English as a Second Language

by Megan Crane

  “You have a crush,” Melanie said. “An inconvenient one, true.”

  “Sean is not a crush,” I said. “He’s like . . . this elemental being. He just is. Also he’s sarcastic and mean.”

  “Which you like.” Melanie shrugged when I glared at her. “I’m not making a judgment, I’m just saying you do.”

  “He doesn’t count as a crush, given the ethical dilemmas and the fact he thinks I’m among the lowest forms of sentient life around. Shellfish rank higher with him, I’m pretty sure.”

  “What about those boys you hang around with?” Cristina’s voice was sly. I frowned.

  “Jason is like a British, human version of Yoda, and Toby is just . . . Toby.”

  “Ah . . .” They grinned at each other.

  “What ‘ah’?”

  “You and Toby,” Melanie said. “We think he likes you.”

  I snorted. “I don’t think so,” I said. I threw back some more wine. “It’s not like that with him.”

  We talked until the early hours about Cristina’s touch-and-go thing with the Physicist, and by the time I crawled into bed I was exhausted and tipsy. Too much work, I thought. Too many books keeping me awake with my head spinning. And then when I finally slept I had strange dreams about Toby and Sean, all of them sexual and unsettling.

  I woke up feeling dislocated, and stayed that way until long into the day.

  We decided to have a party.

  “And why not?” Cristina demanded. “All the parties we go to are boring.”

  “So you think we should invite all the same people here and it will somehow be less boring?” I wasn’t entirely skeptical, just incredibly tired of the huge Günter Grass novel I was trying to finish.

  “Less boring and less distance to walk,” Cristina said. “You must tell everyone you know.”

  This consisted of a few announcements to classmates and the random people on other courses I’d met in those chaotic first days. Between them, however, Cristina and Melanie seemed to know every other postgraduate student around.

  The day of the party I woke up with every intention of doing some work, an intention I vetoed halfway through my first cup of coffee. I called Toby and we met up for lunch. We walked along the fields behind our dormitories, into the little village. The village sported a sandwich shop, which could usually be counted on to provide that rarity of British cuisine: tasty and safe.

  We sat on a bench and ate our sandwiches, watching other students and locals mill about. While not what I’d call sunny, it wasn’t actually raining, which was all the encouragement most people needed to get outdoors.

  “Jason’s not coming to your party,” Toby said. “He has to go see his girlfriend.”

  “Thank you, Toby,” I said sarcastically. “Jason and I actually do speak, you know.” Jason’s girlfriend had never been seen by any of us, and we periodically suggested that she was imaginary. He claimed to go up to Edinburgh to visit her regularly, and seemed unmoved by our skepticism.

  “I’m coming,” Toby continued, with a big grin. You should therefore need no one else, the grin said. I rolled my eyes.

  “I’ll notify your fans,” I said. “Assuming you have any.”

  “What about that Suzanne?” Toby asked. He grinned again. “I reckon she fancies me.”

  “Really?” I frowned into my unaccountably empty bag of potato chips. Or “crisps,” as they were Englishly known.

  “Jason and I reckon she’s after the accent, and what’s a bloke to do but surrender?” He sighed, manfully, polishing off the remains of my crisps he held in his hand. “I might offer myself as a sacrifice.”

  “Do you fancy her?” I was reeling a little bit from a sudden vision of Suzanne and Toby together. Her bright red hair and his dirty-blond spikes. I supposed they could each be considered attractive. I wiped the accompanying images from my head and yanked Toby’s bag of crisps from his hand to finish them. He didn’t bother putting up a fight.

  “I’m equal opportunity,” Toby said. “I fancy until proven otherwise.”

  “There’s that discernment women appreciate so much,” I said ruefully. He shrugged, gathering up our trash and lobbing it toward a nearby bin.

  “I do what I can,” he assured me.

