The Anglophile

by Laurie Gwen Shapiro

  “Well maybe you’ll have the energy for his son when his medication kicks in.”

  “Hey, listen. One handsome man in my life is enough!”

  “His son is handsome? Maybe the doctor’s making a good match—”

  “When he was twelve. And hey, I just called you handsome—” I wave my hand to dismiss this bit of silly conversation. Kit grins as I give him a playful squeeze on his elbow. “Anyway, how is this ambrosia coming out of my dinky coffeemaker?”

  “I made it differently. I boiled it in a pot, and then drained it. You don’t get enough caffeine in those makers.”

  “I’m impressed. You can make me coffee every day of my life. I can’t touch this.”

  We sip and comfortably stare into each other’s eyes.

  Is he as wonderstruck as I am by how everything except a timely passport has just magically worked out for us? “A penny for your thoughts,” I say.

  “I’m a very happy man.” I kiss him again on his nose. “A pence for yours.”

  I smile guiltily. “I was thinking about how this is the smug coupledom Bridget Jones hated so.”

  He double-checks my eyes, surprised. “You read that kind of fluff?”

  “Um. Yeah. To relax.”

  He scrunches his nose.

  I hit him on his arm. “Hey, snob! Look at me, Kit! Lay off Bridget Jones. A woman is fighting for two British men’s affections. You think I’m not going to like it?”

  “I just thought you were more selective.”

  “Excuse me, Cambridge snob. And by the way Helen Fielding is very smart. She ‘read English’ at Oxford.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Oh, you picked up that obnoxious phrase from my little shitty America.”

  He sniggers. “You’re the one with class consciousness, not me.”

  “I’m not asking you to be my therapist, arse-hole. I’m just saying, you leave off Helen Fielding and further-more, if you ever, ever say a word against The Secret Garden I’ll wring your neck.”

  “That’s a kid’s book. Apples and oranges.”

  “Sure, but it’s my all-time favorite book. I’m just giving you a heads-up.”

  “What is it with women and The Secret Garden? Every girl I’ve ever gone out with talks about this book.”

  “It’s sexy.”

  “It’s a kids’ book. How sexy can it be?”

  I think for a second as he smirks at me. “There’s this tradition of treacly American TV specials called Hallmark Hall of Fame. They aired their version of The Secret Garden in the late eighties.”

  “So naturally, you watched it.”

  “Of course I did. And the girls I liked best on my dorm floor had to watch, too. That was one of the first times I saw my man Colin Firth, as the grown-up Colin passionately kissing Mary.”

  “Your man,” Kit laughs to himself.

  “Yes, my man,” I say defensively. “We cheered from the couch. The writer and director simply rewrote them as family friends, because they knew what girls really wanted from those characters, and finally had them go for it.”

  “Should I reread Rin Tin Tin for the sex scenes?”

  “Is there anything else you want to deride me about?”

  Kit sips and then says, “Yes, as a matter of fact. Did you ever have a conversation before about how you sleep?”

  “Why, how do I sleep?”

  “You’re like an arrow spearing me in the side. You twist sideways, and you’re constantly jabbing your feet into me.”

  “Whoa. That’s specific.”

  “Well, if we’re going to sleep together some more, and I assume we are, we need to figure out a solution.”

  “Yeah, well talk to me as soon as you trim your toenails, Kit. It’s like nuzzling up to a horned stag.”

  Kit coughs indignantly, but the ringing phone halts the littlest of duels.

  “Two more days,” another woman from the passport service insists after a loud sneeze. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  “There’s a backup due to terrorism,” I preempt her. Her coworker is probably avoiding me after I called her on her expedition skills.

  “Exactly. So you’ve been keeping tabs on the…”

  I grunt toward the receiver when I hang up. “We have to change our tickets again. There’s no way British Airways is having this.”

  “Drink your coffee, I’ll call.”

  “Oh God, thank you. I don’t think I can listen to this.” I choose Cathy’s bedroom with its softer light and thick new mattress perfect for reading the paper. I lie across her expensive down quilt. I must remember to neaten it before we leave for the day; she’ll be back tomorrow.

