L'America

by Martha McPhee

  "We'll be there," Sylvia said. She threw him a kiss.

  "This is just the beginning," he said to her. To Beth he said, "Good-bye, Beth," catching her again with his smile, understanding everything but generous just the same. Where is he now, that boy? Chas. The night he serenaded them in Nice they let him come up to their room. He helped them finish off the cheap wine and they talked until dawn about their brief lives and his exotic plans. The four years that separated Chas from the girls and the sea of experience that is college didn't seem like a lot to them then. Traveling you are outside of time.

  The girls told him about Beth's father's commune in Snyder County and about growing up there and all the odd folks from all over the world who had passed through at one point or another. "I could just stay there and see the world," Beth had said, and explained that that's what her father did, that he never left because according to him there was no need. Beth knew her father's attachment to Claire was deeper, more paralyzing, but she didn't speak about that.

  "You could just go there," Sylvia suggested to Chas.

  Indian scientists, Chinese doctors, herbalists from Africa, a scholar from New York, a French chef, an Italian fashion designer, a Spanish engineer—at one point or another every type passed through Claire. Claire was a colorful place with colorful notions of idealism, built on extravagant dreams and fantasies, and Sylvia (as observer) loved to describe it: all the apple trees and berries grown organically; the chaos; the pantry with its sheer abundance of food; Beth's father's penchant for allowing Revolutionary War aficionados to stage reenactments on the front lawn (cannons, muskets, and all); the vast games of football (tackle not touch) that they had been playing on the weekends since the girls were small. Sylvia loved Beth's father, Jackson, too—ambitious dreamer, big round head suspended on his shoulders like a globe, sitting at his desk at Claire, writing to the government to tell them about the potential of hydrogen for fuel, disseminating information to schools and businesses around the world, hoping he would be heard. He always had time for Sylvia, even with all the business of the farm. He'd squat down so that he could look her in the eye to explain what it meant to drive a hydrogen-fueled car (an idea that her own father, who was suspicious of Beth's father and Claire, described as bunkum); he showed her clippings of a van that actually did use this technology (albeit a funny-looking van with hardly any room for passengers). Jackson taught her to throw a football, he taught her to build a fire, he taught her to pay attention to the sky, to lie in the grass and look up at it, so that she could learn to read it and know what kind of day it would be. Mostly, she loved the attention he paid her, as if her curiosity really did interest him. She envied Beth for how important her father must have made her feel.

  But she didn't say all this to Chas. To Chas she simply described the funny romance of Claire, exaggerating details enough to make him laugh even if at Claire's expense as she always did when describing it for strangers. Beth didn't take offense; she adored listening to her friend describe her world, appreciated the intimacy with which Sylvia knew Claire, her humor about it as if it were her world, too, as if they shared it like sisters. In contrast, Sylvia had one sister and a mother who stayed at home and a father who was a lawyer for the local university. Theirs was a life as foreign to Beth as another country but one that she loved to visit for the sheer reliability of it. Sylvia's home was like Switzerland—everything functioning, well oiled, on time.

  "And your mother?" Sylvia asked Chas, and perhaps that's when he fell in love—because her mind missed nothing. Her auburn hair fell across her left eye and she tilted her head, giving him all of her attention.

  "She's dead," he said. He lit the two candles on the small balcony table. Sulfur sparked the air, then vanished. The flames reflected in their eyes.

  "So is mine," Beth said matter-of-factly. There was no hole or pang of pain, just an instant of recognition, though Beth realized she had never known another person whose mother was dead.

  "I'm sorry," Sylvia said. She was addressing Chas, but her sympathy extended to Beth. It had always been that way for Sylvia; she felt sorry for Beth because she knew what Beth didn't have. She saw it every time her mother hugged Beth, felt it viscerally. In some ways, it's what made Sylvia's love for Beth ferocious—as if she could give her just a little of what she was missing.

  "No need," Chas said, and Beth knew his mother had been gone a long time, too. He played old country tunes, singing the girls to sleep. He blew out the candles and tucked them in and disappeared to his room just before dawn.

