I hit send and scrolled down. The plane rolled forward.
There was another email from the social worker I’d queried for information about setting up an appointment to view nursing homes for my mother. The process in Canada was sometimes years long, bureaucratic, and involved many boxes being checked. The exact opposite of my mother’s decline, which was precipitous, continually shocking in its speed. For months, I’d been trapped in a feedback loop trying to figure out how to set up the help she needed; it felt like a video game I was trying to master: which doctor needed to sign off on what to get us to the next level. So far, no one had signed off on anything. We did not fit the picture of a family desperately in need of assistance. My father kept an obsessively clean house, something he liked to credit to his time spent in the seminary as a young man. When I did manage to schedule a social worker to assess my mother in her home (level one), what they saw was a woman who was nicely dressed (my father insisted on it, even if she spent the day in bed, which was often the case), vacuumed carpets, and shiny counters. They only ever stayed ten minutes and then scurried away unworried, presumably to homes where dishes were not done, and beds were not made. My mother’s great brain didn’t help matters much either. There was, I discovered, a set list of questions doctors asked patients with dementia or Alzheimer’s. Many of the results were gauged on vocabulary levels. My mother’s vocabulary was legendary. She was a person, my cousin had once loudly joked at a family gathering when I was a teenager, who thought it normal to use the word anthropomorphize in a sentence, “As if ordinary people know what that means!” It had been the first time it’d occurred to me that not everyone spoke like this. “These tests are made for the average patient,” a doctor had told my sister and me a few months earlier. “Your mother is quite above average.” This after I’d expressed exasperation over her being sent away with yet another clean bill of health, only to arrive home and start raging that she didn’t know who she was or who any of us were.
Like so much, it was all a matter of timing. I’d once had my heart broken by a man who’d said, “The timing is just bad.” Every time the truth of this statement proved out it made me furious once again. In the weeks after our awful Christmas, I’d often wondered whether my conviction that my mother was worse in the evening was simply my being overdramatic, overkill in an effort to convince my father and the doctors that something was wrong. It was not. My mother was, I learned, sundowning. This was what happened to people with dementia or Alzheimer’s patients when their confusion grew increasingly worse as the actual sun went down. It had something to do with circadian rhythms and explained the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde transformations I’d been witnessing for months. However, I could never manage to get it witnessed by anyone who could actually do anything about it. My parents lived more than an hour from all the specialists my mother was required to see, and my father, who liked to be in bed by early evening, made all their appointments for the morning. Between her vocabulary, and the unsteady clarity she sometimes had in the early hours, no one could understand my urgency. Half the energy I expended making phone calls and setting up appointments was devoted to not sounding like a hysterical overreacting daughter. I knew no one took hysterical women seriously. In the meantime, I was touring nursing homes every chance I got. I was required to make a list of our top five choices of homes and file it with the health care officials who oversaw senior care in the province of Ontario. When my mother’s name reached the top of the list, a process I was told would likely take eighteen months—and that was only after I’d had someone sign off that she was eligible—she’d get the first available bed in any of those choices. If we turned it down, she’d go back to the bottom of the list. I felt as if I were playing Russian roulette with her life. Of the homes I’d seen already, I’d left only two not feeling physically ill at the thought of depositing my mother, my brilliant mother, in one of their dark and dingy rooms, amid the confused cries of other patients doing battle with their minds and bodies. So I kept making appointments, hoping to find better options. I made another for the end of October as the plane rolled forward.
I did another quick scan of my inbox. There was an email from the new accountant I had hired to reorganize the books of Rachel and my business; he needed me to dig up all the financials from the past eighteen months. And then there were more baby-related emails. Rachel had started spreading the word about her pregnancy, and people were coming to me for details. Hey baby mama, started one email, asking about what the registry plans were and where presents should be addressed. I swallowed a wave of annoyance. How many people could I be expected to be responsible for at the same time, and did responsibility for myself even count among that number? Then came the follow-up voice: poor Glynnis, jetting off for a weekend abroad.