  Kit calls me out again.

  “That’s fixed. So what are we going to do with still more extra days in New York?”

  “British Airways went for it? No crazy fee?”

  “We’re going four days later than our original plans. That should give us time for that bloody passport.”

  “You’re my hero. How did you do it?”

  “Charm school,” Kit says between chews. After his success on the phone, he’s finally trying out the bubble gum tape I bought him in a Korean deli.

  I blow out air in envy and awe. “Cambridge is one damn expensive charm school.”

  Kit laughs and says, “Maybe with the extra time I can meet your brothers or your mother.”

  “My mother is easy,” I say. “Gene and Alan, that’ll take a bit of finagling.”

  “Finagle then. Can’t we do it in one hit? How about a dinner party? We can host it here.”

  Our lot is decided by a phone call later that afternoon from my banker brother Gene.

  “Hey, stranger, what’s new?”

  “Not much,” I lie.

  What would Gene be telephoning about? Even if we’re not exceptionally close anymore, we’re on okay terms. But he never calls.

  “Were you planning on calling me this century?”

  “Of course, but you can call, too.” I swallow guiltily. As a matter of fact, I was very close to ringing him this morning after facing facts: even though asking for a handout is just not done in my family, I’m going to need a loan as I sort out my botched dissertation. A trip through England is a luxury, but what then? I have to do it. My stomach tenses. Do I have to do this now?

  “You hear about the funeral? I got the call from Eric.”

  “Wait—what—Dot died?” Sure, I complain about Dot’s incessant nagging to my mom, but I don’t want my aunt dead. In one instant I realize I love(d) her.

  “No. The skunk.”

  I breathe out. “Oh, my God! Dot’s okay?”

  “You thought Dot died, idiot? You really think I’d be jabbering away when I said hello?”

  “It’s been a rough week. Don’t fight me today.”

  “Who’s fighting? I’m just the messenger. We have to go to the funeral. It’s tomorrow. They need to bury him in twenty-four hours.”

  “Why? Because he is going to decompose after that and stink up the place?”

  “No, because he’s a Jewish skunk.”

  “What?”

  “You have to bury a Jew in twenty-four hours.”

  “He’s a skunk.”

  “This is Dot we’re talking about. It’s going to be at an animal cemetery in Westchester tomorrow.”

  “She lives in the Catskills though.”

  “Apparently this is the best resting place a skunk can go to rot. It’s where Judy Garland’s dog is. That was a big drawing card.”

  “Can’t you or Mom represent?”

  “Represent? Who am I, Snoop Dog?”

  “Listen, I have a friend from England in town. I’m touring him around.”

  “Listen, then you have to take him. Mom says Galoot—”

  “Galoot,” I repeat with considerable sarcasm.

  “Galoot,” he picks up after a little laugh. “Yeah, Galoot was like a son to Dot. Mom’ll never hear the end of it if we don’t go.”

  Uncle
Sam, as quirky as he is with the chronic gift-giving, is from my mother’s side, the Blums. I can’t think of one Blum that is really off his or her rocker. But I cannot subject Kit to the full-blown Diamond madness. Can Kit spend another day on his own? Maybe he can take in the Guggenheim or the revamped MoMA.

  “I’m not promising anything. Give me the details,” I say to my brother as Kit looks at me inquisitively.

  “Alan’s coming.”

  “Alan? Our Alan?”

  “I do not lie.”

  Alan Andrew Diamond has always been the most difficult for my mother to wrangle, especially when we were kids. In the morning he’d go through all of evolution before he could fully function as a human being. He has the strongest will of anyone I know, in a negative way, and even to this day he leads the pack of everyone I know for most phobic.

  “If Alan can leave the sandals behind and come, you can get your ass out there, too. Do it for Mom. Surrender now. You can fight her for an hour, but she’s going to make sure you do the right thing.”

  “The Catskills is so convenient.”

  “No, I told you, pay attention. The funeral is closer than that. In Hartsdale, next to Scarsdale. Galoot’s getting the royal burial at a famous pet cemetery.”

