The English American (3 page)

“Sorry,” I said, somehow managing to hide my excitement.

Thank God I found the papers. Now that I knew the truth, I would never have to upset anyone by asking questions.

I mulled over the information I now had until it sunk in, repeating it to myself, over and over again.

I’m descended from remarkable people.

I’m an American.

My father was in politics and unfaithful to his wife.

I have red hair…

Of course. I am a Kennedy.

I selected the people I told this information to very carefully. With my best friends I’d say, “I’ve got a secret to tell you. I am not what I seem. I was adopted at birth, and my real father is a famous politician, probably a Kennedy.”

I’d wait for the fascinated expression that invariably followed this revelation.

“And,” I’d say, “there is evidence to suggest that my real mother is Emily Dickinson.” Or, when I read
The Bell Jar
, Sylvia Plath. Or, when I decided my true vocation was to become a playwright, Wendy Wasserstein.

I
T’S STILL RAINING AS
I
LEAVE WORK
,
and London smells of damp coats and bus fumes and cigarettes. A thousand feet are walking along the Strand, and down the hill toward Embankment tube. I’m high as a kite after winning top salesperson of the week again, and for the first time in the three months since I ended things with Miles, I feel my usual optimism return. I hold soft, sweet-smelling daffodils, my prize for selling the most, which dance against my face, kissing me as I walk. I’m full of joy and I feel light again.

If I were hip I wouldn’t tell you that I can whistle the tune to just about every musical ever written. The great ones uplift me as no other music can. But I’m not hip. I care even less about my hip factor than I do about the stain status of my clothing.

So I leave work whistling “Singin’ in the Rain” and walk at a healthy pace toward Trafalgar Square. Dad spent hours teaching me how to whistle when I was about eight. I’ve been a world-class whistler ever since. As I whistle, people on the street around me start to smile.

Today I look at each face as I pass by. Who are these people sharing the street with me? What is going on in their worlds, inside their heads? Are they in love? If so, is it the kind that Mum and Dad have? Based on having things in common, like raspberry picking and a love of dogs, and Shakespeare, and long country walks? Or is it the knock-you-out, eat-you-up, set-you-on-fire kind of love that I have longed for—and avoided—all my life?

Are they looking at me and wondering the same thing? Or are they just going home, not thinking about much in particular? Is it quiet inside their heads? Still? Peaceful?

A thousand thoughts compete with one another in my head, every day. They always have done. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have just one thought at a time. Like Mum and Dad and Charlotte.

When I get to Villiers Street, where you turn left off the Strand to get to the Embankment tube, I stop at the light. There’s a woman next to me. I can tell, from the way she is standing, and the look in her eyes, that she’s terribly unhappy. She’s about thirty, I think. Tall and thin, like me. In her shiny black boots with big silver buckles she looks like an elegant buccaneer.

It’s impossible to smile and whistle at the same time, so I turn my face to her and whistle the rest of the song in an attempt to cheer her up. The tune is almost lost in the traffic, but not quite.

Her response to my whistling is quite different from everybody else’s. The woman turns her pale, tightly drawn face toward me. Then she says, in a voice that’s both shaking and sharp: “People like you—Christ! You just have to draw attention to yourself, don’t you?”

Then she turns her head away and gets ready to move as soon as the traffic light turns green.

She seems so miserable, and I know what that’s like, because I’ve been feeling unhappy recently too. Bursting with the desire to make everything all right for her, I turn to her and say, “I’m sorry you’re having a horrible day. I’m sorry for annoying you. I—well, I hope these will cheer you up.” Then I hand her my bunch of daffodils.

The woman holds the flowers slightly away from her, her attention on the traffic light, which is about to change. Then, as a London bus revs up its engine, puffs warm exhaust into our faces, and rattles on down the famous London street, she drops the flowers on the ground and walks away.

If this happened to Charlotte, or just about anyone else I know, they’d brush it off and carry on with their day. But for me it hurts terribly. For me, any kind of rejection hurts terribly. It always has done. I’m even sensitive to little rejections—like the butcher giving the last chicken to the lady in the gray coat, even though she was behind me in the queue.

It’s the real reason why I’ve never actually auditioned for a singing job of any kind—or applied for a job somewhere like Amnesty International. I’d rather be accepted for a job I don’t care about than risk being rejected by one I do.

It’s the same with men.

