Red Plaid Shirt

by Diane Schoemperlen

  “I should like to see a bullfight. Me gustaria ir a una corrida de toros.”

  There are other practical conversational sentences which I’ve memorized just in case.

  “It is a beautiful day. Hace un dia hermoso.”

  “I am ashamed. Me da vergüenza.“

  “Do it again. Vuelva usted a hacerlo.”

  “My friend used to wear her clothes too tight. Mi amiga usaba sus vestidos demasiado estrechos.”

  “I just want to sit in the sun and doze. No quiero más que sentarme al sol ly dormitar.”

  From my spot on the couch, I could see right into the living room of the house across the street. An ordinary family lives there, husband, wife, half-grown twin daughters with braids who came bouncing over the day we moved in to tell us, happily, that our house was haunted. When I run into the wife at the grocery store, we chat about the neighbourhood cats digging up her flower beds and peek curiously into each other’s shopping carts, as if reading tea leaves or palms.

  This morning, as usual, the fat husband in his red housecoat was riding his exercise bike and looking out the window. I suppose that he could see me too, wandering around in my housecoat (blue), watering the plants and straightening the pictures, talking to myself with explosive Iberian gestures.

  I was just deciding to get dressed when the phone rang. It was the travel agent. “I’m calling about the two tickets to Spain. They’re ready. When can you pick them up?”

  I called Howard at the store and he said he’d go tonight after work. On the phone he was friendly but careful, swallowing several times as if someone was listening or his tie was too tight. Shoe salesmen, we hypothesize, are circumspect about their private lives. On the odd occasion, at a movie or a bar, when we run into someone Howard works with, he always introduces me as his wife. Sometimes this irritates me but I smile fetchingly and try not to guzzle the sugary little cocktails they buy me. The store is an exclusive downtown boutique where summer sandals start at a hundred dollars. We can’t afford to shop there.

  The Spanish are a very shoe-conscious people. A high polish on the shoes is a tradition passed down from the caballero, whose shiny boots served notice that he rode his own horse and did not walk along dusty roads with lesser men. Madrid has one street—Fuencarral—lined with shoe shops from one end to the other.

  In real life, Howard is a playwright. He has been working on the same play for nearly two years. It’s even been finished a few times. We’ve gone out for expensive dinners to celebrate, congratulating ourselves with champagne in silver buckets. But then Howard changes his mind or the characters change their minds and they are all dissatisfied all of a sudden and Howard happily starts the rewrite. Afraid to cut the cord, babies leaving the nest, all of that. We assume that playwrights, like all artists, are supposed to struggle and squirm.

  Howard’s play has had various endings and titles over time — in this incarnation it is called Tickets to Spain and they all live almost happily ever after.

  The set consists of two rooms in a small old house on a tree-lined city street.

  The kitchen, stage left, is spacious and bright, very warm and wifely. Plants in the window, wicker baskets on the wall, pots and pans hang from the ceiling. Yellow cupboards, old-fashioned well-worn linoleum, round wooden table in the centre.

  The bedroom, stage right, is smaller and darker. Seen through the window is a huge elm tree which casts the room in a watery greenish light. Two old-style dressers with mirrors, a king-size bed in the centre covered with a colourful handmade quilt in the Log Cabin pattern.

  At first the bed was covered with a Guatemalan blanket but then my mother sent us the Log Cabin quilt which has been making its way around my family for decades, and the Guatemalan blanket got rewritten.

  It is mid-May, about four in the afternoon. The kitchen is rich with sunlight and cigarette smoke hung in layers like veils.

  DAVID BARNES is seated at the kitchen table, staring out the window, smoking and drinking coffee. He is wearing dark dress pants and a rumpled brown cardigan. david is about thirty-five, slim, and dark-complexioned.

  Sometimes DAVID is drinking beer out of a can, dressed in jeans and a sleeveless white undershirt. He is always handsome. Sometimes he has his head in his hands. He is depressed, not drunk, although at times it can be hard to tell the difference.

