by Lisa McKay
*
One of the ways I fought the blah that often threatened during those three months of separation was working to create a home out of the new apartment.
I’d arrived in L.A. more than four years earlier with only two suitcases and I’d resisted buying anything that felt too big and too permanent for a very long time. Anything I really did need – a bed, for example – I bought secondhand from online marketplace forums.
But this move, I was determined, would be different.
I would commit to this new beginning by transforming the blank slate of the new apartment into a haven of tranquility, I resolved. I imagined dark wood, white bedding, clean lines, and minimal clutter, a space in which creativity would flourish like grape vines in France, somewhere you would breathe more deeply and slowly the minute you entered. I wanted a wooden counter-height kitchen table with six tall chairs. I wanted a bright Moroccan-tiled console in the entry. I wanted brand-new sophisticated blue couches and low coffee tables. I wanted stuff to match. And I was determined that I was going to buy it new, like a normal person. I was not going to impulse-buy off secondhand forums and risk ending up with a couch covered in dog hair or a bread-maker that I would never use. This time I was going to plan ahead and make sensible choices. Choices I’d thought through carefully.
It took less than two weeks after the move, however, for me to discover a couple of flaws in that grand plan.
First, money. Who knew that new stuff cost so much money??? Even the cheapest decent counter-height dining-room table would set me back close to a thousand dollars. Second, the time and energy it takes to think through such choices carefully. After a couple of days spent cruising furniture stores online and walking around them in my new neighborhood, I was done with the whole process. I didn’t, I learned, really want to spend days thinking about dining-room tables. And all the furniture in these stores was a shiny sort of bland.
So it was that less than a month after moving I found myself back on the online forums hawking secondhand goods, and on my first virtual peregrination I saw it.
A television cabinet made out of dark teak wood. Perched on four solid legs, it stood more than six feet tall and two feet deep. The doors were delicately arched, fronted with slender bars, and double-hinged so that they unfolded to swing all the way back. It cost a hundred and thirty dollars.
It was probably a little strange that in an apartment devoid of kitchen table, microwave, and lamps, my first major purchase would be a huge cabinet for a TV I didn’t own and was not at all sure that I wanted to acquire. But the second I saw those dark wooden curves I knew that exciting creative adventures would unfold for the person who owned this piece of furniture, that it would infuse my new living room with mystery and potential, that the cabinet wanted me to buy it. So on Saturday I drove down to Hollywood to seal the deal.
On the way home I started to think about how I was going to pick up the cabinet later that week as promised, and the next day I emailed my friend Nick and asked if he’d like me to take him out to dinner on Thursday, via Hollywood, in his truck.
As my preferred partner in crime for adventures related to sourcing secondhand furniture, this was not the first time Nick had received such an invitation from me. Nick was blessed with the spiritual gift of “large vehicle.” Nick also seemed willing to view these occasional forays less as “running all over town on Lisa’s errands” than as “quality friendship time on the freeways with intermittent heavy lifting to keep things interesting.”
That Thursday Nick turned up and asked pertinent questions before we even set out. It seemed he had learned a couple of things over the years from these outings (although not, apparently, that perhaps the wisest course of action was just to say no and not set out at all).
“How big is this thing again?” Nick asked.
I told him. And I was honest.
“And once we get it back here, how are we going to get it from the curb, three hundred feet down winding sidewalks and up two flights of stairs into your apartment?” he asked.
I confessed that this was a question I had thought about myself several times during the previous four days but that I had not yet managed to come up with a good answer.
“I’m not particularly proud of that,” I finished lamely. “It’s not something I’d normally do – ask you to help me when I’m not sure how it’s not going to kill the two of us to try to move this thing.”
“Are you kidding?” Nick said. “That totally sounds like something you’d normally do to me.”
“I’m sure something will work out,” I said, shooting for optimism more out of desperation than any real conviction that I was right.
Down in Hollywood it took Nick and me, the seller, and two hapless bystanders to get the cabinet into the back of Nick’s truck, and by the time we got back to my place at a quarter past ten that night I still hadn’t figured out a grand relocation plan. As we pulled up in front of my apartment complex, it was quiet and dark. There were no able-bodied stranger-neighbors roaming around whom I could beg to help us, but I did find a dolly sitting conveniently outside someone’s door waiting to be borrowed, and after fifteen minutes of extreme exertion Nick had managed to wrestle the cabinet to the bottom of the stairs.
Then we were stuck.
Nick eventually asked the obvious. “How are we going to get it up there?”
“If we just look at it for a while we’ll figure something out,” I said.
Ten minutes later we were still looking at it. And we still had not figured anything out.
“That’s the biggest TV cabinet I’ve ever seen,” Nick said. “It looks like the wardrobe in the C.S. Lewis movies. You know, the entrance to Narnia?”
“It does!” I agreed, amazed.
“Perhaps if we climb inside it will fly up the stairs?” Nick said sarcastically.
“You know,” he added in a tone laced with frustration, affection, and bewilderment, “I never really understood the whole concept of love/hate until I met you.”
