The Laments (21 page)

Will nodded.

“Elvis is in America, y’know.”

Will said he knew this. Fiona played with the little gold chain hanging from her neck with one long, pink fingernail and finally asked a favor.

“Will you give him a message for me if you see him?”

“Who? Elvis? What’s the message?”

The fingernail gestured for him to approach. Will complied. Then Sally’s sister put her lips up to his and Will felt her tongue slip into his mouth. It was over in a blink, and she shot him a sideways smile.

“Think you can remember that?”

Will swallowed. She’d been sucking on a lemon lozenge. Normally he didn’t fancy lemon, but this was different. The fingernail waved good-bye, and Will felt his pants tighten strangely.

IT STARTED TO RAIN
as he walked home: a soft English patter. Will realized that everything he did today would be for the last time. As he nodded a farewell to the corner where he had fought Rillcock, tiny droplets of rain formed on his sweater, like glitter. He would miss this sweet, gentle rain. Not like an African rain at all, with its bombastic thunder and torrential streams cutting chasms in the earth. He wondered what an American rain would be like. Will stuck his tongue out, savoring the last lemony vestige of Fiona’s kiss. He passed a row of council houses, and the recreation field nearby. Two figures were kicking a ball around. They were Digley and Ayers.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Will said.

“Say hello to Elvis!” said Ayers.

“Say hello to Marilyn Monroe!” shouted Digley.

“She’s dead,” said Ayers.

“Is not,” said Digley.

“Idiot,” said Ayers.

“Ditchdigger,” replied Digley.

Citizen of the World

Their spirits were high, perhaps because Howard was never happier than when he came to a new land; like Adam finding a new Eden, Howard was ready to start afresh. They bounced along a six-lane highway in a shiny sapphire-blue Buick with a black roof and two-tone blue vinyl interior. When the twins weren’t arguing over the Sonomatic AM/FM radio, they were gazing at the enormous greetings flashed in neon from Howard Johnson, Holiday Inn, Burger King, and that delightful elderly gentleman offering fried chicken from Kentucky. Everything they saw from their windows looked friendly, exciting, and new.

Julia took silent stock of the family’s passage. They had their health, the house had been sold, the mortgage was paid off, the slate was clean. And yet she worried what it would cost them. Experience told her that there was always something lost.

She reflected on Albo, the material comfort they had abandoned; on Buck Quinn’s affluent white society and its resentment of black rule. The minute they arrived in England, they faced the paradox of being white Africans—reminders of Britain’s colonial glory but a burden to its struggling modern economy.

The huge screen of a drive-in theater loomed over the highway. Rows of speaker poles stood in the empty lot.
2001
: A SPACE ODYSSEY,
read the marquee. The twins peered with fascination.

“What’s an odyssey?”

“A journey. Like ours. But longer.”

“We’ll go to a drive-in,” Howard promised the boys. “
That’s
something you won’t find in England!”

Julia sighed to herself; as if Howard needed to remind them of England’s shortcomings. A mere glance under its skirts had revealed a hostile shoreline, squalid plumbing, and children as tribal as their ancestors. It offered her gifted husband a miserable job, and refused to give her son more than a tradesman’s education.
Good riddance to the sceptered isle,
she thought.

HOWARD’S NEW OFFICES
were in one of many newly built research parks on the edge of Route 1—one of New Jersey’s arterial highways—a cluttered four-lane strip divided by concrete, with incessant traffic lights, fast-food outlets, and automotive franchises. A passing sign pointed to Princeton. The university buildings poked through the trees to the west, school of F. Scott Fitzgerald in his youth and Einstein in his old age. On either side, country roads branched off into woodlands, which were hastily being razed to situate housing developments for the growing workforce. The cachet of Princeton guaranteed that every developer name his tract after it; hence Academy Manor, College Fields, even Einstein Cottages.

The Laments had found a house in University Hills, a development that was actually flat. The house was a sprawling split-level with eight white pillars and a false brick façade, a winding driveway, two-car garage, central air, and baseboard heating. Every other house in the development was identical, except for its mailbox. Americans appeared to enjoy individuality only in this respect—the boxes were painted to resemble turkeys, eagles, ducks, trains, barns, or cartoon creatures.

