The Englishman

chapter 2

MY FIRST TWO WEEKS IN THE SOUTH are the first holiday I have had in three years, and I am determined not to open a book to do with teaching or research, nor to write anything at all except a few emails. Instead, and to my deep satisfaction, I have acquired new kitchenware, a faux-suede three-seater sofa and an armchair for my living-room, a rocking chair for my porch (because I want to do this in style), and six wooden bookcases in a chestnut finish. I have been scrubbing, wiping, dusting, unpacking, and sorting, going to work on my new nest.

Here’s a house-warming resolution: I will lug books and paper into my nest but no new man. Men leave me in a mess. The kitchen windows and the living-room windows change from grubby to invisible while I revel in the determination that I will not allow anything or anyone to distract my attention from the project ahead, and that is to press on toward my first tenure review in three years’ time. “Publish or perish!” is the war cry. I intend to publish.

I get a soda from the fridge, sit down in the shade of the porch, and watch the harvest activities on the farm while behind me Bruce Springsteen is singing of the simple life and the ordinary tragedies of heartland America. This is the busiest time of the year for the Walshes. Pop, Karen, and her husband, Howie, seem to be out and about from the crack of dawn till sundown, while Mrs. Walsh—Grandma Shirley—shoulders the household chores and looks after the twin girls when they come home from school.

It would be lonely out here, all on my own. I’m glad I have neighbors, particularly as I zoom out of the picture of me on my porch: the cottage…the main house…the barns…the garages…the fields…the woods. So much of this region is still wooded, and the river winds like a snake away from the Blue Ridge Mountains through the woods toward the sea. No, not like a snake, more like a lizard, one with short legs and small toes. I imagine the lizard trying to make its way toward…someplace…dashing from rock to rock, from cover to cover, because there is an unnamed danger overhead. Gathering strength in the shelter of the stone, panting, then—with only a vague sense of opportunity to guide it—it dashes out and runs as fast as its little legs and tiny toes can carry it to the next shelter. Why can the lizard not stay where it is, and where is it rushing so frantically when there is danger overhead—

“Hey.”

“W-Wha—hey.” I fell asleep again. Must get that under control.

A slim teenager in torn army pants and a purple tank top has materialized, apparently out of nowhere, and she has the same expression of curiosity mingled with suspicion as the raccoon I came across yesterday morning when I went for a stroll in the woods. Her dark hair is cut short, but neither the boy hair nor the camouflage pants can disguise the fact that there is something waifish about her, something vulnerable and stubborn. She looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it, and since she doesn’t seem inclined to speak, I suppose I must.

“Are you one of the tomato pickers?”

Her eyebrows slam together and she shifts on her feet.

“I’m Jules. They didn’t tell you about me, did they? Karen’s daughter.”

She is right; they didn’t tell me about her. And I don’t blame myself for not having caught the resemblance, because if Karen is her mother, her father must be black.

“Hi, Jules, Karen’s daughter. I’m Anna. But I guess you knew that.”

She rolls her eyes, but it is in embarrassment about her own awkwardness.

“Yeah, I knew that. Doctor Anna Lieberman. You’re from New York. Yeah, I knew that too. Man, what wouldn’t I give—” She shifts her weight again and sighs.

“D’you want to come up for a moment? Let me get you a soda.” Yielding to the air of hopefulness that surrounds her like a cloud of smoke, I indicate the rickety bench on my porch. She grins and skips up the steps, and I mentally subtract a couple of years from her estimated age.

She is sitting on the bench with her feet pulled up to her chest, and it strikes me who else she reminds me of: myself when I was her age. I cut off my hair, too, shortly after my Bat Mitzvah. I would have cut it off before, but my Grandma got wind of the plan and was so horrified that I waited out my performance at the synagogue before I, as my mother put it, “mutilated” myself. Studying my haftarah got me hooked on biblical Hebrew and began a phase of deep immersion in Jewish history and Torah studies, much to the bewilderment—and sometimes irritation—of my almost completely secular parents. Nathan took to calling me “Anshel,” the male alter ego of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Yentl, the girl who wanted to be a yeshiva student; and although I knew he meant to taunt me, I was proud of his acknowledgement of my commitment and academic prowess.

