Dear Exile

by Hilary Liftin

  My kindhearted Indian woman neighbor Amina, who last week fed us goat knees, heard that I was sick and brought over a bottle of orange Fanta. All wrapped up in newspaper. It made me feel better even before I drank it. And Mwanamisi’s youngest son, Rama, drew me a picture of a goat on the back of a flour sack. That too made me feel better. As did your package.

  Delia wrote me about her new love, and I told her how very happy I am for her. Does her lover bring out the best in her?

  And you. And William. Hilary, I don’t think you should sleep with anyone who fails to recognize your ultimate intelligence, charisma, and sexiness. Even if he has a very good (or bad-butcompelling) reason. Just don’t do that. It’s bad for you. You’re putting yourself down really subtly. Isn’t he having his cake and eating it too? Let his libido force him to cut the shit. Aren’t I right? I am, you know it.

  (Do you feel bad for how sick I am?) (Try harder.)

  Love and thanks,

  K8

  P.S. The witch doctor named the ring of evil wizards, including our old man neighbor, last week, but violence was averted by the fact that they had all left town already. Interesting fact: the girls are no longer having any fits.

  NEW YORK CITY

  October 12

  Dear Kate,

  Please please please stop being sick. Thank you.

  I haven’t been to many weddings. Your City Hall affair with me as Star Witness was momentous, romantic, and did the trick, but you have to admit that it was more of a marriage than a full-out wedding. Well, last weekend Steven and Emily got hitched in Millbrook, New York. There was a rehearsal dinner in a winery that used to be an old dairy barn. We were above where they make the wine in a huge loft space shaped like half a barrel with a view of the sun setting over the vineyard. I made a toast that began, “It has been brought to my attention that the way one treats one’s siblings is indicative of the way one will treat one’s spouse. So, Emily, I just wanted to let you know what you’re in for.” This starter was actually a gift from Dr. Strong, who is still making cameos.

  The wedding was the next day at Emily’s family’s place, down the road from the winery. It was a clear, unseasonably cold day, and they said their vows in front of a sparkling lake. The trees around the lake were in autumnal splendor, doubled by the reflection in the water. Now that’s peak foliage. Friends read poems by relevant writers, including this weird poem, which I love and have enclosed. It will remind you that even though Emily and Steven had a much more traditional wedding than yours, they’re not boring. At the last minute Emily flung two boxes into my hand and asked me to be the ring bearer. I wore a sexy, sequiny dress, so when I handed Steven the ring he said, “Thank you, Vanna.” They stood arm in arm through the ceremony, practically the same height, with matching dark brown hair (though Emily has much more), and both with such open, even features. It all made sense. Emily looked like a fairy princess, Steven looked heroic, and they both cried.

  I couldn’t help thinking about what kind of wedding I would want to have—how there would be candy covering the whole cake, and how it might be funny and serious. Then I remembered that I don’t care about being married or having a ceremony at all, although it would be a shame to miss out on a chance to be the center of attention.

  I milled around at the reception able to make no conversation beyond exclaiming, “This is the happiest day of my life!” Which it was, although every time I said it I was aware that it made me sound a spinster sister. So I modified to “This is the happiest day of my life (so far)!” Before the ceremony I was helping Emily get dressed and running around doing little errands. My father was talking to the guests, and I said, sternly, “Your only son is getting ready to marry. Go be with him.” Bossy, I know. But it seemed like a moment when you’d want your parents to be at hand. My dad seemed sort of on the periphery of the event—it was hard to tell if he felt happy for Steven. He didn’t say anything to that effect. But he was accidentally seated next to my grandmother, his ex-mother-in-law, and graciously escorted her through the buffet, telling her what each dish was. Later, when I asked him if he’d had fun, his only comment was “Yeah. I didn’t meet anyone, did you?” Steven and Emily danced the first dance to a Leonard Cohen song, “The End of Love,” and Steven then woke the older generation by slow-dancing with a man. There was much discussion about how hot my mother looked, and her fellow Herb won everybody over by dancing with my grandmother. Emily’s twelve-year-old cousin displaced the band to play the Beatles’ “In My Life” on his guitar. That’s when Delia and I got teary.

