Add This to the List of Things That You Are

by Chris Fink

  Your guests have brought two bottles of vermut, and they pass these around the table, toasting their plum jobs and polishing off their vegetable medleys. The only difficulty, they agree, is not knowing where they’ll end up. Could be any place. But wherever they go, they’ll have the Foreign Service to greet them—Salud!—and cultured friends among their coworkers—Salud! It’s like the Peace Corps that way, only more sophisticated—and with better pay—Salud!

  The women commiserate with you; it is surely most difficult for the spouse of a Foreign Serviceperson. The spouse has to tag along from country to country, reinventing herself at every port. Never mind children.

  Ricky gives you a squeeze, mindful of what you’ve both begun to call your eruption, and says how lucky he is to have married you before entering the Foreign Service, since so many Foreign Servicemen end up lifelong bachelors. You look at Gregorio, practically crying in his vermouth, then at your husband, his hair wild, his left eye drooping from the booze. Yes, you say, how lucky for you.

  You’re dog tired and itching like mad, but relieved. You’ve made it through dinner without interrogation, and Ricky’s friends have been polite enough to ignore your horrendous eruption. But as the shoptalk continues, you grow weary of Ricky and his worldly friends. You can’t help but think that the pretty doctor knew something you did not. She asked, What are you doing here? You begin to wonder. Your mother would never have found herself so far from home, and in such strange company. She warned you. But Ricky seemed so sure you were the one for him. You, who are never sure of anything, were astonished. He began his marry-me speeches shortly after your first night together, and you finally agreed. It was all so dizzying, to be the chosen one. Certainly effortless. You made the easy drive to the Sauk County courthouse, which your mother said was a fitting place for your wedding, given the looks of Ricky. Why, oh, why, did you settle on this one?

  Now, here you are, a new bride in a new country, with a rash the likes of which you have never seen. Your new friends include an anarchist, a linguist, and a snob. You never answered your mother. If you had, you suppose, the reason would be this: Ricky settled on me, Mother.

  It’s 10 p.m. You can safely excuse yourself. You get up from the noisy table, but Gabriella, that old culture fanatic, catches your arm, releasing it quickly when she realizes she’s grabbed hold of your eruption. Not so fast, she says. Here we are, running at the mouth, and we haven’t heard from our hostess. We know where you’re sleeping, dear, but what’s the rest of your story?

  You were nearly passed over in all these big fish stories of loneliness and loss, but now you’re called upon to match what’s come before. Where should you begin your maudlin tale? The throbbing on the surface of your skin deepens, sinking down into your flesh. It feels as if there are two of you, each with your own heartbeat, crammed into just one body. The pressure and heat are almost unbearable. You drink deeply of the spicy Spanish vermouth.

  You can shut them up and send them home. Grotesqueries from the rural life always shut them up and send them home. Since it’s been on your mind anyway, you tell them how, when you met Ricky, you were a county parks employee forced into service as a sharpshooter. Wisconsin’s southern deer herd had been infected with chronic wasting disease, and your hometown of Mount Horeb was ground zero. The deer just wandered around in the woods, dizzy, bumping into trees. CWD had begun to show up in hunters who had eaten venison, and the Department of Natural Resources decided to eradicate the entire herd. Some two hundred thousand deer. The DNR hired local hunters to pot them. It was like in the old days of buffalo hunting. You got paid a bonus for each carcass. Twenty bones for a bag of bones.

  Your dinner guests are staring as if your story has come from nowhere. You feel opposing urges to put them at ease and make them more uncomfortable still.

  The reason I mention that, you continue, is because my mother liked to say that she had the CWD, and couldn’t I please pot her like a dizzy deer. She said she was going out in a slow cooker, even a tough old bird like her would be tender, stewing nice and slow in the chemo.

  She lived at home in a single hospital bed, you say. She could raise it up and down with a little button. Into this pretty story walked my big galoot—you give frizzy Ricky a pinch—and promised to get me out of Dodge.

  You’ve silenced the table. You may as well have dropped your dentures into your gazpacho.

