Dear Exile

by Hilary Liftin

  I’m going to cut to Dr. Strong, the second and more interesting date of the weekend. I waited to meet him on Sunday, coddling my collection of hope and despair, tasting the last of the Power Bar that was supposed to keep me awake through the ordeal. There he came, slightly late, loping diagonally across the street toward Ciel Rouge, a tiny, all-red bar with a gold, baroque-y tent in the back. As he approached, blind date number whatever, I saw immediately that we would actually consider each other. He didn’t have any nervousness or urge to win me. I mean, it was obvious that he didn’t dress up for the night. But he trudged toward me with a step that seemed somehow familiar. And he had a dark beard, which I thought was worth a try. We ordered mint juleps under the tent behind Ciel Rouge. Our conversation was easy, as if we’d been reading the same books for years. Except he’s ahead of me. This, coupled with his sense of humor, which I can’t describe, is part of what makes him a contender. I like his voice—his sentences come slowly, looking both ways before crossing.

  Over our second round of drinks he confessed that he was drunker than he thought he should be. He followed this by stating that he didn’t think arranged marriages were such a bad thing, but for this day and age he would update the tradition by allowing a person to choose his or her own matchmaker. He said that he would choose Larissa, the woman who set us up. Ignoring all premature insinuations here, my response was that I would choose you as my matchmaker (even though your only attempt was years ago and landed me with poor Albert, and you did that entirely for your own amusement). Then William, having essentially declared our potential, picked up my hand to study my nails. I, of course, couldn’t bear to have him think that I’m the kind of career girl who has regularly polished nails. No, I had to explain that I’d had an interview at Condé Nast, where fashion is everything, and that when I got to the threshold fifteen minutes before the interview I realized that I couldn’t go through the doors without a manicure. But I digress. Walking me home from our refined two drinks apiece, he slid an arm around my waist, and I didn’t know what to do. It was certainly too soon to talk about it—too early and embarrassing to say: “Um, excuse me but I don’t think we know each other enough for you to do what you are doing with your arm.” Various means of escape: tying a shoelace, doing a pirouette, even detaching the arm and holding the hand for a brief instant before dropping it, all seemed to send the wrong message. That hand around my waist, it was sending the right message.

  We went up to my roof, where it was a perfect temperature. It was the exact temperature that, on other excursions to my roof, has made me yearn for boy-company. You know how in the right setting with the right weather one can’t help but feel vigorous. My roof makes me want to sing. Lucky for us all, I refrained. We looked down at Seventh Avenue and William observed that all the cars were coming downtown, toward us, which meant that their lights were white, not red, and that from our angle we couldn’t see the traffic lights. How long have I lived here and not realized that Seventh Avenue was a river of white lights? So in a moment when I was nearly overwhelmed by where his hands were and where they might choose to go from there, I was reminded that he might be, well, a very interesting person.

  We were two interesting people who barely knew each other, facing one another in an awkward half hug. I was thinking how odd it was and wondering when he would try to kiss me and what I would do then when it turned out that we were already kissing, and that of the options I had, stopping wasn’t the one I’d take. In Act I, scene i, of the kiss a single sentence ran through my head: “This man is thirty-five.” Eight extra years he’d been alive and kissing. So long, ex-boyfriends, I thought, the way an astronaut thinks, So long, Earth. I’m going with thirty-five. After he left, I went back to my apartment, closed the door, and fell back against it, hands clasped, eyes heavenward, like a sitcom girl.

  But this was Sunday, and now it’s Wednesday, and not only is it harder to remember what he was like but I’m not even sure I would recognize him out of context on the street. We might be having dinner tonight and I’m kind of nervous.

  I’m sorry that the conditions at this school are so intolerable. I support your closed-mindedness with the dedication of a flying buttress. And, for the record, you have never ever called me because you needed something, not even a phone number or a tissue. Make that a goal for when you’re back. I have real doubts that you’re protecting your skin sufficiently, but at least you will be able to say to your grandkids, “These wrinkles, little Hilary, are from the years I spent in Africa.” Protect everything else also, will you please? I need you back in one piece, weathered or no.

