Taylor Mott-Smith Honors Thesis Project ENG4970 First Reader: Uwem Akpan Second Reader: Camille Bordas April 24Th, 2019 English As a Second Language

University of Florida

“English as a Second Language”

Taylor Mott-Smith Honors Thesis Project ENG4970 First Reader: Uwem Akpan Second Reader: Camille Bordas April 24th, 2019 English as a Second Language

By Taylor Mott-Smith

My mother called me twice last night. The first time was to warn me about fluoride; she read online that it could cause infertility. I told her not to worry, that I didn’t think they put fluoride in the water in England. She mumbled something about the European Union and hung up. The second time she called me was very late into the night. Calls at this hour weren’t that uncommon for her — she often forgot about the time difference. She was breathing hard when I picked up. I heard the full static rush of exhale, the clipped whine of inhale. I’d been awake already, luckily. My boyfriend, Conner, had just left.

“Mom?”

Wheezing.

“Mom? Could you relax a minute and tell me what’s going on?”

“I’m having a panic attack! God’s sake, can’t you tell?”

More wheezing.

“Just breathe, Mom, just breathe. Do you want me to do the count? One, two, three… out.

One, two, three—”

“I don’t need the count. Just give me a second.”

I did. I listened as she steadied herself over the phone, across the ocean, leaning against her kitchen cabinet. She might’ve smoothed the hair down over her rollers.

“Winnie,” she said. “I think your father is stalking me.”

“Okay. Why do you think that?”

Over the past few years, I’d developed a strategy for handling my mother’s paranoiac

episodes. Speak clearly and calmly. Avoid tones of nonchalance or irritation. Ask questions, but

don’t interrogate. Let her feel credible.

“Well, for starters, I saw him at the end of the driveway this morning,” she said.

“This morning? You’re sure it was Dad?”

“Yes, yes, he was looking in the mailbox. He opened it and looked into it for a second

and walked off.”

“Why do you think Dad would do that?”

“I’ll tell you why. He wants to see if I have a new man in my life. He can’t stand the

thought of me being happy with another man.”

It was then that I realized this might be a long phone call. I pinched the phone between my neck and shoulder while I searched for some pajamas. I noticed Conner had forgotten his

watch on top of the dresser again. It was a gift from his father, a “rite of manhood,” he’d said,

but he was always leaving it here. Sometimes I thought he ought to wear it at all times.

“What else Mom? Just the driveway this morning? Why were you out of breath when you

called me just now?”

“Someone tripped the motion sensor lights outside. I looked out the window and saw the

bushes rustling like someone had just jumped into them to hide.”

“You sure it wasn’t just a squirrel, Mom?”

Occasionally I tried to introduce some rationality into the conversation. It rarely paid off.

“It wasn’t a squirrel-sized rustle, Winnifred!”

I walked into the kitchen for a glass of water. I’d forgotten to take my pills earlier. I

asked my mother if she remembered her own dose today.

“I’ve been off those for weeks. You should really stop them, too—Jennifer, that coworker

I told you about? She was telling me about these essential oils, like lavender, chamomile, mint,

you know. They cure anxiety and they’re all-natural, so they don’t have any of those chemicals

that pharmaceutical companies put in their drugs to make them addictive. It’s homeopathic,

Winnie—do you know what homeopathic means? —”

I let my mom talk herself out. You had to do that with her. This is how she calmed

herself down. She would never admit to needing professional therapy. She was one of those

people that call psychiatrists “shrinks.” I took a sip of water and swallowed my Lexapro, a

double dose for the one I missed earlier.

When I woke the next morning, I would feel an inner jittery-ness, like my muscles were a horde of hamsters bound by tendons. Then, the incessant yawning, yawns that collided into one another and made my eyes water. The alternative to these side effects was the inability to stand in front of my classroom of Chinese preteens and teach them English. An inability, in the worst of cases, to pry myself from my bed in the morning. After only three months, I’d have to leave

Cambridge, with its fuzzy green lawns and looming gothic spires, its overcast afternoons reading at the banks of the river Cam or getting tea with Juliette. Conner, the shadow of his jaw in my bedroom’s orange light. Love. Instead, I’d be back in Florida, most likely. With Mom, until something else came along.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to go off your medicine without talking to your doctor,” I

said as soon as she’d paused for a moment.

“It’s my body. I can tell if something is working.”

“I think the medicine was working okay, Mom. Please talk to your doctor soon.”

“Alright, alright, I will. Because you asked.”

“Thanks.”

I heard her sigh and wondered if I should keep talking.

“Just make sure all the windows and doors are locked, okay? It’s a safe neighborhood.

You’ll be fine.”

“It was safe five years ago when you were still here, I don’t know if it is now. I should’ve bought that security system, the one that young man tried to sell me the other day. I told you

about him, didn’t I? He seemed sweet. Tall… Well. How are things in Cambridge? Have you

met anyone?”

