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No, damn it, no vacation plans here. Quit asking. I close my eyes and dream of it. It takes me to a time when I thought I would die if I did not get some sun, warmth. I was cold, and had contracted some sort of food poisoning or other malaise, and Caen could not cure it. I went to the station and bought tickets for Valencia.
Caen. Paris. Barcelona. Valencia. That was the plan.
On the first leg, I met a punk, not my type, no type I should have ever stopped to talk to some might argue. But he was sitting across from me, and talking is what I do when I travel. I had to switch trains in Paris, anyway, and could easily leave later in the day. Why not? So, I walked with him through a Paris I had never seen before or have seen since, a Paris that works behind the Paris I knew, beneath it, around it. It makes it tick, and it makes it sweat, and it makes Paris Paris perhaps, but it is not Paris. In little time, I realized the guy was trouble, but not the kind of trouble that would harm me personally, as long as I remained detached. So I did, though he fed my imagination, with its Edith Piaf soundtrack, ports, pimps, accordions. He knew the people in the streets, in dirty cafes, in rundown areas full of the immigrants who some were sure were ruining the country. He was sinewy, handsome beneath his black coarse hair, despite his bent nose, said he broke it. He conjugated creatively, not the way I learned in books, and used words I had heard somewhere, in a movie maybe, but not from people who spoke freely with the bourgeois likes of me. A stop to his father’s apartment, and the slammed door told me enough. Stay out, don’t follow if he has a note to visit the préfecture, but it was there we went. I waited outside.
He said he loved me. He did not. How does anyone really fall in love in a moment? Fool. I certainly knew better, and yet, I have met French men–here I stereotype, but I have met three claiming the same disease–who seemed in their own hearts to believe that these coups de foudre really happen just like that and determine the entire course of a lifetime. They believed that they fall in love forever this way. But not forever, no. Not for me, like that, never was, never was more than perhaps a glass of wine, a coffee, a walk that could sustain a momentary notion of something that some think is love. I always wondered why that feels so nice for that moment, and is perhaps a beginning, but certainly not the whole thing. But then, I was willing to let myself believe, just a little, that this soldier–because he had been one recently he said, a paratrooper, and I did believe that anyway–was just a little in love with me, and I followed, if for nothing else than a glimpse of this life that I had never seen before.
He introduced a friend, or acquaintance, and within seconds a sidewalk rendezvous was transformed as this friend pulled an umbrella from a table where a couple sat gazing at one another. He swung the umbrella, knocking the man from his seat. The woman screamed as another man produced a switchblade. The umbrella hit the ground as the friend went running down the street. My suitor led me to an alley where he pushed hair from my eyes, kissing me, and I feigned regret that the last afternoon train was leaving so soon, and hated myself, my bourgeois, scared little self, for feeling that way. By evening, I was in Barcelona, where I stayed for a while. I never made it to Valencia, but that is another story. Eventually I had to go back to Caen. It was uncharacteristically hot for the rest of the spring, and I was lazy and went to the beach instead of class, and was cured from all my ills.
I saw my would-be love once more, but only briefly. He was busy. There were post cards after that, but no frantic phone calls or emails. This was France, after all, where I wrote my term papers in longhand, and I had none of those modern conveniences where I lived. I did answer his letters, lazily. Words slowed then stopped, and I never saw him again.
Suppose, instead, that I had believed him. What would have happened if I had delved beyond the superficial walk through the jardin and let myself be swept up in all of it? Would I have wound up in some bohemian banlieue, attempting some artful expression of that life? Doubtful. Doubtful my love would ever have been returned if it had been that easy for him to have, and there would perhaps have been no walk, no meant-to-be-broken promises, and nothing to ponder twenty years later on a summer afternoon. It would never have been love, but some mockery of it. So no. It’s Wednesday, and maybe I do need a vacation.
