Traveling while Married

by Mary-Lou Weisman

  It’s important to pay close attention and ask questions. When Larry and I were planning a vacation in Japan with our friends Carole and Alan, I failed to pick up on Carole’s expressed desire to spend at least one night in a traditional Japanese ryokan. If I had said, “What’s that like?” Carole might have told me that it involves living in a paper room and sleeping on the floor on a very large place mat with your head resting on a pillow stuffed with Rice Krispies. Since I didn’t ask, I have to take responsibility for a night of traditional Japanese insomnia. However, I still hold her responsible for failing to tell me that in order to use the bathroom, you must hang from a rope and, when finished, pull on a chain and then swing out of the bathroom like a Flying Wallenda or be inundated by a tsunami of a flush. Nor did she mention that they served pickled eggs for breakfast.

  As in marriage, separation is often the key to happiness, since travel styles differ from couple to couple. This is not a problem if you know about these differences in advance and make appropriate adjustments. There are hundreds of Greek ruins on the Aegean coast between Istanbul and Izmir, many of them on hilltops. Our friend Monica has to visit and climb on top of all of them, including Troy, which even her guidebook described as “a few vague piles of stone.” Larry and I, on the other hand, are quite content to knock off the requisite sites—one theater, one temple to Aphrodite, one temple to Apollo, one gymnasium, and two agoras—and then take a short amble in a field of poppies, followed by a little sit-down and a bottle of wine.

  Some people like to see countries. Others prefer to ingest them. People who want to see all the sights tend to skip lunch, relinquishing the dolmas, eggplant, and baklava that for another couple, one like us, might justify the entire trip. We were completely forthcoming about our slovenly cultural ways and our affection for eating lunch while seated, as were Monica and her husband, Doug, about their need to see it all. Because of our mutual candor, we were able to agree in advance to a marriage of convenience. We would rent two cars, split up after breakfast, and remarry at dinner.

  Museum visitations are often a sticking point for which a brief separation is a mutually satisfying solution. “Do you rent the headphones?” is a good way of distinguishing a serious art lover from someone who looks at the van Goghs and then heads for the museum shop to buy The Starry Night in a mailing tube.

  When you’re traveling with another couple, the numbers can work for or against you. You have two more people to walk and talk with, two more people to share the driving, and one other person who’s interested in going shopping. On the other hand, you also have two more people to wait for in the lobby and two more people to complain about their jet lag. Now that you are four, it is also twice as likely that someone will lose a passport or leave their prescription drugs in the last hotel. However, it is also twice as likely that no one will yell at you. This is because the other couple is watching.

  When two marriages travel together, they tend to be on their best behavior. A kind of benign competition for best marriage takes place as each couple tries to display its union in the most favorable light. The rain in Spain stayed mainly wherever we went, at least for the ten days we vacationed there with our friends Karen and Barry. Had either couple been traveling alone, I suspect the mood would have descended rapidly through the first four of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, and depression—without ever arriving at acceptance. However, because of the alchemy of our foursome, we were practically singing in the rain. On the eighth consecutive day of precipitation, we ducked into a restaurant, any restaurant, to escape what was a torrential gale, the kind that turns umbrellas inside out. After lunch, the rain had diminished to a steady downpour, causing Barry to remark, “Aren’t we lucky?” Had I been married to him and had we been traveling alone and had he made such a comment, I would have torn his head off. As it was, no one dared be grumpy in the face of his pathological good cheer. What might have been a faux pas de deux turned into esprit de corps.

  On another occasion, while having lunch together on the Ramblas in Barcelona, Larry detected what he thought was hostility in my voice. (I think I said something like, “Do you think you’re really going to be able to eat all those tapas?”) “Hostile? I’m not being hostile,” I said. “It’s not what you’re saying, it’s your tone,” he answered. “Tone? What tone?” I replied, looking to Karen for support. “I’m not touching that one,” she answered, and we all enjoyed a good, knowing, intermarital laugh.

