Liz Is an Expat
I MAKE IT through my first few days limpingly. My luggage arrives three days after I’ve landed, and I’ve already had to wash my hated new clothing once to get me through. I take long walks around my new neighborhood each day just to have something to do. Walking and being outside is meant to help and it does temporarily. It’s late spring, and the city has the feeling of coming alive; there is no hour when the tables that spill out onto the sidewalks of the cafés are not occupied and the streets off the Plaza Serrano are not bursting with life; there are twentysomethings everywhere selling interesting clothes and artsy jewelry. I venture to the grocery store for staples and a small market stall for produce—an unexpectedly intimidating experience fraught with mysterious labels and arrangements. I return to the little bodega for the greasy empanadas, and the old men are still there—seemingly they have always been there and will always be there. When I get back to my building, it feels like a sterile and lonely fortress.
I study maps and landmarks to prepare for my tours, and in the evening I drink Malbec and watch American television with Spanish subtitles. How strange that they have all this American culture here; in the mall and in the McDonald’s, every song I hear is American: Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber, and on television it’s all of our shows repackaged. Do they think this is what we are? What a rude awakening they must have if they visit.
I feel relieved three days in when I have my first day of Spanish classes in the morning and my meeting with the woman from the tour-guide company in the afternoon—it gives me some structure. The adrenaline of coming here has faded, and if I didn’t have a reason to get out of bed today, I might not. My classes are on the third floor of a baroque shopping arcade where there are several classrooms surrounding a small interior courtyard. I eat my lunch alone in the courtyard, surreptitiously glancing at the other students, who all seem horribly young.
Late in the afternoon, I make my way to Tour Aventura for my guide initiation. I’d submitted an application and a photo online and have been accepted on a trial basis. I’ll be paid a percentage of the bookings for each group.
The offices are a clean, blank little set of rooms in the Microcentro, one stop on the Subte from where my Spanish classes are. I go to the desk and ask for my contact. The person at the desk escorts me back to a small office in the back, where a slender black-haired woman around my age is sitting.
“Welcome,” she says in English, “please sit.”
I reach across the desk to shake her hand. “Mucho gusto, soy Liz.”
“Bueno, Alejandra. I’m happy to see you weren’t lying about speaking some Spanish,” she continues in Spanish.
“Does that happen?”
She rolls her eyes. “We get a little bit of everything. Your accent,” she says, looking a bit dismayed, “it needs work. It’s very heavy. I’m used to it, but others will have trouble.”
“I’m taking classes.”
She waves her hand. “It will improve, your ear. Just being here. If you’re staying. And you’re blond,” she says approvingly. She says nothing about the fact that I’m heavier than in the photo I sent her. I didn’t mean to be dishonest, I simply don’t have any recent photos. “Very American look, that’s good. Some people specifically ask for an American to show them the city.”
“They come to Buenos Aires and they want an American guide?”
She shrugged. “Just don’t tell them you just got here, tell them you’re an expat. We can start you in the first week of the New Year. You can be ready?” She hands me a thick notebook with information on the key points and a map with the route marked.
“I think so,” I say, feeling fraudulent.
“It’s really not so complicated. Here is the list,” she says, flattening the map. “Plaza de Mayo, Caminito in La Boca, San Telmo, Recoleta Cemetery. It’s three hours, mostly on foot with one short Subte ride. Yes?”
I nod at her.
Looking over my bank accounts, I realize I can afford to stay quite a while. It helps that the dollar is so strong against the peso, and though I rarely made good money while I was skiing, my living expenses were so minimal that I saved nearly all of it. Still, this condo is too pricey. At the language institute, I find a notice for an apartment opening in San Telmo: Casa de Volver. What an odd name for a building, I think, as my mind scrambles for the translation but knows something is likely lost: the house of returns?
