|
Between Here and There
Tuesday morning and March, drizzling
in the cold, inimitable drizzle of not-yet-spring in Syracuse.
Erik off to office, twins on the bus, homework in briefcases
and backpacks, respectively. Chase down the cat and get her into
the box, four long scratches down the inside of my arm. Griselda
does not want to have her teeth scaled any more than I do. Drop
her off at the vet. To Stop and Shop. Milk, jello, capers, hamburger,
Doritos for the kids. Cool Ranch, the ones that smell like feet.
Not Nacho Cheese. Nacho Cheese sucks, mom. Accutrim, cotton balls,
vitamin C, frozen yogurt. No coupons. Thirty-eight dollars and
change. Paper. It's better for the environment.
I roll the cart out into the
rain, one wonky wheel dragging against the concrete. Un-blipping
the alarm I load the sacks into the back seat of the van, then
slide the side door shut with an oiled, walloping thump. Walking
around the back I catch my reflection in the window and see that
the drizzle has made my hair horrible. The flesh under my neck
looks slack and I stop for a moment, getting closer to my reflection.
I push three fingers up under my chin at my pulse point, pulling
my neck taut. I turn my face side to side, slowly. When I was
a little girl, my mother used to make this same motion at the
mirror above the bathroom sink. She would see me watching, lift
me up and park my bottom on the porcelain edge, then run her
sparkly mauve lipstick over my lips. "Make a kiss,"
she'd say. The oily taste of Avon and my mother's wonderful,
worried face.
Getting into the van I spot
an envelope face down beside my front wheel, kept dry underneath
the van, and by whatever succession of cars parked here before
me. It is brilliantly white on the dirty pavement, and I wonder
how I missed it on the way in. Turning it over, the address reads
Sarah Redmond at Unitron Limited, Syracuse, the same zip code
as Erik's office. The letter has been opened, but miraculously,
not run over, not stepped on, not wet. Settling behind the wheel
I close the door and examine the postmark. Brazil. Hotel stationary
from a place called the Panorama Business Hotel, clean and heavy-cut
with rough, fibrous edges. The rain bounces in hollow aluminum
patter around me, above me, and I am alone in the sealed damp
coolness inside the van. I slide out the letter, unfold it. Read.
|
Friday, March 9th, 7:00 p.m. Sau Paulo
Hello, Pretty Girl,
This seems good, this Sau Paulo. Not the city so much, which
is dirty as all cities must be, but the people. Good to look
at, pretty and friendly. As a rule, you know I am not friendly,
mistrust those who are, but when I travel, I am different. One
day I will convince you to come with me on one of these trips,
and you'll find out.
There is a drugstore here called FARTSO. It is a chain.
My hotel is on Double Super Street. I have not yet determined
if this is true. Am working on it. Will get back to you by Monday.
Plus people of all hues and colors, and the women are beautiful,
women of all ages. They dress in a deliberately feminine, provocative
style, as though saying 'Yes, I am a woman, and it's good, no?'
Of course this is my puritanical March in New York interpretation.
The warm climate here means not so many clothes, and what clothes
there are are bright and silky and cheaply made and wonderful.
It seems as if most of the women dress in long bits of rectangular
cloth that they fold and shape as it suits them, into a bikini
top, into a sarong, into a dress, into a halter. And the lingerie
shops on a scale to rival Paris! Even better perhaps. Come to
Sau Paulo for the undies, Sarah. I see these women walking about
in their well-wrapped rectangles and know from the shop windows,
exactly what they have on beneath. It's enough to make a man
crazy.
I found a wonderful market yesterday after I got off the plane,
full of fruit, vegetables, flowers and cheeky people who tried
to sell me everything. Men and women with arms outstretched,
shaking produce at me. 'Hey, these are fantastic yams!' Well,
yes, but. . .
My hotel, the Panorama on Double Super Street as I mentioned,
is wonderful and bare with tall ceilings and great windows that
open onto the street, only three stories below. I'm in a central
location amidst cafes, bars, restaurants and shops, two of which
sell the underwear that so plagues my mind. In between meetings
I look down at all the people dipping in from café to
restaurant to conversation to conversation, and I wonder resentfully
where all the working people are. It seems I'm the only one.
