The Anglophile

by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

  Sam beams. “We have some boys in Afghanistan now. So the tradition continues.”

  A seventy-year-old man with a full head of it’s-got-to-be-dyed black hair slaps Sam on his back. “Who are these young things?”

  “My niece. Shari, this is the infamous Frank Alvarez from Yonkers.”

  “Sam’s niece, what do you do?” says Frank Alvarez from Yonkers.

  “I’m a linguist.”

  “Hear that, Gladys?” he says to a woman with long white hair standing a few feet away with an open makeup case to her eye. He beckons her over with a finger and a yell. “Sam’s niece!”

  She obliges.

  “This is Gladys. Seventy-five years old. Doesn’t she look great? A former professional tap-dancer.”

  “You’re giving away my age, Frank? Thanks a lot.”

  “Hi,” I say. “I’m Shari.”

  “She’s a linguist.”

  “Very nice to meet you,” Gladys says. Then, to Kit: “And you. Who are you?”

  “I’m Shari’s friend Kit. I’m a linguist, too, I’m afraid.”

  Frank calls out to Uncle Sam, “So you got some intellectualism in your genes, Blum?” He turns to us. “Me, I’m still in gutters. Someone has to sell them.”

  “No shame there,” Kit says. “My uncle made his name in dung. Lives well.”

  “Buys a lot of gongs,” I say. Kit secretly pinches my hip.

  Franks smiles broadly. “So you know the value of a niche. Why retire? My job plus these meetings keeps the old noggin cooking.”

  “Tell him about the mushrooms, Frank,” Gladys pipes in.

  “I’m not going to bother this young fellow about that. We just met a second ago.”

  “I’d love to hear about the mushrooms,” Kit says.

  “Just that some fellow talked me into buying cheap carpet for my van—with all the moisture after a rainy day, before you knew it a big long spindly toadstool and three little mushrooms were growing back there.”

  “The creepiest thing I have ever seen,” Gladys says.

  The food will be served momentarily; we’ve inadvertently timed our entrance well. The president of the chapter pleads with the chatting veterans to find their seat.

  Uncle Sam makes sure we sit next to him. He hands me a large gift in purple tissue paper to unwrap. Sam is very, very big on giving gifts. (He scored a wholesalers card years ago and goes to the Seventh Avenue stores and buys “fun” things by the dozen.) I open it up: a George Foreman four-hamburger minigrill.

  “Hey, thanks,” I say sincerely. I can actually use his present this time.

  “Knocks the fat out,” Gladys imitates the infomercial pitch as she takes her seat next to Frank. “I don’t even cook in my regular oven anymore.”

  “You got the George Foreman?” a soldier at a neighboring table asks. “That’s one of the better things Sam has in the duffel. He must love you.”

  “I have a gift for you, too,” Sam says to Kit.

  “Me? But you don’t know me—”

  “The nut has backup gifts for every occasion,” Frank says. “Take it, it might be a watch. The one he gave me last year is still working.”

  Kit opens a small gift wrapped in red tissue paper that Sam hands him from a small duffel bag full of tissue-wrapped gifts.

  It’s a two-inch plastic bird.

  “Thank you,” Kit says with notable confusion.

  “It balances on your finger,” Gladys says. “I got one from Sam the first time I met him, too.” She places the beak of the bird on Kit’s forefinger, and whaddaya know, it balances and the rest of its body flies above his hand.

  Kit grins at the physics show.

  “Grab one of the big ones, too,” Sam demands.

  Kit opens a square box wrapped in blue tissue paper. “A Yankees wall clock,” he announces to the table.

  Sam smiles, and addresses me: “I invited your brothers, but they didn’t call back.”

  “Gene never comes to anything, and Alan is…well—”

  “Alan,” Uncle Sam answers for me. Since Alan never listens to anything Gene says anymore, Sam was the one my mother sent to try to talk Alan off the sandal commune. He failed just as miserably as the rest of us.

  Sam was indignant when he called my mother. “Alan wants us to understand that anarchy is the only way to gain back our country.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have reached out to Alan through a Second World War veteran,” I’d said when Mom relayed the pitiful report to me.

