Zwerfster Chic

by Billie Kelgren

  The two-year old in the pictures on his desk — that toddler became Marie. Until she arrived in the States at the beginning of the year, those photos were all Getting knew of her. She makes a comment about getting him something more up-to-date after she wanders over to look at them.

  She then asks me how long I plan to stay with her and David and I tell her that it’s all up to…What do I call him in front of a daughter who never refers to him as Dad? I become stuck, and it’s Getting who comes to my rescue, sensing my unease.

  “Just for a day or two, sweetheart,” he says. The “sweetheart” is a little forced — he’s still not used to saying it. Neither of them is used to the other even existing, and it reminds me of me and Dad on that first day at the airport. “Ms. McNeil and I have business to discuss, if you don’t mind.”

  He’s also not used to having someone around who doesn’t immediately jump on his command — or take his hints. Marie stands there, hands in her pockets, smiling, looking at both of us through those dark, squinting eyes. She looks so much like Getting, now that they’re together — even the same wide nose. He finally ushers her out, walking with her to the door so that he can close it behind her. He speaks with her, apologizing, explaining, sounding a little exasperated. She looks over her shoulder at me, still smiling, flashing me a look with her eyes that’s the kind of look that passes between two people who share a secret.

  “Did she find you?” I ask, when he comes back. “Or did you find her?”

  Getting hesitates ever so slightly, causing his steady pace across the room to falter for a step. I don’t think he often has people asking him personal questions. Particularly not people who work for him, which is how he sees me. I’m pretty sure he’s about to tell me to Mind your own goddamned business when he stops himself. He’s learning to make allowances for his new daughter, and it’s clear to him that she feels some sort of connection with me, so he decides to answer, I think, to make sure that nothing but kind words about him get back to her.

  “Actually, it was your man Bouchard who found her for me,” he says.

  It causes me to involuntarily suck my breath, hearing his name. I really want to know what happened to Bouchard. I prefer working with him, because he was strictly business and spoke with me as a colleague, as an equal.

  “The records over there, they keep them locked up pretty goddamned tight.” Getting waves in some arbitrary direction to indicate Sweden, or Scandinavia, or Europe, or maybe the rest of the whole goddamned world. Or Jersey, for all I know. “It took some time because Amelie, her mother, didn’t want me finding either of them. I kept my distance, as she asked. For thirty years, I’ve kept my distance. Thirty years. She was Marie’s mother, but she was something of a bitch to the rest of us.”

  The search for his daughter was the first job Bouchard did for Getting, before they even met. He introduced himself up through the layers of assistants and sycophants until he met with Getting himself, to see whether he was interested in the name and location of his long-lost child. It sounded as if Bouchard was trying to wriggle his way into the Getting inner circle, knowing it would be a great source of opportunities. The way Getting makes it sound, though, he thought of Bouchard as some sort of scheming mercenary. But when Bouchard came through, bringing Getting and Marie together in a rather short amount of time, Getting decided to see what Bouchard could do about another person he was interested in. Someone who was giving him, and some of his competitors, heartburn because this woman seemed to snatch their money away as if she had the numbers and codes to their personal bank accounts.

  Getting asks me what “Ms. Garcia” is like, in person. He has a drink in his hand, giving a good impression of a bitter man talking about an ex-wife. He rolls the ‘r’ in her name like he’s clearing his throat.

  Holy shit, it feels like I’m part of two worlds — two realities, similar but disjointed. The world of Getting, where the name of Garcia is regarded with such loathing, and the world of Mia, where it’s spoken with reverence and adulation.

  Oh, how do you solve a problem like Garcia?

  Shit! Now I’ve got that damned song stuck in my head.

  Despite the absolute whiteness of it, Mom is a Sound of Music fanatic. (What other choice did she have? There were…what…two black musicals back then? Porgy and Bess and…I don’t know…The Wiz?) We watched it every time it was on TV — every year from 1979 until my sophomore year in college. Going to BC, it was still easy for me to come home and sit on the couch with her, but, luckily, some aunt I never met died my junior year, so her and Dad had to attend an out-of-town funeral. She thought I might be heartbroken, but I was relieved because I knew I would never, ever be Julie Andrews, or grow up in a family that sang together in a talent competition in front of Nazis, and seeing people like that year after year was killing me, one syrupy song at a time. So the year prior was the last time we watched it together, and when I was in Danbury, I cried when they showed the damned thing during Christmas.

  Cried bitterly over all the years I had missed.

  “She’s rather reserved. Keeps most of her thoughts to herself.”

  Getting nods. I guess he’s the same way.

  “A far above average intellect.”

  I then switch over into a standard Bureau long-form psychological assessment, which I often considered while Mia and I were traveling. How would I profile her, if I were still in the Bureau? Thinking about it helps me maintain a certain degree of detachment from her, because a profile makes everyone sound like a criminal. I worry some that I’m being sucked in, overwhelmed by her charm and personality. I sometimes sensed that I was slipping over to her side, but this trip, meeting Getting, reminds me that I’m doing a job. A job that, if I fuck it up, will send me back to prison without even the benefit of a trial. So I give him the most clear, thorough, and concise report I can and that takes us through the rest of the morning.