I emerge from the Subte at Saint John and am hit with a jolt of recognition. Blair and I spent a lazy afternoon walking through the neighborhood’s famous Sunday market, looking at the antiques and eating gelato in a café off the Plaza Dorrego. My eyes whirl around, looking for the café as though, if I find the right one, Blair might be sitting there waiting for me. But as quickly as it comes on, the feeling of recognition vanishes, and I’m returned to the excruciating present, alone.
San Telmo feels more contained than Palermo, with its converted warehouse and wide avenues, its fancy locked-down buildings with security guards posted outside. The Plaza Dorrego is shaded by leafy trees and dotted with intricate iron lampposts and café tables where people drink beer in the afternoon sunshine. The streets off the plaza are narrow, and as I make my way to the apartment, I’m mesmerized by the faded, crumbling grandeur of the villas lining the streets.
The building is just south of the plaza, and the landlord—a sixtysomething woman with a warm smile—meets me outside the entrance and leads me through wrought iron gates into a courtyard off of which are the entrances to the individual apartments.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, taking in the charming courtyard with its clutches of squat palms and monkey puzzle trees, the bougainvillea climbing in all directions. A faded fresco lines the walls, worn down in some places to the brick beneath it. A cherubic face, hauntingly disembodied, gazes heavenward.
“It has quite a history. It used to be the home of the Del Potro family, all of this,” she says, gesturing to indicate the entire villa. “Just one family. But they fled north with all the other rich families in 1870 during the yellow fever epidemic. After that, it became a conventillo with dozens of families. It’s been renovated since then, por supuesto.” She smiles.
The building is grand, but the apartment is tiny. A studio with a half kitchen and a narrow rickety-looking shower. Nonetheless, I immediately imagine myself here, a place with a story. And the rent is dirt cheap. I could stay a long time on my savings. I love the idea of a space relinquished by the rich to the teaming immigrant masses and now, so many years later, to me.
“I’ll take it.”
That evening, I’m sorry to leave colorful San Telmo to return to my pristine apartment in Palermo Soho for my last few days there.
Being by myself so much is new for me. I’ve never traveled alone, much less lived alone. I realize now that, as much as it irritated me sometimes, having a posse of coaches, trainers, teammates, parents, and trustees surrounding me all the time was a comfort. It buffered all of us as we went from one place to another, reinforced the idea that we had something precious, that we were something precious. And now it feels like I’ve been drained of everything that once made me special. I’ve been leveled. In the United States, becoming famous is a pipe dream for a skier. But I became infamous instead, and now anonymity feels like the best I can hope for.
Being alone used to be thrilling because it meant I was on the mountain, my heart beating in my ears as I contemplated my line for a first descent. I used to enjoy my own company then, back when my instincts were finely honed and fear was a friend I could trust to tell me when something wasn’t right, not a tyrant run amok in my brain. Time alone used to be fleeting and precious.
When I get back to the apartment, I’m tired but keyed up. The new sights and sounds and the novelty of the city seem to have temporarily tricked my mind out of its fugue. Now I feel it all seeping back in: that amorphous but persistent fear that those I love are in mortal danger, as though I’ve left them all in a house with a gas leak only I kn
ow about. The center of me feels weak, like I’m a cloud of a person. I was a skier, I was a beloved girlfriend, I was someone’s little sister. I’m none of those things anymore.
Maybe a glass or two of wine would smother my nerves. The half bottle of Malbec left over fits snugly in one of the giant red wineglasses I find in the pantry; these are rich-people wineglasses, not meant to be filled to the brim. I take it to the balcony. The city lights sparkle, and I can see the dark waters of the river churning in the distance. There’s a glimmer of nostalgia left over from walking through San Telmo, but the more I try to recapture it the more elusive it becomes: my mind is already comingling the memory with the present. It seems clear, looking back, that when I was in Buenos Aires the last time, Luke and I were already doomed. And Blair. Until that trip, it was as though I hadn’t really let myself look at him in years. I realize now, too late, that I’d let so much of it pass me by because I was always hurtling forward in pursuit of glory, never simply standing still in the moment I was in. My old life was beautiful, and I’d raced right through it. I’d marched in Olympic ceremonies, stood on the medal podium, but it was never enough, because it wasn’t gold. And now it’s over.