  "Good-bye, Chas," Beth said to him as he ran alongside the train. She felt ugly and greedy, like a selfish two-year-old unwilling to share, but she was also content to have Sylvia again for her own. The train picked up speed.

  Choice: one of the great mysteries of love. The Surrealist thinker, André Breton, was kept up at night contemplating the meaning of choice and love. Exclusive love is the result of choice, but isn't that choice the result of a series of coincidences? Might those coincidences have a meaning, obey a hidden logic? Breton well understood the moment when chance transforms the world into something rich and strange. Objective chance, he called it—that moment of recognition of the extraordinary in the ordinary, the moment when coincidence—Fate?—offers up the answer to a question that hasn't yet been asked; the moment when love finds its object and two lives are bound together forever.

  The train south on that Spanish night is entwined with Fate—the great hand of Lachesis, sister of Clotho and Atropos, daughter of Themis—spinning human destiny. Her hand comes down and we are simply playthings, instruments in her delightful little game. Her hand came down and gently set Beth on a different course—for this is Beth's story. You can see it clearly in retrospect, there like an old roadmap to your life. Do you remember that moment, that time, when the world felt perfect and the future impossibly easy and there was only one inevitable direction?

  Chas was a part of the past, behind them now, and it was dark and late and the girls were tired and suddenly aware that the train was crowded. Travelers lined the corridors and even the entrance wells near the bathrooms; many of them were as young as Beth and Sylvia, lugging backpacks, smoking, looking older than their age but tired like the children that they were. Beth, feeling guilty about Chas, tried to make Sylvia comfortable. "Are you sorry we left?" she kept asking, and Sylvia would smile her winning smile. The thing about Sylvia was that once she made a decision she didn't regret and she rarely held a grudge. Sylvia was already flipping through the guidebook, ready to start with her plans. But Beth knew that she had been bossy and demanding and she had forbidden her friend a chance. She got up and opened all the compartments to see if they were actually filled, which they were, overflowing with entire families—children, uncles, grandparents, many of them snoring. Walking down the narrow corridors as the train bumped along, she had to be careful not to step on sprawling limbs, fingers, and toes. So many travelers had made themselves comfortable just as if they were in the privacy of their own rooms, mouths agape. She didn't want people looking at her while she slept. She slid open another door, poked her head in, and saw a group of six nuns who were eating rice from tins and drinking water from metal cups, the cheap kind that leave a metallic taste on your tongue. They spoke quietly in some unfamiliar language that Beth imagined was Euskera. She studied them for a moment and they her, then she shut the door and turned back to Sylvia, who was squatting in the corridor. The car swayed, catching Beth off balance, and she stumbled against her friend.

  "We can sleep here," Sylvia said. "An adventure." And she opened her eyes wide and invitingly. She began to unfold her sleeping bag and Beth helped her. "I'll keep watch," Beth said. One of the nuns slid open the door to her compartment and looked at the two girls. The old lady's mouth puckered and her lips trembled involuntarily. It seemed a long time passed, as if she (in her habit and her veil) were studying them, as if she herself might be Lachesis. Then indeed with her hand she beckoned the girls in.


  The nuns welcomed the girls into their compartment. They helped them stow their backpacks on the racks overhead; they made space for the girls to sit; they fed the girls rice and water, murmuring to one another in their unfamiliar tongue. One of them opened the window a crack for air, letting in as well the whistle and cries of the train. Cradled against the soft laps of the nuns, the girls fell asleep, rocked gently as the train hummed and swayed through the moonless night.

  In the morning the nuns were gone. Sylvia was stretched out on one side of the compartment and Beth on the other, all the seats to themselves, their sweaters wrapped neatly around their shoulders.

  "Was that a dream?" Sylvia asked. The only sounds belonged to the rhythms of the train.

  "Where were we yesterday?" Beth said. Light pushed around the edges of the curtains. Sylvia pulled them open. Sun alone filled the crowded corridor of the night before.

  "Yesterday's gone," Sylvia Summerhaze said.

  "I suppose," Beth replied, as if that fact were debatable.

