The English American

by Alison Larkin

  Illegal pursuits?

  “What sort of…?”

  “The last time he got into trouble was for masterminding an illegal animal liberation operation. I don’t know whether he’s been freeing animals recently or not. He probably hasn’t. He really hated it in jail.”

  “He went to jail?”

  “Oh, yes. The year the circus came to Dawsonville. He’d have been fine if the lion hadn’t torn through town and snacked on that poor little boy.”

  “When did he get—um—set free from jail?”

  “About three years ago. It’s really been a long time. I had some hope for him when he came up and visited Daddy at my place a few months ago, but my instinct was ‘Don’t feel good about this. You’ll be disappointed again.’ Probably what it is is that he’s drinking again.”

  “Oh.”

  “Irv is very much the kind of alcoholic who, unless he hits a really low bottom, will never get it right. And even then he may not, because the program is based on honesty. And I just don’t think he has the capacity to be honest. They think his kind of personality may be in the genes.”

  My heart’s pounding. I’m thinking of Dad’s sister, Auntie Laura, living in her stone house in the south of France. Of the childhood summers we spent there, jumping into bales of hay in the barn, being chased by geese, playing Snap with my cousins who had never heard of manic-depression. Auntie Laura, who won the Florence Nightingale Award for her work as a nurse in Cyprus during the war. And tall, handsome Uncle Magnus, whose bravery won him the Légion d’honneur for rescuing Jewish people from the concentration camps. Uncle Magnus, who taught me how to swat flies and catapult cheese across the table with the cheese scraper. At the big, wooden dinner table, in the stone house which he built himself, in the heart of Provence.

  Auntie Laura and Uncle Magnus are my aunt and uncle. Were my aunt and uncle. Are my aunt and uncle.

  Billie’s voice comes back in again.

  “Seeing Irv turn out this way just breaks Daddy’s heart. And Daddy has the additional burden of never quite being able to shake the idea that if your kid turns out bad, you didn’t raise him right.”

  We’re biking downhill next to the creek that’s become so wide it’s more like a river.

  “Most people who are very sophisticated about parenting, and who have read all the books and studied behavior and so forth and so on, know damn well that you’re not responsible for the way your kids turn out.”

  I don’t know if Billie is aware—really aware—of what she’s saying, or if she’s actually trying to tell me something about myself. But if it’s all in the genes, then according to Billie, Mum and Dad and my upbringing had nothing at all to do with who I am.

  In that moment, something shifts inside me. Before I know it, I’ve started biking as fast as I can. I’m hurtling down the mountain at top speed, away, away, away from the stranger who keeps calling me her daughter.

  The road is steep and winding, and my head is spinning as fast as the bicycle wheels. I have to get away, I need time to think.

  “Honey! You’re going too fast! You’re going too fast!”

  I am going too fast, tearing down the mountain, desperate for just a moment away from the chatter. I don’t know what to do, but I know I have to think, I just have to. And then I ride up on the bank next to Deer Lick Creek—the deep part, lying cool and still to the right of the road before me. I jump off my bike and, fully clothed, dive into the water. There’s silence under the water. For the first time in almost two weeks, I hear nothing. I come up for air behind a rock. Billie is calling me from the bank.

  “Pippa? Where are you? Pippa!”

  From behind the reeds, which are tall and green and still, I watch Billie standing on the creek bank. With her hands on her hips, calling for me in her purple shorts and T-shirt, from a distance she looks like an indignant Shirley Temple. The air feels cool against my wet skin.

  The sun is setting against the mountain, which has turned blue and orange in the evening light. I duck under the water again. My body feels light. I watch the bubbles from my breath make their way to the surface. I come up for air again and look at her, through the reeds. The sunlight makes her curls look like burnt gold. I feel as if I am looking at her from a long way away.

  Where is the sense of peace I’ve been longing for? Will it come tomorrow?

  I look up at the sky. It will be dark soon. I take a deep breath and start walking toward the creek bank.

  “Sorry,” I say, coming out from behind the reeds.

