The English American

by Alison Larkin

  I try to picture Mum, Dad, or Charlotte telling someone to “trust their instincts,” but I can’t. I try to picture Mum, Dad, or Charlotte moving across a room as fast as Billie is now, but I can’t.

  Billie brings out a photo album and tells me about each and every relative. I’ve never seen anyone related to me by blood before, and I stare, fascinated, at photographs of strangers who look like me.

  Chapter Sixteen

  BY NINE IN THE EVENINGwe’re sitting on the sofa in Billie’s bedroom eating chocolate chips out of a bowl. I’ve been up for nearly twenty-four hours but I’m wide awake. Billie tells me we’re descendents of Governor McKay of Georgia, and about her childhood, growing up in Georgia. Her happiest childhood memories are of long summers spent on her grandfather’s estate, where she and her brother and sisters would run wild through cotton fields and drink sodas from their grandfather’s soda fountain.

  For half a second I remember my own happiest childhood memories—camping in the Serengeti, getting up at six o’clock in the morning to see the hippopotami in the river, making mud pies with Charlotte in the African bush. Then Billie’s voice brings me back.

  The unhappiest moments of Billie’s childhood took place at dinnertime when her parents were fighting. Billie’s mother was the daughter of a composer, who loved musicals and her father. Her father was a successful businessman, and an alcoholic.

  “When he’d had nothing to drink, Daddy was one of the most intelligent, enjoyable men I have ever known; after even one really stiff drink he became belligerent and cruel. It runs in the family,” she says again. “Alcoholism.”

  “Oh.”

  Billie is looking at me in a significant sort of way.

  “I don’t drink,” I say. “I’d rather have a glass of chocolate milk than anything else. I’ve never liked the taste of alcohol much.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re not an alcoholic,” Billie says.

  The phone rings. Billie picks it up, slipping seamlessly from her role as long-lost mother to businesswoman. As she talks, I pick up the bowl of chocolate morsels, put it on my lap, and drink in every detail of Billie’s room.

  On the wall behind the headboard of her bed are four bookshelves with hundreds of books I am not at all familiar with. My bookshelf in London is filled with the complete works of Jane Austen, Ibsen, Strindberg, and A. A. Milne. The titles on Billie’s bookshelf range fromDo What You Love, the Money Will Follow toYou Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?! A Self-Help Book for Adults with A.D.D .

  As soon as Billie is off the phone, she continues talking as if there has been no interruption. She tells me she was twenty-two when her father left her mother for his secretary, to whom he is still married. Later the same year, Billie met Walt. Something in the way she says the name “Walt,” with a slight lilt to her already musical voice, tells me this is important.

  “I was interviewing for a job in New York City, and Daddy called saying he was going to be in town, and did I want to go with him to hear this incredible new speaker, Walt Markham, who was speaking for the young conservatives? I was a rabid young conservative myself at that time—oh, don’t look so horrified!”

  “A youngconservative ?”

  “It’s okay, honey,” she laughs, “I became a libertarian later. But at that time…well, I wanted to change the world. And so when I heard your father speaking—well, he was so charismatic and I was just blown away by him, and I said, ‘Daddy, I have to meet this man.’ And when I did—oh.”

  She takes another handful of chocolate morsels and turns her back to me, looking out over the river. With the light from the Adler Bridge behind her, in profile, she looks breathtakingly beautiful.

  “He was tall and handsome as all get-out, with thick copper-red hair, just like yours and so full of life. Oh, honey…” She turns toward me now. There are tears in her eyes. “Your father was, without a doubt, the most exciting man I had ever met.”

  I can see the memory is causing her pain. I wish I could soothe her, but I can tell she doesn’t want me to interrupt.

  “We knew what we were doing was wrong, and we tried to stay apart, but we just couldn’t. He was married. He had a child. His wife’s name was Margaret.”

  Her face changes for a second. There’s something tough underneath the softness of her tone. “Walt and I recognized each other, honey. We knew we were meant to be together. We could not be in the same room without touching each other.”