  DENISE BARNES enters stage left. She is an attractive woman, about thirty, very tanned and healthy looking, dressed in a dainty sundress, eyelet cotton, very white. She is carrying a bag of groceries with a loaf of French bread sticking out the top.

  Sometimes a bunch of tulips sticks out of the bag. I like DENISE best when she has blonde hair done in a perm, unruly but angelic around her little face. When it is raining she wears a baby-blue jacket and matching scarf.

  DENISE puts the bag on the table and looks at DAVID sadly.

  Angrily.

  Lovingly.

  Guiltily.

  She puts her hand on his shoulder.

  She ignores him altogether.

  DAVID: Do you still love me? (He lights another cigarette.)

  DENISE: I don’t think so, no.

  DAVID: Please don’t leave me, Denise.

  DENISE: I can’t go on this way. (She heads for the bedroom.) I’m going to live with my sister.

  DAVID: Do you still love me? (He lights another cigarette.)

  DENISE: I think so, yes.

  DAVID: Please don’t leave me, Denise.

  DENISE: I’ll never leave you, David. (She heads for the bedroom.) We can work it out. (The telephone rings. They know it is the lover. Neither moves to answer it.)

  Sometimes DAVID and DENISE are married and sometimes they’re not. It doesn’t seem to make much difference in the long run. They have taken turns at being unfaithful and at being fooled. But there is always a lover, somebody’s lover, male or female, with an unstable mind or a murderous bent, phoning, following them, ruining their lives. They have experimented with staying together, splitting up, group sex, suicide, and murder.

  They’ve even got their tickets to Spain. I’m glad when they get to go, sorry when they don’t, and depressed when the plane crashes. Or I’m just as happy when they stay home, worried when they go, and curious when they take the lover with them. Sometimes the lover is Spanish. They are learning the language:

  “Do not go away until it stops raining. No se vaya usted hasta que case de llover.”

  “See whether my umbrella is behind the door. Mire usted a ver si mi paraguas esta detras de la puerta.”

  “Nobody likes to be deceived. A nadie le gusta que le enganen.”

  “Lunch is ready. El almuerzo est á servido.”

  I have grown rather fond of DAVID and DENISE and can always sympathize, no matter what happens to whom. They are nice people and I’m always relieved when Howard lets them live. I imagine how tired they must be by now of the paces he persists in putting them through.

  This morning in the study, more commonly known as “Howard’s room,” I dusted, emptied the ashtray, gathered up coffee cups, crumb-covered plates, and a pair of socks. In Howard’s room, according to law, I do not touch or remove anything else.

  I also turned on the tape recorder which Howard uses when he is rewriting. This cannot, I think, strictly be considered snooping—the play, after all, is destined to become public property (someday). But I don’t tell Howard I’m doing it either. It is like turning on the soap operas when you’re ironing—something you do every day but wouldn’t admit to just anyone. Like listening in on the people at the next table in a restaurant. Howard does this all the time but denies it.

  One night at Giorgio’s we took a table beside a handsome young couple who didn’t talk much and played with their pasta. Then the woman said, “Before you know it, she’ll be yelling at you in public, just like I used to.” The man looked pained.

  DAVID is taking DENISE out for Italian food, trying to break it to her gently.

  DAVID: She is a quiet and gent
le woman.

  DENISE: Before you know it, she’ll be yelling at you in public, just like I used to. (She reaches for a roll.)

  DAVID:You still do. (He takes a drink of wine.

  This morning I sat down at Howard’s desk to listen.

  DENISE: In the dream there was always the sound of drums, faint and far away, but then not really a sound at all, more like having water in your ears.

  DAVID: I’m tired of hearing your dreams, Denise. You’ve never asked for mine.

  Bees, it was bees, there was always the sound of bees.

  This afternoon I met my sister, Robin, and her lover for lunch at The Village Green. It was one of those days when every stranger you see on the bus looks like someone you know, someone you used to know, someone you’re sure you know from somewhere but you can’t quite put your finger on it. Who is it, who are you, who do you remind me of?

