’ve set it on the ground. “What have you got in here, Liz? A dead body?”

“Oh,” I say, my respectful and dignified demeanor threatening to crumble, “just a few necessities.”

“I’m sorry my chariot isn’t more stylish,” Mr. Marshall says, opening the driver’s door to his car. “It’s certainly not what you’re used to, I’m sure, back in America. But I hardly use it, since I walk to the school where I teach most days.”

I am instantly charmed by the vision of Mr. Marshall strolling down a tree-lined country lane in a herringbone jacket with leather elbow patches-rather than the extremely uninspired windbreaker he is currently wearing-and perhaps a cocker spaniel or two nipping at his heels.

“Oh, it’s fine,” I say about his car. “Mine isn’t much bigger.”

I wonder why he’s just standing there by the door, instead of getting in, until he goes, “After you, er, Liz.”

He wants me to drive? But…I just got here! I don’t even know my way around!

Then I realize he isn’t holding open the driver’s door at all…it’s the passenger side. The steering wheel is on the right side of the car.

Of course! We’re in England!

I laugh at my own mistake and sit down in the front seat.

Andrew slams down the trunk and comes around to see me sitting in the passenger seat. He looks at his dad and says, “What, I’m supposed to sit in the boot, then?”

“Mind your manners, Andy,” Mr. Marshall says. It seems so strange to hear Andrew called Andy. He is such an Andrew to me. But evidently not to his family.

Although truthfully, in that jacket, he looks a bit more like an Andy than an Andrew.

“Ladies in the front seat,” Mr. Marshall goes on with a smile at me. “And gentlemen in the back.”

“Liz, I thought you were a feminist,” Andrew says (only it comes out sounding like, Liz, I fought you were a feminist). “Are you going to stand for this kind of treatment?”

“Oh,” I say. “Of course. Andrew should sit in front, he’s got longer legs-”

“I won’t hear of it,” Mr. Marshall says. “You’ll muss your pretty Chinese dress, climbing about.” Then he shuts my car door, firmly, for me.

Next thing I know, he’s come around the right side and is holding the driver’s-side seat back for Andrew to crawl behind. There’s a brief argument I can’t really hear, and then Andrew appears. I don’t really know any other word I can use to describe the expression on Andrew’s face except peevish.

But I feel bad for even thinking Andrew might be feeling peevish about me getting to sit in the front seat. Most likely he’s just embarrassed about not having his own car to pick me up in. Yes, that’s probably it. Poor thing. He probably thinks I’m holding him to American standards of capitalist materialism! I’ll have to find some way to assure him that I find his poverty extremely sexy, seeing as how all the sacrifices he’s making, he’s making for the children.

Not Andrew Jr., Henry, Stella, and Beatrice, of course. I mean the children of the world, the ones he’ll be teaching someday.

Wow. Just thinking about all the little lives Andrew’s going to improve with his sacrifices in the teaching profession is making me kind of horny.

Mr. Marshall climbs into the driver’s seat and smiles at me. “Ready?” he asks cheerfully.

“Ready,” I say, and I’m filled with a spurt of excitement despite my jet lag. England! I’m in England at last! I’m about to be driven along the English countryside, into London! Maybe I’ll even see some sheep!

Before we’re able to pull out, however, an SUV drives up behind us, and a back window powers down. Marnie, my little friend from the plane, leans out the window to yell, “Good-bye, Jennifer Garner!”

I roll down my own window and wave. “Bye, Marnie!”

Then the SUV pulls away, Marnie beaming happily in the back.

“Who in heaven,” Mr. Marshall asks as he backs out, “is this Jennifer Garner?”

“Just some American film star,” Andrew says before I can say anything.

Just some American film star? Just some American film star who happens to look exactly like your girlfriend! I want to shriek. Enough so that little girls on airplanes want her autograph!

But I manage to keep my mouth shut for once, because I don’t want Andrew to feel inadequate, knowing he’s dating a Jennifer Garner look-alike. That could be really intimidating, you know, for a guy. Even an American one.

