Go to America. You love the books, the TV shows, the movies. Tell people you're tired of being a tourist and you want to live in a foreign country for a few months. You know, really live there. Tell your mother it's what you've always wanted. Remind your father how often he said you should get out of England if you had the chance. Say, it's only a master's degree. One year.
Pack two suitcases and give your guitar to a friend who plays it better than you anyway. Give away your TV and tennis racket. Sit in the pub on your last night home and wish for any excuse-fire, flood, earthquake-not to go.
At Heathrow your father slips you $500 in cash that he's changed at the bank that morning. Then he warns you to look out for muggers. Give them the money, he says. Everyone has a gun over there. Your mother wants to make sure you've got your tickets and your passport. You say, yes. She makes you show them to her. You are an only child and sometimes you think your family takes this to mean you're only a child.
Tell your parents on the phone how much you like Boston. How friendly everyone is. The size of the portions in restaurants. Tell them you're happy, so they won't worry about you. Hear the worry in your mother's voice. Marvel at how clear the line is. And how cheap international calls are from the US. Promise to call every week. Tell your father that you miss football. Tell him: "They call it soccer, here." In the post, the next week, receive a week's worth of cuttings from the sports pages of English newspapers. "What else do you miss?" your mother wants to know. Tell her you can't get English marmalade, but by the time some arrives in the post (which you now call the "mail") you've found a store in Fanueil Hall that stocks it. Don't tell her; and continue to get a new jar of marmalade every month.
At night, lie awake listening to sirens-the distinctive American wail. Wonder if they're from the street or a neighbour's TV.
Walk the Freedom Trail. See the sites of historic importance. Realise you don't know any of the important history. Get bored and stop half-way. Go to Filene's Basement and the Bull and Finch pub, the one Cheers is based on. The Bull and Finch doesn't look much like Cheers inside and doesn't feel like a real pub to you. Explain to your mother on the phone that they only use the outside of the pub on TV. Learn to call pubs, bars. When you feel homesick, eat at McDonald's or Burger King or KFC just like at home. Think, if anyone ever invents teleport booths they should all be placed in fast food joints around the globe to minimise the effects of culture shock.
In the supermarket, find jars of Coleman's mustard, Crosse and Blackwell pickled onions, Lea and Perrin's Worcester sauce. Feel the tang of homesickness. Defend English food to your fellow students. Explain what Yorkshire pudding is. Complain that you can't get a good curry in Boston. Work out how much everything is in pounds. Phone calls are cheaper. Food is cheaper. Gas is cheaper than petrol.
At parties people come up to you and ask you to say "weekend" or "schedule" or "Scottie Pippen." Discover you can bring the house down by saying, "Whatchoo talking about, Willis?"
Drink a lot. American beer is weaker and the bars stay open all night. Get a reputation as a drinker. Smoke pot for the first time. Amaze your new friends that it's your first time. One of your fellow graduate students refuses to believe you. She has lived in England for six months and she says she smoked pot. Be slightly annoyed that this person is telling you about your own country. Wonder how well you know your own country. She says words like "chemist" and "dustbin" and you share a taxi home with her. She is from New York and you can hardly believe you're sleeping with a New Yorker.
"Do you have Oprah?" someone asks you, and you say, "Yes, we have Oprah. And Cosby and LA Law and Baywatch. And electricity and microwaves and indoor plumbing, too. Just no guns and drugs." Get into stupid arguments. Insist that the movie, Glory, is a western. "Not geographically, but generically."
There is an election. It seems like a grand thing to be in another country during an election. When Bill Clinton wins you feel slightly superior to your friends in England with John Major for prime minister. When they call or write and ask you how you like America you explain you like Boston fine, but you don't know enough about the rest of America to judge. "It's like asking someone in London what they think of Vienna." Feel like an experienced traveller when you say this.
At Thanksgiving call your parents and tell them, "It's Thanksgiving." Explain it's just like Christmas, "except without presents or a tree." Spend the day with the family of the New Yorker. Her mother tells you she loves your accent. She knew a girl from England who was evacuated to the US during the war. Maureen Johnson was her name. You nod, not that you know her, but as though you might know her. They ask you what you think of the Queen, Princess Di, Northern Ireland. Form some opinions. They tell you how much they admire Margaret Thatcher. You compliment the pumpkin pie. Tell your parents all this on the phone and your mother says, "Americans are very hospitable, aren't they. I'm so glad they took you into their home." Feel like a refugee receiving charity.