  Dwight Maguire was my lover last year, before he fell in love with Robin. We are all very civilized and (try to) find this situation amusing. I don’t have a lover these days, other than Howard I mean. I suspect sometimes that he has one or is in the process of getting one, but I have no proof, am not even looking for it yet. The Village Green is an airy, healthy-looking place filled with little glass-topped tables and many unsteady little chairs. There are aggressively healthy plants hanging everywhere and also some large leafy ones in clay floor pots that make you feel as if there is another guest at your table. The white walls are covered with posters advertising art show openings that took place five years ago in large American cities that no one here has ever been to. There are also many large photographs of vegetables—bright green broccoli big as trees, plump tomatoes precisely sliced to show off their shapely seeds.

  It is the kind of place that tries to convince you that you are really somewhere else, in some more serious-minded metropolis where everyone is self-employed and artistically inclined.

  We all ordered Caesar salads, flaky croissants, and the house drink, champagne and orange juice on ice, called O.J. Bubbles.

  “Miriam, Dwight, Robin, how nice to see you all,” said the waitress. They all know us there. They probably gossip about us after we leave, speculating about our arrangements, sleeping and otherwise. We keep showing up for lunch in various combinations of two or three, sometimes all four of us, sometimes just Howard and Dwight together. DAVID and DENISE do the same. We are all so mature. Why do I wish sometimes that we could all just make a scene, throw lettuce and forks, hate each other and get it over with?

  DAVID is sitting at the kitchen table while DENISE paces furiously around him.

  DENISE: How could you?

  DAVID: I lost my head.

  DENISE: You’re losing your mind.

  DAVID: You’re driving me crazy.

  DENISE: I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.

  DAVID: You’ve still got lettuce in your hair. (He laughs maniacally.)

  The restaurant filled up rapidly around us. It is a popular place, drawing businessmen and bank tellers on their lunch hour, university professors and their favourite students, new mothers gracefully breast-feeding. There is always some young man alone in the corner, reading or writing in his journal. I like the look of this and think that Howard should do the same, in a tweed suit jacket with leather elbow patches. But Howard says they’re probably writing grocery lists and letters to Mom asking for money.

  A naturally gregarious man who delights in the intricate art of conversation, the Spaniard spends much of his time in cafés and bars. He is probably a chain-smoker and rolls his own cigarettes from his favourite cheap tobacco. He is rarely a heavy drinker.

  Seated at the next table was a well-dressed young couple politely putting away vast plates of lettuce. The woman put down her fork and slipped off one diamond earring, just the way my mother does when she’s getting ready to talk on the phone. By proxy for Howard, I automatically eavesdropped.

  “How could you?” said the man (husband).

  “I didn’t want to hurt you,” the woman (wife) explained.

  “But you did.”

  “I couldn’t help it.”

  “I’ll never forgive you.”

  “More coffee, folks?”

  I wondered why everybody seems to be conducting their crises in restaurants these days. There is something about sharing a well-prepared generous meal which arouses, all at once, a false sense of security, the illusion of normalcy, and an abstract promise of intimacy. In addition to this emotional trickery, restaurants also ensure the relative safety of hurting someone you (are supposed to) love in a public place as opposed to your own inescapable living room.

  Robin nudged me. “Stop staring at those people, Miriam. It’s rude.”

  Robin and Dwight were still talking about some party they’d been to the night before, a birthday celebration for one of his friends.

  “I was having a wonderful time,” Dwight said, “until you started bitching.”

  “I wanted to go home. You were ignoring me.”

  “I was not.”

  “You were drunk.”

  “I was not.”

  “You were disgusting.”

  “Maybe a little.”

  Before you know it, she’ll be yelling at you in public.

  Today, as always, Robin wore a flowing cotton dress and sandals. She has a broad peasant face, permanently tanned, and with her flaxen hair wound up in braids, she was looking like a milkmaid. On first seeing Robin, you would expect her to be the warmest, most understanding woman you have ever met.