  Marie bangs on the door to the office and screeches Lunch! I guess she’s decided that, even at thirty-one years of age, she’s in the position to play the attention-demanding child.

  Getting frowns at first and then, seeing me, quickly lets it slip into an awkward grin as he shrugs What’re you gonna do?

  Shit, my Mom can tell you.

  I’m guessing that if someone had come to our home in Boston during my first year in the States, and wasn’t allowed to ask any questions that might give them insight into what they were seeing, the odd behavior they would’ve witnessed would probably be very much like what’s occurring between Getting and Marie.

  There’s some differences between our stories, big ones, but there’s also so many similarities that when they apologize to me for how it must seem, I’m truthful when I tell them that I understand. Of course, they know little of my own history, especially that part of it, and I don’t know everything about theirs, though they’re filling me in. Back during my first year, I’m pretty sure both Mom and Dad spent a lot of time “filling in” friends and colleagues and family as to how it came about, their suddenly having this big-eyed, mixed-race little girl in their midst. I can’t really say that for certain, though, since I didn’t understand English all that well at the time.

  Getting and Marie seem to be experiencing the same thing, only Marie’s English, also not her first language, is much better than mine was. Her mother, the wife of a much younger Getting, was a French-Canadian from outside Quebec City who was fluent in both French and English, and her adoptive father, Papa, as she calls him, was French-Belgian, so there was absolutely no Dutch spoken in their home. The three of them lived together in Sweden from the time Marie could remember, so she grew up speaking Swedish primarily, French at home, and English on occasion. Getting, with his immigrant parents, spoke nothing but Portuguese at home.

  It’s funny that they’re amazed that I speak Afrikaans.

  I spent my first six months with my new family looking at them, wide-eyed, and believing they were mocking me when they looked back at me with the same expr
ession. I didn’t understand that my presence at their dinner table was as disconcerting to them as my being there was to me.

  This girl came from Africa? Did she live in the jungle and play with monkeys?

  That was Tonya.

  Ta-la-la-la-la-la-la! Lalala…. to Sez-me Seed!

  That was Naddie.

  Another girl.

  That was our Dad.

  YOU had SEX with THIS GIRL’s MOTHER!

  That was our Mom, directed at our Dad.

  You people are Black and you’re rich. Blacks have great lives in the U.S.A.

  That was me.

  To be clear, I was still seeing them as Black-with-a-capital-B, like they would’ve been seen in South Africa. I was Coloured, which I didn’t know meant a whole different thing in the States, just as I didn’t know that blacks really didn’t have it so hot in the U.S. either. But these were the things I learned as I grew up.

  It was Mom who eventually came around to my presence first, as you would expect, being a mother. But looking back, and having spoken with her over the years, I really believe that it wasn’t the nurturing sensibility of a woman that brought her about, but instead her decision that I was a Lost Girl, needing to be saved — removed from the woman who gave me life to be placed with the woman who would show me how to live. I was, in essence, her grand experiment.

  A grand experiment that didn’t turn out so well.

  Sorry, Mom.

  As I sit with Getting and Marie, I notice that first sign of a newly formed family — the utter silence while eating. We were like that, until Mom started to pry the words out of Dad and my sisters. She wanted to demonstrate to the poor, unfortunate orphan how a real family was supposed to behave. Of course, with me not understanding what they were saying, they were okay with my not saying so much in return. But in about a year, I received my first sisterly devotion of Shut up! You talk too much! from Tonya and that sting was the sting of the cut you make on your finger when you enter into a blood pact. I belonged now. Belonged enough that my sister was willing to be openly hostile to me. Until that time, you’re really nothing more than an annoying guest.

  I don’t want to say anything at this table, though, because here, I’m really only an employee. I shouldn’t even be sitting there, with them. I should be eating in the kitchen or something, a break room with yesterday’s newspaper stacked on top of the microwave.

  “Where are you from,…?”

  Marie hesitates and looks at Getting. Getting looks up, surprised that she’s looking to him for guidance. He glances at me and then tells her my name is McNeil. That’s how he speaks to me — last name only, like in the Army. He’s the full bird, I’m the private, and that’s how it’s done. To me, he is Sir.

  Marie scoffs at this and tells him that she’s not about to call me by my last name. I’m their guest, a friend, not her employee. Getting looks at me again, his eyes conveying a plea for help. He really isn’t ready for this.

  I tell her my name is Elise, though, truthfully, it seems like a long time since anyone’s called me that. Mia always calls me Bokkie, and Anna and Iben referred to me as Elsja, Cutie, and eventually Little Sis. I also tell Marie that I’m from Boston.

  “No. Your accent. It’s so…different.”

  This coming from the woman whose Swedish-French-Euro-English accent is so thick that it’s often hard to understand her.

  That’s when I tell them about South Africa, and my growing up speaking Afrikaans. Getting makes a comment of how much better it must be there, since Apartheid ended, and I agree, feeling that I will only embarrass him if I tell him that I wouldn’t know about that.

