by Sarah Price
Abby: “Look what I have”, practically singing the words as she came into my room, waving a piece of paper in her hand.
Tia: “What? What did you say?” I was deep in thought, trying to string together inspirational words and not paying any attention to Abby
Abby: “Look,” now waving the paper in front of my face.
Tia: “Do you think fond memories is too corny to put into my speech?” still ignoring her gestures, lost in thought with my speech.
Abby: “You can do this later. Look!” pulling the pen out of my hand and placing the notepad on my bed.
Tia: “It’s a letter. Nice. Can I have my pen and pad back?”
Abby: “Yes, it’s a letter from the Peace Corp with our itinerary. We have been assigned to Kenya, Africa. Our start date is August 28th. Africa, Tia. Africa!”
She had finally succeeded in getting my attention. My heart sank on hearing her words.
Tia: Oh, Abby.”
I gave her the look that must have told her this was not going to happen as planned because she quickly looked away.
Tia: “About this Peace Corp trip. . . .”
She didn’t even let me finish, cutting me off so that she wouldn’t have to hear what she knew in her heart I was going to say-that I wasn’t going.
Abby: “We have to start making travel arrangements. Apparently, there are a whole bunch of shots we need to get from our doctor for malaria and other diseases. They said they’ll give us some money, a stipend, to get our supplies. They’ll give us a list of things we will need but they also say to pack light which may be a problem for you.”
I was distraught now and didn’t know what to do. When Abby had first mentioned the Peace Corp to me, it seemed like an exciting thing to do and a sensible idea. After all, I did want to become a doctor and the experience would be very useful. So I filled out the application form with Abby, not thinking once about the consequences. But when I told my parents, they were less than thrilled and basically forbade me to ever mention it again. Instead, they made me apply to several colleges in the area with good science programs. I knew I couldn’t fight my parents so I promised myself that I would go to college and, after college, join the Peace Corp. By then, I would be an adult and a college graduate and my parents wouldn’t be able to say anything to me.
Tia: “Abby. I can’t go.”
Abby: “What do you mean you can’t go?”
Tia: “I’ve been accepted to New York University on full scholarship.”
Abby: “But, I thought . . .”
Tia: “I know, I really wanted to go with you but it’s an opportunity of a lifetime. This would get me into any medical school I want.”
Abby: “But we planned on this. When were you going to tell me about this?”
Tia: “Soon, really. I just forgot about it with finals and now graduation.”
Abby: “Well, what am I supposed to do now?”
Tia: “Go to college with me and after we graduate in four years, we’ll go to Africa.”
Abby: “I don’t know, Tia. I mean I have a start date and everything.”
Tia: “Go to college and I promise, four years, Africa.”
Abby reluctantly agreed to my plan of staying put and finishing college or so I thought. High graduation had come and gone and the summer was in full swing. I took a job as a medical assistant and Abby went to visit family in Florida and then stopped off to see her mom in North Carolina for one month. We stayed in touch during that time, calling each other a few times a week. It was ten days before college orientation when Abby came to visit me for the first time since we had our talk about the Peace Corp. I was excited to see her and couldn’t wait to plan out our fall semester at college. But instead, Abby came to say good-bye.
Tia: “So, do you want me to pick you up on Monday?”
Abby: “For what?
Tia: “For orientation at NYU. Didn’t you get the welcome packet in the mail?”
Abby: “I didn’t get the welcome packet because I never applied.”
Tia: “Why? I thought we had talked about this?
Abby: I know we did.
Tia: Well, don’t worry. If you apply now, you can get on the wait list for the spring.”
Abby: “ I won’t be going in the spring either. I’m leaving for Africa next week, Tia. I’ve joined the Peace Corp.”
Tia: “But I thought we were going to wait?”
Abby: “I can’t wait for my life to start. I can’t wait four years. I’m sorry, Tia, but I need to go.”
The loud cry of the baby in his mother’s lap next to Tia jolts her back to the present. She glances at the baby, a quick flashback to her own days of crying babies and awkward stares from strangers. When the mother looks up anxiously as she tries to soothe the baby, Tia spares her an understanding smile, a simple gesture that shows that she’s been there, done that.
She shuts her eyes again and sighs. She considers every choice she has ever made as tiny pieces of a bigger puzzle that is her life, all measured by that single moment when Abby had left to join the Peace Corp. It floats through her mind now in rapid succession. A kaleidoscope of memories.
It is true. Abby couldn’t wait for her life to start and Tia had decided that life could wait a few more years. At the time, convincing herself of that had been so easy. She could put adventure on hold, Tia had told herself. Time wouldn’t get in the way of dreams, she had reasoned. Now, looking back, Tia realizes how naïve she had been.
Although she was upset that Abby would be leaving without her, they had promised that as soon as Tia finished school, they would meet up with each other in Paris, France, by the Eiffel Tower. From there, they would backpack through Europe: Two young women, finding their way, discovering the magic of Rome, Florence, and London, lying on the beaches in Nice and the Canary Islands and meeting a variety of attractive men drawn to American girls because of what they had seen on television. So, it was all planned out. Life for Tia would start in four years.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“What?” Tia looks up, startled from her thoughts by the flight attendant standing by the beverage cart, asking for her drink selection. “Oh. Yes. I’d like a glass of chardonnay, please.” Tia answers, without much thought.