Howard loved the jet-stream shower and the toilet that flushed without a chorus of knocking pipes; Julia liked the dishwasher, the sprayer nozzle in the sink, and the vast refrigerator. Instead of three channels there were seven, some running all night long; the twins learned to talk like Americans in a matter of weeks. Their new diet depended on infusions of Bazooka gum, Twinkies, and Big Macs. And they rejoiced at these new things, for America was strange and wonderful and they were free to roam as never before and utterly consumed with their own company.

Will, however, was grieving.

Every night he dreamt of a tunnel with Sally at the other end beckoning to him. Behind her lay a faint rainbow and his conker tree. In his dreams, he heard a soft rainfall that smelled of lemon lozenges. As he climbed through this tunnel, he noticed familiar sights embedded in the earthen walls: the Midnight Chinaman’s jubilant and wicked smile, Ruth clutching her tin vanity box, Buck Quinn riding a chariot drawn by his howling Ridgeback; the
Windsor Castle
’s captain borne across the waves on mermaids with breasts cupped in bright plastic scallop shells; Ayers dancing in Hitler’s trousers, and Digley summoning spirits with Goebbels the cat on his shoulder. Before Will’s lips reached Sally’s, however, his dream was always interrupted by his alarm clock, and the jarring fanfare of the AM radio station with its unfamiliar accents.

He was back to square one: a foreigner again.

“What are you so upset about?” asked his mother.

“I hate moving.”

“But you’re a Lament. The Laments have always traveled. All of them except your grandfather, that is.”

“Perhaps I’m more like
him
.”

“Impossible,” said Julia.

“Why?”

Julia hesitated, knowing she had to protect him from the truth. “Because he just sat in his armchair all day.”

Will frowned. “Why?”

“Daddy said he had a weak heart.”

“Who am
I
like? I don’t look like you or Daddy or the twins. Who
am
I like?”

“Darling, it’s not important who you look like,” said Julia, embracing her son.

“But you look like
your
mother,” came the distressed reply.

“Darling, you’re terribly special; you’re a very lucky person, a traveler, an explorer, a citizen of the world! You’re a Lament, do you understand?”

Will was puzzled by his mother’s answer because, though it was emphatic, it lacked consolation. To be a Lament was to be a perpetual stranger.

Where Is Chapman Fay?

On his first day at work, Howard was told that the man who had invited him to America could not be found.

“You mean he’s late?”

“Not exactly,” explained his secretary. “He’s missing at sea.”

CHAPMAN FAY WAS
the visionary leader of Fay/Bernhardt, a company that built specialized devices for NASA, the military, and medicine. What were these devices? Future technologies, explained the company literature. By all accounts, Chapman Fay was a genius. A high school graduate at fifteen, he earned a doctorate in chemical engineering at twenty. By twenty-five, he had amassed three more doctorates, in Chinese mythology, quantum physics, and pre-Columbian art. At the age of thirty-two he was running a think tank for Ethical Utopians in Napa Valley, by thirty-eight he had plans to build a rocket ship to carry them to Mars. Fay/Bernhardt was founded to build this ship, but after shortfalls in funding, Chapman Fay changed his goal. He decided it was better to save the world before leaving it, and he proceeded to invent a few devices that were designed to do just that.

Pan-Europa had been interested in one of Chapman Fay’s inventions, a chemical that forced spilled oil to congeal into an iridescent goop on the surface of water so that it could be extracted easily. The procedure was called the Rapi-Flux system; at Howard’s recommendation, Pan-Europa bought the gear from Fay/Bernhardt for its rescue tankers. Howard supervised the testing of the system in a saltwater tank near Southampton with a team of beefy merchant marines with bullnecks, their faces flushed from a life of hard drinking and rough North Sea weather. Halfway through the test, a slight man with brilliant blue eyes and a shock of white hair bound in a ponytail entered the facility, dressed in an avocado Nehru jacket. The marines may have sniggered about his outfit and his hair, but the moment he issued orders, they responded without hesitation.

After the exercise, Chapman took everybody to lunch at a local pub. It was there, over a pint of Watney’s, that Howard told him about his plans for the Sahara, and the artificial heart he’d been thinking about ever since his father died. As he rose to leave, Chapman pumped Howard’s hand and, instead of saying good-bye, offered him a job.

“You’re a man of ideas,” said Chapman Fay. “Come work for me in America.”

“
WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE’S MISSING AT SEA?
”

“His yacht lost radio contact about five days ago. Don’t worry, Mr. Fay is a genius. He’ll show up,” said the secretary.

