Balloons

 

BALLOONS

First Prize Balwest Competition, Cornwall, UK 1993

Published Sirens, UK anthology 1994

ALL BUT ONE of the houses are shuttered, their owners having deserted their holiday homes on the Costa Brava for their year-round responsibilities in Paris, Madrid, London, wherever. Scrub pines bend in the same wind that sends waves crashing against the cliff.

Jean-Michel, his yellow slicker protecting him against the sleeting rain, struggles to shut his door on the one house still occupied. He must lean into the wind to cross the dirt path to the bar/restaurant.

Lightning flashes unnerve him. He has been afraid of it since childhood when he huddled in bed with his brother under the eaves of his family’s Paris apartment. They could see the lightning through the skylight while he waited for the hated crash he knew always followed the flash.

The wind grabs the oak door of the bar/restaurant and slams it against the wall, chipping the stucco. Evan, the only occupant in the large room with most of its table and chairs stacked against one wall, polished the bar with a rag and lemon oil. He watches Jean-Michel puddle his was to the bar.

“God! It smells like my mother-in-law’s.” Jean-Michel’s tone makes it no compliment.

“That’s why I do it when no one is around,” Evan says. He automatically pours an espresso. Brown foam coats the top. He puts one sugar cube, not two as he does for other clients next to a spoon and places it in front of Jean-Michel, who unwraps the cube.

Balzac is written on the paper. Jean-Michel wonders why it’s a French and not a Spanish name. He considers French anything superior to Spanish anything. He has the same patriotic and curious thought each time he unwraps a sugar cube which is every afternoon at 14:05. Putting the cube on a spoon, he dips it into the coffee. The liquid turns the sugar brown. Jean-Michel never talks during this ritual nor would Evan interrupt him.

“How much longer? Jean-Michel asks only after the cube disintegrates. They’ve talked over afternoon coffee, early evening drinks and Thursday night couscous from April to October for seven years.

“Two weeks. Almost done.”

Jean-Michel knows that Evan means its his wish to have everything perfect before he returns to Wales for the winter. Without saying more Jean Michel sips his coffee. From time to time, he checks his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. His white mane needs a trim before he leaves for New York.

He thinks of himself as rugged, a new self-image he has grown into. He laughed the first time Laurie, his lover called him “rugged.” Betty, his wife, says he aging. Forty-two is young to be completely white, he thinks. Even his chest hair peeking through his shirt is white.

Pouring more polish on his cloth, Evan attacks the other end of the bar. The two men are quiet for a few minutes. Finally, he throws down his rag, pours himself a coffee and carries it to the customer side of the bar.

Turning on their stools, they watch the storm out the window on  the opposite side of the bar. Evan has put long strips of masking tape on the glass to keep the window from shattering. He’d read that tape adjusts pressure in hurricanes, although this storm is not that fierce.

“You’ll have a devil of a time scrubbing ‘em off,” Jean-Michel says.

Evan doesn’t need to answer. Jean-Michel knows he doesn’t care.

“Heard from your wife?” Evan asks.

The phone of the far side of the room rings. It’s a buzz sounding more like someone giving a raspberry. As Evan picks it up, he hears a crackle. Either it’s the storm or an international call.

“Allo.” Pause. “We were just talking about you Betty.” Wrapping the cord around his hand and playing it out he reaches Jean-Michel and hands his buddy the receiver.

Although Jean-Michel would have preferred to avoid the call, Evan has made that impossible. “Hi Sweetheart. How’s New York weather?”

“Hot. Why the hell aren’t you here?” Betty never makes small talk. “You’re scheduled for a major interview Tuesday. With Artists Today.”

Betty is more than Jean-Michel’s wife. She is his manager and manages him in every sense of the word. Her maintenance of his career and home down to the smallest detail allows him the rigidities he loves.

Strangely, these rigidities disappear when he stands before a canvas. His eyes see the world in an array of color styles that flow through his hand and onto the canvas without any of the limitations he imposes on himself in his daily life. Her protection gives him the safety to run free without the danger like a wild animal on a well-fed preserve.

