Glitter and Glue (3 page)

But for all my zealous imagining, a year later I looked up from my life and was deeply unimpressed. I worked at the bottom rung of a nonprofit in downtown Baltimore, and thanks to the understandably pitiful pay, I lived with Libby, my grandmother on my mom’s side, which meant that except for Tuesdays, when I had Weight Watchers, I spent every weeknight eating roasted meats and Pillsbury dinner rolls with Libby and her very crazy brother, whom everyone called Uncle Slug. By eight o’clock on any given night, I was up in my room—the room where my great-great-aunt Gerty lived until she died in the rocking chair that still sat by the window—highlighting
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
until my next move became clear.

If I really wanted to grow, well, that was not going to happen while I was living with my granny, driving my shit Honda two miles to the office every day, clocking in to happy hour on Water Street at five
P.M.
, hoping some club lacrosse player would try to suck my face behind the phone booth after pounding a Jägermeister shot. I needed to get out. I needed an adventure. So I found a round-the-world ticket on sale in the back of
The New York Times
and talked Tracy into coming with me. One year, seven countries, bang-o—odyssey!

When I laid out the plan for my parents, my dad said, “Lovey, FANTASTIC!” He would know. He went to Australia with a lacrosse team back in the late fifties. “Go get ’em, Lovey!” He’s a Life Eater, my dad.

My mom said, “You haven’t been out of college two years yet. You need to focus on making money, saving up.”

“I
have
saved. How do you think I’m paying for the plane ticket?”

“You should be using that money to get established, get your own health insurance, not traipse all over creation,” she said. “I certainly hope you’re not expecting help from your father and me.”

“I’m not.” (Hoping, maybe.)

“Good. You don’t want to come home to a mountain of debt.”

“Mom, I get it.”

“You get it. I bet you get it,” she said, mostly to herself, as she cut a sliver of lemon rind to toss in her five o’clock drink.

“Anyway, I’ll go back to work when I get home.”

“You better hope they’ll take you back.”

“They will.”

She looked at me like I thought I knew everything. “You really think you know everything, don’t you?”

“Here’s what I know: I want Life Experience!”

“You know what’s good Life Experience? Life. Real life is excellent life experience,” she said, pleased with her retort. “How does running around Australia apply to anything … like working, marriage, family?”

“Mom—God! You know what? Things happen when you leave the house.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to magically become interesting sitting on
the sofa. I’m not going to learn anything—my values, or purpose, or point of view—at home. Things happen when you
leave
, when you walk out the door, up the driveway, and into the world.”

“I don’t know why you don’t walk out the door and go to an office, like everyone else.”

Despite my mom’s total failure to get behind me, I liked everything about the odyssey plan. I even liked the vocabulary of travel: distant shores, exotic vistas, excursions, expeditions. Show me the poetry in
ground-beef special, informational interview, staff development
.

Two months later, my parents walked me to the gate at JFK. I spotted Tracy from a hundred yards away—she’s six feet, a head taller than all the Taiwanese in line for our flight to Taipei—with her mom. They have the same haircut because they go to the same hairdresser; they share clothes and shoes, sunglasses and jewelry, which they can do because Tracy’s mom has pierced ears, like a normal person. My mom wears clip-ons that feel like little vises on my earlobes.

As my parents and I approached, Tracy and her mom started their goodbye. They said
I love you
and
I love you, too
and
Have the time of your life!
They kissed and hugged, and when they pulled apart, they both had tears in their eyes, which made them laugh the exact same laugh at the exact same moment.

My mom stood in front of me with her pleather pocketbook snuggled cautiously under one arm.

“All right, now,” she said, “be very careful with your passport and your travelers’ checks.” She had said this ten times in the last two weeks.

“I know, Mom,” I said, putting my arms around her. We patted each other, and then she released.

When my dad stepped forward, my mom looked away.
“Lovey, go get ’em, kid!” I bear-hugged my dad. We rocked back and forth.