Work is fine. The usual succession of lawyers and suits and stuffy
hand-shaking. The big guy here reminds me of McAllister. Remember
we met him, the fattish man in the walkman, running that day
by the lake? The guy here has pimples and laughs this huge, uninfectious
laugh, and is given to spitting when he gets excited. He gave
my pen back to me sweaty. That's all I want to say about work,
which is the least interesting thing here.
Yesterday between appointments I ran down to the street and
bought an outrageously pungent, greasy sausage at a street stall.
It was an astonishing sausage. Nothing like they have at O'Brian's.
No ketchup, no mayonnaise, no mustard. Nothing you would wrinkle
your nose at and wipe off. I fed the end bit to a small calico
cat that haunts my hotel doorstep. Even she seemed astonished.
There are lots of cats here, all friendly, all walking about
with their tails up and curled in question marks. They seem content
to trot from ankle to ankle, and belong really to no one. No
one kicks them. I say this not just because I have not seen anyone
kick them, but because they act in the ways only cats that have
never been kicked can act. I saw an orange cat yesterday that
was Grimalkin's twin. Let her know that her Siamese sister is
in Brazil.
The plane gave me stale peanuts and a silly seat-mate, a Brazilian
guy named Ricardo, no joke, who asked me if I liked English football.
I said yes, but that in America we call it soccer. Brazilian
is better than both, he said, and I nodded. Then he asked if
I liked Brazilian music and I said I thought I did. He invited
me to a party tomorrow night. I am going.
Saturday the 10th 9:00 p.m. Soon to dinner.
Brazil, Brazilians. This place is shocking, Sarah. Every third
woman is shocking. Gorgeous and sexy and out front with it, right
there with it. I go around wincing. Wincing, as in a wince, trying
not to howl or faint. You would love it here. You should be one
of these third women. Don't be aghast that I say so. You are
shocking. You knew that. I have seen you in spandex.
I am going to move here. The distance is not so far. I'll
never dance like they do, but I have other virtues. Maybe you
will move here too, but just by accident, nothing to do with
my moving. We could both learn to dance.
The hotel fax machine keeps crumpling my contracts. The little
man at the front desk hands me back my originals sheepishly,
always smiling. Technology in Brazil has some catching up to
do. The phone in my room is rotary, and takes an eternity to
dial. Ah, but the underwear, Sarah. Cutting edge.
Sau Paulo, Monday March 12th.
I have a hangover that merits suicide. I can't think, my eyes
are fucked, I'm afraid to fart. And I have terminal guilt, not
sure why. Did I do something terrible? God I hope not. I think
not. Good all the suit work is already done. I couldn't face
a meeting today. As for the evening's events, I do recall being
at a street café and pointing out to my companions, male
and female, the distinct fashion here in Sao Paulo, for THE TOE.
Almost all-Call young and not so young women are wearing extremely
tight pants and trousers, crotch grabbers and splitters, definite
toe-jobs. It just seems to be the current fashion. So I said,'See?'
to my friends, only one of whom was actually related to work,
thank God, and after about five minutes, they were in hysterics.
Two girls would toe by and we'd crack up. I have to thank you
for pointing this phenomenon out to me that first day you dragged
me running. However, try explaining THE TOE in Portuguese. "El
Camel? El Dromedario?"
The waiter just brought olives. I feel as if I might spit
up.
Nice place. When I die later on today I hope they bury me
here. But first I am going to a café and do some purposeful
toe observation. Sau Paulo is proving a rare opportunity for
me to do research on my becoming a dirty old man project. Actually,
what I'll probably do is go into another café and write
you. Which is the dumbest thing I could ever do, seeing as you
won't even get this until after I get back, and most of what
I say is utter nonsense, and I miss you terribly. I wish you
were here. At home I know I can't call except to go running,
and I manage, humming along and doing the regular day business,
you tucked off in the verboten section of my mind, not causing
a lot of fuss. But when I am so far away I want nothing more
than to talk to you and to tell you all the things around me.