If their marriage wasn’t made in heaven, it wasn’t made in hell either.

He had amazed Evan when Laurie had moved in shortly after Betty had left for her native New York City to set up her husband’s show. In a way Jean-Michel was even more amazed than Evan. His orderly lifestyle had no room for affairs.

He’d met her when she was looking at a blue and yellow vase in a village shop window. He had walked by on his way to buy bread, something that Betty normally took care of. He’d been discontent interrupting his work for something as mundane as bread buying, but he also knew when he warmed the meal that his wife had labelled “September 5^th dinner” he would want bread with it. The colors of the vase had caught his eye also.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Laurie had asked in one of the worse Spanish accents he’d heard in a long time. They’d started chatting, first in Spanish, than in French and finally in English. Instead of buying bread, he’d bought her dinner. By the end of the evening they weren’t drunk, just a little buzzed. Neither remembers suggesting going to bed. Maybe it was an assumption, not a decision.

Resting in bed afterward, she told him how she was on sabbatical from Boston University. She didn’t tell him she was using the year to recover from her divorce. She did say that for one year, she was letting her mood of the moment rule all her actions.

Laurie was the first woman he had slept with since his wedding. His passions were for his painting not sex. She brought out a new passion and he found himself wanting more and still more.

What he doesn’t know is how she feels about him. If he’d ask, she would have told him. Sometimes she likes him. Mostly she is amused at his insistence that everything be just so.

They’d had one fight. He insisted the forks on the dinner table be prong down when she’d placed them prongs up. Only when she said, she would leave did he stop picking at her to do things exactly as Betty did. Her presence in his bed was more important than fork prongs, although he flipped his when she wasn’t looking.

As Jean-Michel talks with his wife, Laurie, her sensualness and fork prongs are banished from his mind. Betty’s anger unsettles him worse than the storm. “Now Sweetheart, have I ever missed an important show?

He whines. She orders. That’s their communication style, woven deep into the cloth of their marriage.

“Yes.” The words cackle or maybe it is just the bad line. “Get you ass over here. It’s been two years since you marketed yourself in New York.”

“I feel like a can of peas.” For a moment he wonders why he married a hard-driving American businesswoman as he pictures himself in quantity on a grocery shelf. His miniature clones paint at tiny canvases with even tinier brushes.

Without Betty, he would still be hawking his work to tourists near Sacre Coeur in Paris instead of living in financial security. He doesn’t know how much money the couple has. He doesn’t care. It’s part of the freedom within his chosen cage.

The door flies open as Laurie blows in: her hair is slicked to her head and her cheeks are flushed. She has taken a long walk.

When they’d made love earlier, she told him how storms and high tides produce primordial waves in her inner being. After lunch she’d gone for a long walk to communicate with the weather and the sea.

Evan puts his finger to his lips before she can speak. She absorbs the situation as water drips off her slicker.

Jean-Michel nods his head as he listens to his wife. He rolls his eyes.

Evan pats him on the back, then pours Laurie a coffee which he carries to the table nearest the window. He sits next to her, both their backs to Jean-Michel as they watch the storm.

Occasionally, Jean-Michael interrupts with a “but…” the only word he can say before Betty renews her rampage.

“Let me speak,” he finally barks. His tone works. Betty is silent. “Okay, I’ll catch the damned flight on Monday. From Barcelona. I’ll be there for the fucking interview.” He is positive that Laurie is trying not listen. “Me too” he says to his wife’s parting, “I love you.”

Years of bartending have taught Evan when to be invisible. He disappears into the storeroom.

After Jean-Michel hangs up, he watches Laurie watching the storm. Her back is to him. He makes himself another espresso, quickly drops a sugar cube into it. He walks across the room and places his cup next to hers. The table is almost covered with cups.

“Look at the storm,” she says.

