They Only Eat Their Husbands

by Cara Lopez Lee

  We stopped at the little window of a small building, where a policeman started from his seat in surprise. The bartender shouted something in Greek as I handed the policeman my documents. He scribbled on them and handed them back. Then I jumped back on the bike, and we were off again at high speed. It was like a James Bond chase scene—no bad guys, but plenty of near misses, fleeing pedestrians, and brake-squealing trucks.

  “What’s your name?” I shouted over the bartender’s shoulder.

  The unfamiliar Greek syllables he shouted back got lost in the din of the motorbike’s engine.

  “I’ll tell this story to my grandchildren!” I said.

  “It is a good story,” he agreed.

  “I guess I’ll either make my ferry or I won’t.”

  “Don’t worry. You will make it for sure.”

  “Efharisto,” I told him as we approached a small group of people gathered around my backpack.

  “Parakalo (You’re welcome),” he replied as I leapt off the bike.

  I hauled on my pack with help from a couple of bystanders. I bowed deeply but quickly to the entire group, said another “Efharisto!” and started to run.

  “Siga! Siga!” they shouted after me. “Slowly! Slowly!”

  The cashier from the grocery store rushed forward and yelled, “I ran to the ferry to tell them you are coming. They will wait for you!”

  I halted and turned an incredulous face on the small clutch of half a dozen Greek strangers on the dock. I smiled, pressed my hands together in a prayerful clasp, and shook my joined hands toward them, a supplicant thanking the saints who’ve interceded on her behalf: the bartender, the grocery clerk, the cop, and the dock workers. “Brava! Thank you.” I turned and walked away.

  When the purser took my ticket, he said, “So you are the one they told me about.”

  “Yes, that’s me!” I said, with a self-effacing grin.

  It was 8:30 when I boarded the eight o’clock ferry, which the first agent had told me was “never late.” It left five minutes later.

  Still dizzy, I made my unsteady way to the Pullman deck: this ship’s version of steerage, minus the partying and dancing promised by James Cameron’s Titanic. I was one of five backpackers flopped amid dozens of uncomfortable seats. After stepping outside to watch the sunset, I showered and found a spot to sleep on the floor, wedged between chairs, my sleeping bag pulled indifferently over me. The floor was hard, but I slept even harder, exhausted from my much more than 200-yard dash through the obstacle course of the ferry terminal.

  During the Ancient Olympic Games, the city-states of Ancient Greece—Athens, Sparta, Mycenae, and the rest—would declare a truce, setting aside war for peaceful competition. In the modern Olympics, that’s what people call “the spirit of the Games.” Some American travelers have told me they think Greeks are rude. Judging by the angry graffiti and shouts I’ve endured, many Greeks don’t think much of Americans, either. Not to mention the perverts, pick-up artists, and psychos who’ve had a go at me. Yet my last thought before drifting off to sleep last night was of the small group of Greeks who, although they had nothing to gain, pulled out all the stops to help a complete stranger, a foreigner, an American, make her boat on time.

  This morning, as the ferry runs from the Ionian Sea into the Adriatic, fleeing the sunrise, I feel as if my heart is spreading throughout my body and trying to escape through my pores. I don’t know whether this stinging, tingling surge is about Italy or Sean, whether I’m excited or terrified. It’s been almost a year since Sean and I last saw each other, and there’s no denying I’ve changed, but that no longer frightens me. I guess I’m just afraid he hasn’t.

  Or maybe I just haven’t recovered from running.

  Il Dolce Far Niente

  thirty-six years old—rome, italy

  I spent thirty-eight hours working my way to Sean—ten months and thirty-eight hours—but when the train pulled into Roma Termini, I still had no idea how I felt about seeing him. I walked up and down the platform looking for him. Twice I paced up the binario and back again, but no Sean.

  Then there he was. He later told me he’d been standing there all along, but at first he hadn’t recognized me. We walked toward each other, quickly but not running. I felt excited but nervous. I also felt the irrational anxiety that even as I walked toward him we were already running out of time.