  Marie asks if Afrikaans is much like Dutch and I tell her that it is, that I can understand someone speaking Dutch, most of the time. She thinks it’s amusing that with all the languages that can possibly be spoken at the table that day, none of us can speak with another except through English. Getting makes a comment about this being the reason that English is the international language of business, which comes across as somewhat arrogant coming from the only native English-speaker. I catch Marie making a slight face at him. If he weren’t her father, would she even like him at all?

  She then asks me where I’m going to next. She’s thrilled to have someone to speak with informally, though from my side of the table this is anything but informal. This is being grilled by the boss’s daughter, as if we’re going to date or something — me and Marie, or me and Getting, I’m not sure which.

  I tell her that I’m pretty sure I’m heading back to Brussels, to finish with some work I’m doing for her…to finish some work. Her eyes light up at the mention and she says that she hasn’t been to Brussels in a couple of years, but she would go there all the time when she was little because Papa was born in Montignies-Sur-Sambre, in the southeast corner of Charleroi. They traveled down and visited Tatie, Onc, and the cousins in Brussels every spring.

  She tells me this breathlessly, with the urgency of a woman wanting to share her life, to talk about the things she’s familiar with, the memories she cherishes. She pauses abruptly, though, peering sideways at Getting, and I instinctively follow her gaze. Getting is trying to look busy, picking at his grilled salmon with a fork.

  I know how he feels, because when she wanted to be mean, Tonya would remind everyone of a place they visited, or a holiday that occurred — some memory from before I became part of the family. She was trying to isolate me, make me into an outsider, but she actually created the bond between me and Naddie because Naddie had no memory of these events either, being too young.

  Mom and Dad took us up to a beach once, on the North Shore. Crane Beach, I think, but I can’t say that with any certainty because we stayed for only the one summer. I was twelve; Tonya, eight; Naddie, five. We were the darkest people we saw there and obviously the only ones who didn’t grow up on the water because me and my sisters were the ones running landward whenever even a particularly mild wave crashed and foamed up across the sand. We all knew how to swim, in a pool. (Naddie would be on the swim team in high school.) Stepping out into the ocean, though, that was something else, nothing to do with the ability to swim. There were things in that water. And water shoes hadn’t been invented yet. At least, no one told us about them.

  Back then, I’m pretty sure the majority of people believed that blacks didn’t swim, except, of course, at the inner-city YMCA pool where we all splashed and made a fuss. We were even asked about this by some boys, most a year or two older than Tonya. Actually, we were told that they were told that blacks can’t swim and were wondering why we were at the beach. It was really an innocent, ignorant attempt by these boys to investigate the cultural issues of the day, but it made little Naddie cry and she ran all the way back to Mom and Dad, because she so desperately wanted to swim but now believed that she couldn’t, because she was black.

  Being much older than the boys, I should’ve done something for making her cry, and I thought about it, but before I could think of what I could do, Tonya had already sailed into the lead boy and shoved him to the ground. The other boys scattered, trying to make room, trying to understand this sudden flare-up in racial tensions that their very liberal parents told them might happen on occasion. They had been warned to keep out of the way, because we were apparently oppressed since the time of Roots, meaning the mid-1970s, and we had every right to become angry.

  Tonya was angry, all right — with me, for not sticking up for Naddie. I hated the rest of that vacation, and I hated those boys for exposing me as the coward that I was.

  After lunch, back in his office, all the warmth that Getting had displayed earlier flushes away. He’s now about business, and business is about getting to this Garcia woman and figuring out how she is bleeding him goddamn dry. He wants me reporting directly to him — Bouchard is no longer involved. Getting says something about his being moved on to other matters, but I’m pretty sure it’s really about the snatching of that card. Getting is going to micromanage this operation right
into the ground, I can feel it. At least, once I’m back with Mia, I will essentially be out of his reach.

  The thing is, Getting has billions — many billions — and Mia is allegedly plucking away millions at most. It doesn’t matter to him, though. It isn’t about the money, it’s about the arrogance of the woman. He wants to catch her. Catch her and put her into a vice so hard that, as he puts it, her tits will squirt blood.

  Fuck! Why did you have to go and say that? You were such a pretty man to watch.

  12

  Terminal C, Logan Airport

  I call Mia as soon as I’m dropped off by Getting’s driver at the Middleborough/Lakeville Station, where I’ll catch the commuter into South Station and then T it over to Logan. Getting doesn’t want me to be seen climbing out of a big SUV at the airport, in case Mia is there, watching. It’s a good idea, though it really gives Mia more credit than is due. It’s not as though she’s some huge multinational. Or intelligence service.

  Or crazy billionaire.

  The sound of her voice has such a calming effect on me, like being with her is where I belong and that riding the T in Boston is now somehow strange and foreign. She asks about my Dad right off and I tell her that he’s okay, all a false alarm, but it’s best not to take chances in these cases. He and Mom are already heading back to Montreal but we had a good talk together and everything is fine. No, I didn’t get the chance to talk to Mom, because she always seemed to be gone when I was there.