Beyond the Snows of the Andes

by Beatrice Brusic

  “And what did that do to you?”

  “It took a big toll.”

  “Go on.”

  “Because unable to make waves, I repressed everything I was feeling.”

  “And that’s not just the past, you’re still doing it.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Yes, you are. These lifelong habits are hard to break, they don’t just disappear overnight.”

  I think of all the times I repress my opinions with my husband, friends and co-workers, and realize he is right.

  “You learned to do that to survive when you were a child and it served you well,” he says. “But you don’t have to do that anymore. You are an adult now and can finally assert yourself.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “No, but that’s why you are here. Here you drop the mask, confront the pain and get better because you are in a lot of pain, but people don’t see that, do they? You learned to hide that very well since you were a child.”

  “There are reasons,” I say. “It’s not always easy to be assertive.”

  “You are afraid people won’t like you if you assert yourself?”

  “No, it’s more of a calculated thing. Sometimes you just can’t afford to.”

  “That’s the little girl in you responding again. She calculated every move in her life like in a chess game and the result of that was endless anxiety.”

  “I’m not aware I suffer from anxiety.”

  “You do, that’s why nothing is spontaneous in your life. You’re always measuring your words, anticipating the other’s response. It’s not an easy way to live.”

  I say nothing thinking of my boss who sometimes crosses the line staring at my breasts and making suggestive remarks, and I can’t tell him off. I see him sitting in front of me looking at me lasciviously while I take dictation, and I pretend it’s not happening. He is a short, pudgy Irish man with gray eyes and curly brown hair who is married with three children who call him twenty times a day. I think of Rose who can be cruel at times with insensitive remarks, and I can’t tell her off. I think of my husband who nags me incessantly about things he doesn’t understand, and I put up with him because I’m not ready to walk out.

  “You’re not as powerless as you seem to think you are,” he says. “You can put your boss in his place, and threaten him with a law suit if he takes retaliation. You can assert yourself with Rose and risk losing her friendship if necessary, and you can certainly leave your husband if you have nothing in common with him.”

  “I’m working for a glamorous cosmetics firm now and I like it, so I’m not ready to give up my job, but I suppose I could tell him off. I weigh the good and the bad with Rose, and the good always outweighs the bad - as for my husband, it’s very complicated.”

  “You can’t go through life weighing the good against the bad in people; they will walk all over you if you do that. You have a right to demand that people treat you with respect all the time, friend or no friend; you are not here to provide cheap thrills to dirty old men or to be used as a doormat with your friends, no matter how good they are at other times. As for your husband, he of all people, should treat you with respect, should appreciate you. You shouldn’t have to justify your therapy to him, what kind of a relationship is that?”

  “I can do something about Rose but I can’t do anything about Nick, not yet.”

  “Why?”

  I’m getting angry now and I don’t want to talk about it. “Can we just drop the subject?”

  “We can but I think it’s really important that we don’t. What’s going on with him?”

  “I married him for the wrong reasons, okay? I owe it to him to at least give the marriage a good try.”

  “Why did you marry him?”

  “I thought I did it because I was lonely and desperate after mother died, but the real reason was the visa, the lousy visa, alright? Are you satisfied now?”

  “Maybe it was a combination of all three. But it’s clear that your strong survival instincts were kicking in again. Do you have the visa now?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what’s stopping you from walking out?”

  “That’s so cold blooded, I’m not even going to discuss it with you, besides I’m not in love with him, probably never will be, but I do love him. He is good to me, he adores me, and I need that, so I’m going to work at this marriage.”

  “You should, but don’t do it out of guilt, do it because you really think he could be your life’s partner, not because you feel you used him.”

  “I don’t think it is guilt.”

  “No? There is a lot of guilt in you, why should he be any different?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Don’t you? What brought you here in the first place, wasn’t it guilt about your mother?”

  I find myself bursting into tears again. “I wish you wouldn’t go there.”

  “We have to.”

  “I do feel guilty I couldn’t go see her, okay? But that’s all.”

  “Is it? Don’t you feel guilty about her life? Didn’t you always assume everything that happened to her? Her death was the catalyst, but this has been going on for a long, long time.”

  There it is again, that horrible, choking pain inside of me making conversation virtually impossible. He lets me cry silently. I look at his wall clock and mercifully the session will end in five minutes.

  “We’ll talk about this next week,” he says, gently. “Brace yourself for this topic.”

  But how can I brace myself for it? She is and has always been the torment of my life. The minute someone mentions her name, it hurts. Sandy and I went bicycle riding in Central Park a while ago, and I ran into an old friend of mother’s who had come to the States a long time ago, and the first thing she did was ask about her, and when I told her what happened, she kept prodding me for details.

  I was evasive but she was persistent till Sandy saved the day for me by telling her we had an appointment to keep and had to keep going. This happens to me all the time, I can be enjoying a happy moment and all of a sudden I’ll think of her, and her memory will bring tears to my eyes unexpectedly. I still wake up at dawn every morning and think of her.

