They Only Eat Their Husbands

by Cara Lopez Lee

  Young boys of eleven or twelve walked the streets hawking the same two wares: “Excuse me, madame, Tiger Balm? Pocketknife?” I thought, “What an odd combination.” Then I realized these boys were canny little entrepreneurs: Kathmandu is trekker central, and they’d hit on two portable items that could come in handy on a trek. I already had a pocketknife, but I stopped the next boy and bought a tiny jar of Tiger Balm, legendary potion for aching joints.

  Emboldened by that first purchase to take another risk, I walked into a store and bought a slice of yak cheese. The shopkeeper sliced it off a dusty cheese wheel that sat uncovered atop the counter. I shrugged, figuring half a dozen hungry flies couldn’t all be wrong. It was delicious.

  As I wandered farther from the touristy heart of Thamel, the hawkers and backpackers diminished, but the crowds remained thick. Women wearing the traditional Kurta Surwal—a long tunic over baggy pants—did chores, sold produce, or ran errands in groups of two or more. Men wearing close-fitting caps sat in small groups talking or ambled through the streets holding hands. Not because they were gay; it’s just the Nepali way between friends of the same sex. Men and women don’t walk together unless they’re married, and even then they don’t usually hold hands in public.

  Shrines to the many Hindu deities were tucked into every conceivable corner. Children dressed in hand-me-down Western clothes played on and around the statues of their gods without deference or inhibition, and adults didn’t seem to mind. In Nepal, secular life and religious life aren’t segregated. Children playing atop shrines might give joy to the gods, or not—it isn’t a matter for concern.

  The power was still out when night fell with an almost audible clang, and the thousands of candle flames quivering in windows and doorways turned the streets into twisted braids of shifting shadows. A faint echo of exotic music drifted to me, weaving through the competing sounds of the city. I followed the sound to a small room with its wooden doors opened onto the street, revealing a tableau of men singing and playing drums and small instruments. I felt as if I’d wandered into an alternate dimension.

  That was last night, when I was still in the honeymoon phase of my love affair with solitude. Today, Kathmandu let me know it didn’t approve of my affair.

  In the morning I guessed my way to Durbar Square, a major intersection of activity dominated by three temples—pagodas topped with triple-tiered roofs. The steps of each temple were dotted with locals and foreigners watching the world go by. A man walked past carrying a stand full of bamboo recorders, which jutted out like branches from a tree. I bought one, carried it to the top step of the largest temple, and began teaching myself to play. The instrument produced a mellow whistle, a sweet sound like the ghost of childhood happiness.

  I’m not much of a musician, and soon I stopped playing so I could do my share of world watching like the others on the steps. The square was a happy maelstrom of human and animal traffic. Fake sadhus (Hindu ascetics) wearing dirty saffron robes offered to let tourists take their photos, then demanded donations. Non-payment could result in being followed by an outraged phony holy man for quite some time. In one corner, people on their way to and from daily routines passed a small shrine, brushing their hands along the little bells dangling from its eaves, sending the music of their prayers to the gods.

  I stepped down from my perch to take photos, but soon found myself floundering in a steady stream of Nepalis, all of them insistent that I buy something:

  “Excuse me madame, flute?”

  “I have one.”

  “One for your father? Your sister? Your friend?”

  “Excuse me madame, where you go?”

  “I stay here.”

  “You have trekking guide?”

  The worst tormentor was the man who dangled a pendant directly in front of my camera lens.

  “No, thank you.”

  “It’s very beautiful,” he said, still blocking my lens with the pendant.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  He switched tactics: “Would you like to hear me play your flute?”

  Before I could answer, he grabbed for the recorder. I beat him to it and held the instrument tightly, as I gritted my teeth and again said, “No, thank you.”

  Now that he had my attention, he held up the pendant again. “You see? Very beautiful.”

  By now, several more salespeople had gathered to vie for my attention. I ignored them and lifted the camera to my eye to photograph a temple. The pendant man grabbed my recorder again and a tug of war ensued. “I’m not going to keep it,” he said. “I am Sherpa. I know how to play.” At this point about a dozen people surrounded me, all talking at once. Within seconds, I went from agoraphobic panic to tensely coiled rage. My voice resonated, strong, firm, and unrecognizable to me: “I would like to be alone, please!” No one moved. “I’d really like to be alone please!” No one moved. I cast an icy glare at all of them. “Then I will leave.”

  As I pushed through them and stalked away, the pendant man shouted after me in an imperious voice: “You will spend your whole life alone!” The effect of his words was stultifying. Minutes later I was still standing in the middle of the square holding my camera limply in my hands and staring into space. The man had voiced aloud the fear I carry with me everywhere I go.

  I meandered back to the temple. An old man sitting on the steps smiled down at me and said, “You are welcome. Come and play.” I complied, though I knew no real songs. I made up a tune, as my mind continued to turn. A young man sitting nearby asked if he could play my recorder. I handed it to him without hesitation, too tired to risk another confrontation. He played a beautiful melody, but the music seemed to float to me from far away.

