Point out to your new academic colleagues wryly that The Bridges of Madison County was initially a flop in Britain, when it was published as Love in Black and White. But then, of course, it was reissued with a lot of hype and became a big hit. Wonder what your point is.
Realize one day that you haven’t had any good marmalade in the mail for months.
Develop an interest in all things British. See every Anthony Hopkins movie ever made. Reread Forster and Austen. Watch the Monty Python marathon. Quote from all these sources occasionally. Disagree with all the anglophile articles in The New Yorker but read them avidly. At Christmas your wife buys you a subscription to the foreign edition of a British newspaper. Your mother sends you a Manchester United shirt, which you put in your closet. Which you used to call a wardrobe. Write articles about Britain and the British. Say you had to leave to really understand your home.
Buy a car with a hood and a trunk rather than a bonnet and a boot. Say to your wife, “Do you call it a windshield or a windscreen?” Once when you’ve had a little too much to drink, swing onto the wrong side of the road. Your wife screams at you and you pull back. There’s no real danger and you feel oddly elated.
Tell your wife you’ve noticed you’re spelling words like realize with a z. Stare at her blankly when she says, “A zee? You mean a zed. A zee!” Ask her if she thinks you’re losing your accent. Hear her say, “I don’t think so.”
When people ask you where you’re from, start to say, “Originally?”
Be wary of other British people. Avoid them at parties. Feign surprise when your colleagues introduce you to their British graduate students. Say, “Oh, hello.” They look pale and half starved. Notice how bad their teeth are.
Clinton’s second election comes around and your wife goes to a rally. Remember how you used to be more political. How every little thing—roadworks, the homeless, Benny Hill—made you despair of Britain. Things like that in the U.S. are someone else’s problem. Get a call from the Democrats. Can they count on your vote? Explain that you don’t have a vote, that you’re not a citizen. Besides, you’re not a democrat. You’re a socialist. It sounds so exotic. Forget to register for a postal vote in the upcoming British general election.
The Patriots make the playoffs. Say, “That kid Bledsoe—nothing but bullets.” It makes people laugh at parties.
Your mother calls and tells you she’s clearing out the attic. Do you want to keep any of your old schoolbooks? Say no, you don’t think so. Not any? she says. Why not keep a couple? Say all right. Your father comes on the other extension and tells you he’s sold your bicycle. You had been meaning to ship it over. Ask him why. He says it was in the way, underfoot. “Clutter,” he says. Ask him what he got for it and get angry when he says, “Twenty quid.” It’s only four years old and you paid over two hundred for it. “I’m only kidding,” he says quickly. “It’s still here. But it’s getting rusty. There’s nothing I can do about that.” Next time he comes on the phone he pretends he’s sold your books. Next time he jokes about taking in a lodger in your old room. Next time he says they’re thinking of selling the house and buying something smaller. Tell him, very funny. Tell him you’re not laughing. “Only teasing,” he says.
When your mother calls, take the phone from your wife and say, “How ya doing?” and feel like you’ve just slapped her in the face. When your father calls, say, “What’s up?” and groan inwardly.
Lose track of how many years you’ve been in the U.S. Work it out by administrations. Lose track of how many kids your best friend has. Teach students Shakespeare. They look at you as though you’re an expert with your accent, although you know their accents are closer to the Bard’s. You call home every week and write every couple of weeks. More often than any of your old friends in England, you’re sure. There isn’t enough news for all these letters and phone calls. On the phone your mother tells you she and your father have fights about you. “He doesn’t understand,” she says. Tell her that you know what you’re doing. That they shouldn’t worry about you. Ask, is it because they miss you? Hear her say, “Oh, no.” They’re both busy and active, enjoying their retirement. She says it’s not your fault. They’ll have to get used to it. “I tell him, perhaps I should have had another child,” she says. Neither of you speaks for a long moment. “I mean a second child,” she says at last.