When I’m on my own with a boyfriend, everything’s wonderful. But when we go into the outside world, I find myself on red alert, terrified the object of my affections will be making a date with the waitress if I so much as go to the loo. I never let on, of course. Because everybody knows the bloke stays with you if the chase is still on.

I thought I’d found the solution by dating the men least likely to leave me: Dull Blokes Only. That’s why, when Charlotte introduced me to Miles, I thought he’d be ideal.

He absolutely wasn’t my type. He loved to spend hours looking at old buildings, and he thought Benny Hill was funnier than Ricky Gervais, for God’s sake. He was big and spotty and laughed too much at his own jokes. Miles, I knew immediately, would never leave me. I would be the one to leave him. Thus I accepted his invitation to dinner with absolute confidence in my ability to stay in emotional control.

But Miles was kind, and even sexy in his own way. Before I knew it, to my surprise and dismay, I was in love again.

We settled down. In the morning, Miles rode his yellow moped to work and spent the day designing corporate websites. We made love in the evenings, sometimes on the floor of his office, sometimes at my flat, once in the ladies’ room at the Tate.

The more time we spent together, the more afraid I became that he would go off with somebody else. And, as usual, everything became about trying to make sure that didn’t happen.

Once we bumped into an attractive friend of mine on the street, and she invited us to a dinner party. I couldn’t make it because it fell on the same night as Hanif Kureishi’s playwriting workshop at the Royal Court. I’d been looking forward to it for months.

“Why don’t you come anyway, Miles?” she offered.

“Not without me!” I said, instantly on the alert.

“Why on earth not?” they said together, turning to me in unison. My heart was beating twice as fast as it had been seconds before, but I smiled quickly, pretending to consult my diary.

“What an idiot,” I said. “Got the date wrong. The playwriting workshop is
next
week. I am free on Friday after all.” And so Miles and I went to the dinner party together, and I spent the evening checking to see if he showed any interest in other women, but pretending not to. And, even though I knew we weren’t really “right” for each other, I flirted conspicuously with the bloke sitting next to me, to make Miles jealous. So he’d love me more. And never leave me.

When we got back to his flat Miles held me tightly, all night, his bearlike body wrapped around mine. I felt utterly at peace. But in the morning, when his body left mine…All I can say is that it’s all-consuming, the panic that sets in. And I know it’s all in my head, because no bloke has ever gone off with someone else.

“Oh Pip,” Miles said one morning, “I don’t want to do anything else. I just want to be with you. Always.”

For a second, my heart eased. But as soon as it did, I started worrying about the next time. So I said, “I think we need a break.” I told Miles, and myself, we were completely wrong for each other, returned the matching yellow moped he’d given me for my birthday, and took up smoking again.

It’s awful. I’m awful. And it’s been going on for years.

Recently I’ve begun to wonder if it might have something to do with the fact that I was adopted.

Maybe if I found out that my mother gave me up for adoption because she had to—and not because she took one look at me and went “yuck”—I’d no longer have a fear of rejection. And then I might finally be able to fall in love totally, absolutely—maybe even honestly—without the panic that sets in. Like normal people.

When the woman rejects my flowers, the feeling of joy disappears. By the time I get to the ticket counter at Embankment, the sense of despair that’s been haunting me recently returns. London isn’t beautiful anymore. It’s dirty. The smell of stale piss that I didn’t notice the first time I came through the tunnel hits me, now, as strongly as the stench of rubbish on the street and the vomit on the wall. I can see, now, that the other people are just tired and want to go home. I no longer care who they are or what’s going on in any of their lives. I just want to go home too.

I don’t know where my long-lost mother is. Or who she is. Or how she is. Or whether or not she’d want to have anything to do with me. But in my mind’s eye, she’s with me on the tube, which is thundering through the underground tunnel toward Kew.

She has a lovely, serene face. She’s singing to me now. Soothing me.

She understands the joy. She understands the terror. She understands everything.

I
GET OFF THE TUBE
and walk up the ivy-covered stone steps to my flat and into my room. I wade through piles of clothes, some dirty, some not, and climb up onto the window seat in my bedroom.

The Abbey looks almost ethereal at night, bathed as it is in murky yellow light from the street lamp on the corner.

A group of Benedictine monks lives on one side of the Abbey, and a group of Benedictine nuns lives on the other side. I used to tell people that if you looked very closely, in the middle of the night, you’d be able to see the monks and the nuns sneaking up onto the roof of the Abbey and dancing together in the shadows.

