Traveling while Married

by Mary-Lou Weisman

  In the face department, maybe we’re a draw. When it comes to bodies, it’s no contest. So how come she’s trying on a violet taffeta Yves Saint Laurent that’s at least a size too small for her, which plunges directly and precipitously to the waist—the same dress I just rejected a moment ago as gorgeous, but too flamboyant, too expensive, and too young for me? Plus I don’t deserve it. (Some part of me that does not wish me well is hell-bent on making what could be a genuine spree into a joyless exercise in self-loathing.)

  None of this bothers Ms. France. She doesn’t even look at the price. She doesn’t pause to ask herself, “Can I throw this in the dryer?” She just slides into it. Her chest rises like a Perdue carcass from the violet décolletage. She steps into her high heels. (This lady doesn’t wear Reeboks. She’d sooner have her legs amputated.)

  She pirouettes in front of the mirror. The peplum bobbles comically on her huge hips. She places one foot forward at an angle to the other, slides her hands lovingly up her own flanks, rakes her fingers through her hair, tosses back her head, wets her lips, and puts the make on her own reflection in the mirror.

  What’s she got that I haven’t got? I think I know. It is the certain knowledge that she is beautiful. So what if she’s wrong? She’s happy, isn’t she?

  Besides, the longer she preens there, exuding a musk of self-esteem more French than Chanel No. 5, the more beautiful she becomes. I, who just moments ago saw every line and bulge, now find myself viewing her through a more generous lens, as if she were backlit and I were filming her through chiffon. I find her conviction that she is beautiful utterly convincing. I am seduced. And I’m not even a consumer.

  I’ve got to have that dress. I wait, smoldering while she decides whether or not she’ll take it. I keep my eyes averted, affecting disinterest. After a moment, I feel something change in the air around me. I look up. Ms. France has turned away from the mirror, and we are face-to-face. She is posed in front of me like Venus on the half shell—dewy, expectant. “L’aimez-vous?” (“Do you like it?”), she asks.

  “Ce n’est pas grand-chose,” I reply carelessly, letting her know I think the dress is nothing special. I watch her face flinch, fracture, and craze with hurt. Quickly she turns back to the mirror for what she hopes will be a reassuring look, but instead she begins to tug at the peplum.

  Just in case I have aroused her suspicions, I decide to send her the international signal of shopper surrender. I put my clothes back on. I sling my purse over my shoulder and move resolutely toward the door.

  It is just a matter of time. I hide out behind a coatrack, watching while she reaches back, releases the zipper, and slowly steps out of the dress. She puts it back on the hanger and, avoiding the sight of herself in the mirror, leaves the store. The dress is mine.

  This time I take off my Reeboks before I put on the dress. I stand on my toes, mimicking the high heels—something gold and strappy—that I’ll buy to go with it. I pivot and examine myself in profile. Perhaps I will let my hair grow long again. Then I could put it up in a careless knot on top of my head, allowing for a few tendrils to hang fetchingly about my ears and the nape of my neck. Maybe I’ll grow my nails too.

  I flip over the price tag, divide francs into dollars, and come up with an astounding $350, more than I’ve ever spent for any dress. So what. So what if I only wear it once. I apply some fresh lipstick, brush my hair, and lovingly air-kiss the mirror. I’ve got to show Larry.

  He rises from his seat when he sees me. He takes my hands and holds me at arm’s length for a long look and then twirls me around. “Beautiful,” he says. “You look beautiful. You are the best-looking woman in Paris. Buy it.”

  I flip over the tag.

  “Are you sure it’s not too expensive?”

  “Buy it,” he says. “I insist.”

  I am nearly overwhelmed by the sweetness of this man, pitting himself against my intransigent craziness, but not quite.

  “Are you sure it’s not too plunging, too purple? Are you sure it’s not too young for me?” I ask, and nearly wreck the whole thing.

  “Buy it,” he says, and I do.

  His Vacation

  Marriage is all about compromise; so is traveling while married. In the honeymoon years, when our blood was hot and the earth moved on a nightly basis, it was easy enough to agree about almost anything. Will I hike up Vesuvius because he wants to? Yes! Will he make a detour through Naples so I can buy the dishes I admired in a New York restaurant? Yes! But now, after so many years of marriage, will I go on a sixday white-water rafting trip on the Colorado River because he thinks it would be fun? “Yes,” I said. “Yes I will. Yes.”

