by Desiree Span
And we went to the Prague Castle complex; a stunning sight founded around 880 AD, of which Jose claimed it is the largest medieval castle in Europe. I admired the castle buildings and its many architectural styles, from the Gothic St. Vitus Cathedral to the Romanesque Basilica of St. George.
At night we ate pork with onion and potato dumplings, and then he took me to a tavern where we would chat and amateur-philosophize while getting slightly intoxicated on unfiltered dark beer.
* * *
Of all the people I had met along this trip, Jose was the first and only person to whom I had told the story of why I was in Europe in the first place. After I had spoken about Erica and the death of my child, I felt that at the end of it all I had actually made little emotional progress, for the edges of the sadness and aching were just as sharp and I couldn’t tell him my tale without my eyes welling up, feeling the pain in my chest and a knot in my gut.
“I have no comforting words, my friend. Yours is like a Greek tragedy and I respect the way you carry your cross,” he said with Spanish accent. Jose really had a way with words and always seemed to know what to say, but for a minute there we both fell silent.
“You know what you need? A new beginning and a new goal in life,” he said after a while. “Something that sets your mind to the future instead of thinking about what you’ve lost in the past. I mean, you’re young, so go back to college, find a new girl to love, have more children. Start over!”
“Start over,” I repeated to myself. And I let him talk me into returning to his birthplace of Madrid and pick up my studies there.
Three days before my visa expired I was on my way home. I had called my father to see if he was willing to pick me up at the airport and just as promised he received me with a huge grin and tight hug.
My mother, on the other hand, was still mad at me for leaving without notice, or at least she pretended to be. She walked about frowning at me and spoke to me only when spoken to. That was until I announced my plan of going back to Madrid to study.
“Why does it have to be so far? Why can’t you just enroll back in your old college?” she kept asking.
“It’s not for a particular reason, Mom. A made a new friend who lives there and he convinced me to go and I happened to really like the city when I was traveling. Besides, the university I plan on going to is very good. I thought you’d be happy I am going back to studying,” I said.
“But how long will you be gone?”
“I don’t know for sure. It might be a while, but it’s what I want and it would really give me peace of mind if I knew you supported me.”
She sighed. “You’d better call and write at least once a week or I’ll personally fly up there to spank your bottom,” she said, wiping a tear.
I grinned at her and then we stood there for a while, and I hugged her.
“So, you’ve kissed and made up?” my father said, walking in on us.
“Did you know your son was leaving us? Again?” she scolded.
“Yeah, and personally I think it’s a great idea,” he said.
I let go of my mom and grabbed an apple from the fruit tray, and as I walked into the living room I heard my dad talking.
“This will be good for him,” he said in a low tone.
Chapter Fifteen
OLIVER
1997
* * *
It was November by the time I arrived back in Spain. I enrolled in the Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid. I contacted my old university and was fortunately able to get many of my credits transferred so I could sort of pick up where I had left off in the States, but first I followed many months of intensive Spanish classes.
Jose was back home and he received me with a tight hug and friendly pat on the back. He really helped me settle in and with his help, I found several people that wanted to learn English, and managed to make a living teaching anyone who was interested. I also took different jobs from waiting tables to cashiering in supermarkets, to further make ends meet.
Following his instructions I found a room to rent with Mrs. Gonzales. She was Jose’s great-aunt; a retired widow who spent most of her days taking care of her beloved plants in a greenhouse she had in the backyard. Mrs. Gonzales must have been around seventy years old, but she was young at heart and meandered around at a steady pace, happily whistling unknown tunes.
* * *
Habitually she would call for me. “Americanooooo,” she would shout at the bottom of the stairs. I would come down from my room, which was more of an attached small studio with its own separate entrance, and she would take me by the arm and lead me to her greenhouse, where we would sit on a couple of stools and drink good wine. She would insist on me speaking English, because one of her lifelong dreams was to learn the language. But then she always seemed to forget that she actually disapproved of my American accent. She would frown disappointedly and insist on me speaking like Sean Connery. I would laugh heartily and tell her I was still practicing. It didn’t matter, though, for I could hardly get three words out before she would interrupt me and ramble about her plants, her late husband, and life in general. I didn’t mind for I liked spending time with her and simply listening helped me improve my Spanish. She was actually good company.
One evening we went for a walk together and she asked me why I was alone. “Such an intelligent, handsome young man like you should have a leading lady in life,” she said in Spanish.
I smiled and told her that it was almost a year ago that my leading lady had unfortunately left me.
She stopped walking and looked me in the eye. “Is this why you always look so sad?” she asked.
“I hadn’t realized I looked sad,” I said.
“Mmmh, well the truth is, Americano, every pot has its lid, and if she is your lid, she’ll be destined to come back to you, because, well, you’re her pot,” she said with a warm smile.