  “What are you doing? Pippa, honey, your shirt’s all wet! We don’t want the mountain boys looking at your nipples. Here. Put on my sweater.”

  But I’m already back on my bike and riding off again. This time Billie manages to stay close behind me.

  “Let me tell you about the time I wore a shirt that was almost see-through to a Christmas party at the Whitcombs. Daddy nearly had an angina attack…”

  In England, it’s considered polite to wait for somebody to stop talking before you talk yourself.

  I’ve been waiting for the moment when Billie will stop talking and ask me more than the basic facts about my life. So I can tell her all about Mum and Dad and Charlotte and my life in England. And me. But the moment hasn’t come. And it doesn’t come now, either.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  THE DAY BEFOREI am to go back to England, I tell Billie I really, really want to speak to my father.

  “Well of course you can speak to him any time you want. But—well, we haven’t had that long together, just you and me.”

  “It’s been wonderful, Billie. Really it has, it’s just that, well, he is my father.”

  Billie has been vague about the whereabouts of Walt’s number ever since I met her. Now she reaches into her poppy red handbag, takes out her address book, and reads Walt’s number to me.

  “It’s his home number on Marsama Beach,” she says. “You’ll probably get his wife, but she’ll know where he is. Why don’t I make the call?”

  “Please let me,” I say to Billie. “Besides, I’ve got an idea.”

  Quickly, before she can change her mind, I call Walt’s number. A woman’s voice answers.

  “Hallo,” I say, in my most authoritative voice. “My name is Pippa Dunn. I am calling from the BBC.” No one would refuse to talk to someone from the BBC. “I’d like to speak to Walt Markham, please.” I’m so convincing, I half believe I am from the BBC.

  “He’s not here,” the woman says. She sounds friendly. “He’s in Kabul.”

  “Kabul, Afghanistan?” I say. God, how stupid. Of course Kabul’s in Afghanistan. Everyone at the BBC knows that.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “What’s he doing there?”

  “Well, I don’t really know!” she says. She sounds intrigued and curious herself. Like the mother of an adored child who knows her son is in some kind of mischief, but that’s just the way he is, and—oh—she’ll just have to live with it.

  I can tell from the way she speaks that she loves him, and I feel guilty for deceiving her. But the voice inside me is becoming more and more insistent. I need, need, need to meet my father.

  “Do you know when he’ll be back, Mrs. Markham?”

  “Well, you can never be sure with Walt,” she says. “It could be weeks.”

  I can’t wait weeks. It would kill me.

  “Do you have a number for him in Afghanistan?” I say. “I’m wanting to interview him for an upcoming piece on the World Service.”

  I pronounce “Afghanistan” with a longa , just like someone from the BBC World Service would pronounce “Afghanistan.” I half expect to hear “Lillibullero” chiming out behind me. I used to hear it every day, blaring out from Dad’s black shortwave radio, announcing the arrival ofNews Hour . He kept the radio next to his bed, no matter which country we were living in.

  “I’ll go get the number for you,” Walt’s wife is saying.

  When she gives it to me, I thank her and put d
own the phone.

  I jump in the air holding the number. “I’ve got it Billie! I’ve got it!”

  “Afghanistan?” Billie says.

  Before she can raise any objections, I start dialing. Afghanistan is eight and a half hours ahead. It’ll be six in the evening in Kabul.

  I take a deep breath as I listen to the phone ring. He has to be there. He has to.

  In my mind’s eye, I can see my long-lost father in a room with a desk and a phone and a tall, dust-covered window, in the heart of downtown Kabul. He’s looking out onto a dusty street. There’s a boy, kicking a can along a dusty road next to a white boxlike building. And American soldiers and tanks. Everywhere.

  Now I can see a telephone on my father’s desk, covered with papers. It’s ringing now. A faraway sounding ring, but it’s definitely ringing. Walt’s hand is reaching for the phone.

  The line is surprisingly clear. He picks up right on cue, as if I willed it.