“Here, girls,” my mom said, handing Tracy and me each a neon-green pack of gum from her extra-valu pak. “For your ears, on the descent.”

“Thanks,” we said.

“What a pair!” my dad said as we headed to the gate.

We turned around one more time before we disappeared into our whale of a future. My mom had her arms crossed and her lips pursed as if she’d just lost an argument and couldn’t quite believe it, but then my dad put his arm around her, and I heard his booming voice say, “Aw, Mare, she’s gonna be fine,” and I thought,
Greenie, you’ve got it all wrong. She never once said anything about being
worried.

I assumed the whole trip would be like Bangkok, where even crossing the street was an adventure. Seven or eight lanes of cars pushing around on a highway built for four, the sidewalks jammed with fruit sellers and fish stands, sacks of spices, nuts, and dried meats. Even the alphabet was overflowing: forty-four consonants and fourteen vowels. Plus, they didn’t have toilets. We had to squat over holes. My mom would have died.

After a couple of days getting organized, Tracy and I took an all-night bus to a ferry to an island. Onshore, we were mauled by bungalow operators waving photos and calling,
Lady, lady, this way, come this way
. Along with a couple from Stockholm and a boy from Crete, we picked a place called Bungalow Bill’s because the guy said,
Plumbing, good plumbing
. As soon as we got in his tuk-tuk, a makeshift motor cart, I started taking pictures even though it wasn’t safe or convenient. I had to have proof.

At Bungalow Bill’s, we had beers with this guy Joe, who was much older, like thirty. He’d been all over—Burma, Sri Lanka, Bhutan. He had no idea where he was going next or for how long.
I just go
, he said, establishing himself as Person of Interest #1.

When we told him we were going from Thailand to Australia, he said we were crazy to miss Indonesia. He said we could spend months traveling from island to island, seeing temples and volcanoes, estuaries and coral reefs. We told him our flight wasn’t flexible like that; we couldn’t fly to Jakarta without paying some kind of penalty. He said we’d never be this close to so many places, and we needed to be awake to the possibilities, which instantly became my mantra.

Tracy and I went back and forth about Indonesia. We called the airlines and looked at guidebooks and talked to other travelers. In the end, we couldn’t stomach the rerouting fee, so we boarded the plane, as planned, to Australia, settling in for six hours of Merit Ultra Lights and backgammon on the tiny magnetized board that Tracy’s mom had given us as a bon voyage gift. After dinner and three mini-bottles of Chardonnay, totally free, Tracy went to sleep, her legs folded up against the seat in front of her like a giraffe in a phone booth, while I wrote in my journal about how, when we got to Australia, we needed to totally Go for It at every crossroad, by which I did not ever mean that we should become nannies.

But here I am, saving up, trying to somehow Be Awake to the Possibilities in a neighborhood that’s basically indistinguishable from the one where I grew up. Three- and four-bedroom houses with bikes on the lawn and potted plants by the front door. Dads jumping in cars by eight
A.M.
, moms in bathrobes dashing out to grab the newspaper to see what the rest of the
world did yesterday, and kids on swing sets, oblivious to it all. Some exotic vista.

A month ago, I was the curious American in the Thai hostel, confabbing with Greeks and Swedes and Buddhists fresh from the ashram. Now I’m the weird new appendage hanging off the sagging mobile that is the Tanner family.

That first afternoon, before we sit down for dinner, Martin appears at my door, holding out three toy dinosaurs. “They’re mine, but you can have them.”

“Oh, wow, thanks. I’ll just borrow them.”

“Okay,” he says. “For how long?”

“Well, for as long as they like it in here.”

He sets them carefully on my bedside shelf. “They’ll like it in here. It’s dark. They like the dark. They’re never scared.”

“Do they have names?”