  "Is Madrid on the ocean?" Sylvia asked, standing at the window.

  "It's definitely not on the ocean," Beth said, still lying down, not paying much attention. She loved being rocked by the train. She could have lain there forever.

  "Is there a lake in Madrid?" Sylvia persisted.

  "There's no lake in Madrid," Beth said, getting up to see. But she had only a vague memory of Spain's geography. The train was traveling parallel to a huge body of water.

  "Where are the nuns?" Sylvia asked abruptly, as if their disappearance was somehow linked to the appearance of water outside. Beth looked under the seats, pretending to hunt for the nuns. Sylvia laughed.

  "Do you have your money belt?" Sylvia asked, clutching at her waist.

  "They were nuns," Beth said.

  "They could have been gypsies," Sylvia said. "In disguise." But everything was where it should be except that body of water, the Mediterranean, vast and cornflower blue, like another sky.

  "You and your gypsies," Beth said.

  The train had divided in the night, half of it heading to Madrid, the other half to Barcelona, the conductor explained to them with a Spanish smile in a tangle of broken languages. Rome, Athens, Istanbul replaced Portugal and Africa, and the girls' imaginations became rich with new possibility.

  When Beth and Sylvia left the train station in Barcelona, a group of Americans with toy drums, guitars, balloons, and American flags marched by, singing the "Star-Spangled Banner." They were drinking cheap wine and offering some to all the Americans they passed. Beth and Sylvia, shouldering their backpacks, joined the parade as it snaked its way across the city, down the Gran Via, through the Parc de la Ciutadella and the Portal de la Pau to Las Ramblas, where the street came alive with folk dancers and living statues, musicians and magicians, vendors selling a bit of everything. A paunchy old American man marching next to the girls offered them more of that wine that tasted like whiskey as he gave them a lecture on patriotic songs. He was shirtless and he smelled of sweat and garlic. He told them the story of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," of how he wrote it for a burlesque show initially. He asked them if they knew who wrote the national anthem (they didn't) and told them about Francis Scott Key, poet-lawyer, inspired to write the poem by "the valiant defense of Fort McHenry from the British on September 13, 1814." Beth remembered pledging allegiance to the flag every morning when she attended the public elementary school, saw her little self with her right hand to her heart. Even so, she never thought about patriotism or being a patriot, of dying for love of land and country. And she could not, for the life of her, remember the pledge. "But nothing," the old man said, smiling at the girls, "beats Katharine Lee Bates's ‘America the Beautiful.' ‘Thine alabaster cities gleam...'" he sang, flashing his yellow teeth. New York rose before Beth and Sylvia, shimmering buildings emerging from the sea. It was hot. They had had too much wine. "She began writing it on top of Pike's Peak, for goodness gracious." He spit the words.

  "I get it," Sylvia said, nudging Beth. "It's the Fourth of July." They burst out laughing from drunken silliness, and then, gesturing to each other in their private language (more ridiculous than specific, involving raised eyebrows and crossed eyes), decided to escape, as if leaving the parade would involve a plan more complicated than merely slipping away. The old man started giving his lecture to some other young girls.

  Just off Las Ramblas, Beth and Sylvia passed a little hotel advertising cheap rates. (It was a brothel, but they didn't know it.) Pretty Spanish girls with long hair and dark made-up eyes sashayed by as Beth and Sylvia waited at a small table in the courtyard for their room to be cleaned. Red geraniums with creeping ivy cheered up the interior balconies. Two cats arched their backs in unison and then began to lick their paws, lounging in a cool spot of shade. A dark burly man sat opposite the girls, wine in a water glass on the table in front of him. He took a sip, looked at the girls, and offered them a drink by raising his glass. He seemed old to them, in his thirties or so. Beth couldn't decide if he was handsome or very ugly. The girls looked at each other, conferring silently, and decided to accept the offer. In Spanish he called for a bottle and some glasses. The girls could always drink more, even though by now, after marching all over Barcelona, they were decidedly drunk.

  "Me, Carlos Alberto," the man said, pointing to his chest. His accent was thick. He had a leer to his eye, a bit too eager. "Brazilian football star, World Cup champion," he added.

