by J. J. Kapka
Smarting from her own carelessness, which as always, was a deeper cut than the actual wound, Madison snapped off a piece of paper towel and started wrapping it around her finger. Then she whirled around and marched quickly into the living room, feeling a well of emotion bubbling up from inside her and spilling into her tear ducts.
“What now? What now?” she rumbled. Crossing the room, she picked up steam, having just enough time to let the moment take possession of her. By the time she got to the couch, she fairly tore the newspaper from Becker’s hands. Maddie bent down menacingly with a finger to his chest. “What is the matter with you?” she exclaimed.
Becker sat up in bewilderment.
Trembling, Maddie felt her tears begin flowing against her will, and the words started tumbling out. “You’ve been like a ghost around here for weeks now, and you’re asking me what’s wrong? How about you telling me what’s up, because I’m tired of guessing and tiptoeing around whatever it is that’s eating you.”
Startled, Becker stared helplessly up at the bloodstained paper towel. “Why do think something is eating at me? What have I said to make you think something’s wrong?”
Madison sighed and crumpled onto the floor, burrowing her head in her knees and murmuring almost inaudibly from the folds of her robe, “It’s not what you’ve said. It’s what you haven’t said.”
“Oh, this is incredible,” Becker muttered. “Most husbands get into trouble for saying the wrong thing. I have to be the lucky one to catch hell for not saying anything. Do you see anything wrong with this picture?”
Maddie tried to compose herself with a deep breath and a hard swallow. She lifted her face and placed her chin on her knees, gazing at her husband thoughtfully for a minute before getting to the heart of what had been troubling her.
“What’s wrong with this picture is that we’re about to embark on your dream trip, and ever since the word go, there hasn’t been the least little spark of excitement in you. Whenever I mention the trip, you change the subject or just dismiss it with a one-word reply. Before we signed on the dotted line, you couldn’t talk enough about what you wanted to do, and see, where we’d eat, how we’d get there. You were so…animated. Now, it’s like you’re lifeless. Do you even want to go?”
Becker ran his hand through his shock of blond hair, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed. “Maddie, I honestly think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. You’re seeing things that just aren’t there.” Leveling his soft blue eyes at hers, he continued, “Yes, I want to go. Maybe I don’t have too much to say because it is all finally happening. We don’t have to plan it out anymore. That’s a good thing. Let’s just let it happen and enjoy it, can’t we?”
What Becker was saying all sounded so logical, so much so that she felt foolish for even saying anything in the first place. Yet…well, yet what? Something didn’t feel right, but she’d finally confronted him, and he’d said all the right words. Maybe she was the one with the problem.
Enough. She decided to banish all misgivings. As soon as she decided to let it go and felt the weight lifting off of her shoulders, simultaneously the weight of the cheesecake disappeared from her stomach, and she found herself…hungry. Incredible. But easy enough to take care of.
“Okay. I give. Forget I ever said anything. How about helping me fix dinner?”
“Sure,” Becker said, unfolding himself from the confines of the couch and tossing the newspaper on the floor in a heap. “Your wish is my command,” he said with a grand flourish of his right arm, gesturing that he would follow her lead into the kitchen.
Soon they energetically chopped away at a variety of vegetables and beef, prepping for their stir-fry. Maddie fished their well-seasoned wok out from under the sink and set it on the burner. At just the right moment, she added a fragrant film of sesame oil, which would soon enrobe the waiting vegetables and meat. They were stir-fry pros and had done their prep work properly. All the ingredients were marshaled along the counter in various bowls and on cutting boards. There was ginger, scallions, finely diced carrots, day-old cooked rice, shreds of beef tenderloin, a beaten egg, cornstarch paste, and a sauce made up of beef broth, soy sauce, more sesame oil, and a bit of rice vinegar.
