The English American (8 page)

B
ILLIE’S HOUSE
is made of dark wood and is built on stilts. It looks out over the Hudson River. You could park a car in the garage under the house, if it wasn’t full of furniture, a motorbike, and other stuff Billie’s bought from garage sales over the years. Collecting other people’s junk is obviously genetic. I’ve been shopping from the boots of people’s cars for years.

If you’re English you’ll know all about the car boot sale. If you’re not, a car boot sale is exactly the same as the garage sale, only the secondhand Tupperware is sold from the trunk of someone’s car, in a remote field, by English people—standing next to dozens of other English people—drinking cups of tea from plastic Thermos flasks in the pouring rain.

“We’re here!” Billie’s voice rings out loud and strong.

At the top of the steep staircase leading to the sitting room is a young man in torn jeans and a black T-shirt, with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. He doesn’t look remotely like me, but I like his face. He’s smoking a cigarette. He’s my brother Ralph.

“My God!” I say. “I have never ever walked upon such a clean carpet in my life!”

He’s got a sweet, high laugh. Quite different from Billie’s and mine.

“So, Ralphie, do you think she looks like me?” Billie says.

“Kinda—without the hat,” Ralph says, smiling. “But then I don’t look a whole lot like you either. You must have weak genes, Mom!”

“Ralphie’s father plays the cello,” Billie says. “He ran off with a violinist when Ralphie was five. I raised Ralphie on my own. But we’ve done okay, haven’t we, Ralphie?”

“I’ve got the coolest mom on earth,” Ralph says. He picks up the bags. “I’ll just take these to your room.”

Sitting rooms in England are usually filled with antique furniture: old drapes, carpets handed down from generation to generation. When I walk up the stairs and turn left into Billie’s sitting room, I am struck immediately by the fact that everything—and I mean everything—looks new. By new I mean modern, by which I mean as if it’s been bought within the past fifty years.

At the center of the sitting room is a cream-colored leather couch, a beige rug, and a large square glass table. To my astonishment—nay, delight—I note that her home is as messy as mine.

A furry blue sweater with a cat on it is thrown over a chair, one shoe is at one end of the couch, another on the floor. The room is cluttered with piles of newspapers, magazines, books, coffee mugs, ashtrays, cigarettes, and, in an oddly shaped rose vase, a small bunch of purple flowers.

“Those are pretty,” I say.

“Mary brought them for you. She lives down the road. She’s a recluse, and her son’s a kleptomaniac, but she’s just wonderful with flowers.”

I’d be willing to bet that a sentence like that has never been uttered in England.

Hanging on all the walls are original paintings. Some of people, some of plants, all vivid, remarkable in their own way.

“These are from my art-dealing days,” she says. “Here’s the Marfil! Oh that was a heady time, discovering Marfil! The whole of New York was talking about it.”

She told me she worked with artists, but I didn’t know she discovered one of the greatest artists of our time. I can’t wait to tell Nick.

While Billie makes us some coffee, I stare at a print of Marfil’s most famous painting, hanging above her piano. It’s a small oil painting of an old woman walking down the streets of New York. She has a craggy face and bright blue eyes that penetrate my soul. I’ve seen the painting hundreds of times before; I’d found it so compelling I hung it on my bedroom wall at university. How amazing to find out that my own mother was partially responsible for getting it there.

Nick was right. There’s magic in the air.

I read an article, framed, on the wall leading to the kitchen, about Billie. It talks about how she first met Marfil, then a street painter. The article says Billie had a gut feeling about him, knew he was a great artist and felt she just had to do something about it. And so she beat down doors until people took notice. Then she became a well-known art dealer. “After that,” Billie says quietly, “I became an alcoholic and dropped out of the game.”

“People drink for all kinds of reasons,” she says. “Mainly because it’s in the blood. In my case, after years of therapy, I came to realize I was drinking to drown out my grief.” Then, “Losing you was real, real hard, honey.”

I look over at her. There are tears in her eyes. I find myself responding instantly and instinctively by crossing the room and hugging her.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. She hugs me back. She doesn’t smell of alcohol. She smells of sweet perfume.

“What sort of drink do you—er—drink?” I say, finally.

“I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in eleven years,” she says.

“Oh good,” I say.

“I take it one day at a time,” she says.

“How sensible,” I say. We laugh as we pull away.

Soon the adrenaline is back. I’m looking at another painting I know. Only this time it’s mine. It’s the forest painting I was thrown out of art class for drawing again and again. I’ve been doodling it on telephone pads ever since. The leaves are orange and green, and in the rain forest scene in front of me they look like teardrops. They’re my leaves. Bursting across a canvas, in a sitting room on the other side of the world. Almost legible, in the bottom right corner, are the initials ND.

“Who’s ND?” I ask.

“Your grandmother,” Billie says. “That was one of hers.”