As I was laughing at this, a muscled neighbor named Tony whom I had met only five hours earlier, an angel sipping Starbucks, walked up from the garage and said those holy words: “Looks like you need some help.”
“Even with Tony’s help,” I wrote to Mike later that night, “it took us another ten minutes and several near-hernias to get the cabinet up the stairs and through my door, but it was totally worth it. Who needs predictable new furniture when you can have furniture with a back story? Who even needs a TV inside a cabinet that already hints at whole other worlds removed from the mundane in this one – worlds of snow and crocuses, danger and sacrifice, adventure and valor? No, I’m convinced that this cabinet will make me a better writer, indeed a better person. It is, after all, a gateway to Narnia. And you can never have too many of those in your life.”
*
After I acquired Narnia, other bits and pieces of furniture fell into place. Over the next couple of months, I granted a home to dozens of books in two enormous Spanish-style wooden bookshelves. I flanked my bed with nightstands that housed gentle lamps. I hung pictures of peaceful beaches in Australia and wistful children in Belize. I found a secondhand kitchen table, and friends gave me a coffee table. I bought delicate, sensual wine glasses. I found the perfect nooks for a bronze statue from Ghana, ebony candlesticks from Kenya, and a bowl from Indonesia made entirely of cinnamon. Out on the deck I planted forget-me-nots in a small pot and watered them faithfully until they, much to my amazed excitement, pushed up fragile green shoots.
Then I forgot to water them for more than a week and they died, but never mind. The important point was that I was finally putting energy into creating my own homey space. It didn’t end up looking much like the home I’d initially envisioned – nothing was dark wood except the Narnia cabinet, you couldn’t say that things matched exactly, and it was all far more comfortably cheerful than uncluttered elegance – but with all these different woods and shapes and colors cobbled together, it wo
rked. It felt like a visual of my life. It felt just right.
Being so far from Mike, on the other hand, didn’t feel just right. There were many moments from February to May when I wished rather acutely that we lived in the same city instead of being separated by the Pacific Ocean and an 18-hour time difference.
Near Madang, PNG
On February 14th Mike was out in the field and totally out of contact. As he put it later, he was “celebrating Valentine’s Day in true PNG style, by sleeping in a village surrounded by other men’s wives.”
“One thing we’re not going to have to worry about this year,” I wrote in response to this, “is setting any expectations too high for future celebration of events like Valentine’s Day or birthdays.”
Washington, D.C., USA
Three weeks later, on Mike’s birthday, I was in Washington, D.C., again for work. Perhaps, Mike had suggested, while I was there I might like to meet his parents, who lived nearby? I thought this over and then shrugged and agreed. After all, I reasoned, Mike had braved my parents’ house within two hours of meeting me; I could brave his alone. So on a cold spring night, I borrowed Michelle’s car, bought a bunch of flowers, and showed up for dinner at Mike’s parents’ house.
Mike’s parents were utterly hospitable, if seemingly a little puzzled by my presence on the scene.
“So,” his mother ventured shortly after I arrived, while I was still processing the framed high school portrait of Mike that was sitting in the living room, “how did you two first meet? Was it in Thailand?”
I tore my eyes away from a smiling eighteen-year-old Mike with some difficulty.
What? Sure, Mike hasn’t seen them since we met, but hasn’t he told them the whole story?
“Not exactly,” I said. “Here’s how it happened …”
After my own mother’s chicken-dance antics in the kitchen on the night that Mike arrived in Australia, I was gleeful to have plenty to report back to Mike by email after dinner.
“Your parents were utterly hospitable,” I started my letter. “A turkey had been roasted, rolls baked, profiteroles procured and fruit salad made. And your mother will no doubt tell you she did not show me the baby albums. That is true. She thoughtfully left them on the coffee table and I looked through them all by myself while dinner was being put on the table.
“I can also report the following:
“1. You have quite a considerable pile of stuff stored in that house. I think it is still less than what I have stored in my parents’ house, but even after looking it over carefully during the parent-guided tour of the basement, I’m not sure.
“2. Your mother made me pose for photographs before I left because she said she would be in terrible trouble with the other women at the office if she went in on Monday morning without pictures.
“3. Within half an hour of meeting me your mother asked whether we were going to have an e-marriage. In her defense the flow of the conversation went like this: I explained how we met and ended with, ‘so now we’re e-dating.’ Your Mum said, ‘E-dating. What comes next, an e-marriage and e-kids?’”
Los Angeles, USA
Three weeks later, on my birthday, Mike was out in the field again. But I did have a birthday present to open that morning when I woke up.
He had sent me a billum (a woven bag used by villagers in PNG to carry everything from vegetables to babies) and a CD full of photographs. This wasn’t just any billum. Mike had clearly gone to some trouble to find the most outrageously bright red, pink and orange billum in existence. Then he’d carried this billum with him everywhere for several weeks, taking pictures along the way to demonstrate everything I could do with this most useful of gifts.
The billum had sat beside Mike on the porch of his house. It had been slung over his shoulder while he went jogging, snorkeling, swimming, scuba diving, and did sunrise yoga. The billum had accompanied Mike to the office, the markets, and on Skype dates. The billum had even taken showers under the drain spout. The last photo on the disk showed Mike, the billum, and a handwritten happy-birthday sign with a big red heart on it.