  I had absolutely no hope that I would enjoy this trip. I don’t like to be too cold. I don’t like to be too hot. I don’t like to be too high. I don’t like to be too low. I don’t like to be frightened and I don’t like to sleep in a bag. It was a compromise. I did it for love.

  Larry likes camping. One of the ways I got him to marry me was to pretend I liked it too. But gradually, after we were married, I reverted to indoors and percale. I did a lot of pretending before we were married, but I wasn’t the only one. When we were dating, Larry told me that whenever he entered a city for the first time, he was obliged to go to the local police department and register his hands as lethal weapons. So in a way we were even. But I still felt bad about my betrayal.

  Larry has been a trial lawyer all his adult life—years spent convincing idealistic wives that amicable divorce is an oxymoron, years spent trying to convince hostile zoning boards that the shelves his clients would like to hang in their living room (for which they need a variance) will not further contribute to the traffic problem on the Post Road. This means decades of needing to be smart, defensive, aggressive, persuasive, villainous, heroic, perpetually in control, and above all a winner. It can get on a person’s nerves. And here he was, about to celebrate his fiftieth birthday, and I had denied him nearly a lifetime of camping pleasure. Would it kill me to pretend I liked camping just one more time?

  A quick read of the outfitter’s catalog describing the trip suggested that it might. A number of sentences seemed ominous: sentences like “Breakfast is served at 5:00 A.M.,” or “When you are splashed—drenched may be a better word—going through the rapids, you will get very cold,” and my favorite, “We carry out all wastes.”

  But here and there I found words of encouragement. “We serve wine with some meals,” and “Please let us know if you’re having a birthday or anniversary on the trip.” That did it. The idea of Larry stripped to the waist, a red bandanna tied around his neck, blowing out candles in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, was irresistible. He would love it. I signed the release forms indemnifying the outfitters for all legal responsibility in the event of death or maiming, mailed in a deposit, and began to shop for the items on the packing list, none of which were available at Saks. In spite of the fact that I followed the list like a fascist, I could not fit all my stuff into the little black rubber duffel provided by the outfitters. I had to triage one of the two pairs of trousers allowed and the recommended extra pair of sneakers, just to make room for my pharmaceuticals. Even so, I bonfired all my vanities and brought along only those prescription and over-the-counter items necessary to maintain life and other regularities. The night before departure, I bathed, shampooed, conditioned, shaved, moisturized, pared, plucked, and flossed.

  On day one, we put into the river at Lees Ferry, where the canyon begins. There, the Colorado is wide and tranquil and the canyon walls are unimposing and gray. In addition to the oarsman, Tony, I spend the first day in a yellow rubber boat with Larry, a bank manager and hot-air balloonist from Allentown, Pennsylvania, named Nancy, and a thirty-something woman named Diane, winsome in a khaki visor hat.

  No sooner is the boat in the water than Larry refocuses all of his considerable type A talents on controlling this adventure. He ties things down. He pushes off. He wants to row.

  I try a different tack. “How do you get o
ut of here if you’re having a terrible time?” I ask Tony. There is no way, he tells me, unless you are really disabled, like your back is broken, or you’re dead, in which case they radio for a rescue helicopter and bill you or your estate $350 an hour. Tony also tells me about two women from a former trip who flounced onto his boat the first day with their husbands and announced that the trip was not their idea. “They were determined to hate every minute of it,” says Tony, “and they did.” And then he tells about the lady “who came down here all high-strung. In a coupla days she threw away all her tranquilizer pills she was taking.” Sitting across from Tony, trussed in a life jacket, swathed in Gore-Tex from head to toe, anticipating my first rapid, I wondered which it would be—the helicopter, the six-day sulk, or born again drug-free?