I can only appreciate it in the rearview. Before, I found my peace and my euphoria in speed. If I had known I was speeding toward catastrophe, would I have done it differently? Could I have?
The wine gets me bleary enough to try to sleep. I’ve become wary of the bed; those quiet hours with no distractions have become my worst enemy. I try to read a novel I brought with me—something light and forgettable—but my mind is too wine drenched to string the words together. I close my eyes and feel the dizziness of sleep cloud my mind.
A few moments later, I’m awoken by an indistinct noise that sets my heart racing. I hear another sound, from the kitchen—it’s muffled but chillingly human. Oh god, someone is in here. I grab the cordless phone from the nightstand without the slightest idea of who I might call. Tom told me the number for emergency services, but I’ve forgotten it. It’s written down on a notepad. In the kitchen. As I pick my way softly along the plush carpet of the narrow living room, my nerves crackle like exposed wiring. Then I see it, a tiny hand stretched out on the kitchen floor, palm down and fingers slightly curled, as though the child had been trying to claw its way forward, but now the hand is still. A viscous pool of red is slowly advancing past it.
I jolt straight up in my bed. I’m drenched in sweat. Only dreaming. It takes me several minutes to catch my breath. I get out of bed and discard my sweat-soaked T-shirt. I douse my face with water, and with shaking hands, I riffle through my large cosmetic bag for the pills. A careless doctor had at first prescribed me Ambien, which put me into a flat, dreamless sleep that left me unrefreshed. Worse yet, I would occasionally do strange and humiliating things, like sleepwalk into the kitchen and plow through an entire box of granola bars. One evening, I even called Luke in the middle of the night and left him a long, unintelligible message. A different, better doctor—one Gena sent me to—told me to stop taking the Ambien. I didn’t have a sleep disorder. She gave me Klonopin instead to help with the anxiety but told me to use it sparingly, as it could be addictive. I found myself turning to it more than I would have liked. I know I’m not supposed to take it when I’ve had this much to drink, but what is my body for anymore anyway?
Two days later, I decamp to San Telmo, as planned. I’m not sorry to leave my Palermo building, and even the swimming pool doesn’t feel like enough reason to stay; I haven’t used it once. I’ve also had the dream again. The little girl in the kitchen, the blood, and while I know that the ghosts are products of my overwrought mind and will go where I go, I can’t pretend these visions don’t make me want to leave.
I move in on a Saturday afternoon and hang my things in the closet. That evening, as the sun is starting to go down, I venture into the beautiful little secret garden of the courtyard. I feel hidden away. Entombed.
I’m intrigued by my dark-eyed, elegantly graying landlady, though beyond our first encounter, we only exchange a passing hello. She lives in the building in a unit just off the small lobby. I frequently see her in the courtyard with a woman who looks so much like her, I decide they must be sisters. I feel envious and heartbroken watching them drinking and laughing in the courtyard. Penny and I will never be old ladies together. I can’t think of my childhood without heartache now, and so much of what had once felt promised in my future has now disintegrated too. I’d always thought my sister would be there when I got married, there when I had children, there when I won a gold medal. Her absence reverberates now in both directions—my memories of her suddenly untrustworthy, my future with her obliterated. My children, if I have them, won’t grow up with cousins or an auntie. I will eventually face the death of my parents alone.
The approach of Christmas feels surreal. Decorations abound, but the weather is warm and the days are long, the opposite of the cozy white Christmases I’m used to. My parents are also celebrating the holiday somewhere warm, having decamped to Hawaii, as is their new tradition. I went with them last year. Once we no longer had Penny, it felt masochistic to simply sit at home and go through the same motions we always had. I know they wish I was with them, but we have plans to Skype on Christmas morning. Like all of our family traditions, we’re left with a sad facsimile of what was.