  And I was sad, as was Steven, that my grandfather wasn’t there. Emily has such a big family that we could’ve used more Liftins. He and Rosa sent a telegram, which was appreciated because none of our generation had ever seen a telegram.

  I sort of invited William to the wedding by saying something as welcoming as, “You can come if you want,” knowing that, considering our limbo state, it was unlikely. At the wedding I knew some people were single and finding each other, but I was in such a blur of friends and family and forgetting names and learning the Texas two-step that I couldn’t even consider it. I mean, you have to figure that just saying hello to 300 people has to take at least four hours. It felt like I barely had time to remember to drink champagne. Don’t get me wrong. I was lonely. Not that I was sad during the event, but I was aware the whole time that for a long time I’ve been consoling myself, like any liberal arts graduate, with notions of love as a construct. As you know, I’ve called myself satisfied with boyfriends who were rentals with no option to buy. Now it turns out that I want to believe in love, in head over heels, go down with the ship, cut off my hair and sell my watch love.

  At times I think this is damage done me a long time ago—that it’s sick to have a six-year-old child playing “Someday My Prince Will Come” on the piano, to tell her that one day she will fall in love, that she will know it’s right, that it will be forever. The problem was the passivity in all that romanticism. I was told I was a princess. (Think: trapped in a tower.) And the prince was supposed to come to me, if I was good, without my having to pick up the phone and make a fool of myself. It’s enough to make a girl think all she has to do is look out the window or pick some flowers in the right sunlit crag for love to happen. But the wedding reminded me that there’s still a version of romanticism that suits me. It comes in a few forms. I mean, Emily and Steven had a rocky start but came around. That makes me sustain hope in less than perfect circumstances. And then there’s you and Dave, who seemed to have instant recognition of your affinity. That’s what I’m really hoping for. Love at first sight; battlefield, Hallmark, oncoming train, frog prince love; I’ll never wash this cheek again love, till death do us part love. That’s why just as soon as I finish convincing myself that William is telling the truth about not wanting me, then I’ll be off again, awaiting someone who’ll rearrange the stars to spell out our names.

  And with that endorsement, the newlyweds are off to Bangkok.

  Youth! Vigor! Hope! Onward!

  H

  LOVE

  He looks like a bowling pin, she looks like the ball.

  All over the neighborhood, I meet them,

  walking hand in hand, his stretching way down to hers.

  They waddle-walk as really fat, or stupid, people do.

  When I climb the stairs and pass their apartment

  I see them sitting at their kitchen table.

  They always leave their door open at dinnertime.

  The smell of cabbage and old linoleum overpowers the hall.

  His face is like a shy bell, fat and friendly at the bottom.

  Her shape is shapeless with an overall impression of round.

  He has a gray-flecked crew cut and an expression like a cow.

  She has wispy mouse hair and cackles through rotten teeth.

  I make small talk with them as they lumber up the stairs:

  “You’re out late,” I say. “We’re out late,” he giggles.

>   “We’re out late,” she echoes. “It’s late,” he elaborates.

  Poor, stupid, mismatched and ugly, they have love.

  Yesterday, the Super told me that she was dead.

  She had stepped out between parked cars and

  got run over by a truck.

  I walk up the stairs past their closed door

  and picture him sitting on the padded chrome chair,

  staring at the pearly Formica of the kitchen table,

  his big, shy hands hanging between his knees, unheld,

  and I cry.

