The Englishman

chapter 23

THIS IS NOT THE FIRST end-of-grading-period party that I have been at, and maybe it is just me, but it seems to me that we have all gone a little crazy.

“No shoptalk!” Erin declares when we arrive. “Whoever mentions the Observatory, or essays, or students—”

“Studnets!” Eugenia interrupts her. “Nine times out of ten when I type the word, it comes out as ‘studnet’! I just call them ‘studnets’ now.”

“Nomen est omen,” I say darkly. “Very appropriate, under the circumst—”

“SHOP!” Tim shouts. “SHOT!”

“What?”

“Down in one, please, Ms. Lieberman. Doctor, I should say, a.k.a. Anna-Banana, but don’t call her that, she doesn’t like it!” Tim, already a little ahead of the rest of us, hands me a small glass full of some colorless liquid. Egged on by the others, I shrug and down it without asking what it is. It is straight vodka.

“Fix your hair in bunches with little butterfly clips, and you don’t look old enough to drink that.” Vern, Eugenia’s husband, looks into my eyes just a second too long. I am tired of jokes about how young I look, so I smile and say nothing.

“You are the baby here, aren’t you, Anna?” Erin is our kind hostess, so again I smile and say nothing. But Erin doesn’t allow people to slip from her grasp. “How old are you? Absurdly young, I remember that from your application.”

“Only at heart,” I say wryly.

“Oh, come on—have you crossed the Rubicon yet?” Kirsten Thomason leans back and fluffs up her hair. “That was my worst, so far, thirty.”

“Almost.”

“Almost thirty? What does that mean? This year? Next year?”

“Tomorrow.”

This, predictably, creates something of a hullaballoo. “It’s your birthday tomorrow, and you’ll be thirty? Why didn’t you say?” Erin is almost angry with me.

“Because it isn’t important! Really, guys, don’t…don’t make a big thing of it. This is nice, isn’t it? End of grading, yay!”

“SHOP!” Tim shouts. “SHOT! Down in one, please, Thirty-Years-Old-in-Three-Hours-and-Seventeen-Minutes!”

The evening progresses from there.

At midnight they congratulate me and sing for me, and the women hug me, and the men awkwardly shake my hand, all except Giles.

“Did you get any exciting birthday presents?” Eugenia asks. “I would have gotten you something, Anna, if I’d known!”

“I bought myself a seat on a plane. That’s my birthday present to myself!”

“Aaah! Where to?”

“London.”

“Of course, London! Nauseating anglophile,” Tim adds for good measure.

“Yes, I am,” I admit sadly. “I know I am.”

“Maybe one of these days Anna won’t come back from England,” Erin jokes. Almost.

“No, no, I’m here. I’m back,” I assure her, or myself, or my mom. I’ve had far too much vodka.

“Would you have stayed for a man?” she keeps needling me. “It usually hinges on that, doesn’t it?”

This question goes too far, and the others are beginning to be embarrassed by Erin’s insistence.

“I’m guessing that when Anna did her MA at Cambridge, she met more than one bona fide English toff or knob who would have kept her there. In England.” I’m surprised that Giles joins Erin in baiting me. Or maybe I’m just too drunk to decode his signals accurately.

“Not really. Jewish girls from New York tend not to hobnob with the nobs.” I have to giggle about my own pun. “Oh, wait—a friend took me to a party at Trinity College once, and there I, um, met an Etonian.”

“We shan’t enquire further,” says Giles.

“Oh, yes, we shall.” Tim grins. “Spill, baby.”

“Well, he was drunk, and he told me his uncle was a duke. I bet he told that to all the overseas students he wanted to pull.”

“Did it work?”

“Naaah. But he was cute, sort of.”

“You must have been drunk, too,” Tim decides. “Etonians are not cute. They are fearful oiks. Repeat after me—”

“—fearful oiks.”

“Would that not have appealed to you?” Giles asks, playing with his shashlik skewers. “A posh English boyfriend, meeting his nice parents in their nice house in Buckinghamshire, sailing off the Sussex coast where they have a nice little cottage, nights out at the theatre, tickets for all the exhibitions at the London galleries…”

“Shut up, Giles, you…rotter. I hate you. Anyway, he couldn’t kiss,” I splutter, so disoriented for a second or two that I lose control over my words. “And I was in love with somebody else, and all the posh English boys in the rough, rude sea could not have washed that love out of my heart. So there! There you have it.”

“There we have it.” Giles nods. “No posh English boys for you, then.”





“I’m okay,” I protest as we get up, several hours later, or so it seems to me. Here I am, on my thirtieth birthday, and it comes as a surprise to me that although sitting down I felt only slightly befuddled, standing up I’m reeling.