  I think of Nick.

  Then Billie looks at me for a long moment with tears in her eyes and says, “Your father was a very athletic lover, honey.”

  At a moment like this, most Brits will look away, change the subject, and/or head straight for the kettle. But Billie has me mesmerized. I have a feeling she knows this. Her voice is low again. Husky.

  “We saw each other as often as we could for almost a year. That time in my life was the most wonderful, and the most terrible.”

  Billie seems lost in the memory. “Granddaddy cut me out of his will, of course. Up until then he’d always loved me the best, but this…” Billie looks too sad to speak. Eventually she sits down next to me.

  “I’m sorry it was all so hard for you,” I say, reaching for her hand.

  The lights from the cars crossing the Adler Bridge half a mile away hit the mirror above her dresser. Her voice is soft and sweet. “It was hard. Very. But we got through it. And now—well, we get to meet you as an adult. How fascinating is that? We knew you’d be special beyond belief. You do have our genes.” She reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “And you are special,” she says. “You are, you are.”

  I like being called “special beyond belief.” That, too, could never happen in England.

  For a moment Billie looks exactly like the young Billie, the one in the painting on the wall behind her. Twenty-eight years have gone by but she doesn’t seem to have changed. A few lines around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes perhaps. An extra ten pounds or so. Nothing more.

  Billie’s black cat, whose name is Heathcliffe, has come into the room. He slinks over to Billie. Billie laughs. “Heathcliffe’s an under-the-cover cat. He lays his silky body against my chest and kneads me all night long. Isn’t that right, Heathcliffe?”

  The cat sits on her lap purring loudly as if to say, She’s mine.

  “Are you still in touch with Walt?” I say, not ready to change the subject.

  Billie’s hand is moving across Heathcliffe’s body with long, steady strokes.

  “Oh yes,” she says. “I hear from him every year. On your birthday.”

  A warmth spreads instantly across my chest. I picture my father, picking up his phone faithfully, every April 26, calling the love of his life. And wondering about me.

  “We talk every year. Hoping you’ll come and find us. ‘How could she not?’ we say to each other, ‘with our genes?’” Billie takes my hand this time. “And now here you are.”

  “Have you told him yet?”

  She looks at me. Her voice is soft. “Not yet, honey.”

  Up until this point I hadn’t given my father much thought. Everything was about finding my mother. Up until this point.

  “Do you know how to find him?”

  Silence in the room.

  “Do you know how to find him?” I say again.

  Billie smiles at me.

  “Honey, we’ve both had a long day, and I’m real tired, I’ve got to go to bed. Why don’t you have a hot bath inmy bathtub? Now there’s a treat.” And she leads me to her bathroom, which smells of perfume and other sweet things. The towels are purple and red. There are rose pink light bulbs all the way around her bathroom mirror.

  “Look!” she says, holding up a bottle. “I got you somefoam !”

  She pours several capfuls into the bath and then she’s gone.

  After saying good night to Billie, I put on my pajamas and knock on Ralph’s door. He’s playing the guitar and smoking a joint.

  “Want some?” he
says.

  “No thanks,” I say. “I don’t.”

  Ralphie looks at me blankly.

  “Someone gave me some bad stuff at university once. It turned out to be opium. Everything went blurry and I got totally paranoid. Worst of all I couldn’t feel my nose. Haven’t touched it since.”

  “Your nose?” he says.

  “No,” I say, laughing. “Pot.”

  There’s a pause. “You know you said your mom was the coolest mom in the world?”

  I’m careful to pronounce it “mom” rather than “mum.” And I’m careful to refer to Billie ashis mom. I don’t want him thinking I’ve come to take her away from him.

  “What kind of cool things did she do?”

  Ralph takes another drag from his joint. He’s thin and looks as if he hasn’t been out in the sun for a long time.

  “Well, she never got on my case about things, like other moms, you know? Like she never forced me to go to bed at eight o’clock and stuff. She’s never, like, interfered or cramped my style in any way. You know what I mean?”