  Packing

  Packing is the original sin of travel. In the beginning there was no packing. There weren’t even any clothes. If Adam and Eve had not gotten themselves banished from the Garden of Eden, their children and their children’s children would not have to decide between taking one pair of underwear and rinsing it out every night, or packing several, thereby taking up space that might better be used for a wide-spectrum antibiotic, a current adapter, or an alternate pair of walking shoes. We would all still be naked in Paradise. There wouldn’t be any need to get away from it all. As it is, in our fallen state, we must travel endlessly throughout the world collecting frequent flier points, doomed never to know if we’ve packed the right stuff.

  Having nothing to wear is a condition I take with me wherever I go, no matter how many and various the items of clothing I possess. I take them out and I put them back. I lay out. I try on. I accessorize. I fold. I roll. I assess all the bottled items I’m planning to bring with me for their explosive potential, especially the hand lotion and shampoo, and decide to isolate them in a Ziploc bag. I count the days I will be away in pills and deposit them in my Sunday-through-Saturday plastic case. I pack them. Then I unpack them and put them in my purse, in case of luggage loss. Then I dump everything out and change suitcases. Invariably while packing I feel the need to shop. I dash from store to store in a sweat, like a druggie in need of a fix, at once ashamed and determined.

  For extra credit I worry about what to wear on the plane. Jeans are getting too tight. I gave them up in a lavatory over Tokyo in 1992 when I discovered grommet indentations on my belly. It was during that same flight that I invented an inflatable outfit for air travelers, inspired by astronauts’ space suits. It’s an all-purpose, self-regulating minienvironment, equipped with gourmet food, music, TV, and movies. The pod is made out of opaque, flexible plastic so that you can lounge nude inside. It’s even got its own waste disposal and air recirculation system that guarantees that the only cold you catch will be your own. Plus it has exterior handles in case someone needs to move you into the aisle, and in the event of an emergency landing, you can serve as your own flotation device. Until I get the patent and enough investors to make a prototype, I settle for a sweat suit and sneakers so that all of me can swell with impunity.

  My friend Brett has an irrational fear of wrinkles. Before she packs, she sends the clothes she’s planning to take with her to be dry-cleaned, whether they need it or not, just so they come back wrapped in plastic. Then she places them in a suitcase so large that she doesn’t have to fold anything.

  Another friend, Lucie, has worse problems. She never has the right luggage. She wanders through stores trying out suitcases as if she were tasting porridge. Should she get the one that the gorilla jumps on in the commercials and can’t break, or maybe go with something less flamboyant and more patriotic, like American Tourister?

  No matter how much I learn in advance about my destination’s climate, topography, style of dress, midday highs, and evening lows, not to mention its average monthly precipitation, I seem not to be able to process the information to any useful effect. Is hot in Paris the same as hot in Connecticut? I cannot imagine. Should I take an umbrella? It rained 2.1 inches in Prague last August, but was that all at once, or a little bit nearly every day? I wouldn’t know what to pack for a vacation in a nudist colony. I’d get hung up worrying about a suitable traveling outfit: Sweats? A muumuu? My imagination fails me. (I have a similar problem with travel books. No matter how intently I
read them before a trip, no matter how informative, well-written, and sometimes even interesting they may be, I still don’t know what I want to see or how long I want to stay until I get there.) I compensate for not knowing what to take by taking everything I own. I’m one of the vacationing homeless. I pull my worldly possessions in a suitcase on a leash behind me.

  It is as if I believe I must take everything I own because no matter where I’m going—Paris or Peru—they don’t have it. Larry has tried his best, including the use of both reason and sarcasm, to reassure me, but to no avail.

  “My sun hat! I forgot my sun hat!” I cry as we run to the gate at La Guardia.

  “I would hazard a guess,” says Larry, “that they have sun hats in Jamaica.”