In all of her years since college, Tia has always preferred her glass of wine over any beer or sweet tasting fruity tropical drink with names that remind her of a real bad porn movie, such as Sex on the Beach and Fuzzy Navels. Her friends are amazed at how she can still remain standing after drinking several shots of tequila and a few bottles of beer but will almost fall down drunk on the floor after just a half glass of wine. Her ex-husband, Michael, often joked that if he had only known back then, when he was dating her in college, that Tia couldn’t hold her wine, he would have rushed over to her dorm room with an entire case of chardonnay.
Tia takes the glass from the attendant with her left hand. As she moves it over to her tray table, she looks down at her ring finger and sees the faint outline of where her wedding band used to be. Even though it has been over a year since her divorce from her husband, Michael Gables, was finalized, she can still see the indelible mark of her marriage on her finger. Tia still remembers clearly every detail of the day that she took off her wedding ring for the first time since she had gotten married.
It had been an ordinary Thursday morning and she was on her way to work when she opened her front door to find a messenger standing there. He handed her a yellow envelope with the words “Private and Confidential” stamped in big bold letters on the front with her maiden name “Tiadora Vale” and home address in the center. Tia closed the door behind her and opened the envelope to find her divorce papers with the words “Final” marked across the page on the top. Looking at the words, it suddenly hit her.
Until that morning, she had not thought much about the end of her marriage. It was still very hard to believe that Michael and her were through. Yes, they were living apart. Yes, they talked only when it
concerned the children. Still, it didn’t seem real to Tia. It felt more to her like Michael was on one of his long business trips and that he would come home at anytime.
Looking down and seeing the words in black and white, plain as day, she could no longer deny the fact that Michael was never coming back. So Tia set the papers down on a small table by the front door, walked over to the kitchen sink, turned the faucet on and placed her left hand over the warm running water. With a tug from her other hand and some soap to move it along, she gently pulled the ring off of her finger.
So many years of struggles, of love, of history and it all came off so easily with a little soap and warm water. It felt so strange not to have it on, as if a vital organ of her body was stripped from her and now she was slowly learning how to live without it.
A feeling of terror consumed Tia because that ring was a symbol of the life she had built with Michael. Without it, she didn’t know who she was supposed to be. But with it, Tia would always be painfully reminded of the person she once was. After so many years of belonging to someone, she was left with no one at all. She was living with a stranger and the stranger was herself. It was not going to be easy for Tia to adjust to living on her own and it would take her months of balancing her own checkbook and of fixing her car to begin to realize she had no one to depend on; no one who would look after her and her future. Tia also knew it would take her much longer to figure out what she liked, what interested her because there were so many things that intimately intertwined with Michael and she knew she would have to take time to untangle the mess that had defined her for so long.
The postcards had brought it all back. Just as Tia remembers the day she took off her wedding ring, she also remembers the day Michael put it on.
Tia and Michael
Abby had gone to Africa with the Peace Corp and I had started my grueling first year as a premed student at New York University. Because we both had such busy schedules and long distance phone calls were expensive neither one of us had time or money to talk so Abby would send postcards to me as way of catching up on everything that was happening to her a continent away. The postcards came every week in the mail and I enjoyed reading about Abby’s travels in between my biology labs and calculus classes.
Tia,
You’ll never guess what I did this weekend? I went on a safari. A group of us from the Corp. mounted an all-terrain vehicle and hit the Serengeti like a bat out of hell! I am so excited I don’t even know where to begin. To stand within a few feet of a lion and live to tell about it is absolutely amazing to this city girl. The picture in front of this postcard is pretty much how I saw it, only I was close enough to actually fear death! Counting down the days until we plan our own adventure in Paris. If you should change your mind before that and decide that dissecting a frog is not all that it is cracked up to be, know that there is always room for one more. I’ll be saving you a seat.
Abby
And that was pretty much the routine for both of us during the first year that we were apart. I managed to stay alive underneath the ton of work that piled up on me while Abby explored every inch of Africa that she possibly could. The summer break had come quickly for me and I was looking forward to seeing her again. But instead of returning to the States for a visit, another postcard had arrived and I was surprised to see that she was not in Africa anymore. It was a postcard of a small water canal with a single gondola. On the gondola, there stood a smiling man dressed in a black and white checkered shirt and black pants, holding an ore in the water and looking straight ahead as if posing for the picture. I turned the back of the postcard and began to read:
Tia,
Buon Giorno! As you have probably guessed, I am in Venice, Italy. I am writing this, picturing the look of surprise on your face. I know I said I would be coming home but I have taken a minor detour along the way. One of my friends, John, was heading to Italy and invited me along at the last minute. Since I have no idea what I am going to do now that my tour of duty with the Peace Corp. is over, I thought I’d figure it all out over a bowl of pasta and a gondola ride. This doesn’t mean we can’t see each other. Why don’t you come join me for the summer and backpack through Europe a little earlier than we planned? Come on, you know you want to. There is always room for one more. I’ll be saving you a seat! I’ll call you in a few days when I have settled in.