You tell your parents that you're not coming home for Christmas. You want to experience an American Christmas. Break up with the New Yorker, just too late to buy a ticket home. On Christmas Day spend forty bucks on the phone to your parents. Tell them how much you like America, so they won't worry. Listen to your father tell you how much your mother misses you. Listen to your mother tell you how much your father misses you. "All we want is for you to be happy," your mother says. Microwave the Christmas pudding they've sent you. Hope your father liked the Red Sox cap you sent him.
Discover that you're more popular with women than you ever thought. Ask them what they see in a bloke like you and make them laugh. You think they like your accent, these graduate students, and then you decide there's just a more mature approach to sex in the US. Then you realise it's because they're expecting you to leave the country in a few months. You're a holiday romance. Sleep with them anyway.
Between girlfriends, when you are lonely, do a lot of academic work and in the spring get offered a PhD place and a full ride. Fly home to explain your decision to your parents. Bring live lobster from Logan airport. Your mother says you look tired. Your father asks when you're going to get a job. "I thought you were only going for one year," he says. Get angry. In the silence afterwards, listen to your lobsters scratching against their cardboard box.
In the days that follow, notice that instant coffee is undrinkable and that the service in Britain is terrible. Back in the US, write to your parents inviting them to visit. "You don't have to wait for me to come there," you tell them. Your mother says she'd like to, "but you know what your father's like." Call to tell her you've had an article accepted for publication in a journal. "That's nice," she says, and tells you about her garden.
Go to an American football game. Your friends have brought something called a "suitcase" of beer and you take it in turns to smoke pot in the portable toilet. Get into the stadium and realise you've never seen a crowd of drunker people in your life, but marvel at the absence of violence. Have a revelation: there's no crowd violence at American sports because there are only home fans. The country's too big for fans to travel to away games. That's why so many sports are decided by series. Think, this is the kind of deep insight you came to the US for.
Manchester United, the soccer team you've supported since you were a kid, win the championship for the first time in 25 years. You tell your American friends and they say, "Cool."
At the end of your second year, go home for Christmas. Sit in the departure lounge at Logan and feel oddly embarrassed for all the English people and then suddenly shy about your own accent. Sit in the pub at home and tell your friends about American girls, every British boy's fantasy. New York, California, these words in an English pub sound like sex. Let slip words like "fall" and "soccer" and have them make fun of you. Listen to them talk about bands and politicians and TV shows and sportsmen you've never heard of. When they say you look tired, say it's jet lag. Try and sound more English and wonder if you're starting to talk like the Artful Dodger. Gor' blimey! Stone the crows! Lor' luv a duck!
Your best friend tells you you've changed. He tries to sound pleased, but he looks at you like it's a betrayal. Tell him, you should hope so. Wasn't that the point? But later wish you'd asked him how you've changed. Wish you could be sure yourself.
In the pub on your last night home, call your friends "mates" and tell them, "Cheerio."
Meet a girl from California. Sleep with her and think, she's from California. At the end of the summer, take her home to meet your parents. "Tell us about California," they say. They like her. She likes England. Wouldn't mind living there one day. This seems terribly attractive to you. Fall in love. Marry her. When your parents get off the plane to come to your wedding they look smaller and older than you've ever seen them. They tell you your wife is lovely. They're really happy for you. They look scared in all the photographs.
Take your wedding album to the immigration interview. Tell the INS inspector how you met. Melt her heart. Get your Green Card-and discover that it's pink. Your wife comes out of the interview shaking a little. She says, how strange to think that her government could deny her something and she wouldn't have any rights. As if it weren't her own country. Tell her everything's okay now. At the party to celebrate your permanent resident status, someone asks if you'll take citizenship. Say, no, you can't imagine yourself swearing allegiance to any country. Tell your parents you're a legal alien. Never use the phrase "permanent resident" to them.
Lose track of the months you've been in the US. Say 18 months when it's been two years. Argue about it with your friends on the phone. Do well in your PhD programme. Have your parents tell you they're proud. Explain your achievements to them carefully. Understand that to them every success you have in your new country keeps you from going home. Have your professor write a glowing recommendation for a tenure track position. Go out for jobs, even though you're still writing up and the chances are slim. Talk with your wife about moving back to Britain and getting a job. Remind her that she'd like to live there one day. What about her mother, she says.
Get a position in the US. In Atlanta. Think about it for about two seconds. Accept it. Call your parents with the good news. "All we want is for you to be happy," your mother says. "I thought you were only going for one year," your father says. Call your best friend to give him the news. Have him tell you he's marrying his fianc? of two years who you realise you've never met.
Point out wryly to your new academic colleagues that The Bridges of Madison County was a flop in Britain when it was published as Love in Black and White. But then it was reissued with a lot of hype and became a big hit. Wonder what your point is.