  It’s not the same raw pain of the beginning but rather a constant thing, like a dull ache that won’t go away. I have practically resigned myself to living this way, and now he wants me to bring her to the fore, forcing me to face my feelings for her once and for all. Doesn’t he know I’m afraid to reopen the badly healed wound? Isn’t he supposed to be the expert?

  I wish I could talk to Nick about this, it would make me feel less lonely but I know I can’t, he’ll never understand and will only demand I give up therapy. Only I can’t give it up, no matter how tough it gets, I have to keep going. Dr. Bergman is already helping me a great deal. A few days ago I had the guts to ask my boss to stop staring at my breasts, and he reddened and said he didn’t know he was doing that, and I smiled sweetly and said “no problem, Mr. McGeehan, now where were we?” and he proceeded with his dictation as though nothing had happened, but he stopped doing it and I congratulated myself for finally standing up to him.

  I also asserted myself with the top secretary there by telling her I was busy when she tried to dump her work onto me. And when I was having lunch with the girls, Gina started picking on my accent and making fun of it, and I told her that if she had an accent and people made fun of it she wouldn’t like it. I know her parents came from Italy, and casually asked her if she makes fun of them too. She admitted they have accents and apologized to me. The result is that now that I’m no longer absorbing the blows, I’m beginning to feel better about myself, and people are respecting me more, but it is still a struggle, forcing me to be on my guard all the time, whereas before I was so busy trying to fit in, I didn’t have time to worry about their insults.

  ~~~

  It has snowed the night before and the city looks pristine. I adjust my coat high at the neck under m
y scarf, but I’m still cold. As I walk to my therapist’s office I wish I were going to Nick’s favorite restaurant in Port Washington so we could have dinner and I could warm up my bones by the fireplace. I know I’m going to have a difficult session today and I’m dreading it. I’m full of doubts and wonder if I should turn back, admit that Nick is right and become a contented housewife and mother.

  I knock at the door and Dr. Bergman opens promptly. He is wearing a striped sweater and black pants. A feeling of warmth and well being emanates from him, and I feel close to this gentle stranger who knows me better than anyone in the world. I sit across from him admiring his boots; they are expensive and look good on him. He touches his goatee and smiles at me.

  “Have you thought about what we said?”

  “Yes, and I just want to come to terms with it, alright? I want to stop feeling this anguish when it comes to mother.”

  “Grief can not be rushed, Vicky, that’s the mistake you made a year and a half ago. It’s a process and it takes time. The body and soul need time to mourn this unique relationship.”

  “Will I ever heal?”

  “You’re healing already, all these sessions, all the crying you’ve done is part of the healing process.”

  “If that’s the case, then why am I still so afraid to talk about mother?”

  “Because you always had a conflicting relationship with her, and now she is gone, to explore it fully we have to go back to the beginning, and you’re resisting it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you feel guilty you weren’t there, you didn’t take care of her. You chose a country over her, and that’s killing you.”

  I’m crying again, and he hands me a box of tissues. I want to tell him about her last letter to me but my sobs stop me. I blow my nose and tell him her devastating words, “before the final hour, everything, right?”

  “She didn’t understand your circumstances or she would have never said that.”

  “I should have been there; I should have had those last moments with her.”

  “I don’t believe that for a minute, and neither do you. You were so deprived you developed excellent coping insights early on in your life, the same insights were in place at the end of her life when you wouldn’t give up your dream. You were fighting for your life, you knew you couldn’t go back to stay, you had to do the difficult thing and let her go. You have always been a fixer, a problem solver, but you couldn’t solve her life and that’s what’s tormenting you. You need to understand that you weren’t responsible for her life or death, you were only a child.”

  “She had so much potential,” I tell him hoarsely, my strangled voice coming from a deep well within me. “She could be so funny, so witty. And she wrote such beautiful poetry. Had she been born in this country she may have been able to publish some of her poems.”

  “I see, you’re mourning her life and death.”

  “If only I had been able to give her one year, one happy year here in America with nothing to worry about, I would have been able to accept her death more easily, but she had nothing, nothing, and she suffered horribly at the end, do you think that’s fair?”

  “No, since she was apparently a tragic figure to begin with. You have to come to terms with that and let her go in peace. Also let yourself off the hook because I think you’re a very good person and were an excellent daughter. Mentally you know all that but emotionally you blame yourself. It is going to take a long time but the day will come when you will be able to think of her without pain, when you will be able to look back and say “I did the best I could for her.” You had the best intentions and you tried very hard, but you were still a child, just a child, remember that. We also have to work on the leftover guilt I see in you. Where did that come from?”

  “I always felt I ruined her life, that if she hadn’t gotten pregnant with me so young she would have been able to meet somebody else rather than my father and have a better life.”

  “The truth now, don’t lie to me. Did you really feel that way?”

  “All the time, every time I saw her struggle, every time I saw her suffer.”

  “Did she say that to you?

  “Yes, when she was angry she said a lot of things but she didn’t mean it, I knew that then, and I know that now.”

  “But the seed was planted, wasn’t it? And that’s a very hard thing to cure. When people are stressed out, they say crazy things. I don’t believe for a minute she really thought that. I think she was so caught up in the struggle for survival she didn’t know what she was saying half the time, but children are very vulnerable and they believe everything. So you probably grew up believing it was true, but you’re old enough to know better now.”

