busy busy busy
My sister had met her husband on a cruise ship and then they both became fans of cruises, ever on the alert for "great deals" and "deep discounts."
Something I would consider now, but did not occur to me then, is that probably a cruise is not something you want to purchase on clearance.
It was tempting. Seven days and six nights, everything pre-paid, your every need anticipated.
Eat!
Drink!
Swim!
New York to Bermuda!
Pack your bikini!
One reason there might be a discount is if the weather will not be good. In, for example, hurricane season. By the second night, the ship was re-routed, and Bermuda replaced with Portland, Maine and Newport, RI. I had only brought one sweater.
In Newport, in front of the post office, there was a comically-oversized mailbox. I took a photo of my love, a regular-sized human male, in front of it. He was jumping up, pretending to try to open it the mail slot. In the photo, he's just a blur.
In Portland, we rode on a tour bus behind two women whose constant chatter floated at ear-level like thick cloud cover, obscuring everything. Observing a downtown mural of life-sized whales on a pier wall, they agreed solemnly, "There must be whales in there."
Imagine if every building, every structure, on its surface, bore the image of its contents. A library: Love it. A restaurant: OK, maybe. But the logic quickly breaks down. Meatpacking plant? Factory floor? Morgue?
The trip did not go well.
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After the divorce, I rented the first floor of a two-story yellow house at the end of a dead-end street. The front door led into the kitchen and then a big bedroom on the left, which got bright morning sun. Down a short hallway, a room on the right, where I made an office, a small living room with a curved wall. I bought a pale blue flocked velvet couch at the Salvation Army and my ex-husband helped me move it. You could tell it was cheap, it felt like sitting on a cardboard box, no softness. But I loved its color, its swirled pattern that suggested excess and luxury.
Later that spring, I would lie on that couch, Garfield telephone receiver in hand, dialing, over and over, the suicide hotline.
Busy
busy
busy
Across from the living room, a tiny room at the end of the hallway, just wide enough for a queen-sized bed. It was the first bed I bought on my own. I called 1-800-MATTRES ("Leave off the last ‘s’ for savings") the only place I could think of. With delivery, it cost just over $500, a nearly unthinkable sum.
Evenings I spent sitting on the floor near my daughter's bed, singing Joni Mitchell and The Beatles and You are My Sunshine until she finally relented, eyes closed, mouth open, pink lips twitching with memories of milk.
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In my dream, M made me sit in an oversized flowerpot while he took an important phone call. We missed our son's graduation. We tried to order take-out but everything was closed.
A week of minor grievances. Office politics of the pettiest sort. Everyone always needs some complicated thing urgently. Everyone always needs to just have a quick chat. I try, I truly do, to be my most accommodating, most cheerful, most responsive self. I smile winningly behind my mask and then sometimes, after they've gone, I bare my teeth.