“Was she a painter?”

“She didn’t start painting till she was forty. She always got so into her work, she was scared that if she started before we were old enough to be left on our own, she wouldn’t notice if one of us kids fell off a ladder or something. It’s called hyperfocus. It’s in my nature, too, and probably in yours. It’s common in artistic types.”

I come from artistic types. My heart soars.

“Is your mother still alive?”

“Yes. And no.” Billie’s movements are quick, like my own. In under three seconds she’s left the room and come back into it, lighting an unusually thin cigarette with a sparkly pink lighter.

“Mother has Alzheimer’s now.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry.”

“Turns out it’s got its advantages,” she says. “Each time I tell her you’ve found me, she’s all the way to thrilled.”

I smile with her. “What was she like before—well, you know…?”

“Real creative and beautiful, and she just adored your father. But, as I told you in my letter, she was not an organized person. Most highly creative people are that way. Einstein used to leave his house wearing odd socks. God, who’d want to be neat!”

I start to grin again. She’s everything I dreamed she would be. And she thinks I’m wonderful too. I tell her about the rain forest I drew again and again at school, and for years afterward. Billie listens intently.

“Honey,” Billie’s voice is low and quivering with intensity, “you’re highly intuitive. It’s not something to be scared of. It’s a gift. Mother has the gift. I always swear your father does too. Just make sure you trust your instincts and let them lead.”

I try to picture Mum, Dad, or Charlotte telling someone to “trust their instincts,” but I can’t. I try to picture Mum, Dad, or Charlotte moving across a room as fast as Billie is now, but I can’t.

Billie brings out a photo album and tells me about each and every relative. I’ve never seen anyone related to me by blood before, and I stare, fascinated, at photographs of strangers who look like me.

B
Y NINE IN THE EVENING
we’re sitting on the sofa in Billie’s bedroom eating chocolate chips out of a bowl. I’ve been up for nearly twenty-four hours but I’m wide awake. Billie tells me we’re descendents of Governor McKay of Georgia, and about her childhood, growing up in Georgia. Her happiest childhood memories are of long summers spent on her grandfather’s estate, where she and her brother and sisters would run wild through cotton fields and drink sodas from their grandfather’s soda fountain.

For half a second I remember my own happiest childhood memories—camping in the Serengeti, getting up at six o’clock in the morning to see the hippopotami in the river, making mud pies with Charlotte in the African bush. Then Billie’s voice brings me back.

The unhappiest moments of Billie’s childhood took place at dinnertime when her parents were fighting. Billie’s mother was the daughter of a composer, who loved musicals and her father. Her father was a successful businessman, and an alcoholic.

“When he’d had nothing to drink, Daddy was one of the most intelligent, enjoyable men I have ever known; after even one really stiff drink he became belligerent and cruel. It runs in the family,” she says again. “Alcoholism.”

“Oh.”

Billie is looking at me in a significant sort of way.

“I don’t drink,” I say. “I’d rather have a glass of chocolate milk than anything else. I’ve never liked the taste of alcohol much.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not an alcoholic,” Billie says.

The phone rings. Billie picks it up, slipping seamlessly from her role as long-lost mother to businesswoman. As she talks, I pick up the bowl of chocolate morsels, put it on my lap, and drink in every detail of Billie’s room.

On the wall behind the headboard of her bed are four bookshelves with hundreds of books I am not at all familiar with. My bookshelf in London is filled with the complete works of Jane Austen, Ibsen, Strindberg, and A. A. Milne. The titles on Billie’s bookshelf range from
Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow
to
You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?! A Self-Help Book for Adults with A.D.D
.

As soon as Billie is off the phone, she continues talking as if there has been no interruption. She tells me she was twenty-two when her father left her mother for his secretary, to whom he is still married. Later the same year, Billie met Walt. Something in the way she says the name “Walt,” with a slight lilt to her already musical voice, tells me this is important.

“I was interviewing for a job in New York City, and Daddy called saying he was going to be in town, and did I want to go with him to hear this incredible new speaker, Walt Markham, who was speaking for the young conservatives? I was a rabid young conservative myself at that time—oh, don’t look so horrified!”

“A young
conservative
?”

“It’s okay, honey,” she laughs, “I became a libertarian later. But at that time…well, I wanted to change the world. And so when I heard your father speaking—well, he was so charismatic and I was just blown away by him, and I said, ‘Daddy, I have to meet this man.’ And when I did—oh.”

She takes another handful of chocolate morsels and turns her back to me, looking out over the river. With the light from the Adler Bridge behind her, in profile, she looks breathtakingly beautiful.

“He was tall and handsome as all get-out, with thick copper-red hair, just like yours and so full of life. Oh, honey…” She turns toward me now. There are tears in her eyes. “Your father was, without a doubt, the most exciting man I had ever met.”

