The English American (26 page)

A
T THE END OF THE DRIVE
,
Billie’s house looks dilapidated and dark. The smell of dirty carpet and general neglect hits me hard as I walk through the door.

“Billie?”

She’s wearing purple overalls and a red shirt. Her lipstick hasn’t quite reached the edge of her lips and she’s carrying a huge pile of papers. Heathcliffe rushes past her, tail stretched toward the ceiling. One of the tiles on her ceiling has come loose and fallen to the floor.

Her earrings tinkle as she turns her head toward me.

“Honey!”

We stare at each other for a second, Billie Parnell and I. We’ve come a long way since our first meeting. We still look the same, pretty much, and yet we’re no longer looking at our selves reflected.

“Well, hiiiii!” Billie says.

I walk across to the couch and sit down on the edge. The light isn’t working and I can smell cat food as usual. No need for small talk. I’m an American now. I can come straight to the point.

“Have you been in touch with Nick?”

She’s standing by the door to the kitchen. Her laughter breaks through.

“Oh honey, I have missed you so much.” She’s delighted I’m there. She moves toward me for a hug. I’m not giving in to it. Not this time.

“Have you been in touch with Nick?” I say again.

She stops and walks toward the window to put the papers down.

“Have you told Nick you’re going to represent him?”

I hope that I’ve misunderstood what Aradhana was saying. I want my suspicions to be a mistake. But as I watch her debate whether or not to tell me the truth, I know that I am right.

She turns toward me, eyebrows raised. “Well, clearly you know I have, or you wouldn’t have come storming in here like Boadicea with PMS. I love watching you when you’re this angry! You remind me so much of Mother, who…”

But this time I refuse to let her sweep me away on one of her tangents.

“Without consulting me, Billie? Goddammit, will you just stay on the subject just this once?”

Billie stops talking.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Billie?” My voice is calm and clear.

“Well, I tried!” she says, finally, in an utterly reasonable tone. “Really, I tried. But it’s real hard to consult someone who won’t pick up the phone.”

“What did you say to him, Billie?”

“I don’t remember exactly…”

“Billie!”

“Well, I might have said that you were a little disorganized. Well, you are, honey! I mean you could sell sand to the Arabs, but organized you are not. And…”

“
And…
?”

“And I might have said something about experience counting in these things.” Then she says, “It was Nick who asked me to represent him, honey, not the other way around. And I only agreed for you.”

“What?”

“You’ve done some good work here, honey, but I know how to take someone like Nick and turn him into a star. I did it with Marfil, and I can do it with Nick. I talked with him at length about it only this morning. Isn’t that what you want? For Nick to be a star?”

She’s pacing now. Excited.

“Of course, I still want you on the team, whatever Nick says. We’ll be a mother and daughter team. We’ll set up a new agency and call it Parnell and Dunn. We’ll split the commission. I don’t mind, honey, you have done a lot of the legwork.”

I stop trying to get a word in and just watch her. She is telling me she’s taking half my commission and implying that she’s doing me a favor. She and Nick plan to tell James Souk they’ll take the next set of paintings elsewhere unless he doubles his price.

On top of that, if I want to be paid half the money I’m owed for almost a year’s work, I’ll have to work with her. And she’s packaging all of this as something good. Fascinated, I watch her convincing herself that it’s all in everyone’s best interests. She really seems to believe what she’s saying. Actually I don’t care about the money side of it. I’m making all the money I need from performing now. And I’m strangely relieved about Nick. But I do care about James Souk.

And the fact that I’ve allowed myself to be so blatantly used is killing me.

“Did you know Nick was married?” I ask Billie.

Billie’s quiet.

“Did you?”

Billie’s sitting down now. “No, honey. I didn’t.” I look at her face. I believe her. All that time and energy spent dreaming about Nick, thinking he wanted me, when all he wanted was a break.

“His wife’s beautiful. And Indian. And…and…and delicate!”

“Oh no. Not delicate.”

“Yes,” I say. “Delicate.”

“Oh, honey.”

She takes me in her arms. And for a second I am still.

“Oh, baby, you’re so hurt.” She’s right. I am hurt. And I’m humiliated. Above all, I’m furious with myself for being such an idiot.

“Nick Devang has played you beautifully,” Billie says finally. “But if he were a nice guy, well, he wouldn’t be able to paint like that, now would he? The biggest mistake you could make now would be to drop him. That is exactly what he wants. He could have any agent he wants now he’s got the exhibition, believe me, honey. At least you’ve learned one of life’s most important lessons. Never mix business with pleasure.”