Idon’t see any sheep. It turns out Heathrow airport isn’t exactly that far out in the country. As if I can’t tell I’m not in Michigan anymore from the way the houses look (many of them are attached, like in that movie The Snapper…which, come to think of it, was actually set in Ireland, but oh well), I definitely know it from billboards that flash by us. I can’t tell, in many cases, what the product is that they’re trying to sell-one of them shows a woman in her underwear with the word Vodafone beneath her, which could be an ad for a phone-sex service.

But it could just as easily be an ad for panties.

But when I ask, neither Andrew nor his father is able to tell me which it is, since the word panties causes them to dissolve into peals of laughter.

I don’t mind that they find me so (unintentionally) hilarious, though, since it means Andrew’s mind has been taken off being in the backseat.

When we finally turn onto the street I recognize as Andrew’s from the care packages I’ve been sending him all summer-boxes filled with his favorite American candy, Necco wafers, and Marlboro Lights, his preferred brand of cigarettes (though I don’t smoke myself, and assume Andrew will quit well before the first baby is born)-I’m feeling much better about things than I had been back in the parking garage. That’s because the sun has finally put in an appearance, peeking shyly out from behind the clouds, and because Andrew’s street looks so nice and Europeany, with its clean sidewalks, flowering trees, and old-fashioned town houses. It’s like something out of that movie Notting Hill.

I have to admit, it’s something of a relief: I had been wavering between picturing Andrew’s “flat” as being as high tech as Hugh Grant’s in About a Boy, or a garret, like in A Little Princess (which looked very cute once that old guy fixed it up for her), only in a seedier part of town, overlooking a wharf. I’d just been assuming I wouldn’t be able to go walking around his neighborhood by myself after dark for fear of being set upon by heroin addicts. Or Gypsies.

I’m glad to see it’s actually somewhere between the two extremes.

We are, as Mr. Marshall assures me, just a mile away from Hampstead Heath, the park where a lot of famous stuff happened, none of which I actually remember at this current time, and where people go today to have picnics and fly kites.

I’m happily surprised to see that Andrew lives in such a nice, upscale neighborhood. I didn’t think teachers made enough to rent apartments in town houses. No doubt his flat is at the top of one-just like Mickey Rooney’s in Breakfast at Tiffany’s! Maybe I’ll get to meet Andrew’s wacky but bighearted neighbors. Maybe I can have them-and Andrew’s parents, to thank Mr. Marshall for the ride from the airport-over for a small supper to show my American hospitality. I can make Mom’s spaghetti due (pronounced doo-ay). It tastes complicated, but nothing could be simpler to make. It’s just pasta, garlic, olive oil, hot pepper flakes, and Parmesan cheese. I’m sure even England would have all the ingredients.

“Well, here we are,” Mr. Marshall says, pulling into a parking space in front of one of the brown-brick town houses and turning off the ignition. “Home sweet home.”

I’m a little surprised that Mr. Marshall is getting out with us. I would have thought he’d have dropped us off and gone on to his own house somewhere-well, wherever Andrew’s family lives, a family that consists, from what I remember him saying in his e-mails, of a teacher father, a social worker mother, two younger brothers, and a collie.

But maybe Mr. Marshall wants to help us with my bags, seeing as how Andrew probably lives on the top floor of the charming town house we’re parked in front of.

Except that when we get to the top of the long flight of steps that leads up to the front door, it’s Mr. Marshall who takes out a key and unlocks it.

And is greeted by the inquisitive gold and white muzzle of a beautiful collie.

“Hello,” Mr. Marshall calls into what I can clearly see is not the foyer of an apartment house, but the entrance to a single-family home. “We’re here!”

I am lugging my carry-on bag while Andrew pulls my wheelie bag up the stairs, not even bothering to lift it, but dragging it up one step at a time-thonk, thonk, thonk. But I swear I nearly drop the bag-hair dryer be damned-when I see that dog.

“Andrew,” I whisper, whirling around, since he’s coming up the steps behind me. “Do you live…at home? With your parents?”

Because, unless he’s dog-sitting, that’s the only explanation I can think of for what I’m seeing. And even that isn’t a very good one.

“Of course,” Andrew says, looking annoyed. “What did you think?”

Only it comes out sounding like, What did you fink?