I hadn’t told her about Conner. I wasn’t really planning on telling her anytime soon. She

was just beginning to get her bearings on the internet, and I didn’t think Conner would be

amused to receive a rogue Facebook friend request from his new girlfriend’s mom. I chose to

ignore that part of her question.

“Things are going well. I finally learned all my students’ names and how to pronounce

them. They’re good students, you know. Very smart, very engaged. They ask good questions.

We’re on the future tense right now.”

“That’s good to hear, sweetie. I hope you’ll call me if you’re ever feeling lonely over

there. Or come home and visit, at least for the holidays.”

“I’m not lonely. I mean, I have Juliette. She’s a good friend. Things are going well.”

“I know, sweetie, I’m glad to hear it. I just want you to know you can always call.”

“Thanks, Mom. I actually think I should be getting to bed soon though. I have class

tomorrow morning.”

“Oh shoot. I forgot. It must be pretty late over there. Go get some rest. I love you.”

“I love you too. Goodnight.”

I hung up the phone. It was just past three. My alarm would go off in four hours.

One of my students had given me this paper lantern thing that I hang over the light in my room. The light was too bright before, and fluorescent light like that had a way of making cheap

surroundings look even cheaper. Conner bumped the lantern with his head earlier that night and

made a rip in the side. Some of that cheap white light was leaking through now, grimacing. I’d

have to tape it shut in the morning.

Fawcett College is over one hundred years old. It is composed of three red brick buildings, each three stories high, which surround a central lawn. Two of these buildings are dormitories, which house a diverse population, including graduate students, burly rugby hunks, and Chinese foreign-exchange kids. South of Dormitory A, there is a small orchard of plum trees and another lawn with two soccer goals. Located in the third building are administrative offices,

5 the dining hall, a reading/recreation room, laundry facilities, and classrooms. It’s in this building that I teach English as a Second Language for a company called Anglex, from nine to three.

There are sixteen students in my classroom. They each have a folded cardstock name placard on their desk. I embarrassed myself rather frequently in the beginning of the year by bungling their names. I tried my best, but I’d stumble over the unfamiliar phonemes, like zh and xi. I suppose I could blame my insular upbringings. Back home in Florida, I hadn’t met a single person of east-Asian descent until I was in high school.

A few of my students go by nicknames that are easier to pronounce. One of my students is called “Ben Ben,” which means “Clumsy-Clumsy” in Mandarin. True to his name, on the first day of class last May, he walked in with the upper-left half of his body in a cast. He had broken his collarbone playing soccer after class — a beloved pastime for my students. I had often watched them from the window as they ran out to the north lawn and fetch the weathered soccer ball from wherever it had last landed in the bushes. It was not the sport as it was meant to be played; rather, it was a carefree approximation, a sort of playground game involving soccer’s equipment, if not its rules and regulations. I watched them, the boys and girls alike, red-faced in the crisp evening air, laughing and screaming until they’d unraveled into huddles of legs and ponytails and sweater sleeves, undone by breathlessness.

Ben Ben has to sit on the sidelines and watch until the cast comes off. When I asked him about it, he told me he gets to be the coach now, so it was okay.

I once asked my students if they’d like to give me a nickname in Mandarin. The room quickly devolved into excited whispers and laughter. Finally, one of my students called out “Gǒu máo!” Another student affirmed the decision, then another.

“Go Mao?” I’d said.

“Yes!”

“Why? What does it mean?”

One of the girls in the class stood up. “Your hair!” She’d said, fanning out her own long,

straight hair with her fingers.

My hair is brown, thick, and curly. I’d told them that I like my hair because it makes me unique, and I liked the nickname too.

Later that evening, with some online research, I discovered the literal translation of Gǒu

máo: dog hair. I’m sure the children meant poodle hair, specifically. That said, I couldn’t tell if

the nickname was mean-spirited. My face is a bit narrow, but I wouldn’t call it poodle-ish.

Although my limbs are thin and long like a poodle’s limbs, I have wide hips that are decidedly

un-poodle. Maybe they were simply admiring my dark eyes. Or was it my air of refinement? As

far as comparisons go, it could’ve been worse.

We were working on a creative project in class this week. Each student was given the

prompt “When I Grow Up”. From there, they wrote a short essay and illustrated it on a large

piece of construction paper. I’d hang them all over the room once they were done, giving color to

the beige cinderblock walls.

I sat with Juliette during my lunch break. As a former military brat, Juliette had lived in the US until she was eight, so I’d always felt like I had more in common with her than the other instructors. She spoke in a sort of British-American hybrid accent—open “posh” vowels with a

7 trace of American “r”—but tended towards British terminology and considered herself culturally

British. Yet she remembered, in some way, what it had felt like to be American, and perhaps more importantly, she understood acutely what it meant to uproot oneself from familiarity and start anew. Juliette was the type of exceedingly-nice person in whose company I felt I could be completely myself. She was smart, yet unassuming. And sometimes I could persuade her into coming to the pub with me after class let out for the day.