Here she comes again, no bike helmet, but that would be très uncool. The neighbor kid is cute, I’ll admit. You know the type: dark hair, impish smile, the middle school principal knows him well enough to know where he is after school, generally an area off limits during the rest of the day, where older kids hang out. That type. Trouble.
Of course our neighbor never notices how many times she has come past here, which she does not realize is probably a good thing. She is hardly the type to get noticed, after all, shorts and a t-shirt from Target–I don’t even remember what color. Hair like dark sand, not chocolate or golden, drab. And she would die of embarrassment if anyone asked why she keeps riding past. But still, there is something to this girl, something special about the way she looks back, out of breath, when she reaches the end of our short street, looks at her watch, checks her time, keeps going and assumes, like all kids who have crushes, that no one thinks it’s odd that she is doing time trials on a street so many blocks away from home. She thinks no one has ever done that before, that no one notices a kid riding up and down in front of another kid’s house.
My summer for the crush was when I turned twelve. He was the lifeguard, and tossed a Nerf ball back and forth to me in some act of mercy. He was eighteen, about to go to school in California. I listened to old Beach Boys records, partly because he looked like Al Jardine, really, just like him. The lifeguard’s family was so much cooler than mine, no grass in the front yard; they had wildflowers. Of course I knew his phone number. I got up the nerve to ask his mom if he was home the night before he left for college. He talked. On. The. Phone. To me. And that was it. Never saw him again. I used to see their mom swimming laps at the Y. I understand the girl with sandy hair. I myself still live under the assumption that no one in my crush’s family ever realized I was doing anything other than riding past to go to the pool.
Our pre-teen visitor has gone by once more, but it is close to five o’clock. She may come by once more this evening, hard to say. Maybe not. Maybe life is waiting for her, too, right around the next corner.
He sat in the hot dog counter of the local Target in his dress pants and neatly pressed shirt, heavy dark eyebrows over an intense gaze. “Must get out,” I imagined him saying before he left his house–too hot, humid, lonely–on a Sunday afternoon. An excuse, needing paper towels, shampoo, light bulbs. An excuse, but nothing is really in short supply; only seeing another person is. So Target it is, and while we’re at it, a soda, yes make it a Coke.
It’s nice to look your best when you go out, but not that shirt, too old, used to wear it to work. This one: casual, but needs ironing. So, it’s 2:00, fine I’ll iron it. Now it’s 3:00, still not too late, still time to get those paper towels and see what else is there, who else is there. Don’t forget to comb hair, wash hands. Always make a good impression. There. Perfect.
Three years ago, I would have written a very different post on this day. The symbolic gesture could not have been coincidental: why else would he have chosen that day to move out?
Independence had a somewhat different meaning for me then. Before then, I had felt free, only realized I was not when I started to stray beyond the expected, with results not unlike those offered by an electric fence.
At first it was about small things: being able to make my own choices, playing music I liked, walking through my own house and my own life without fear…
Writing.
The last three years have demonstrated that freedom is a concept that I had never fully appreciated before I lost it; otherwise I would have done more to protect it. At the same time, this end of tyranny was not an altogether independent action. I owe it to so many people who came into my life. I did not, do not feel that I ever could not need anyone. Far from it.
I cherish my freedom to be who I am, but I am no island. I cherish interdependence, as we depend on one another in this world. Today I celebrate life. I celebrate liberty. And yes, I celebrate that pursuit of happiness, that maslovian step up, that thing that pushes us toward greater things, and to holding fast to those principles that protect and define us.
Pig is ready with the enchiladas.
Enchiladas are served.
And now, the best part:
Enchiladas are gone.
enchilar “1. to season with chiles; 2. (Mexico) to annoy; 3. to sting, burn.
A simple meal in the final execution, the preparation of enchiladas in my house was a labor of love. On a busy evening, it could be quick: a jar of sauce, pre-grated cheese, onion, whatever else was left to throw in, roll them up, stick them in the oven, and they were done. Sometimes, though, I made the sauce myself, boiling and scraping out the chiles, shredding the chicken (roasted–perhaps not traditional, but certainly tasty), softening the onions, nearly caramelized (again, maybe not traditional), before adding them to the cheese and chicken mixture, the mild peppers.
