Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife (26 page)

“I showed him who’s boss,” my mother said.

“I don’t like what you did,” I told her. “Don’t do that again.” I wanted to cry. I wanted to shake her. I wanted to drive to Wisconsin to pick up Van and bring him home, but I was leaving the country in a few hours.

“He didn’t cry,” my mother said. “He just kept looking down at his sandwich and looking at me with a sad face. Finally, after an hour, he ate his sandwich and even licked the jelly off his fingers. He said it was good.”

“You should have put the sandwich in the refrigerator and given it to him later,” I said.

“Well, he needed to eat. It was after one o’clock, and he hadn’t had lunch.”

“He’ll eat when he’s hungry. If he doesn’t feel like eating, don’t force him.”

I got off the phone and cried. I remembered the day I bought a chocolate bunny after school and when my mother saw it, she said, “You didn’t ask me permission. Give it to me,” and she whipped the bunny into the garbage.

My mother often pulled my long blond hair into two tight, painful ponytails. I started pulling my hair loose at school, but my mother didn’t appreciate that. “I put those ponytails in your hair and I expect to see them when you walk out of school,” she said. A few days later, I pulled my hair out of my ponytails and got spanked for it.

When my mother spanked me, she used a wooden paddle that used to have a red rubber ball attached to it by a rubber string. It used to be my toy before she ripped the ball and string off and began using it to punish me.

I pictured Van, head hung low, looking up at my mother’s tight-lipped glare and eventually eating that rotten sandwich.

At three o’clock, I picked up Max from school and we packed his suitcase. I gave him a portable CD player and let him pick out a bunch of my CDs to take to Liv’s. I gave Max a great big hug and said, “I’m really going to miss you, Buddy.”

“I’m going to miss you, too,” he said.

“I’ll be back before you know it, probably before you want me to. I know you’re going to have fun at Seth’s house.”

“Yeah, it’ll probably be fun,” Max said.

I took Max to Liv’s and we carried his things to the guest bedroom. Max sat down on the bed, put his headphones on, and began listening to CDs. We kissed good-bye, and Liv walked me out the front door.

Liv smiled. “He’s going to be fine,” she said. “He’ll have a good time. Don’t worry about him. Seth’s so excited that Max is staying here.”

“Thank you so much,” I said. “I really appreciate you.”

I went to the airport, my plane took off, and I was on my way to Budapest.

[Tuesday, September 16]

One of the travel guides I’ve been reading warned that the taxis in the taxi queue are notorious rip-offs and recommended calling a cab company. So after I got my luggage, I changed some American money for Hungarian forint and spent several minutes staring at a pay phone trying to figure out how I was going to do that. Fortunately, no one else needed to use the phone while I stood there looking like a dolt. I put some money in and dialed. The phone rang and rang. I was about to hang up when someone answered in Magyar.

“Uh, hello. English?” I said.

“Yes. Little,” the woman answered.

By the time I got off the phone, I was pretty sure I’d reached a taxi company and fairly certain a cab was coming. I yanked the handle up from my suitcase and rolled it to the reserved taxi stand. I watched other tourists hopping into the rip-off taxis and felt smug. Several minutes passed, and a swarthy gray-haired man walked toward me and motioned for me to get into a cab that was parked across a median two lanes over. I got in and arrived at the hotel. Charlie was in the room waiting for me.

“How much did you pay for your cab?” I asked him right away.

“About 5,500 forint,” he said.

“Ha! I paid 3,600,” I said.

Charlie had paid ten dollars more than me.

“I’m starving,” I told Charlie.

“The concierge recommended a restaurant nearby,” Charlie said. “We have a reservation. Let’s go.”

The restaurant, Nostalgia, was gorgeous. It was art nouveau with domed ceilings, arched windows, and sunken and raised dining rooms. The walls were pink and trimmed with elaborate white moldings. Huge chandeliers hung from the ceiling. A gypsy trio played music from a corner. And the food was delicious: crusty rolls with herbed butter, fish soup with hot paprika paste, grilled goose liver and apples in plum sauce, and for dessert, a dense wedge of a ricotta-like cheesecake laced with raisins and topped with an apricot sauce. Charlie had a gin and tonic and a beer. I looked at the other tables and their sparkling crystal wine decanters and glassware. It actually didn’t bother me. Huh.