“T. rex, Barosaurus …”

I meant name-names like Pete or maybe something Australian like Baz or Norbert but now I see that a boy can hardly find a better word to say, a word that confers more authority, than Ve-lo-ci-rap-tor.

“They’re from the Crustinsashus Period,” he says with pride.

“One of my favorites.”

“Really?”

“Totally.”

“Martin, dinner. Keely, too,” Milly calls from the kitchen, her voice sharp.

“Come on, Keely!” Martin says, holding out his hand. “See how my daddy can cook now.”

Dinner is ham and cheese on brown bread with some chips.
None of it looks good to me, but I eat it all, because I’m a guest or, God help me, a role model. This would amuse my mother. It’s just the sort of mundane shit she wanted me to be worrying about.

“How long have you lived here?” I ask John as he moves Martin’s milk away from the edge of the table.

“Since Ellen and I got mar— Martin, put your napkin in your lap,” John says. Milly leans over and pushes Martin’s napkin onto his thighs. “For a while now, eight years. I guess actually nine.” I can’t tell whether this last year hardly registers or counts double. Maybe he can’t even remember it, maybe it’s all there is.

Milly eats every chip and then sits back in her chair.

“Eat your sandwich,” John says, tapping the table in front of her.

“I don’t like the cheese.”

“Take it off, then.”

“I don’t like the ham.”

“Amelia—”

She looks over at me, waiting to see if I will insert myself, which I will not.

“I’m not hun—”

“Now.”

She picks up her sandwich and takes a mousy bite, fake-chewing, reminding me of all the ways I found not to eat whatever awfulness my mother forced on me (bread crust, spaghetti sauce, dark meat) when I was Milly’s age.

As Milly stares at her sandwich, Martin runs his fingers around the outside of his, working the excess mayonnaise like a bricklayer does mortar.

John smacks the table with his open hand. “No fingers!”

Martin looks down as Milly takes another bite, bravely, like a soldier taking stitches in the field.

“Daddy—” Milly points at her brother, who is rolling his greasy hands around in his T-shirt.

“Martin! Use your serviette! And apologize to Kelly.”

To me? What do I have to do with any of this?

Martin apologizes without hesitation or, for that matter, feeling.

After a period of terrible silence, uneaten sandwiches disassembled on plates, John leans back, exhales, and says, “Who wants ice cream?”
Ice cream?
I hear my mother say.
After that behavior?

“We do!”

“With toppings!”

So, John, who just moments ago was beside himself with frustration, heads to the kitchen to dole out treats.
Someone needs a little backbone
, my mother whispers.

While the kids are busy with their jimmies and chocolate sauce, John tells me about Pop, who lives in an in-law unit attached to the house. Pop is eighty-four. Pop lived most of his life in Fiji. Pop is a widower, too. He keeps to himself and is no trouble, and I am not expected to worry about him for meals or anything at all. He came over a couple of years ago, when Ellen first started chemo, and now he’ll probably stay.

Milly lifts her head from her ice cream. “Probably?”

“As long as he wants,” John assures her, committing to house the father of his dead wife indefinitely.

“He likes it here. Like the dinosaurs,” Martin whispers to me.

“I see,” I say, thinking less about Pop and the dinosaurs and more about John saying that Ellen was in chemo. I didn’t know it was cancer. It didn’t come up in the interview, and I didn’t have the guts to ask.

“And then there’s Evan, Ellen’s son from her first marriage,
who lives in a room off the garage. He’s in and out, he won’t bother you.” How had Evan and Pop not come up before?

Martin announces he’s done.
Finished
, my mom corrects.
Meat is done. Are you a slab of meat?

After dessert, I start to clear the table, but John shoos me away, saying I must be tired, and I take the opening to say good night.

Stretching out on the bed, I rotate my thoughts like a camera on a tripod, away from the Tanner kids and malignancies to the reason I am here. On a clean two-page spread in my journal, I make the official list of all the Life Eating I’m going to do, starting five months from today.