  He abandoned me to hit the library, and I headed back to my house. I didn’t really know how I felt about a Toby-Suzanne connection. The fact was, I didn’t know Toby well enough. For all I knew, Suzanne and he were perfectly matched. I’d spent almost every night of the past two months in his company, but personal details were kept to a minimum. British people reserved that kind of thing. We talked about general issues and people we knew. Or differences in American and British culture. Or a whole lot of rubbish, more often. There had been no deep, emotionally wrought testimonials about anyone’s psychology, or scarring first love, or any of that nonsense.

  Alternatively, I thought that if the whole literature thing didn’t work out I could probably write my MA dissertation on Suzanne’s childhood traumas, her insecurities, her intellectual issues, and her worst fears. Why did Americans shift so quickly into the murky intimacy of personal revelations? But maybe it wasn’t fair to tar all my countrymen with the same brush. I certainly didn’t act that way. I liked to give the impression that I was sharing bits of my soul, when the truth was, that was a privilege reserved for a very select few. I didn’t understand people like Suzanne. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt—maybe she kept her real self hidden—but I couldn’t imagine that was possible, given the volume of the information she gave out. She was either so much deeper than any other human being I’d ever encountered—and I suspected sometimes that this was her take on things—or this was the package, the whole enchilada. I was far more comfortable with Jason and Toby and all that British reserve than I ever was with Suzanne.

  I wandered into our courtyard and there was Suzanne herself. I could see her through her kitchen window, sitting alone and looking blank. She looked up and I waved. I started lecturing myself on being such a hypocrite. If I didn’t like her . . . But that was the problem. I didn’t dislike her. I just thought she was a bit misguided.

  She invited me in and we had a coffee.

  “I’m so glad you came by,” she said. “I was calling you.” On-campus phone calls rang and rang and were never forwarded to voicemail. Only off-campus calls were. I had been rendered speechless over this and refused to allow myself to think about it anymore, for fear of apoplexy.

  “I’m really psyched about your party tonight,” she said. “I have a big crush, but you can’t tell anyone if I tell you.” She giggled.

  Okay, that right there. What was this, seventh grade?

  “Let me guess,” I said dryly. “Toby.”

  “Oh my God, you could tell?” She covered her face. Theatrically, I thought. “I’m so embarrassed!”

  I could have told her that Cristina had called it earlier in the week. I could have cleaned up Toby’s comments from earlier and told her he’d mentioned her to me. I did neither.

  “Toby’s really cool.” I smiled at her over my coffee mug. “But you never hang out with him.”

  “Well,” she said, “you three are a unit, aren’t you? And I think he has a crush on you.” She sighed. My eyebrows shot up.

  “Toby? No way. You couldn’t be more wrong.”

  “I think both he and Jason do,” Suzanne said. “It’s obvious to me, anyway.” She watched me with those disconcerting green eyes.

  I laughed. “Jason’s girlfriend lives in Edinburgh, and even if she didn’t, Jason doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would have a crush on anyone. He’s too . . . bookish.”

  “Come on, Alex,” Suzanne said, abruptly serious. “You can’t deny that you lead both of them around. They’re like your acolytes.”

  “They’re my friends,” I said. “I don’t lead them anywhere.”

  Suzanne shrugged. “You get all the male attention on the course.”

  “What?” I was gaping at
her.

  “You’re dynamic and you have a strong personality,” she said. “It’s not surprising that people would feel drawn to you. Why do you seem so surprised?”

  “I don’t think it’s true,” I said, thrown. And I wasn’t sure how much I liked the idea that Suzanne clearly spent time thinking about me in such a weird way.

  “Well,” she said. “It is.”

  I blinked.

  “I really like Toby,” she said fiercely, her eyes locked on mine.

  “Then you should go for it,” I said, relieved the conversation had veered away from me. “Except I would be careful of getting romantically involved with someone you’ll have to see every day if things go wrong.” I shrugged and tried to smile. “The gospel according to me.”

  Later, I flopped across my bed and wondered.