  “Dot.” My single word sentence is loaded with disapproval.

  “She’s your flesh and blood, and she loves you.”

  “You’re working for your mother now?”

  “You’re going to cave. Let’s get it over with.”

  “We just returned the car rental.”

  “What’s your roommate’s name? Cathy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Cathy and you don’t have the kind of money to be renting cars. Use the subway. Isn’t that the point of living in Manhattan?”

  “Pay attention. I told you, I have a visitor from England in town. A guy. We’ve been sightseeing.”

  “Then bring him along. If he’s a visitor here, he might even enjoy it.”

  “A cemetery? C’mon.”

  “This place sounds kind of insane. Mom was reading to me from the brochure she picked up with Dot when they made the arrangements.”

  “What, they picked out a skunk casket?”

  “Rosewood. Cost Dot five hundred bucks.”

  “Um, I was joking.”

  “And there’s lots of famous dead dogs. You can come to my house and I’ll drive you.”

  “Let me talk to my friend and I’ll call you back.”

  When I click the receiver down, Kit say, “Oh, goodie. A skunk funeral.”

  “You don’t want to go to this.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously. And why are you so shocked about Alan coming? Did he have a fight with Dot?”

  “You picked all of this up?”

  “My conversations with my family last four seconds. Americans are very expressive.”

  I throw my crumbled napkin at him. “Alan is a handful.”

  “How’s that? You haven’t really talked about your brothers too much.”

  I list just some of Alan’s countless phobias over the years: green olives stuffed with pimiento, vomiting, plungers, a postcard of the Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights a neighbor once sent to my mother from Madrid, undercooked egg, sharp whistle blasts, and the sharp-toothed boar in the We Serve Only Boar’s Head meat products sign in the window of our local deli.

  “Is that all?”

  “And barber chairs.”

  “And melty chocolate?”

  “No, he loves chocolate. Who doesn’t love chocolate?”

  “Call Gene back. Tell him we’re coming.”

  I do, and agree to bring Kit to Gene’s apartment via the F Train. From there he will give us a lift.

  CHAPTER 10

  Car Pool

  Gene’s two-bedroom spread is in Parker Towers, one of the more enviable apartment buildings in Forest Hills. In the ride up to the nineteenth floor I explain to Kit that my older brother’s interiors will look professionally done because they were designed by his old girlfriend Jill—a woman with two facial features exactly like a stock Dr. Seuss character: a short upturned nose, and a vertically distended upper lip.

  “When did they break up?”

  “Six weeks ago. He’s being predictably secretive about the relationship demise.”

  Gene ushers us in. I’m surprised how he’s aged even in the six months since I’ve seen him last. His hair has thinned, his forehead has prematurely pleated, and I’m a little worried about a possible double chin emerging. But his killer smile is there, the one that the ladies in the Forest Hills bar scene love.

  After a sibling kiss, Gene says “How-d’ye-do?” to Kit and shakes his hand firmly.

  “Nice to meet you,” Kit says.

  As we turn from the foyer into the living room I see that his interior has been redone once again. Jill’s gone, and there’s no way his unseasoned eye could have ever pulled this together so expertly. It briefly occurs to me that my brother’s digs bursting with expensive furniture and mail-order baubles may be off-putting to a man offering an overseas freebie vacation out of pity.

  “So when did you get this decorated again?”

  “New girlfriend,” he says to me. “Also an interior designer. Didn’t want Jill’s stamp on it.”

  “Are you dating one of Jill’s friends? What’s her name?”

  “Cannot divulge,” he says robotically. “Must break three-month mark.”

  “Nice place,” Kit says.

  “Thank you. It’s the ultra in fake American Colonial, or so I’m told.”

  “Oh,” Kit says.

  There’s an awkward silence.

  “Kit is also a Volapük specialist,” I say to fill the void.

  Gene is relieved at the sound of spoken word. “There’s two of you doing that?”

