The English American

by Alison Larkin

  “Ralph’s moved over into publicity, and he’s doing wonderfully well. We’re making a profit this year. You can come back anytime. We can pay you anything you want.”

  “Billie, it’s not about the money. I just can’t. I’m busy here. I—”

  Now her voice turns.

  “I’ve been reading about adoptees and their issues. Whatever kind of family you went to, you’ve all got issues!”

  I’ve been at the gallery, going over the list of people to invite to the exhibition. We’re getting close now, and there’s a lot to do. I want Nick to take New York by storm.

  When I get home, the phone rings and it’s Billie. I find I can distance myself a little if her voice isn’t in my ear, so I put the phone on speaker. Then I put down my bag and sit on the floor next to the phone.

  “I love you so much, Pippa.” The pitch of her voice goes from low to high. “And you’re hurting me so badly.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I say.

  “Well, for a start, I’d like you to do what you say you’re going to do! You said you were going to call me for my sausage stew recipe, but you never did!”

  The words, in all their absurdity, hang in the air.

  “I’ve been busy, Billie.”

  “I feel like a dictionary.”

  “A dictionary?”

  “You walk into my life, make me fall in love with you, get the information you need, and then you walk out again. You are not the only one with abandonment issues.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I love you, Pippa!” She’s shouting now. “I want you in my life! And I want to see my grandchildren! They are my grandchildren, goddammit! How can you deprive your children of their grandmother in this way?!”

  “But I don’t have any children.”

  “I know you don’t have children, what are you, nuts? I’m talking about when youdo ! I loved my grandparents so much.”

  And then ten minutes of memories of her childhood at her grandparents’ estate. My arms are wrapped tightly around my knees now. My head is buried in them too. The same body that took a tough Saturday night crowd by storm two nights before is now curled up in the fetal position next to the phone. The darkness is back.

  And then Billie changes tone.

  “I went to the adoption agency. I wanted to find out what happened. I figured you must have been abused or something, to be having this much trouble with your adoption.”

  I’m not having trouble with my adoption,I want to shout.I’m having trouble with you!

  “I figured something must have happened to you in the foster home for you to have all these issues. But they said it was a nice foster home. So you just got problems. So, deal with them, honey! You gotta work them through! Just like I worked mine through in AA. Becoming an alcoholic was the best thing that ever happened to me.” And then she tells me, as she has told me time and again, about how her alcoholism started soon after she gave me away.

  I sense someone standing in the door to the kitchen. It’s Jack. I have no idea how long he’s been standing there. He’s looking at me with an expression I don’t recognize. I can’t move.

  “You can love your adoptive parents and me, you know,” Billie is saying. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other!” And then, when I don’t reply, she says, “How can you be so cruel?”

  “I’m so sorry, Billie. I’m so sorry.”

  “Well you should be.”

  “And I am.”

  I can’t stop the shaking and I still can’t move. Jack walks over to the phone. Solid. Sure.

  “Billie?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m a friend of Pippa’s. She’s very upset.”

  “She’supset?”

  “Yes. And she needs to hang up now. Good-bye.”

  And with that, Jack puts the phone on the cradle.

  “Has this been going on a long time?” Jack’s eyes are dark with fury. “Has it?”

  “Jack—you just—you just hung up on her.”

  “It wasn’t hard,” he says. “You just close your hand around the phone and put it down.” He isn’t smiling.

  From the look on his face, I can tell that he heard it all. My cover is blown. The Pippa Jack knows isn’t what she seems. Underneath, she’s a heaving, porous mass of mess. The darkness is winning. She’s going under.

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Long enough.”

  A siren screams past on the street outside. Jack comes over to me and helps me up off the floor.

  “You must think I’m a terrible person, causing her so much pain.”

  I can see Jack choosing his words carefully.

  “Pippa,” he says, his voice straining in anger, “you’re not the one who’s only thinking about herself here. Do youreally think it’s fair of her to lay this huge guilt trip on you?”

  I look at him. “Maybe not, but…”

  “But nothing,” Jack says. “But fucking nothing.”

  A few moments later, we’re standing next to the phone, my friend and I, as close as it is possible for two people to stand together with all their clothes on.

  And then the phone rings.

  “Let the machine pick up,” Jack says.

  We wait for the needy southern voice, but it doesn’t come.

  Instead the voice is young and male.

  “Hi. I hope I’ve got the right number. This is Walt Markham’s son Edwin speaking. I’m—uh—I guess I’m Pippa’s brother.”

  “Edwin?” I say, picking up the phone.

  “Hi sis,” the voice says.

  “Hi,” I say, feeling a huge sense of relief. Then again, “Hi.”

  “Can you meet me on the corner of Thirty-fourth and Sixth in an hour? I’ll be the redhead in the Orioles hat.”

  “Yes!” I tell him. And then, “Me too.”

  I put down the phone, grinning.

  “Jesus!” Jack says. “It’s one helluva rollercoaster you’re on here.”

  But, seeing the joy in my face, he’s smiling as I go.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  IT’S A WINDY DAY,and Edwin isn’t there yet. I crouch down beside a dumpster for shelter and wait. A shadow blocks the sun. I look up. Edwin is standing in front of me. He is tall, with a face that looks remarkably like mine.