  That’s all for now.

  —H

  NEW YORK CITY

  July 12

  Happy Birthday, Farthest Kate!

  May this be the farthest birthday you ever have. Today I’m sending you what I hope is a year’s supply of peanut butter cups and a new towel, which is the closest thing to a clean, healthy shower that I can imagine.

  Thanks for being born, and please continue to be so.

  Love,

  H

  KWALE

  July 21

  Dear Hilary,

  Remember the burns on my legs from cooking chapati? Well, of course they got infected (maybe I should have tried the toothpaste), and I ended up having to go to the doctor in Mombasa yesterday for some antibiotics. Fine, right? So I walk into the office and sit down and the doctor looks at the infections for a really long time. Then she looks up at me and says, “What’s this?” Hoping she was testing me and not actually wondering, I explained that some of my small burns had gotten infected. She looked at them for another really long time and then asked, “You are in Peace Corps?” Thinking she might be stalling for time to figure out what to do, I tried to work in some hints about antibiotics while explaining my job here in Kenya. When there was dead silence after my explanation, I assumed the hints hadn’t really taken hold. She looked at my wounds again and said to herself kind of wistfully, “I think you can’t come here every day for new plasters. . . .” I sort of panicked at this point, imagining making the four-hour trip daily for her to put a Band-Aid on my gangrenous legs, so I asked her if maybe the other doctor I had gone to for my last infection had done the right thing by giving me antibiotics? Slightly offended, she asked me which antibiotic and proceeded to write me a prescription for the same one. Then she examined my legs again for a while, looked up at me, and said, “Maybe we should clean it?” I agreed and immediately regretted it when that seemed to really slow things down. Finally, she said, “But . . . how did you burn your legs if you are cooking with your hands?” I explained that the fat splattered when I flipped the chapati. Ah-ha! That really caught her interest. How could I flip chapati with a fork? I need to buy an instrument. Yes, an instrument. “It’s about this long,” she said, gesturing near her elbow, and it has a very flat end. Flat and square. Yes, this long, with a very flat end. Really I must get this instrument called a spa-tu-la. In fact, she drew me a picture of it and wrote the name of it in Hindi and Swahili so that I could get it from a clerk in a store. While the nurse was dressing my wounds, she came into the room again to make sure I had the concept. Really, she was very concerned. The nurse put an Ace bandage on my burns, and Dave and I left hurriedly to get the prescription filled before she could decide that we needed a whole dishes set. Don’t you wish you could get pus-y blisters on your legs? Should I save some of my really big scabs for you? (And I know you want to point out that if we had registered for our wedding, we would already have a dish set.)

  We’re having problems at Dave’s school with, get this, girls being possessed by djinnis (genies). Recently, the fiftieth girl fainted screaming with the whites of her eyes rolled down. Several have dropped out of school because of it. Some of them show up at our door in the evening to draw, and they look totally exhausted from screaming all day. Many of them have charms for protection now. Sefu has a ball of bits of colored string all knotted up and put on a string of palm leaf around hi
s neck. Nazmin has a black leather thong around her upper arm with a little pouch of dried herbs in it. Nothing seems to be working yet, however. Zaina told me that it feels like a man is squeezing your neck when it happens to you, and you get hot. Mwanamisi says that some girls have been seeing a supernatural man with a panga who puts it to their throats and says he’s going to slaughter them.

  Here’s the wisdom of the week from Dave: It’s cool to see a zebra, but it’s even cooler to be bored seeing a zebra. I’m happy for your new love—maybe.