  “Three. There’s also a man at Columbia.” I keep to myself: Dave Mitchell’s prolific praise of my competition, and how that stung me so. I marvel at fate. There’s the very enemy himself, fingering a wooden Mancala tray.

  Kit picks it up. “I like your Mancala board. Very old. A bit of African Colonial mingling in I see.”

  “Since when do you play Mancala?” I ask Gene. “My old roommate played it. I might even give you a go.”

  “This thing’s for a game?”

  I can see Kit is hesitating with a ready response. It looks as if he doesn’t want to come off as a know-it-all. His overstuffed mind can’t help itself: “It’s an African strategy game. Mancala is one of the oldest games in history, you know. Yours is from the Congo, I’m pretty sure.”

  Gene shrugs. “I’ve been using it as a candy dish. Jill made me buy it at an estate sale. She thought I needed something old for this place.”

  After more brief niceties, we get ready to go to his car parked in the building’s in-house garage. Gene loves his car and he hates hassle. An assigned parking space is the main reason Gene chose Forest Hills over the Upper East Side when looking around for a good place to buy. It’s by no means the sole reason he bought here. Gene’s a dime-a-dozen go-getting guy in Manhattan, but in this borough with a nice place and a banking job and a BMW X5, he is a big fish. In Queens he gets laid.

  Gene hits the elevator button for Lower Level. “So did my sister tell you what a whackjob our aunt Dot is?”

  “I didn’t go there,” I say preemptively.

  “You said she was big on candles,” Kit reminds me.

  “No,” Gene laughs. “That’s another crazy one-syllable aunt, on our mother’s side. Fay’s a lightweight. Dot is a class unto herself. For starters there’s her body.”

  I throw my hands up. He is such a jerk sometimes. “God. Pick on the skunk, but not her fat. Fat doesn’t equate insanity, Gene. Lots of people have weight issues.”

  “I’m not talking about her fat, Shari. Her toes are disgusting. Did you ever see Dot’s hammertoes when she wears sandals?”

  “Are t
he sandals environmentally sound?” Kit says dryly.

  Gene laughs, surprised that his guest already knows that insider joke, and I shoot Kit a look to shut up. Later, I’ll laugh, too, after I take Gene to task. “She only has one left hammertoe now, so you can cross that off your list. Mom said they cut the tendons on seven of her toes, but the one that is left was full of arthritis.”

  “How do you get seven hammertoes?” Kit asks with an interested but slightly sickened face.

  “She wore stilettos all her life,” I say to Kit and then I look intently at Gene. “Let’s leave poor grieving Dot alone.”

  “Well you said Kit didn’t hear any evidence of insanity in our family.”

  “No, I actually still haven’t,” Kit says.

  “Okay, than what’s with the skunks as pets?” Gene demands of him.

  I jump in: “I’m surprised to hear how attached she was to this one. I don’t know anything about this particular skunk other than its untimely demise.”

  Gene addresses me back and Kit rolls up a cigarette before we get into the car. I catch Gene’s frown at the smoking. “Have you really ever bought their childlessness? Dot couldn’t adopt?”

  “Gene, enough, okay? Leave her alone. You’re just being mean. If you remember, before Eric, she had no partner. It wasn’t easy to adopt as a single parent twenty years ago.”

  “You’re playing innocent, Shari, like you don’t rag on Dot twenty-four/seven—”

  “Gene!” I knew introducing Kit to my family was a dumb idea. Going to see Sam in Headless Horseman territory was a surprisingly nice experience, but it looks like when it comes to introducing the rest of my eccentric family, it’s all downhill from here.

  “Nice car, by the way,” Kits says, after we’ve climbed into Gene’s beloved BMW.

  “Thank you,” Gene says proudly.

  I say nothing.

  Gene starts the ignition. “Well, one last thing then, Shari, and then we can talk about the weather.”

  “What?” I spit out.

  “I don’t buy it.”

  “Buy what?”

  “That she couldn’t have a kid. Mom thinks that, too, by the way, that Dot didn’t want a kid, that she never wanted the emotional responsibility of children. She never wanted anyone who would talk back to her.”