Ignoring her words, he turns her head toward him. He’s not sure if there are tears on her face. He wants to think that she cares enough to cry a little, but not too much. “Laurie?”

“We both new it was temporary. Even if you were free, I doubt I could stand you long term…unless we spent the entire time in bed.” She smiles, but her lips stay closed.

He blushes.

 

Monday, they ride to Barcelona. He offers her the use of his car. “Leave it before the end of the month.”

“No, I’m supposed to walk, but gracias, merci, thank you.”

“You’re riding now.”

“Maybe they won’t give me my shell.” She refers to the pilgrim’s symbol. “But how will they know. I can’t imagine a monk checking my bum for upholstery marks.”

He never is quite sure when she is joking. Betty never jokes.

They drive the autoroute, stopping for tolls, saying little. Last night they spent almost the entire night making love. Jean-Michel is surprised by his stamina. Maybe he is more rugged than old.

“Will I see you again?” he asks. Part of him wants to keep her as a spare in case something happens to Betty. He doesn’t tell Laurie, which he thinks is wise.

“I doubt if I’ll be back. You probably won’t ever be in Boston.”

“Will you give me your address?”

“There’s the Barcelona exit.”

He brakes in time and manoeuvres the car through the toll booth. The national road runs through fields once filled with sun flowers. An army of stalks remain standing at attention having given their seeds for oil.

The country turns into a city of yellow and white stucco building highlighted by black iron railings. When a rainbow of color catches his eyes, he slams on the brakes and jumps out. Horns honk as he weaves between cars.

He buys a bunch of helium-filled balloons. Getting them into the car takes patience. They want to fly out the doors and windows. They fill the back seat and bounce into the front. Laurie keeps pushing them back so Jean-Michael can see the road.

“The airport is the other way,” she says.

“I’ll still make my plane.” He looks for a dirt road that he’d passed about twenty minutes before. He finds it. Several horses stop grazing to watch the car pull up to their fence.

“Get out,” he tells her. She does as he struggles to free the balloons from the car. He kisses her nose and lets a red balloon go. “I wish you happiness,” he says. He hands her a blue balloon.

She understands and lets it go. “And I wish for yours.”

Soon the sky is filled with the color of their wishes. When the last balloon flies away, they hug.

“Thank you,” he says not knowing way.

They rush to the airport. At a red light, Laurie opens the door. “I hate long goodbyes, I’m outta here.” She grabs her backpack and blows him a kiss.

He wants to watch her, but the light changes. Instead, he sees himself in the mirror. He feels old more than rugged.

10 ans déjà

 

The French often do 10 ans déjà programs...10 years already for when someone dies to mark the anniversary of their death.

I had a t0 years already moment at the final street ball of the season in Argelès. But it had nothing to do with death.

For the 30+ years I've been coming to Argelès-sur-mer the summer street dances have been part of my life in July and August. All ages and all abilities dance to all kinds of music.

It's sitting with friends, sipping wine and even dancing a bit.

My 10 years moment was when Rick and I were dancing. He pointed it out it was 10 years already. I had used the dance to show him to my friends, who were used to my I want to be single for the rest of my life stance. After all it had worked well for me for 41 years.

"How will they know we are together?" he'd asked earlier in the day.

"When I hold your hand."

That night a decade ago I had no idea where our relationship was going. We were thinking that when he traveled for work, he might be able to swing by either Argèles or Geneva for a few days. 

I knew how delightful our conversations were. Although we'd met many decades before, we'd lost track of each other. I had been astonished to get an e-mail telling me he was in Geneva and would I like a cup of coffee. Luckily I was and we ended up having a fondue and checking up on years of activities.  Thus, I'd invited him to France to see my Argelès Nest and to finish catching up.

The days flew by. And when he left, he had decided to move whether I wanted him to or not. I did want him to.

Little did we know then all we would go through dealing with visas, cancer, sharing a business, finding places to live besides the daily making meals, changing sheets--all the things that make life a life. The other parts of our lives together might be running out to see the sunset over the mountains, discovering Scotland, holding hands as we walked down the street and doing the small things that people who love each other do.

