Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories Read online

  “There must be something more,” she would think as she handed the tickets and brochures and passport applications to the clients. “There must be somewhere else, somewhere better, somewhere more exciting and full of life” as she accepted payments for flights and cruises and train excursions.

  And there was—but not for Alice.

  Now, the closest she came to traveling to faraway lands was when she slipped away and opened the pages of the travel guides and atlases waiting patiently in her room. Each day, she ate just a little, husbanding the pages against the time when there would be nothing left to consume. But her escape was temporary and her return inevitable, unlike her father who had escaped forever, although he had to die to do it.

  Alice had found him sitting in his easy chair, the cushions so broken down that the chair was anything but easy. His beer had spilled across his lap, soaking into the faded work pants he wore every day although he didn’t work, didn’t do anything but twist off the caps on the bottles of malt that served as the major portion of his nourishment.

  The doctor said it had been a massive heart attack and offered his reassurance that her father had gone peacefully, but Alice didn’t need a medical pronouncement to tell her that. How could death be anything other than peaceful when it brought a release from a life that was hardly living at all?

  Later that night, she had eaten an entire chapter on the foods of Persia, dining on thick creamy yoghurt spiced with onions and cucumber, barbecued chicken marinated in an aromatic mix of olive oil, tomatoes and golden saffron, followed by desser miveh—a heady mix of oranges, apples, bananas, dates and figs bathed in honey-sweet orange juice. Real food never tasted as good.

  “Here’s your juice.” Alice handed her mother the small glass of orange juice, not fresh-squeezed but some pasteurized, reconstituted, bastardized version of the beverage. “I’ll be making dinner in an hour: boiled chicken and potatoes and parsnips,” but the only response she received was a sniff as her mother turned up the volume on the soaps.

  Alice’s mother watched every episode, even going so far as scheduling her doctor visits so all she’d miss would be the morning game shows—“What do I care what those stupid people get anyway!” Besides, she distrusted the game shows—too much happiness when the contestants won their cars or boats or brand-new homes—and never watched the news because she didn’t care what was happening in the world, only what was happening to her.

  Alice slipped from the room, like a ghost in search of a more hospitable location to haunt, and debated what to do next. Should she wash yet another load of clothes from the ever-growing pile, peel the potatoes (first carefully digging out the eyes that dotted the dirty brown surface), scrub the brown and beige kitchen floor that, no matter how many times she washed it, never looked clean?

  Or should she cruise the salty Mediterranean where she could watch the monk seal twist and turn in the blue waters, flashing first its soft brown back and then its spotted, creamy belly? Climb the High Atlas to her Moroccan mountain retreat surrounded by fragrant wildflowers and sturdy walnut groves, the crystal blue sky a counterpoint to the luxuriant green and brown vegetation?

  Or should she journey to Israel to bow her head before Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, weeping over the hardships of her own life until her eyes ran dry? No, never the last—her trips must be all pleasure, all joy, an escape from the life she lived, not a continuation of it.

  The floor could wait, and if she diced the potatoes small enough they would reach that mushy stage in time for dinner even if she started them later in the afternoon. Wash clothes then, and, while the washer was running, she might have just enough time for a camel ride across the Sahara, the wool of her long white burnous shielding her from the sand and sun. She would race across the desert until she reached the tent of the desert chieftain. There they would rest together on soft pillows, dining on fruits and nuts while the spicy wine caressed their tongues, a tantalizing promise of pleasures to come.

  Which book to choose? Guide to the Sahara? North African Journeys? In the Footsteps of Desert Kings?

  So many books on the small bookcase, acquired through the years from flea markets or taken from the small community library and never returned. Notices were sent when the books were a month, two months, three months overdue, but Alice kept writing “Moved—left no forwarding address” on the envelopes until finally they stopped.

  And it wasn’t a lie—not really. When she opened the books to consume their contents—paragraph by paragraph, line by line—she had moved, had left the life she hated and had gone to a place where no one could find her. No one except her mother, that is. Her voice was strong enough to transcend time and space, powerful enough to pull Alice back to this house.

  Alice wanted to go there—be there—she wanted to go anywhere other than where she was right now, at this moment, in her life. But she was trapped within these walls just as the words were trapped between the covers of the books.

  But little by little, Alice was noticing gaps on the shelves where books once had to fight for space. The more she read—the more she consumed—the thinner they became. What would she do when the pages were gone? How would she get away then? Alice didn’t know, couldn’t conceive of a time when she would open the books to find nothing left but empty bindings and the remains of torn out sheets.

  Don’t think about it now, she told herself, choosing the Tales of Journeys to Faraway Places. Focus on the feel of the blanket, the jolting rhythm of the camel’s gait, the promise of sensual pleasures to come. Don’t be here, stay here. Like Alice in Wonderland, she must take one bite and then another, not to be smaller but to leave this place, quickly, quickly . . .

  “Alice! Where are you? Get down here right now and help me!”

