The English American

by Alison Larkin

  On the eternal subject of Phillippa’s untidiness, I’m sorry to say her essay on the fall of the Roman Empire had more crossings than the Waterloo Line. She is, at times, very immature.

  Miss Possum, Latin teacher

  Well, of course I was immature. I was ten.

  HOUSE REPORT

  Phillippa drives us to the point of despair in her dormitory—and by leaving her belongings scattered abroad. Alas, she will never make a needlewoman—and her work suffers because of her appalling untidiness. The universal distribution of her belongings entails much work for other people. Please note, when I say she is appallingly untidy, I am not exaggerating.

  Miss Steel, Housemistress

  The reports of my untidiness alarmed my neat-as-a-pin parents far more than anything else. Ashamed of myself for disappointing them so terribly, I’d return to school at the end of the holidays, determined to be tidy. No matter how hard I tried, I never managed it. Within days I’d be hauled up before the headmistress with ink on my hands, or my uniform, or both, and told, once again, that I was a grave disappointment to the school.

  I blocked out memories of the aptly named Miss Steel and kept flipping through.

  There were papers from the British school I went to in Hong Kong before boarding school, and from my prep school and nursery school in Zimbabwe. Then my baby weight, height, that sort of thing.

  Then I came across a thin file with a label on it. It read: “As supplied by the adoption agency, non-identifying information about Phillippa’s biological parents.”

  I’d always known I was adopted. But we’d never talked about who from. I held on to the file tightly. There, in my hands, fifteen years since I was born, I was holding a file that held the facts about my long-lost mother. I was holding the key to my true identity.

  Feeling like a criminal, but unable to stop myself, I got up and shut the door. Then, guiltily, heart beating extra fast, I opened the file and I started to read.

  For Phillippa when she is ready:

  Non-identifying information about Pippa’s biological parents

  Mother: 5' 8", 110 lbs. Very pretty. Writes excellent poetry. High achiever. Well-spoken, lively, highly intelligent. Born in . Educated at . American.

  Father: 6 ft., 180 lbs. Born in . Varsity football team. Excellent speaker. Politically ambitious. Married. American.

  Mother relinquished baby so as not to ruin father’s political career.

  I held my hands to my heart, which was still beating at double speed. I shut my eyes.

  I knew it. I just knew it. My real parents were brilliant people. They were remarkable people. They were famous people.

  And they were American!

  I took a deep breath.

  “Relinquished baby so as not to ruin father’s political career.”

  Of course. This explained everything. No wonder I had been given up for adoption. Why, if the press found out about me, it could cause a nationwide scandal, maybe even bring down an entire American administration! Why else would the adoption agency black out all the details?

  I carefully put the file back in the drawer, exactly as I had found it, left Dad’s office, and ran down the stairs.

  “Couldn’t find the Sellotape anywhere,” I said, in as casual a tone as I could manage.

  “I’ll go and look,” Mum said. She returned a minute later. “Oh Pip, you are a silly billy. It was on top of the desk. Right under your nose!”

  “Sorry,” I said, somehow managing to hide my excitement.

  Thank God I found the papers. Now that I knew the truth, I would never have to upset anyone by asking questions.

  I mulled over the information I now had until it sunk in, repeating it to myself, over and over again.

  I’m descended from remarkable people.

  I’m an American.

  My father was in politics and unfaithful to his wife.

  I have red hair…

  Of course. I am a Kennedy.

  I selected the people I told this information to very carefully. With my best friends I’d say, “I’ve got a secret to tell you. I am not what I seem. I was adopted at birth, and my real father is a famous politician, probably a Kennedy.”

  I’d wait for the fascinated expression that invariably followed this revelation.

  “And,” I’d say, “there is evidence to suggest that my real mother is Emily Dickinson.” Or, when I readThe Bell Jar , Sylvia Plath. Or, when I decided my true vocation was to become a playwright, Wendy Wasserstein.

  Chapter Three

  IT’S STILL RAINING ASILEAVE WORK ,and London smells of damp coats and bus fumes and cigarettes. A thousand feet are walking along the Strand, and down the hill toward Embankment tube. I’m high as a kite after winning top salesperson of the week again, and for the first time in the three months since I ended things with Miles, I feel my usual optimism return. I hold soft, sweet-smelling daffodils, my prize for selling the most, which dance against my face, kissing me as I walk. I’m full of joy and I feel light again.

  If I were hip I wouldn’t tell you that I can whistle the tune to just about every musical ever written. The great ones uplift me as no other music can. But I’m not hip. I care even less about my hip factor than I do about the stain status of my clothing.

  So I leave work whistling “Singin’ in the Rain” and walk at a healthy pace toward Trafalgar Square. Dad spent hours teaching me how to whistle when I was about eight. I’ve been a world-class whistler ever since. As I whistle, people on the street around me start to smile.

  Today I look at each face as I pass by. Who are these people sharing the street with me? What is going on in their worlds, inside their heads? Are they in love? If so, is it the kind that Mum and Dad have? Based on having things in common, like raspberry picking and a love of dogs, and Shakespeare, and long country walks? Or is it the knock-you-out, eat-you-up, set-you-on-fire kind of love that I have longed for—and avoided—all my life?