Everything in me wants your company. Watch out, Sarah. Distance
makes me dangerous. I think of you on the phone pacing the kitchen
floor, going from ice-box to cork board to the stool, connected
to the wall by the spiraling elastic of phone cord. My kitchen,
not yours. My kitchen has no wedding pictures on the fridge.
And I want you here, not there.
I am coming home tomorrow morning. Perhaps I will sit by Ricardo
again and eat lousy peanuts. He will issue a pop quiz on what
I've learned about the music, only half of which, thanks to the
wine, I remember. What a party your man Ricardo throws. Maybe
I'll save the peanuts for you.
You and I will run together this Wednesday, I hope. I am two
days away. I am only as away as a plane and a few taxis can take
me. No jet lag. And by then no hangover. We'll run the lake.
Say yes when I call. Jeremy is always so good about handing the
phone over to you.
Have you ever had a 'real'? I've enclosed one for you.
It's worth only some indeterminate amount of change in the US,
but they're pretty. The woman on the back has beautiful lips.
She has lips like yours.
I love you madly and truly and all that, Sarah. I'm a hung
over old man who repeats himself, but I so wish you were here.
And I am going to send this. I am. If nothing else, maybe the
stamps will please you. That and the real. And I'm bring you
a scarf. One of the rectangular ones the Brazilians knot up into
clothing. It's the exact shade of your lipstick and I could not
say no. 'These are fantastic yams!' Well yes, but. . . Alas,
there is one of us born every minute, if not more frequently.
But you knew that.
Love,
William. |
I shake out the envelope and
the Brazilian real falls into my lap, sliding between
my legs. The inside windows are damp and beginning to steam,
and I shift to fish the coin from beneath me. In these trousers
with my bottom up off the seat, I look at my crotch and wonder
if I am a victim of the toe, a joke between lovers a thousand
miles apart. The real is a silver coin rimmed with a band of
gold around the outside. Sau Paulo. Worth an indefinite amount
of change. The woman on the back is beautiful. I refold the letter
and tuck it back into the envelope, addressed and stamped and
delivered, true to William's promise, all the way from Brazil.
Such a dangerous letter from such a distance. I am surprised
Sarah was not more careful.
I am surprised I was not more careful.
I cannot bring myself to start the van.
I cannot bring myself to go home.
Big, childish tears are welling up in my eyes and I know I
will never get this letter. William's letter to Sarah is one
I will never receive. Erik does not write such things. He never
has. He writes postcards, obligatory wish-you-were heres when
he visits his mother in Florida. The twins write from camp in
their loopy pencil cursive, their script indiscernibly similar
were it not for their uniquely flourished signatures. I have
no lover who travels to Brazil, no lover who sees other women
and thinks of me, who sees other cats and thinks of mine, who
carries me with him to cafes and restaurants, through hangovers
and jet lag. If Sarah knew this, she would never have let this
letter slip from between her fingers. If she knew the distance
between her life and mine, if she knew the space between us,
she would never have dropped this small, devastating explosion.
When I was a little girl, I
spied on my neighbors. I crawled through the secret dirt beneath
the rhododendron bushes in their front yard, and tucked myself
under their living room window and watched. I watched as the
mother read the paper and the teenager talked on the phone, and
the father mixed a pitcher of Minute Maid orange juice from a
can. He stirred it with a long wooden spoon, which he licked,
then put in the sink when he was done.
My mother caught me that first
afternoon I was spying. She sneaked up from the side, avoiding
the window, and hauled me out from the flowers as quietly as
possible. As she pulled me to my feet I didn't make a noise and
neither did she. Neither of us wanted the neighbors to come out.
The whole next week both our arms bore the long, red, telling
scratches of the rhododendrons. It was the first and only time
my mother slapped me, hard, once on either cheek. As I began
to cry she said, "Stop it. Stop crying," and I could
see her fighting her own tears. "Don't ever look into other
people's windows." She squatted down and cupped my face
in her hands and began to wipe my tears away with her thumbs.
She kissed me where she had slapped, her mauve lips to my cheeks.
"I did it for your own good," she said, clutching me
to her. "You'll never forget what you see. You can never
forget what you see, and it makes you so sad."
My mother was crying when she told me this, but she was only
partly right. What you see through other people's windows does
not make you sad. It is knowing the distance that devastates. |