  Alice chewed a little faster, not waiting for the pieces to turn to soft mush in her mouth but swallowing them with a great convulsive gulp. But it wasn’t working. There was no camel ride, no desert sand, no dark-eyed chieftain. Her mother’s voice—that cold, almost tangible thing—stood between her and the bright hot land.

  Somewhere else, then—and flipping the pages, she came to Greece—the land of gods and goddesses, of temples erected to worship the divine yet capricious beings who held their subjects in the palm of their hands. Tearing a half-sheet section, she swallowed it quickly, and could very nearly taste the dry piney-flavored retsina that filled her glass. It was late afternoon, and almost, almost, she could smell the heady mix of thyme and lemons in the air. Washed through with that peculiar brilliant hot light that existed only in Greece, Alice felt as white and dry as the plastered homes dotting the hillside above the Aegean Sea, as the bones lying entombed in a Greek nekrotafeio.

  As she tore off another piece, the cry came again: “Alice! I spilled the juice! Get down here and clean it up and bring me more!”

  The more she chewed, the farther away the voice became, but when she swallowed—when her mouth was empty of the places of escape—the distance disappeared.

  “Alice! I need to go to the bathroom right now! If you make me wait, there’ll be a mess and you’ll have to clean it. Get down here right now, dammit!”

  Where had the taverna gone? What had happened to the sun, the blue water? She was back again—in the here, in this house—too soon, far too soon.

  “I need my medicine! Alice! I need it now!”

  She must try again—and Alice flipped the faded pages until she came to her favorite section. So romantic, so mysterious—Cairo, Alexandria, Mozambique, Tangiers—holding the promise of heat and life. If she could only stay there long enough, consume enough to fill all those empty places inside. . . .

  She tore out the paragraph on Morocco: “. . . in the open-air markets, you will find an incredible array of jewelry, leather and brass, with shopkeepers eager to haggle over prices . . .”—and slipped it between her teeth, letting it rest gently on her tongue. And she could almost feel the heat, taste the hot, sweet mint tea, hear the strange voices and jangling of gold brac
elets, touch the softness of the woolen rugs, the silks. Almost but not quite block out the noise from below.

  A strand of hair caught on her chapped lips and absentmindedly she pushed it behind her ear, still chewing. If she lived there, she would wear a beautiful flowing djellaba in orange and brown, gold and silver threads running through it. She could almost feel the weight of it against her skin, hear the sound it made as she walked amid the crowds of people. And all would bow reverently to her because she was someone special, someone of value and worth and respect.

  “Alice!” still too loud, too intrusive, still reaching all the way across the ocean. “My pills! I need my pills! Dammit to hell, where are you?”

  More, she needed more—enough paper to build a boat, a plane, to construct wings to fasten on her body like Icarus, except she wouldn’t fly too close to the sun but only close enough. She needed enough words to carry her away, far away, certainly too far for that crazy, mean, needy old woman to follow.

  She ripped an entire page from the atlas, stuffing the yellowed paper into her mouth, almost choking on the dryness—dry like the land, baked to hardness by the blazing sun. But the heat felt good, taking the coldness from her skin and bones and heart. She chewed faster, wanting to taste it all, absorb it all, be there. Anywhere but where she was right now, this minute, this life.

  “Alice!”

  More pages, more words, more distance: “Cairo . . . Alexandria . . . Mozambique . . . Tangiers . . .”

  The Sugar Bowl

  Chloe would tell men that the slightly battered and tarnished sugar bowl was a legacy from her grandmother.

  “Granny,” she would say, her eyes fixed on a distant spot in the small apartment, “had to sell all her possessions to keep my mother fed and warmed. But she saved the sugar bowl for better times. And when she died,” here, her voice would quiver and a brave smile would slip across her face, “she left it for me, for my ‘better times’.”

  The story always worked on those older men who would bring her home after a pleasant dinner in a quiet, expensive restaurant. They would listen to her story as she poured freshly-brewed coffee into delicate porcelain cups, her light brown hair falling softly around her face.

  And they would be overcome with feelings of protectiveness for the young girl, so unlike the hard brittle career women they were used to. It would be almost obscene, they would find themselves believing, to think of taking this fragile flower to bed.

  Instead they would kiss her chastely on the cheek and then leave, never understanding that it had all been carefully orchestrated—the dinner, the story, the quiver in the voice.

  And if they should call again, she would be politely unavailable. Chloe could not support a return engagement. Her story was only strong enough for a single run.

  Sometimes, on those Saturday nights when none of the men appealed to her or she to them, she would fix herself a steaming mug of cocoa, watching the heat rise in swirls and eddies across the dark brown surface.

  Then, sipping the sweet liquid, she would rehearse new stories of the sugar bowl, trying in turn to look pensive or lonely or brave—whatever emotion she thought would fit the tale and appeal to the men she brought home.

  “This bowl?” she would ask, wide-eyed and smiling. “Why, this is from my Great-Granny, my grandmother’s mum. She worked in one of those old English manor houses, and the master took such a fancy to her!”