As soon as the wok started sending up a slight haze, they began tossing in the ingredients, starting with the scallions and ginger. Thirty seconds later, the aromatic steam reaching their nostrils signaled to their brains that stir-fry was on the way, which in turn relayed the news to their mouths, which commenced salivating in anticipation. While Maddie was busily tending the wok, Becker laid out their bowls and chopsticks.
The big payoff with proper prep work on a stir-fry was the nearly instant gratification of a meal on the table after only a few minutes of cooking time. Both Becker and Madison sat down gratefully to enjoy the labors of their joint venture and silently appreciated the first few mouthfuls still brimming with the heat and flavors of the wok. Looking over at Becker, Maddie mused that he appeared not only happy with the dinner, but content in other ways as well. Or is that just wishful thinking?
~~~
June 21—Early Evening
As she surveyed their suitcases flung open on the bed and continued crossing items off of the packing list, Madison could feel her heart going a mile a minute. At last, the moment was here when they would kiss their jobs goodbye, at least for two months, and go out and explore the world. They’d been to half-a-dozen goodbye parties thrown by friends, co-workers, and family. They’d collected their share of joke gifts, like his-and-her miniature bottles of Pepto-Bismol. Now the interminable wait till “the day” was nearly over. Becker had just gone out on a last-minute mission to buy a few extra small bottles of toiletries for their backpacks so they could pass through airport security unscathed.
They’d decided to limit themselves to one medium-sized rolling suitcase and a backpack each. The backpacks were meant to contain enough to keep them amused on their flight, along with enough toiletries and clothes to get them through two days in the event their suitcases got lost. The minimalist approach sounded logical when she thought about all the places they’d have to lug their stuff around. But when the time came to decide which clothes she was going to see day in and day out for the next two months, the decision-making seemed much harder than she’d anticipated. If they could be assured of perfect summer weather wherever they went, it would be simpler, but with England as their first stop, Madison knew it was going to be considerably tougher than she’d expected to include everything they’d possibly need.
At this point, as long as we’ve got our tickets, passports, money, and clean underwear, she mused, we’ll make do wherever we are. We can always buy anything we lack or send stuff home along the way if we end up not using it. Why obsess in advance?
Just as she was shutting her suitcase, Maddie heard Becker’s key rattling in the door. She strolled out to the living room to greet him and relieve him of his bag. He grabbed both her shoulders, bent down, kissed her forehead, and said, “The crowds were terrible. I must’ve waited in line at the drugstore for over ten minutes. And that was just for the shampoos and toothpaste. I went to the bookstore, too, and picked up a handful of magazines and one more travel book that looked good. Everything else all ready?”
Maddie looked up into those inquiring blue eyes and nodded quickly. “Help me get this stuff in the backpacks and off the bed. We better get a good night’s sleep. I know our flight’s not till tomorrow evening, but I figure that by tomorrow I’ll remember all the things I forgot to pack tonight and can run out and shop for them at the last minute. Did you remember to give your brother a set of keys for the apartment?”
“Yep.”
“Did you remember to tell the post office to hold our mail?”
“Yep.”
“And did you call…”
“I did everything you put on the list. Done. Fini.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Just one more question,” Maddi
e continued. “Is this really happening?”
“Mmm-hmmm. Let’s get some sleep and put an end to all this endless waiting.”
Maddie grinned and said, “You’re right, the waiting’s been torture. Let the adventure begin.”
Chapter 2
London
Bangers and Mash—a Greasy, Messy Concoction
June 23
This has not been not an auspicious start, Maddie thought, as she and Becker staggered out of customs at Heathrow. She stood blinking as the crowd surge pushed them beyond the sliding doors and into a mass of people with placards and carts trying to catch the attention of various and sundry other passengers deposited on British soil, seemingly from every other nation on earth. An early summer thunderstorm had delayed their flight out of Kennedy airport. After they’d boarded and the plane had taxied away from the gate, it had then languished on the taxiway for six hours, while she and Becker sat inside—hot, frustrated, and largely ignorant of what the prognosis was for liftoff.