  Kate

  NEW YORK CITY

  August 1

  Hey Kate,

  Why, you ask, a handwritten letter from your cyberfriend? Why indeed. Since you asked, it’s because I am finally, thankfully, between jobs (and therefore between computers) again. My new job will be better because I’ll be working for a small, bookish website in the city. My career will have shape again, thankfully. How relieved I was to commute for the last time. The job doesn’t start for another month, which gives me time to play. One week has passed, and I spent it accomplishing the tasks that work made impossible: painting my kitchen mango; getting my dishwasher repaired; and repotting plants. I’m afraid I’m becoming a less interesting person. I just painted my toenails sky blue. See what I mean?

  Do you remember August? There are only a few people left in the city, and almost all of us spend as much time as possible at the movies. Tonight Stack and I will go to the free movie in Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library. They do this all summer Mondays, showing classics on a huge screen suspended, it seems, from the HBO building and other midtown pinnacles. The park fills up with all kinds of people—I think—I’ve only been once, to last season’s finale, The Sound of Music. It was incredibly surreal to see Julie Andrews spinning across the mountainside surrounded by traffic and city lights. Everyone sang along and hissed at the Nazis. Tonight is The Wizard of Oz. I wonder if people will go in costume.

  Stack and I have been making Dreamsicles in the afternoons. They’re just blended orange juice and vanilla frozen yogurt. Stack always tries to deviate from that recipe, with some new idea involving coffee ice cubes, so we can eventually make our fortune by publishing a frozen drink recipe book. I told him he’s an idea-hamster. I never let him touch my Dreamsicle. Why change perfect? Did I mention that my apartment has ceiling fans in both rooms? They’re working hard right now. It was my plan, this unemployed Monday morning, to go skate down the West Side Highway, but now I can’t quite imagine upsetting my present comfort level. I’m not even a hundred percent positive that it’s Monday, and I’d like to keep it that way.

  Wedding plans for Steven and Emily proceed. Yesterday I went with Emily to check out her dress, which is just lovely: simple enough for Emily’s tastes but transparent and architectural enough to suit Steven.

  I’m a love story waiting to happen, don’t you think? Sorry to hold back on you, but I’ve now been on several dates with Dr. Strong, and we are further contemplating each other. As part of that, we are using our lips and some other body parts. It’s at a fragile, fragile point. I’ve been a little heady and addicted to his affection lately. How can I make it clear that I’m busy and hard to win (following The Rules) while on the exuberant vacation I have begun?

  There’s something sacred to this one, something that makes me want to keep it between him and me and my journal, but (okay, okay, calm down) I suppose you deserve it, being so far away and all. So I will tell you this, and more. He stares and stares at me, and I can’t hold his eyes. This past weekend we went hiking in the middle of New Jersey and came upon some trees that had long, thick vines hanging from many feet above. I grabbed one that looped down just above my head and hooked my feet over it, pulling myself up so I was sitting. William pushed me and there I was, swinging through the trees, about five feet above the ground. I thought, Who knew there was a jungle in New Jersey? Then we discovered a grove of pines planted so close together that there was no undergrowth, only a plush bed of pine needles. And a fine bed it made! The good news about public affection is that if you don’t look at people they can’t see you.

  To further your vision of this love montage, you should know that we went camping together in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Don’t get me wrong. He’s still something of a stranger, and I wasn’t sure about going. But curled up in his tent by the light of a candle lantern, his arm around me as psychological shield against bears and other beasts, he made the suggestion that we sing camp songs. Camp songs! I looked at him incredulously, wondering, Where did you come from? Picture it: a little firefly of a tent huddled near a gurgling stream and a dying campfire, emitting a B-grade version of “The `Circle Game.” Another high school fantasy come true. Unreal. Now if only he’d carried my pack up the blasted mountain.