Has it been pleasure? Or obsession? I’m not sure. It certainly doesn’t feel like pleasure now. The betrayal stings me again, like a hard, unexpected slap.

“Oh, honey! That face! That dear little face!” Billie’s sitting next to me now, holding me like a child. “You’ll move on. I did. It happens.” She’s soothing me with her movements, rocking me back and forth. Then she wraps me in the throw from her couch and I sit, clutching my knees to my chest, staring out at Billie’s sitting room, broken.

“Now you stay here,” she says, “and I’ll go make us something to eat. God, it’s just so wonderful to see you.”

“I feel like such a pillock,” I say, as Billie comes back into the room.

“A what?”

“Never mind.” It is time to stop trying to explain British expressions to the Americans. Particularly ones I’ve never understood myself.

Wrapped in the blanket, I sink into the couch that hasn’t been cleaned in twenty years. Billie suddenly seems so reasonable. So certain that this is a good way forward. If we set up Parnell and Dunn, I won’t have to do it all on my own anymore. Perhaps we could figure out a way to represent Nick together. And eventually there’d be other clients too.

Billie has dimmed the lights, and the sitting room doesn’t look as depressing as it did earlier. Billie is singing “Someone to Watch Over Me” in the kitchen. She may not be the mother I wanted her to be, but she is my mother. It’s time for me to grow up. It’s time to accept her the way she is.

And thus I might have stayed, had Heathcliffe not decided to jump on Billie’s desk and knock over a pile of papers.

Listening to Billie’s voice, I get up off the couch and pick up the papers that have fallen on the floor. That’s when, between two pages from an Ethan Allen catalog, I see a return airplane ticket to London, dated a month before.

“What’s this?” I say.

Billie has stopped singing and is balancing two mugs of tea on the baking tin she is using for a tray.

“It’s a plane ticket,” she says. “You can see that.”

Billie puts the tea down on the table.

“To London?”

“Yes.” She sounds much too casual.

“What were you doing in London, Billie?”

“Honey, you know London is one of my favorite cities to walk around.”

“Billie.”

There’s a pause. And then, in the patient tone of an adult talking to an unreasonable child, Billie says, “I went to see your parents.”

“You did what?”

“Well, you weren’t returning my calls. You even blocked my e-mail. I was worried about you.”

“So you went to see my parents?”

“I can’t lose you again, honey. Don’t you understand?” She looks like a perplexed angel.

“I
understand
all of it,” I say. “Your sorrow, your aching heart, your longing for me. And I’m sorry you have suffered so. Really I am.” The anger rises up and bursts out of me. “But I didn’t give myself up for adoption, Billie. I didn’t leave you. You left me!”

“And now you’re punishing me for it!”

“When will you get it into your head that I am not punishing you for giving me up for adoption? I’m grateful! You know that! I’ve thanked you for it a thousand times. The reason I don’t want you in my life now is because being around you makes me miserable. And I don’t trust you. I’ve tried to trust you, but time and time again you’ve shown me that I just bloody well can’t!”

Finally. It’s out.

“But I’m
family
!” she says.

“I didn’t come to America to swap families, Billie! ‘Oh, thanks for the nappy changing, and the education and the skiing holidays Mum and Dad, now I’m buggering off to join my real family.’”

“So, you feel a sense of
duty
toward them?”

“No, Billie. I love them. Mum, Dad, and Charlotte are my family. They always have been. I have loved them all my life and I always will. And it’s not the kind of love that hurts me either! It’s the kind of love that feels like love!”

“But…”

“But nothing, Billie! They are my family. Which, again, wasn’t my choice. It was yours.”

“Well,” she says, “Wellllll. Well, your parents don’t want you behaving badly toward me.”

“What?”

“They raised you to be considerate about other people’s feelings. And they said to me—listen to me, Pippa—they said to me that you could spend Christmas and Thanksgiving with me, and they could have you in the summer. They said that, honey.”

“Billie, I’m not up for shared custody! I can make my own decisions! I am twenty-nine years old!”

“Don’t you have any feelings for me at all?”

The anger subsides as suddenly as it came. Billie looks like a child again. I walk toward her.

“How could I not feel for you?” I say, gently. “God, giving up a child would hurt any woman terribly. How could it not? I know you suffered. And I know my finding you has brought up all the feelings of loss you’ve buried for so many years. I know that. And I feel for you. Really. I’ll always be grateful for the way you welcomed me, and encouraged me, and made me feel wanted. It would have crucified me if you’d said you didn’t want to see me. But Billie,” I say, “I wasn’t away on vacation.”

