The English American (10 page)

D
URING THE EARLY AFTERNOONS
,
while Billie is napping, I walk through the trees to Earl’s cabin, to sing to my long-lost-grandfather-now-found, at his request. Unlike Billie’s house, Earl’s cabin is ordered and clean. Actually it feels a bit like being inside a boat because it’s tiny and the walls and floors are made of dark polished wood.

Earl has one of those chairs that recline backward at the touch of a button and are so comfortable you never want to leave. As I sing, he lies in his recliner with his eyes closed, dressed in a pair of white cotton pajamas. Everything about him is white, apart from his toenails, which are yellow with age.

After I’ve finished singing, I tickle his feet with the long white feather he keeps for that purpose on the shelf by the door.

“Thank you for granting the wishes of a dying man,” he says.

I smile. Billie has already told me he’s been cajoling people into tickling the soles of his feet with a feather for the past thirty years.

“Now, listen up, Granddaughter,” he says. “I want you to remember something.” His voice is frail and old, but his eyes are clear.

“You sing like an angel, which confirms my suspicions. You, dear granddaughter, have got the family gift. It’s an artistic gift and it comes out in different ways. Your grandmother had it too. I wanted her home, loving me and my family, so I stopped her using that gift. Hell, I treated her gift like it was her lover, and that was wrong. A little higher now.”

The skin on the instep of the feet that have carried my grandfather for eighty years is as smooth as a child’s.

“Make sure you use your gift. And don’t go and do something stupid like getting married. But if you gotta marry, whatever you do, marry the kind of man who will let you do everything you gotta do.”

Someone who understands the artistic spirit. Someone like Nick.

Mum and Dad’s parents died in their early seventies. I haven’t had grandparents past the age of ten. How I would have loved this man had I known him growing up.

When Billie joins us, our conversation turns to the subject of Earl’s wife, Molly Alice. The wife he left Billie’s mother for. Billie calls her Malice for short.

“Biggest mistake I ever made,” Earl says. “Lost a great secretary and gained a lousy wife.”

“Daddy couldn’t understand why she was so mean about me until I sent him an article I read, entitled ‘When Paranoia Comes Home,’” Billie says. “It makes it much easier to have compassion for her, knowing she’s mentally ill. Malice is not going to like Pippa’s arrival one bit,” Billie says happily.

“Oh dear,” I say. “I didn’t want my arrival to upset anybody. Maybe I could talk to her and try and help?”

Billie looks at me with a gleam in her eye.

“Now, Daddy, what do you think? ’Course she’ll say no if you
ask
her, so why don’t you just…I know, Daddy! Why don’t you take Pippa with you when you go down the mountain and surprise Molly Alice with her?”

Earl shakes his head slowly. Molly Alice’s hatred of Billie goes back many years. Seems to me there’s a fierce competition going on for Earl’s affections, which Billie is winning hands down.

“Weelll,” Earl says slowly, “the situation can’t get much worse than it is already…”

An hour later I am driving Earl down from the mountain.

“It’s the right side of the road in America,” Earl says. He’s gripping the door handle tightly.

“Sorry,” I say, hunched up at the wheel, concentrating like mad. “I do know that. It’s just that the road is so thin.”

I hit a rock.

“Sorry,” I say.

We drive past the trees and the mountains, down through Main Street, which looks clean and pretty, with old-fashioned dark yellow traffic lights hanging from a wire above the center of the road. We drive on to Pine Drive and pull up outside a pretty old colonial house painted white and light blue, with a swing on the porch.

“You stay back,” Earl says. “And when I signal to you, step forward and give her a hug.”

I get out of the car and stand by as a tiny, reed-thin, immaculately dressed woman with jet-black hair scraped off her face in a tight bun hurries out of the house.

“Earl, you’re late,” she says.

“Well, yes I am, Molly Alice,” he says, “but look what kind of a reason I got.”

She squints at me. “Who’s this?” she says.

“This,” my grandfather says, pausing theatrically, “is Pippa Dunn. My granddaughter.” She looks blank for a second and then it dawns upon her.

“No! Not Billie’s…not the one she…” Her voice is sharp and thin.

“Yup,” says my grandfather, signaling for me to make my move with the arm bent behind his back.

“Which makes me your step-granddaughter,” I say, coming toward her and holding out my arms with a smile, waiting for the usual reaction. I’m getting quite fond of being hugged by everyone I meet.

Molly Alice stares at me open-mouthed and just as I reach her, she jumps back.

“Keep away from me,” she says. “You just keep away from me!” And then, “What d’you want? The money? That what you come for?”

“Of course not!” I say, horrified. “Of course not!” Apart from anything else, money is never, ever discussed in England.

Earl is a wealthy man, and part of the battle between Billie and her stepmother is over who will inherit that wealth when he dies. I am mortified by the thought that anyone would think I wanted anyone’s money.