  “You will spend your whole life alone!” I couldn’t shake the upsetting feeling that the pendant man had cast a curse on me, or perhaps, made a prediction.

  The Last Frontier

  thirty-four years old

  I wish I’d understood long ago that love doesn’t end loneliness. If I’d known that, I might not have struggled so hard to get it. If I’d known that, I might not have expected so much from it.

  One day Sean and I went on a hike in Arctic Valley, just outside Anchorage. Early green struggled to push its way through thick, sloppy piles of melting snow. My feet were getting wet as they sank in the slush. We’d been lured outdoors by the false promise of a sunny morning, but the weather had turned and it was starting to sprinkle.

  As we walked uphill, Sean asked, “What is the nature of rain?”

  “Is this some sort of Zen koan or something?”

  “No, it’s just a question.”

  “The nature of rain . . . to be wet?” I offered. “ . . . To fall?”

  “There’s no right answer,” he said.

  “All right, what do you think?”

  “The nature of rain . . . is rain.”

  “That’s a tautology,” I said.

  “A what?”

  “A circular answer.”

  “Maybe that’s life.”

  Our conversation wandered, the way conversation does when two people are trying to beat a path toward each other through a maze of internal obstacles. After six months commiserating with Sean over our failed relationships with other people, we’d become close friends. We talked for hours—over coffee, at bookstores, at his place, at my place. We hugged a lot. But neither of us had made any other move.

  There was a long silence, filled only with the sound of heavy breathing and the weight of our thoughts, as we negotiated some thick piles of snow. Then Sean asked whether I was familiar with the Enneagram. I wasn’t. He explained that it’s a chart of personality types, based on ancient Sufi wisdom. The Enneagram breaks personalities down into nine basic types. Unlike astrology, these types are not dictated by external factors like the stars, but are revealed by observations of behavior.

  According to Sean
, I was a “Three,” otherwise known as the “Performer,” someone attached to image, achievement, and praise. He claimed to be a “Four,” the “Tragic Romantic,” someone who idealizes what he doesn’t have, who romanticizes the past and yearns for the future, but has difficulty living in the moment. Sean theorized it was our unenlightened personality types that had damned our past relationships.

  “That’s why I can never get over Heather,” he said. “Because I always want what I don’t have. I’m not even sure if she really was the way I remember her, because everything I remember is always so much better than anything I ever have in the moment that I have it.”

  “That’s kind of depressing,” I said. “That means the only way any woman will ever be able to keep your interest is to leave you.”

  “God, I hope not,” he said. “I mean, people do evolve.”

  Upon reaching the top, we sat on a tussock that was free of snow, and gazed down on a view of Cook Inlet and the City of Anchorage spread below. Sean was one of the few people I knew in Anchorage who grew up there, and he pointed out familiar landmarks that we could see from our vantage point: Ship Creek, his old high school, the neighborhood where he and some other boys once started a grass fire while playing with matches.

  As we walked back downhill, my feet grew soaked and frozen from sloshing through the wet snow. I thought resentfully, If Chance were here, he would have swept me onto his shoulders and said something about not letting his treasure get her feet wet. Aloud, I joked about how numb my feet were.

  Immediately Sean asked, “Would you like me to carry you on my back?”

  “No. No, thank you.”

  Back at his apartment, he offered to make tea, and while we waited for the water to boil he asked, “Would you like me to warm you up with a foot massage?”

  A strong, hot jolt shot through me. I mumbled that I remembered something I had to do, and while he rummaged in the cupboards for tea bags, I practically ran out the door. The way he expressed it later, “I turned around for a moment, and when I turned back you were gone.”

  The next afternoon we sat in his apartment on his bachelor-beige couch, talking nonstop as usual, yet still avoiding the subject that vibrated the air between us. I decided someone needed to say something. And it was going to be him.

  “Sean, if you were going to tell me something that you’d normally be afraid to tell me, what would it be?”

  As if we’d rehearsed this a hundred times and he’d only been waiting for me to give him his cue, he replied, “I’d say, ‘You’re a very attractive woman, I like you, and I’d really like to have sex with you.’”

  I exhaled in relief and said, “I feel the same way. But I think we should talk about this. You realize I still have feelings for Chance.”

  “Yes, I know that. And I still have feelings for Heather.”

  “And I’m not ready to give up my friendship with him.”

  “I know.”

  “And I can’t guarantee that, if the opportunity came up, I wouldn’t go back to him.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “I like you very much.”

  “I like you very much, too.”

  “But I’m not sure if I can offer you any kind of long-term commitment,” I said.

  “I don’t think I’m ready to do that again, either.”

  Then, without sparing a word on sentiment, I said, “I think we should have an affair.”

  “An affair?”