  Someplace in my brain where I’m sane, I must know that I’ll be able to find a sun hat in Jamaica or a toothbrush in Paris. Jacques Chirac, after all, must brush his teeth. He probably even flosses. But I am not soothed. Will I find tweezers in Dublin? It rains a lot in Ireland, but do they pluck? My fears defy reason. I am sure that nothing I have forgotten is available in any other country in the world.

  It may be that packing is particularly difficult for me because my earliest ideas of what packing should be came from the films of the forties, where stars like Anne Baxter or Loretta Young made it look too easy. They grabbed armloads of dresses from their closets, sometimes with the hangers still attached, folded them hastily into their suitcases, and then struggled to close the lid and snap it shut. Usually something chiffon was hanging out as our heroine, dressed in a cloth coat, picked up her bag and closed the door behind her. Then she would show up in a New York hotel room with a fully accessorized wardrobe of gowns, gabardine suits, peignoir sets, a riding habit, and a change of fur coats.

  I wish I could be fancy-free like my friend Mirela. On a recent trip to India she packed clothes she no longer enjoyed wearing and then, like an ambassador from Goodwill, left them, outfit after outfit, in hotel rooms from Delhi to Bombay. Why can’t I be cool like those postmodernist hippies who fill one half of a backpack with a change of clothing and the other half with bottled springwater? Or, failing that, I would settle for being the kind of savvy woman who packs five mix-and-match separates in black and beige tones, made of uncrushable fabric that breathes, plus a colorful scarf she knows how to tie eight ways. But I am not. I am an out-of-control packer. Larry is too. We are each other’s enablers. What else does “made for each other” mean?

  Whenever we’re faced with two empty suitcases, we try to keep each other under control. We take it one outfit at a time. “Are you bringing khakis?” I ask Larry, who is fighting his own packing demons on his side of the bed. He is. I am reassured. I’ll take mine.

  “How about three T-shirts?” he suggests, keeping the numbers down to what he knows he can handle. “Sounds about right,” I agree. He in turn wants to know if I think he can get away with one sport jacket and one pair of decent trousers, in case we do anything slightly fancy in the evening. “Absolutely. And I’ll take one pair of black slacks and a blouse,” I offer.

  So far so good. These are our finest marital packing moments. We are centered. We are open and honest. We are mutually supportive. We are fighting a common enemy and working together toward a common goal—fitting everything into carry-on so we never have to go to baggage claim.

  I’m always the one to give in to temptation first, a precedent established by Eve in Genesis 3. Just when we’re virtually finished and all that we have left to put in are the toiletries, I am seized by a perverse and irresistible urge to pack more. I know I’m engaging in destructive behavior. I even know I’m going to be sorry. But I don’t care.

  “Sweetheart,” I say, “wouldn’t you like to have another outfit, just in case?”

  He bites. What began as a commitment to control our packing habit ends in betrayal and a race to the bottom. He slips in an extra jacket. I retaliate with a sweater. He ups the ante with two more pairs of slacks. I pack three. We take a quick time-out while we head to the attic for larger suitcases. I end by packing a dress I don’t even wear when I’m at home. He stuffs in a pair of black wing tips. I tuck in some heels. We are like two bulimics with spoons in front of an open fridge. It’s Paradise Lost all over again. No wonder Adam and Eve were sent packing.

  Shopping

  No matter what clothes I ultimately decide to take with me, when I get to my destination I invariably need to go shopping. Not need in the sense of “I need to cover my body with an animal skin because I am a Cro-Magnon woman in prehistoric times and it’s cold outside,” but need in the sense of “I haven’t a thing to wear.”

  When I’m seized by such a compulsion, Larry usually refuses to go with me. I try to sell him on the idea that shopping expeditions are legitimate sightseeing events and that he should think of the stores as minimuseums where one can purchase the exhibits, and the conversations with salespeople as rare and spontaneous opportunities for cultural exchange, but he’s not buying. Madrid is famous for leather, so I have to buy boots; Ireland is full of sheep, so I must visit sweaters; and a kimono tour is compulsory in Japan. Paris is where all shopping hell breaks loose.

