The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance: A Memoir (14 page)

“
It’s siesta! Everything’s shut down.” I held my hand to my head.
“
I’m going to pass out
.”
Truthfully, I don’t think I was in any danger of passing out. I was just a little hungry. But I decided to play up my symptoms.

Once again, the family focus shifted from “sightseeing” to “fulfilling Elna’s needs.” We started roaming the streets looking for food. It was pointless; not a single store was open. To make matters worse, I was acting the part so convincingly that I started to believe it. Every corner we turned caused my blood sugar to drop lower and lower. Soon I was twenty paces behind the group.

I was hoping they’d stop and wait for me. On the contrary, all six of them turned a corner and disappeared. I waited, my breath held, for someone to realize and come racing back. No one did.

Six people, six chances to glance back, and no one did.
I could drop off the face of the earth and they’ d never even miss me!
It was then that I got the idea to fake pass out. That way when they found me, they’d feel really really bad. I walked over to an abandoned building, dusted off the stoop, sat facing forward, and dropped to the side.

They’ ll come running,
I imagined.
They’ll shake me, I’ll open my eyes and weakly say, “I don’t know what happened, I felt faint and then it all went black . . .”
Brilliant. After Paul Stowe, I should know better than to act anywhere but onstage. But my mistakes rarely lead to learning.

I waited in this position for at least fifteen minutes. Occasionally I’d open my eyes and peer down the street. Each time I expected to see my family, each time the street was empty. It was depressing.
My family left me, no money, no passport, on a bombed-out street in the middle of nowhere.
Just then, I heard a noise. I shut my eyes tightly and waited for whoever it was to come running.

Only, they didn’t.
Scrape, scrape, scrape
. I heard slow, dragging steps.
Scrape, scrape, scrape
. The footsteps stopped a few feet from where I was lying. I could feel someone watching me.
They probably think I’m faking it,
I thought.
Well, I’ll show them.
I let my eyelids flicker weakly and I was about to limply hold my hand to my head, when my eyes came into focus. Standing directly above me, one arm outstretched, was an emaciated woman wrapped in rags. I screamed. She stumbled backward.

“I’m sorry.” I sat up frantically. “I thought you were . . .”

She stretched out her arm palm facing up and said something to me in another language.

“Oh.” I reached into my pocket. “I’m so sorry, I don’t have any money.”

She moved her palm closer to my face, and shook it. This time she spoke rapidly, almost yelling.

I mimed that my pockets were empty and said, “Nothing.”

She stopped speaking and looked at me. Her expression was neither angry nor kind.
You have so much,
it said.
Why aren’t you helping me?
With that, she turned around and walked up the street.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
One of her legs was dragging behind, her shoulders hunched as though with osteoporosis. While her skin was leathery from sun damage, I could tell we were about the same age.

You’re hungry because you’re on a diet,
I thought.
She’s hungry because she’s starving.
I considered all the food I’d been giving up. The three spoonfuls of yogurt I dumped down the drain each morning to save on calories. Or the trick I use at restaurants: If you don’t want to overindulge, take two-thirds of your meal and cover it in salt.

You’re an asshole.
I felt genuinely bad, upset, disappointed with myself. But at the same time, the whole encounter pissed me off.
Okay, God, I get it.
I thought,
Thanks for laying it on real thick. Can’t I just wallow in self-pity for a few minutes? No. Cue the emaciated Turk who is actually starving. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.

Just then, I heard someone coming. I turned; it was my brother.
Crap.
It was too late to get back into my position. So instead, I put my elbows on my knees and rested my head in my hands.

“We found a restaurant,” he said as he approached me.

“Huh?” I looked up weakly.

“Are you okay?”

“I felt really dizzy,” I answered, “so I put my head down. I think I passed out.”

It wasn’t as believable now that I was awake. Plus my family’s used to my antics. Britain waited for me to finish. “Let’s go,” he said.

I stood up, exaggerating my frailty. Taking a few steps, I decided to use the encounter with the beggar woman to my advantage, and I mimicked her.

“Can you please walk like a normal person?” my brother said.