She brought her lunch from home, neatly-packed Tupperware containers of carrot sticks and tuna salad. I went through the cafeteria line with the students. There was some form of white fish served every day—I ate far more fish here than I ever did in Florida. The special that day was Toad-in-the-Hole, that mythological British dish. I was excited to try it for the first time, but within a few bites I found myself underwhelmed. A small morsel of sausage embedded in a mound of flaky pastry, it was bready and a little salty. Maybe I would walk to the McDonald’s off Trinity Street for dinner and reacquaint myself with a proper bread-to-meat ratio. I’d found during my time in England that potatoes, another bland cafeteria staple, could find salvation there, anointed in the oil of its amber-colored fryers.

“Why don’t you pack a lunch then, if you don’t like the dining hall food?” Juliette asked me, nibbling on the end of a carrot stick. With her small mouth and small prim hands, she had the aspect of a wood mouse, especially, it seemed, when she ate carrot sticks. To me, it was endearing.

She must have noticed my dissatisfaction with the Toad-in-the-Hole. My mom once told me I never had the ability to hide my emotions, that they were consistently telegraphed in my face and posture, and to know me long enough or well enough was to be able to tell immediately how I was feeling, just by my appearance.

“I haven’t quite familiarized myself with the Sainsbury’s in town yet,” I said.

“Familiarized? You haven’t been then?”

“No, I have. I walked around for a while, I looked at everything. I only ended up buying a

box of Poptarts.”

“Poptarts? They have those back in the States, don’t they?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I just really like them.”

Juliette nodded. “Well, we’ll just have to see about familiarizing you with the place then.

Maybe you could tag along next time I go for groceries. I can show you how to make Chicken

Tikka Masala, too. It keeps well in the refrigerator.”

I told her I would gladly take her up on the offer. She slid the remainder of her carrot

sticks across the table towards me, another kind gesture, but I politely declined.

“Did your mother phone you again last night?” she asked.

“Yeah, she did. How could you tell?” I thought I’d piled on enough concealer this

morning to mask the dark circles under my eyes.

“I was under the impression that it happened almost every night.”

“Oh, right. Yes, it does. And yes, she called again. Twice actually.” I recounted the call

about my father’s alleged stalking.

“Wow, Winnie. Do you think she might be right?”

“No, I really don’t. Their divorce wasn’t, like, exceptionally messy or anything. Well, I shouldn’t say that. My dad was very calm about the whole thing, blasé, you know. He’s like

9 that— very logical, very pragmatic. He didn’t love my mother anymore; she stressed him out.

Those were the facts. For him, it was voiding a contract. My mom was more emotionally invested in everything. I think she felt abandoned, but she wouldn’t say so. She’s not the kind to be caught caring more for someone than they care for her. If that makes any sense.”

Juliette nodded quietly.

“I guess what I’m saying is, I don’t think it’s the kind of thing my dad would do. It’s an act of passion and he’s just not that invested.”

“Fair point,” Juliette said. “Do you think she’ll sort it out on her own? Or maybe she’ll get the police involved?”

“I really don’t think police involvement is necessary, but if that’s what makes her feel better, maybe that’s the way to go. I feel like she’s holding me partially responsible for her own safety and happiness. After the divorce, when I was still in high school and living at home, it was fine. We watched a lot of TV together, bad reality shows and stuff like that. She wanted me to drink wine with her. We just did a lot of things together. She said she was excited for me to go to

England, but the calls have been so frequent, and they’re never about me or what I’m doing. Her anxiety seems to be getting worse, and it's hard to do anything about it when I’m here, across the ocean.”

“I don’t think it’s your responsibility to do anything about it.”

“Maybe it’s not, but I still feel a little guilty about it. Or annoyed. Or guilty for feeling annoyed—I can’t really tell.”

I stopped talking for fear that I was overwhelming Juliette. A tenseness had creeped into

my shoulders and was seeping into the back of my head. It would be good to change the subject

anyway.

“Let’s talk about something else. How about your birthday? Do you have any plans for

that yet?”

Juliette smiled broadly, lifting her chin and crinkling her eyes. I knew she was excited for

her birthday. I hadn’t been excited for a birthday since I turned twenty-one, but Juliette wasn’t

the type to agonize over aging. I didn’t care to pry, but I suspected that her upbringing as an only

child in a military family was often lonely and disorienting. She was well suited to a forward- facing life.

“I want to throw a fancy-dress party,” she said.

Juliette likely knew the American term for this—a costume party—but it was rare for her to translate for my sake.

“Oh, that’s exciting. What are you going to wear?”

“I haven’t decided. I think I want to wear something a bit sexy, actually.”

I made no effort to conceal my surprise. Juliette wore a cardigan over her Anglex polo every day. Two weeks ago, when I wanted to go dancing, she showed up to the club wearing penny loafers. I had tried the sexy Halloween thing back in the US, when I was in college. I didn’t get any more attention from men than usual because every other girl was dressed that way, and it was miserably cold. Juliette, however, was throwing this party in early June and admittedly, her figure would complement a corset and mini skirt nicely.