Cheat on your wife. She tells you one night you are losing your accent and it makes you feel like you’re losing your hair. “Going, going, gone,” she says. Cheat on her with a gifted student from your class. Cheat on her with less gifted students from your class. Talk to your oldest friend from England late at night on the phone. He’s jealous of your affairs. “I could never do that,” he says. You wonder if you could if you were there. “Have you been drinking?” he asks, and when you say “No!” he says, “Only it’s six A.M. here.”
A Starbucks opens around the corner from you, and you tell your wife, “Conformity. That’s what I love about this country,” and she calls you an asshole. Tell her you’re an arsehole and watch her not laugh. Have a harassment suit filed against you by one of the students you didn’t sleep with. Your wife wants a separation. She says, “Don’t look so miserable. We’ve been together more than two years.” She means that even if you divorce, you’ll get to keep your pink green card.
“You’ve changed,” she tells you, and you say, “I had to change to stay.”
“You’ve changed,” she says, and you ask, “How? Tell me how I used to be.”
You’ve changed, and you wonder, too much or not enough?
Look at old photos. Reread letters. Wish you’d kept a diary. Think, you chose this. You’re an expatriate, not an exile. It’s what you always wanted.
At Christmas, after your wife leaves you, fly home for the first time in two years. You’ve spent winters in Boston when the Charles River froze solid and the snow was piled on street-corners into April, but you feel cold to your bones at Gatwick. Yes, you think, but it’s a damp cold. The atrocious fucking coffee costs a fortune. Your parents have preserved your old room like a shrine for six years. They’re delighted to have you home for Christmas. Your father slaps you on the back, and your mother’s eyes fill with tears at the airport. “It’s good to have you home,” they say, although they insist they haven’t missed you.
At night you lie awake in your old bed in your old room in your old home and you wonder how everything could have changed so much.
Frogmen
MICHAEL AND JOHNNY were playing deep-sea divers. They were on the embankment above the river with their cheeks blown out, making slow-motion swimming actions with their arms. Johnny was twelve and Michael was ten. They spoke in sign language and pointed down the bank whenever the masked head of one of the police divers emerged from the brown water.
Johnny stuck his thumb up and gestured that they should surface.
“Do you think they’ve found anything?” he said.
“No.” Michael made treading-water movements. “Why aren’t you sinking?”
“I’m hanging on to our boat,” Johnny said.
“Well, move over. My arms are getting tired.”
“Look,” Johnny said, pointing behind his brother toward their house. A small pink figure was skipping across the field in a ballerina costume. “Susan,” he said recognizing their six-year-old sister, but Michael had already taken a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks and sunk to his knees on the grass.
They tried to swim around Susan, but she just thought they were doing some kind of dance, and she stood on tiptoes and followed them around with her fingers laced over her head.
“What do you think of my new costume?” she said. “Isn’t it nice?” They kept swimming, but because they could only go in slow motion they couldn’t get away from her, and she came twirling after them.
“Play with me,” she called, but Johnny had his foot caught in a giant clam and was waving for help. Michael turned slowly to come to his aid, but Susan leaped in between them
and gave a tug at Johnny’s arm.
“Oh, what is it?” he said, sacrificing his last lungful of air.
“Dance with me,” she said shyly.
“No way.”
“You have to,” she said. “I’m a ballerina. Mummy just bought me my costume.”
“What for?” Michael asked.
“Will you dance with me if I tell you?”
“No.”
“Will you?” she asked Johnny.
“Oh, all right.”
“I just told her I was upset about Billy and so she bought it for me.”
“You never did. You just told her that?”
“I did. She took me straight out to buy it. Just now.”
Johnny looked at Michael.
“Are we going to dance now?”
“No. Get lost.”
“But you promised.”
“No, I never. Ask Michael. Did I say I promised?”
Michael shook his head.
“Did too,” Susan said sulkily. She would have fought him then, but she didn’t want to get her new costume dirty. “Well,” she said with a huff, “you’re just crap,” and she scampered off toward the house.
Johnny waited until he saw their mother come out, then sat down in a heap.
“Look sad,” he told Michael.
“Why won’t you play with your sister, John?” his mother said angrily. He just looked up at her sorrowfully and pointed down the embankment. She looked and saw another masked head pop out of the water.
