“Because I do believe love exists.”
“I think that is a sickness.”
One bitter night, a bonsai tree that belonged to Sean’s dad appeared on their front stoop. The diminutive tree was dying, tiny inches of brown and drying twigs jutting this way and that. Anchorage was covered in frost, but when I found the bonsai it appeared untouched.
I carried it inside and asked Sean, “Do you think we could save it?”
“No. Once a bonsai tree starts to go there’s little you can do.”
I carried the tiny tree back outside and set it on the porch. I paused there a moment, took a deep breath of the chilled night air and let it out in small bursts like the chugging of a train, the way I used to when I was a girl, and watched the small, cottony puffs float away in the dark.
***
By spring, Sean and I barely saw each other anymore. I resigned myself to the idea that for many people life doesn’t hold happy endings, only happy beginnings followed by reality.
Then came more reality. I wasn’t there when it happened, but Sean called to tell me. One morning, his mother came downstairs from the house to the jewelry shop and stood mute in the doorway, wearing a worried frown, her mouth working as if she were trying to figure out what to say.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” Sean asked.
“Grandma’s not breathing,” Tess said in a wispy voice.
Someone shouted, “Call 911!” and everyone ran upstairs to Grandma Mae’s room.
Sean told me, “I shook Grandma and started yelling. There was all this commotion, and they wanted me to do CPR, and the woman on the phone was talking us through it, and she asked, ‘Does she have false teeth?’ She said someone needed to get the teeth out of her mouth. And I was reaching in Grandma’s mouth to get her teeth . . . and it was just so, I hate to say it, but it was disgusting. None of us knew how long she’d been dead and I was about to do mouth-to-mouth, and all I could think was I didn’t want to be there.”
Just as he yanked her dentures out, the paramedics showed up. Tess, who had been standing riveted, shouted, “Stop! My mother didn’t want any life-saving measures. She has a living will!” She disappeared down the hall and ran back with the living will in her hand. The chaos stopped and the murmuring began as everyone allowed death its place in the room.
That’s when Sean decided it was time to leave home. A part of him had floated outside the scene and watched, and he could no longer deny what he’d seen: a house where financial demise, depression, and now death had run everyone down like a steamroller, flattening them like two-dimensional cartoons, floating down, down, down like paper. He knew his father was next, and he didn’t want to follow. He asked me to edit his resume. Time was running out.
A few days after Grandma Mae’s death, Sean’s dad swung from depression to mania. He pulled out scissors, glue, and construction paper and began making a collage, a project that overran his entire living room. Too late did his wife realize he was also cutting up all their old family photos to create his dubious work of art. One day, the police called Tess to tell her that Stuart had gone to a thrift store, filled a shopping cart with odds and ends, and marched the cart outside without paying. It wasn’t clear whether he’d turned into a kleptomaniac or his mind had drifted so far away he’d forgotten what he was doing. After that, he died his hair gold—not blond or yellow, but gold—and showed it off to everyone, cackling with delight at the color.
For Tess, the last straw was when he began inviting strangers to stay at the house, people who smelled of homelessness, booze, and wasted lives. He said that, as an A.A. member, he was just trying to help. Unable to coax him into sensible conversation or therapy, fearful of his odd house-guests who came and went at all hours, Tess left the house and moved in with her daughter.
Sean began spending more time at my place, hiding. But he couldn’t avoid going home at least five days a week, because that was where he worked, at least until he found another job.
While he sent out resumes, I continued to save money for my global trek. Then my dad’s wife fell into a coma. I didn’t know that this family emergency—with its last-minute flights, unpaid leave, car rental, and expenses—would eat half the cost of a shoestring trip around the world. I thought I’d have to delay my dream. Then my grandmother mailed me the missing half as a gift.
“Mom, you need this money for retirement. I can’t accept it.”
“Yes you can. I have a good pension. I want to do this for you, while I’m still alive. I never had a dream. So your dream will be my dream, and you’ll come back and tell me about it.”