“I think you should go for it,” I said. “You’d look great.”

Lunch period ended soon after. I said goodbye to Juliette and returned to the classroom. I

preferred the after-lunch classroom environment to the morning. My students returned from the

dining hall relaxed but also talkative and engaged. The morning periods tended to be groggy,

whereas my afternoon classroom was sun-warmed and buzzing.

We’d finished up the assignment from this morning, so it was time to begin the first round of presentations.

The first presenter was Meifeng. She was a sweet girl, one of the brighter students in my class. She held up her poster while she spoke. It was light purple and tidy.

“When I grow up,” she began, “I will live in United States. I will live in a big house with my friends. I will want my family to be living there, too. My mother will make a flower garden by my house and my father will bring the dogs from our China home.”

When class let out for the day, I walked to the library to meet Conner. The way to the library from Fawcett College was a fifteen-to-twenty-minute walk down a gravel footpath flanked on one side by a two-lane road and green, misty woods on the other. Although fenced in by black wrought iron, English Oak branches reached over the footpath, dusting the ground with leaves and shade. On the walk, I’d also pass by playing fields, verdant and perfectly level with a perimeter of tall boxwood hedges. Cyclists coasted by, laden with books, occasionally sounding their bells to warn pedestrians of their approach. Yet, there wasn’t much foot traffic here, as

Spring term had already ended, and the majority of Summer tourists stayed in the town center.

I met Conner while walking this path. I’d been teaching with Anglex for just over a

month. Typically, when approached by men, I default to shyness. Yet, with Conner, I

experienced a gush of confidence, an ease of response. Though generally and admirably bold,

Conner was not fearless. As he spoke, he occasionally reached up to stroke the bridge of his nose

– a nervous tic I found fiercely endearing.

I had been walking alone to the library when a voice behind me called out.

“Hello there!”

I turned around. The voice belonged to a tall man in his mid-twenties. He had a thin face and was wearing a maroon sweater with the sleeves pushed up. His stride was loping and a little goofy.

“I suppose now’s a good time to introduce myself,” he’d said, catching up to walk alongside me. “I’m Conner.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Conner. I’m Winnie.”

“Oh, dear god, Winnie. You’re American, aren’t you?”

“Well,” I’d said, smiling down at my feet. “Don’t say it like it’s such a bad thing.”

“No, no, not at all. I’m only surprised. Americans, they… they tend to speak so loudly.

I’d seen you around before, but I’d never heard you.”

“You’d seen me around before? How long had you been watching from afar?”

“Not long enough to have noticed you’re American.”

Conner was two years older than me and a graduate student at Cambridge, studying the

Roman empire under Hadrian. He lived in the residences at Fawcett College, where he’d seen me a few times in the cafeteria. Later, when I asked him why he decided to approach me that day, he told me I was new and pretty, and that was good enough reason for him.

Cambridge University Library, in sharp contrast to the intricate Gothic architecture generally associated with the institution, was characterized by an austere, highly-rectangular verticality. Against the pale grey backdrop of the overcast sky, the central tower loomed like a draconian overseer.

The library’s interior was markedly cozier, if not a little stuffy, lined from floor to ceiling with dark wood bookshelves and oil paintings of Cambridge scholars and benefactors. Conner had texted me while I was in class to tell me he would be in the North Wing on the third floor.

The only source of light in this wing came from the windows, leaving the narrow corridors between bookshelves dark and quiet. For nighttime study, one could turn on the overhead light for a particular shelf with a device similar to an egg timer, located on one end of the shelf. There were small desk lamps, as well. Conner would study deep into the night in this Wing, where it was always quiet. If he wasn’t here, he was most likely back at my apartment or his own.

I found him leaning back in his chair, two of its legs off the green carpeted floor, a pencil clamped between his teeth and a book open in his lap. His light brown hair, which he kept short, curled just slightly at the ends. I admired the aquiline length of his nose, its silhouette carved out of the window’s natural light. He was, perhaps, most handsome in profile.

“What are you reading?” I said, tapping him on the shoulder.

He read for just a moment longer, likely finishing the sentence. Then he turned to me and smiled, standing to greet me with a kiss on the forehead.

“Winnie, how have you been?” His voice was low, befitting the studious atmosphere.

I recounted my day without going into much detail. Having immersed himself so intently in academia, he expressed vague annoyance in idle chatter. All points of discussion needed an intellectual foundation, conversations required a higher purpose than recalling anecdotes and sharing perspectives. When talking to him, I found myself often feeling as though I were a participant in a Socratic debate. I didn’t mind it because I’d always wanted to date someone intelligent, and I appreciated the challenge of accommodating his wit.

I did, however, tell him about my mother’s phone call last night. I thought he might find her stalking claim intriguing, albeit unfounded.

“Sounds like she’s gone a bit senile, hasn’t she?” he said without looking up from his book.