It was a meal that I had loved for a long time, and perfected during the Colorado years, in a land of hedonism and endless meal choices. It was there, watching Mexicans, many nearly invisible in the kitchens of a town many could barely afford to live in, that I was inspired to find the secrets. It was there, in the only affordable living space, a cheap deal in the land of plenty: the trailer court, that I first made enchiladas.
The trailer court was not my first choice for a home, snob that I was (well… not snob, to be honest: I was actually afraid of the trailer court). The trailer option did allow us to stay in town, and after a bit of arm-twisting, my then-husband convinced me that it did not have to be the place of tornadoes and dysfunction that I had grown up experiencing it to be. No, this was the West, not the Midwest, and things were different.
And different they seemed in those early days. I frolicked in the kitsch, put a clichéd pink flamingo out front, and started cooking. I became pregnant, blurred my doctoral dreams, nodded gazedly to the sudden move across the country. Boston. I was in hub heaven. I could still finish my work there, and made arrangements. My advisor said a class at Harvard could help me through the classical language requirement. Harvard! Imagine that.
The enchilada ingredients were harder to find, at least then, at least within walking distance of our house.
Fast forward several months. The baby was pushing to come out. Someone was asking me to sign something. A purchase and sale agreement was Fed-Exed to northern Vermont. “Why there?” you ask. Hell if I knew. I cannot even remember when I stopped asking those questions. The town we landed in was one of so many places where we picked up real estate brochures: Charlotte, Cheyenne, Guthrie, Belfast–at least this one was not a ranch. We could have landed anywhere, back in those days that any vacation could become the next home sweet home. Vermont seemed nice enough, though a bit lonely as the summer faded. I loved being in Boston. My then-husband enjoyed those pre-child moments, too, took long walks, played drums with a friend, went to car races with his brother on Saturday nights, tried to forget the doctorate he quit. No teaching work in Boston, he said, said we could not afford to stay, said we had to move. No job in Vermont, either, not for a long time. The house was a dream, a true beauty, the village isolated, dotted with dairy farms and cross country ski trails. Hard not to love, but to stay there? Babies came, many babies. I loved them well, loved them as if they were all I had. And maybe then, they were.
I was making enchiladas, my gloved hands dipping the tortillas into the sauce, then filling them with the chicken, cheese. Gloved hands—I had learned my lesson years earlier not to mess with chiles without some defense.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I was making dinner. I was cooking his favorite dinner, our favorite dinner, kids waiting, watching, wanting me to finish quickly. The oven was preheated, the side dishes were cooking, a salad waited on the table already.
“Those are gloves for cleaning toilets!”
I had two pair. The yellow ones for cooking, the blue for cleaning. Both were beneath the sink, on separate sides. Two pair: these were the yellow gloves.
“You are an unfit mother.”
He grabbed the dish from me and dumped the enchiladas into the trash. My older son yelled “NO!” while the others cried. I watched in horror as my husband, ‘till death do us part, ripped open hot dogs, baked beans, told the kids not to move. No one did. I saw the look in his eyes. I thought how I had bought the hot dogs the day before, at a grocery store seventeen miles away, thought how he was lucky there was something else to eat. My son said he wanted enchiladas, and I feared for the kid. He saw the look, too, bit into a hot dog, tears streaming down his face. I sat in the stairwell and sobbed, curled up as tight as I could, looking for a safe place, and there was none.
“If no one is going to eat, it’s bedtime.”
It was 6:30 pm. The kids did not argue, the four of them in the bath together. I went into their room, trying to put our life back together, convinced like so many other times, that it never really happened.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
My husband pushed me into our bedroom. I wanted to say goodnight to the kids. I heard myself protesting as he shut the door on me. I know I was yelling please. The key turned and locked.