  As I reached my arms around him, I registered that he’d gained a little weight. Then I registered that something was flooding through me. Love? Confusion? Adrenaline? I squeezed him tighter, then we both moved in for a clumsy kiss and half-missed each other’s mouths, noses clashing, lips mashing, hitting more cheek than mouth. I want to explain how I felt at that moment, because surely that information must be important. But even once I saw him and held him, I didn’t know how I felt.

  I still don’t know.

  The farther I travel, the less certain I feel about anything. There are moments when I begin to know who I am, but those moments have yet to reveal my relationship to the people, places, and events surrounding me. Who is Sean to me? I have no idea. Maybe God just plants people in my life and I must simply accept that they’re there and move toward them or away from them as the truth of who I am pushes or pulls me.

  Sean spent his first night in Rome in a hotel room that cost 125,000 lire (seventy bucks), a bit rich for my shoestring budget, although we’ve agreed to split costs. So today we moved around the corner into an airy room in a wistful saffron paint-peeler with creaking wood floors. It cost half what Sean paid last night for a tiny bourgeois cupboard with showy sheets and shiny faucets.

  “Wow, this is so much bigger,” Sean said.

  “And it has more character.”

  “So, this character, is he the one making the creaking noise?”

  “Watch it, or you can forget finding out if the bed squeaks.”

  No, the bed doesn’t squeak, but the headboard does bang against the wall. After ten months of separation, waiting, and doubt, in the end it was as easy to abandon myself with Sean as it has always been. Maybe that’s because there are no secrets between us; or maybe it’s because the last time either of us had sex—with a partner—was with each other, ten months ago.

  “So, was it worth flying thousands of miles just to get laid?” I asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  We lay in bed for hours, watching the afternoon sun glide across the room until day was gone, as stories of my journey tumbled onto the crumpled sheets in a silken skein of murmurs.

  By the time we dressed for dinner it was 9:30 and Sean suggested we eat nearby. But I insisted we catch a bus to the lively nightlife of Trastevere. Three buses and four helpful Italians later—the people in this city really are friendly—we still had no idea where Trastevere was.

  At eleven we gave up and got off our third bus, near a restaurant where the kitchen had stopped serving everything but pizza. I ordered one with flaked salmon and praised the delicate crust. Sean smiled, but said nothing. When we finished it was past midnight. Most buses had stopped running and no taxi would pick us up from an undesignated stop so late. We had to walk about two miles back to the hotel.

  On the way, we passed the Roman Coliseum, glowing in its nightly bath of lights, the last remaining luminance of the Roman Empire, a colossus of forgotten pain and remembered beauty. “Isn’t it beautiful?” I asked.

  “Beautiful,” Sean parroted in a weary voice.

  “They probably thought it would last forever.”

  “I feel like this walk is gonna last forever.”

  We arrived at the hotel at 1:30. As we crawled into bed, Sean said, “You know, all the time we were walking tonight? I just wanted to sit down on a curb and cry.”

  I wanted to tell him it was better than all the endless, exhausting walks I’ve taken alone. But I knew it would only make him feel worse. All I said was, “I�
�m sorry. You were right, we should’ve eaten near the hotel.”

  “That’s okay,” he said, laughing. “That’s just you, Cara. You never want to take a chance of missing something.”

  “Maybe that’s how I miss everything.”

  “No. Even when you miss something, you don’t miss anything.”

  “I missed you.”

  “With a whole world of new sights and sounds to keep you occupied?”

  “Especially then.”

  Sean fell asleep before I did, as he always has. And the night slipped away, as everything between us always has, leaving only forgotten pain and remembered beauty.

  The Last Frontier

  thirty-four years old

  “So, what now?” I used to ask Sean with impish impatience. I was always excited about what we were going to do next, where we were going to go, what we were going to see. He always laughed, tickled by my desire to experience everything. He wanted to discover Alaska’s treasures as much as I did. More than that, he wanted to share with me the treasures he’d already dug up and watch my reaction.