“I’m in pain!” I yelled.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
A few blocks later, this faux-cripple walk was starting to wear me out, so I stopped it. I tried to be subtle, but it looked kind of like the ending to
The Usual Suspects
. And while Britain didn’t say anything, I could tell he noticed.

“This is it.” Britain stopped in front of a fluorescent sign: AMERICA FRY CHICKEN
.
“It’s just like KFC,” he said.

“Great,” I muttered, “because the best thing for weight loss is deep-fried chicken, gravy, and biscuits.”

We walked inside. My family was sitting around a circular table, waiting for me. A single plate of food was set in front of an empty seat. My mom handed me a fork. I sat down. Fried chicken, saffron rice dripping in an orange-colored oil, and French fries. I picked at the chicken, searching for the white meat. Then I took my napkin and pressed it on the rice.

“
Good job
,”
my father said.

I stopped midbite. According to him, he meant:
Good job trying to stick to your diet even though you’re starving.

But that’s not what I heard. What I heard was:
Good job, you throw a fit, the world stops, and you get whatever you want.

For the third time in a row, I lost it. Pushing the plate of fried food across the table, I yelled, “If you listened to me this would have never happened! No one listens to me! You just want me to be the same, but I’ve matured. I’m a grown-up now and when
I say I eat at one, I eat at one
!
”

I’ve never seen my dad look more upset. He started to say something, but held his tongue and walked out of the restaurant. The rest of my family sat in silence.

“Elna”—my mother took the plate of food and moved it back in front of me—“we are not leaving this restaurant until you eat every single thing on this plate.”

“Mom,” I whined, “it’s unhealthy.”

“I don’t care. Eat it.
All of it.”

It took a while. I used over fifty napkins, one for each French fry. But as soon as I finished, I felt better. It was like I’d just come out of a coma or something. I looked up. Everyone was there—my mother, my sisters, and my brother.

“Is there anything fun to do in this town?” I asked brightly.

They collectively clenched their teeth.

“Hey.” I looked around. “Where’d Dad go?”

They could’ve killed me right then and there.

 

By the last day of our trip everyone had had enough, except for my mother. She woke us up early and announced that instead of just hanging out by the hotel pool, we’d spend the day driving to Aphrodite’s Rock, a rock on the Mediterranean Sea that was shaped like a Goddess. Reluctantly, we crammed into the rental van and drove toward the sea. Only instead of leading us to Aphrodite’s Rock, my mother, who was navigating, accidentally followed the wrong signs. By the time she realized her mistake we were two hours into the journey.

“Shoot.” She smacked her head. “We’re going to
Adonis’s Bath
, not Aphrodite’s Rock.”

“What’s Adonis’s Bath?” my dad asked.

“
I don’t know
.” She opened
Rick Steves’ Guide to Cyprus
and started flipping through it. “It’s not in here.”

“It has to be in there.”

“Well, it isn’t.”

“Let me see.” He pulled the guidebook away from her.

“It’s not in here,” he concluded a minute later.

“I know.” My mother smirked. “But we’re almost there, so we might as well go.”

“I didn’t want to go out in the first place,” my father said.

“We’re going there.”
When my mother makes up her mind, there’s no discussion.

We headed up the mountain—full speed. Everyone was silent. They say one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. Well, one bad Elna can spoil the whole family. And over the course of our trip, tension had built up among everyone. Julia was mad at Jill because she stole her earrings, Tina was mad at my mom for saying she was willfully unmarried, and my father, who was paying for the trip, was annoyed by his entire ungrateful family.

“The origin of the word
Adonis
may not actually be Greek.” Tina tried to clear the air by sharing a meaningless fact. “
Adonis
is often associated with a woman’s need to express unbridled emotion.”

I caught my brother and father exchanging looks in the rearview mirror.
Women: expressing unbridled emotion? Impossible.

“We’re supposed to turn soon.” My mother interrupted Tina’s lecture.

“Where?” my dad said. We were driving alongside a cliff and there was clearly nowhere to turn.

“
I don’t know
.”

