They Only Eat Their Husbands Page 11

  By the time we returned home, my knee was swollen. Dad said, “You’d better get some ice on that and put your leg up.” A few hours later I was still in the TV room, happily lying on the couch with my leg up, when my father-daughter fantasy came to an end.

  He sat down and asked how my travel plans were coming. Still relishing the attention, I did what I always do when I’m excited: I continued talking after I stopped thinking.

  “There’s so much to see in Italy,” I said. “I can’t possibly see everything I want to see in just four weeks.”

  “That’s too much time. You’ll see. You’ll probably get bored.”

  “But I don’t mind just hanging out and doing nothing. And I like doing weird stuff. Remember, I’m the weird one in the family.”

  “That’s presumptuous, Cara.”

  He was right, as usual; I was showing off. That ended the conversation, so we did the only thing we always enjoy doing together: we watched a movie. This one was some B picture about a teacher working in a tough ghetto high school. There was rampant violence in the halls, and one girl offered to have sex with the teacher in return for good grades. My father—who always talks throughout movies but angrily shushes anyone else who dares do the same—told me the movie was stretching reality too far. He said such things rarely happen in schools.

  “Sure they do,” I said.

  “Cara, I’ve spent a lot of time working with people in the school system. Such things may happen, but they’re rare events.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “‘Not necessarily’ isn’t an argument,” he said. “In any assertion, the exception of ‘not necessarily’ may already be assumed.”

  I grew defensive. “I only used the shorthand, ‘not necessarily,’ because I didn’t want to get into a debate while we’re watching a movie. But okay, you might have spent a lot of time in schools, but I’ve spent a lot of time with gang members in Anchorage—as a volunteer and a reporter—and I find it hard to believe L.A. gangs would be more tame. I’ve interviewed a fifteen-year-old kid who sold guns. I’ve covered cases of teachers who had sex with students. The movie might be using hyperbole, but filmmakers often use hyperbole to underline the truth.”

  “All right, Cara. Why do you have to be right about everything?”

  I stared at him, taken aback, my mouth opening and closing like a beached fish.

  “What’s the matter now?” he asked.

  “It’s just that, when I describe you to people, that’s the way I always describe you, that you always have to be right.”

  “Really?” he said. He looked genuinely perplexed.

  “God. You have no idea. I’ve been so bitter.” Choking on tears of rage, I stood up. “I’ve been struggling so hard to avoid this. I didn’t want to be like those dysfunctional families who tear each other apart in movies. I didn’t want to be another cliché. But here we are!”

  The next moment, I felt guilty about my outburst, knowing he was still grieving for his dead wife. “I’m sorry,” I said. “You were watching the movie and now I’ve made you miss it. We were having a good time and now it’s ruined. My anger was way out of proportion to your comment. I should have chosen another time to tell you how I felt. I’m really sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Cara.”

  Neither of us said another word. I left the room.

  I went to the kitchen and called Kaitlin to unload. “All these years I’ve been hoping someday my dad and I would have this great relationship. When I came here I thought this was my chance to fix everything. But maybe we aren’t meant to get over our pasts. Maybe some things just can’t be repaired.”

  “That’s true,” she said, “but it’s only human that you’d hope for more. Every daughter wants her father to love her and be proud of her. The way I see it, any father would be proud to have a daughter like you. He just doesn’t know how to show it. And you’re right, you can’t fix that. Only he can.”

  But my dad doesn’t even know there’s anything to fix.

  One thing I’ll say for Sean, whether or not he’s able to repair anything between us, at least he’s aware something is broken.

  ***

  I’m beginning to wonder if death is the only thing powerful enough to illuminate my connection to the people I love. Sean has flown back to Alaska because his father is dying. Tonight I called him in Anchorage. We switched our usual roles: he talked, I listened.