I lie down on the comfy maroon and cream window-seat cushion that Mum made me for Christmas and fall asleep. I dream that the nuns and the monks are dancing their nightly dance. The wind is up and the branches of the huge oak tree at the end of the road are swaying furiously. The dancers have a wildness about them I’ve not seen before.

Then one of the nuns and one of the monks lift their habits and become the parents who gave me birth. I’m watching them from inside my room. All the lights have gone off, and it’s pitch black. They can’t see me, but I know they’re there. They come to the bay window in my bedroom. In unison, they reach out their hands and open the heavy curtains. Then I wake up and, in that state between wake and sleep, make the phone call that changes everything.

The call itself doesn’t last more than five minutes. But it has the power to catapult me out of the world I know, into an in-between world, from which the “me” I thought I was can never return.

It’s nine thirty. I dial international directory enquiries and ask the operator for the telephone number for the adoption agency in New York City where my parents collected me when I was six weeks old.

I’m not expecting anyone to pick up. I’m expecting an answering machine.

“Post-adoption services, can I help you?”

“Oh. Hallo,” I say. “Um—my name is Pippa Dunn. I’m calling from London. In England.”

Shut up, Pip. Of course they know that London’s in England.

There’s a pause and the sound of rustling paper.

“Yes, Pippa, I remember you well.” The woman’s voice is nasal and efficient and American. “You called a few years ago, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes, I did,” I say.

The last time I called the adoption agency I was in the same state I’m in today, when I just do something, without planning to. It usually happens when I’m tired either due to lack of sleep or to the sugar crash that follows an excessive consumption of Maltesers, chocolate buttons, or if I’m particularly hungry, a large bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut.

About three years ago I’d called to make a general inquiry about what I would need to do if I ever decided to trace the woman who gave me birth. The woman at the other end of the phone asked me if I had any siblings and I’d said, “No, I’m not married.” And then I felt like a complete idiot later when I realized what she meant.

“Oh yes,” she’s saying now. “It’s Judy. I remember you well! We don’t get beautiful British accents calling here every day, you know!”

She sounds excited.

“Something unusual happened,” she’s saying. “The day after you last called, your birth mother came into the agency. The very next day! Isn’t that something? We all thought it was just such an extraordinary coincidence…”

There’s a long pause, this time at my end. Mum’s maroon and cream curtains are moving slightly in the breeze.

I was expecting a bland recorded message, on which I would probably have hung up. I wasn’t expecting this. Sparks of adrenaline are shooting off, like tiny fireworks, inside my chest.

“So she’s all right?” I ask. “My mother…she’s all right? I mean she’s alive? And…and real?” I sound like an idiot again.

“Oh yes,” Judy says. “She’s certainly real. And it says here—yes—she’s open to contact.”

I take a deep breath in a futile attempt to calm myself down.

“Why?” I say. “Um, why did she come into the agency? And what should I do, if I wanted to maybe meet her? Or find out more about her? Or reassure her she did the right thing, and thank her, for…for giving me up to the most wonderful life?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t disclose any information over the phone,” Judy says. “You need to write us a letter.”

“What sort of letter?”

Judy has gone back into practiced mode now.

“Oh, you know, a letter saying who you are and why you want more information. It may take some time for us to respond. There are only two of us here at post-adoption services and we’re getting requests like yours every day.”

Poor Judy, she sounds tired. I feel guilty taking up her time.

“I’ll write to you,” I say. “Thank you so much—thank you, thank you, thank you.”

I put down the telephone. I’m shaking, and my heart feels tight.

The mother I have dreamed of and wondered about all my life is alive, and real, and—oh, best of all—“open to contact”!

The excitement is accompanied by a thud of guilt. How can I do this to Mum and Dad? The maroon and cream bedspread that Mum made to go with the curtains reproaches me from the floor.

I look around my room. My orangutan washing bag is still stuffed full of dirty laundry. The Oriental carpet I brought back from Kashmir is still desperately in need of a clean. The Abbey is still standing in the shadows under the moon, which is still full. Everything looks the same and yet it is not the same.

Minutes ago my mother was a ghostly figure, asleep in the back of my mind.

Now she has become real.

I sit down and write the letter Judy asked for. Miraculously I find an envelope, stick far too many stamps on it—better safe than sorry—and run down the end of the road to post it before I can change my mind.