  By day two I know it will not be the helicopter or the six-day sulk. As anticipated, I am scared of the rapids and uncomfortable in a sleeping bag. But as well as I know myself, I have failed to take into account a serious character flaw that is serving me well on this trip. I tend to behave myself when people are watching. If I were alone with Larry, lying in my sleeping bag, and I learned that the birds flying around the night sky were really bats, I might scream or gag or make unreasonable demands about making them go away. With twenty other people watching, I just take a sleeping pill and roll over. Or if I were alone with Larry on a rubber boat, bouncing off boulders, while sheets of icy water invaded my Gore-Tex and streamed down my cleavage, I would not say, “Wow! This is fun!” In other words, I’m a show-off.

  Larry, on the other hand, is getting bored and restless. He’s seen enough rocks. He’s seen enough water. He’s been through enough rapids. Now what?

  By day three the canyon walls loom red and mauve as the river cuts its way deeper into time, taking us with it. We stop on a white, sandy beach for lunch. We eat our way up and down the food chain, specializing in bacon, peanut butter, and M&M’s. It’s as if we’d never heard of low fat.

  We hike five hundred feet straight up to explore an Anasazi granary. I am very frightened but I behave, although I do most of the trip up and back on all fours. After the climb, I am too hot, too hot not to throw myself into the Colorado River.

  Now I am too cold. So cold that my brain throbs. And still I behave. “Hey!” I cajole the others. “C’mon in. It’s only cold water.” Soon all the women are bathing. Shampoo, razors, and emery boards appear from secret stashes. Diane has dental floss. Then we do the laundry.

  By day four the canyon spreads high and wide above us. We read the rocks like clouds. There’s a two-headed dog, a nude, a whale, and Winston Churchill. Suspended temporarily in a state of nature with total strangers, people take liberties. They fall in love. They confide. Diane tells Ralph he’d look a lot better without a ponytail. Larry tells Diane that he covets her hat. Diane asks Larry if he thinks it’s possible that two people, if they really respect each other and want to be fair, can get divorced amicably. Fred tells me that his wife left him because he would not help her with the household chores. I tell Fred I don’t blame her. Bill refuses to be photographed. Lowell tells me that when I get out of my sleeping bag in the morning, I have “jail hair.” Larry tells Tony he talks like they do on Hee Haw!

  On day five the canyon ravels and unravels Escher-like, background moving to foreground, fooling and dazzling the eye. Larry has passed from Larry Lawyer, through bored and restless, through open and honest, and is now drifting into mellow. He no longer ties down. He no longer wants to row. He no longer wants to be a lawyer. Maybe he’ll open up a little sandwich shop. And yes, Diane, there is civilized divorce.

  We have all changed. We are all relaxed, happy, genial. Fred offers to do my dishes. Diane changes her mind about Ralph’s ponytail. I’m so used to behaving myself that I’m actually having a wonderful time. Tony says he’s thinking of leading a nine-day white-water rafting trip in Chile next February. He wants to know if anyone’s interested. I hear myself say, “I am.” The prepercale kid in me has taken over. Although I have not yet thrown away my pharmaceuticals, I am born again.

  We celebrate Larry’s birthday the last night on the river. Tomorrow we will hike ten miles up and out of the canyon to what now seems like the unreal world. We don’t want to leave. Everybody sings to Larry. He is completely surprised and moved. Tony bakes him a chocolate cake in a Dutch oven. “Hey, pard, remember the first day?” says Tony. “Remember? You couldn’t stop talking. You had to row. ‘Tony,’ I said to myself, ‘this one’s gonna be a real pain in the neck.’” Diane gives Larry her hat.

  “This is an elemental place,” says Larry the philosopher later that evening as we lie in our bags, staring up into the night. “You don’t change it. It changes you.”

  Her Vacation

  He ate a hot dog in the Detroit airport and two more when we landed in San Diego. He was playing the role of “condemned man on his way to a spa” to the hilt. In San Diego, a bus picked us up to drive us across the border. The driver told us the bus trip would take about an hour. Good. It was going to be the only hour since we’d left New York that morning that Larry wouldn’t have something in his mouth.

  The spa had been my idea. It was my turn. It was at his request that we had gone white-water rafting the year before. He could bloody well go to a spa.