I scoffed at that idea but appreciated her friendly remark. “Unfortunately, at this point I’m more like a Tupperware whose cover has been lost forever,” I replied.
Mrs. Gonzales gave me a heartfelt look. “I see...” she said and patted my hand. “Well, no te preocupes. Don’t worry. I’ll fix this,” and she walked off humming.
From that moment on Mrs. Gonzales was determined to serve as Cupid. She would one by one unexpectedly invite her granddaughters, nieces, or any other young female she was acquainted with for dinner and then come up with an excuse to scurry off, leaving us to ourselves. In the beginning I felt awkward and told her she really didn’t need “to help.” But she was very persistent in her new mission and pretended to not understand what I was referring to.
Eventually I gave up and became cooperative, so to speak, and I actually tried to enjoy the blind dates she set up.
She managed to arrange several dates with beautiful girls; like Eliza, her great-niece, and Lucia, the granddaughter of the butcher, and I remember there was Amalia and also Penelope, who was very pretty but extremely shy. In all of them I would somehow see a little of Erica—her smile, her spontaneity, her sense of humor or sensuality—but I would have to Frankenstein my way through at least five of the women I had met to be able to make the Erica I was to some extent unconsciously still looking for.
When Jose pointed out I was sabotaging my own “start-over plan,” I dismissed him, telling him I didn’t mean to be picky. I just hadn’t felt a click with any of the women I had met.
* * *
Until one sunny morning when I went for a walk and found myself stopping at a small coffeehouse I hadn’t been to before. It was quite busy inside so I sat on the terrace and ordered a café solo with a tostada con tomate, while I smoked a cigarette and tried to work on my Spanish by consistently reading the newspaper.
I studied my surroundings and guessed that it was a family business. The owner took my order and shouted it back to a young woman standing behind a counter, as only a father would to his daughter. She caught my attention, for she seemed quite annoyed an
d shouted back that she was occupied and asked where the hell Pedro was. The owner and assumed father walked over to her and said he didn’t know, and with an irritated gesture she threw down the kitchen cloth she had been holding and started preparing my order.
She walked over to me and without looking placed my coffee and toasted bread with tomato, briskly on the little round table.
“Gracias,” I said with my American accent and smiled at her. For some strange reason I found her foul mood amusing. My accent must have caught her attention, for she then looked at me for the first time and I could see her eyes soften.
“De nada,” she replied with a distinct husky voice. She then walked back to her chore behind the counter, and when our eyes met again she winked at me and I smiled back. I felt instantly attracted to her.
* * *
Maica was her name, short for Maria Carmen. And Maica had remarkable jet-black eyes and matching raven-colored hair that danced over her shoulders when she walked. Her face was square shaped with high cheekbones, and her sensuous mouth was adorned with a small birthmark in the upper corner. Maica was five-foot-two and had a full bust and soft, round hips that softly swayed from side to side when she walked. Connecting those two was the tiniest waist, which she accentuated with a broad leather belt. She reminded me of a black panther ready to pounce on her prey of choice. It was almost intimidating.
* * *
Maica and I had a tumultuous romance. She was feisty, jealous, and possessive, but also extremely sweet and caring. One minute she would make a scene by screaming, throwing plates and glasses, unjustly accusing me of philandering, and the next minute she would rip my clothes off and we had steaming hot sex on the spot.
More than once I got tired of her melodramatics and would break it off, only for her to lure me in again and I would succumb to her sensuality. She was like a magnet.
After two years of pain and pleasure, I had enough and decided to definitely end it. Not only because she was driving me insane but also because more and more I felt the time had come for me to go back home, and even sexy Maica couldn’t release me of that feeling. A couple of months before I should have graduated I started looking for a job, but without any luck. It turned out to be somewhat more complicated than I had thought for anyone to hire an inexperienced foreigner, one with a soon-to-expire student visa and with Spanish skills proficiency noted as “Intermediate” on his short resume.
My father offered to help me out many times by sending money, but I always declined. He even opted for me to consider it as a loan, but still I didn’t accept. I felt I had screwed up enough and wanted to prove I could do this on my own.
So after facing a fierce discussion, with me trying to make her understand that I wasn’t planning on giving clandestine English lessons for the rest of my life and that I needed a real job, and her yelling, crying, and then begging me to stay, I hugged her tightly, kissed away her tears and made love to her for the last time. I then drank one final beer with Jose, said my good-byes to sweet Mrs. Gonzales, grabbed my worn-out backpack and hopped on a plane back home.
* * *
The years I spent in Madrid were incredible; it’s a wonderful city that I had come to consider as my second home. And I left behind great people that I genuinely cared for and would never forget. Jose and I have made an effort to keep in touch, and now and then we write to each other and share what’s become of our lives. Several years later I received an email from him and I was happy to see he had finally attached a photograph of him posing with his wife and their four beautiful children.