Howard was assigned a room twice the size of his Denham office. It was paneled in mahogany, with one glass wall that offered a view of a Japanese garden of weeping cherries, a pool of koi, and a stately blue heron. He spent the first two days putting tabs on his binders and filling out the forms needed for his medical coverage and retirement fund. On the third day, he began to fret.

Fay/Bernhardt occupied a large building carefully designed for privacy and singular focus; it was impossible to see anyone else working. People went about their business without a lot of talk in the corridors. Perhaps, conceded Howard, this is the atmosphere of a place where brilliant ideas are hatched, but it was isolating, too. There was no one to talk to until one day he ran into Chapman’s partner, Dick Bernhardt, a ruddy fellow with laughing eyes, who wore a Moroccan djellaba in the office.

“What should I be doing until Chapman returns?” asked Howard.

“Relax,” said Dick. “If Chapman hired you, there must have been a reason. Chapman will take care of you, don’t you worry. Have you tried our cafeteria? The chef comes from a restaurant in Brittany, four stars in the Michelin Guide.”

“
HOW IS THE NEW JOB?
” asked Julia.

“The cafeteria is extraordinary,” Howard replied. “And you should see my office.”

“But the work?” she asked. “How is your work?”

“Not bad,” said Howard, thinking it premature to admit his dilemma. He was being paid more than he had ever earned in his life. For doing nothing.

The Himmels

Julia looked forward to the start of school in a few weeks, when the boys would be out of the house and she could look for work. Until then, she spent her time getting organized—buying clothes for the boys; lamps, blinds, and bedside tables for the extra bedrooms in their enormous new house. One morning she was greeted at the door by a woman with an eager smile and a basket of chocolate chip cookies.

“Hi! I’m Abby Gallagher,” she said, gesturing toward her house. “Number Thirty-three, with the pear tree and the beautiful green lawn.”

Julia followed Abby’s glance and found herself instantly envious of the woman’s casual pride. She remembered her roses in Albo, and it seemed possible that she and Abby already had something in common.

“It
is
a beautiful lawn,” agreed Julia.

When Julia invited her in, Abby inspected the kitchen appliances while explaining that she had two sons about Will’s age. Then she ran her fingers over the parquet floor in the dining room.

“Walnut,” she sighed. “We wanted walnut; they gave
us
pine. Where are you from? You sound English!”

“No, I’m from South Africa,” Julia replied. Then, in a breathless ramble, she ticked off the other countries she’d lived in and the difficulties of starting up in a new culture, and topped it off with an earnest wish to see all of America because it was a culture that had assimilated its races the way, she feared, South Africa never would.

Abby looked confused. “South Africa.” She blinked. “You don’t
look
African.”

Julia silently admonished herself for talking too much; it had been many weeks since she had chatted with anyone other than family and salespeople.

“I’m Irish,” said Abby.

“Really?” said Julia. “Which part of Ireland are you from?”

“Cork,” Abby replied, “but that was three generations ago.”

“Ah.” Julia smiled. “So, you’re just a
little
bit Irish.”

Abby paused. “I celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, if that’s what you mean. That makes me as Irish as anybody, doesn’t it?”

“Actually,” said Julia, “my family lived in Ireland a few generations ago, but I wouldn’t dare call myself Irish.”

What was left of Abby’s smile vanished.

With a desperate sense that she had blundered, Julia attempted to rescue the conversation. “But I
love
Irish literature,” she added. “Who are your favorites?”

Abby blinked again. “I’m actually late for a tennis game,” she said, and rose from her seat. Julia thanked her for the cookies, aware that she had made a mistake, without knowing precisely what it was. But Abby’s parting comment rankled.

“Y’know,” Abby said, nodding at the blue house next door, “you’d like the Himmels—they’re foreigners, too.”

“
THEY’RE FOREIGNERS, TOO
,” repeated Julia as she cut her veal into ribbons that evening.

“But she
did
bring you cookies,” said Howard, thinking that women judged one another far more harshly than men did.

“Perhaps,” Julia said, “but I don’t understand why an American would call herself Irish when she hasn’t been to Ireland, doesn’t read Irish authors, and probably couldn’t even find Ireland on the map!”

Howard was amused by Julia’s outrage. “Clearly, darling, you know more about the Irish than any Irishman, but isn’t the point to make
friend
s
?”

When Madge Finch brought over a fudge cake the next day, Julia was appreciative and cautious. Madge cocked her ear at Julia’s accent.