  Just inside the Mexican border, he spotted a sign: CARNICERÍA Y ABARROTE—Spanish for butcher and grocery. He got the driver to stop and emerged moments later from the small, dusty supermarket with several bags of Cheetos. He would go to Rancho La Puerta, a vegetarian, aerobic, calorie-counting mountain spa, but he would act like a baby the whole time. Swell! This meant that I would feel like his mother the whole time.

  As we drove into the town of Tecate, he peered intently out the window of the bus, sounding out every sign he saw that might indicate the presence of retail food. “Tacos and pollo!” he cried out, happy as a child as the bus wound through town. “How far is the spa?”

  “About two miles,” was the answer.

  “Things are looking up,” said Larry, hoovering up the first bag of Cheetos. “And look!” he cried, orange dust still clinging to his lips, “a mueblería!” The only fun I had that day was telling him that he was salivating over a furniture store.

  Vacations have a way of reopening gender issues for us, issues we both thought had been settled years ago. This, after all, is a man who no longer sees anything sexually compromising about so-called women’s work. He enjoys washing dishes—“It’s the only thing I do all day that has a beginning, a middle, and an end,” he likes to say. And he cooks about half the meals we eat. I hate to rub it in, but he even likes to unload the dishwasher. For my part, I cheerfully take out the garbage and drive in England. And yet, after years of fine-tuning our yin and yang, he was suddenly telling me that going to spas was a “girl thing.”

  “You have to wear tights for yoga,” he accused.

  “No, you don’t,” I defended. “You can wear a sweat suit. But you might enjoy wearing tights. They make you feel so stretchy and catlike.”

  “If I want to feel catlike, I’ll get a litter box,” he answered, and promptly launched into an indignant monologue on the sociopolitical implications of working out. For one thing, working out was decadent. Why didn’t people do real work in workout clothes? He had an idea. Spandex tights should be sold to people only if they are willing to do manual labor. Tights would be available in hardware stores, along with hammers, saws, shovels, and trowels. Let the yuppies lift bricks instead of weights. People should work out where they’re most needed—in the slums, on bridges and roadways, and in the subways. For all the calories aerobically dissipated into thin air by thousands of Evian-swigging, spandex-wearing narcissists pedaling bikes and climbing stairs to nowhere, we could rebuild the South Bronx! Street crime would be driven into the health clubs.

  Nor was he impressed by the fact that William F. Buckley Jr. went to this spa. “That figures,” he sneered, implying God knows what, and turned on his heel. “George Ham
ilton goes!” I yelled after him. “What about that! And Sophia Loren!”

  He would not be moved. There was no question about it: he had reverted into manic machismo. I had only to say the word spa to trigger a testosterone tantrum. It wasn’t just the idea of exercising that made him rant. He also could not bear the thought of eating a no-salt vegetarian diet for a week: “If I want fiber, I’ll chew on a rope.” For Larry, spa food was an oxymoron, like guest host or reasonable attorney’s fees.

  Not surprisingly, Larry also had his own theory about dieting. He advocated skipping meals, specifically breakfast and lunch. Dinner, he believed, should be chosen from all seven of the basic food groups—beer, pizza, chocolate, cheese, chicken wings, nachos, and sour cream. It’s a diet he adheres to faithfully. It has kept him a consistent ten pounds overweight for years, but then my “anything you eat standing up doesn’t count” diet has done the same for me.

  As the fatal day approached, Larry seemed to mellow a bit. The ranting stopped. “It’s no big deal,” he said to me quite calmly. “I’ll be fine. While you go to the workout classes, I’ll play tennis, I’ll swim, I’ll take walks, and I’ll do a lot of reading.”

  This blessed state of relative acceptance lasted until we got there. Then group pressure, his natural curiosity, and the bitter knowledge that he had paid for it anyway began to transform him. He attended his first yoga class. Once there, pure ego sustained him. He could not have failed to notice that he was the strongest, thinnest, best-looking man in the room. Or that he had the most hair. Or that he was the only one who could do the yoga headstand. Nor did it hurt when Michele, the instructor, her buns vivid in neon spandex, asked him if he was a yogi. And I don’t think he could have been totally unmoved by the fact that there were a lot of attractive women dragging their mats across the floor to be near him. “You’re lucky,” one of the nervier ones told me. “Your husband has a wonderful body.”