The next morning, I clamber into Typhoo—my beaten-up old Renault 5, named after my favorite tea—and drive along the familiar road to Mum and Dad’s house. My mind is still racing.

I was afraid she wouldn’t want to see me.

But she does want to see me!

As I drive, badly and fast, past the house Mum lived in as a child, which is now a teashop, I try to think of moments in my life that might have caused the feeling that has overtaken me. I can’t describe it as anything other than longing.

Mum first told me I was adopted when I was about six years old. We were living in Hong Kong at the time, in a lovely, light four-bedroom apartment that looked over the Star Ferry. I could watch it chugging back and forth across Hong Kong harbor from my bedroom window. Mum had just finished reading
The Hundred and One Dalmatians,
and I’d asked Mum how the puppies were born, and she was explaining that they came out of Perdita’s tummy.

“Is that how human babies come?”

“Yes,” Mum said. “Human babies grow inside their mummy’s tummies too. Only with human beings, there’s usually only one baby at a time.”

“I see.”

I loved this time of day, just before bedtime, when Mum tried to bring some kind of order to my unruly red hair, by brushing it and brushing it, with her cool, carefully manicured hands. I secretly wished I had smooth blond hair, like Mum’s and Charlotte’s, despite the fact that Mum was always telling me how pretty mine was. I bent my head back so she could brush from the top of my head down.

“So Charlotte and I came out of your tummy?”

The brushing stopped for a second, and then started again.

“No, darling.”

“No?”

“Charlotte came out of my tummy.”

There was a pause in the brushing. Then it started again.

“Didn’t I come out of your tummy too?”

“Well, no, darling. Before Charlotte was born, we thought there was something wrong with Mummy’s tummy. We thought we couldn’t have a baby. We wanted a baby very much, so we came and got you from the adoption agency. As soon as we saw you, we knew you were the perfect baby for us. And so we brought you home. You were chosen, darling,” Mum said gently, smiling at me in the mirror, with tears in her eyes.

Within a second my worldview shifted. I was special. I had been chosen. But my poor little sister. She wasn’t chosen, like me. She just came. From that moment on, I was as kind to Charlotte as it’s possible for a six-year-old to be.

The first time I remember actually picturing the mother who gave me birth was in the middle of a freezing February night at boarding school. I was eleven years old and in deep trouble for shoving the clothes under my bed that I was supposed to have folded and put away.

I was sent to see Miss Steel, who was not at all happy at being called out of bed to discipline a student. Especially Pippa Dunn, again. The phrases Miss Steel used in her school reports were tame in comparison with how she spoke to me in person. Miss Steel’s face was almost as white as the pictures you see of Queen Elizabeth the First.

“Your punishment,” she said, standing ramrod straight in her buttoned-up dressing gown, “will be to stand under the clock in the cloakroom until it strikes twelve. You will not speak. You will not move. Upon the stroke of twelve, you may return to bed.”

It was dark under the clock, and the cloaks took on scary shapes. I shut my eyes tightly. There was a draft coming through the cloakroom door, so I pulled the sleeves of my dressing gown over my hands like mittens.

I tried to think of anything but the scary gray cloaks, which looked like monks’ habits. The harder I tried not to think about the scary cloaks, the more like faceless, heaving monsters they became: hanging on their hooks in menacing rows, waiting, challenging me not to look at them.

So I looked above the cloaks, not at them. And when I did, I thought I saw my long-lost mother, looking down at me from above the racks. She was there and yet not there. She was sort of transparent, and she was smiling right at me.

She was beautiful, and delicate, with red hair, like mine, only hers wasn’t springy. It was long and smooth and cascaded down her back like a mane. And her eyes were gentle and kind. The sight of her filled me with warmth and made all the fear go away.

And that’s how she’s come to me, over the years. Until now.

I’m driving through Fenhurst now. The Spread Eagle Hotel—yes, that’s its real name—stands in all its glory, bridging the road in the middle of town, as ugly today as it was when it was first built over six hundred years ago. I spent a night there with Miles once. Wooden beams, white walls, a bed covered in a pink floral bedspread that sloped too far to the left, karaoke in the bar the night before, and no air-conditioning.

I drive toward my parents’ house in Peaseminster heavy with guilt. The adoption thing was something that happened a long time ago that Mum and Dad put right. But now here I am, about to bring up the one thing that can only cause pain to the people I love most in the world.