  Sean’s dad, Stu, had fallen so deep into depression that he stopped eating and drinking. He became so dehydrated he wound up in the hospital, where he came down with pneumonia. Then complications set in. Sean told me that the doctors had to pump bile out of his father’s stomach, that when they stuck the tube inside him they accidentally ruptured his spleen, that by the time they cut him open to repair his spleen it had stopped bleeding, that opening him up then led to an infection. Now he’s on a breathing machine.

  Sean said, “I have to get okay with . . . to get okay with the fact that I can’t stay. I have to leave in a few days. I have to be okay that I was here for my dad.” He repeated this several times.

  “I know sometimes you worry that you’re not a good son, but you are a good son. You know how you can know that, don’t you?”

  “They send you some kind of card in the mail?”

  “You’re there. You showed up. He knows you’re there for him. You can’t help it if you can’t stay indefinitely. You moved away for a lot of good reasons, at a time when you had no idea your dad would get sick.”

  “That’s true.” He sighed. “I was going to call you today. I wanted to hear your voice . . . It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “I feel bad for you that you don’t have a girlfriend, or somebody to be there with you.”

  “Yeah, I was thinking about that. I miss you. I wanted you to know . . . because . . . well, because it’s important.”

  As we spoke, I pictured him engulfed in an Anchorage winter. I could picture the hoarfrost covering that city in crystalline white purity. There are places in Anchorage that are just as dirty, dismal, and depressing as an L.A. ghetto. Yet L.A. never has enough frost to bathe it in innocence. For a moment I felt homesick for Alaska.

  But although I miss Alaska, the truth is I’ve never truly felt at home anywhere. If Alaska seemed like home, it was only because so many other people there were lost and broken like me, like the castaway dolls and jack-in-the-boxes that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer found on the Island of Misfit Toys. I remember I once asked Sean’s dad how he wound up in Alaska. He said, “They told me to turn left at Utah, and I turned right by mistake.”

  I thought about checking on flights to Anchorage, so I could be by Sean’s side as he sits by his father’s side. Then I realized it’s not my place anymore. I don’t know what is.

  ***

  I’ve been considering canceling my trip overseas. I just spent a few days in San Diego, dipping down into Mexico for a day to complete my circuit down the coast. Then I returned to L.A. and discovered something that made me furious: my father went on a ski weekend with his new girlfriend. She isn’t the problem. I’m glad he met someone. He no longer looks so lost.

  When he met Jessie around the holidays, just four months after Christina died, he asked me, “Do you think it’s too soon?”

  I was surprised he wanted my opinion. Then I realized he was used to asking for Christina’s opinion and that was no longer an option. I carefully considered my answer. “If you were someone else I’d probably say yes. But in your case, no, I don’t think it’s too soon. You’re simply the kind of person who’s happier when you’re in a relationship. If you fall in love with someone new, that doesn’t mean you didn’t love your wife.”

  I have no problem with Dad having a girlfriend or going on a ski weekend. My problem is that he left this weekend. On Friday afternoon, even though his two-year-old daughte
r had an alarming cough, he left her in the care of an aunt. That night, her aunt took her to a doctor, who discovered that Iliana had an infection in both ears and had lost six pounds. She only weighed twenty-five pounds to start with. The next day, when I came home and saw my sister’s listless face, the dark circles under her fever-bright eyes, and her thin little body, I wondered how he could leave.

  When my dad called to check in, I shouted at him for the first time in my life, holding nothing back. “What are you doing in Mammoth when your daughter’s sick?!”

  “She wasn’t that sick when I left. Why didn’t anyone call me?”

  “That sick?! You don’t pay attention. For weeks she’s been listless, she keeps crying, coughing, and whining, she barely smiles anymore. She’s beginning to realize her mother’s not coming back, and now you’re gone most of the time. She doesn’t understand what’s going on, but she does get depressed whenever you’re not here. I can see it on her face. And now she’s sick and you’re off skiing?!”

  “She gets depressed when I’m not there? Oh, poor baby. Let me talk to her.”