  Doug Dorph

  NEW YORK CITY

  October 14

  Dear Kate,

  No sooner did Steven and Emily take off, leaving me with the dreamy conviction that love was a neighbor, waiting for me to lend it a cup of sugar, than everything got funky. My real-life neighbor, turns out, is hardly looking for sugar. Not to be confused with the sweet but lead-footed woman upstairs, the newest threat to my sanity is my downstairs neighbor. Oh, the horror of last weekend. I wake up at 5:30 because Amy, my houseguest, is standing in my bedroom doorway. She has heard a voice saying, “Contact the police about 6L and 6M.” I live in 6L. We think she’s dreaming, but in the living room we hear the voice, which is my downstairs neighbor. He is yelling things like “Those people in 6L and 6M are pure shit,” and “Someone’s going to pay,” and “Those people are involved in a murder.” I am scared that he will shoot us through his ceiling. I put on more clothes. I get out my personal alarm. I am shaking so hard that my knees are knocking and my stomach is growling and I laugh at how I am such a classic scared person. I wonder if my hair will stand on end (it doesn’t). We sit in the silence and dark for an hour, listening to him. I make Amy come sleep in my bed and everything seems less scary in the daylight, except that we both know it’s not a bad dream. I have nothing further to report on this, except that I’m going to notify the co-op board and tread lightly.

  Let’s hope lunatics come in pairs, otherwise I’m doomed to endure the fairy-tale third. Freak of the week number two is Serge. We met at a party, and he asked for my number. That seemed so normal that even though I wasn’t particularly interested, I was proud. I got to think, Yup, that’s me, that’s what I do. I go to parties and get asked on dates. But it was a bungled date. At work, we launched our redesign of the website that night. So I, duh, should not have made plans to go to a play with Serge. That was mistake number one. Also he lives on Ninth Street. I’ve already dated three people who live on Ninth Street in the past year (Jason, Nick, and Strong), and I’d sworn it off. But it was too late to cancel, so I went. After the play I had to call the office and, as it turned out, had to return to work. I didn’t think it would take very long. They were just proofing at that point. When I asked Serge what he wanted to do—wait for me to finish or call it a night—he ducked his chin down into the high neck of his raincoat and mumbled, “I want to hang out with you.” So he went to Barnes & Noble and to a restaurant and had dinner by himself while I went back to the office and one hour stretched into several. Finally I called him at the restaurant and said he should just come to the office and have a beer. So he did, and at midnight we finished and he came over to my apartment and we sat on the floor on pillows and drank red wine and kissed. I was exhausted and ambivalent, but I felt guilty for his having waited so nicely. At some point I was playing with his eyebrows and he asked what I was doing and I said that I was trying to make them more diabolical and then he confessed that he had plucked between them for the date. Something I didn’t need to know. So I said, “Thanks for shaving the monobrow, but did you wax your back?” at which point he started to take off his shirt and I was like “What are you doing?” and he said, “I’m allowed to be naked if I want,” and I said, “Not true,” and he said, “I’m just proving that I don’t have a hairy back.” He was right. Not much hair. But then I stopped him and said, “Serge, think: First Date.” I turned down his generous offer to “tuck me in” and sent him back to cursed Ninth Street. I wasn’t particularly attracted to him. He was too delicately clean-cut and his eyes were too small. I liked feeling that way: intrigued but not personally involved. It runs counter to my recent revelation that I do believe in romance, but it takes the edge off William (with whom I’m still romping. I disagree with your contention that he shouldn’t get to be with me. I want to be with him, actively. Wouldn’t holding back be playing games? I thought we didn’t do that). One point for Serge: he cleaned out my wineglasses before we used them, which was a good idea since I had tried to grow a plant in one of them and it was kind of crusty.