And of course there was mi bella Maica, whose memory always brings a smile to my face. Over the years I unfortunately lost contact with her, but I was happy to learn that she too had moved on, gotten married and later relocated to Andalusia with her husband and kids.
Chapter Sixteen
ERICA
2015
* * *
We were more than halfway through the flight and with the destination coming nearer I felt ever more anxious.
But Fred unconsciously helped me through it by amicably jabbering on. “So you have twins?” he asked. “That’s a nice picture... your girls are gorgeous! And your husband; he is also Dutch?”
And so I told Fred about how I met my husband Jan.
* * *
I was in my car heading toward the city of Utrecht, a distance of about twenty-one miles from my home in Amsterdam. I had been invited to a typical American Thanksgiving party that was being thrown by my best friend, Chris. He had sent me an invitation that oozed “Chris’ style” all over. It was a comic, drawn by him, and on it was a turkey wearing a tutu and holding a card in his hand that said: “Thanksgiving 2000. Come and taste me!” I smiled when I read it.
When Chris and I met we hit it off immediately. Not only was he originally from Providence, Massachusetts, but he had actually attended a couple of semesters at Boston University, and we both loved art! What more could I want in a friend?
We met at an art exhibition of a mutual acquaintance. He was there with his boyfriend Jacob and I was there with a date, a guy named Alexander.
I heard him speak in English and figured he was an American, and somehow felt the need to walk over and introduce myself. We ended up talking for hours about Boston and living in The Netherlands, and then we discussed our favorite painters and our preferred genre art. We then got hungry and left the exhibition to find some food at a typically Dutch friettent, a cheap fast food establishment that is open past midnight and mainly serves fries and other deep-fried junk food. It’s the kind of food that gives most women I know the classic I’m-never-eating-again feeling, the second they finish licking off their fingers.
By the time we were done with eating it was very late. We had exchanged phone numbers and were saying our good-byes when suddenly he gasped, “Oh, shit!” And he put his hand to his mouth.
“What is it?” I asked, startled.
“Where the hell is Jacob?” he said, looking around. It was then that we realized that our dates weren’t there and that worst of all, we had no idea at what point we had lost them. I really didn’t have much to lose, for I hardly knew my date, but Chris and Jacob had been living together for a couple of months.
He didn’t seem worried, though, for he laughed loudly and winked when he said, “I’ll have to make it up to him later.”
Up to this day, the story of how we met is one of our favorite anecdotes.
* * *
At the time I met Chris I had been living in The Netherlands for a couple of months, but I was still living with Aunt Karen, for it had been impossible to find a cheap apartment. So, when Chris called to tell me that he had officially broken up with Jacob and was looking for a roommate, I grabbed at the opportunity and moved in with him.
Living with Chris opened up a new world for me. His motto was party today because you can sleep when you’re dead, and his life consisted solely of sex, weed and art. He would drag me from one party to the other, introducing me to the most interesting people, and with him I rediscovered Amsterdam in a whole different way.
Chris was fun and had a joyful perspective on life. He thought life was complicated enough as it was, so one should just go with the flow and enjoy the ride. He never seemed to worry much about anything, and I welcomed the way his cheerfulness would rub off on me whenever I was down or upset by something.
* * *
Chris was the only person here that I ever told about Oliver. We had spent the afternoon together and run into an ex-boyfriend of his. Later that day we were having a drink and he was telling me how when he saw him he still felt the remains of old butterflies in his stomach.
“There are some people in your life you just simply never completely get over,” he had stated. And that was when he started to reminiscence over his lost loves and wonder about the “what if” and “what could be.” And then he fell silent, as if indicating it was my turn. I hesitated at first, but then shared my story with him.
&nbs
p; I told him that there had actually only been one person that I had ever really loved. And I explained how Oliver and I had turned from friends to lovers and how perfect we had been together. And then about Tess and the pregnancy and that I just couldn’t deal with it and fled away. And that months later, while I was on a backpacking trip, my Aunt Karen casually told me he had come by the house. That he had come all the way to The Netherlands, looking for me!
“He came all this way looking for you?” Chris repeated with amazement.
I continued telling Chris about how angry I had been and that I had written Oliver an email telling him to get lost, for at the time I thought he had left Tess and the baby to come look for me. I should have known better; Oliver might have made a mistake, but he would never leave his own child behind. But at the time, I was foolish, jealous and way too hurt to be able to think reasonably.
It was the first time I had told anybody what had happened and how miserable I had felt, and I felt relieved.
“Wow, that’s some heavy shit,” Chris said, blinking rapidly a couple of times. “And you never spoke to him afterwards?”