  One summer day in Anchorage, we rode our bikes to a place he knew: Ship Creek. Not the busy banks near the inlet, where hundreds of people lined up for combat fishing, but further upstream at a serene little pause where salmon jumped up an old fish ladder. As fish leapt up the humble manmade falls, their scales flashed silver in the sunshine. Downstream from the watery stairway, we spotted a salmon swimming against the current without making any headway, just maintaining his position like someone running on a treadmill.

  “Maybe he knows the destiny that awaits him and he’s in no hurry to get there,” I said. “Imagine only getting one chance to have sex and then you die.”

  “Do you think if they really knew what was going to happen to them afterward they’d turn around and go the other way?”

  “Nah. Think about it. Even humans aren’t smart enough to do that,” I said. Then, as usual, I turned to him with a grin and asked, “So, what now?”

  We hopped back on our bikes and continued on to the Coastal Trail, where we stopped to walk along a silty, rocky beach near downtown. The beach was decorated with a collection of rock cairns like a display of featureless totem poles. The cairns weren’t intended to delineate a trail, but purely to give bored beachcombers something to do. Sean picked up the tiniest rock he could find and balanced it on the most precarious tower, where large boulders teetered atop small rocks, triangular stones atop oval. It looked as if each person who added to this particular pile had dreamt of a life as a circus performer.

  When I pointed out my observation, Sean said, “You know, I used to want to be a magician. I bought magic kits and books, and studied and everything. I juggled, too. I actually performed in a few high school shows. I wasn’t bad.”

  “Will you show me?”

  “Sure. I’ll show you when we get back to my place.”

  I picked up a rock to place on the cairn, but hesitated, a sly grin tugging at my lips.

  Sean looked at me quizzically. “What?”

  “When I see a tower like this, I have a wicked desire to kick it over.”

  “That’s because you’re an artist.”

  “I want to destroy something other people created, and that makes me an artist?”

  “Of course,” he said. “You want to make your own statement. The only way to create something new is to destroy something.”

  “Matter can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only change form.”

  “That’s what I mean. To create a painting, you change a blank piece of paper, so it’s no longer what it was. To create a sculpture, you cut stone or carve wood or dig up clay. You’re destroying ‘what was’ to create ‘what will be.’”

  “Okay, so to create a relationship, what do you destroy?”

  “Wow. I don’t know,” he said. “Your mind never stops does it?”

  “No. Neither does yours.” I turned to face him, arms akimbo, and said, “So, what now?”

  We rode on to Kincaid Park. At the park chalet, we climbed a metal stairway to the rooftop, for a view of Cook Inlet and Mount Susitna, otherwise known as Sleeping Lady.

  “That mountain does not look like a woman,” I said.

  “Sure it does.” He traced an outline in the air with his hand. “See: she’s lying on her side with her hair flowing around, and there’s her breasts . . . ”

  “That does not look like breasts. Men just see breasts everywhere.”

  “Only if we’re lucky.”

  The wind picked up and we heard an unearthly sound, like dozens of ghosts sighing into great silver flutes, evoking an elegiac music. We traded puzzled glances, wordlessly questioning what could be haunting us. As we descended the stairway, the sound increased. Together we stopped and looked down at the stairs, a metal lacework of diamond shapes, and realized that the music was created by wind passing through the grating. Listening, we exchanged smiles of wonder and kissed, as the mystical sound wafted around us.

  I whispered, “What do you think it is that keeps people together?”

  “Great sex?”

  “I think what binds people together are the secrets they share.”

  Back at Sean’s apartment, he made me dinner. After he slid two pieces of nut-encrusted halibut into the oven, he poured two glasses of wine.

  I raised my glass in a toast. “To us and the music of the wind in the stairs.” I took a sip, then remembered, “Hey, you were going to show me your juggling.”

  “I’ll warn you, it’s not that impressive,” he said. But he disappeared into his bedroom and reappeared with a set of colorful cloth balls. He started with three, then added a fourth.

  I clapped my hands with delight. “Wow! Can you do five?”