I can see the memory is causing her pain. I wish I could soothe her, but I can tell she doesn’t want me to interrupt.

“We knew what we were doing was wrong, and we tried to stay apart, but we just couldn’t. He was married. He had a child. His wife’s name was Margaret.”

Her face changes for a second. There’s something tough underneath the softness of her tone. “Walt and I recognized each other, honey. We knew we were meant to be together. We could not be in the same room without touching each other.”

I think of Nick.

Then Billie looks at me for a long moment with tears in her eyes and says, “Your father was a very athletic lover, honey.”

At a moment like this, most Brits will look away, change the subject, and/or head straight for the kettle. But Billie has me mesmerized. I have a feeling she knows this. Her voice is low again. Husky.

“We saw each other as often as we could for almost a year. That time in my life was the most wonderful, and the most terrible.”

Billie seems lost in the memory. “Granddaddy cut me out of his will, of course. Up until then he’d always loved me the best, but this…” Billie looks too sad to speak. Eventually she sits down next to me.

“I’m sorry it was all so hard for you,” I say, reaching for her hand.

The lights from the cars crossing the Adler Bridge half a mile away hit the mirror above her dresser. Her voice is soft and sweet. “It was hard. Very. But we got through it. And now—well, we get to meet you as an adult. How fascinating is that? We knew you’d be special beyond belief. You do have our genes.” She reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “And you are special,” she says. “You are, you are.”

I like being called “special beyond belief.” That, too, could never happen in England.

For a moment Billie looks exactly like the young Billie, the one in the painting on the wall behind her. Twenty-eight years have gone by but she doesn’t seem to have changed. A few lines around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes perhaps. An extra ten pounds or so. Nothing more.

Billie’s black cat, whose name is Heathcliffe, has come into the room. He slinks over to Billie. Billie laughs. “Heathcliffe’s an under-the-cover cat. He lays his silky body against my chest and kneads me all night long. Isn’t that right, Heathcliffe?”

The cat sits on her lap purring loudly as if to say, She’s mine.

“Are you still in touch with Walt?” I say, not ready to change the subject.

Billie’s hand is moving across Heathcliffe’s body with long, steady strokes.

“Oh yes,” she says. “I hear from him every year. On your birthday.”

A warmth spreads instantly across my chest. I picture my father, picking up his phone faithfully, every April 26, calling the love of his life. And wondering about me.

“We talk every year. Hoping you’ll come and find us. ‘How could she not?’ we say to each other, ‘with our genes?’” Billie takes my hand this time. “And now here you are.”

“Have you told him yet?”

She looks at me. Her voice is soft. “Not yet, honey.”

Up until this point I hadn’t given my father much thought. Everything was about finding my mother. Up until this point.

“Do you know how to find him?”

Silence in the room.

“Do you know how to find him?” I say again.

Billie smiles at me.

“Honey, we’ve both had a long day, and I’m real tired, I’ve got to go to bed. Why don’t you have a hot bath in
my
bathtub? Now there’s a treat.” And she leads me to her bathroom, which smells of perfume and other sweet things. The towels are purple and red. There are rose pink light bulbs all the way around her bathroom mirror.

“Look!” she says, holding up a bottle. “I got you some
foam
!”

She pours several capfuls into the bath and then she’s gone.

After saying good night to Billie, I put on my pajamas and knock on Ralph’s door. He’s playing the guitar and smoking a joint.

“Want some?” he says.

“No thanks,” I say. “I don’t.”

Ralphie looks at me blankly.

“Someone gave me some bad stuff at university once. It turned out to be opium. Everything went blurry and I got totally paranoid. Worst of all I couldn’t feel my nose. Haven’t touched it since.”

“Your nose?” he says.

“No,” I say, laughing. “Pot.”

There’s a pause. “You know you said your mom was the coolest mom in the world?”

I’m careful to pronounce it “mom” rather than “mum.” And I’m careful to refer to Billie as
his
mom. I don’t want him thinking I’ve come to take her away from him.

“What kind of cool things did she do?”

Ralph takes another drag from his joint. He’s thin and looks as if he hasn’t been out in the sun for a long time.

“Well, she never got on my case about things, like other moms, you know? Like she never forced me to go to bed at eight o’clock and stuff. She’s never, like, interfered or cramped my style in any way. You know what I mean?”

“I think so,” I say, sitting on his black comforter and accepting one of his Marlboro Lights.

“Would you play me a song?” I say.

Ralph looks pleased, as is my intention, and plays me a song by Steely Dan. I try to look as though I enjoy it, but I don’t really. I prefer musicals to just about any other kind of music. Except Rachmaninoff, of course.

But it’s not the time to break this news to my newfound kin, so after clapping enthusiastically I go to my room, just down the corridor from Ralphie’s, lie down on the daybed that’s been made up for me, and fall into a restless sleep.