[Wednesday, September 17]

Charlie attended a conference today but before he trotted off, we walked around the city a bit and found Café Gerbeaud, which was highly recommended in guide books for coffee and pastries. Like Nostalgia, Gerbeaud was extravagantly lovely. Charlie had a big puffy cheese pocket and I had a chestnut croissant. They were heavenly. I walked Charlie back to the hotel for his conference and started off on my own.

Before I’d left the states, I checked out five travel books from the library and cross-referenced their recommendations. Soon after I left Charlie, I stumbled on a tourism office and picked up a detailed map of the city, a brochure for organ concerts at St. Anne’s church—which the guidebooks said were fabulous—and an opera house schedule. I began perusing one of the guidebooks I brought with me. A nearby attraction I’d highlighted was an ancient train that was on display in a subway. I descended a flight of stairs into the subway and saw nothing. There was a short escalator and I rode it down to the next level. Nothing. I walked across a platform to the top of another down escalator and stepped on. Holy shit! It was the steepest, tallest, longest, fastest escalator I’d ever seen. If the escalator had been a building, it would have been something like twenty stories high. My hair flew behind me as I plummeted hundreds of feet down a seemingly endless gray chute at what appeared to be a thirty-degree angle. Halfway down, I began feeling dizzy and nauseated. If I tripped or was pushed, I was a dead woman. The handrail was moving at a slower rate than the stairs and I adjusted my grip. I looked across at the people flying up the up escalator and started to giggle. It was a ridiculous wild ride that smacked of the communist era. I got off the escalator and in front of me was a train platform but no antique train. Screw it. I stepped on the up escalator and watched people flying past on the down one. A mother and her daughter, a girl about Max’s age, were hurtling toward the train platform below. It made me wince. I got off and took the short escalator up to the next level. I walked toward the stairway and a man began yelling at me in Magyar. I quickened my pace and the man ran in front of me. “Ticket, ticket!” he shouted. I took out my guidebook and pointed to the paragraph of the antique train.

“You need ticket!” he shouted. “Passport!”

“I didn’t ride the train,” I said. I tapped the guide book with my finger. “I was looking for the old train.”

The man began aggressively moving toward me, weaving from side to side, backing me toward a wall. “Passport, I need passport!” he demanded. “This is fine!” He flapped a book of tickets in my face.

I looked at the two laminated ID badges hanging from a cord around his neck and hoped he was legitimate. I fished around in my purse and handed him my passport.

“Where do you buy a ticket?” I asked. “I never saw a ticket booth.”

He swept his arm toward a tiny booth in a dimly lit corner. He waved his arms over an almost-worn-off red line painted across the width of the floor. “Need ticket to cross,” he said. He scribbled up my fine and demanded money. I pulled a bill out of my wallet and handed it to him. He handed me some change and my passport and left. I walked out of the station.

Budapest is two cities: Buda and Pest. Buda is the old side, Pest is the new side, and they are separated by the Danube River. I walked the Pest side, which is full of impressively ornate buildings, and popped into a health food store and bought a wedge of eggplant pie for lunch. I carried it out in a brown paper bag and ate it on the steps of the Hungarian National Museum. I entered the museum and viewed the Hungarian history of Turkish occupation, Hapsburg rule, Nazi occupation, and communist rule. I headed to the opera house and bought two front-row tickets to the ballet for Saturday night. I walked back to the hotel, freshened up, and changed for dinner.

Charlie showed up and we walked down to the Danube River and boarded a boat aglow with festive white lights for a conference dinner cruise. We were directed to the top deck where waiters dressed as monks, turbaned Turks, and Hungarian folk dancers served cocktails on silver trays. I sipped water for an hour and stood next to Charlie as he schmoozed with clients. Music began floating up from below and people started streaming down the boat’s stairwells to go inside.

Two floors down, waitstaff had begun serving people food from three stations: traditional Hungarian, medieval times, and Turkish. Hungarian folk dancers skipped and twirled. Dancers dressed in medieval garb circled. Belly dancers jiggled next to the Turkish food.