I was a little startled by his response. I suppose what I expected most was sympathy. Why did I expect that? Did I feel sorry for my mom or sorry for myself? How was Conner supposed to know I wasn’t just bringing the whole thing up to poke fun at my mother? I wouldn’t reproach him. I didn’t want that conflict.

“I’m not sure if my mom is senile,” I said, “but she has wormed her way into the nooks and crannies of conspiratorial cyberspace. I think that’s what I’m most worried about—the possibility of her becoming so paranoid that she believes the Clintons are brainwashing our impressionable youth through microwave ovens.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Stay sharp, my dear.”

He left for the tea room and returned several minutes later with two cups of Earl Grey.

We drank our tea together, silently; he read, and I graded the quizzes from last week. Much of

our time spent together, due to his commitment to his studies, fit this format of shared solitude.

Occasionally, I’d reach over to stroke along his arm with the backs of my fingers. Sometimes, his absentminded hand would trace the length of my thigh or entangled itself in my hair. This was our intimacy.

The shadows fell long until they receded into darkness. Conner flicked on the desk lamp beside him, but I had already finished my grading and ached to be home, where I could end my

Friday with a hot bath and shrimp Pad Thai from the place next door.

“I think I’m going to head home,” I said, packing my things away in my canvas bag.

Conner looked up and smiled. “You’ll be fine getting home by yourself?”

“I thought I might take an Uber. The rates aren’t very high right now.”

He nodded, turning back to his book. “Good.”

“Do you think you’ll come over later tonight?” I asked.

“I would, but I already told some mates I’d meet them at the pub tonight.”

I was hurt, but not enough to say something. Anyway, a night alone could be relaxing. I gave Conner a kiss and walked down the stairs from the North Wing, past the Reading Room, which was aglow in lamplight and so quiet that one could hear the turning of a page, if they listened closely.

The bathroom at my apartment was little larger than a broom closet, but I didn’t mind. I want little else from a bathroom besides a tub and hot water to go in it. The floor and walls were lined in peach-colored tiles, and I’d mostly succeeded in covering the cracked ones with the bathmat or framed wall art. My shower curtain was plastic, printed with a pattern of cartoon cats with snorkels, swimming after tiny pink fish. I kept an assortment of candles around the tub, and as part of my pre-bath ritual I carefully lit them all, one by one.

I soaked in peace for about ten minutes or so before my phone started ringing. I shouldn’t have left my phone on or in reach if I didn’t want to answer a call from my mom while I was relaxing, but I was feeling tender tonight and a little small, like a floating speck in a dense, dark cloud. This was only my third month in Cambridge, and I was sure the feeling would surface less frequently as I adjusted to my surroundings. Tonight, however, the call from my mother struck me with such a strong and unexpected wave of comfort that I felt myself nearly brought to tears, even if she was only calling to air her endless concerns. It made me feel needed.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Hi, sweetie. Do you have a minute to talk?”

“Sure, I’m not busy at all.”

My mother’s day was wonderfully mundane. In her own words, she’d survived the night.

She woke early, fed the cat, watered the houseplants, and made a nice egg white omelet for breakfast. She watched The View while practicing calligraphy, Edwardian script— “I’d like to be the one to address your wedding invitations, when that day comes,” she’d said. There was a sale at the craft store, where she got a vial of cobalt-blue ink and some unscented tea lights for next- to-nothing. I let her talk herself out again, but this time I listened the whole way through.

“That seems like a good day. I’m guessing you didn’t see Dad in the driveway?”

“No, I didn’t. I forgot to mention it, but last night I did call the police, the non-emergency line. I told them about it and they said they’d have someone patrolling the area that night.”

Yeah, I thought. So they said.

“I’m a little unsure as to why you can’t just call Dad and talk to him about it. Involving the police seems a little unreasonable.”

“Winnie, if a man doesn’t feel obligated to tell the truth in marriage, that fact certainly won’t change in divorce.”

I really couldn’t stand the platitudes. Mom always seemed to have one in the barrel, ready to fire off if ever she saw an opportunity to laud her worldliness over me. Besides that, the constant character assassination of my father bothered me. He wasn’t evil for wanting to leave.

Often, I thought what he did was understandable.

“You’re making things too complicated, Mom. This doesn’t even make sense. Dad lives on the other side of the state, and you and I both know he has a girlfriend.”

My mom didn’t say anything to that. I felt a surge of self-loathing; I shouldn’t have brought up the stalking thing in the first place. The most effective means of quelling her paranoia was distracting her with something else. It was a trick I’d used on myself, if ever I found myself spiraling off into dread. You find something else to occupy the mind.

I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and it didn’t matter anyway.

“Just when I think you’re the only person I have left, you go and prove me wrong,” she said, and hung up.

I heard banging on my front door, and then Conner’s voice calling my name. It sounded urgent. I answered, still wearing my bath towel, trailing damp footprints behind me.

“Winnie,” he said, leaning against the door frame. “Is this a bad time?” He was visibly drunk.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He held up his wrist and turned it from side to side. “My watch. The one my father gave me.”

“Oh right. Wait here.”