  For the first time, it occurred to me that behind all the deep emotions and heartrending tales of angst, I actually knew very little about Suzanne. I knew enough: like me, she’d chosen to abandon home and everything she knew to study in a foreign country. When your own country boasted some of the finest institutions in existence, and you could find your subject matter in any of them, it meant you were running away from something. Or running toward something. I knew I was.

  “Guess what,” I said to Michael, propping up my feet against the wall and holding the phone against my shoulder. “According to Suzanne, I have acolytes.”

  “What kind of acolytes? Because the wrong acolyte can destroy an entire reputation, you know.” He laughed when I sighed. “Why was she telling you this? Does she want to be one of your acolytes? Is there a waiting list? Do people really talk about things like that over there?”

  “She’s that American one,” I said. “I told you. She went to Smith,” I reminded Michael. A point Suzanne brought up in entirely too many conversations.

  “Good God,” Michael murmured. “Tales of patriarchal oppression and radical feminist tracts at the breakfast table. That’s half her problem right there.”

  “Then she lived in Oregon or something, teaching maybe.” I considered. “Or, more likely, she was involved in the struggle to take down big lumber companies or some other endless fight against The Man.”

  “You shouldn’t joke about things like that,” Michael warned. “Do you know, there are people who are actually living in trees, in protest?”

  “Can you imagine that?” I asked. “Do you believe in anything strongly enough to go live in a tree for a year?”

  “Well, no,” he admitted. “But then, I wouldn’t go live in the suburbs for a year in protest of something, either. Do you really think we’re supposed to? I think those people whose lives are all wrapped up in some big idea or some big cause are pretty dreary. Fundamentalism is a disease, as far as I’m concerned. If you can’t defend something rationally and unemotionally, without getting all dramatic and chaining yourself to a tree, you’re a big freak.” He paused. “In my humble opinion.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but what do we feel strongly about? Anything?”

  “I feel strongly that it’s nobody’s right to thrust their issues into my face,” Michael retorted, “or to legislate so that I don’t have the option to exercise my opposing choice. Choice always wins over narrowing the field. I believe that.”

  I closed my eyes. “We’re not going to have a debate about abortion, Michael, since I am actually a woman and I agree with you, which never seems to keep you from ranting at me.”

  “I just think that having the ability to choose not to do something is meaningful. Having no choice at all is fascism. You can quote me in one of your graduate papers if you want.”

  I waited a beat. “You’re awfully vehement today,” I observed. He sighed.

  “I just wish everyone would keep their beliefs and their issues and their drama to themselves. If everyone did, we’d be a much happier species.”

  Robin wasn’t answering any of her telephone numbers, so I posed the same question to Melanie and Cristina at dinner. We were in major party preparation mode, and so we were bolting down dinner in our strangely clean and presentable kitchen. No overflowing trash can. No stacks of dirty dishes in the sinks and cluttering up the washboards. Gleaming counters. It was both creepy and festive.

  “The British are much calmer about these things,” Melanie said after a moment’s consideration. “For the most part.”

  Cristina eyed me narrowly. “Did Suzanne actually chain herself to a tree?”

  “I don’t even know her opinion on trees.” I shrugged. “She’s just the sort of person who, given the opportunity, would leap at the chance to believe in something. Particularly if it brought her attention.”

  “I believe that she’s an idiot,” Cristina said. “If that helps.”

  “Suzanne also has a crush on Toby,” I said. “She was quick to tell me.”

  “I knew that from the beginning,” Cristina scoffed.

  “Hang on,” Melanie said. “She has a crush on that teacher of yours. She said a few days ago that she had an ‘intellectual crush’ on that Jason. Wasn’t there someone else?”

  “That really hot Italian guy,” I supplied.

  “The one who you were talking to that night in the pub.” Melanie waited for my nod. “Is there anyone she doesn’t have a crush on?”

  “Cristina’s Physicist?” I smiled at her.

  Cristina made a face. “The girl claims to have a crush on every male you know,” she pointed out. “I think she is staking a claim. You should tell her that she must choose one. Just one.”

