The English American (19 page)

“A perfect fit,” he says.

“I’ve really got to go,” I say, heading quickly toward the door.

“Pippa,” he says, “I’ve got every episode of
The Office
on DVD. You can come over and watch them with me anytime you like.”

“The British version?”

“Of course. We can watch one now, until the rain stops, if you want.” His brown eyes have green in them. I hadn’t noticed it before.

I long to stay. The whirlwind I’ve been carrying in my head for weeks has calmed down completely, and I’m suddenly terribly tired. But I have been imposing on Jack’s kindness long enough. The only thing worse than a woman unburdening her problems is a guest who will not go.

“Oh no, thank you, I couldn’t possibly. Thanks so much for the trousers,” I say. “And I’m sorry for—well—rabbiting on and on.”

“You weren’t rabbiting,” Jack says.

“And thanks again for the trousers. I was just so cold. Awfully kind of you. I promise to get them back.”

I dash out the door. As I leave, I notice that the walls of Jack’s lobby are also painted green. The cornices are glossy white. It looks like the inside of Restoration Hardware.

Behind me I can hear Jack laughing quietly.

“Pippa?”

“Yes?” I say.

Jack’s holding the door to his apartment open with his foot and dangling my handbag from his left hand.

“Your purse?”

“Oh,” I say. He hands me the handbag. It’s no longer wet, and he’s done the zipper up.

“Sorry. Thank you,” I say. But why, oh why, call it a purse? It makes no sense. Handbag makes sense. I turn round to put him straight, but he has gone.

I
T’S SIX O’CLOCK
in the morning and I’m woken by the sound of the phone. It’s Billie, calling from Georgia.

“This is your mother speaking!” she says, her voice loud in my ear. “You know what she’s done now, don’t you?”

It takes me a second to tune in.

“Who?”

“Malice of course.”

Of course.

“She’s stolen my passport.”

Oh no.

“She came up the mountain in the middle of the night and stole it.”

“Why would she do that?”

“She hates me,” Billie says.

I want to believe her. But Billie loses things all the time, just like I do. It’s genetic.

A seventy-five-year-old woman who has just lost her husband doesn’t drive twenty miles up a mountain in the middle of the night to sneak into her stepdaughter’s house and steal her passport. I can picture Billie picking it up by mistake and throwing it away with a pizza container.

“Have you checked the trash?”

“Of course I’ve checked the trash!” I can hear her scrabbling about in the trash. Then, a few seconds later: “And it’s not there!”

She sounds accusing. As if it’s my fault. I recognize the tone of voice. It’s the same tone I’ve used all my life when I can’t find something.

“I can’t find my hairdryer!” I’d say to Charlotte, late for work.

“Have you looked on your dressing table?”

“Yes. And it’s
not there
!”

“Here you go,” Charlotte would say, patient and kind as always. “You can borrow mine.”

I might refuse to accept responsibility for the fact that I’ve lost my hairdryer, or my bra, or my shampoo, or my hot water bottle, or my swimming costume, or my keys, or even my passport—but I wouldn’t go so far as to accuse an old woman of driving twenty miles up a mountain in the middle of the night to steal something I can’t find. Would I?

Will I?

I’m thrashing about in Billie’s ocean, afraid of currents I can’t see, searching desperately for the woman I want Billie to be.

Sometimes I see glimpses of her. When she insists we all stop work and play a game of tennis “because life is short and it’s a beautiful day.” Or says something wonderfully encouraging that gives me the confidence to keep working on my act.

But then she says something like, “Your uncle’s a sociopath. They think that might be genetic, by the way,” and the mother I longed for disappears into the ocean again and becomes a devouring sea monster, waiting to pull me under.

My days are now accompanied by a growing pain in my chest that will not shift. It feels like a kind of sorrow, and it weighs me down. I know it’s illogical and I feel guilty for feeling it, so I carry it inside me, hidden from the world.

I tell myself that the reason Billie never asks me anything about my life in England is because it’s too painful for her to hear about the life I’ve had without her in it.

But I have had a life without her in it. Only the people who could remind me of who I used to be are a world away.

P
IPPA
, I
KNOW HOW
B
ILLIE
feels about having you home. But how are you doing in all this?” Carol’s voice sounds casual. We’re sitting on the couch after spending the afternoon stapling Billie’s latest mailing together.

“I’m fine,” I say. And then, “I look at Billie. And I know we have the same hands. I hear her, and I know we have the same laugh. But—well, Billie keeps saying I’m exactly like her. But I’m not. Am I? Not that that would be such a bad thing,” I say, quickly. “I mean, look at what she’s achieved.”

It’s cool in the room, but Carol is blushing. Her tone is reluctant when she does finally speak.

