Surviving Valencia

As the saying goes, a watched pot never boils. A few days after Memorial Day, I was wearing one of my sundresses, the black and white gingham one with the yellow rickrack, coming back from a walk, definitely not watching my pot as the water lurched and bubbled. Adrian and I had just had a wonderful weekend together. Visions of babies were dancing in my head, and my fingernails were painted the most spontaneous shade of melon. My husband, who I had decided to let myself be madly in love with again, had left early to go to Atlanta and I was on my own, so cheerful and content I think I was actually whistling on my way back up our steps.

I opened the mailbox and pulled out good mail, the kind of stuff I love: Two fat fashion magazines; an artsy postcard from a local gallery; a padded envelope from Seattle, no doubt filled with more sundress patterns I had purchased online. And then I saw it: One of the terri

ble, hand-typed mystery letters. I began shaking and set all the other mail aside on the kitchen table. I held that letter in my hand and paced. I picked up the phone and began dialing the number of Adrian’s cell phone, hung up, started again, hung up…

From the back of a drawer in the kitchen I pulled an open, stale pack of cigarettes that had been left at our house after a party a year or two back. I’d been saving them for some reason. For this, I guess. I lit one of the crumbly cigarettes and inhaled, dying for some calm and clarity. Still shaking but feeling more in control, I returned to the front hall and closed the door, locking it. I need to be alone to really think. An open door invaded my ability to reason. Even an unlocked door could be so distracting that I could not think.

I then opened the letter, carefully. Inside was another one of those lined, fringed pieces of notebook paper. Wrapped around what looked like the back of Polaroids.

Stop. Set them down. Think.

Do you really want to see what is on the other side?

No.

Inhale. Exhale until you can’t see smoke anymore. Inhale again.

I missed smoking, being a smoker, carrying the etched silver antique cigarette case I used to love. Depending on what I found, I decided right then and there I might start again. If it was bad enough, I could smoke. I could do anything I wanted if it was bad enough. I could be free to smoke or become an alcoholic. Kiss the Coach and Prada purses goodbye, and curl up in an alley. Crawl right back inside myself and die.

Isn’t that the true you? Maybe just a little? Wouldn’t you like to be free? Admit it. That sounds kind of good.

I looked around me, at the white wainscoting and the Crate and Barrel hall table. The umbrella stand held umbrellas, of course. The fruit bowl of course held fruit and the vase of course held flowers. I was unmoved by my enviable life. The woman in the mirror was prettier than me and she was nodding to herself like a lunatic. She looked crazy, and thin. Rigid and elegant and scary. She looked like someone who would not invite me to her fancy parties.

I lit another cigarette.

Who are you being so good for?

No one.

I stared at the backs of the photos, hanging in that moment before everything changes.

Really. Why are you depriving yourself of everything you really want. He isn’t, you know.

I unfolded the paper and braced myself for pictures of Adrian and some stranger kissing, embracing, or worse… Nothing could have prepared me for what I actually saw.

Chapter 28

I won the Sixth Grade Science Fair on December 12, 1986. I had only been back in school for two days, and had entered an old shoe and a paragraph-long report on the history of shoes (which had nothing to do with science), yet somehow I took away the blue ribbon. The report said something like, “Shoes used to be made so they fit a left or a right foot, just put one on and it would fit, but not very well, but then one day a smart person realized left feet are different from right feet. It may have been Benjamin Franklin, since he discovered many other things. This shoe here is an example of a shoe made for a right foot.”

“Was that your sister’s shoe?” asked a seventh grader I had never talked to before. I nodded. She stroked it, caressing the worn toe until I had to look away in embarrassment. In reality, it was one of my mother’s stinky old loafers and if I didn’t get it home before she noticed it was missing there would be hell to pay.

We did not celebrate Christmas in 1986. My mother had purchased plenty of gifts, but they stayed in their shopping bags down in the basement storage room where she thought no one knew about them. I went down there and looked in the bags one day just before Christmas, finding some stonewashed jeans in my size and purple earmuffs that must have been for me. Most of it was for Valencia. There were new boots in her size and a neat stack of sweaters, jeans, and pajamas. Chunky, matching earrings to go with the sweaters. Romance novels and a cookbook called College Cuisine about making casseroles in a toaster oven. Mom had always had the most fun shopping for her, so by November she had already been almost done buying her gifts. There were only some socks and a new basketball for Van. He was hard to shop for, my mother always said. There was nothing for Dad, of course. Parents don’t give each other presents.

On Christmas morning, when I awoke and there were no presents, I tried to help my mom by reminding her of the jeans and earmuffs. “And the stuff you got for Valencia is fine for me,” I said. I didn’t mean to be offensive. But she slapped me across the face, which I really had not seen coming. My dad, normally not one to get involved, even felt that she had gone too far and said, “Patricia, that’s enough.”

Then we pulled ourselves together for the trip to my grandmother’s house. She had some gifts for me: Books like John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony and The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. They were old and had already been read, I could tell. They were wrapped in a brown paper bag from the grocery store, and given to me out of sight of my cousins, since she normally gave us just ten dollars each.

My cousins had piles of gifts to open, and my aunts and uncles forced them to share with me. I was given what they wanted least. I went home with a badly knitted scarf and Smurf socks with blue pompom balls on the ankles. Throughout it all my parents drank brandy slush and my mother cried.

“Can I stay with you for a while?” I asked my grandma.

“No, your parents need you,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” I said solemnly. I remember whispering this to her, urgently, my eyebrows raised. I felt like the only sane person in the world. Like I could see things, obvious things, everyone else was missing.

When we were leaving I tried again, desperately. But she was unfazed by my pleas.

“They need you now more than ever,” she said, handing me my bag of crappy gifts, loading me into the car with two staggering drunks. I recall looking back at her as she stood on her porch and waved, her little hand folding open and shut. Before we were out of her driveway she pulled her sweater around her and went back inside.