As we danced around the square, his arms around me felt as good or maybe even better than they had 10 years before. We've settled into a loving couple, each trying to help the other find what they want. We put up with each other's idiosyncrasies, mostly amusing and every now and then annoying.  

The music stopped and we walked back to our table. Only one of the couples who had been there so long ago were there. We reminisced a bit. 6

I am grateful for the last ten years and for finding my soul mate. 

A miracle

  

I held back the tears of joy replacing them with a smile as he walked into the rehab cafeteria.

Walked.

Nine months before he was in a coma from a horrendous car accident.

He will leave rehab but continue with daily physio as an out patient.

He is special to me, my wantabe brother.

I met him 32 years ago when we shared the company flat. It started a friendship full of backgammon games, trips to Garmish, Paris, Geneva, Payerne, Boston and Argelès where he married the girl next door. He has stayed with me in all those places depending on his work assignments.

I was one of his marriage witnesses. He performed the commitment ceremony for Rick and me. We jokingly call him Father.

We've shared music, concerts, meals, adventures, conversations on every topic imaginable. We've shared dreams and frustrations. When we lived together we would go shopping in France in the morning, turn down a road that looked interesting and not get home until nightfall.

Sometimes weeks would go by and we would have no contact. Other times it was daily or weekly.

When Rick came home before Christmas and told me he's seen the wife who talked about him being in a coma. He'd been on his way to pick up the keys of my studio that he sometimes used as his office. I wondered why he never arrived. I never imagined the accident, the airlift, the intensive care.

Sleepless nights, even more than usual, followed wondering if he would make it. Would I lose this much loved friend? If he lived what would be his condition?

He lived and he was transferred to a beautiful rehab overlooking the Med.

Each visit he progressed a bit more -- out of sheer determination. It was a cause for celebration when he set up in bed, moved to a wheel chair, walked with crutches, a crutch and then without.

He leaves rehab this week but he has months of physio on an out patient still repairing the damage done.

I wish I could say I was proud of him, but he did it himself. All I could do was cheer him on with visits, with emails, with youtubes.

"One day at a time," he would tell me. 

I laughed when he told me how he had started a paper airplane game in the cafeteria with other patients.

My friend is a walking, talking medical miracle.

 

Student loans

 

People are screaming because of student loan forgiveness. They don't want to pay for someone else. 

Never mind all the subsidies and weapons their tax dollars pay for.

Never mind the tax breaks given prosperous companies. Too many of the breaks went to stock buy backs and higher CEO salaries of companies that could have paid people more and lowered not raised their prices and still come out making lots of money. That might even have slowed inflation.

No one is mentioning that in the non U.S. industrialized world higher education can be free or at a low cost. Some countries have paid students to go to school, while others still subsidize rent and books. These young people come out of uni ready to work, to contribute to society and the tax base without punishing debts.

The countries doing this will have an advantage over the United States. Americans who can't afford university will not be put into jobs that does live up to their full potential.

I am NOT putting down non-university degree requirement jobs. Many of the same countries that support an educated populace have apprentice programs that produce electricians, plumbers, personal assistants, sales people, etc.. They are equally valued members of the work force.

Think, if your toilet is stopped up what would you prefer: a plumber or an economist? We need every skilled person possible from flipping hamburgers to operating on a tumor.

The cost of university has become absurd, especially for those institutions that have large endowments. These universities also have relied more on adjunct professors whose salaries are much smaller than tenured professors. High level administrators seem not to have suffered.

Then there are those that say, "I paid my loan, why should others get a free lunch?" There's also saying two wrongs don't make a right. Think: You were abused as a child by your father. The girl next door is being abuse by her father. Under the why should I do anything to help someone else philosophy, you would shrug your shoulder and ignore her cries at night.

And there are those loans where the interest charges mean that a person pays the loan back not once but several times over.