I laughed at these seventy-five photos until I almost cried.
Then I read his card and, again, almost cried.
“Do you think these feelings are going to continue?” it started. “I never thought it would happen to me. I was always a bit skeptical about becoming paralyzed by love. No, that couldn’t happen to me. And now it has. …
“I still feel a bit uneasy about this. I never expected it and now it’s here,” he finished, a page and a half later. “Not skeptical anymore. But perhaps scared of what will happen. Will these feeling last? Will we make it?”
Los Angeles – Accra – Washington, D.C. – Sydney – Zagreb – South Bend – Nairobi – San Diego – Atlanta – Madang – Kona – Canberra – London – Baltimore – Itonga – Vancouver – Harare – Dushanbe – Lira – Petats – Port Moresby – Brisbane – Ballina – Malibu
Shock and Awe in Love
I’d always wondered how someone is caught by surprise by a marriage proposal in this day and age. I mean, if you’re in a solid relationship and you’re both good communicators, surely you’d have some idea if one party in that equation were scheming to pop the question? I mean, how dumb are people?
So, yeah, apparently I’m dumb.
Well, that’s one possibility. Another possibility is that Mike is crazy. Or Mike could be both dumb and crazy. Or I could be. Or maybe we both are.
Even now I’m still undecided on this point, but let me back up and set the scene, because setting the scene is a valuable life skill that should be exercised during the telling of all stories (and quite possibly, I’ve come to believe, in advance of all major life-altering decisions).
Los Angeles, USA
By April, three months after first meeting in Australia, Mike and I had made our first tentative forays toward discussing when Mike was going to leave Papua New Guinea and move to L.A.
His contract in PNG wasn’t up until December, and I didn’t let myself spend much time considering the possibility that he might cut it short. I knew what I was getting into when I signed on to this relationship, I told myself. I was determined not to be that woman – the one who expects her man to rearrange all his plans and priorities around her preferences.
No, we hadn’t exactly discussed it yet, but I had it all worked out in my head. Mike was going to stay in PNG until December, as he’d planned. We would soldier through this year of long-distance dating, spending a month together in the U.S. in May and two weeks in September in Cambodia. We’d meet again in Australia for Christmas and then Mike would move to L.A. in January. With all continuing to go well, we’d date for four to six months while living in the same city and then (and here was another topic I wasn’t letting myself think too much about) we would get engaged.
It was such a good plan. Such a sensible plan.
I just assumed that it was also Mike’s plan.
So I was very surprised when, in April, Mike dropped the first hints that he might consider leaving PNG in September rather than December.
It was raining in Madang that day. When it rained we couldn’t talk, because the internet connection had slowed way down. We could usually, however, instant-message. So that’s what we were doing when Mike, mid-conversation, joked about quitting his job.
After I read this comment I didn’t send any words back straight away. I just used the party emoticon, the one where a little yellow face, crowned with a purple hat, is tooting a paper horn and streamers are floating down. Instant-message conversations are not entirely devoid of nonverbal signals if you make full use of the emoticons.
Mike laughed. This I know because he wrote “LOL” (laugh out loud). Twice.
“Not fair,” he wrote. “You weren’t supposed to have that reaction.”
“Look,” I wrote, “just because I fully support you staying in PNG for the year doesn’t mean I wouldn’t throw a party if you decided not to.”
“So
what about perseverance?” Mike teased.
“Stuff perseverance,” I shot back. “It’s like a vaccine. Once you’ve had a dose or two you’re good for ten years.”
“Fifteen,” Mike wrote. “Twenty. Life.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“I wish,” Mike said.
I sent a smiley face.
“We were talking about this over here last night,” Mike said. “The consensus was that perseverance is worth it if there’s some sort of future goal you want to achieve.”
“What qualifies as a worthwhile goal?” I said.
“I threw that one out there, but no responses,” Mike said, “and you don’t expect me to have my own original answer now, do you?”
“Oh, no, sorry. That is asking a bit much,” I said. “But I just think you can set up anything as a goal, but some goals are not going to be worth it.”
“A worthwhile goal isn’t just ‘I made a commitment and I’ll be damned if I renege even if it kills me’??” Mike replied.
“I don’t think so.” I said. “That’s just being unable to reroute despite changing circumstances. I don’t think that alone is a good enough goal in most situations.”
“What about if the joy in the situation is gone. Then perseverance isn’t worthwhile?” Mike typed.
“Joy gone for how long?” I asked. “It’s such a tricky one. I think we have times when the joy is gone but we’re still supposed to stick it out. Other times joy going is a huge red warning flag.”
“No formula on this,” Mike said.
“Yeah,” I said. “No formula. Guess that’s what we’re supposed to need wisdom for.”
“The other tidbit of wisdom that came to me last night …” Mike said.
“Yeah?”
“No need to make a decision about PNG until the end of May,” Mike said. “So how about that? We enjoy hanging out in May, and then the last week of May we make a decision. Okay?”