  “A sexual relationship, but with no promises. I know this sounds . . . well, I don’t know how this sounds, because I’ve never done this before. I consider you my friend. But I’m more comfortable being with you than I’ve ever been with anyone, and I feel like you understand me better than anyone. And . . . I want to have an affair with you.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “There’s only one condition I want us to agree to: neither of us can have sex with anyone else for the duration of this. If we want to have sex with someone else, we have to end it.”

  “Of course.”

  It was the first time I didn’t try to tell myself I was in love with someone and intended to marry him, just so I wouldn’t feel like a slut. Even the times I truly had been in love, I’d never been honest with myself; deep down I’d never trusted any guy to hold up his end of my commitment fantasy, yet I’d always pretended to believe he would. Look where that kind of thinking had gotten me. This time I fully intended to fornicate, and if that made me a slut, at least I’d be an honest slut.

  So, for the first time, he kissed me, with six months’ worth of longing, and we slowly went on from there. His every movement felt so gentle and generous, so impassioned and consuming that I forgot I was in love with someone else. I forgot everything except him and me. It was the first time I fully allowed someone to give to me, without feeling the guilty need to give a perfect performance in return. I told myself maybe it was because we were friends, or because we had no expectations, or because I didn’t feel the need to impress him. I didn’t consider that there might be no explanation at all, that we might simply be good together.

  We talked into the silent hours when time holds its breath. “You . . . are . . . so . . . beautiful,” he said, emphasizing each word and holding my gaze. His eyes told me he was simply saying what he’d been thinking. He’d taken out his contacts and his eyes were no longer the same impossible, Superman blue. They were the light but endless blue of a clear winter afternoon in the arctic.

  “I like you better without the colored contacts,” I said. “Your eyes are amazing. You shouldn’t hide them.”

  “Isn’t sex great?” he said. “It makes everything seem amazing.”

  “That’s not it. Your eyes really are beautiful. This is not an opinion. It’s a fact.”

  He smiled. “Do you remember the first day I met you?”

  “You mean at the dojo?”

  “Yeah. Well, that morning I had this dream. I didn’t remember anything about the dream except these big brown eyes. That night, when I walked into the dojo, you turned around and I thought, ‘There they are, those eyes from my dream.’”

  “Yeah right.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. But it’s true. You know what else? Remember Julia, the woman I was with when I ran into you two days in a row?”

  “Yeah . . . ”

  “Do you know what she told me after she met you? She said, ‘You have unfinished business with that woman.’”

  “Unfinished business . . . ” I slowly rolled the words across my tongue. “So, are you through yet?”

  “No. How about you?”

  I turned to crouch over him, until my breasts grazed his chest. “I’ll let you know.”

  ***

  For three weeks I abandoned myself to a liberating affair with Sean.

  At first it was kind of embarrassing, because he lived in the downstairs apartment attached to his parent’s house and the family business was attached to the front of the house—a small jewelry shop. They all worked together, designing, making, and selling jewelry: Sean, his father, sister, and mother. Each morning, Sean walked out his apartment door, stepped through another door, and voilà, he was at work. In such close quarters, discretion was impossible. I cringed that first morning when I left his place, sure that several pairs of eyes watched as I walked to my car out front.

  The first time I visited him at the shop, I was surprised at how excited they all seemed to see me. I sensed that my presence in Sean’s life was a source of relief to them, although I didn’t know why. I felt guilty, knowing I had no intention of making a commitment.

  Then, one afternoon, Sean took me for a drive down the Seward Highway to watch the sunset over Cook Inlet. He drove down Turnagain Arm until he spotted a rock looming over the mudflats and pulled over.

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to walk on the
mudflats,” I said. “I’ve heard stories about people who walked out on the mudflats and died. They got their feet stuck in the dense silt and drowned when the tide rushed in. I met a firefighter who says he held the hand of this one woman they tried to dig out. They gave her some sort of tube to breathe through, but she died of hypothermia while he was holding her hand.”

  “Wow. Anything else?”

  “So why are you taking me on the mudflats?”

  “We’re not going out that far. Trust me, this spot’s solid. I’ve been here before.”

  “Ahhhh, so you bring all your women here.”

  “No. I usually come here by myself.”

  As we crossed the mud, I walked extremely slowly, planting each foot carefully, making sure it wouldn’t sink before planting the next one. Sean turned to snicker at my progress.

  “Shut up,” I said, grinning.

  We scrambled to the top of the rock, sat facing west down the arm, and silently waited for the sun to set. In summer, this is a long process. The sun tiptoed down the horizon, as if it were too timid to dive into the icy water of the inlet all at once.

  When the final flame balanced itself precariously on the edge of the earth, I asked, “Hey, you know what time it is?” Sean looked at his watch as the last glint of sun vanished behind the horizon. “You missed it!” I said.

  “What?” He looked up at the dark horizon, then gave me a reproachful grin. “Nice.”

  After we climbed back down to the mudflats, he said, “Here, get on my back. I’ll carry you across. Then you don’t have to get your feet muddy. And if we sink, you’ll be on my shoulders and have more time to escape the tide.” This time, I took him up on the offer.