“No,” Conner said, reaching out to grab my elbow as I turned away. “I mean, can I come in?”

I hesitated. The phone call with my mom had made me feel exposed and ashamed. While

Conner’s proposition might have normally excited me, now I just felt uneasy. He’d seen me now in just my towel – he’d want to stay the night.

“I don’t know, Conner,” I said. “Why don’t you wait here? I’ll call you a ride and bring you the watch.”

“What’s the problem?” he asked. “I can’t just sit inside for a moment?”

I hiked my towel up my torso. I didn’t know how to respond.

“Please, Winnie, can’t I just sit down? I really need to sit down.” He was holding his forehead in his open hand.

I let him inside. He sat on the countertop in the kitchenette and leaned his head back against the cabinet.

“I’m always forgetting that watch,” he said.

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. That’s the most important gift I’ve ever received. Did I tell you about how my father gave it to me?”

He had, but I let him tell the story again.

“I had this wonderful stuffed rabbit named Peter. He had been — he was my favorite toy for all my childhood. I remember—” he laughed softly to himself and rubbed the fingertips of his right hand together — “I’d loved Peter so much, I rubbed the fabric on his ears completely bare.

“My parents, as you know, were, uh, rather well off. My mother offered again and again to buy me a new one. No, no, not the same, Mummy. She knew how I loved him. She’d made him a little sailor hat, a little officer’s uniform like my father’s.

“On my eleventh birthday, my father took Peter from my bed while I was sleeping. I looked all over for him until father sat me down and told me Peter had gone away.”

Conner paused and looked up at the ceiling. He might’ve been crying. I didn’t say anything about it.

“’When I became a man, I put away childish things,’ he’d said. Then he replaced Peter with that watch, which had belonged to his own father.”

“Your father was wrong to do that,” I said.

“No,” he replied, looking me hard in the eye. “He was right to do that. It was important

and I needed it.”

I left him for just a moment to retrieve the watch from the bedroom. The band was made of gold and silver, and it felt heavy in my hand. Holding the watch, looking at it, I think I better understood why Conner was so upset about forgetting it here. I’d never met Conner’s father, but there was a sort of fatherly presence in this object, tucked away under the glassy face. I realized then too why Conner was so engrossed in his studies of Hadrian. A military figure, a leader and intellectual — He would’ve been familiar to Conner.

I returned the watch to Conner. Wordlessly, he fastened it to his wrist. Then he brought

my hand to his lips and kissed my fingertips with such a solemnity, such a tenderness that for an

instant my breath caught in my throat.

“Thank you,” he said. “I should be going now.”

“Do you… would you like some water? I can call a cab?”

“No, thank you,” he said. A wistful smile crossed his face. “I don’t wish to impose any

longer. I think I’ll enjoy the walk.”

As he left, he turned sideways in the door frame, made a sort of half-hearted salute, and laughed to himself as he strolled off into the dark.

Juliette’s party was the following night at her apartment. I woke up the morning of the party in a daze. The phone call with my mom last night left me kind of foggy the next morning,

downtrodden. I called Juliette early in the afternoon to see if she had any costume ideas. She was

at Sainsbury’s, stocking up on vodka and mixers.

“Why not go as Winnie the Pooh?” she said. “That would be cute.”

“Juliette… I can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“Well, first, Winnie the Pooh doesn’t wear pants. So that’s a whole thing.”

“No, no, you’d just wear yellow leggings or something. No big deal.”

“But Winnie the Pooh is fat. He’s a big fat-ass bear,” I said. “Conner will be there.”

Juliette sighed. “That’s all I’ve come up with for now. I’ll text you if I think of something else, but I’m rather busy right now. Should I get six or seven bottles of vodka?”

“Might as well get seven. Wouldn’t want to run out.”

“Too true.”

I decided to go as a rubber duck. I already owned a yellow plastic raincoat, and I’d found the duck bill while trawling through the shops in town. It was orange, about five inches long and made of silicone, with an elastic band that attached to either side so you could fasten it to your head. As far as costumes go, it wasn’t all that more attractive than the Winnie the Pooh option, but at least I’d only spent five pounds on it. I’d put on some dark eye makeup and do something snazzy to my hair to try to sex up the look a bit.

I arrived at Juliette’s apartment around ten with a bottle of cheap Riesling. Conner told me he was finishing up some work in the library and would arrive later. Juliette had hung a gold

sign that said “Happy Birthday” over the door. The cobblestone footpath outside her front door

was still slicked with the afternoon’s rain, glinting in the streetlamp light. I’d arrived a little late,

and already I heard the rumble of voices and music emanating from the apartment, rattling the

windows in their old wooden frames.

Juliette opened the front door and greeted me with a squealy hug before I could get a

good look at what she was wearing. When I pulled back I could see: she was some sort of cheap

prostitute kitty cat. The costume might’ve been alluring had it been all black, but instead she wore an array of sexy-adjacent items in all different colors—lime green fishnet tights, a lipstick-

red pleather mini skirt, black corset with pink ribbons, a white garter belt, and heavy silver

jewelry. To top it all off, she had on a pair of pink sequined cat ears. It was the kind of thing that

would’ve been funny if done intentionally. I told her she looked great anyway, and she invited

me inside.