  Good old Mount Horeb, Ricky says, coming to your rescue. The whole place is built on a pun. You should see it. They call Main Street the Trollway. Front yards all down Main Street display a gauntlet of hand-carved wooden trolls. There’s Chicken Thief Troll and Carp Carrier Troll. My favorite is Transfer and Storage Troll. Dairy’s gone in the tank, and trolls are the new export commodity. Sundays after church they have carving sessions like old-fashioned quilting bees. Locals call it “Going Trolling.”

  Ricky’s coworkers are at ease again now that the hayseed story has swerved back toward comedy. You take the opportunity to get your pills from your purse. You want to make your getaway before Ricky starts in on your mother, whom Ricky called the Troll Queen Troll. You say your good-byes and good lucks and disappear into the bathroom. Your guests thankfully arise from the table as well.

  After they leave, Ricky acts as though nothing were wrong, so it’s easy for you to do the same. He’s good about that. The pressure abates. In bed, as if he doesn’t have a care, your husband falls immediately asleep. You’ve noticed you’re always the last to fall asleep. It doesn’t matter how tired you are when you lie down, as soon as you’re in bed, in the dark room, you begin to worry. Tonight you’re worrying the big questions. What am I doing here? Why am I married to this man?

  You don’t believe all the storybook nonsense about marriage. Your mother cured you of that. At best, she said, marriage is an end of freedom. At worst, it is just making the bed for death. Stay single, your mother said, and stay put.

  But what’s a girl to do? And what kind of advice is that for a mother to give? If you were an anarchist like Adrianna you could go a different way. But what anarchist was ever born in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin? Oh, the flower girls on State Street in the capital might go in for the communal life, but Mount Horeb is a different world entirely. You have a deep and abiding feeling that marriage is a normal part of a full life. It’s part of the big story, and if you don’t participate, well, there’s something left unknown to you. Men, too, march up the aisle, eager to be part of that big story.

  You’re prepared well enough for marriage by the months you spent at your mother’s deathbed. You suppose it was natural enough to exchange your mother for your husband. But it happened too soon, this changing of the guard. When your mother left you, it was the first time she had ever left you. You were supposed to be the one who went away. She was supposed to be standing in the driveway, waving you away, awaiting your return.

  All those pictures you have in your mind of your mother waving good-bye while you set off are canceled by your last picture of her. The ambulance pulled out of the drive while you stood and watched: that was your mother’s final emergency.

  To put yourself to sleep, you try counting spots. In the darkness you feel with your fingertips the angry Braille of your skin. How many had you counted the first time a few days ago? You count the spots on your groin and lose track somewhere north of one hundred. You look at your husband with a mixture of worry and disdain. Where, pray tell, are Ricky’s spots? Your eruption, you finally concede, is not poison ivy. The spots don’t seem to be spreading as much as multiplying. There are simply more and more. The next morning you will go back to the hospital. With that simple decision made, you worry no longer, and fall asleep.

  You have a different doctor this time who doesn’t give knowing looks or ask tricky metaphysical questions. Typical man, he’s all business, and within minutes of entering his office, you’re bent over a gurney receiving a hydrocortisone shot in your backside.

  Walking home, you realize Holy Week has been passing wi
thout your realizing it. The last of the processions weave through the Parte Vieja, the participants dressed like clansmen in their white robes and masked, conical hoods. You’re stuck for a long while in the slow procession, behind two hooded pallbearers carrying one of the grisly floats of the crucifixion. The float is heaped with a blinding array of white gladiolus and calla lilies. Your hip hurts where you got the shot, and you would like to crawl onto one of the floats and be borne slowly along. Instead you find yourself in slow lockstep with the procession, tilting from one stiff leg to the other in time with the rigid pallbearers.

  By the time you get home and undress for bed, the spots have all blanched, and they don’t itch anymore. You’re so tired. Ricky too stays home. He mixes a pitcher of mojitos, closing the blinds against the Holy Week processions, and watches the steamy telenovelas in Spanish.

  You sleep twelve hours that night. The spots abate. The next day, the narcotic apparently wearing off, you get some energy back. For the first time in more than a week, you’re not bone-tired. All the fretting from before begins to seem like silliness.