“Anna, you’re welcome to stay over, if you don’t mind the patter of tiny feet at six in the morning.” Erin hopes I won’t accept but feels obliged to offer.

“I’ll be okay! Just gimme a—second…”

Amidst the laughter—I am not drunk, and I demonstrate it by walking unaided into the hall and toward the coat rack—Kirsten Thomason comes up to me.

“Anna, we could drop you off. Do you live along the river or across?”

“Hm? Oh, thanks, but—I live—thataway.” I point into the direction of the kitchen, which I take to be roughly east. “Behind the college. I can take a cab.”

Several coats have buried mine, and it isn’t easy to put the wrong ones back onto the hooks, what with the loops so tiny and the light in the hall so painfully bright, after the candles in the living room.

“I’ll drive you.”

There is a pause of about two seconds. Or two minutes. I’m not sure. I have to think about this.

“Calderbrook is on my way.” Giles takes the pile of leather, quilted nylon, and wool out of my arms. “Which one’s yours?”

I know perfectly well that I can’t drive anymore. Instead, I must focus. Focus on walking straight, talking straight. Balance. Posture. Must. Not. Bump. Into. Him.

The cool night hits my head like a hammer, but I am not nearly plastered enough to be oblivious to embarrassment. More rounds of good-bye, and Giles motions me across the street and into a cul-de-sac. Our heels clack-clack on the asphalt and echo back from the house fronts; it is the loudest noise around.

This. Like this, Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland would be leaving a party. Walking back to the car. He, tall and handsome in his blue Barbour and his Oxfords; she, in her tailored woolen jacket and knee-length pleated skirt. Not quite knee-length, actually, and I know that I look nice in it. But what is that to the purpose, if the purpose is to take him home, rip his clothes off, and jump him? Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland on their way home to make love all night with an uninhibited abandon that belies their composed, academic exteriors.

“Anna?”

It’s like getting your naked toe caught under a door. You have time to expect the pain, and then it shoots through every nerve. He calls me so rarely by my name, it’s like a physical shock rushing through me.

“It’s this one.”

Car. I had been walking past his car. No idea what make it is; I am still not used to paying attention to that sort of thing. Cars are yellow cabs or not; that’s the only distinction necessary in Manhattan. I climb in, feeling strange in the passenger seat. The seat belt is unfamiliar, but he doesn’t help me with it as I fiddle it into the lock.

“I’m afraid the car smells of dog.”

“I don’t mind. How does this—oh, got it.”

“All right?” His eyes glitter in the light of the street lamp. He is as keenly aware of this unprecedented privacy as I am.

“Yes. Sorry.”

He reverses out of the lane and onto the street, fast, and for a dismayed moment I worry that he may be trying to impress me with his driving.

“Sorry? What about?”

No, stupid. He is simply a much more experienced driver than Lame-Duck Lieberman. Calm down.

I am not calm. How could I be calm, with Giles Cleveland’s hand on the gear stick, jerking it unexpectedly toward my knee as we speed along the main road? I’d like to ask him about manual transmissions, but I daren’t draw attention to the fact that I have developed a fetish for his hands.

“You’re not sorry you got a bit sloshed, are you? You had to.”

We come to a halt at a busy junction. The car is flooded with red light. He looks over at me. “You had to make yourself a little vulnerable, you know. Now all is well.”

Green.

“I thought I did that when I came here in February and jumped through all the hoops that were held up for me!”

He chuckles, and this time I am ready for the moment he will accelerate. Inches. His hand inches from my leg. I wish I were a Jedi knight. Then I could will his hand over onto my knee.

We have reached the beltway. He shifts into fifth and rests both hands lightly on the wheel.

“So…thirty.” He casts me a quick glance, eyebrows cocked. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” I reply sweetly. “I’m good. I’ve been thinking that when I’m thirty I can afford to be more…you know.”

“What?”

“More of a bitch.”

This makes him burst out laughing.

“Do you want to be?”

“Yeah…sometimes. Well, academia is The Place of Extended Adolescence, isn’t it? And it’s beginning to get to me. The most dumbass, moronic big-heads get to mess you about and you have to curry favor with them instead of telling them where to stick their bright ideas. And I have five and a half more years of having to shut the f*ck up…if I’m lucky.”

“Oh, you’ll get tenure, for sure. Only take care never to get tipsy in the presence of the Provost.”

“Hmm?”

He glances over, as if to see whether I am really not following. I am really not following.

“Language.”

“Oh! Sorry…I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be—I don’t mind. And you’re right, of course.”

There is a pause. I’m glad. I want to enjoy the fantasy of driving home with a man who, when he has parked the car and walked the dogs, will follow me into the bedroom, undress me, and make love to me, because he likes it when I am a tiny bit drunk and in need of some tender loving care.

