The Road Trip

Valeria and Camila Ferraro had been planning the trip since they were teenagers in Rosario, watching American movies with the subtitles off to show off. Twenty years later, they finally picked up a rented red convertible in Chicago, with a paper map, a playlist of songs about highways and a shared conviction that their English was excellent. It was. It was simply the wrong kind.

They had both learned at a school where every teacher had studied in London, and their English came with tea, umbrellas and the occasional "brilliant." The first sign of trouble came at a gas station in Illinois. Valeria asked the attendant where she could fill up with petrol. He looked at the car, then at her, then pointed at the pump marked "Gas" as though explaining something to a small child.

In Missouri, a friendly waitress looked Camila up and down and said, "I love your pants, honey." Camila, whose teachers had always insisted that pants were what you wore under your trousers, turned crimson and spent the next five minutes checking her reflection in the napkin dispenser. Valeria laughed so hard she had to go outside. In the end a truck driver at the next table explained, very kindly, that in America pants were simply trousers, and that the waitress had meant her jeans.

Oklahoma brought biscuits. The menu promised "biscuits and gravy," and Valeria, picturing a plate of sweet cookies drowned in brown sauce, ordered it purely out of scientific curiosity. What arrived were two warm, soft, scone-like rolls covered in a thick white sauce with sausage in it. She stared at it with deep suspicion, took one bite and then, without a word, ate the whole thing. "This," she said finally, "is not a biscuit. But I forgive it."

The misunderstandings piled up like the miles. They asked a receptionist in Texas for a room on the first floor and were given one at street level, which is where Americans start counting. They told a motel porter their suitcases were in the boot, and he looked down at their feet. They queued politely behind a burger stand until someone told them, not unkindly, that the line was over there, and that it was moving. When Camila asked a man where the rubbish bin was, he looked so puzzled that she ended up simply holding up her empty cup until he pointed at a can labeled "Trash."

Somewhere in New Mexico, under an enormous sky, they started keeping a list on the back of the map. On the left, what their teachers had taught them; on the right, what America actually said. Petrol and gas. Chips and fries. Crisps and chips, which was where things got truly confusing. Holiday and vacation. Jumper and sweater, which a shop assistant in Arizona took a full minute to work out.

By the time they reached the pier at Santa Monica, the list ran to forty-three entries and both sisters had started, without noticing, to say "gas" and "trash" like locals. They sat on the edge of the Pacific eating fries that they no longer called chips and agreed that neither kind of English was the wrong one. They had simply been carrying the wrong dictionary.

On the flight home, Camila took the map out of her bag and looked at the list again. Then she added one final entry at the bottom, in capital letters: "Brilliant" and "awesome." Underneath, she wrote: "Both mean we should do this again."