  Iliana has a very modest vocabulary, so it was a pretty one-sided conversation. She looked perplexed listening to Dad’s voice on the phone, maybe wondering how he shrank it to fit in there. My father then reassured me that he’d be home tomorrow, as planned, and that the housekeeper knew where to get in touch with him in case of emergency.

  He wouldn’t be back in time to see me off at the airport. This wasn’t news. He’d never planned to.

  After I got off the phone with my dad, I called Kaitlin to pour out my anger.

  When my monologue devolved into tears, she said, “Cara, your father’s doing it to you again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s abandoned you again.”

  “You mean the way he treats Iliana is making me relive the way he treated me?”

  “No, I’m not talking about your sister. I’m talking about you. He’s doing it to you.”

  It took me a moment to understand what she was saying. I hadn’t thought of it that way. “You mean he’s abandoned me? Left me here holding the bag?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I’m not even holding the bag. Don’t you see? I’m dropping it. I’m leaving to go to China, to-mor-row. Maybe I shouldn’t go. Iliana already lost her mother, and now I’m going to leave. She’ll think she was abandoned twice. I still don’t think my father knows how to be there for a child. Maybe I should ask for custody, if he’ll let me.”

  “Adopting her won’t help. Whether she lives with you or her dad, she’ll still be abandoned by her father and she’ll still have lost her mother. And if you adopt her, she’ll also lose her sister.”

  “I don’t think my dad would abandon her. It’s obvious he loves her, and he’s very responsible. He’s no Ward Cleaver, but he’s not that bad.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about emotional abandonment. If you want to give him something to think about, you should ask him what he’s going to do if his second daughter grows up to hate him as much as you do.”

  “I don’t hate him.”

  “Cara . . . ” she chided me.

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Look Cara, you can’t rescue anyone here. What you can do is be there for Iliana, as a sister. You’re in a unique position. You can give her the kind of understanding no one else can because you were abandoned, too.”

  As her words sank in, I felt a power I’d never known before. It could be different this time. I never had a big sister when I was growing up, but Iliana would. The realization made me feel even guiltier about leaving.

  But Kaitlin said that was a mother’s guilt, not a sister’s. “Grown-up sisters don’t usually live at home. You’ve already done plenty. Giving up your life for someone isn’t a gift—it’s martyrdom. If you want to do something for your sister, be a role model. Go on your trip. How many girls have big sisters who have the courage to travel around the world alone?”

  ***

  I’ve spent the past couple of weeks telling Iliana about my journey in the simplest words possible: “Your big sister is going on a long trip.”

  This afternoon, Grampa drove me to the airport. As I threw my duffel bag into his truck bed, I marveled that I’ve condensed my new life to fit into the thirty-five-pound backpack stuffed inside that duffel. All that’s left of my old life are several boxes of books, photo albums, and clothes stored at Grampa’s house. I’ve sold my car, and with that I no longer own a single key. For the next six months I’ll be carrying everything I need on my back. I feel liberated. Almost.

  Before I left, I picked up Iliana and carried her to the mailbox. She stared curiously at my face as I spoke to her. “I’m going now. I’m going on my long trip. But you see this mailbox? Wherever I go I’ll be thinking of you, and just so you know I’m thinking of you I’ll send you postcards, and they’ll come in this mailbox. I’ll write on them and Daddy will read them to you.”

  “Long trip,” she chirped, smiling uncertainly. At least she didn’t look as wan as she did yesterday.

  “That’s right. But—this is very important—I will come back. And when I come back I’ll give you a big hug and a kiss, okay?”

  My sister’s nod was solemn, or maybe it was just a mirror. I kissed her goodbye.

  Maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about leaving her with our father. I remember once, when I was seven, I was in the car with Dad and one of my step-moms. It was raining and the windshield wipers were on. A tiny twig had gotten hung up in the wiper mechanism and was swishing back and forth, in sync with the wipers. My dad pointed at the twig and said, “Look, Cara, a baby windshield wiper!” We laughed so hard it felt like we’d never stop. But we had to get out of the car sometime.