  I was there in the spring of 1986, mostly on vacation with Larry, and partly to report on the International Sommelier’s award banquet at the Abbaye de Royaumont for an American travel magazine. I didn’t learn until we got to Paris that the event was formal. No “black tie optional.” When wine is involved, the French don’t kid around. It would be a four-fork affair with more gold braid, medals, ribbons, drummers, heel clicking, and smart turns than Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery.

  We were staying with friends. Luckily our host had a tux and was about Larry’s size. Our hostess had a formal gown, but—grâce à Dieu—she was not my size. It was a dream come true: I was in Paris and I actually needed to go shopping.

  In view of the degree of difficulty of this particular couture assignment, Larry decides he’d better come with me. He knows that if left to my own devices I will hold back and try to save money. He wants to be there to remind me that this is a special occasion and that I should splurge and buy myself something really wonderful. He is right. I have already decided that I must first try a discount shop. (Part of needing to shop is needing a bargain. It cancels out the guilt.)

  “But it’s a formal. I’m only going to wear it once,” I protest.

  “This is a once-in-a-lifetime event,” he says, turning my words against me.

  He also reminds me that most women would kill to be married to a man like him, who encourages his wife to spend money on clothes, and perhaps I should have my head examined.

  Meanwhile, I pull on jeans and sneakers and throw my traveler’s checks into my pocketbook in case they don’t take plastique. I hope that I can remember enough French to buy a dress—if the word for dress is robe, what’s evening dress, robe de soir? Or du soir? What if that means bathrobe? I seem determined to drive myself and him crazy, even before I set out. Larry makes his usual skewed attempt to reassure me. “In a world of clothes, hangers, price tags, and sales-women,” he says, “I have every confidence that you will find a way to make yourself understood.”

  We step out into the street. I mean to rush by the corner pastry shop without looking, but before I can help myself, I have established eye contact with a pear tart. Larry gives me that old come-hither look, and we fall into line at the counter. I estimate how many times I’ll have to jog around the park the next day to exact my pound of flesh. It occurs to me that I have been in Paris for almost a week and I have not heard anyone say calories, or cholesterol, or even arterial plaque. The French do not season their food with regret. Even so, I don’t buy the tart; Larry does. I eat half of his.

  When I walk in Paris, I study the women as they stroll toward me. Usually they stare brazenly back at me. Neither of us blinks. We lock eyes until we either must stop and meet face-to-face, or pass out of one another’s view forever. In those few seconds of contact, each conducts
a body search. We probe for one another’s secrets. We quickly slip in and out of one another’s skin. We learn what we can. When Larry does what I’m doing, it’s called being on the make. When I do it, it’s called testing the competition. I have consummated at least fifty such encounters before I get to my destination. The results of my womanizing are, as usual, inconclusive. I am no closer to identifying that certain je ne sais quoi that French women seem to have.

  Once in the store, I shed my clothes and try to find a hook on the wall, which is the best way to stake a claim at Mendes. Mendes is the Parisian answer to Loehmann’s, except that at Mendes, clothing by Yves Saint Laurent and Lanvin is routine, whereas at Loehmann’s you’re euphoric if you find a Calvin Klein that hasn’t had its label removed.

  “Be sure to come out and show them to me!” are Larry’s parting words as I disappear into a warehouse-size changing room.

  I head for the nearest rack. Another woman arrives and begins to look through the dresses alongside me. I size her up through narrowing, gimlet eyes. She’s a ten on top; a twelve, maybe a fourteen, on the bottom. She has a high, bony chicken chest. She is thick of waist, heavy of upper arm, and broad of beam. I, on the other hand, am a nicely proportioned size eight, and starving.

  Etched on both our faces are enough laugh lines to indicate that we have been amused for at least four decades. Her blond hair falls lank to her shoulders, emphasizing, it seems to me, the first signs of jowls. Recently I have had my red hair cut short. I brush it upward, away from my face, to give me what the guy who cuts my hair calls “a lift.”