  That next night, you and Ricky go out to dinner. It’s a warm, summery night, so you choose an intimate outdoor plaza, hidden in the old city. You haven’t been out to dinner in some time. You toast to the end of the dreadful eruption, which is somehow not contagious. Ricky jokes that you must be the only one who’s allergic to marriage, but now you’re breaking down, resigning yourself to the inevitable.

  Ricky grins. Truly, he says, I’m glad to have you back. I’m sorry that you’ve been laid low by the mopes, or whatever they are, but all that’s over now.

  You smile. Maybe Ricky’s right. Maybe he’s always been right. He orders another bottle of wine and you toast to your future. You have only a couple of weeks left here in Spain. Then back to the Trollway to pack your lives. In two months, you could be living in any of the world’s twenty-three Spanish-speaking countries. Salud!

  Whereas in the past thinking of this move has made you nervous, now it makes you giddy. If you had your choice of countries, well, that could be nerve-wracking. But you don’t have to choose. The choice has been made for you, and you’ve simply agreed to go along. You must go along, and that’s some comfort in itself. You will be assigned a country, and that country will be home. It will be a surprise, something like a destiny, but not quite as permanent. There is no pressure on you. You’re not responsible, after all, if the placement turns out to be a disaster.

  As you get ready to leave, a breeze arises. The salt sea air refreshes your blemished skin, blowing away the warm, stale air trapped in the city. Within a matter of seconds, the breeze gathers into wind and then rather suddenly into an alarming gale. Plastic tables wobble and tip. Silverware clatters onto the cobbles and placement settings take flight. You and Ricky, along with the other diners, hold on to your glasses and each other as you take shelter beneath the portico. Shrieks of delight and surprise accompany the sudden change in climate. Seconds more, and tables and chairs are skidding across the courtyard. Sounds of shattering glass fill the courtyard, and the tenor of the shrieks changes from rapture to terror. Everyone is hanging on to something solid. You’ve never had this sensation before, that the wind could pick you up and blow you away. You drop Ricky’s hand and grip the stone threshold. A disaster is imminent. At any moment, you will be swept through the old stone portal of the plaza and out to sea.

  But the wind dies, turns to rain mixed with a few hard nuggets of hail. Disaster is averted. Only things are broken. Some of the diners are crying. You leave the stoic waiters to reassemble their lives. Wet and cold, you cling to your husband the whole walk home. At the old port below your apartment you’re surprised to see a group of young Spanish boys swimming shirtless in the deep water along the high harbor wall. What are they doing in the water on a night like this? The boys call out to you, reaching up out of the water and shouting. Are they calling for help? Ricky seems to know what they want. Watch this, he says, and flips a silver coin into the water. The boys dive for the coin, reaching it before it hits the bottom, and one comes up holding the shiny reward. Otra vez! the boys shout, and Ricky flips more treasure into the harbor.

  For the first time in two weeks you don’t itch anywhere. Even the throbbing has subsided. You feel as if you have lived a whole life in these few weeks. Your mother warned you would learn a secret. On her honeymoon she learned that your father wore a hairpiece. He was balding prematurely and had managed to hide it all through their courtship. During a honeymoon, however, all secrets are aired. Perhaps you have learned your secret. It has more to do with you than with Ricky. You’re a small-town girl, after all, pretending to be a grown woman in a bigger world. Everything you know very well at all lies between the two ends of a single street. The eruption wasn’t so bad: your mother would call it a slight hitch in your get-along. Now, a strong dose of hydrocortisone and the elements have cured you.

  That night, invigorated by the parallel sensations of grace and danger, you make love. But, because of your eruption, there are precious few places safe to touch. You keep your eyes away from the mirrors and all they reveal. The lights are dim and your bodies covered by the sheets.

  The next morning you wake up at noon and your husband is sleeping next to you. You haven’t slept until noon since you were in high school. You don’t feel lazy, however, more mischievous, as if you’ve gotten away with something. You stretch, yawning the sleep away, stretching your arms to the ceiling. You blink. There, on your arm—your other arm—is a line of fresh red spots. The skin is raised around the spots, and they have a heartbeat all their own.