With that, the fulfillment of my goal required only the decision to go. I considered the possibility that this fantasy might save not just me, but Sean and me. I asked him to come with me. But he was afraid to spend his savings when his future was so uncertain.
“You can always get a job when you come back. Come on! Instead of sitting around here watching the business tank, you can have an adventure you’ll remember the rest of your life!”
“I’m sorry, Cara, I know you want someone to come with you.”
“Not ‘someone.’ You.”
“But it can’t be me. It’s just not realistic.”
In July, he found a job in the Four Corners region of New Mexico. I began to hope that, if he wouldn’t come with me, he’d at least ask me to go with him. “A lady waits to be asked,” Mom once told me. I’ve never been good at waiting, but this time it seemed the right thing to do. Unless I let him ask me, how would I know if he truly wanted me? The question never came.
One day while he packed, I stood in the midst of a dozen boxes, surveying the disorder, motionless and pensive, until he stopped wrapping glasses in newspaper and stared at me, chewing his lower lip.
“So,” I said, “you really aren’t going to ask me to come with you?”
“I didn’t think you’d want to. Besides, I couldn’t do that to you. Farmington’s a small town—there’s no TV station, so what would you do? I won’t be making enough to support us . . . I’m sorry, I can tell by the way you’re looking at me that I’m screwing this up. Did you want to come?”
“What does it matter what I wanted? After that speech, I don’t want it now. I don’t want to be with someone who can’t even be bothered to ask me to be with him.”
“So it’s over?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“I don’t want it to be over.”
“So it’s not over. But it will be, when you fly south.”
“Right,” he said. Then he shrugged and looked away, biting on his thumbnail. I hated when he did that. It made an ugly clicking sound. Turning back to look at me, he caught me staring at his thumb, and lowered it slowly. It was only the end of a relationship, but in the Last Frontier, if you squint long enough in the wrong direction, you can see the end of everything. And neither of us wanted to look anymore.
I’ve Been Dingled
thirty-six years old—dingle, ireland
I thought I left it behind in Alaska, but today in Ireland I once again visited the end of the earth. Sunshine transformed the Dingle Peninsula into the bright bliss of heaven as I biked around the Slea Head Loop. It took me to the westernmost point of Europe: the water-carved cliffs where the culminating energy of the Atlantic first crashes into land.
I locked my rental bike to a pasture gate and walked up a grassy slope, passing several sheep along the way. I soon found myself sinking and rising, wading through uneven grass up to my knees. As I approached the summit, the slope grew so steep I could crawl upward on hands and feet while remaining upright. At the top I looked north, where a crescent of jagged coastline curved into the distance toward Slea Head and the Blasket Islands. The ocean was a mad beauty, a blaze of furious white froth pounding the cliffs.
I arrived at a wreck of a wooden shack with gaping holes punched into its surv
iving walls and floors. Two couples were there, English by their accents. I maintained a discreet distance, and felt glad when they left. I not only wanted solitude, I craved a cold blast of loneliness.
I followed a narrow path along the cliff ledge, little wider than a footstep. The height was dizzying. I couldn’t help but consider what it might be like to trip and fall off. There’d be a long time to think on the way down. I stopped to peer down a crevice that opened onto a view of the traveling sea and manic waves hundreds of feet below. The distant thunder of the ocean was soothing, though it vibrated the ground where I stood. I don’t know why such terrifying power gives me peace. I suppose it’s freeing to be reminded how little control we have over anything.
As I gazed, dreamy eyed, into the memory of all the waters I have met, I once again asked God to show me the purpose of my life and help me fulfill it. And, as I listened to the ocean’s ferocious lullaby, I began to hear an answer. Since long before my odyssey began, to this moment staring at the place the ancients once thought of as the edge of the earth and the beginning of the unknown, only one desire has remained constant: my desire to be heard.
