Field Notes on Love(44)

“Have you ever been?” he asks the sisters, who both laugh.

“No, we’ve never bean,” Karen says, mimicking his accent. “But maybe one day. I’d sure like to see that castle. What’s it called? The one where the queen lives.”

    “Buckingham Palace,” Hugo says. “But that’s in London. I’m from a place called Surrey, which isn’t too far from there.”

“So how did you end up on a train in Iowa?”

“How does anyone end up on a train in Iowa?” Mae jokes, and they both turn their attention to her.

“You’re not from England,” Karen points out.

“No, I’m from New York. But also not the city.”

“How did you two meet?”

“It’s a long story,” Hugo says, reaching for Mae’s hand underneath the table. She clasps his back, and he feels an instant warmth spread through him. Outside, the sun has dipped low, casting long shadows on the fields of corn. They pass a herd of cows huddled close, a road with a dusty pickup truck lumbering by, a small town with an American flag waving high above the buildings. It all feels unreal somehow, sliding past like this, as if it’s part of a film montage.

Once they’ve ordered—a steak for him, some sort of chicken dish for her—they hand back their menus. The sisters are on their second glass of wine each, and Trish winks at them from across the table. “If you’d just spent six days with our mother, you’d be drinking too.”

Karen lifts her glass. “Amen.”

“So what’s England like?” Trish asks.

Hugo shrugs. “You know, mostly just tea and crumpets. That sort of thing.”

He’s only teasing, of course, but they both nod very seriously. “Do you go to college here or there?” asks Trish.

“Neither,” he says. “Yet.”

    There must be something in his voice that warns her off a follow-up question, because she nods and turns to Mae. “How about you?”

“I start at USC next week,” she says. “That’s where I’m headed now.”

“Well, isn’t that wonderful,” Trish says, then nudges Karen. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

Karen nods. “Wonderful. My three are still little, but I’d love it if they got into somewhere like that one day. Or somewhere in England,” she says, looking over at Hugo. “Do you miss it?”

He grins at her. “Would it be absolutely horrible if I said no?”

“Trust me,” Trish says, “we get it. We just spent a week watching soap operas and learning to crochet. Home can be overrated.”

“It’s just that I’ve never really been anywhere else,” he says. “And it’s nice to be on my own for a bit. But it’s only been a few days. I’m sure I’ll start missing them all soon.”

“You have brothers or sisters?”

Hugo glances sideways at Mae, then says, “Both. There are six of us.”

“Older or younger?”

He hesitates, as he always does at this point in the conversation. “The same age, actually. We’re sextuplets.”

They both stare at him blankly.

“Multiples,” he says. “We were all—”

“Yeah, darlin’, we know what sextuplets are,” Trish says, shaking her head. “It’s just…wow. There are really six of you? All the same age?”

He nods.

“Are you identical?”

“Some of us,” he says. “But I’m the handsome one.”

    When Mae laughs at this, he feels a rush of pleasure. Behind them, a bald man with a handlebar mustache turns around in his seat. “Did you say you’re a sextuplet?”

Hugo nods, realizing how many people are staring at him. The booths are small and pressed close together, a whole dining room shoved into a train car.

“My cousin has triplets,” the man says, “and I thought that was a lot of work.”

A woman a couple of tables over cranes her neck to look at Hugo. “I’m a twin,” she says in a low voice, sounding shy about it.

Hugo realizes that half the people on the train are staring at him now. He’s used to this sort of thing back home, where the six of them are fairly well known—though even there, it’s rare for someone to recognize him when he’s not with his siblings. Once when he was in London with Margaret, a group of young girls stopped to ask if he was one of the Surrey Six. They fell into giggles when he said he was, and asked him to autograph two receipts, a phone case, and even someone’s forearm. But usually it takes the whole gaggle of them to elicit any sort of attention.

Here in America, it’s different. The books aren’t published on this side of the ocean, and there aren’t many readers of the blog in this country either. Americans have their own sets of famous multiples. So he’s chalked up most of the stares he’s gotten to the color of his skin or the fact that he’s traveling with a white girl. Or maybe, if he’s being generous, to his height.

But now, once again, he’s no longer just Hugo. He’s one-sixth of something bigger.

And even amid the general merriment of this train car—the curious questions and eager faces—this feels like a kind of loss.