It’s Billie, calling from Georgia. “This is your mother speaking!” she says, her voice loud in my ear. “You know what she’s done now, don’t you?” It takes me a second to tune in. “Who?” “Malice of course.” Of course. “She’s stolen my passport.” Oh no. “She came up the mountain in the middle of the night and stole it.” “Why would she do that?” “She hates me,” Billie says. I want to believe her. But Billie loses things all the time, just like I do. It’s genetic. A seventy-five-year-old woman who has just lost her husband doesn’t drive twenty miles up a mountain in the middle of the night to sneak into her stepdaughter’s house and steal her passport. I can picture Billie picking it up by mistake and throwing it away with a pizza container. “Have you checked the trash?” “Of course I’ve checked the trash!” I can hear her scrabbling about in the trash. Then, a few seconds later: “And it’s not there!” She sounds accusing. As if it’s my fault.
What do You think about The English American (2008)?