  She had cried. “I was desperate. I want my son back.”

  The outlook has not improved in the year that’s passed. Alan only occasionally takes my calls to make sure everyone is still alive.

  The lunch orders for the meeting arrive.

  “Who had the medium beef?”

  “You did,” I say to Kit.

  “Oh, you did, too, Frank,” Gladys says.

  “Go ahead and take it,” Kit says emphatically. “I think veterans should get their beef before me.”

  “Listen to this fellow. This is how American youth should be. Respectful. None of this government bashing.”

  I poke at the not-so-nice mushrooms on my salad as Kit says to Frank, “How long have you and Gladys been together?”

  “Oh, we’re not together.”

  “I’m his event buddy, but this cat’s got a young girlfriend.” Gladys speaks after a bit of her lunch goes down her hatch. “His wife didn’t cook. That doesn’t fly with Puerto Ricans. If you don’t cook for your man, all the women in your husband’s family talk about you.”

  “My ex said the hell with Love and Obey,” Frank says after a nod.

  “How did you get to serve in the American military if you’re Puerto Rican?” Kit asks.

  I quickly interject, “Puerto Ricans are American.”

  “Puerto Ricans got the vote in 1917—” Frank says.

  “I thought you weren’t a commonwealth until 1952,” Uncle Sam says.

  “But we have a relationship with the mainland back to the Spanish Civil War, Sam.”

  “So Puerto Rico is rather like Australia to Britain?” Kit asks Frank.

  “No kangaroos, though,” Gladys says kindly. She steers the conversation back to the previous subject. “His girlfriend is a young one, darling.”

  Frank shrugs. “I wouldn’t bring her here. I know these dogs from the war. I don’t want them drooling over my little lady.”

  Uncle Sam laughs knowingly.

  “How young can she be?” Kit says.

  “You don’t want to know,” Gladys assures him.

  “All I’ll tell you is I go dancing with her every week at the Pittsburgh Center in Yonkers. Boy does she come from moonyan.” He rubs his fingers together. “Yeesh, yeah, big money. No need to get married. I’m happy. She’s happy. All she wants to do is sleep, eat, fuck and dance.”

  “Hey, curb the potty mouth,” an ex-soldier calls out from across the table. “My wife is here.”

  “You two married yet?” Frank says to Kit.

  “No,” Kit says, quite shocked.

  He honks in approval. “As long as you get married by Exit Thirty.”

  “He’s got a ways to go,” my uncle calls out. “Must be about Shari’s age, twenty-five—”

  “Sam,” I stop him. “I’m thirty-five.”

  Sam stares at me in disbelief. “How the hell did that happen?”

  “Thirty-six,” is Kit’s delayed response to Frank.

  Well thanks to Frank, now I know my new boyfriend’s age.

  “You look good for an old geezer,” Franks says.

  Kit grins. “I stay out of the sun. Bad for the Brits.” He takes a drink of water, and asks, “So, what’s your dance?”

  “Jitterbug,” Franks declares. “There’s still a few places old-timers can jitterbug in the Bronx. You should talk to Shari’s uncle about it. Sam was the jitterbug king.”

  He was? “Tell me more,” I say to Sam.

  My uncle smiles. “They saw
me dance in Colorado. Most of us knew each other in Aspen. The Tenth trained in an ad hoc military hut in the Telluride area. Forget about my dancing—I bet you didn’t know that the ski industry started because of our fellows. Pfeifer built Aspen of course, he’s a good man, and Pete Seibert created Vail. You know Nike sneakers?”

  “Sure,” Kit says politely.

  “Bill Bowerman. Founded the damn thing, and one of ours. And Bob Dole is Tenth Mountain, too. A real joker. I trained with him in the Rockies. Sent me a postcard recently. He’s the one who convinced me to switch parties.”

  Even if he knew some of this information already from his recent reading, Kit is entranced. Me, too, although I’m embarrassed it took a foreigner’s accompaniment to have heard any of these stories. My uncle knows these people? Really?

  Another soldier runs over to our table. “Anyone have a clean glass? I’m looking for a clean glass.”