Making a mental note to write the airline when they got back, Maddie recalled the stingy way the aircrew had doled out a single pack of pretzels and a soft drink during the entire time they’d been sitting there without air conditioning, waiting for clearance to take off. It’s not like they couldn’t have sent any of those catering trucks out to us with at least a decent cold meal, she fumed. Heck, this is New York; they could have had their choice of any kind of meal truck that would be happy to make a few bucks. What’s the point of starving us?
When the plane finally took off, the flight crew served a meal Maddie found barely edible. Wound up by the whole situation, she spent most of the flight tossing and turning fitfully, with not even a movie to distract her because the system had broken down after just ten minutes. She glanced over to see how Becker was doing. He stared stonily ahead, as sleepless as she was.
Maddie had finally nodded off, just in time to be awakened by the pre-landing breakfast service. She ate in a groggy state, nearly senseless from lack of sleep and the confinement to the small amount of square footage, or inch-age, as she would put it, allotted to them in economy class.
After all that, it came as no surprise to her that one of their suitcases, Becker’s, never turned up on the baggage carousal. After waiting hopefully for an interminably long time, she and Becker grimly set off for the lost luggage window to report the item had gone AWOL. Naturally, or so it seemed, the line was about fifteen people long, and each case took an excruciatingly long time to progress to completion.
When she and Becker finally stepped up to the window, the clerk entered the bag’s identification number into the computer. It had accidentally been put on a plane destined for Paris, but that particular flight had never taken off because of the delays in New York. Becker’s bag had been off-loaded, and that’s where the trail went cold. Maddie knew something wasn’t right when the clerk, with lines of consternation knitting his brow, started typing furiously and making a succession of phone calls.
“Sorry,” he finally said, “I can’t seem to locate it in the system.” He didn’t appear to care very much about the bad news. “I’ve just put in a trace, and if it’s found, we’ll send it to your hotel. If it can’t be located,” and the way he set his chin and lifted his eyebrows seemed to indicate that this was a distinct possibility, “you can file a claim for reimbursement when you get home.”
Speechless, they stepped back from the counter as the clerk looked over their heads at the person in line behind them. “Next” was the closest they got to an apology.
Now, emerging into the midafternoon sunlight in the arrivals hall, after having lost the bulk of their purported first day in London to the airline’s whims, Maddie felt at a loss as to what to do. “Let’s cash some money,” she suggested to Becker, whose drawn face and sloping shoulders mirrored her frazzled mind. “We’ll catch the airport train to town and get to our hotel.”
“Okay,” Becker wearily responded. “After we get to the hotel, we can decide if there’s enough time left in the day to do a bit of sightseeing.”
An hour, and a train and taxi ride later, Maddie gratefully opened the door to their room at the hotel advertised as “charming” on the Internet. She looked forward only to collapsing on the bed in release from what had, thus far, been the longest day of her entire life. Before abandoning herself to the oblivion of a nap, however, she stood in the doorway somewhat stunned by the décor. The decidedly loud curtains were in a bold stripe, contrasting vividly with the checked bedspread in a different set of colors. The worn-down floral pattern in the carpeting was barely discernible. The three pieces of furniture, a desk and two nightstands, were all of different makes and woods, or pseudo-woods. There was no detectable theme to tie any of it together, other than perhaps “thrift-shop chic.”
“Charmed, I’m sure,” muttered Maddie, as she threw her backpack on the desk and proceeded to the other side of the room to open the curtains and the window and let out some of the stale smell assailing their nostrils. Since no curtain-pull was apparent, she manually pulled back the curtains to be accosted by the sight of a brick wall less than two feet from the window. Glancing up, she could see a feeble shaft of sunlight being cast down into what could only be generously termed an alley. Undaunted, she tried to turn the hand crank on the window, only to discover that it was sealed shut from innumerable, but perhaps not enough, paint jobs over the years—maybe centuries, judging by the looks of the window mechanism.