  ~~~

  Winter ends and spring comes around with steady rain, sunshine and promises of renewal, flowers are beginning to pop everywhere and the city is celebrating the mild weather after a harsh winter. I think of Oscar and how much he loves the rain and want to go home, but I’m afraid to interrupt my therapy. Dr. Bergman and I are making a lot of progress and I let nothing interfere with that, not even my deep love for my brother. I’m taking care of him and sending my aunt money for his upkeep, but I wish I could see him, hug him.

  He doesn’t write to me but I forgive him. I know he loves me and just doesn’t like to write. I learn he is doing well and dating steadily. The thought of him dating, amazes me. I still see the skinny child with the expressive brown eyes who was my steady companion as a child, but he is now seventeen years old. I have no news of my other siblings, my aunt has no contact with them and neither does my brother. I know I’m going to remedy that when I go home, but for now I will accept the situation.

  Mr. Bergman is teaching me the value of letting go of things I can do nothing about, and I’m beginning to apply it to my life. I’m still close friends with Sandy, but the friendship with Rose ended when I asserted myself and she no longer felt she had the upper hand in the relationship. It hurt to lose her because I had once thought the world of her, but Dr. Bergman explained that some relationships are only meant to last for a short time.

  “Take all the good she gave you and let her go,” he said and I’m making a deliberate effort to do just that whenever I think of her. I’m beginning to realize that the secret to a happy life consists in letting go, nothing more, nothing less, just letting go of small grievances, hurts, regrets and sorrows that can wreck our lives. We have been exploring the tormenting relationships I had with mother and my aunt, and I’m slowly coming to terms with it.

  I don’t hate my aunt anymore, I got that out of my system when she came to my wedding, but I do feel sorry for her, which is something she never wanted. I feel sorry she wasted her life, and that she had to lose her husband and sister permanently to realize what she really had. I feel sorry she kept her true self hidden for fear of hurt and rejection. I feel sorry she couldn’t show love or give herself fully to anyone. I feel sorry she never learned to forgive her mother and that she never healed from the wounds of her childhood. She could have benefited so much from therapy; the beautiful person I always sensed underneath would have finally come to the surface then. Still, a part of me will always love her; will always be grateful she changed my life forever.

  ~~~

  My marriage is going well, Nick has finally accepted I won’t give up my therapy, and he has stopped nagging me about it. He is still surprised I haven’t gotten pregnant, but Sergio told him these things can’t be rushed and it will happen when the good Lord decides. I keep my birth control pills at work and just bring a few with me on the weekends so he won’t notice the deception. I don’t know how long I can keep this up, but I won’t have a child I’m not ready for and I won’t stay in this marriage if Nick doesn’t become the understanding, supportive partner I have always dreamed of.

  We are watching a fascinating documentary about space in Sergio’s house and I make a comment that I can’t believe how far man has gotten.

  “Are you kidding?” sa
ys Sergio. “I celebrated with champagne and potato chips when it first happened.”

  “If man can walk on the moon you can get pregnant,” says Nick spoiling everything.

  “It figures you would talk like that at a moment like this,” I retort, angrily. “You don’t even know how stupid that sounds.”

  I leave the room and hear Sergio telling him that he may be rubbing salt into the wound, and he says bullshit, she doesn’t really want a child, all she wants is to go waste my money with that stupid therapist who must be a real thief. Sergio asks if I’m making any progress and he says zero progress, I’m still a weird person and always will be. I know then that I have to leave him because he will never be the right companion for me.

  ~~~

  “Let’s face it,” says the doctor on my next session. “You rejected him from the beginning and would have never married him if it wasn’t for the visa. I’m afraid that time isn’t going to make things better. For what you told me you this isn’t a happy relationship. You view him as intellectually inferior, and you obviously wanted a more compatible partner. That’s never going to change in a hundred years; you two have a very different way of looking at life.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Then how can you expect to be happy? I don’t think you love the man, either.”

  “I love a lot of things about him.”

  “What things?”

  “The thoughtful things he does for me. He likes to surprise me with little gifts, cards, flowers, works very hard, and he is totally devoted to me, he gives me everything I want. He is full of little gestures, indulgences, I never had that.”

  “You didn’t give yourself too much chance. You married him when you were too young because you felt you had no other choice in the matter and maybe you didn’t, but now you do.”

  “I know, but there is a lot of good in him I’d have a hard time giving up.”

  “We all fall into little traps; the marriage is meeting some of your needs, but for what you tell me that is not enough to sustain a relationship, the differences between you are only going to get more pronounced through the years. You are better off making a clean break now.”