“Half of the things Billie tells you about herself aren’t true,” Carol says.

“Like what?”

“Well, pretty much everything she’s told you about Marfil.”

“But she discovered Marfil!”

“Yes, she did. But she didn’t ‘make’ Marfil. Tom Sniffen did that. And Billie worked for Tom as his number two, not his partner, as she tells people. And she didn’t leave because she wanted to. She left because she got fired. She was drinking to dull the pain. It hurt her a lot when her husband left her. And it hurt Sniffen a lot when she showed up tanked to work.”

“Oh.”

Carol is about to say something else when Billie walks into the room. She’s carrying some shopping. When she sees us sitting on the couch, she stops.

“Well, hi,” she says sweetly. “Don’t you two look cozy.”

“We were just having a little talk,” Carol says.

“About what?”

“Just some publicity ideas I have,” I say, quickly. “I thought I’d run them by Carol. Let me help you with the shopping.”

“Why don’t you run your ‘publicity ideas’ by me?” Billie says. “I’m your mother.”

“I hope you don’t think…,” Carol says.

“I’m her mother!” Billie says, turning to Carol with a viciousness I’ve not seen before. “How dare you try to take my daughter away from me? After everything I’ve done for you! How
dare
you? You’ve been trying to muscle in on my territory with her ever since she got here.”

“Billie, she wasn’t muscling in,” I say. “There was no muscling.”

“You are
my
daughter. Not hers,” Billie says, turning to me, eyes blazing.

I take Billie’s shopping into the kitchen. When I come back into the sitting room, Billie is yelling at Carol.

“I am
not
a narcissist! My mother was a narcissist, so I know. Why, to say that
I’m
a narcissist—why, that’s just nuts! How dare you try and turn my daughter against me! How dare you!”

Billie fires Carol immediately and then storms back into the sitting room.

“What did she say, honey. Tell me! What did she say?”

Billie is clearly used to this kind of drama. Right now she looks like she’s almost enjoying it. I am not.

But I do feel terribly sorry for her.

“What did she say to you?” Billie says, shouting now.

“She didn’t say anything,” I say, not wanting to hurt her. “Honestly. Nothing at all.”

“Carol’s jealous. She doesn’t have a daughter of her own, so she’s trying to take mine. Oh, honey, I don’t think I could stand losing you again. I need a hug!”

I don’t feel at all like hugging her. But I don’t want to hurt her feelings either. And so I let her close her arms around me. They make me think of the jaws of one of those big yellow trucks with jagged metal teeth that picks up a car and crushes it so it can never run again.

On my birthday, Mum, Dad, Charlotte, Rupert, and Neville, who are all down at Little Tew for the weekend, put the phone on speaker and call me to sing “Happy Birthday.”

“Your father’s sword dance was a hit!” Neville says.

“Was it?”

“It really was, darling!” Mum says. “Princess Anne absolutely loved it and your father danced like a real pro!”

“Which means back straight and not looking down! Pas de basque, pas de basque, change, leap, change, leap,” Dad chimes in. Everybody laughs.

“And Princess Anne talked to him afterward for at least three minutes,” Charlotte says.

Neville makes a neighing sound.

“Stop it, Nev!”

“Are you doing anything nice tonight darling?”

The only person who knows it’s my birthday is Billie of course. She’s ordered in an ice cream cake, which we’re going to share with Ralph and Tom. Then, later, Billie is taking me to see a show.

“I’m going to see
Pajama Game
,” I say. “On Broadway.”

“Oh what fun! Who with?” Mum says.

It’ll only be a half lie. If he knew it was my birthday he’d insist on doing something to celebrate it.

“Do you remember I told you about my friend Jack?”

W
ALT CALLS
and announces he’s coming to New York. I’m to meet him at the Waverly Bar on East Seventy-third Street at two thirty sharp. I haven’t seen Walt since Billie told him she didn’t find cowardice very sexy. This was in reference to the fact that Walt kept saying he was going to tell his other kids about me and then not doing it.

The bar is full of shiny dark wood and powerful-looking older men drinking whiskey and smoking cigars. As I enter, I can see Walt sitting at the end of a long drinks table next to four other men. I’ve never seen him so well dressed. He is wearing a beautifully cut suit, a pink and yellow tie, and appears to be holding court.

He sees me, looks surprised, stands up, kisses me on both cheeks and says “Pippa!” Then, before I can say, “But you said two thirty sharp,” he turns to the men with an expression of regret and says, “Gentlemen…”

I see a look of anger cross the men’s faces. As Walt introduces us, I learn that two of the men are from the Ukraine. Two are from Afghanistan. The man sitting next to Walt has piercing black eyes that glitter in the artificial light.