There’s quiet in the room. Billie walks toward the window. Then she turns toward me with an angelic expression on her face and says, equally gently, “It’s time to come out of denial, honey. You don’t belong with those people anymore.”

“Those people?”

There’s no point in continuing. The anger is back.

I start to leave, but Billie keeps talking.

“I told your mother it’s time for her to let you go.”

I stop. “What?”

“She can’t understand you the way I understand you, because she’s not your real mother. To make you feel a failure because you were untidy, when really you were just wildly creative, well, I don’t care how you paint it, abuse is abuse!”

“No! Tell me you didn’t say that to Mum, Billie! Please, Billie! No! What have you done, Billie? What have you done?”

Suddenly I’m running out the door.

“Don’t leave me again, Pippa.” She’s pleading now. Shouting. “Don’t leave me again!”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Billie. I didn’t leave you. You left me! YOU LEFT ME!”

I run down the stairs to the lower floor and bang on Ralph’s bedroom door.

“Ralph? Will you drive me to the airport?”

“Where are you going?” Billie says, following me as I head toward the car.

“I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago. I’m going home.”

“But what about Nick?”

“Fuck Nick.”

“Pippa!”

“You go on the Circle Line with Nick and his delicate wife and gorgeous little children. I’m going home.”

I
DON’T WANT YOUR MOTHER
,”
I say to Ralph, who drives the road between Adler and JFK even faster than she does. “Despite her endless protestations to the contrary, she’s not my ‘real’ mother.”

“Okay, okay,” he says. His face is young, and he’s laughing. “Man, you women really know how to sling shit, don’t you!”

We’re driving at eighty now. He is his mother’s son.

“Way to go, bro.”

We get to the airport and I run through the doors. A British Airways flight has just left. There’s another flight in an hour. I’ll manage to get on it with just enough time to buy a toothbrush, some respectable looking clothes, and an overnight bag from duty-free.

“Ralph, thank you.”

“Hey, I’m cool,” he says. And smiles.

“Good luck, Ralph.”

An American voice booms out across the airport. “You are not required to give money to solicitors. This airport does not support their activities.” I can’t help laughing. Because even though I’m an American now, I’ll always be English too. And, to me, a solicitor will always be a solicitor. Not a solicitor, if you know what I mean.

And then I’m on the airplane, and the whirlwind’s back. Billie has said the one thing to Mum and Dad that I never, ever wanted them to hear.

I’ll never regret finding and coming to know my birth parents. The parts of me that no one else recognized, they recognized. The talents I knew were within me, they validated. I’ll never again have to answer the doctor’s “What’s your family medical history?” with “I was adopted. I don’t know.”

But if Billie has hurt Mum and Dad in any way, how will I ever forgive her?

I turn my attention to the Virgin Atlantic flight attendant who’s asking me to buckle up. They’re all wearing red skirts and white blouses and remind me of the girls I used to see around the streets of Peaseminster, who wore makeup and highlighted their hair and knew all about the latest bands and sold me Tampax at Boots. They still look nothing like me, but I find their familiarity comforting.

I’ve been caught up in a whirlwind, far, far away. As I travel across the ocean, my love for the country and the family I left fills me completely. I’m being pulled back to England with the same sense of urgency I felt when I left it.

Tears start to trickle down my cheeks as I think of Jack, who I could have trusted. He was right there. Lying right next to me. And on top of me. And underneath me. And I ran, instead, toward a man who didn’t really exist.

I have behaved appallingly to the one man I’ve ever known who I could have truly trusted. And therefore truly loved.

The flight attendant offers me an apple juice and several extra napkins.

“Thank you,” I say, blowing my nose loudly.

I yank my mind back to the present. Billie has been to visit Mum and Dad, leaving God knows what damage in her wake. Oh God. What has she done?

Keeping a low-level panic under control as best I can, I walk quickly toward the exit, hail a taxi, and ask the driver to cover the roads between Heathrow and Peaseminster as fast as he can.

As we drive, I realize I am looking at England like an American. Taking note of the cute little cars, and the cute little roads as if for the first time.

The taxi has a little place between the front seats for Murray Mints. The taxi driver leans back and offers me one.

“Thanks.”

I bite into it.

“Did you chew that?” he asks, chuckling.

“I did.”

“Better have another one then.” He hands another back to me. I pull the wrapper off with my teeth and pop it in my mouth.

“Remember the commercial on the telly about the Murray Mints?”

I do. It seems a lifetime away from where I have been. Another world, which was not supposed to collide with this one.

We say the line in unison: “Never Hurry a Murray.”