Becker slumped fully clothed onto one of the beds and turned to face the far wall.
Maddie despondently collapsed onto the other bed, only to sink far deeper into the mattress than she’d expected. Apparently, the mattress had been around for more years than she herself. Lack of sleep and a string of disappointments welled up from within and forced tears to her eyes. She flung one arm across her eyes and lay back, letting loose a loud cry of bitter dejection. Knowing she felt this way partly because of utter fatigue, compounded by jet lag, she bit back more tears rather than letting the series of mishaps further color the start of their trip.
Her body must have been even more tired than she’d imagined, or perhaps the release from all the many stressful months of planning contributed, but within a minute, she was fast asleep. Becker soon followed her to temporary oblivion.
The next thing she knew, Madison stirred awake, confused about what time it could be, given that the lights had been left on, and the alleyway, even in the middle of the day, hadn’t been terribly bright. Becker stirred as well. Madison glanced at her watch. Eleven o’clock. But whether it was 11:00 a.m. or 11:00 p.m., she couldn’t guess, groggy as she was with jet lag and the “charming” comfort of the beds.
Being closest to the window, such as it was, Maddie got up and craned her neck at the sky to see what color, if any, the slit at the top of the alley was. Since she couldn’t make out a slit at all, she decided it must be night, probably of the same day. Having ascertained the time of day, she realized she desperately needed a meal. Her stomach complained prodigiously at having been given short shrift since the last skimpy meal-in-disguise that was served on the plane.
From across the room, she could hear Becker’s stomach growling as well. Without having to say anything, simply by looking at Becker, she projected her desire to get out of the dreadful room and onto the streets to seek out nourishment of whatever sort might be available in the capital of England on a warm summer night.
~~~
June 23
Having tried unsuccessfully to get some restaurant tips from the churlish night clerk, Madison and Becker set out on foot to look for any place that might still be open and serving food. Taking the lead, with Becker groggily stumbling along half a step behind her, Maddie decided to go with her instinct and head in the direction of the most lights and traffic. Within ten minutes, she happened upon a pub that was still in full swing.
Maddie grabbed Becker’s hand and plowed through the smoky bar area until she found a hostess stand.
From there, a waitress led them to a small dining room at the back, where she recited a short list of two things still available: bangers and mash, or kidney pie. Maddie instantly decided to forego the possible disappointment of the known for the potential of the unknown. After conferring with Becker, who was still communicating only in monosyllables, she placed an order for them both to try whatever bangers and mash might be, along with some draught beer. Maddie eagerly drank the pint of ale the waitress brought over, though rightly suspecting the drink would immediately go to her head, since it had been such a long time since her last meal.
Indeed, by the time the waitress returned with two plates containing sausages and mashed potatoes, revealing the mystery of the name bangers and mash, Maddie was decidedly lightheaded from the ale, hunger, and lingering exhaustion. At this point, she was so hungry she would have eagerly wolfed down just about any kind of dish set in front of her, maybe even the kidney pie.
By the looks of it, Becker was equally famished. He quickly picked up his fork and knife and joined her as she attacked the meal with zest. When she was nearly halfway done, Maddie paused to look up at Becker. He had a funny look on his face. He, too, had ravenously attacked his serving, but after the first few bites, he actually tasted the food and found it woefully lacking.
“This has got to be the worst meal I’ve ever tasted,” he said. “No, make that next to the worst, after that horrible meal the airline served on the way over. These sausages are so bland and watery, and the potatoes—I think they’re instant.”
His disappointment was palpable. Maddie knew instinctively that after all his dreams of their grand tour of the world, this meal was not what he’d needed to reassure himself that they’d done the right thing. After their interminable flight over, the lost baggage, the disappointment over the hotel, and now the food, what else could possibly go wrong? Making matters worse, the jet lag that had set in with a vengeance was making him irrationally irritable, even after their nap at the hotel. She could see the signs of his growing bad mood in the way he narrowed his eyes and set his jaw.