The apartment was mostly dark, with a few patches of incandescent light where Juliette

had turned on some lamps. I was surprised by how many people were already here, some people

that I recognized from work but mostly people I’d never seen before. Who were all these other

friends Juliette had, and why hadn’t she mentioned them to me before? I’d found comfort in

what I perceived to be our mutual loneliness. I thought I’d been her closest friend, as she was

mine.

Almost immediately, Juliette disappeared from my side to go mingle. I’d lost my guide,

and the party was now a nightmare realm of strangers who would sneer at my American accent

or my poodle hair or my babyish costume. I shimmied through the crowded living room to get to

the kitchen, where I could pour myself a drink. Juliette had arranged what appeared to be all her

23 glassware and mugs along the countertop. Did they not have plastic cups in the UK? I grabbed a purple mug. On the side it read “My Grandma Was So Amazing God Made Her An Angel.”

The glaring problem with the duck costume, which I’m certain I would’ve realized while shopping today, had I been in the right frame of mind, was that in order to drink, eat, or even communicate effectively, one had to momentarily displace the duck bill from over one’s mouth.

I’d developed a two-handed system for this: left hand moves the bill, right hand brings mug to mouth for sip, left hand moves the bill back. Using this method, I leaned against the counter and watched the party happening around me, hoping Conner would arrive soon.

It would be another two hours before he showed up. He wasn’t wearing a costume. I noticed him come in the door and maneuvered through the crowd to reach him.

“Conner!” I called to him over the loud dance music. He didn’t hear me.

I moved the bill and tried again. “Conner!”

This time he saw me. He fumbled through some other partygoers.

He gave me a funny sort of look. “Well what’s all this then?” he said, looking me up and down.

“You mean my costume?” I said. “I’m a rubber duck.” I tapped my bill as affirmation.

He tapped the bill too, and laughed to himself, a raspy laugh that shook his shoulders.

“Why didn’t you dress up?” I asked him, adjusting the bill where his taps had displaced it.

He shook his hand dismissively and smiled. He seemed to be avoiding eye contact with me. Annoyance pinched my throat and shoulders.

“Let me get you something to drink,” I said.

The crowd was beginning to thin now, as people began to leave, and groups splintered off into lazy huddles, draped over Juliette’s sectional sofa, talking. I passed Juliette on my way to the kitchen as well—she was entwined with a tall redheaded guy with pointy elbows who was stooping down to kiss her. Her fishnets had a substantial run in the side. I didn’t watch them for more than a moment.

I returned to Conner. He took the drink from me and then started leading me by my forearm out the front door.

“Wait, where are we going?”

“I was wondering if I might talk to you outside for a moment. I have some exciting news.”

He led me out of the door and a few paces away from the front steps. He stopped and leaned the length of his body against the black streetlamp behind him. I stood in front of him, my arms folded across my chest. The cold night air stung me through my raincoat.

“I’m leaving tomorrow for Jerusalem,” he said.

“Jerusalem? That’s exciting. You hadn’t mentioned that before.”

“Well, no, I hadn’t. I was still considering it, but now I’ve decided on it. It’s too great of an opportunity to pass up.”

“What’s that? The opportunity, that is.”

“I’ve been offered a research position with the Department of History. I’ll be working

alongside other historians and archaeologists to study the Bar Kokhba revolt and Hadrian’s

efforts to suppress Judaism within his empire.”

“Wow, how wonderful. How long will you be gone?”

“It is, it’s a wonderful opportunity. You see, the current body of scholarship is quite

revisionist and defamatory towards Hadrian and his policies. Rather than looking at the bigger

picture, it focuses on the destruction of temples, the Torah burnings, what have you. Utter

sensationalism. Now we have junior reporters who read the Wikipedia page on Bar Kokhba and write a 750-word thinkpiece comparing Hadrian to Hitler. It’s nonsense.”

“Conner, how long will you be gone?”

“Oh,” he said, his voice faltering slightly. “This will likely take the better part of a year.

Maybe longer.”

The better part of a year? Maybe longer?

I couldn’t tell what my face was doing. Did I look angry? Mortified?

“You didn’t think to discuss this with me first?” I said.

“Discuss what?”

“What your being thousands of miles away will mean for our relationship?”

“Well, I suppose we could have that conversation now,” he said.

We stared at each other in silence. Behind him, things were moving. Small, dizzied bugs in the lights of streetlamps, waving tree branches, rustling curtains in backlit windows, and very

26 distantly, all the way down the road, groups of people and their voices. Yet, Conner was all stillness, and something about that made me feel worse.

“I don’t think we have to break up, Winnie,” he said.

“Will you call me every day?”

“I don’t know. I expect to be rather busy. I’ll try to.”