  He takes the empty one from our table, and as soon as he is seated back at his table, Frank pokes Kit and says, “That fellow was a hypochondriac back in the war, too. Just what you need in the Alps. We’re worried who’s still alive after the battle at Lake Garda, and he’s worried if his finger is frostbitten.”

  After the meal, the president of the chapter calls us to order, and after a pledge of allegiance to the American flag and a moment of silence for the new crop of Tenth Mountain reps in Afghanistan and Iraq, he proceeds with his order of business before the awards.

  Another former soldier interrupts: “Why are we having this meeting on a Wednesday? If we want the descendants to be part of this why don’t we have it on a weekend? I frankly think you’ve made a hash of it, Ed. Time for Harry to run for president.”

  “I can hardly even get to the meetings,” someone, who I assume is Harry, says. “Now you want me to grow an extra pair of testicles and run for president?”

  President Ed is indignant: “Honestly, Phil, I haven’t made a hash of it. I rang the head of the descendants to give us a date. No answer. There’s only one descendant eager to help us however she can, a woman named Kay Kay.”

  “What kind of name is that?” calls out an amused voice from the back, rickety with age.

  “Kay Kay?” says another decorated soldier. “It’s people like that make me feel like I’m living in a giant cartoon where I’m the punch line.”

  “That’s her name. She lives in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue and Fifty-eighth Street—does all our labels for us—I send her a hundred names and she has them back to me in a week.”

  “Sam’s niece, do you know Kay Kay?” a man way down the table asks me.

  Sam waves an exasperated palm in the air. “Murray, don’t be silly. New York is a big place.”

  “It’s an unusual name, Sammy.”

  “No, I don’t know her,” I answer back with a smile.

  “Son of a gun, all of you,” Frank hisses says with an exaggerated pained expression. “Mr. President is speaking, have some respect.”

  “Yes, well, where was I as far as the descendants go?”

  “Kay Kay,” Uncle Sam calls out.

  “Yes, Kay’s not the problem. She’s lovely. About the others, I said to my wife, what the dickens. Let’s have a meeting when it’s convenient to us. If anyone wants to go after them again, be my guest. You can look at their Internet site—”

  “Can I have that Internet number?”

  A woman at the front table says, “Address, Pete. Internet address. And it’s in the Blizzard, Pete, read the new issue of the Blizzard.”

  “A smart lady,” the president says to the woman. “You’re a dynamo for pulling together that latest Blizzard, honey.”

  Kit beams at me. I can tell he loves these characters and their unselfconsciousness that comes from living through experiences worse than anything either of us could even conjure up in our heads.

  Another hand goes up, and the veteran is called upon: “I want to ask that we send the mementos to my house.”

  “Son of a gun,” says another without permission to talk. “I brought that up five years ago.”

  More voices:

  “Let the guy speak, Murray.”

  “He’s an officer.”

  “Yeah, Quartermaster, you had to talk from the back and now you can talk from the front.”

  Then it’s time for my uncle’s award. The chapter president nods to an official photographer and says, “I now call upon Sam Blum, who finely and bravely served our country from 1941 to ’45.”

  There is loud applause and hooting.

  I never knew my uncle was such a natural ham when handed a microphone. “Who’s just cheering because he wants a George Foreman grill?”

  Even louder hooting. Sam bows with a grin, and I can tell here in this room, he is greatly loved.

  “Twelve days in combat and I got my kishkes blown out at Riva Ridge—many of you know I had amnesia, so everything I’ve learned about my time there I learned from rehooking up with you fellows.”

  After the award ceremony is over, and Sam is reseated, I give him a kiss and reveal more of my embarrassing family ignorance: “I didn’t know you had amnesia.”

  My uncle looks at me, deciding what to say. “My legs were pinned by the shrapnel—the military used the New York Jews and Italians as pack rats.”

  Several soldiers, mid-dessert, look up in surprise.

  “Let’s save this for another time,” Sam says dramatically.

  I hold my uncle’s eye. “I’d love that. How about when I get back from England?”

  Sam smiles again. His teeth are suspiciously white, very possibly he was just fitted for a new set of dentures. “Good for you. I knew you’d get there. When are you going?”

  “In two days, with Kit.”

  “I love the place myself.”