The difference between the old Pippa and the new is that I’m not going to waste any more time thinking there’s something wrong with me for not being able to suck my mints for hours. It’s as much a part of who I am as my red hair, pale skin, and fondness for chocolate.

When I get to my parents’ home all the lights are out. Mum, Dad, and Boris, the worst guard dog on earth, are fast asleep. I reach under the flowerpot by the front door, take the spare key from underneath it, and, tapping in the alarm numbers, enter the house.

The fourth stair board creaks as I creep quietly up to the second floor, just as it always has. I walk quietly past the room where Mum and Dad are sleeping, down the corridor to my room, and fall fast asleep.

I’m awakened by the smell of bacon frying. I look at my watch. It’s three thirty in the morning in America. Which means it must be eight thirty here. From my bed I can see white clouds crossing the bright blue sky above England and the trees moving in the late summer wind. One of the branches hits the corrugated roof of the pool house. First it taps the roof, then it makes a scraping sound, and then there’s a three-second gap before it starts again.

I get dressed and head down to the kitchen. Dad is reading the
Times
and Mum is getting a jar of Chivers marmalade down from the kitchen cupboard.

“Hallo, Mum,” I say from the top of the stairs.

“Pippa!” she says, dropping a spoonful of marmalade onto the kitchen table. “Darling!”

Dad looks up from his paper and starts laughing.

“What a lovely surprise!” Dad is patting me on the back, and Mum is kissing me on the cheek.

“Hi, Mum! Hi, Dad!” I say.

“What a lovely surprise!” they say again.

And it is.

I’ve been so far away. And now I’m back. And my beloved parents are still here. Nothing has changed in their world. They are still doing the same thing they’ve been doing since I went away.

They woke up at six. Dad went downstairs and made Mum a cup of tea and brought it upstairs on a tray with two Garibaldi biscuits, otherwise known as squashed flies. After listening to the World Service and reading the paper, Mum went down to the kitchen, still in her dressing gown, and made Dad a cup of coffee. In the royal wedding mug. Which they bought from the village fête in Barnfield twenty-five years before. Charles and Diana look young and in love, and the whole country believed it would last forever, because they wanted it to.

“What a splendid suitcase,” Dad says, when he sees my smart new plaid suitcase with buckles. “Not too full either. Well done, Pippa!”

Dear Dad. It doesn’t take much. They seem okay. But are they really? My heart is pounding.

“How is everybody?” I say.

“Oh fine,” Mum says. “Charlotte and Rupert spent last weekend in Cornwall eating scones and clotted cream. This weekend, they’re biking it all off in Wales. They’ll be so happy to see you!”

I open the door to the bread bin, take out a thin piece of Waitrose whole wheat bread, and put it in the toaster. Then, waiting for the toast to pop, as casually as I can, I ask them if they’ve had any visitors.

“Mary came yesterday,” Dad says. “She’s been feeling low since Mabel got mangled, but your mother cheered her up no end.”

New York has guns. Peaseminster has farming machinery. Mary’s friend Mabel was killed by a combine harvester one sorry afternoon last May.

“Any other visitors?” I say, waiting.

“Only Poppy,” Mum says. “To talk about the village fête. We’re thinking of having an egg and spoon race next year.”

“Farted up a storm all afternoon!” Dad’s hooting with laughter.

“Alas-
dair
!” Mum says.

“Anyone else?”

“No,” they say.

“Is anything wrong, darling?” Mum is looking at me carefully.

“Yes.”

Dad, stands up, folds his newspaper under one arm, and signals to Mum that he’s going into the next room to listen to some music.

“Bring your toast and Marmite out onto the porch, darling,” Mum says. “We can talk there.”

I put my toast on the Peter Rabbit plate I’ve used since I was a child. I carry it through the house, past the Oriental carpets and the wooden cedar chest to the porch, and sit down on the wicker chair. Mum has re-covered the cushions since I was last there. I can smell freshly picked tomatoes ripening in a bowl next to the swimming pool heater.

“Mum,” I say, sitting down. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I am, darling. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, Billie told me she came to see you…”

“Ah,” Mum says.

She takes off her sunglasses and turns toward the garden. A tiny robin is hopping around one of the croquet hoops trying to pick up something off the grass, I can’t see what.

Mum turns back toward me.

“Did she come here?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“About a month ago.”

“Oh Mum. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Probably for the same reason you haven’t told us about what’s really been going on with you.” She’s stating a fact. There’s no criticism in her tone. “I suppose I didn’t want to worry you.”

My throat constricts.
She
didn’t want to worry
me
?

“What happened?”