No, I thought. He wouldn’t call me every day. What chance was there if he couldn’t promise it? When I left home, I told Mom I’d call, but then I became distracted. I was learning to live in a new place. Not for lack of love, I neglected that promise to my Mom because a mere phone call had become inconvenient.

Would it then be left to me to call him every day? To forget the time differences and wake him in the middle of the night? To discuss at length the mundanities of my life just for the chance to hear him breathe and speak and maybe laugh?

“No,” I said. “I don’t think this is going to work."

Then I began to cry. Big, ugly sobs. Mascara-blackened tears had already begun to roll down the end of my duck bill before I realized I was still wearing it and ripped the stupid thing off.

Conner stepped back and stroked the bridge of his nose for a moment. Then he tried to console me, placing a limp hand on my shoulder. I continued to cry, stupid, cold, and immobilized. I told him he’d made his choice.

“I assumed we’d be able to compromise. I thought you’d be happy for me.”

“I am happy for you,” I said, wiping my eyes.

Something about the way I’d said it rang untrue. He and I both could tell, and I felt ashamed.

“I just don’t want to be alone,” I said.

He nodded and leaned back against the lamppost, raising his chin to the sky, exposing the pale stretch of his throat. He sighed softly, as if he’d just recalled a pleasant memory.

“I’m not worried for you Winnie,” he said. “I know you’re going to be okay.”

It was enough. Clumsily, we said our goodbyes, and I walked alone to the bus station.

Back home, I flung the duck bill across the room and flattened myself against my living room carpet. Eventually I would have to get up, take off what was left of my makeup, and brush my teeth. But in that moment, I wanted only to commune with my scratchy beige carpet and listen to the gentle rumble of my upstairs neighbors engaging in a domestic dispute.

After an hour or so of that, I got up and entered my bedroom in a daze. The rip Conner put in my paper lantern had widened considerably, and now the bottom half hung from the top, nearly detached, like a flap of injured skin. The white fluorescent light from the bulb spilled out freely, harshly. Everything around me looked cheap.

I led a quiet class the next day. My students spent the time working on their book reports.

Occasionally one would ask me to help pronounce a word.

Unique: juˈnik. Sometimes the same letter in the same word makes a different sound, for no reason other than That’s How It Is.

From my desk, I looked around the classroom at the colorful posters, crayon drawings of people with thin red smiles and long distorted limbs. Bright orange suns, green and purple flowers, two-dimensional sports cars and approximations of soccer balls. I would’ve liked to keep some of these pictures when my students graduated, but I also understood that would be a strange request.

After class, I sat on the stone wall in the orchard and watched the children as they played in the field. The distant trees had long gone black against the orange dusk, but there was light enough to see.

My phone started ringing. But it wasn’t my mom — it was my dad.

“Hello?”

“Winnie? It’s Dad.”

“What’s going on?”

My dad didn’t usually call unless it was a holiday or special occasion. Our relationship wasn’t cold, but we’d reached a sort of agreement wherein we acknowledged our familial love for one another at a distance and lived our lives separately.

“Your mother didn’t call you yet? I thought that might be the case. She’s probably still in shock. Somebody broke into her house yesterday evening. I just found out.”

My stomach dropped. “What? Wait, really? Was she home? Is she okay?”

“She wasn’t in the house, apparently,” he said. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my dad was very nonplussed about the incident. “Police said the intruder likely cased the house beforehand to get

29 an idea of when she’d be out. He entered through the garage door, so he probably saw her put in the code to open it at some point. They said he’d done his research.”

I was both stricken and relieved. My mom hadn’t been lying about the man at the mailbox, or the rustling in the bushes. It just hadn’t been my dad.

“One would think a woman like her would be more careful,” he said.

“Dad, I’m sorry, I have to go,” I said, and I hung up the phone.

I didn’t move from my spot on the wall. To move was to participate in physics, to concede to space and time. The thought crossed my mind that I could proceed indefinitely in this moment. It felt profoundly rational.

I could hear very clearly the voices of the children as they called out to each other in their native language, Mandarin Chinese, the most widely-spoken language in the world, a language I could not speak or understand. In Florida, at this time of day, the cicadas call out to each other in their own language, a deafening rattle that originates deep inside them, vital, unlearned. The sound the cicadas make fills up everything around them. Here, it’s completely absent. I could hear very clearly the children at play.

One of the children wandered off from the others and I couldn’t tell why. What dazzled him? I watched as, gradually, the others took notice. The locus of fun shifted; the huddle of children now chased a moving, invisible point. They laughed as they breathed and reached their arms forward, grabbing at the air surrounding that invisible point, toddling and knocking into one another. They looked so young. I thought about what it meant to be eleven and twelve years old, at the threshold of adolescence (with its promised intrigue), and to embrace so fully and

recklessly the childlike part of one’s heart. I leaned forward until I was able to make out what

they pursued: a butterfly. A butterfly. I never thought I’d see anything so perfect in my life.

I submitted my resignation the next day. I called my mother and when she picked up, before she could say anything, I told her I was coming home.