I didn’t like myself for being annoyed and sat there struggling to figure out why exactly the email bothered me. Yes, I was a little worn out from being on call for people, but I was also excited for Rachel. I knew she wanted this so much. And however hard they were—and they were hard—babies were exciting! They changed everything. It was amazing. I knew, too, that had our roles been reversed Rachel would have thrown me ten baby showers, probably with a musical theme and an original song written for the occasion. She was not the problem. The problem was the encroaching sense that I had somehow stepped outside of ritual and was always going to be a guest star, forever celebrating the milestones of others without ever starring in my own. What cultural markers were there for women other than weddings and babies? How else do women mark the progression of their lives? Would I forever be piggybacking on others? That was the depressing thought.
The pilot announced we were next in line for takeoff. I closed my email and shot Rachel a text as was our habit when either of us was about to take off: Wheels up, Iceland.
The plane began rocketing forward with the velocity that always turned my stomach cold. Nora Ephron once wrote that she’d ceased being scared of flying when her husband pointed out it was narcissistic to think her plane was the one that was going to go down. She said the thought had amused her and cured her of her fear. It had not cured me. But I thought of it often on bumpy flights. I always took turbulence personally, as if I were being punished for something I had or hadn’t done. Maybe in this case it would help to think of myself as simply along for the ride. The turbulence could be someone else’s responsibility. I put my phone down and leaned back. If this plane goes down, I thought with a jolt, a lot of people are going to be fucked. I was holding quite a few lives in my hand. I sat back and said a silent prayer of strength for everyone should I go pitching into the water off the Rockaways in the next three minutes, briefly forgetting my terror, unable to decide if I was being narcissistic or not.
7. Choose Your Own Rom-Com
We arrived at Keflavik International Airport at 5:45 a.m. Icelandic time after a brief five and a half hours in the air. This was one of the selling points of visiting Iceland—it’s so close!—but it was confusingly short to my body; it felt as if I’d decided to take a nap at 2:00 a.m. The airport was small, clean, and mostly empty. Outside it was pitch-black, as if someone had hung blackout curtains on the windows. No famous midnight sun. I’d managed to visit during the time of year when Iceland’s daylight hours were exactly the same as New York’s.
After stumbling through customs, I found part of my press group. So far, it included me and a guy named Scott from California who had 200,000 Instagram followers. Scott was in his mid-twenties, had long hair and a long beard, and was carrying only a rucksack; I’d initially taken him for a backpacker. I would later discover he owned his own house in Portland but lived alternately out of his car and by hopping trains, Woody Guthrie–style, around the country. The rest of the group, which consisted of a morning television show from Denver, had been delayed two hours. This was the first press trip I’d ever taken, and I’d naively assumed we’d hit the hotel first and be given a chance to shower and rest before the day began. I quickly discovered this
was not how press trips worked. The tour started now, our guide Michael explained with a smile that suggested my expecting anything else was the equivalent of asking him to stop the sun from rising till I’d had a chance to sleep. There was in fact a car outside ready to take us to our first stop; we were just waiting on the driver. Michael pointed to a tiny magazine store. If I wanted anything to eat or drink, I should get it there now. I promptly bought a hot chocolate from an automatic coffee machine tucked in beside the cashier counter, then thought better of it and returned for a second one. When I rejoined the group, a tall man who appeared to be in his late forties had materialized. It was as if, while I had been waiting for my drink to pour, Michael had called into Icelandic central casting and ordered up a tall, handsome, rugged guide, complete with the traditional wool sweater and mountain hiking boots.
Enter Viktor.
Almost immediately my bitter thoughts of missed sleep disappeared, and I became very aware that I’d neither showered nor changed clothes since the previous morning, and also that my outfit was now officially ridiculous. The vintage fox fur chubby, which had seemed reasonably practical when I’d scanned my closet for Icelandic apparel, now made me feel as if I’d walked out of a lost episode of Absolutely Fabulous. I also had on the same leather ankle boots that had nearly killed me earlier that night. Or now yesterday, I supposed. I shrugged it off, thrust out my hand, and introduced myself.
