Jessica Shadoian
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-—all
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.
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