On Christmas Eve, I’m kept up late by the sound of fireworks, and eventually I go to sit in the courtyard, bringing the bottle of wine and the panettone that the landlady has sweetly left on all of our doorsteps. At midnight, the city releases thousands of paper lanterns into the sky, and I can’t help but be moved; it feels like such a hopeful tradition.
On Christmas Day, I Skype with my parents, but my Internet is weak, and it makes a painful encounter even more so. It feels like some clumsy metaphor: my connection with my parents, once strong, is now strained. The screen freezes midconversation, their disembodied voices continuing on, and in their captured still, I think I can see all the anguish they’re trying to keep from me beneath their suntans. I admire them now more than ever: they’ve stayed together in the face of everything, and they turned toward rather than against each other. I know I should be grateful for my family, now three. I try to make it sound like I’m having fun: I tell them about the plazas and the tango dancers I see everywhere on the sidewalks.
My landlady is traveling somewhere to see family. She’s given us a friend’s name and number in case of emergencies. Casa de Volver. I wonder who has come here before me. I wonder who will come here after.
Penny Has a Boyfriend
IT WOULD be hard to overstate how much the idea of Blair and Luke moving away rocked my world at thirteen. They were really the only friends I had, though Blair in those days was more of a big brother figure—tasked with keeping tabs on Luke and me as we crashed down mountains all winter and spring and took to those same trails on our mountain bikes in the summer. It wasn’t that I disliked other girls; I just didn’t get them.
I spent more time together with Penny and Emily in the summer: they would come and sunbathe by the lake and giggle over Blair, who was the only one allowed to drive Tad’s boat. Blair, reserved and handsome, was three years older than Luke and me and felt impossibly far ahead of us at sixteen, on the precipice of manhood. This was heightened by his being especially adultlike for a teenager, particular about everything from his clothes to his cross-training workouts, destined even then to be a tech skier.
“You’re such a dude,” Penny said to me as she watched me horse around with Luke on the Duncans’ dock that summer.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said, giving her a crooked smile. Luke was sputtering in the water beneath me, after I’d pushed him in. I cannonballed into the water next to him as Penny rolled her eyes.
Penny and Emily wore floral bikinis from the Delia’s catalog and slathered too-weak sunscreen on their fair freckled limbs. I never understood how they could waste the whole day there with their copies o
f YM and Seventeen and endless, meandering gossip. They’d both liked running around outdoors when they were kids, but in the past few years they’d moved into the mysterious girly world of adolescence.
My parents never gave me a hard time about not fitting in. They never wanted my sister and me to be anything in particular, only happy and safe. They were the opposite of so many sports parents I met—Tad included—who deposited the full weight of their own unrealized ambitions onto their children’s young shoulders.
Tad Duncan believed in excellence with a religious fervor. He would do anything for his kids, but it was always conditional on them being the best. Kristina, their eldest, was a near-perfect student and champion volleyball player who only went off the rails once she’d decided it would be the best way to spite her father, after he abandoned their family to live in Sun Valley with a woman scarcely ten years her senior. The rebellion didn’t land; by then, Tad was too focused on his boys. Luke and Blair were both at the top of their age group in juniors but were good for different reasons. Blair was quiet and precise, absorbing our coaches’ feedback and fine-tuning his technique ever closer to perfection, whereas right from the start Luke couldn’t be told anything. When we were younger, the coaches discouraged us from going too fast, wanting to hone our technique to protect us. But Luke defied both orders and physics by getting down the mountain faster than anyone else in spite of, not because of, his technique. Watching him, it seemed like there was no chance he actually had control of his skis, and sometimes he didn’t: the only thing more spectacular than his wins were his crashes. The Duncans’ divorce only stoked his rebelliousness.
“My dad wants us to move to Sun Valley,” Luke told me one day when we were sitting at the lodge in Schweitzer the next winter, waiting for my mom to pick us up. It had been a grueling day on the hill; the slopes were icy, and we’d been pelted with rain on the bottom half of our runs. We’d been talking for twenty minutes about the rotten snow—a topic we could discuss endlessly but that bored anyone else in earshot almost immediately.
We Came Here to Forget Page 4