“Surely you don’t have to leave just as things are getting clarified, Walt?” he says. His Ukranian accent is thick.

“Marin, forgive me, but my daughter is not a patient woman and so, if you’ll excuse me…”

“I’m so sorry,” I say, “I can always go and come back again…I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Not at all,” the man says, looking at Walt. “Your entrance was so perfectly timed, it could have been orchestrated.”

Walt is signaling for the check.

Marin smiles, “Please sit, Peppah. While we wait for the check at least.”

There’s a large bowl of cashew nuts in front of me. I hand the nuts round just as Mum and Dad trained me to do. As young children, Charlotte and I were instructed to “circulate with the eatables” at embassy parties. And we would, of course, dressed in little embroidered dresses with black velvet hair bands from Harvey Nicks.

The man pulls out the chair next to him and I have no choice but to sit down.

“Your father is an enigma, Peppah. I find him so hard to read.”

Walt presses my hand under the table. Be careful.

“You know him so much better than I do of course,” the man is saying. “Was he always this way?”

I look at Walt. He is clearly enjoying himself. Whatever game he is playing, I can play it too. Keen to show Walt how cool I can be, I turn to the man, smile sweetly, and say, “He hasn’t changed since I was a child.”

Now the men are talking amongst themselves, in another language. Now someone’s saying something about how good a Ukraine-Afghani company will be for international relations.

Now one of the other men is saying something about the fact that despite the tragedy of it, sometimes good things can come out of war.

Finally the check arrives and we all shake hands.

“Perfect timing, kid,” Walt says quietly into my ear as we’re leaving the bar.

Then Marin turns toward Walt to say good-bye. There’s a hardness in the man’s eyes that chills me. “Peppah, it was a pleasure,” he says, kissing my hand. “Walt. Until next time.”

As we walk away, Walt keeps saying, “We pulled it off, kid!”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” I say, delighted that he is delighted.

“Yes you did,” he says. “You arrived at just the right time. Ten minutes later and it might have been a different story.”

He doesn’t expand on why, and I don’t press him.

Walt’s brother Ben is due to meet us for a late brunch at the Gordon Grille. Walt has only just told him about my existence and some of the story behind it.

Ben is older than Walt, by about ten years, and does something important in the military. He is very tall, and extremely handsome, with auburn hair, an air of authority about him, and eyes the same shape as Walt’s and mine.

As soon as he walks into the restaurant I detect something in the way Ben looks at me that I do not like. Hell, he’s looking at me like I’m some sort of loose woman or something. Like I’m the illegitimate daughter of his brother’s mistress. A rush of anger hits me in the chest.

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” I say, with my back ramrod straight, smiling at him with all the British cool I can muster and holding out my hand to shake his. I will not bloody let him treat me with anything other than respect.

“Walt has told me so much about you.”

Responding to rudeness with extreme politeness is an old trick employed by English people, reputable and otherwise, for hundreds of years, and it works again here.

His expression changes instantly. Good. He’s ashamed of the way he looked at me and backtracks fast.

Two minutes later he’s at the edge of his seat, exactly where I want him. Riveted, respectful, charmed.

“And so, here I am,” I say. “Walt told me I belong in America, and he was right. I love it here.”

I have Ben under my spell. Sorry if it sounds immodest, but, as Charlotte always says, when I choose to turn my charm tap up to full, no one can resist me.

We all order
moules marinière.
We all dip our bread into the sauce. We all put the empty mussel shells on the side of the plate we’re eating from rather than in the bowl.

“This kid is you Walt! In female form!”

Later, when Walt has left the table to go to the loo, Ben says, “Your father is a great man.”

“Yes,” I say, “I know that. I’m just so sorry that, because of me, he never ran for Congress.”

Ben laughs. “Is that the reason he gave you?” Ben laughs again, until he has tears in his eyes.

Ben cannot stop laughing.

Like the men in the bar earlier, Ben’s laughter disturbs me—like an unidentifiable sound in the middle of the night.

It’s one o’clock in the morning and I don’t feel like going home yet, so I head for The Gold Room. The bar is empty apart from Jack, who is clearing up.

“Come for a nightcap?” he says.

“Yes.”

“Everything okay?”

“Fine,” I say.

“You sure?” He’s looking at me closely.

“Yup.”

Jack brings me a glass of chocolate milk.

“Pippa,” he says, “if you ever want to talk about anything, anything at all…”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I say.

Even if I was American, and used to talking about what I’m feeling, I don’t understand any of it. So how can I possibly articulate it without sounding like a lunatic?

Jack doesn’t press me, and I’m grateful for it.

When he’s done clearing up, Jack walks me to my car.