  “Markham here.” The voice is gruff and sounds very American. No matter. He’s there.

  “Hallo,” I say. I swallow. It’s all happened so quickly I’ve had no time to think about what I’ll say. I find myself stammering. “Um, my name’s Pippa. We—uh—we last met twenty-eight years ago. I was very small.”

  There’s another pause. Then he says, “Oh…my…God.”

  And then, shaking, I hand the phone to Billie.

  “Walt? It’s Billie.”

  “Oh…my…God,” he says again. I can hear him from two feet away.

  “Yes,” Billie says softly. “She’s finally here.”

  They’re both silent for a second.

  Then Billie is talking fast, with lots of excitement, telling him all about how I found her, what we’ve been doing, everything.

  “If I had to describe her in just one word what would it be? Delightful. I’ve experienced her that way. Everyone who’s met her has experienced her that way. And she’s beautiful! Yes! I know! And she’s got so much energy, and she bounces, Walt, be warned!…You heard it? Of course you did.”

  When Billie speaks again, the pitch of her voice has dropped low. For emphasis, I think. She’s mesmerizing when she speaks in a low voice. You can’t not listen to her when she does this.

  “Walt, honey,” she says, “I just hope that when you meet your daughter you don’t feel so much you just expire of ecstasy.”

  Billie is sharing the receiver with me now, so I can hear what Walt is saying.

  “I’ve been fighting the biggest battle of my life. But I’ll be leaving soon.”

  “Are you in any kind of danger?”

  “Not at all,” Walt says.

  “Are you going to tell me anything more about it?”

  “I can’t. Now put her back on, Billie.”

  Billie hands me the phone.

  I can’t say anything. My throat has constricted. The anxious feeling that kept gnawing at me, insisting I connect with Walt, has stopped. The numbness has gone. I’m filled with a sense of utter relief. I’m afraid that if I loosen my grip, he will go away. He doesn’t.

  “So you’ve come,” he says, finally.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “I will rearrange my flight and fly to London on my way back from Kabul,” he says. “I’m almost done here. It shouldn’t be long now.”

  “Good,” I say. He’s coming to see me. Thank God.

  Walt feels the relief I feel. I know he does, because just before he hangs up, during a few seconds of silence between us, I hear Walt exhale. And it sounds like air is being let out of a bicycle tire.

  Billie and I talk about Walt long into the night.

  “Could he be with the CIA?” I ask.

  Billie shakes her head. “There’s no knowing with Walt.”

  The Pippa who left England two weeks earlier would have been shocked and appalled that there’s even a possibility that Walt is working for the U.S. government in Afghanistan. But at that moment I don’t care what Walt does for a living. I don’t even care that he’s a conservative—or used to be. I’m just grateful he’s safe, and alive, and coming to see me in London.

  When I go to his cabin to say good-bye to him the next day, Earl is on his third bowl of Froot Loops. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that he’s been smoking marijuana.

  “He lost his appetite,” Billie says. “So I got him some pot. Everybody knows pot gives you the munchies.”

  Earl may be eating more than he has in a while, but he looks tired and old and his arms feel like twigs when he hugs me good-bye. As I leave, he looks me directly in the eyes. “Even when you’re hurting so bad you can’t move, and you will,” he says quietly, “welcome the pain, Granddaughter. Because, when it really hurts, when the difficulties are truly difficult…What I’m saying is, welcome the difficulties. ’Cause it’s them you learn from.”

  As I sit on the plane, flying from the mother who gave me birth back to the family that raised me, I understand completely how Pandora must have felt. Now the box is open, there can be no closing it again.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  WHENIRETURNED FROM AMERICAthat August, Mum, Dad, Charlotte, and Rupert were all at Heathrow to meet me. I was so happy to see them, I almost cried. But I stopped myself. I wanted them to think that the visit had brought me the peace of mind I hoped it would.

  On the way back home in the car I regaled them with the tale of the man with moonshine and my encounter with Molly Alice, keeping to the periphery.

  And then Charlotte asked, “What’s she like?”