  “But, you know,” here, her voice would drop as she cast her eyes demurely to the ground, “it just wasn’t done to acknowledge a child born out of wedlock in those days. Although the silver tea set he gave her was worth a fortune, and saw her through the worst of the Depression, even with a baby to support. She saved this bowl, though, to remember the sweetness of their love.”

  Or it was all that was left of the items stolen by her gypsy grandmother from the man who had left her “with child.” She would embellish the story with tales of the old woman’s proficiency at knife-throwing—“a family trait,” fingering the carving knife on the counter, “passed down from mother to daughter.”

  Or, for those attracted to bravery, it was the only item kept from the Nazis when they raided her grandparents’ home.

  “She kept it all those years,” Chloe would whisper, wiping dry eyes, “as a reminder of the cruel Germans who had shot her beloved husband to death while she, great with child, could do nothing to save him.”

  No one knew the truth of course—sometimes even Chloe couldn’t remember when the sugar bowl wasn’t there, when the white crystals were kept in a plastic cup with ducks imprinted on the side.

  If she had been an artist, she could have painted a likeness of those mythical women and no one, least of all Chloe, would have been able to tell that the features came not from memory but from imagination.

  She never tried to explain or justify her stories to herself, but instead concentrated on developing new ones, adding to her repertoire as though, like Scheherazade, her very life depended on it.

  Almost without thinking, she would enter those small upscale bars on the west side, choosing a man who looked as though he might be kind, understanding, tender. Her purse would slip from her lap or her heel catch on a non-existent tear in the carpet, and the man would be at her side, offering assistance to the beautiful young girl who had unaccountably been left waiting for a date who never appeared.

  If no one was there, she would order a small glass of orange juice and sip it slowly until the glass was empty and it was time to return to the cold apartment filled with shadows of an imagined life.

  It was planned so carefully, down to the last detail. It couldn’t fail—had never failed Chloe in the past.

  Each man was a mirror image of the last: hair starting to gray, crinkles at the corners of the eyes, late fifties at the very least. The kind of man who would watch out for a young girl, barely in her twenties (she was, in actual fact, nearly thirty-two, but who could tell? Life had left no mark on her smooth, soft skin), the kind of man she could safely bring home and trust to leave when the almost imperceptible signal was given that the evening was over.

  Was she tired that night and not as cautious as she might have been? Had the dim lights of the bar deceived her? In any case, after dinner and a drink or two, after a taxi ride to the apartment, after her story (which one did she tell? She wasn’t certain—they all seemed the same any more) this one didn’t leave—not till much later when it was too late for Chloe to cry out a new story.

  Had the door not been left open, perhaps no one would have known. But the sight of the bruised and battered figure broke through even the self-absorption of the old neighbor lady—enough, at least, for her to call the police and then, as an afterthought, to sit with Chloe until they arrived.

  The woman officer, competent and professional, wrapped Chloe’s shivering body in a blanket pulled from her disordered bed. But she couldn’t break through the wall of silence Chloe had erected, and resigned herself to a long wait for details.

  Her partner, an older man yet still capable of being shocked by such casual cruelty, was moved to protectiveness by the vulnerable neck bowed in grief, by the cold fingers tightly wrapped around a small silver object.

  He reached over, gently touching her hand, and when Chloe released her grip, he took it from her.

  “What a nice bowl,” he said, and handed it back to the young girl, who turned her soft blue eyes toward him.

  How gentle she is, he thought—this officer who had watched bodies pulled from cars and rivers and closets, who had witnessed brutality and cruelty almost beyond belief. How could anyone harm her—such a young girl, such a delicate child?

  Chloe saw his eyes grow tender and his hand reach out almost as though to stroke her cheek. An older man, probably in his fifties—a kind man who would respect her and all that she had suffered in her young life.

  “This bowl?” she finally whispered in a voice scratchy and rough. “It belonged to my arrière-grand-mère, the mother of my grandmother.
She was in the French Resistance during the war. She stole it from a man who had raped her and beat her and left her to die one cold winter night in a field just outside Paris. It is all I have left.”

  The Shop on the Square

  The dirt road was bare and rutted, bedraggled chickens scattering before the car’s approach the only sign of life in the isolated Mexican town.

  The young man stopped the car, and stepped out into the oppressive stillness. The heat and dust surrounded him, settling into the creases of his gray trousers, on his eyelashes and in his mouth. Everything tasted of the hot baking sun and the dry ground, and he had to swallow twice before his parched throat felt any relief.

  Squinting in the brightness, he saw a shop nearby, the open doorway inviting him to enter, the shadowed interior promising escape from the relentless sun. Carefully locking his car against intruders and thieves, he moved toward the darkness.

  Inside the store, the walls were hung with Mexican sombreros and brightly colored skirts, splayed out like three-dimensional paintings glowing against the whitewashed walls. Everywhere he looked there were items for sale: precarious stacks of garishly painted pottery and piles of serapes woven with the rays of dawn captured in their patterns, heaped on scarred wooden tables.

  But the dust from the street had invaded the shelves, dulling the bright colors. The store seemed to have few visitors—hardly surprising, he reflected, since he himself had stumbled across the town only because of several wrong turns during the long night of driving.