  But, oh, you would not even believe what happened after that unremarkable beginning. Serge and I were supposed to go to a play on Saturday (apparently all he does for entertainment is go to plays but I suppose I could have stomached that for a while). So he called me at work and we made plans and then he said, “I left you a couple messages at home already.” “Oh?” I said. “Yes,” said he, “and one of them was obscene.” “Really?” I said. Yes, and he wished he could take it back, but it was too late. So I got off the phone and called my machine and indeed he had left a message expressing a sexual fantasy involving the two of us. I don’t shock easily—cybersex was a breeze—but suddenly I felt like a prude. After only one meeting I really don’t want to hear a graphic and, worse, unsuccessfully poetic description of what he’d like to do to me. Know what I mean? Maybe someone could have pulled it off, but he wasn’t the one. At all. You know me—ordinarily I might have saved his message, played it a few times, contemplated my response. Not this time. I listened to it once and immediately knew I never wanted to hear it again. I think I was something I don’t get to be very often: disgusted. It was what the writer Malcolm Gladwell refers to as the Theory of Disqualifying Statements. “For every romantic possibility, no matter how robust, there exists at least one equal and opposite sentence, phrase, or word capable of extinguishing it.”

  I decided to act responsibly, because I could use some karma coupons. So I called him and, gently, nonjudgmentally, told him that his message made me uncomfortable and that I was canceling our date. He put up a decent defense, saying that he thought I’d be flattered that he found me sexy and that I’d appreciate his honesty and couldn’t I just forget it altogether and that he’d just meant to be funny and titillating. My response was simply and firmly—Too bad, I didn’t like it and I didn’t want to go out with him that night. He persisted. Finally he said, “That message I left you—it was art.” I returned, “Well, Serge, art is always a risk.” There we left it, except that he’s still leaving me messages, often. I probably will go out with him one last time, to prove to him that although I’m able to forgive the bad taste of his Disqualifying Statement, it doesn’t negate the disqualification. The point is, Serge is out, men are weird and clearly my attempt to date someone who liked me more than I liked him totally backfired. Oh, drama.

  Maybe I’ll come to Kenya. Somehow I don’t think there are scary neighbors and taboo-breaking dates in Kenya.

  XOXO,

  H

  P a r t F o u r

  O c t o b e r - D e c e m b e r

  KWALE

  October 20

  DIRTY KWALE SCHOOL CLOSED

  By NATION Correspondent

  Public health authorities have closed down the Kwale High School owing to poor sanitation.

  A source at the district’s public health offices said a notice to close the school was issued on Tuesday after an inspection report indicated that the school was a health risk.

  The official, who requested anonymity, said that earlier, students had gone on strike, citing poor sanitation conditions at the school.

  “The situation was so bad that we had to take immediate action to avert a possible disease outbreak,” he said.

  The headmaster and the Education Officer could not comment as they were said to be out in the field.

  Dear Hil,

  We heard that my student Baya who had cerebral malaria an
d was put off by his teacher died two months ago. It’s raining so hard that we have stopped classes because the noise of the water hitting the tin roofs is deafening.

  This article from the national newspaper reports on what happened last week. Nothing has changed here at school, and now it looks like there might be yet another strike. Frankly, every day feels tense, like something’s on the verge of happening. Today the kids refused to raise the flag or sing at assembly. At one point they all left the classrooms and sat outside, possibly in protest, but then it started raining and they came back in because they were getting wet. I usually try not to plan anything too complicated ahead of time so as to save myself a lot of stress.

  The day before yesterday was yet another episode. Students, because of the same old things—corruption, abuse, lack of food and water, and the health risk generated by no bathrooms—burned the inside of the kitchen storeroom in an attempt to burn down the whole dining room. It happened in the middle of the night when I was at home, and I didn’t hear a peep about it until the next day when I went with Owisso, another teacher who also lives off the compound, to the dining room for lunch.“Oh, it’s closed,” the teachers told us. Painfully slowly, the whole story came out. The teachers were trying to pretend it never happened. In truth, it almost feels like it didn’t.

  Dave and I overheard a conversation about all this striking while we were in a matatu going to Mombasa. One man was saying that each student got a quarter loaf of bread as food each day—how could they complain? The other man said he’d heard there were maggots in the porridge. The first man said, “Well, was it five or six maggots in every serving, or was it just one or two like you find at home?” (Not the same kind of conversation you overhear from your downstairs neighbor, but also scary, right?)