  “So,” he says, “I meet my sister for the first time ever, and she’s sitting by a dumpster.” I jump up.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi,” he says. We laugh.

  “So, the cat’s out of the bag,” he says.

  “Meow.”

  We stare at each other. His hair is my hair, only short. His face is my face, only male. He’s taller than me and clearly shares my lack of interest in fashion. We’re both wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and, as anticipated, an Orioles baseball cap.

  “Why did he tell you now?” I say, finally.

  Edwin smiles. “He doesn’t like my girlfriend. So he said all mistakes have consequences, some of them serious. Then he told me about you.”

  Oh. Well, at least he told him. My joy at meeting a sibling who I already recognize completely is far stronger than anything else.

  “Were you surprised?” I say.

  “Not really,” he says. “I always knew there was something. Dad was never all that happy, especially at holiday times. Your mother must have been something special. Dad’s not really the affair type.”

  “Yes, I think she was,” I say, picturing the two of them, for a second, as they were, forbidden to love each other, but loving each other anyway.

  “Now I know why Dad used to want to know my girlfriends’ birthdays,” Edwin says. “He wanted to be sure I wasn’t dating my sister.” With New York City rising above us, we start laughing like hysterical children.

  “When is your birthday?” I say, back on the street as we head toward Times Square.

  “September sixth, nineteen seventy-eight.”

  “Mine’s April twenty-sixth, nineteen seventy-eigh
t.” We grin. “Must have been an active year.”

  “So we’re Irish twins,” he says.

  “I guess so,” I say. He looks at me closely.

  “How do we know he’s dead?” Edwin says.

  “Who?”

  “Our brother.”

  Our brother. Edwin’s brother and mine. Walt has told him about my twin. Our brother. I am no longer alone.

  “Why would they lie about it?”

  “Have you seen the death certificate?”

  “Do dead twins have death certificates?”

  “Dunno. Did he have a birth certificate?”

  “If he did, I haven’t seen it. I haven’t seen my birth certificate either, for that matter. I’m not allowed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was adopted. I’m not allowed access to my original birth certificate in the U.S.”

  “No shit?”

  We walk around New York and talk and talk. About politics, justice, Walt, me, him. And our sister Ashley. She works with children with special needs.

  “Does she know about me?”

  I watch something tighten in him. “No,” he says.

  “Are you going to tell her?” I say.

  “I can’t. Dad made me promise.”

  “Why?”

  “Something to do with Dad’s theory that boys handle tough things better than girls.”

  “So your dad has made you promise to keep my existence a secret from your sister?”

  “Our sister,” he corrects me. “God, but you’re so like her!”

  “Is she sane?” I ask.

  “Hell no!” he says, grinning.

  Edwin stays overnight on my couch. I’m tired when I climb up the ladder to my loft bed, but I don’t sleep well. I dream of a sister with only half a face, and I wake with a start.

  I can see Edwin is awake too, because his eyes are open.

  “You okay?” I whisper. There’s pain in his eyes. Keeping other people’s secrets hurts. He doesn’t say anything. I turn onto my back and stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars Elfrida stuck on the ceiling above me, wishing there was something I could do to help ease his burden.

  Edwin and I go out to breakfast at the Cornelia Street Café in the West Village. We both order the fried eggs with roasted garlic cloves.

  “Growing up, Dad loved playing hero to everyone but his family,” he says. “You didn’t miss much. He drank a lot, and he ignored my mother, and he was never there.”

  That makes sense.

  “He played hero to me, I think. At least for a little while. When I met him, well, to me he was the perfect father I’d dreamed of all my life.”

  “I’ll bet he loved that!”

  “Yes, I think he did,” I say, suddenly missing the father I had so wanted Walt to be.

  “When did you last see him?”

  “It’s been a while,” I say. I haven’t heard from Walt since I left Marsama Beach.

  There’s understanding in my brother’s twinkling eyes. Behind his smile is the kind of depth that can only come from pain. He knows how much I’m hurting over Walt. I don’t have to say a word.

  I wonder why it is that I recognize Edwin completely and Ralph not at all. Is it just because we’re so close in age, or have I really inherited more of Walt’s genes than Billie’s?

  “I’ve got some news. It’s not good,” Edwin says once breakfast is over.

  “Okay.”

  “Dad’s had to go away for a while.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s going to be out of the country for a while. That’s all I know.”

  I wait for more. There isn’t any.

  “Do you have any idea what, exactly, he does for a living?”

  “No.” Edwin laughs. “He’s never really talked about it. Dad’s always been an enigma. He likes it that way.”

  “Well, at least he bequeathed you to me before he disappeared again.”

  “Yeah,” Edwin says. Then he laughs again and says, “So, now I have a sister who says ‘bequeathed.’”

  When I say good-bye to this funny, familiar brother of mine I’m hit by a profound sorrow. In the hope that it’ll help me figure out where it’s coming from, I start walking around the city.

  By the time I reach the Hudson River, I realize that Edwin’s arrival probably means that I’ve seen the last of my father.