  In reality she is phlegmatic and persistently narrow-minded. She is hard on everyone, does not allow them their weaknesses, be they alcohol, excess emotions, or love. She is no good with children or small animals. She is mightily offended by television and most jokes told to her by men. She seems always on the verge of ridiculing Dwight or discarding him altogether.

  I have almost always adored her and would follow her around if she’d let me. I did hate her for a few years after I found out she’d tried to drown me, but then I had to forgive her. Just as they say, blood is thicker than water. But we have never really been a close family.

  All Spanish families are alike. Rich or poor, large or small, they cling together and take a profound interest in each other’s lives. Children seldom leave home until they marry. Family life centres around a large late lunch which Mother has spent most of the morning preparing.

  I imagine Howard and me, poor white waifs, being hugged into the heart of a big Spanish family with clean, singing children, fat aunts always cooking for jolly uncles who are always eating and tickling us. I am learning to say:

  “We are very glad that our father has come home again. Nos alegramos mucho de que nuestro padre haya vuelto a casa.”

  “I am very like my mother. Me parezco mucho a mi madre.”

  “She is going to marry her cousin. Ella se va casar con su primo.“

  Robin and Dwight sulked through their salads, Robin sternly, Dwight theatrically. But by the time the coffee arrived, they were cuddling and teasing again. I was foolishly feeling left out and had to bring up the time that Dwight, drunk, had proposed to me. “But what about Howard?” I’d asked. I had never seriously considered leaving Howard for Dwight. We are the kind of couple that everyone else thinks is perfect and will stay together forever. I suppose we will. “He can come too,” Dwight had said.

  Robin, whose only emotional fault is jealousy (retroactive as well as concurrent), tolerated this nostalgic reverie rather well and said nothing. Neither did Dwight.

  It came as no great surprise to me when Dwight fell in love with Robin. I supposed that most men would eventually. I was not in a position to put up much of a fight anyway. Howard knew about the affair by then and was talking in sad whispers, smoking in the dark till four in the morning. He had always been critical of Robin but discovered that he liked her immensely once Dwight fell in love with her.

  Dwight is a widower, his wife having died two years ago of a s
wift and savage cancer. When I loved him, I thought of him as soft and sore, slightly infirm, as if recovering from major surgery. I pampered and petted him constantly, thinking of how much he needed me to be strong. Robin, on the other hand, spares him nothing and gives him just enough, and it looks as though he’ll never leave her.

  “The travel agent called this morning. Our tickets are ready,” I told them.

  “The Spanish are an amazing people, so intense,” Robin said. Everything that Robin likes lately, including movies (films), books, and women especially, is amazing and intense.

  Taking my hand in an uncharacteristic gesture, she said, “Once you’ve been there, you’ll know,” as if the whole country were hers to give me. Dramatically, mystically, she said, “In the searing sunshine, there is nowhere to hide. Death is no longer dark. Spain is a landscape with figures. Houses bake in the sun. It will change your life.”

  There can be no turning back now.

  Going home on the bus, I got out the phrase book, which, I find, I have taken to carrying with me everywhere, like a lucky rabbit’s foot. The man beside me edged stiffly away as I began muttering to myself like a befuddled old woman in black, counting her rosary beads.

  “However difficult it may seem, you must try to do it. Por dificil que parezca, usted debe probar a hacerlo.”

  “The more I give him, the more he wants. Cuanto más le doy, más quiere.”

  “It is no use saying that. No sirve de nada decir eso.”

  I was expecting to spend an agreeable evening at home, Howard in his room writing, me curled up on the couch reading or watching TV. I was in the mood for a whole series of stupid sitcoms where everyone is immaculate, articulate, and can sort out their respective but interwoven problems in half an hour, not counting commercials. The ordinary family across the street watches TV every night. They never close their curtains, having nothing, I imagine, to hide. From my spot on the couch I can see their screen clearly, colours and faces, car and cat food commercials, in their dark living room. I’m always pleased when I see that we’re watching the same program.