There was a point when I worked for a credit union and we believed that if a person reneged on a student loan, they should be denied a loan. At that period interest rates were normal and money paid back went to other student loans. That is no longer the case. It was people helping people.

The system is broken. The fact that Americans carry about $105 trillion in student debt certainly does not benefit the American economy. Other countries don't have that problem. Again the U.S. is exceptional, but in a very bad way.

3+1

They say things happen in threes. Usually "they" are those mysterious people who spout folk wisdom.

Yesterday was when we were about to live the things come in threes scenario with three problems.

No. 1: I heard a crash while I was still in bed.

There was a plaque that we had resting on the floor waiting to be hung. A local craftsman had created a scene with a horse in a stable. I suppose the good news is that we can cross the hanging off our to-do list.

 No. 2: Our washing machine comes with a variety of time settings most at three hours minutes or more. There is one alternative of an hour. I usually chose the one hour setting. It was no longer a choice. No matter what I did, the settings were in the three-hour range. My clothes aren't that dirty. Rick went to search for the manual. Spoiler alert: Today, it was back to normal before he had a chance to try his handyman talents. I suspect a gremlin living inside.

 No. 3: To turn on our TV we have three remotes with various combinations of buttons and a rain dance or two to get what we are trying to watch. It gives us a choice of thousands, okay maybe hundreds, of choices from all over the world. In reality we watch maybe five or six, mostly national and international news, golf and Netflix. One of the boxes would not work. Miscellaneous combinations were tried. Before I could get out the incense, candles and book of chants, Rick was able to get it working. I did involve us trying a pile of batteries and finally buying new ones.

Okay, we joked, there's our three things going wrong.

That night we went to the last street ball of the summer season. We took Sherlock, who did not settle down. Rick decided to walk the pup him home. The square where the ball was held was only a block away. He was gone longer than I thought.

No. 4:"Good thing I went home," he said when he came back. Seems a fuse had been blown. Our flat is in a 400-year-old building and when the building was turned into two apartments, totally separating the electricity became too challenging. Every now and then is an overlapping problem with the fuses. Once discovered which fuse was responsible, upstairs and downstairs had light.

I wish I could find out who the "they" are who say things come in threes. I would tell them to up it to four. Maybe another example of inflation.

S/he'd be 55 now

 1967

Elizabethan Drama Class

 

The professor in the course was the most demanding I've ever had. It was the third course I took with him, not because I'm masochistic, but because his lectures were fascinating.

Although it was Elizabethan drama we read 30+ Greek and Roman plays as "scanty information" and any fragments to complete plays that were written between the Greek and Romans and what appeared on the Elizabethan stage. We also read most of the plays that were on stage during that time period.

Did I mention the prof was a bit of a sadist in the work he buried us with. He was also so far in the closet it would take an archeological team to dig him out. He was my advisor for the yearbook of which I was editor. I respected his knowledge, his teaching ability, the way he gave a clear answer to any question, although I wouldn't go so far as to say I liked him.

It was my senior year and I was physically exhausted from working almost full time in a dry cleaner, a full course load and keeping as near to perfect home as possible for my now ex husband. This was pre-Betty Friedan. Had it been after Betty, I would have done things differently.

The prof was discussing the final. "There will be no makeups. If you miss it, you will get an F." His eyes circled the room and landed on the other Donna in class, who barely fit behind her desk.

"I would make an exception for you, if you're in labor during the exam. Just bring the baby to my office as proof."

I have no idea why I thought of that today. I can still see Donna with her long hair and huge belly. She wasn't at graduation, although we heard she had graduated. I never followed up. We weren't not friends, but not not friends either, just two women fighting complications in our lives to get our degrees.

I don't know if she had a son and daughter, but the child would be 55 today if all went well, 23 years older than his/her mother was when she sat in the Elizabethan drama class. 

My writer's imagination can conjure up all sorts of stories about what happened next that could be worked into short stories. Instead, I think I'll just write this blog.