  “Apparently,” I said, “I’m very dynamic and popular. All the men want me.”

  Melanie nodded. “Obviously, that goes without saying.”

  “That Suzanne,” Cristina muttered. “I don’t like her at all.”

  Hours later, the party was in full swing. Melanie and I were taking a breather by sitting up on the counters.

  “I can’t believe so many people fit in here,” I said.

  Melanie grinned. “Free drinks.”

  The two of us were particularly interested in the animated conversation Cristina was engaged in with her Physicist over near the wall.

  “I think he likes her,” I said now, watching the way he leaned down to catch her words. “They laugh a lot.”

  “I don’t know,” Melanie said. She frowned. “There’s something about the way he looks at her. It’s a bit too indulgent, as if he can’t take her seriously.”

  We watched some more, until a new song came on the stereo and people screamed and began dancing with even more energy. There wasn’t exactly space to dance, which was why Melanie and I had pulled ourselves up and out of the way. The Europeans liked their pop music, which offended my American rock sensibilities. They danced in discos and listened to girl and boy bands. It was like waking up and finding myself transported to my own Wham!- and Duran Duran-filled youth, except without bands I actually had that teen girl connection to. The scariest part was that it grew on you. When I’d arrived in September I’d been appalled. These days I just surrendered. Even sang along.

  I saw Toby and some of our other classmates push in through the crowd, and began making my way toward them. People had cameras, and I found myself posing with classmates, housemates, and taking my own pictures of people. I was taking a group picture for some of our neighbors when a familiar tall, golden presence appeared.

  Aryan Karl. Ugh.

  “This is my house,” he announced in his deep, unnecessarily severe voice. Referring, I presumed, to the group and not the house he stood in. I stared at him in dismay over the top of the camera. I’d actually forgotten about him.

  “Smile!” I ordered, and took the picture.

  Karl’s housemates evaporated, with an interchange of knowing smiles I really didn’t care for.

  “Hello!” he said abruptly. To me.

  “Karl.” I showed my teeth in an approximation of a smile and noticed Toby from the corner of my eye, peering in my direction.

  “Th
is is a large party.” Karl’s endlessly blue eyes and high forehead were too much for me. I couldn’t bear staring up at him. I had the slightly hysterical urge to do something unforgivably fucked up, like offer a Heil Hitler salute.

  Best to shove that right out of my head.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “And how are you?”

  Toby appeared at my side and slid Karl one of his xenophobic stares. I didn’t even have to prompt him.

  “All right?” Toby drawled. The first time I heard that particular greeting, I was deeply confused, until I worked out that they were just cutting out the “are you” in front of the “all right.”

  “Toby, this is Karl. Karl, Toby.”

  They stared at each other. Toby looked insolent and rude, which made me grin.

  “You are a friend of Alex?” Karl boomed.

  Toby stared at me. I grabbed his arm and excused us from Karl’s line of sight. A little bit rudely.

  “What was that?” Toby asked, laughing.

  “My sins in human form,” I replied. I reached for a new drink. “God.”

  The night wore on.

  Karl was never more than a foot from my body, though he had given up attempts at conversation.

  “He is looming over you,” Cristina said in a brief non-Physicist moment. “I think he wishes to resume your relationship.”

  “I think I would rather sleep with George,” I retorted.

  There was dancing, and toasting. Cristina and her Physicist adjourned elsewhere, and Melanie and I celebrated her victory. And then George strolled in, hand in hand with a girl.

  “She’s not a monster,” Melanie said, surprised. “She’s quite pretty.”

  “Pretty is overstating things,” I said, checking the girl out. “You’re just giving her bonus points because she’s standing next to George.”

  “Standing over George, really.”

  Fiona was a good head taller than George. She had uneventful hair, an unobjectionable body, and unremarkable clothes. What made her stand out from the crowd, aside from the troll at her hip, was her nose. It was what my mother would have called prominent, to be polite. It was huge.