“Oh god,” she said. “You poor babies,” and she put her arms around both boys.
…
The Saturday after Billy Burns went missing, David’s father took him to the toy department of Woolworth’s and let him pick out two tennis rackets, one for himself and one for his best friend, Paul. When they got back, David raced over to Paul’s house with the two rackets stretched out like wings, banking and making ack-ack-ack fighter-plane noises. Paul’s mother had bought him boxing gloves that same morning, but only one pair. The boys took one each, and using the tennis rackets as swords, they dueled and punched their way up and down the garden until David’s mother called him in for dinner.
Martin got a kite in the shape of Batman, but he couldn’t get it off the ground and his father had to come out and fly it for him. Every time Martin took the string, the kite plunged to earth, so in the end his father made him run into the house for some paper. “We’ll send a message to Batman,” he said, tearing a hole in one of the sheets of paper. He threaded it onto the string, flicked it once, and the wind caught it and carried it up to the kite. After that, he had Martin sit at his feet and write messages to the kite. “Where’s Robin?” Martin wrote. “Why do you wear your underpants over your tights?” he wrote. “Can you see Billy Burns?” Each message made the kite heavier, and gradually Batman sank to the ground. Cathy, from down the street, brought it back to them on her new roller skates.
Johnny and Michael got new Action Man dolls. Their mother asked them if they were sure that’s what they wanted—in her day, dolls were for girls—but they said yes, it was what they’d always wanted. Didn’t they both have Action Men? she asked, but they very patiently explained that they had old Action Men with plastic hands.
“New Action Men have gripping hands,” Johnny said.
“They’re made of rubber,” Michael added. “So they can hold guns and things better.”
“I never knew it was so complicated,” their mother said.
Really old Action Men had plastic hair, they told her, before they had bristles.
“It’s like Action Man’s been growing up, then?” Their mother laughed.
Well, no, they said. They thought he’d always been about the same age.
“And when did Action Man get his scar?” she wanted to know.
“Mother,” said Johnny, “Action Man has always had a scar.”
“John,” his mother mimicked, “aren’t you getting a little old for this?”
…
Billy Burns, as Johnny and Michael both knew, had had a new Action Man with gripping hands. He’d got it for his twelfth birthday. Billy had always had the best toys. He had tried to swap his old Action Man with Johnny for a magnet, but Billy’s mother had made them swap back, even though they’d shaken on it. “It wasn’t a fair swap,” she’d said, but Johnny didn’t see how that mattered if Billy had agreed to it. It never occurred to him that he might have bullied Billy into it. You couldn’t bully someone older than you.
Just wait till I show her I’ve got my own now, Johnny thought.
At the time Billy had said he was sorry and he really preferred the magnet, but the Action Man was a present from his father and his mother said he had to keep it. Billy’s father had “vanished” the year before. “No one knows where he is,” Billy had told them. “He’s a spy or something.” Johnny didn’t believe that, but he didn’t ask anymore about Billy’s father, because his parents had told them he shouldn’t. Only after Billy disappeared, he wondered if this was something you inherited, and he asked his mother if Billy had vanished like his father.
“No,” his mother said. “Billy’s father hasn’t vanished. He just decided to go away. Billy didn’t want to go anywhere. He’s lost.”
“Maybe he ran away,” Johnny said. “Maybe he didn’t like it at home and he just ran away.”
“Don’t say that,” his mother said, and he thought she was angry until she pulled him tight against her.
Once, Johnny remembered Billy coming to the door and saying, “Do you notice anything different about me?” and Johnny had wondered if he should say, “Yes. You don’t have a dad,” but he didn’t. “No,” he said, and then Billy smiled and unzipped his coat and showed him where he had strapped his cowboy holster under his shoulder. “See,” he said. “Now we can play detectives.”
…
The police were gone from the river when Johnny and Michael got back to the embankment with their toys. They played commandos for a while. They imagined Action Man swimming into the German harbor past all the mines and nets and blowing up the ships. They imagined Billy doing that, with a knife in his teeth, swimming past all the policemen to the sea. They were interrupted by Susan again. She came running out with a strange dog leaping and barking around her heels.