“You are not safe to be around children,” he told me.
I thought maybe he was right about everything he said until then. I had told people I needed more help, found help. Four kids under six, one noticeably disabled. A woman came from the school, said we were a family, and had to work together. I cried. He was busy, I told her, had to leave early in the morning, and was tired at night. I was trying. She said I was a great mom. How could I believe what she said, if what he said was true? I begged for help. He told me I was telling everyone our business. I found help, strong women who helped me, who glanced knowing looks first at one another–then at me. He hated the invasion of privacy. I thanked God for the help. He said I was lazy, an unfit mother. I had tried to be better, but trying was never enough, never would be. I stopped making enchiladas, and the love in my heart seemed gone forever.
We moved once more–my choice this time. He gave me one present that last year we spent together. It was a pig.
The pig was a baking dish, made in Chile. It was shown in the Williams-Sonoma catalogue with enchiladas in it, he said. He asked me why I never made them anymore. Until I started the process I once loved, I had forgotten why myself. I never did find those gloves.
Last week, though, I did find the pig on top of my kitchen shelves, never used. I went to the grocery store yesterday, and bought the tortillas, the cheese, chiles. I have it all, watched the kids devour something similar at a Mexican restaurant not so long ago. They are ready for this kind of meal, and at last, so am I. Tonight I am making enchiladas.
When M. failed to answer the door, her daughter did not find anything strange. It was often that the old woman was napping, or upstairs and not quick to descend. A key turned the door, and all in the house was quiet. Did M. have an appointment she forgot to mention? Had a neighbor called? The youngest daughter opened the garage door to see if the car was still there. It was. And behind it, she found the carefully laid out cot, the empty bottle of sleeping pills. The keys were still in the ignition, but the gas had probably long run out.
The death was a tragedy, we all knew. M. was not so old, after all, in splendid health, we thought. It took a long time for anyone beyond the one daughter and her husband to realize that it was a suicide, and as it was, few people were ever supposed to know. The death by one’s own hands seemed too messy, too questionable, too unsuitable for a reputable family. And yet, the daughter who found her mother cold and inexplicably dead that morning said that she would have done the same thing.
Up to the time I knew of the suicide, M. seemed an amazingly resilient woman. Letters and other documents found after M.’s death hinted at a less than auspicious diagnosis, perhaps from a cardiologist. One thing was certain, though: M. had said many times that she never wanted to be a burden to her children or anyone else. She had enjoyed a high level of independence her whole life. What did life mean to her if she needed assistance?
A suicide must always leave questions unanswered, but the questions it poses reach far beyond the life that is taken. I was surprised to learn that the daughter so fully supported her mother’s actions. Her own pronouncement of similar suicidal intentions if faced with similar potential dependency cited anthropological examples of the practice of “going off to die.”
I was judgmental of the dead woman, hurt. How could someone I loved and admired not let the people who loved her actually care for her when she needed them? What makes life worthwhile? Can we even answer those questions ourselves?
Life can be intolerably painful in so many ways. I cannot imagine what for certain caused M. to end her life, or what I would do in her place. After the suicide, though, the context of the family began to make more sense, and I was out of context. Never being a burden seemed more a selfish thing, never allowing another person to extend a kindness, to serve a meal, to make a bed: not good enough, perhaps? Not thoughtful, but selfish. Always giving, but never receiving: yes! there is a selfishness in that. The familial stoicism was overbearing; pain, heartbreak and illness were impossible to discuss aloud, but were whispered in tributes to the character of those who hid their weaknesses. Bad things simply did not exist in that make-believe world.
Oh, demons exist everywhere, but they become dangerous when they are hiding. Everyone knows about the bear hunt:
“We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh no! We have to go through it!”*
Go through! Go through! Go through this life. Why hide? I want to love, and I want to rejoice in the real connections we have, the efforts we make, the love we give to one another… and the love we courageously take.
*From Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury, We’re Going On a Bear Hunt, 1989.