Upstairs, white linen-covered tables were topped with miniature mirrored staircases supporting bite-sized Napoleons, chocolate tortes, and orange sponge cakes. It was heaven. I stuffed my face, and Charlie and I climbed back up to the top deck of the boat for a gorgeous view of Budapest all lit up. As the boat cruised down the Danube, warm wind floated through my hair, and I was thrilled I wasn’t numb from booze. The night was glorious. Everything was vivid and sharp. I’m not going to wake up tomorrow with a hangover.

[Thursday, September 18]

I went to the enormous, gorgeous, and opulently tiled Central Market for a Hungarian cooking class arranged by the conference for spouses of attendees. We made Hungarian goulash and for dessert, thin pancakes stuffed with raisin-laced sweet cottage cheese. I ate lunch and ditched the other spouses who were getting on a tour bus for a tour of Pest, which I’d seen yesterday on foot. I hung out at the market and started shopping. I toured stalls filled with lace tablecloths, gaudy crystal goblets, touristy imitations of Herend china, and real Herend porcelain, which the Queen of England is rumored to drink tea from. I bought Max a petrushka doll of the American presidents and Van some wooden animal jigsaw puzzles. The shops rimming the walls of the top two floors of the market overlooked the ground floor, which was loaded with fruit and vegetable stands, pastry shops, meat markets, and paprika kiosks. Locals grocery shopping scurried from stall to stall. I made a mental note to come back when I was hungry and took a leisure walk back to the hotel to get ready for tonight’s putska.

A putska is a Hungarian cookout. I freshened up, changed into jeans, and Charlie changed into casual clothes. We walked down to the lobby and Charlie shepherded me toward some of his business buddies and their spouses, and we got on one of three enormous tour buses. Charlie leaned over me from his aisle seat and pointed out the window.

“Look at that,” he said. Two police officers on BMW motorcycles had pulled up next to our bus. The cops blared their sirens and began stopping cars. The tour buses pulled out into heavy rush-hour traffic. More motorcycle cops were in front of and in back of our motorcade. They swooped around, stopped traffic, and pushed our buses through stoplights.

“This is embarrassing,” Charlie said as we peered out the window at angry drivers stopped in their cars.

The event planner, noticing our shocked faces, picked up a microphone and said, “You might notice we have a police escort to get us through rush-hour traffic. We were concerned we wouldn’t be able to meet our train in time.”

“We’re getting on a train?” I asked.

“I guess,” said Charlie, still looking out the window, thoroughly appalled. “I can’t believe they’re doing this.”

“Oh, lighten up,” I said. “It’s obnoxious, but it’s kinda cool. This would never happen in the States. I wonder how many palms they had to grease to pull this off.”

We traveled through the city and suburbs, and began driving through the countryside, which was dotted with clusters of shack-like homes. Eventually, the buses stopped in the middle of nowhere and parked. We got out and walked around the bus. There was a posh antique train and Charlie grabbed my hand and we entered one of the dining cars. Charlie’s friend, Lawrence, and his wife, Ann Marie, were already seated at a table covered with a white linen tablecloth, and Charlie and I joined them.

“My grandfather used to live in one of those small country houses,” Ann Marie said.

Waiters brought wine, mineral water, soda, and dense cheese biscuits to the tables. The train began clattering down the track. We heard music and, minutes later, accordion players were strolling down our aisle. Waiters brought party sandwiches to our table and a beer was plunked down in front of every passenger.

“It would be rude to refuse,” Lawrence said and popped open his beer.

My guidebook said Hungarians take offense if a man refuses a proffered alcoholic beverage, but if a woman graciously declines a hard drink in favor of a soft one, it’s okay. God help the alcoholic man trying to stay sober in this country. I pushed my beer in front of Charlie and drank mineral water.

We rattled through more Hungarian countryside and rolled to a stop about an hour later. Horses and wagons were stationed alongside the track, waiting to take us to a ranch. I’d had my fill of mineral water. God, I was tired of drinking water. And I had to go to the bathroom. Ann Marie said she had to go, too, and we found a restroom at the end of a dining car.

“Go ahead, you first,” I told her.

As Ann Marie exited, she said, “I don’t know what you have to do, but I wouldn’t relieve myself of both things in this toilet. It goes straight outside.”

I shot her a puzzled look and went into the bathroom. As I sat down, I noticed daylight shining through the bottom of the toilet. I looked down and saw train tracks. I took a quick pee, wiped, and walked off the train. Charlie, Lawrence, and Ann Marie were standing a few feet away laughing.