It is a compulsion so strong that it has driven the people I love to distraction: “I think part of the reason Grampa left was because of you. Because he couldn’t stand all your arguing.” . . . “When you keep going on and on like that, it makes me think about guns . . . and knives.” . . . “I have to listen to you talk and talk, until you say everything you want to say. And if I don’t, it’s ‘let me finish!’” Throughout my life, the thing I’ve wanted most was to tell someone all I’ve seen and heard and felt. This has always been my curse. But now I understand: it is also my purpose.
Like the tide, to fulfill my purpose I need only flow in the direction that draws me onward. Like a wave, I’ll glide along the paths of least resistance, jump over obstacles, and wear down walls. Like the surf, I’ll whisper in the distance, and if someone draws close enough to listen, I’ll roar. The ocean has a story to tell. And so do I.
***
I spent all day at the Café Lit, drinking tea and eating apple crumble with clotted cream, reading and writing and chatting with the regulars, but mostly waiting for Saoirse. It was closing time when he walked in, and I approached him to pay my bill and ask one more time for a job.
When I told him what I’d eaten, as usual he questioned me: “Did y’ sit or stand? Did y’ have sugar? Milk?”
Then I asked, “Have you given any more thought to whether you could use my help around here?”
He once again stood with his finger on his chin, thinking. He walked over to his son, and they whispered together. Then he walked back over to me, looked me up and down one more time, and said with his usual gruff warmth, “Come back tomorrow at nine.”
Stunned at this unexpected success, I asked, “Come back to talk?”
“No, to work!” he said with a crooked smile.
“Oh . . . okay,” I replied, hesitant but grinning from ear-to-ear.
“Can you?” he asked.
“Ye-e-e-s . . . Yes, of course. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I tripped over myself as I left.
“I have a job!” I spoke out loud as I walked down the street. “Oh my God! I have a job! I’m going to live in Ireland!” Then, as it sank in, “Fuck . . . I have a job . . . I’m going to live in Ireland?”
The Ballintaggart van was sitting at the bus stop, full of people, and I ran for it, grinning with elation and terror. I bounced onto a seat next to Gareth, turned to him and said, “I got a job!” A few people congratulated me, and someone slapped me on the shoulder.
“That’s great!” Gareth said, but his eyes searched my face with concern. Although I was grinning, he must have noticed my eyes bulging with shock, because as we drove away he murmured, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah . . . I just can’t believe it. Now I have to find a place to live.” I’m sure I said more, but I can’t remember what. My lips were talking about the job and living in Dingle, but I was thinking about my sister, Iliana, who just turned three a few days ago. I’d called to wish her a happy birthday. She’d told me that she’d had a piñata at her party. She’d learned so many new words. She’d asked if I could come play with her; she had no concept of a world so enormous that it might not be possible for me to come over tomorrow. I was thinking about all the drinkers I’ve met in Dingle. I went through nine winters surrounded by depressed, seasonal affective disordered, cabin-fevered alcoholics in Alaska. Do I want to do that again? I was thinking about Sean. But I no longer knew what I thought about Sean.
The peace I’ve felt in Dingle has vanished.
***
A person may give away all worldly possessions, don sandals and robe, and wander the planet, becoming in the process either a sage or a fool. I suspect it may be hard to tell the difference. When I go home, wherever that is, I suppose some people will expect wisdom from me, but it’s likely most people will find me more foolish now than I was before I set out.
I wouldn’t try to change their minds.
This morning I woke up early to start my new job. I was nervous about making pastries.
I still missed my sister, but I reminded myself that my father got married a few weeks ago to a woman with two daughters of her own. They’re Iliana’s family now; I’m simply the big sister who doesn’t live at home. So there’s no need to hurry back. I still missed Sean, but I reminded myself that he never exactly proposed. Again, no need to hurry back.
Before I set out for the Café Lit, I went to the hostel’s payphone and called Sean.
“Hi-i-i-i!” he said in the sweet tone men only use with children or women they love.