  Are they looking at me and wondering the same thing? Or are they just going home, not thinking about much in particular? Is it quiet inside their heads? Still? Peaceful?

  A thousand thoughts compete with one another in my head, every day. They always have done. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have just one thought at a time. Like Mum and Dad and Charlotte.

  When I get to Villiers Street, where you turn left off the Strand to get to the Embankment tube, I stop at the light. There’s a woman next to me. I can tell, from the way she is standing, and the look in her eyes, that she’s terribly unhappy. She’s about thirty, I think. Tall and thin, like me. In her shiny black boots with big silver buckles she looks like an elegant buccaneer.

  It’s impossible to smile and whistle at the same time, so I turn my face to her and whistle the rest of the song in an attempt to cheer her up. The tune is almost lost in the traffic, but not quite.

  Her response to my whistling is quite different from everybody else’s. The woman turns her pale, tightly drawn face toward me. Then she says, in a voice that’s both shaking and sharp: “People like you—Christ! You just have to draw attention to yourself, don’t you?”

  Then she turns her head away and gets ready to move as soon as the traffic light turns green.

  She seems so miserable, and I know what that’s like, because I’ve been feeling unhappy recently too. Bursting with the desire to make everything all right for her, I turn to her and say, “I’m sorry you’re having a horrible day. I’m sorry for annoying you. I—well, I hope these will cheer you up.” Then I hand her my bunch of daffodils.

  The woman holds the flowers slightly away from her, her attention on the traffic light, which is about to change. Then, as a London bus revs up its engine, puffs warm exhaust into our faces, and rattles on down the famous London street, she drops the flowers on the ground and walks away.

  If this happened to Charlotte, or just about anyone else I know, they’d brush it off and carry on with their day. But for me it hurts terribly. For me, any kind of
rejection hurts terribly. It always has done. I’m even sensitive to little rejections—like the butcher giving the last chicken to the lady in the gray coat, even though she was behind me in the queue.

  It’s the real reason why I’ve never actually auditioned for a singing job of any kind—or applied for a job somewhere like Amnesty International. I’d rather be accepted for a job I don’t care about than risk being rejected by one I do.

  It’s the same with men.

  When I’m on my own with a boyfriend, everything’s wonderful. But when we go into the outside world, I find myself on red alert, terrified the object of my affections will be making a date with the waitress if I so much as go to the loo. I never let on, of course. Because everybody knows the bloke stays with you if the chase is still on.

  I thought I’d found the solution by dating the men least likely to leave me: Dull Blokes Only. That’s why, when Charlotte introduced me to Miles, I thought he’d be ideal.

  He absolutely wasn’t my type. He loved to spend hours looking at old buildings, and he thought Benny Hill was funnier than Ricky Gervais, for God’s sake. He was big and spotty and laughed too much at his own jokes. Miles, I knew immediately, would never leave me. I would be the one to leave him. Thus I accepted his invitation to dinner with absolute confidence in my ability to stay in emotional control.

  But Miles was kind, and even sexy in his own way. Before I knew it, to my surprise and dismay, I was in love again.

  We settled down. In the morning, Miles rode his yellow moped to work and spent the day designing corporate websites. We made love in the evenings, sometimes on the floor of his office, sometimes at my flat, once in the ladies’ room at the Tate.

  The more time we spent together, the more afraid I became that he would go off with somebody else. And, as usual, everything became about trying to make sure that didn’t happen.

  Once we bumped into an attractive friend of mine on the street, and she invited us to a dinner party. I couldn’t make it because it fell on the same night as Hanif Kureishi’s playwriting workshop at the Royal Court. I’d been looking forward to it for months.

  “Why don’t you come anyway, Miles?” she offered.

  “Not without me!” I said, instantly on the alert.

  “Why on earth not?” they said together, turning to me in unison. My heart was beating twice as fast as it had been seconds before, but I smiled quickly, pretending to consult my diary.

  “What an idiot,” I said. “Got the date wrong. The playwriting workshop isnext week. I am free on Friday after all.” And so Miles and I went to the dinner party together, and I spent the evening checking to see if he showed any interest in other women, but pretending not to. And, even though I knew we weren’t really “right” for each other, I flirted conspicuously with the bloke sitting next to me, to make Miles jealous. So he’d love me more. And never leave me.

  When we got back to his flat Miles held me tightly, all night, his bearlike body wrapped around mine. I felt utterly at peace. But in the morning, when his body left mine…All I can say is that it’s all-consuming, the panic that sets in. And I know it’s all in my head, because no bloke has ever gone off with someone else.

  “Oh Pip,” Miles said one morning, “I don’t want to do anything else. I just want to be with you. Always.”

  For a second, my heart eased. But as soon as it did, I started worrying about the next time. So I said, “I think we need a break.” I told Miles, and myself, we were completely wrong for each other, returned the matching yellow moped he’d given me for my birthday, and took up smoking again.

  It’s awful. I’m awful. And it’s been going on for years.

  Recently I’ve begun to wonder if it might have something to do with the fact that I was adopted.