Viktor grasped it and smiled. Was that a spark? It had been so long since I’d sparked with anyone without knowing a single thing about him. It had been years since the married man had run toward me through the crowded room. 646 had largely been a long, habitual rush of adrenaline brought on by a vibrating phone; the physical component of that relationship had been sporadic, confusing, and forced. Meanwhile, I’d exchanged a total of five words with Viktor; whatever attraction I was feeling was purely physical and felt wonderfully uncomplicated. Then again, maybe I’d imagined it. I was tired, and presumably somewhat smelly, and he was a tour guide who was paid to be nice.
Viktor motioned for us to grab our bags. I downed my hot chocolate, and Scott and I dutifully followed him out of the airport and into the dark, cold, rainy parking lot. There waiting for us was an enormous SUV that looked as if it had driven out of one of those monster truck rallies my nephew liked to watch on TV. The wheels were enormous, practically as tall as I was. I looked at them skeptically while Viktor took my carry-on suitcase and tossed it way in the back—no hope of surreptitiously slipping into a better outfit now. Then he directed Scott to the back seat and opened the passenger door, took my arm, and helped my climb up into it. Perhaps I was not imagining.
A few minutes later, we roared out of the parking lot, crossed a two-lane highway, and drove onto a single lane road. Somewhere behind the dome of clouds we’d flown through the sun was rising, and the world had gone from pitch-black to a shade of gray. It looked like the moon. The land rose up from the road, pockmarked with boulders and craters. Everywhere jets of steam erupted. Some of the craters were filled with water and appeared to be bubbling like a witch’s cauldron. I felt as if I’d driven into Mordor. I’d never been in the habit of calling my parents from the road, but thinking of the evenings my mother had sat by my bedside assuring me the Dark Riders were not coming down the street made me want to pick up my phone and call and tell her where I’d landed. Not that it would have meant anything to her. The last time I’d been home, I mentioned something about Narnia to her, books we’d read together hundreds of times; she’d smiled pleasantly and apologized for not knowing what they were.
We hadn’t been in the car long before it became clear Viktor was far from the strong silent type he appeared to be on first encounter. Twenty minutes into our ride, and he’d already caught us up on Icelandic politics, Viking history, and his dislike of cities, or really anywhere with more than twenty people, it seemed. In addition to being a tour guide (everyone in Iceland was apparently some sort of tour guide, according to him), he was also a member of parliament and a mountaineer. As we jolted along, my head began to pound. I couldn’t tell whether I was dizzy from all the information, from fatigue, or from the fact that Viktor was addressing his monologue directly to me, turning and gazing intently at me every minute or so, and not at the winding road that was increasingly difficult to see as the rain became heavier. Before we’d left the airport, Michael had told us where we were going, but all I’d gathered was that there would be bread there. I was hollow with hunger and had the feeling that all the clocks in my body were running contra to each other. This travel writing business was getting less decadent by the minute. Meanwhile, no matter how welcome Viktor’s gaze was, the rocking of the car was putting me to sleep, and I began to wish he’d pay less attention to me just so I could close my eyes for five seconds. I turned my head to look out my window, or at least appear to do so, and closed my eyes. Sweet relief. The car jerked violently, and I flew into the door handle. Viktor had driven us off the road and briefly up and onto the moonscape to avoid an oncoming car, and then, without stopping or even slowing down, promptly jerked us right back on it. That explained the wheels! I turned in alarm to him, expecting to find the same expression on his face, but he hadn’t paused for breath. “The first Viking parliament is not far from here,” he said, pointing out and past me.
Our first stop was a geothermal spa. Inside a small empty cafeteria, we were served steaming slices of sweet rye that the owner had just pulled from the sand along the water as we’d arrived. “Iceland sits atop a volcano,” Viktor explained as I inhaled piece after piece of the fresh bread slathered in Icelandic butter. (“It is the best butter,” said Viktor. “The dairy is purer here, thanks to the clean glacial waters the animals drink.”) The volcano was the reason why the country felt as though it were bursting and shifting and bubbling at every turn. It also meant the country was powered entirely on geothermal energy, resulting in an abundance of hot water. In the winter the sidewalks of Reykjavik were heated, farmers were encouraged to build their own mini power stations, and it was possible to bake bread in the beach, which was where ours had come from. The dough was placed in a covered pot and left overnight, its location marked with a small flag.