“Have you recovered from the recent…brouhaha? And having to shut up about it?” He sounds quizzical, but I can only see his profile, so I can’t be sure.

“Oh, I told Dancey where to stick it!” I exclaim and report my violation of the prime directive at the ICSLP lunch. “I don’t care. He can’t deny me tenure because I wouldn’t host a conference with his pet.”

“No. But don’t defy him too often, is my advice.”

“What about you? When you were thirty?” I ignore his warning. “What was your STFU-factor? Probably lower than mine, because you’re a man.”

“Yeah, maybe. Although I wasn’t brought up to speak my mind. Less than you, probably. Hang on, can I remember my thirtieth birthday? Oh, Lord…”

I don’t know whether the groan means that it’s so long ago he can hardly remember or that the memory is unwelcome.

“I’d just got married. I got married shortly before I turned thirty.”

The realization hits him, and I can tell the groan was genuine. I want to groan, too. On a night like this, a decade ago, Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland did drive home and had wild, uninhibited sex all night. And then, presumably, there were many nights when they drove home in near-silence.

“You must have thought then that it was a good idea to marry Amanda. Sorry!” I glance at him and suck in my lips. “I’m drunk. Don’t listen to me. Don’t answer that!”

He drives on in silence.

“I was quite frightened as a young man,” he says after a long pause. “And consequently, full of bravado, and anger.” He glances over and smiles. “You wouldn’t have liked me.”

“Wouldn’t I?” A minimal answer, not to distract him.

“No, I was insufferable. I didn’t understand at the time that there is a good way of feeling safe with someone and a bad way. Amanda and I had a sort of…pact to pretend that the demons weren’t there. The monsters. So we felt safe with each other. And then the monsters pounced.” He sighs and laughs grimly. “You’re drunk, and I’m meandering. I do apologize!”

“No, no…” If I’m impatient with him, it’s because he is giving this madly fascinating information when I’m not able to process it adequately. “What became of them? Of the monsters?”

“Oh—I’ve chased the ringleaders out of town, and as for the ones that stayed, well, these days I know where they live.” He laughs again, less sardonically. “And this is where you live!”

My heart is pounding so hard it hurts. “Thank you, Giles, that was—it was irresponsible of me to drink when I had the car.”

“Hardly the most irresponsible thing you’ve ever done.”

“Well, no.”

We’re looking at each other in the dim light shining in from the Walshes’ porch, and we’re thinking the same thing.

“I’m not going to do the most irresponsible thing—ever,” I manage to say.

“Now what would that be?”

He actually wants me to say it. Then I will say it.

“Ask you in for coffee.”

“I wouldn’t come in, either. You know I couldn’t. Not in this world.”

His answer gives me a pang, but I nod. I know that he means it kindly, but of course the rejection is like a blade through my heart. I wish I could brush it off with a joke, but I can’t trust my voice not to betray how pitiful I feel. It doesn’t get any more pitiful than having to bite down the declaration that I don’t want tenure, I don’t want a career, I want this man naked in my bed! And if I can’t have that, can he not at least kiss me to make it better?

He moves. His wax jacket is noisy in the silence of the car; he is undoing his seat belt. Good God, does he mean to come in with me, after all? But he leans across, cups my face between his hands, and kisses me.

It is not meant to be a sexy kiss. His lips are firm and soft and warm on the corner of my mouth, and they linger; it is not quite a friendly kiss, either.

“It’s too dangerous,” he whispers. His thumb brushes across my lower lip, across my cheek; his eyes follow its movement. He is so close I can see the black pupils in his light eyes. Feel his voice on my skin. I clasp his wrists to keep his hands in place, and kiss him back.

Properly.

I had forgotten what it feels like to kiss someone like this. To feel the incomparable softness of another person’s lips and tongue, to gauge his kissing style, to begin to communicate in this intensely private manner. It is the tugging ache in my womb that makes me pull back. This is not supposed to happen, we’ve told each other that, but if we don’t stop at once, it will happen.

His face has gone all soft and blank; he’s not hiding from me at all, and I know I have the same look on my face. I’m still holding on to his wrists, and I push them together and hide my face against his cupped palms. Behind the double shutters of his hands within mine, I close my eyes, breathe, and try to think of the rotten herring on my door, that I must decide what to do about Selena, of Nick Hornberger snooping in my office. Of the Notre Dame paper that is waiting to be finished.

A long kiss into the hollow of his right hand, and I sit up. Shaky.

“Go now. Go quickly.”

I don’t know whether that was addressed to me or to himself, because he isn’t looking at me anymore. He has withdrawn from me. And although that makes me want to climb onto his lap and kiss the desire back into his eyes, I am sober enough to understand that I have to let him be.