  Your own heart quickens. Ricky is a snoring lump beside you. He truly is a boy yet, with no regard for life’s dangers. You want to wake him, but at the same time you want him to stay sleeping while you make your own decision. Almost anything can set off an allergic reaction, you know well. You can even catch a faceful of poison ivy from wood smoke, or from the fur of your pet. Your mother at the last had hives in her throat.

  You think carefully about the whole mess, how it started. This is a mystery that you can solve by certain clues. At first, all mental trails lead back to Ordizia and the noxious Spanish weed that must have been lurking there among the wildflowers. Now, you see that all trails lead back to the man sleeping next to you. The wise doctor asked, Where are you sleeping? Her sage question was another way of asking, How well do you know your husband? Implicit in the question was the answer. Harboring some disease, your new husband has been injecting you with his poison in unrelenting bursts.

  Perhaps. You continue to ponder. What if your translation was wrong? What if she had asked, Where did you sleep? the way your mother asked the first time you stayed out all night with a boy, as if to suggest you were a dirty girl who had done a hideous thing. For the first time, you think of the question quite literally, removing poor Ricky from the equation entirely. You are sleeping in a foreign country, in a strange apartment, in this strange bed, and on these strange pillows. You roll over to examine your cream-colored pillow. Looking closely at the pillow, you see two small red spots. Blood stains, the size of pin pricks. In the sheets you find more of these stains. You ruffle the bedding and from the folds falls a small brown insect. It’s been crushed. Not a spider. It looks more like a deer tick. You pinch the bug in your fingers and drop it on the nightstand.

  You’re on your knees now on the king-sized bed, peering into the sheets. Get up, you say to Ricky.

  Ricky rolls over and yawns. What time is it? he says.

  It’s noon. Get up. I’m looking for something.

  Ricky does as he’s told. He yawns and stretches, then just stands there staring at you, your nose inches from the sheets, your fingers tweezers.

  Who let this crazy woman into my bedroom? he says.

  In the bed, you find several tiny particles and gather them in your palm. The particles are innocuous. They could be dandruff, or lint, dead skin, the broken wings of mosquitoes.

  I th
ink we’ve got bugs, you say to Ricky. Look, these might be babies. I have a big one on the nightstand. You go to the nightstand, but the smashed bug is gone. Instead, you show Ricky the airy chaff in your palm.

  I don’t see any bugs, he says.

  Back on your knees now, you search the floor around the bed. Look, here’s another one. You hold up a tiny husk no bigger than a flea.

  I don’t believe this, Ricky says. I have to go to work. What are you doing?

  We’re living with insects, you say, holding forth the proof. I don’t have a rash, Ricky. I have bites. I’m being eaten.

  You’re crazy, he says. If you’re being eaten, what about me? Don’t I taste good?

  I don’t know, you say. You’re still inspecting the floor. I just know there are bugs in here. I think they’re shedding.

  I think you’re obsessed, Ricky says, or cracked. So what if they’re bugs. Those might be normal here. They’re probably just dust mites or something. Look. Sweetheart. You’ve got to get over your small-town hang-ups. We’re in a foreign country. You can’t always bring your Midwestern baggage with you when you travel in a foreign country. You’re going to have to get used to things being foreign.

  You stand up now, and look directly at your husband. Ricky. There are bugs in the bed. I don’t know what they do in California, or any other country, but in Wisconsin, we don’t sleep with insects. Period. This is not normal.

  To this, what response but silence? Ricky pulls on his pants and leaves. Alone in the empty apartment, you look through Ricky’s backpack for his English dictionary. You look up the word bedbug. You’re surprised to find the word there in plain bold print, and even more surprised by the definition. Bedbug: a small, wingless, bloodsucking insect. Small-town hang-ups, Ricky? you say aloud. I’m not crazy. Next you look up bedbug in Ricky’s Larousse. Nothing. They must not have bedbugs in Spanish. They must be an English-speaking phenomenon.