 

 

 

The art of café sitting

 

I think I've developed the art of café sitting to an art form.

Stuttgart, Germany

My first was in the 1960s in Stuttgart where my husband was in an Army band. Another army wife, a German girl and I had been to the art museum. She suggested we stop at this café across from the new Schloss. 

We ordered coffee and a four fruit tarte fierfruchtetorte. I savored each mouthful because the cost represented my entire disposable income for the month. At different times over the years I've returned to that café, taken out the memory of that day and smiled that the torte and coffee no longer represented a major part of my income.

Paris, France

I've been lucky to spend much time in Paris, most of it spent at two different friends' homes. It left me time to do a Hemmingway-Fitzgerald type of café sit. One Parisian explained the high price of Paris coffee as a rental price for the table. Still there is something about sitting there in all seasons (they have wonderful heaters and some even provide blankets). One can watch the locals stream by. I almost expect some film director to yell "CUT" at any moment.

A favorite memory is of a café near Shakespeare's Sister bookstore on a cold, rainy day. A girl friend and I had been to an exhibition of fashion through the ages and we ducked into the café for hot chocolate, which was more chocolatey than those packets served with hot milk in many places.

Geneva, Switzerland

Auer café is tiny and probably hasn't been redecorated in decades, not that it should be. It too has that exceptional hot chocolate. When my daughter lived with me we used to play gin rummy. Loser threw in 10 centimes. We saved up for two hot chocolates, although we could have afforded to go anytime. Saving made it more special. There are mirrors on the wall. I would sometimes go in and read the paper. It was in that café I learned that Arafat had died in a Paris hospital from reading the Tribune de Genève. That day I was drinking tea.

 Argelès-sur-mer

There are several cafés that we stop at for tea, hot chocolate, coffee or wine. Our favorite, especially in the summer, is l'Hostalet. Much like a Brit goes to a pub, we will drift down there many times during the week. 

Sometimes there's entertainment.

Sometimes we find friends.

Sometimes we chat with strangers making new friends.

Sometimes it is just nice to greet the owners and staff.

Lately the owner's pup has been playing with a friend's pup. Their antics leave us giggling. I wish Sherlock would join in, but he's content to sit on Rick's lap watching, above it all.

What's it all for?

• A café sit is for
• Relaxation
• Reading
• Writing (no rithmetic)
• Watching the world
• Chatting with friends
• Making new friends
  
• Enjoying beverages 
• Nibbling on something good
• All of the above.
  

Frissons of Joy

  

Any one who knows me, knows I'm neither a shopper or materialistic. However, that doesn't mean I don't like beautiful things. There are things I own that give me great pleasure for myriad reasons.

Here's three.

 I came across this piece of furniture on the sidewalk of an antique store. I loved the color and the design. I also LOVED the fact it wasn't mass produced. I know nothing about the person that painted it, but I imagine him/her (gender depends on the day) mixing his/her paints. I can almost taste the fruit.

If I walk by it 20 times a day I get a frisson of joy at least half of the time. 

I discovered this hand-carved, hand-made desk in a depot-vente. The man who made it lives a village away, but we never did find out his name. Again, I imagine him with tools. I can almost imagine the smell of wood. Sometimes I like to imagine the conversation the figures are having. 

At one point I thought of painting it in realistic colors, but decided that would ruin it. 

There is a place in Elne where we found most of our furniture. Much of it was used and restored. Not only did we save money, it was giving people work. 

Rick spied this coffee table. The tiles remind me of a restaurant in the Alps where I ate several times. They had a wonderful wild herb salad, fondue and an atmosphere one would imagine the Alps to have.

When we eat on the table, there's another frisson of joy when we clear a dish or cup and see the stream, a cow, the pines.

I love my home. I love being at home. My treasures may not be expensive. They definitely have NO BRANDS no STATUS value. What they have is the ability to make me feel totally at home, totally happy. 

It helps my goal of being content with the simple and reveling for all the good things in my life.