“Where’d you find him?” Johnny said, jumping up.
“Do you like him?”
“Yeah,” they chorused.
“Well, he’s mine,” she said. “Daddy bought him for me.”
“What?”
“I told him I was upset about Billy and that Mummy bought me an outfit and that she was taking you to town to buy whatever you wanted. But no one ever said I could have whatever I wanted. Mummy just said she’d get me the costume, so it wasn’t really fair. So Daddy asked me what I most wanted.”
“A dog,” Johnny said, in awe. “How did you think of a dog?”
“Well, I asked for a pony first,” Susan said.
“What’s he called?” Michael wanted to know.
“Billy, of course.”
And they chased him off down the field behind the houses, shouting, “Billy! Here, Billy—here, boy.” That brought out all the parents down the street, theirs and David’s and Paul’s and Martin’s and Cathy’s. Only Mrs. Burns stayed indoors. Their father grabbed Johnny and Michael by the shoulders and shook them hard. Their mother caught Susan by the arm and smacked her bare legs until she cried.
…
Susan told. She said it had all been Johnny’s idea to get the presents. She showed her brothers her legs, still red from smacking, and said she had to. But she got to keep Rover, as he was now to be called, while Johnny and Michael had to go and apologize to Mrs. Burns and take their toys and say they were presents for Billy when he got home. “He already has one,” Johnny hissed at his father, but it was no good. Mrs. Burns took their offerings without a word, but Johnny’s father must have seen something in her face, some gleam of hope. By the end of the week every fami
ly in the close had sent her a present for Billy. The local paper picked the story up, and before long presents were arriving from all over town. A local bicycle shop even donated two bikes of different sizes so that Billy would never outgrow them.
Johnny sat with Michael and Susan and David and Paul and Martin and Cathy on the wall opposite the Burnses’. For days they watched strange cars pull up and prim children in shirts and ties or party dresses whom they’d never seen before go up to the door with armfuls of gaily wrapped presents. None of them said a word. They were all lost in their thoughts, dreaming of the piles of toys behind the door.
“We’ll never see them again,” Johnny said to himself.
…
The best toy Billy Burns ever had, in Johnny’s opinion, was his camera. It wasn’t a “proper camera,” as Billy was the first to admit—it didn’t take normal film, just single plates—but it came with all the chemicals to develop pictures. “Like a cross between a camera and a chemistry set,” Billy had said when he got it the Christmas before. No one was really very interested until Michael found the dirty magazine. It had been floating in the river and got stuck on the bank. “Hey,” he’d shouted, and Johnny and Billy had jumped on him and twisted his arm behind his back. They’d been playing detectives and Michael had been the murderer, but when he’d found the magazine he’d forgotten he was supposed to be hiding.
“No,” he said as they marched him up the bank. “I’m not playing anymore. There’s something back there you should have a look at.”
“You don’t really expect us to fall for that old one, do you, chump?” Johnny said, poking him in the ribs with his six-shooter, but when they finally got him back to the base and tied him up, they listened to him.
“It could be evidence,” Billy decided.
“We shouldn’t touch it,” Johnny said, thinking of germs and fingerprints, and that’s when he told Billy to fetch his camera. Leaving Michael tied up—he said he’d tell on them, but they ignored him because he was younger than them and their prisoner—the two older boys went down to the water’s edge. The girlie magazine was half hidden in a tangle of nettles. Johnny turned the pages with a stick and Billy took photographs of all the bodies stretched out across them. Back in Billy’s bathroom, they watched him tipping the tray of chemicals back and forth, making waves across the plates. Johnny wanted a go, but then the pictures began to develop and he forgot to ask. The dark patches of hair surfaced first, and then the eyes, and then the rest of the body. It was like watching someone in the bath, Johnny thought, when the plug was pulled out. None of them said anything. Not even Michael, with his hands still tied behind him. They watched Billy develop picture after picture.
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