The English American

by Alison Larkin

  “Iunderstand all of it,” I say. “Your sorrow, your aching heart, your longing for me. And I’m sorry you have suffered so. Really I am.” The anger rises up and bursts out of me. “But I didn’t give myself up for adoption, Billie. I didn’t leave you. You left me!”

  “And now you’re punishing me for it!”

  “When will you get it into your head that I am not punishing you for giving me up for adoption? I’m grateful! You know that! I’ve thanked you for it a thousand times. The reason I don’t want you in my life now is because being around you makes me miserable. And I don’t trust you. I’ve tried to trust you, but time and time again you’ve shown me that I just bloody well can’t!”

  Finally. It’s out.

  “But I’mfamily !” she says.

  “I didn’t come to America to swap families, Billie! ‘Oh, thanks for the nappy changing, and the education and the skiing holidays Mum and Dad, now I’m buggering off to join my real family.’”

  “So, you feel a sense ofduty toward them?”

  “No, Billie. I love them. Mum, Dad, and Charlotte are my family. They always have been. I have loved them all my life and I always will. And it’s not the kind of love that hurts me either! It’s the kind of love that feels like love!”

  “But…”

  “But nothing, Billie! They are my family. Which, again, wasn’t my choice. It was yours.”

  “Well,” she says, “Wellllll. Well, your parents don’t want you behaving badly toward me.”

  “What?”

  “They raised you to be considerate about other people’s feelings. And they said to me—listen to me, Pippa—they said to me that you could spend Christmas and Thanksgiving with me, and they could have you in the summer. They said that, honey.”

  “Billie, I’m not up for shared custody! I can make my own decisions! I am twenty-nine years old!”

  “Don’t you have any feelings for me at all?”

  The anger subsides as suddenly as it came. Billie looks like a child again. I walk toward her.

  “How could I not feel for you?” I say, gently. “God, giving up a child would hurt any woman terribly. How could it not? I know you suffered. And I know my finding you has brought up all the feelings of loss you’ve buried for so many years. I know that. And I feel for you. Really. I’ll always be grateful for the way you welcomed me, and encouraged me, and made me feel wanted. It would have crucified me if you’d said you didn’t want to see me. But Billie,” I say, “I wasn’t away on vacation.”

  There’s quiet in the room. Billie walks toward the window. Then she turns toward me with an angelic expression on her face and says, equally gently, “It’s time to come out of denial, honey. You don’t belong with those people anymore.”

  “Those people?”

  There’s no point in continuing. The anger is back.

  I start to leave, but Billie keeps talking.

  “I told your mother it’s time for her to let you go.”

  I stop. “What?”

  “She can’t understand you the way I understand you, because she’s not your real mother. To make you feel a failure because you were untidy, when really you were just wildly creative, well, I don’t care how you paint it, abuse is abuse!”

  “No! Tell me you didn’t say that to Mum, Billie! Please, Billie! No! What have you done, Billie? What have you done?”

  Suddenly I’m running out the door.

  “Don’t leave me again, Pippa.” She’s pleading now. Shouting. “Don’t leave me again!”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Billie. I didn’t leave you. You left me! YOU LEFT ME!”

  I run down the stairs to the lower floor and bang on Ralph’s bedroom door.

  “Ralph? Will you drive me to the airport?”

  “Where are you going?” Billie says, following me as I head toward the car.

  “I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago. I’m going home.”

  “But what about Nick?”

  “Fuck Nick.”

  “Pippa!”

  “You go on the Circle Line with Nick and his delicate wife and gorgeous little children. I’m going home.”

  Chapter Fifty-six

  IDON’T WANT YOUR MOTHER,”I say to Ralph, who drives the road between Adler and JFK even faster than she does. “Despite her endless protestations to the contrary, she’s not my ‘real’ mother.”

  “Okay, okay,” he says. His face is young, and he’s laughing. “Man, you women really know how to sling shit, don’t you!”

  We’re driving at eighty now. He is his mother’s son.

