Here's my favorite picture from the past month. I only look relaxed because I'd had a giant margarita with an extra shot, and Maura has her fake smile that she does whenever the camera gets in front of her, which usually causes her eyes to close and cracks me up.
One other fun fact is that outside of work, this was the first time in months I put on a clean t-shirt that was actually mine and not Jay's. As much as I hate to admit it, I've turned into a dumpy housewife who wears her husband's t-shirts and thinks it's OK.
I reflect on this a lot. As I was packing I was looking through photo albums and got caught up on a particular old picture of me, taken in DC the fall after I'd moved to Boston. I was visiting. I had on a red leather jacket, Diesel jeans and my favorite bright green weird hand-knit scarf. My hair was cute and short and highlighted, and the person who took it said of me, "Wow, she's got so much style. Dosen't she have so much style?" The picture captures that feeling exactly, but as I looked at it, it seemed like another person in another time. I guess, in a sense, it was. I mean honestly, I had a student come up to me once and remark how he'd never seen me in the same outfit twice all semester. At the time, this made my fucking day, no joke. But I guess, no, I KNOW, I can't get a better accessory than the lady above, right? Identity issues continue, clearly...
Another side effect of moving is that we've Googled real estate listings so much we killed our computer and had to get a new one. It just arrived today. And as I was transfering files, I found other old remnants of my past life. Stories I'd started, but never finished. My God how I used to love to write. And today, for an hour, I did. I'd started this story in October of 2004. What was I doing then? Well, I was with Jay, working somewhere I can't remember and I think, had just moved in with Jay in Taunton that spring. I may have been doing my triathlons, as this was the fall before I attempted my failed run of the Boston Marathon (and I have never set one foot in front of the other to run again). I can't even remember the exact details, but reading this old story, and picking up today and writing a few minutes more on it five years later felt so good, like I returned to something I had been missing but was always there. (Cliche, cliche, I know.) I actually remembered as I read this the ending I wanted it to have, unwritten all these years. I called it "seagulls." One day soon, I will finish writing it. Here we go on the so-far parts:
We were at the beach in Gloucester, Ethan and me, and Elise, the woman from the office. Not mine, not my office, but Ethan’s. She was, or she is, Canadian. This means nothing to me, but it means everything to Ethan. He started working at the office right after we moved here, right after we moved from Virginia to Boston, so he could work at this job at Fidelity and I could be, well, so I could live with him, because I’d just finished grad school in ophthalmology and thought it was the adult thing to do, move in with my boyfriend, even though we’d be conducting our relationship long distance, me in South Carolina in grad school him in Virginia gainfully unemployed waiting for a dream job to fall from the sky—anyway, all he could talk about was this nice woman from work, how she was Canadian, and how they might try to send her back because she can’t hold down a job because everyone is getting laid off and how she was living with this boyfriend but they just broke up and she still has to live with him because it’s so hard to find a place in the city and my God? Can you believe it? No, I said, no, I can’t believe it. So can she come to the beach with us today, I kind of already invited her and it would be hard to back out now? And naturally I was compelled by this Canadian so I rolled our towels tightly and sorted through our sunscreen bottles and said sure, fine, we’ll bring her along.
Not that I was thrilled, I mean really, come on, to Ethan, Canadian’s are exotic. And this one, according to Ethan, has even lived in South America and Australia and London and New York and I mean, can you believe it? No, I said, no, I can’t believe it. And then he leans into me like he’s gonna kiss me but instead slaps my butt with both of his hands and grabs tight and laughs with his head back, his neck long and knotty, and I think, this is the man I am choosing to live with. Maybe the Canadian can have him if she wants.
And that morning we went to the beach is when he said to me the strangest thing he’s ever said, and I didn’t know what to attribute it to, but this is what he said. He said,
I just want to warn you I might not be affectionate today, because I’ll be around people from the office.
People? I said. Only the Canadian will be there.
so we picked her up; she lived in the North End, in a small walk-up above Mike’s Pastries, and she was waiting out front of there with the nice little blue and white box tied with string they give you, and she had a whole bag made out of macramé that was filled with food, a bread loaf sticking out near her shoulder, apples settling on the bottom, like a fucking cornucopia or something. We pulled up next to her and Ethan is waving and I got out to let her in the back and Ethan says, “Honey, babe, you wanna let Elise sit in front?”
I looked at him and then looked at her and she smelled like pastries and I should have known then.
So we’re on the beach, and she’s got this spread around her, and we are three across on an old quilt, Elise in the middle, and I get bits and pieces, literally, of everything. My bagels don’t go over big; we are eating brie and grapes from her macramé bag. But she and Ethan each take two, maybe even three, bites for themselves before they even offer me one. I am watching this family to my left, a big family, not in quantity but size. The biggest family I’ve ever seen. And I watch them, the mother in a green amazon print tank suit and stained pink knit shorts, bunched up high in her inner thighs while she sits in her umbrella chair, her calves fat and touching, leaving her feet a full two feet apart buried in the sand. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, maybe they weren’t that far apart, but you could have fit a rubber ball in there, at least. Her ankles were this perplexing salmon color, and I wanted to tell her, don’t be stupid, put some sunscreen on those feet.
Ha! That's a far as I got. But I know how it all turns out and will write it. I will. It has to do with seagulls, eating sandwiches.