  I know Walt loves me. But Walt’s image of himself as a great man is as important to him as breathing. When the child who most resembles him called him a coward it must have shaken him to the core. Walt has spent his life—and probably made his living—keeping secrets. Other people’s, as well as his own. Honest, direct communication is not something he values or is familiar with. Much easier for him to cut me off again than deal with the “me” I have become.

  Having finally found out the truth about the people I came from—not just the parts that are easy to deal with, but all of it—I find I can’t lie to myself anymore. About anything. I can’t lie to other people either.

  What Walt doesn’t know—and what I didn’t know until this moment—is that the profound disappointment I feel doesn’t make me love him any less. Perhaps, in a way, it makes me love him more. If Walt can be imperfect, then so perhaps can I.

  Walt doesn’t know how to say he is sorry. But I do. I am English after all. So I stop at a phone booth and leave him a message. I don’t tell him I love him. I’m still way too English for that. I don’t say good-bye either. Instead I say, “I’m just calling to let you know that it’s okay by me for you to be human, Walt. I understand all of it. And—well—thank you for sending me Edwin.”

  Chapter Fifty-three

  WHENIFINALLY GET BACKto my apartment in Union Square, I’m too exhausted to think anymore and realize I have lost my keys. I try calling Elfrida but she doesn’t pick up. I bang on the door for half an hour but she stays asleep.

  I go back downstairs to where Farik the doorman is sitting in his usual place by the elevator, chanting the Koran. I ask him if he has a spare key to the apartment. He shakes his head to indicate a negative answer to this and keeps chanting.

  “Well, please will you help me bang on the door to try to wake Elfrida up?”

  He stops chanting long enough to tell me that, according to the Koran, when people are asleep, they are in a holy state and that you should therefore never wake a sleeping person.

  “You will sit next to me until the morning,” Farik says, pointing to a grubby-looking chair in the corner off the hallway.

  I bloody will not. I look at my watch. It’s 1:34 a.m. Who can I call at this hour?

  Fifteen minutes later, I’m standing outside Jack’s apartment. His hair is tousled and he isn’t wearing a shirt.

  “Come in,” he says.

  “I’m so sorry to wake you,” I say. “I’m so sorry. I…well, thank you.”

  “How did it go with your brother?”

  “Great. He’s great.”

  Half naked, Jack looks as sexy as Harry Connick, Jr., when he took off his shirt inPajama Game .

  “Do you have something I could sleep in?” I say. I don’t want him thinking I’m here to sleep with him. Because I’m not.

  Jack gets a pair of sweats out of an immaculately packed drawer and hands me a T-shirt. “You can change in there,” he says.

  He shuts the door to the bathroom behind me. I put on his sweats and T-shirt and open the door.

  “Are you going to sleep in your shoes?” he says.

  I stare at the sneakers on my feet. I never wear socks. I’d like to say it was a fashion choice, but the truth is I can never find them. There are consequences to this.

  “I really think that, as your apartment is so small, I should keep my shoes on.”

  Jack looks blank. This clearly isn’t the moment to be British.

  “My feet stink,” I say. “If I’m going to take my shoes off, I’ll need to wash my feet.”

  Without a word, Jack opens the bathroom door again. I
roll up Jack’s pants and get into his lime green bathtub to wash my feet. When I turn on the tap, instead of the bathwater, Jack’s powerful shower rains down on me in a torrent. I let out a little scream.

  “Everything all right in there?”

  “Uh, not really,” I say.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Okay.”

  I’m standing in Jack’s bathtub, in his soaking wet T-shirt and sweats. I wait for the tone of irritation, but it doesn’t come. Actually Jack is laughing, and, as seems to be his wont, handing me a towel.

  “I have a wide selection of T-shirts, ma’am, if you insist on wearing clothes in ninety-degree weather.”

  “I do,” I say, padding after him.

  “Thank you so much,” I say as he hands me a Ray Davies T-shirt and a pair of green boxer shorts with monkeys on them.

  “You’re welcome so much,” he says.

  “I don’t want to keep you up,” I say, after I’ve changed.

  I’m looking at everything but Jack, who is still half-naked.

  “Here, take the bed,” he says, finally. “I’ll take the couch.”

  “No, no, I can’t do that. You take the bed.”

  “Take the bed, Pippa.”

  I’m lying, once again, between Jack’s crisp green sheets. Only this time I don’t have concussion. I try to think of Nick. But I can’t. I can think of no one but the man lying six feet away from me. He is overwhelmingly sexy without his shirt on. His eyes are filled with kindness and humor and fondness for me. He might be in love with someone who isn’t here, but he is not gay.

  I have never made the first move with a bloke. Ever. But suddenly I am tired of the way I have been. Tired of being passive. Tired of just responding to events. I want to initiate something. I’m an American now. It’s time to come right out with it. So I say, “Is the sofa comfy?”

  “Uh huh.” Jack’s voice is deep in the dark.

  “How’s your back?”

  “Okay.”

  “It doesn’t hurt on the couch, then?”

  “What?”

  “Your back.”

  “Nope.”

  Jack doesn’t say anything. Then, “Pippa?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you want me to get into bed with you?”