  Maybe if I found out that my mother gave me up for adoption because she had to—and not because she took one look at me and went “yuck”—I’d no longer have a fear of rejection. And then I might finally be able to fall in love totally, absolutely—maybe even honestly—without the panic that sets in. Like normal people.

  When the woman rejects my flowers, the feeling of joy disappears. By the time I get to the ticket counter at Embankment, the sense of despair that’s been haunting me recently returns. London isn’t beautiful anymore. It’s dirty. The smell of stale piss that I didn’t notice the first time I came through the tunnel hits me, now, as strongly as the stench of rubbish on the street and the vomit on the wall. I can see, now, that the other people are just tired and want to go home. I no longer care who they are or what’s going on in any of their lives. I just want to go home too.

  I don’t know where my long-lost mother is. Or who she is. Or how she is. Or whether or not she’d want to have anything to do with me. But in my mind’s eye, she’s with me on the tube, which is thundering through the underground tunnel toward Kew.

  She has a lovely, serene face. She’s singing to me now. Soothing me.

  She understands the joy. She understands the terror. She understands everything.

  Chapter Four

  IGET OFF THE TUBEand walk up the ivy-covered stone steps to my flat and into my room. I wade through piles of clothes, some dirty, some not, and climb up onto the window seat in my bedroom.

  The Abbey looks almost ethereal at night, bathed as it is in murky yellow light from the street lamp on the corner.

  A group of Benedictine monks lives on one side of the Abbey, and a group of Benedictine nuns lives on the other side. I used to tell people that if you looked very closely, in the middle of the night, you’d be able to see the monks and the nuns sneaking up onto the roof of the Abbey and dancing together in the shadows.

  I lie down on the comfy maroon and cream window-seat cushion that Mum made me for Christmas and fall asleep. I dream that the nuns and the monks are dancing their nightly dance. The wind is up and the branches of the huge oak tree at the end of the road are swaying furiously. The dancers have a wildness about them I’ve not seen before.

  Then one of the nuns and one of the monks lift their habits and become the parents who gave me birth. I’m watching them from inside my room. All the lights have gone off, and it’s pitch black. They can’t see me, but I know they’re there. They come to the bay window in my bedroom. In unison, they reach out their hands and open the heavy curtains. Then I wake up and, in that state between wake and sleep, make the phone call that changes everything.

  The call itself doesn’t last more than five minutes. But it has the power to catapult me out of the world I know, into an in-between world, from which the “me” I thought I was can never return.

  It’s nine thirty. I dial international directory enquiries and ask the operator for the telephone number for the adoption agency in New York City where my parents collected me when I was six weeks old.

  I’m not expecting anyone to pick up. I’m expecting an answering machine.

  “Post-adoption services, can I help you?”

  “Oh. Hallo,” I say. “Um—my name is Pippa Dunn. I’m calling from London. In England.”

  Shut up, Pip. Of course they know that London’s in England.

  There’s a pause and the sound of rustling paper.

  “Yes, Pippa, I remember you well.” The woman’s voice is nasal and efficient and American. “You called a few years ago, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yes, I did,” I say.

  The last time I called the adoption agency I was in the same state I’m in today, when I just do something, without planning to. It usually happens when I’m tired either due to lack of sleep or to the sugar crash that follows an excessive consumption of Maltesers, chocolate buttons, or if I’m particularly hungry, a large bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut.

  About three years ago I’d called to make a general inquiry about what I would need to do if I ever decided to trace the woman who gave me birth. The woman at the other end of the phone asked me if I had any siblings and I’d said, “No, I’m not married.” And then I felt like a complete idiot
later when I realized what she meant.

  “Oh yes,” she’s saying now. “It’s Judy. I remember you well! We don’t get beautiful British accents calling here every day, you know!”

  She sounds excited.

  “Something unusual happened,” she’s saying. “The day after you last called, your birth mother came into the agency. The very next day! Isn’t that something? We all thought it was just such an extraordinary coincidence…”

  There’s a long pause, this time at my end. Mum’s maroon and cream curtains are moving slightly in the breeze.

  I was expecting a bland recorded message, on which I would probably have hung up. I wasn’t expecting this. Sparks of adrenaline are shooting off, like tiny fireworks, inside my chest.

  “So she’s all right?” I ask. “My mother…she’s all right? I mean she’s alive? And…and real?” I sound like an idiot again.

  “Oh yes,” Judy says. “She’s certainly real. And it says here—yes—she’s open to contact.”

  I take a deep breath in a futile attempt to calm myself down.

  “Why?” I say. “Um, why did she come into the agency? And what should I do, if I wanted to maybe meet her? Or find out more about her? Or reassure her she did the right thing, and thank her, for…for giving me up to the most wonderful life?”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t disclose any information over the phone,” Judy says. “You need to write us a letter.”

  “What sort of letter?”

  Judy has gone back into practiced mode now.

  “Oh, you know, a letter saying who you are and why you want more information. It may take some time for us to respond. There are only two of us here at post-adoption services and we’re getting requests like yours every day.”

  Poor Judy, she sounds tired. I feel guilty taking up her time.

  “I’ll write to you,” I say. “Thank you so much—thank you, thank you, thank you.”