  “Way to go, bro.”

  We get to the airport and I run through the doors. A British Airways flight has just left. There’s another flight in an hour. I’ll manage to get on it with just enough time to buy a toothbrush, some respectable looking clothes, and an overnight bag from duty-free.

  “Ralph, thank you.”

  “Hey, I’m cool,” he says. And smiles.

  “Good luck, Ralph.”

  An American voice booms out across the airport. “You are not required to give money to solicitors. This airport does not support their activities.” I can’t help laughing. Because even though I’m an American now, I’ll always be English too. And, to me, a solicitor will always be a solicitor. Not a solicitor, if you know what I mean.

  And then I’m on the airplane, and the whirlwind’s back. Billie has said the one thing to Mum and Dad that I never, ever wanted them to hear.

  I’ll never regret finding and coming to know my birth parents. The parts of me that no one else recognized, they recognized. The talents I knew were within me, they validated. I’ll never again have to answer the doctor’s “What’s your family medical history?” with “I was adopted. I don’t know.”

  But if Billie has hurt Mum and Dad in any way, how will I ever forgive her?

  I turn my attention to the Virgin Atlantic flight attendant who’s asking me to buckle up. They’re all wearing red skirts and white blouses and remind me of the girls I used to see around the streets of Peaseminster, who wore makeup and highlighted their hair and knew all about the latest bands and sold me Tampax at Boots. They still look nothing like me, but I find their familiarity comforting.

  I’ve been caught up in a whirlwind, far, far away. As I travel across the ocean, my love for the country and the family I left fills me completely. I’m being pulled back to England with the same sense of urgency I felt when I left it.

  Tears start to trickle down my cheeks as I think of Jack, who I could have trusted. He was right there. Lying right next to me. And on top of me. And underneath me. And I ran, instead, toward a man who didn’t really exist.

  I have behaved appallingly to the one man I’ve ever known who I could have truly trusted. And therefore truly loved.

  The flight attendant offers me an apple juice and several extra napkins.

  “Thank you,” I say, blowing my nose loudly.

  I yank my mind back to the present. Billie has been to visit Mum and Dad, leaving God knows what damage in her wake. Oh God. What has she done?

  Keeping a low-level panic under control as best I can, I walk quickly toward the exit, hail a taxi, and ask the driver to cover the roads between Heathrow and Peaseminster as fast as he can.

  As we drive, I realize I am looking at England like an American. Taking note of the cute little cars, and the cute little roads as if for the first time.

  The taxi has a little place between the front seats for Murray Mints. The taxi driver leans back and offers me one.

  “Thanks.”

  I bite into it.

  “Did you chew that?” he asks, chuckling.

  “I did.”

  “Better have another one then.” He hands another back to me. I pull the wrapper off with my teeth and pop it in my mouth.

  “Remember the commercial on the telly about the Murray Mints?”

  I do. It seems a lifetime away from where I have been. Another world, which was not suppose
d to collide with this one.

  We say the line in unison: “Never Hurry a Murray.”

  The difference between the old Pippa and the new is that I’m not going to waste any more time thinking there’s something wrong with me for not being able to suck my mints for hours. It’s as much a part of who I am as my red hair, pale skin, and fondness for chocolate.

  When I get to my parents’ home all the lights are out. Mum, Dad, and Boris, the worst guard dog on earth, are fast asleep. I reach under the flowerpot by the front door, take the spare key from underneath it, and, tapping in the alarm numbers, enter the house.

  The fourth stair board creaks as I creep quietly up to the second floor, just as it always has. I walk quietly past the room where Mum and Dad are sleeping, down the corridor to my room, and fall fast asleep.

  I’m awakened by the smell of bacon frying. I look at my watch. It’s three thirty in the morning in America. Which means it must be eight thirty here. From my bed I can see white clouds crossing the bright blue sky above England and the trees moving in the late summer wind. One of the branches hits the corrugated roof of the pool house. First it taps the roof, then it makes a scraping sound, and then there’s a three-second gap before it starts again.