  The Butt of the Lion

  thirty-five years old—beijing, china

  I’m sitting in the bar of a Beijing hostel, in the uncounted, insomniac hours of the morning, my only company the waitress sleeping on the couch behind me. I seem to be the sole person awake in the entire Jinghua Hotel. It’s around noon yesterday in Los Angeles. I think. After crossing the international dateline, my internal clock is a mess.

  Sitting among a maze of chair legs turned up on tables, I can easily imagine I’m in any bar in the world after hours. It hasn’t quite sunk in that I’m in China—except that everyone here looks Chinese, everyone speaks Chinese, and every sign is written in Chinese.

  I wish I could sleep; I need the rest. The rattling cough my family passed around over the holidays, which I thought was gone, has crept back into my lungs. That makes four weeks with this heavy hand squeezing my chest, and it’s making me nervous. I don’t want to end up in a hospital in a country where no one, but no one, speaks my language.

  I’ve already learned a few polite Chinese words, such as “hello,” “please,” and the ever important “how much?” According to my phrasebook, “thank you” is “xie xie,” pronounced “shyèh-shyeh” with a soft “sh,” a subtle sound like two chalkboard erasers rubbing together.

  Last night in the hallway, I met a young American couple who live in China and they gave me some pointers for navigating both the streets and the communication gap:

  “When you’re getting on a bus, you have to rush forward as fast as you can and push your way into the crowd, or you can forget about making it on,” the man said.

  “And be careful crossing the big intersections,” the woman said. “You probably already noticed, but it’s every pedestrian for himself. They don’t have right of way here. And if the street vendors get really aggressive, just remember: Bú yào!”

  “Boo Yow!”

  “Yeah, but you have to put the tones in the right place: Bú yào!”

  “Bú Yohw!”

  “Close enough.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “The lite
ral translation is ‘don’t want.’ It more or less means ‘leave me alone.’”

  I thanked them and walked away muttering, “Bú Yów, Bu Yòwww, Bù-yòw . . . ”

  I could study my Chinese phrasebook to pass the time until sunrise, but I don’t know how much good it will do. Even when I can make out the phonetics, I can’t decipher the tones. Rising tones, falling tones, tones that fall then rise—or is that rise then fall? And if I rise when I’m supposed to fall, I’ll say the wrong words. It’s probably best to keep my mouth shut. That shouldn’t be difficult today; my sleepless night in the bar may conspire with this surreal new world to turn my tongue to stone.

  ***

  When the murmuring light of dawn stirred the stillness of the hostel, I left the bar to go outside and breathe the leaded fumes of Beijing’s chill morning air. I bought a cheap breakfast from a nearby street vendor. It was Beijing’s common fast food: an egg concoction spread into a thin pancake and fried on a griddle, then ladled with sauce and folded up in cheap paper for eating on the go. I have no idea what it was called, but the eggy-doughy consistency and salty-sweet flavor were so satisfying that I intend to become an addict.

  As I ate, I gazed at the odd tableaux spread before me like some parenthetical scene from a David Lynch movie. Next door to the hostel stands a McDonald’s fronted by a small square. In that square two small groups of people were taking two very different sorts of classes in the gauzy light of the early winter morning. At one end, a group was learning ballroom dance, slowly whirling to a waltz that emanated faintly from a boom box, tendrils of warm breath trailing behind them in the frozen air. At the other end, another group was slowly shifting through tai chi poses, making not a sound, pulsating like marionettes. In a wide lane beyond the square, hundreds of bicycles whirred by like the wings of countless insects. In the madcap lanes beyond that, automobiles sped past in a kill-or-be-killed frenzy while pedestrians wearing impassive expressions ran for their lives. The dancers and martial artists seemed out of place and time against the rush-hour pandemonium before them and the Western burger franchise behind.