  "Me Jane," Sylvia said, pointing to her chest. Beth laughed hysterically, far more than the comment warranted. Her cheeks and nose flushed.

  "Y tu?" Carlos said to Beth. She drew a little mirror out of her bag and put on some lipstick and powder to cover up the heat she felt on her face.

  "Me Beth," she said.

  "Me like Beth," he said.

  "Me like Beth, too," Sylvia said, and hugged her friend and kissed her on the lips. Beth felt a thrilling sensation race through her and then a little shock. He poured them more wine.

  "Nice," he said. "Very nice. What's your country? German?"

  "Ich bin ein Berliner," Sylvia said. He didn't seem to understand the reference.

  "Tedesca," Beth agreed. She didn't know how to say German in German, but she knew the Italian. Beth and Sylvia looked at each other again with that knowing look, a look that indicated they liked the idea of being German for an instant, liked being something—anything—other than what they were.

  "USA?" Carlos guessed again, pronouncing it "oosa."

  "Football is soccer," Sylvia said to Beth.

  "I'm not stupid," Beth said, and they burst out laughing again. The World Cup was being played all across Spain. Tomorrow Italy would play Brazil. Star striker Paolo Rossi would lead Italy to a three-two victory. The girls were only vaguely aware of the World Cup and knew very little about soccer. But they liked the idea of a soccer champion. Beth decided he was sort of cute in that burly, athletic way. And she found the eye attentive rather than leering.

  "We'd have to share him," Beth whispered to Sylvia. "After Chas..."

  "You can have this one," Sylvia said.

  "Oosa," Beth admitted.

  "Land of the free," Sylvia said.

  "It's the Fourth of July," Beth said.

  "Your birthday. A votre santé" Carlos said in French, and raised his glass. He seemed, to the girls, to be trying out a bunch of languages.

  "Don't they speak Spanish in Brazil?" Beth asked Sylvia.

  "Or is it Italian?" Sylvia said.

  It took a long time for their room to be made up. Carlos entertained them with soccer stories and wine and with pictures of himself standing next to his brand-new red Ferrari. It was when he got out those pictures that they believed he really could be a soccer star, although they couldn't understand whether he was playing tomorrow in Brazil's game against Italy, or if he was a former star. If he was playing, why was he staying in this hotel and not someplace nicer, and if he was so rich, why was he staying in this hotel, which cost un
der ten dollars a night? All these questions and more swirled through their heads, but they liked his attention. "My baby, this car. It killed a little boy. Accident," he explained in his broken English, as if the car had acted alone.

  "Oh, that's awful," Beth said. When Beth's mother was killed by the fast car in Turkey, Beth had been with her grandmother in New York City. Claire had not been killed instantly. Indeed, Jackson insisted that had they been in America she would have survived, a mantra Beth heard across her childhood but that she did not believe. Those small, slow Turkish roads were to blame, he would say; it had taken too long to get her to a hospital. This image of her mother shot through Beth's mind then vanished as it had thousands of times before, and she simply saw the boy standing on the road, fine one instant then gone. Then, for some reason, she thought of Anna Karenina screwing up her eyes, high on morphine and grand passion. Carlos poured her more wine. She noticed that his hands were very big.

  Sylvia excused herself and went to the bathroom, and while she was gone Carlos tried to kiss Beth. "You're soft, so tender," he said. But she wouldn't let him kiss her because instead of seeing his face she saw the boy's face as if Carlos had shown her a snapshot of the boy as well as of the car that killed him. Then the boy's face became Chas's. "I'm tipsy," she said, and sank against Carlos's shoulder, feeling a desire to be protected. Somehow she wanted to cry. She thought she could start crying and never stop. She was a mean ugly awful person. She wanted her father, her funny father who lived in his dreams and would never leave Claire. She wondered for an instant, and then banished the thought as she had so many times before, what her mother and father had been like together. Like Chas and a pretty smart girl eager to know and devour the world? Chas and Sylvia marching into the light of the rising moon?