  I couldn’t tell them she’s fun and creative and thought my striped-tights-around-my-suitcase solution was genius. Or that it felt so right to learn that I had come from a family of artists, or how thrilled I was to learn that she had worked with creative people all her life.

  I couldn’t tell them that I was longing for some time to be quiet and alone. So I could try to absorb everything that just happened.

  And so I said, “Well, she talks a lot. I mean, a lot.”

  “Hah!” Charlotte said, laughing.

  “And she’s a terrible cook. And she’s very untidy.”

  I looked at their faces in the car, bursting with love for all of them. “You see, Dad? My untidiness is genetic!”

  “That’s no excuse,” he said sternly.

  I smiled, crammed between Charlotte and Rupert in the backseat.

  And then Charlotte and Rupert told me they’re moving to Bath.

  And Mum and Dad told me how Rupert’s little cousin pushed Boris into the swimming pool while I was away. And about how Dad tried to fish Boris out with the swimming pool net and almost drowned him. And all about how Dad and Rupert jumped into the pool fully clothed to rescue him.

  I sat back in the car, listening to their voices, knowing that enough had been said. For them, it was done. Over. It was a journey someone they knew and loved went on. And then she came home.

  Only I wasn’t home. Not at all.

  I waited weeks and weeks for my father’s visit to London. Until his arrival, nightly e-mails to and from Nick kept me sane.

  DATE: September 12

  TO: NickDevang@bankglobal.net

  FROM: pippa-dunn@hotmail.com

  Dear Nick,

  You’re right. I have been in a daze ever since I got back from Georgia. Pictures of my long-lost relatives balancing spoons at the end of their noses, pouring lemonade in my grandfather’s cabin, his prayer before Billie fed us: “Of what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly tolerant. Amen.”

  Something deep within me has clicked into place. I feel ready for full life as opposed to half life.

  I’ve doubted myself for so long. Probably because the essence of who I am is so completely different from the family that raised me. But now—well, I’m finally starting to trust the instincts that told me to find Billie. And Walt.

  And then there’s you. And the fact that Billie works with artists. And the fact that you long to leave the banking business and become
a full-time artist yourself. Tell me more about your paintings.

  The end of an English summer. The air is crisp. I have an old gas fire in my room. It’s on low. Orange light. Lovely.

  Love, Pip

  P.S. My mother has told me to ask my father what he remembers about their time together. I asked him. He says he remembers everything, and he’s going to tell me when we meet. I hope it will be soon. We speak on the phone every third day or so. He’s going to come as soon as he can.

  I thought it was supposed to be the other way round. Women remembering everything, men being fuzzy on the details. Which led me to wondering what, if anything, you remember about me?

  My heart beat a little faster as I pressed Send. His answer told me everything.

  DATE: September 13

  TO: pippa-dunn@hotmail.com

  FROM: NickDevang@bankglobal.net

  Pippa, you intrigue me. You open your soul for a second, so it touches mine. And then you end your letter in a way that reminds me you are also a flesh and blood woman, wanting to know what I remember of you.

  What will you think of men now, or of me, when I tell you?

  I was half drunk and mildly depressed, leaning against a rail watching an excessively dull game of cricket at Steeplehurst. I was home on leave from Singapore and wondering, as I always did, why I bothered coming back to England when absolutely nothing about it ever changes.

  And then I noticed you. You were sitting on a blanket, next to a picnic basket and a woman in an absurdly large hat, trying valiantly not to look as bored as I was. Your hair was long and tied back in a ponytail. It caught the light in a magical way. And your face, which, as you must know, is quite beautiful, took my breath away.

  Then I saw you get up and walk toward the woods. I went to school at Steeplehurst for ten years, so I knew you’d come out, eventually, by the paddock. I ran around the school and positioned myself by the fence.

  So it wasn’t a chance meeting. Clever Nick.

  To my delight, you saw me, as I’d hoped you would. The moment you handed me the buttercup I knew you would be an important player in my life. I didn’t know how. Or when. Just that you would be.