  “I think so,” I say, sitting on his black comforter and accepting one of his Marlboro Lights.

  “Would you play me a song?” I say.

  Ralph looks pleased, as is my intention, and plays me a song by Steely Dan. I try to look as though I enjoy it, but I don’t really. I prefer musicals to just about any other kind of music. Except Rachmaninoff, of course.

  But it’s not the time to break this news to my newfound kin, so after clapping enthusiastically I go to my room, just down the corridor from Ralphie’s, lie down on the daybed that’s been made up for me, and fall into a restless sleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  IWAKE UP EARLYand pad upstairs. No one seems to be around, so I open the wall-to-wall sliding glass doors that lead out of Billie’s sitting room and on to her wooden deck. The Hudson River is black and wide, the air above it humid and thick. Trees far taller than any I’ve seen in England line the banks.

  I can hear Billie talking on the phone.

  “It’s like falling in love!” she’s saying to whoever’s on the other end of the line. “And I feel so healed!”

  As I look out over the river, tears crawl down my cheeks. I don’t have anything to wipe them away with apart from my sleeve.

  Later on, I go into Billie’s office and dial Mum and Dad’s number. It’s one thirty in England. Mum and Dad will be sitting at the kitchen table, having a mini Kit Kat and a post-lunch cup of coffee before taking their afternoon nap.

  “Hallo, Mum,” I say.

  “Darling! Alasdair! Quick, it’s Pip!” I hear Dad run into the sitting room and pick up the other phone.

  “This has got to be quick because it’s Billie’s bill—lots ofb ’s there.” I try to make my laugh sound natural. “I just wanted you to know I got here safely.”

  “Good.”

  “Good.”

  There’s a pause.

  “Our voices are overlapping I think.”

  “Sorry, yes.” There’s a pause.

  “Good flight?” Dad says.

  “Yes.”

  “Good film?”

  I don’t want to tell them that I couldn’t possibly concentrate on a film, so I say,“Mrs. Henderson Presents.”

  “That is a good one,” Dad says.

  “Judi Dench,” Mum says.

  “Yes.”

  There’s a crackle on the line. Mum’s voice now, faint and far away.

  “I’d better go now,” I say, feeling tears welling up again. “Can’t hear you very well. Bye Mum, bye Dad.”

  “So glad everything’s all right!”

  “Yes Mum,” I say. “Everything’s fine.”

  I put down the phone. Billie is standing at the door in a pair of shorts and a green T-shirt with little gold sequins on it.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” I say. “I just wanted to let Mum and Dad know I’m here safely.”

  “That’s fine, honey.” She’s distracted, looking for her purse.

  “Here,” I say, taking ten dollars out of my pocket. “This is to cover the cost of the call.”

  “Put it on the dashboard of the car, honey. We can use it to pay the tolls. Now, you go get the cat box, and I’ll call the cat.”

  “Heathcliffe!” she calls from her front steps. “Heathcliffe!” The image of Emily Brontë’s Cathy on the Yorkshire moors passes through my mind, as it is no doubt supposed to. Billie’s laugh joins mine as the cat trots dutifully in.

  “Is he coming with us?”

  “Of course, honey!” she says. “Helives to be close to me.”

  I marvel at the fact that Billie clearly thinks nothing of traveling the eight hundred plus miles between Adler and north Georgia on a regular basis. A twenty-mile drive is considered long-distance in England.

  She picks the cat up and puts the black, green-eyed feline into the car.

  “Does he sit in the cat box?”

  “Oh no, honey,” Billie says. “Heathcliffe likes to be able to see out of the window when we’re on the road.”

  I climb into Billie’s car, delighted by the eccentricity of it. We do what we want to do, regardless of whether or not it’s the norm—Billie, Heathcliffe, and me.

  For someone used to driving around an overcrowded island in a Renault 5, there’s something very exciting about being on a big American road, in a big American car. I’m so high up, I can see everything.

  So can Heathcliffe, who sits atop a bed of cushions, between Billie and me, next to the coffee holder. Back straight, he looks like a little sphinx.