  I get dressed and head down to the kitchen. Dad is reading theTimes and Mum is getting a jar of Chivers marmalade down from the kitchen cupboard.

  “Hallo, Mum,” I say from the top of the stairs.

  “Pippa!” she says, dropping a spoonful of marmalade onto the kitchen table. “Darling!”

  Dad looks up from his paper and starts laughing.

  “What a lovely surprise!” Dad is patting me on the back, and Mum is kissing me on the cheek.

  “Hi, Mum! Hi, Dad!” I say.

  “What a lovely surprise!” they say again.

  And it is.

  I’ve been so far away. And now I’m back. And my beloved parents are still here. Nothing has changed in their world. They are still doing the same thing they’ve been doing since I went away.

  They woke up at six. Dad went downstairs and made Mum a cup of tea and brought it upstairs on a tray with two Garibaldi biscuits, otherwise known as squashed flies. After listening to the World Service and reading the paper, Mum went down to the kitchen, still in her dressing gown, and made Dad a cup of coffee. In the royal wedding mug. Which they bought from the village fête in Barnfield twenty-five years before. Charles and Diana look young and in love, and the whole country believed it would last forever, because they wanted it to.

  “What a splendid suitcase,” Dad says, when he sees my smart new plaid suitcase with buckles. “Not too full either. Well done, Pippa!”

  Dear Dad. It doesn’t take much. They seem okay. But are they really? My heart is pounding.

  “How is everybody?” I say.

  “Oh fine,” Mum says. “Charlotte and Rupert spent last weekend in Cornwall eating scones and clotted cream. This weekend, they’re biking it all off in Wales. They’ll be so happy to see you!”

  I open the door to the bread bin, take out a thin piece of Waitrose whole wheat bread, and put it in the toaster. Then, waiting for the toast to pop, as casually as I can, I ask them if they’ve had any visitors.

  “Mary came yesterday,” Dad says. “She’s been feeling low since Mabel got mangled, but your mother cheered her up no end.”

  New York has guns. Peaseminster has farming machinery. Mary’s friend Mabel was killed by a combine harvester one sorry afternoon last May.

  “Any other visitors?” I say, waiting.

  “Only Poppy,” Mum says. “To talk about the village fête. We’re thinking of having an egg and spoon race next year.”

  “Farted up a storm all afternoon!” Dad’s hooting with laughter.

  “Alas-dair!” Mum says.

  “Anyone else?”

  “No,” they say.

  “Is anything wrong, darling?” Mum is looking at me carefully.

  “Yes.”

  Dad, stands up, folds his newspaper under one arm, and signals to Mum that he’s going into the next room to listen to some music.

  “Bring your toast and Marmite out onto the porch, darling,” Mum says. “We can talk there.”

  I put my toast on the Peter Rabbit plate I’ve used since I was a child. I carry it through the house, past the Oriental carpets and the wooden cedar chest to the porch, and sit down on the wicker chair. Mum has re-covered the cushions since I was last there. I can smell freshly picked tomatoes ripening in a bowl next to the swimming pool heater.

  “Mum,” I say, sitting down. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course I am, darling. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Well, Billie told me she came to see you…”

  “Ah,” Mum says.

  She takes off her sunglasses and turns toward the garden. A tiny robin is hopping around one of the croquet hoops trying to pick up something off the grass, I can’t see what.

  Mum turns back toward me.

  “Did she come here?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “About a month ago.”

  “Oh Mum. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Probably for the same reason you haven’t told us about what’s really been going on with you.” She’s stating a fact. There’s no criticism in her tone. “I suppose I didn’t want to worry you.”

  My throat constricts.She didn’t want to worryme ?

  “What happened?”

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  DAD ANDI had been to see the Saturday matinee at the Mariton,” Mum says. “It was a very interesting play about Isadora Duncan. The one people always used to say you reminded them of.”

  “The one who got strangled by her scarf?”