  “You’ve been to England?” This is insane. How did I miss this tid-bit, too? There is not a chance I wouldn’t have heard about a relative’s trip to England.

  “I was there with your grandmother in 1974. We saw London, and Stonehenge, although that was a real tourist trap.”

  Kit nudges me.

  “Grandma Sadie went to England?” I’m beyond surprised now, I’m gobsmacked.

  “Your mother never told you that?”

  “No.” And why wouldn’t she? Does she still think my family embarrasses me? Do they? C’mon, I tell myself. I’m being a bit paranoid here. Even my mother has other things going on in her life than to be my family almanac. So a remarkable detail or three finally got revealed.

  Kit smiles as I sting. “I’d love to ask you more questions one day, too, Sam. I’ve read two books on the Tenth.”

  “I’m on e-mail.” Sam writes down his new Earth-link account details on the program in his spidery old handwriting, and I wonder what else my mother hasn’t told me.

  CHAPTER 9

  The Pill

  I’m stepping out of the shower as the phone rings. I call for Kit to answer it—it could be the passport agency.

  Kit brings me the phone and whispers, “A woman with a masculine voice.”

  That’s either Aunt Dot or Dr. Zuckerman’s nurse calling back with the results of the blood test.

  “Ms. Diamond, I have Dr. Zuckerman waiting to speak with you.”

  “You’re still in America,” Dr. Zuckerman says two minutes later. “Good. I thought I was going to have to leave a message.”

  “Passport mess.”

  “Maybe you can use one of those services.”

  “I did. They’re not going any faster.”

  “Well, at least your doctor has delivered. You are hypothyroidmatic as I suspected, a strong candidate for Hashimoto’s disease.”

  I clench my jaw before I speak. “How bad is that?”

  “If you’re going to have a disease, it’s certainly not the worst. Lethargy is one of the main symptoms, which explains your energy level the past few months. And you can gain a lot of weight with a loss of metabolism. Count yourself lucky there.”

  “I know
I was joking about my weight in your office, but I was thinking about what you said—and realized I’ve mysteriously gained about ten pounds the past two years.” Disease? That word lingers in my head as I nervously ramble on. “Not that I’m normally a stick, but I’ve never had a weight battle before—”

  “Sssh. Calm, calm, you’ll probably lose it just with Synthroid. This is a disease that’s easy to control with a daily pill. But it is a pill you’ll be taking for life I’m afraid.” He pauses dramatically and adds, “I am going to put you on .75 milligrams to start. I think you’ll feel an improvement right away, and when you get back, we’ll test your blood levels again. It takes a while to level off.”

  “Okay.” If he’s not too worried, I’m not going to shit myself either.

  “So, what’s your pharmacy’s number? I’ll call in the prescription.”

  “Hold on.”

  As I reach for the Yellow Pages to find Avenue A Drug and Beauty, a beloved mom-and-pop holdout among the billions of New York Duane Reades and Rite Aids, he tells me they’ll probably fill my prescription with a generic version of Synthroid—Leve something. I make like I was listening carefully and tell him whatever’s cheap and effective works for me.

  “So, bon voyage,” Dr. Zuckerman says warmly after I give him the number. “Maybe you can look up Owen in England.”

  “Is he in England? I thought he was here.”

  “I told you, he’s back and forth all the time. He’s leaving sometime this week. He’ll be based in the British Museum scholar room. They know him there if you ask. He’s trying to arrange for an international cell phone, but no word on that yet or where he’s staying.”

  “You know, you are a wonderful Schadchen. You’ve got yourself a second career if you want it.”

  Dr. Zuckerman laughs and after a final goodbye hangs up.

  “What’s a Schadchen?” Kit says as he pours me a second cup of coffee. (Our brew has improved, as late last night we stopped in Porto Rico Importing on East Ninth Street for fresh ground French Roast Colombian.)

  “Yiddish for matchmaker. My thyroid doctor is trying to set me up with his son.”

  “And you are going on that date?”

  “No. I told him I was taken but he didn’t seem to listen. I don’t have the energy to repeat myself. I knew his son as a child, so I would like to look him up, platonically. I’ll explain my current rap to him.”