“Guess what?” I said. My pulse leapt in my neck.
“What?”
“I got a job. I start this morning.”
“Wow . . . ” he said. “I thought something like that might happen. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. It’s not a good-paying job, but it’s at this cute little café at the back of a bookshop where they sell Irish books. The owner speaks Gaelic. I mean, it’s a great place . . . ”
“It sounds great.”
“But I don’t know how I feel about it. I think it’ll only pay about four Irish pounds an hour. And I wouldn’t be able to see you for a long time . . . ” He didn’t step in to help me, so I spit out my next question, “AndIwanttoknowwhatyouthinkaboutit.”
“Ca-ra . . . ” he sighed, “I’m not going to do that.”
“I’m not asking you to make my decision for me. But if you meant anything you’ve said, you definitely have an interest in it. And I have a legitimate interest in knowing your feelings, since this decision will affect our relationship. I was thinking about it all last night and I just couldn’t come to peace with my decision. Then I realized that’s because I want to go home. The problem is, I don’t know what I’m going home to, or where to go home to.” He said nothing, so I continued, “Two months ago you sent me an email that said ‘Marry me, soon,’ and I sent you three replies. But you never responded. I started to think maybe you didn’t mean it.”
“No. I meant it. But see, you’ve been doing all this traveling, and I keep thinking you’re going to come to tiny little Farmington, New Mexico after seeing all these exciting places, and it’s going to seem boring. I don’t think you’ll be happy here. I’m not even that happy here.”
“Sean, if we don’t like Farmington we can always move. All I know is, wherever I go, I’d be much happier living with you than traveling alone for the rest of my life.”
“That’s the other problem. I want to propose properly and do the romantic thing,” the words caught in his throat, “but I can’t do it while you’re halfway around the world.”
“So you’re just waiting for me to come home before you propose?”
“Yes, of course,” he said, with the characteristic sincerity I’ve lear
ned to rely on.
“Okay. I’ll come home.”
We quickly declared our love, then I had to run to make it to the café on time. Even if I wasn’t going to take the job, I owed it to Saoirse to tell him. As I hurried past the front desk, Wendy flashed a broad smile, revealing a crooked front tooth. “Going to your new job, then?”
“No, I’m only going there to tell Saoirse I can’t work for him. I’m going home to get married!”
I just had time to register her gaping surprise, as she said, “That’s the best news! Congratulations!”
“Thanks!” I shouted over my shoulder as I rushed out the door into the sunshine.
I ran almost the entire way to town, stuck on the idea that I had to show up on time. As I ran, I thought, “Now I can go home, because I know where home is: it’s wherever Sean is, and he’s not in Dingle.”
When I arrived at the Café Lit, sweaty and out of breath, the door was locked. I knocked for several minutes before someone answered. It was Marcella, a young Spanish woman who just started working at the café last week. Saoirse wasn’t in yet, but I told Marcella I couldn’t take the job after all. She frowned but remained polite, saying, “This is too bad. Another woman was going to work today, but Saoirse gave her the day off because he was expecting you.” I was surprised they planned to rely on me so heavily on my first day. Under the circumstances, I felt too ashamed to leave. So I told Marcella I’d stay for the day, for as long as she needed help.
With a sigh, she let me in. She showed me how to start the coffee, then took me upstairs to the kitchen to help her prepare the day’s fare. Marcella was apparently born in a kitchen, and her sidelong glances made it clear I was hopeless.
She instructed me to cut vegetables for the sandwiches and slice apples for the pastry. This sounded simple enough, but when I put onions and carrots into the automatic slicer I used the wrong attachment, cutting thick slices instead of julienne strips. Marcella laughed and said we’d use them anyway. Then I squished a tomato because I didn’t know how to use the tomato slicer. Now, it really wasn’t my fault that it took me five minutes to peel a single apple; when a condescending Marcella attempted to show me how to use the peeler, she admitted it was dull.
They Only Eat Their Husbands Page 40