“I’ll be back in a while,” Earl says, getting into the driver’s seat of his Lincoln. “You two girls have a nice talk now.” And suddenly he’s gone.

Molly Alice and I watch the dust from the Lincoln settle back on the road and look at each other.

“What you come for?” she says. She’s standing on the porch steps, so we’re almost the same height. “If it ain’t the money, what you come for?” Molly Alice’s face is white with fury. “She thinks she’s really got me this time, pulling you out at a time like this, her little English trump card.” And then, bringing her face an inch away from mine, she says, “Don’t you ever forget what they did to you! They abandoned you!”

Along with most English people, I have spent a lifetime perfecting the craft of hiding what I am really feeling, particularly when it’s something strong and difficult. But at this moment, my years of training fail me.

“Your mother back home, she’s your real mother. Not
her
.”

I feel as if I’ve been punched in the stomach. Suddenly I’m crying. “I know that!” I say. “Of course Mum’s my real mother, I just wanted to find out where I’d come from. I didn’t want to hurt anybody.”

“Why’d you surprise me like that? Was that her idea? Was it?”

“No,” I lie. “It was my idea. It was very immature of me. I’m sorry.”

“Well, it was immature,” she says. “Don’t use your sleeve, I got tissues somewhere here.”

She reaches into her handbag and takes out a small packet of Kleenex.

“Thank you,” I say, blowing my nose loudly. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m so sorry. This must all be so hard for you, Earl being so ill.”

“It’s more than hard,” she says. “It’s more than hard. It’s been terrible, living with an alcoholic. Then when he finally stops drinking he gets cancer, then she comes to the mountain and starts doing her usual, making everybody crazy, interfering in people’s lives. Ruining people’s lives.” Her eyes are black with fury.

“Ruining people’s lives,” she says again. “Make no mistake, she’s not a good woman. She’ll sweet talk you all right, till you think you’re safe, then she’ll hurt you real bad. That’s what she does. That’s what she’s always done.”

She believes what she is saying. Poor Molly Alice.

“He’s only got three weeks, they say. Time’s special. He should be with his wife, not up on that mountain with that no-good daughter of his.”

During the hour we spend together, which I shall never forget, I watch this strange little woman struggle with her innate good manners and her hatred of my birth mother. I’ve never seen hatred face to face before. Its hardness disturbs me.

When we’re not talking about Billie, Molly Alice seems almost normal. When we are, her eyes narrow, and she tenses and a completely different expression crosses her face. Then she relaxes again.

“Earl Grey?” she says, almost smiling, making the tea the English way, perfectly.

“Thank you,” I say.

Silence, apart from the sound of the antique grandfather clock ticking in the corner of her beautifully decorated early American sitting room.

“You had a good life?” she says.

“Oh yes,” I say. “I’ve had a wonderful life. I have wonderful parents who I love dearly.”

“Well, I’m glad about that,” she says.

“Oh yes,” I say, finally on familiar ground and holding a decent cup of tea, to boot. “And we lived in Africa and Hong Kong, and they live in the country, and I have a sister, and we’re very happy. I just came to find out where I’d come from, that’s all.”

“Well,” she says, “I can understand that.” We sip our tea in unison.

“I’m pro-choice,” she says, suddenly. “I marched in the pro-choice rally they had in Mapleville last month. You pro-choice?”

“Oh yes,” I say. She still needs reassurance. “If they had pro-choice rallies in England I’d march too, but there it’s really not an issue.”

“You’re prettier than she is,” she says as I am leaving. To me Billie is beautiful. But I feel warmed by the compliment.

And then: “You poor child, you don’t know who you’ve found, do you? She’s…” Her face has tightened again and I am astonished to see what look like tears of pity in her eyes. “She’s…You poor, poor child…”

B
ILLIE AND
I
GO OUT BIKING
and stop to have a sandwich by a small farm owned by a man who really does make moonshine, just like in the
Dukes of Hazzard
. He’s old and gray and gives me a sip from a tin bucket in a small shack with a dirt floor attached to the side of his house. It tastes like turpentine. When we leave his house, Billie starts telling me about her sisters.

“Octavia’s three years older than me. She’s a poet, I think. Or she might run a store, I’m not sure. We haven’t seen her in a couple of years. But I talk to my sister Marcie all the time. She’s the one you most resemble. Only she’s obese. And a manic-depressive. And she’s married to Otis, who’s obsessive-compulsive, but he plays the banjo beautifully, and you can’t have everything.”

“Oh,” I say. I saw a film about a manic-depressive once. I can’t remember much about it—except the man stood on a rooftop and tried to fly.

“What about your brother?” I say.

“Your Uncle Irv? Well, that’s another story. It’s not so much that he’s mentally ill, he just has an impulsive personality and a serious drinking problem…I wish to hell he’d get some help.”

“Is he unhappy?”

“Very.” We’re riding two feet away from each other. I can hear every word, despite the noise of the tires hitting the rocks on the long mountain path.