Realise one day that you haven't had any good marmalade in the mail for months. Develop an interest in all things British. See every Anthony Hopkins movie ever made. Reread Forster and Austen. Watch the Monty Python marathon. Disagree with all the anglophile articles in the New Yorker, but read them avidly. At Christmas your wife buys you a subscription to the foreign edition of a British newspaper. Your mother sends you a Manchester United shirt, which you put in your closet. Which you used to call a wardrobe. Write articles about the British. Say you had to leave to really understand your home.
You buy a car with a hood and a trunk rather than a bonnet and a boot. Once, when you've had a little too much to drink, swing on to the wrong side of the road. Your wife screams and you pull back. There's no real danger, and you feel oddly elated.
Tell your wife you've noticed you're spelling words like realise with a "zee." Stare at her blankly when she says, "A 'zee'? You mean a 'zed!'" Ask her if she thinks you're losing your accent. Hear her say, "I don't think so." When people ask you where you're from, start to say, "Originally?" Be wary of other British people. Avoid them at parties. Feign surprise when colleagues introduce you to their British graduate students. Say, "Oh, hello." They look pale and half-starved. Notice how bad their teeth are.
Clinton's second election comes around and your wife goes to a rally. Remember how you used to be more political. How every little thing-roadworks, the homeless, Benny Hill-made you despair of Britain. Things like that in the US are someone else's problem. Get a call from the Democrats. Can they count on your vote? Explain that you don't have a vote, that you're not a citizen. Besides, you're not a Democrat. You're a socialist. It sounds so exotic. Forget to register for a postal vote in the upcoming British general election.
Your mother calls and tells you she's clearing out the attic. Do you want to keep any of your old school books. Say, no, you don't think so. Not any? she says. Why not keep a couple? Say, all right. Your father comes on the other extension and tells you he's sold your bicycle. Ask him why. He says it was in the way, underfoot. "Clutter," he says. Ask him what he got for it and get angry when he says, "Twenty quid." It's only three years old and you paid almost two hundred for it. "I'm only kidding," he says quickly. "It's still here. But it's getting rusty." Next time, he jokes about taking in a lodger in your old room. Next time, he says they're thinking of selling the house and buying something smaller. Tell him, very funny. Tell him, you're not laughing. "Only teasing," he says.
When your mother calls take the phone from your wife and say, "How ya' doing?" and feel like you've just slapped her in the face. When your father calls say, "What's up?" and groan inwardly.
Lose track of the years you've been in the US. Work it out by administrations. Lose track of how many kids your best friend has. Teach students Shakespeare. They look at you as though you're an expert with your accent, although you know their accents are closer to the Bard's. You call home every week and write every couple of weeks. There isn't enough news for all these letters and phone calls. On the phone your mother tells you she and your father have fights about you. "He doesn't understand," she says. Tell her you know what you're doing. That they shouldn't worry about you. Ask, is it because they miss you? Hear her say, "Oh, no." They're both busy and active, enjoying their retirement. She says it's not your fault. They'll have to get used to it. "I tell him, perhaps I should have had another child," she says. Neither of you speak for a long moment. "I mean a second child," she says at last.
Cheat on your wife. She tells you one night you are losing your accent and it makes you feel like you're losing your hair. Cheat on her with a gifted student from your class. Cheat on her with less gifted students from your class. Talk to your oldest friend from England late at night on the phone. He's jealous of your affairs. "I could never do that," he says. You wonder if you could if you were there.
A Starbucks opens around the corner from you and you tell your wife, "That's what I love about this country," and she calls you an asshole. Tell her you're an arsehole and watch her not laugh. Have a harassment suit filed against you by one of the students you didn't sleep with. Your wife wants a divorce. She says, "Don't look so miserable. We've been together more than two years." She means that, even divorced, you'll get to keep your pink Green Card.
"You've changed," she tells you, and you say, "I had to change to stay."
"You've changed," she says and you ask, "How? Tell me how I used to be." You've changed, and you wonder, too much or not enough?
Look at old photos. Reread letters. Wish you'd kept a diary. Think, you chose this. You're an expatriate, not an exile. It's what you always wanted.
At Christmas, after your wife leaves you, fly home for the first time in two years. You've spent winters in Boston when the Charles River froze solid and the snow was piled on street corners into April, but you feel cold to your bones at Gatwick. Yes, you think, but it's a damp cold. The atrocious coffee costs a fortune. Your parents have preserved your old room like a shrine for six years. They're delighted to have you home for Christmas. Your father slaps you on the back and your mother's eyes fill with tears at the airport. "It's good to have you home," they say, although they insist they haven't missed you.
At night you lie awake in your old bed in your old room in your old home and you wonder how everything could have changed so much.