After we finished, we stripped down to our bathing suits (I’d stuffed mine in my purse on the way out of my apartment) and walked out into the snow and down a set of slippery stairs into a hot spring pool. The wind had quieted and the snow was falling softly. Everything was silent. We were on the edge of a large lake. Through the mist rising off the water, I could make out the shady outline of mountains in the distance. On the other side of the pool sat Viktor. Was this real? The jet lag was fading—fresh bread, fresh butter, and a geothermal pool were apparently just the combination to beat a red-eye flight. But the sense of disorientation had not. I felt as if I’d been dropped into another life. Or the poster for another life. My own, with all its responsibilities and anxiety, was weirdly distant.
When we eventually returned to the giant SUV an hour later, flushed from the heat of the baths, I offered Scott the front seat, thinking it might be a better vantage point for his pictures. But before he had a chance to answer, Viktor opened the door and took my arm. “You’re good here, I think,” he said, helping me up again. Oh! I thought, I am definitely not imagining this.
The rest of the day blended together in a mind-boggling array of waterfalls, rainbows, and geysers, as though I were perched on the edge of one of those flip books that animates when you release the pages. One morphed into the next as we sped from stop to stop.
Our final stop was river rafting. Back in my tiny, perfect, warm Brooklyn Heights studio I had read that line item on the itinerary Jo had sent me and thought it sounded fun. Now that I’d been awake for nearly thirty hours and spent the day in the rain and snow, I was significantly less excited. The pickup spot to board the raft was at an obscure corner of the Hvítá River. The rides went out every two hours, and we were to be the last one of the day. The wind had picked up agai
n and the temperature had dropped, turning the rain into snow. As we sat in the SUV waiting for the river guide to return from his previous trip, I could barely see the river through the blowing snow.
“Will we go in this?” I asked Viktor skeptically. I was past the point of caring whether I sounded like an ignorant, spoiled city dweller.
He shook his head, leaning forward to gaze out the window. “I don’t know, it’s getting pretty bad.”
I felt better knowing he thought it was bad, too. Oh, please let it be canceled. I was fighting off the sort of overwhelming sleepiness that comes when you have spent the entire day in the cold and are finally toasty warm and comfortable. Please, please, please. Two minutes later the previous trip showed up. I could just make them out through the swirling snow. A shadowy figure bounded over to our window and stuck his head in; he was dressed head to toe in a bright yellow slicker.
“We can go in ten minutes,” he said in a tone that suggested it was Christmas morning and he was taking us to our presents. “Go in there and put your suits on.” He waved out into the whiteness.
No, no, no, I thought. No way. I wouldn’t get out of the car. I couldn’t. No. Every molecule in my body was attempting to hurl itself into a horizontal position. Viktor got out, letting in a rush of cold air that practically made me whimper, and then walked around the front of the SUV and opened my door. I got out.
Ten minutes later I had struggled into what appeared to be a hazmat suit and shoved my feet into ungainly rubber boots. Three young women from Australia had joined us, and we were all crowded together in the hut we’d been directed to, trying to get our gear on in a rush; there was only an hour left of daylight. I reached up for a pair of goggles hanging on the wall and pulled them over my head. Viktor handed me a pair of enormous gloves. “Put these on—you’ll need them.” I shoved my hand into the first one but couldn’t get the second on. He took it back and held it up so I could put my hand in smoothly. Then he did up the snaps at the base of both gloves. Then he reached back and took the hood attached to my coat and pulled it over my head and fastened the buttons under my chin. Such small gestures, and yet . . . I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had taken care of me. Looked out for me. I was so in the habit of doing every single thing for myself, that his doing up my hood practically felt like a bodily caress.
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