“The thing that frustrates Daddy so much about it is that Irv had so much. In addition to gifts of intelligence and good looks, Irv has good business sense. He was making more money than he knew what to do with as a financial consultant. I think the real reason he turned to illegal pursuits was because the edge wasn’t there.”

Illegal pursuits?

“What sort of…?”

“The last time he got into trouble was for masterminding an illegal animal liberation operation. I don’t know whether he’s been freeing animals recently or not. He probably hasn’t. He really hated it in jail.”

“He went to jail?”

“Oh, yes. The year the circus came to Dawsonville. He’d have been fine if the lion hadn’t torn through town and snacked on that poor little boy.”

“When did he get—um—set free from jail?”

“About three years ago. It’s really been a long time. I had some hope for him when he came up and visited Daddy at my place a few months ago, but my instinct was ‘Don’t feel good about this. You’ll be disappointed again.’ Probably what it is is that he’s drinking again.”

“Oh.”

“Irv is very much the kind of alcoholic who, unless he hits a really low bottom, will never get it right. And even then he may not, because the program is based on honesty. And I just don’t think he has the capacity to be honest. They think his kind of personality may be in the genes.”

My heart’s pounding. I’m thinking of Dad’s sister, Auntie Laura, living in her stone house in the south of France. Of the childhood summers we spent there, jumping into bales of hay in the barn, being chased by geese, playing Snap with my cousins who had never heard of manic-depression. Auntie Laura, who won the Florence Nightingale Award for her work as a nurse in Cyprus during the war. And tall, handsome Uncle Magnus, whose bravery won him the Légion d’honneur for rescuing Jewish people from the concentration camps. Uncle Magnus, who taught me how to swat flies and catapult cheese across the table with the cheese scraper. At the big, wooden dinner table, in the stone house which he built himself, in the heart of Provence.

Auntie Laura and Uncle Magnus are my aunt and uncle. Were my aunt and uncle. Are my aunt and uncle.

Billie’s voice comes back in again.

“Seeing Irv turn out this way just breaks Daddy’s heart. And Daddy has the additional burden of never quite being able to shake the idea that if your kid turns out bad, you didn’t raise him right.”

We’re biking downhill next to the creek that’s become so wide it’s more like a river.

“Most people who are very sophisticated about parenting, and who have read all the books and studied behavior and so forth and so on, know damn well that you’re not responsible for the way your kids turn out.”

I don’t know if Billie is aware—really aware—of what she’s saying, or if she’s actually trying to tell me something about myself. But if it’s all in the genes, then according to Billie, Mum and Dad and my upbringing had nothing at all to do with who I am.

In that moment, something shifts inside me. Before I know it, I’ve started biking as fast as I can. I’m hurtling down the mountain at top speed, away, away, away from the stranger who keeps calling me her daughter.

The road is steep and winding, and my head is spinning as fast as the bicycle wheels. I have to get away, I need time to think.

“Honey! You’re going too fast! You’re going too fast!”

I am going too fast, tearing down the mountain, desperate for just a moment away from the chatter. I don’t know what to do, but I know I have to think, I just have to. And then I ride up on the bank next to Deer Lick Creek—the deep part, lying cool and still to the right of the road before me. I jump off my bike and, fully clothed, dive into the water. There’s silence under the water. For the first time in almost two weeks, I hear nothing. I come up for air behind a rock. Billie is calling me from the bank.

“Pippa? Where are you? Pippa!”

From behind the reeds, which are tall and green and still, I watch Billie standing on the creek bank. With her hands on her hips, calling for me in her purple shorts and T-shirt, from a distance she looks like an indignant Shirley Temple. The air feels cool against my wet skin.

The sun is setting against the mountain, which has turned blue and orange in the evening light. I duck under the water again. My body feels light. I watch the bubbles from my breath make their way to the surface. I come up for air again and look at her, through the reeds. The sunlight makes her curls look like burnt gold. I feel as if I am looking at her from a long way away.

Where is the sense of peace I’ve been longing for? Will it come tomorrow?

I look up at the sky. It will be dark soon. I take a deep breath and start walking toward the creek bank.

“Sorry,” I say, coming out from behind the reeds.

“What are you doing? Pippa, honey, your shirt’s all wet! We don’t want the mountain boys looking at your nipples. Here. Put on my sweater.”

But I’m already back on my bike and riding off again. This time Billie manages to stay close behind me.

“Let me tell you about the time I wore a shirt that was almost see-through to a Christmas party at the Whitcombs. Daddy nearly had an angina attack…”

In England, it’s considered polite to wait for somebody to stop talking before you talk yourself.

I’ve been waiting for the moment when Billie will stop talking and ask me more than the basic facts about my life. So I can tell her all about Mum and Dad and Charlotte and my life in England. And me. But the moment hasn’t come. And it doesn’t come now, either.