Tropic Magazine, The Miami Herald
December 1, 1991
"I'm leaving for Saudi Arabia," he says, with that sexy, low voice I once thought meant romance but now know means he's using the editor's phone. He's very discreet--unnecessarily so, I've always thought, since I call him at the paper two or three times a week, and always have to give my name. (Once a snippy secretarial voice asked, "What is it in reference to?" and I almost answered, "It's in reference to getting laid," but I controlled myself.)
It is early 1991, and the war with Iraq is on everyone's mind. Except mine. I haven't seen him in a week and a half, and I hate the note of petulant disappointment in my voice. Why him? Can't they send someone younger? Can't they send him tomorrow? But he tells me it's only for 96 hours. He'll call me when he gets back. So I hang up the phone and start putting all the olives back into the little bottle, because they dry out if you leave them around in a dish.
To tell you the truth, I don't really like green olives all that much anymore. He used to feed me the olives out of his martinis, back at the beginning when even he was romantic about our relationship. I'd roll those fat green gin-soaked olives around in my mouth, and they felt like a sacrament. He likes to snack on olives when he comes over, even though last year he switched from martinis to beer. I guess the olives hold him till he gets home for dinner. After he leaves, I usually just call out for a pizza.
I think the main reason this relationship works so well for me - and has worked for almost 10 years now - is that I really don't like company very much. I've become something of a recluse since my second divorce. I like the word curmudgeon, which implies that even though I'm cranky and hard to get along with, I'm intelligent, and can be funny if your sense of humor is pretty sophisticated.
I don't suppose you'd call me sophisticated, although there is little that shocks me, and before I became a vegetarian in the '70s I used to enjoy eating snails. It's probably the way I dress: I haven't worn a skirt in about 15 years, and it must be 25 years since I put any makeup on my face. I seldom think about this, but last month he went downtown to an awards banquet that the TV stations covered, and when the cameras panned the crowd I looked at his pretty little wife sitting next to him, and I thought: What if we were married? I'd have to buy a dress.
There's nothing here to eat (except the olives). I'd like some coffee, but it's too late to walk down to the Cuban cafeteria. I should keep a can of Bustelo around, but it's always bitter when I make it at home. I even tried making my own Cuban toast once, splitting the long loaf. buttering the middle, then leaning on it with my iron till it was hot and compressed. But when I dipped the end into my coffee cup it turned limp and formless as a cheap bath sponge.
I ought to do the laundry. The bedspread certainly needs it. But I look at its artless pattern of crusty blotches--what Anais Nin has called "man's white blood"--and think: What if he dies? What if I wash out this last of his life fluids, and Monday morning I find out he got killed in the desert? I could grade some papers, but the trouble with teaching writing to college kids is that they can write about only what's gone on so far in a college kid's life. And frankly, it's pretty boring. Someone once said I should write the story of my life, but I think how hard it would be to explain about the olives. and the bedspread, and I really don't think I'm good enough to make anyone understand just how satisfying my life is right now.
Laura Pelner McCarthy, PhD