  William is a rara avis. Let’s see, he’s deadpan; a self-described pervert (which so far means he reads Philip Roth and likes people better when they’re unbathed); and he’s so hairy that we were in a pharmacy and he was looking at the Rogaine and he said, “I have this area . . .” and he pointed to his knuckles, one of the few places on his body that aren’t covered with nearly black hair. He may be unlike men I have liked in the past in that he holds a job and only plays guitar occasionally, but he shares, perhaps, a cynicism, and that deep, lazy voice with lovers past. He has insomnia in a very serious way. He goes to extremes to try to fall asleep. When we camped I’d wake up and find us head-to-toe.

  When I’m with him, um, in layman’s terms, it feels so right. But my ease is tempered by some hesitance, because while I find myself charmed by his oddities, I can tell he’s discovering that I’m not Dream Girl, and I’m not sure how he’ll react. Still, last night, like Scheherazade, he was allowed to stay until he guessed my middle name. When he was leaving I said, in an overly formal way, “I think I’m going to have to see you again,” and he pulled me up to him and said, “You make me want to cry.”

  And you, Kate, you make me want to eat dinner, which I will now do.

  —H

  P.S. Did you ever receive your birthday package?

  KWALE

  August 13

  Dear Hilary,

  You sent me a birthday package, did you? Are you sure you didn’t mistakenly address it to “A Kenyan Postal Worker”?

  Part 1: A Success Wish

  In order to wish you success in your new job, I include a poem from an English language greeting card I bought in Mombasa:

  As the moment to express your talent

  Continues to advance

  Equally your tantalizing wishes

  Continue to increase

  Fight like a wounded LION

  At-last let your gossip-wishers be filled with shame

  For in the end we shall discourse your victorious news

  With all the might.

  Part 2: Why There Is Chicken Blood on Our Steps and Holy Water Sprinkled on the Thatching of Our Roof

  Because our house was haunted by djinnis and a witch doctor ceremonially exorcised it.

  Part 3: On Something That Looks Like Dollhouse Rice but Isn’t. At All.

  My foot kind of hurt. It looked like an infected splinter was way deep inside it, so I got out the kitchen knife to do some operating. When I squeezed it, lots and lots of little tiny eggs came out along with a gooey membrane and the sac coating. Doesn’t it seem like anyone who hasn’t had an egg sac hasn’t really been here? Did I tell you about Dave’s? And how he fainted when they carved it out? In summary: It was gross. It hurt.

  Okay, I’ve got a few questions about William. Does he appreciate your sense of humor? Does he like your poetry? Those would be good indicators. We’re a little worried about the fact that he sleeps upside down, though, aren’t we? In any case, it’s clear that so far we like him. Camping is good. Singing is good. Why does he seem so old to me? Maybe it’s because he’s a doctor, and I’m still fucking around in Africa in my kneesocks (not really). (The kneesocks part.)

  I am in a thorough stat
e of confusion about my work life. Shouldn’t I have led a nation or saved a camp of refugees or gotten the Nobel Prize for something by now? I am also in a thorough state of confusion about your work life. Will I have better luck getting you to tell me what you do at this new job? I lovingly picture you in front of a computer, typing. Right so far?

  The idea of a whole new two-sided blank page is too much for me to handle right now, but I love you.

  Kate

  P.S.

  Hi again another time, Hil.

  Dave commented that Part 2 of my letter was kind of short. Which I know is true, but some things are so hard to explain. But I’ll try.

  For the last few months, the girls at Dave’s school have been having problems with fits, as I think I’ve mentioned. They see a transparent, white-bearded man whispering that he’s going to slit their throats with a panga. Upon seeing this, they go totally rigid, froth at the mouth, and scream incessantly and inconsolably for an hour or more. This sometimes happens with several dozen girls at once. It has become a common sight to see a row of students (in their uniform of red-checked shirts and purple skirts) carrying a girl across their arms who is stiff as a board and screaming hysterically.

  Witch doctors have been coming off and on to do some ritual dances, rites, and chants, but nothing’s been helping. By now, most of the girls at the school have missed large chunks of schoolwork, have dropped out, or have moved away.