Abby
Although Abby’s offer was tempting, I did not join her in Italy. I had already lined up an internship as a lab assistant at a local research hospital. I tried to explain to her how important the internship was to getting into a good medical school but she didn’t seem to understand. The only thing she understood was that I was passing on an opportunity of a lifetime.
Tia: “This really is important to me. I would have a chance at a good medical school.”
Abby: “You have a good chance with or without this internship. You are brilliant and it’s about time you start believing in yourself. Just come for a few days-one week tops. Tell your supervisor that you have a wedding to go to or something.”
Tia: “It’s not only that. I don’t have the money to send myself to Italy. I’m barely getting by with all these student loans. I don’t know how you are managing.”
Abby: “Ever heard of traveling in Europe on $10 a day?”
Tia: “I refuse to sleep on a train station bench. Besides, I need warm showers. I have a thing about communal baths. You know I would…”
Abby: “I know, I know, if you could. You don’t know what you are missing.”
At the time, I didn’t think I was missing anything because there was always the following summer and the next one after that. Abby, in my mind, wasn’t doing anything I couldn’t do later. All I knew was that I had my goals and I was focused on reaching them. So the summer had passed and Abby had decided to stay in Italy.
She moved to Rome, finding work as an administrative assistant for an Italian designer. Although she knew nothing about the world of high fashion, she managed to impress the buyer who was interviewing her for the position with her own fashion sense. On the interview, Abby told me that she wore a beige ruffled buttoned-down shirt over a man’s white undershirt and boxer shorts on top of black tights. Even though it was the early 90s, it was still unconventional and her boss loved it, hiring her on the spot. As for me, I had successfully completed my internship and returned to NYU in the fall as a sophomore. It was there, in one of my classes, when my whole life changed dramatically.
My early morning philosophy class is where I first met Michael Gables. I noticed him the moment he walked into the room. He was very hard to miss with his light brown hair, dark green eyes and broad shoulders. Michael was constantly surrounded by people and he was either laughing too loud or debating a social issue or any issue, for that matter, with such passion that no one really stood a chance of winning the argument with him and most stopped trying after a while. As a member of the student council and junior varsity soccer player, he was very popular with everyone on campus, which, to me, was very intimidating, and just one of a hundred reasons not to say hello to him.
On that first day of class, Michael sat directly behind me and, since the professor worked off of a seating chart, Michael sat behind me for the rest of the semester. We didn’t speak those first few weeks since he always came in just as the lecture was about to begin. The only words spoken between us had been a hello and goodbye. It was only after he had asked to see my notes on Plato’s Republic that we started to talk. From that day on, we talked every day. I was surprised with how easy it was for me to be with Michael. I had few boyfriends up to that point and they were always short-lived and done secretively since my parents did not allow me to date anyone until I graduated from high school. By the time I was able to date, I had become very shy around guys. That was until Michael. He was easy to talk to and everyday, after class, we would walk to a local café down the block, in the heart of NYC’s Greenwich Village amid a string of coffee shops, vintage clothing boutiqu
es and tattoo/body piercing shops. The conversations I had with him back then were always interesting. He seemed to really want to know everything about me and asked millions of questions.
Michael: “So what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Tia: “I thought I was grownup?”
Michael: “You are still a little girl, little girl.”
Michael loved to tease me, trying to make me blush from embarrassment or anger. Both of which were not very hard to do. I tried to tease him right back but he seemed to enjoy it and it only encouraged him to tease me even more.
Tia: “I am not a little girl.”
Michael: “Are too.”
Tia: “Talk about being mature.”
Michael: “Hey, I’m perfectly willing to admit that I still have a lot of growing up to do.”
Tia: “Yes, you do, little boy.”
Michael: “So? What’s it going to be?”
Tia: “Medical school, definitely, but not before I pack a suitcase to everywhere.”
Michael: “Everywhere, huh? That will take some time.”
Tia: “Well, not everywhere. Not right away but I’d like to get started with maybe Europe.”
Michael: “If you could go right now, where would it be?”
Tia: “Spain.”
Michael: “Wow! That’s a pretty quick answer.”
Tia: “Yes, it is.”
Michael: “OK, I’ll take the bait, why Spain?”
Tia: “Because I spent my summers there as a kid.”
Michael: “Oh, I get it, memories of a first kiss, am I right?”
Tia: “It holds a special place in my heart.”
I spent the next hour telling Michael about my summers in Spain, about my family and my memories. He was right about that first kiss. His name was Joachim but I called him Jack and he was the son of my father’s friend. I was fourteen and he was a year older. We would meet in the afternoons almost every day so he could practice his English with me. For the entire month of July, I waited for him to kiss me, as he struggled to say words such as awesome and incredible. The way his mouth curved as he formed the sounds mesmerized me and I wanted him to feel his lips on mine. But he kept me waiting until the day before I was to go back home.