  “Yes, that Isadora Duncan. Well, anyway, I drove your father home afterward. And then, because we were on Weight Watchers and I didn’t feel like cooking, I popped down to Sainsbury’s to get us a Lean Cuisine for supper. They’re so good, especially the ones with salmon and rice in the white sauce.”

  “Mum.”

  “Sorry. When I got back home there was a red rent-a-car in the driveway.”

  “It’s Billie’s favorite color,” I say, trying to keep things light, despite the fact that I am terribly afraid of what I am about to hear.

  Mum tells me she walked into the kitchen and saw Dad talking to a woman in white furry boots and a multicolored jumpsuit.

  “Although she looked awfully familiar,” Mum says, “I couldn’t think where I knew her from. She said ‘hallo’ in a pretty southern American accent, with such a friendly smile. I said ‘hallo’ back, of course.

  “And then I noticed your father jabbing the air behind her back with his finger. Honestly, Pip, for a second I thought he’d gone quite barmy. And while your father was jabbing the air like a lunatic, the woman was hugging me and telling me she would have called, only she didn’t have our number.

  “It’s funny. It wasn’t the accent that made me realize who it was. It was the expression on her face when she told me she got our address from the back of one of your letters.”

  Mum doesn’t look traumatized. She looks intrigued. “When you were about four years old, and trying to charm me after doing something you knew was naughty, you used to look at me in exactly the same way. And that’s when I knew who it was.

  “She has your dimples, you know,” Mum says.

  “She’d say I have hers.”

  “I suppose she would.” Mum takes a sip of her tea and carries on.

  “When she got out her cigarettes, I thought your father was going to have a fit. So I told him to go and read the paper, led her out to the porch, and opened a window. Her cigarettes are very thin, aren’t they?”

  “They’re called Eve,” I said. “They’re menthol.”

  “Not like Dunhill then? I do miss my ciggies you know. If your father dies before I do, I’m going to start smoking again.”

  “You never told me you missed smoking!”


  “Can’t tell you everything now, can I?” Mum smiles, pleased that she has shocked me a little.

  “Anyway, then Billie said, ‘I’m here to talk about my daughter.’ It was odd, hearing another woman talk about you as her daughter.”

  “Just odd?”

  “Well, yes. I mean you are her daughter, darling. And—well—no. It didn’t bother me. In fact I was fascinated, if you really want to know. I’ve never seen anyone who looks even slightly like you before. It gave me an idea of what you might look like twenty-five years from now.”

  “So it was interesting?”

  “Very. Wehave wondered about the people you came from, Pippadee. It’s only natural.”

  “Well, why didn’t you ever say so?”

  “Probably for the same reason you didn’t tell us you wanted to know who they were. We wanted to protect you, I suppose. We didn’t want to bring up things that might upset you.”

  Ping-Pong again. There I’d been for years, longing to talk to my parents about it all, but not, for fear of upsetting them. There they were, for years, feeling the same. Neither of us doing anything about it for fear of upsetting the other. How absurdly, entirely, utterly English.

  Mum and I sit still for a moment. The moment between us feels honest and clean.

  “She kept calling me Jemima,” Mum says suddenly.

  “Jemima?”

  “Yes. And she kept taking tiny puffs of her cigarette while she paced around the room. Just like you did when you used to smoke. It is ‘used to,’ isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I stopped when I realized that even though she claims to only have one or two, Billie smokes a pack a day. I didn’t want to be like her.”

  “I suppose every difficult situation has its perks.”

  “Yes.”

  Mum is leaning back in her chair, as relaxed as I am tense.

  “Then Billie turned toward me and told me you were dead.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I said. But she told me she didn’t mean it literally. She meant it metaphorically. She said she felt that you were cut off from an important part of yourself, and that it was crucial—for your development—that you spend more time with her than you have been recently. In order to fulfill your potential as a creative artist, I think she said. I must confess I was so relieved you weren’t actually dead, I didn’t take much of that part in.”