Whoa! Hold the projection, Lieberman.

“I guess you’re really bummed you had to come and live out here.” She considers her drink but doesn’t unlock her arms around her knees.

“Do you mean ‘out here in Ardrossan’ or ‘out here on the farm’? Neither, actually. I wanted to. But then I’m not your age. Fifteen?”

“Sixteen in December. Mistake, though. This place sucks. It’s all rednecks and girls who wear purity rings and give blowjobs to the All Stars behind the gym. Do girls do that in New York?”

She glares at me almost accusingly, and I realize that I have become a canvas of projection for her, too. My estimate of her age was supposed to flatter her; I’m surprised that she is almost sixteen. Mental note: mustn’t let her air of an orphaned street-urchin fool me.

“Do you mean the purity rings, or the blowjobs, or the hypocrisy?” I grin. “I’m sure there’s hypocrisy everywhere. But in a big city in the Northeast it’s less likely to be evangelical.”

She seems delighted with me for calling a spade a spade, and her rigid posture relaxes a little.

“I still don’t understand why you wanted to leave New York City. Why would anyone?”

There are a few things I could say in answer to this question, but since she clearly doesn’t know what she is talking about, I let it go.

“Well, I’m guessing that you can’t wait to leave home, either, right? So what’s not to understand?” I give her a meaningful look that has more to do with my mother and Irene than with this belligerent teenager.

“You ran away from home?” Her skin is like creamy caramel, smooth and flawless.

“I think so. But I call it ‘building a career.’ Sounds so much better, doesn’t it?”

The corners of her mouth twitch, but for some reason she is reluctant to laugh with me.

“Well, I won’t go to college.”

“Mmm. Why not?”

“I’m not exactly an A student.”

“You don’t have to be an A student to go to college.”

More sneering. “To get into the Folly?”

“Yeah, okay, to get into Ardrossan you need good grades. But Ardrossan is only one kind of college, and not necessarily the best one, depending on what you want to do with your life.”

“You’re a doctor.” She changes the subject from herself to me.

“Not a medical doctor.”

“Of…English?” She reproduces what she must have picked up at home, complete with doubtful frown.

“English literature is my subject, but I’m a Doctor of Philosophy, really. ‘Philosophy’ is Greek, it means ‘love of wisdom.’ And wisdom is preserved in books, because books live longer than people.”

She watches me closely during this little lecture.

“But you’re…pretty.” She can blush, too, and again she looks younger than she claims to be.

“Thanks. But you don’t actually have to be homely to like studying. That’s what people say who mistrust books and studying. It’s a slur, nothing more. Besides, if you—hang on, that’s my phone. I gotta take that, it may be the college.”

It is the college. They are looking forward to seeing me again, and one little office is waiting to have a nameplate attached to it that reads Anna Lieberman. Or, better still, Straunger, thou art now enteringe the realme of Anna Lieberman, she who hath prevailed! Taking possession of my new home and being lionized by the Cinderella of Calderbrook Farm are amusing pastimes, but they pall next to the unprecedented privilege that awaits me at college. Yup, after years of sharing tiny windowless holes with half a dozen other teaching assistants or adjuncts, having my own office is definitely a big deal to me.

“Jules, I’m sorry, I have to run in and see my—”

But the bench is empty. So is the bottle of cola. It is lying, empty, on the steps up to my porch, in a bubbling pool of sticky brown fluid.

Oh, for God’s sake!

I pour a kettleful of hot water down the steps of the porch, take a cold shower to clear my head, scrub my hands and fingernails, put on both my best summer college dress and my best behavior, and drive in to meet Elizabeth Mayfield, Professor of Renaissance Literature and parting Chair of English. According to the meter in my car it is only three miles from the farm to the edge of the campus, three and a half to the English department, and I am toying with the idea of adding a bicycle to the list of my new acquisitions. This is absurdly like a second date, or like finding yourself engaged to be married to someone you’ve only met once. We met, fancied each other, and made a commitment for a six-year try-out period. I’m the pretty young fortune-seeker; the college is the rich old guy setting up a detailed pre-nup to make sure it is I who will end up poor and homeless, if our relationship goes down the drain.