  “The key to not getting caught while speeding, my dear daughter? Get yourself a radar detector, drive behind the fastest car on the road, and never speed past clusters of trees, ’cause that’s where the cops hide.”

  We pass the International House of Pancakes, which is an intriguing name, when you think about it, whatever nationality you are. And we pass the Wise Trading Company, outside of which I am appropriately horrified to see a sign offering cash for guns.

  “You can’t just walk into a shop and buy a gun in England,” I tell Billie. “If the British want to kill someone, we have to put on uniforms, invade another country, and call it a war. Either that or go to a football game and beat the crap out of the French.”

  Billie can’t reply because she’s holding the ticket for the tollbooth between her teeth and scrabbling about in the glove compartment for some change.

  I’ve never used a tollbooth before, and Billie lets me throw the change into the basket. When I miss, I have to get out of the car, pick up the coins, and put them in by hand, but I don’t mind. I’ve never done this before and it’s fun.

  I have chocolate around my mouth and have spilled some on my T-shirt. I look over at Billie. She has done the same.

  As we drive, Billie tells me all about her love life, her sex life, her brilliant career, her recovery from alcoholism, and the reason she never travels anywhere without a vibrator. “Regular orgasms are essential for people of our nature,” she says. “It helps us relax.”

  I sit next to her feeling conventional and dull in comparison, but hopeful too. Billie is my mother after all. She leads such an interesting life. Perhaps mine will turn out to be interesting too.

  Once over the Virginia border, four hours into our journey, we stop at a roadside café. The diner has almost no one in it.

  A woman with ink-black hair piled high on her head and long blue fingernails comes over to our table.

  “My name’s Connie and I’ll be your waitress today,” she says.

  “Pleased to meet you, Connie,” I say, holding out my hand.

  “Well, listen to that accent!” she says. “I just love it! Where are you from?”

  She’s so excited when I tell her I’m from England she knocks over the milk.

  “It’s okay,” Billie and I say in unison. “We’re spillers too.”

  We all roar with laughter.

  Connie brings us our all-day breakfast wi
thin five minutes.

  “Can you cook the eggs a little longer?” Billie says.

  “Sure,” Connie says.

  The British would rather risk salmonella poisoning than do something as embarrassing as sending a plate of food back to the kitchen. I’m astonished to note that Connie doesn’t mind at all.

  “I just love England,” Connie says, putting the new plate in front of Billie. “The movies. The books. Mrs. Slocum. All those buildings being so old!”

  “Indeed,” I say.

  “How come your accents are so different if she’s your mother?”

  “Well,” I say, unable to resist. I take a bite out of what the Americans call a biscuit and the British call a scone, look Connie directly in the eye, and pause for dramatic effect. Then I say, “She gave me up for adoption when I was a baby, but we were reunited yesterday.” Connie clasps her hands to her mouth and gasps.

  “Praise the Lord!” Connie says. “Bernie! Carly! Come hear this!”

  I glance at Billie, who is as pleased as I am to be creating such a commotion.

  A huge man in a stained white shirt comes out, holding a plate of grits and eggs, sunny-side up, swimming in grease, followed by a tiny woman in a faded floral dress and apron. They stand by our table, staring at us, riveted by our tale.

  “Was your adoptive mother jealous?” Connie asks, when we’re done.

  I hesitate for a second. I’ve never thought of Mum as my “adoptive” mother before.

  “Was she?” Connie is saying. “Your adoptive mother, was she jealous?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, drawing my hands into my lap.

  “Bet she was!”

  “Course she was!” Bernie chimes in. “Had to be! Why, look at you two! You look so alike! Apart from the hair, of course. Does she get her hair from the father?” he says, turning to Billie. And then, to me, “You got your dad’s hair?”

  Billie is enjoying herself immensely.

  “I love that you think she looks like me too! The more I look at her, the more I see it. Oh, yes! She has her dad’s hair. It was just like hers. Only shorter, of course.”