“Damn it, Christine.” He yanked the steering wheel to the right.

“
Gary, NO!”
she shouted.

From the back of the car, all we could see was the sky and the edge of a cliff. From the driver’s seat my father could see a sign that said
Adonis’s Bath,
a steep drop off, and a dirt road. We didn’t know this. Instead, we collectively thought
Dad has finally had enough and he’s driving us off of a cliff.

“
Don’t do it!”
we screamed at the top of our lungs.

We landed on the dirt road a second later, our hearts beating fast, each of us genuinely relieved to be alive. Both my parents started laughing.
They thought we were going to kill them.

It felt so good to scream that, even though we were safe, we kept doing it for fun. This only encouraged my father. He whipped around corners, and zoomed past goats until we reached the mystery destination, Adonis’s Bath. It was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. Two waterfalls dropped from a cave into a fresh pool of water where hundreds of pink flowers were floating. There was a willow tree with a rope swing, a hammock, and rocks covered with bright green moss and ivy.

We spent the rest of the day playing in the water. Britain and my father dove off the highest waterfall into the pool. My mom, Tina, and Jill made floral wreaths, Julia sat in the willow tree, and I—I stopped taking myself so seriously and had fun. The funny one, the pretty one, it didn’t matter, I could be anything. Nothing was missing, I hadn’t left anything behind, I was still me.

On our way back to the minivan, we passed the owner of the bath.

“You should really put this in the guidebooks,” my dad told him. “It’s the highlight of our trip.”

“You can’t put paradise in a tour book.” He shook his head. “You have to discover it.”

 

We flew back to London the following day. When we got home, my brother, with total purpose in his eyes, took out a Sharpie and walked downstairs. In our den we have a white leather couch called the “Sharpie couch.” The couch was supposed to go to the dump years ago, but before we threw it away, we took Sharpies and decorated it. My dad liked it so much he decided to keep it. Now, when we think of good one-liners or inside jokes we write them on the couch in Sharpie.

TOP THREE THINGS NEVER TO SAY TO ELNA,
Britain wrote in the center of the couch:

The Blue Slip

In spite of the fact that I’m religious, there’s a huge part of me that wants to be considered sexy. But if you’re not selling sex, you really shouldn’t advertise, so I don’t. To keep things safe, I present myself as cute. I own tights in every color and, for most of my adult life, I’ve worn my hair in a bob.

But one day, shortly after losing weight, I was walking through the East Village when I happened upon a lingerie store. I’d never owned lingerie before.
Why not?
I thought, walking in.

“Our thongs are half off today,” one of the women behind the register said. Her smile seemed creepy until I realized she meant,
We’re having a sale.

I walked over to a rack of matching bras and panties and started rifling through the options. Mormons aren’t big on lingerie. As far as I know my mother doesn’t own any: She wears garments. Eventually I will, too. When I get married I’ll go into the Mormon temple and make a further commitment to my religion. I don’t know what the ceremony entails, because it’s sacred and no one talks about it. All I know is afterward I have to wear special underwear called garments. People who aren’t Mormon make a big deal about it and sometimes they ask questions like, “Do you wear magic underwear?”

Garments don’t have magical powers; at least I don’t think they do. Basically they’re a set of long boxer briefs and a camisole top. You can’t wear sexy clothes and expect them to cover your garments, which is why I’m not looking forward to the transition. But they’re supposed to remind me that my body is sacred, like a temple, and that I should dress modestly. I expect to own them one day. In the meantime, I’ll wear miniskirts as often as I can.

Now, back to the lingerie store. I was moving from bra-and-panty sets over to a rack of vintage lingerie, when I stopped. In front of me was a slip so mesmerizing that it looked as if it was hanging from an invisible Lauren Bacall. It was literally the sexiest item of clothing I’d ever seen: dark navy blue, with thin straps, a see-through lace top, a silk body, and a slit up the leg. I read the price tag, “Vintage 1940s,” and imagined a whole history: It once belonged to a woman, possibly a World War II spy, possibly a bored housewife in thigh-high stockings and brilliant red lipstick.