  He shook his head and chuckled. “I used to. It’s funny you ask. I used to practice and practice until I could juggle three. Then someone asked, ‘Can you do four?’ So I learned four. Then someone asked, ‘Can you do five?’ So I got up to five. Then someone asked, ‘Can you do six?’ And I realized: this’ll never end. So I stopped at five.”

  For the moment, he stopped altogether; a strange sight outside the window had caught our eyes. As the summer night gradually insinuated itself across the sky, an orgy of clouds rapidly multiplied on the glowing horizon. We opened the window and stared out. “That looks so bizarre,” Sean said. We heard a single clap of thunder and exchanged a look almost as puzzled as when we’d heard the wind in the stairs. Thunder was uncommon in Anchorage; in my eight years there, I only heard that sound about half a dozen times. A few raindrops began to fall, but the air was so dry each drop disappeared before it hit the ground.

  I left the window to pour myself another glass of wine and was surprised to find the bottle empty. My brow furrowed as I calculated how quickly Sean had finished three glasses. I told myself not to jump to conclusions. But as I put the bottle down and walked back to his side to watch the reticently falling rain, I couldn’t help wondering, “So, what now?”

  ***

  I worked the evening shift, from 1:30 to 10:30, producing and anchoring the late news, or reporting and doing live shots. After work each night, I went to Sean’s, where he waited up for me . . . at first.

  One night he wasn’t waiting. I opened the apartment door with a quiet click, and heard an abrupt stumble-thump as he leapt from his bed and lurched down the hall, his hair standing up in odd spikes. He had the pop-eyed look of someone trying to pretend “No, you didn’t disturb me at all!”

  “I fell assseep,” he slurred. “I’m sssorry. I tried to zzztay awake. I wanted to give you a s-prise.” He glanced behind me at the kitchen counter where several small, gooey brown blobs sat on a plate. Closer inspection revealed them to be chocolate-dipped strawberries. “You told me it waszh your favorite.” He chewed his thumb like a nervous child bringing home a bad re
port card.

  I hugged him and said, “That’s so sweet. Thank you. Nobody ever did this for me before.” I picked one up and popped it in my mouth.

  He tried to stop me. “I don’t know if you should eat ’em. I ssscrewd-emup. The shocolate was hot when I dipped it and it kind of cooked the ssstrawberries to muszh.”

  That was an understatement. But I felt touched that he’d remembered my favorite treat. The slurred speech I put down to the fact that he’d just woken from a dead sleep.

  As time went by, he waited up less often. I frequently arrived to the sound of thunderous snores blowing down the hall from his bedroom. Alone, I sat up late, watched TV, and raided the fridge. When I threw away trash, I usually noticed one or two bottles of wine in the trashcan. I thought nothing of it. Rather, I kept thinking about it and telling myself there was nothing to it.

  One night when I got off work early, Sean cooked dinner and rented a movie. When I arrived, he’d already worked his way through a bottle of wine. His kiss tasted like vinegar. At dinner, we opened another bottle. He drank most of it. Fifteen minutes into the movie, he fell asleep and started snoring. Frustrated, I elbowed him in the side, hard. He grunted, rolled over, and recommenced snoring.

  But he was never mean. He never yelled. If he fell into dark, philosophical moods, that was just his personality. If he was often depressed, that was just seasonal affective disorder.

  Then, one chilly evening when I was alone at his place, I decided to borrow a sweatshirt. As I pulled the sweatshirt down from his closet shelf, two tiny, airline-size liquor bottles tumbled onto the carpet. I stared at them, stunned, rooted to the spot as blood hammered my eardrums.

  The next night I confronted him. I sat next to him on his couch, took his hands in mine, and said, “I have something I need to tell you.” I looked straight into his eyes and forced the words out in a rush, “I’m worried because it seems to me that you drink a lot.”

  “And you’re wondering if I’m an alcoholic?”

  “Yes,” I exhaled. It was such a relief to hear him say it that I was sure the answer must be no. He was always so kind. His apartment was scattered with dog-eared books on philosophy and Eastern religion. His father had gone through A.A. Sean couldn’t be an alcoholic.