Six Car Lengths Behind an Elephant, page 14
As I try to dredge up good memories of the time spent in India, I have great difficulty coming up with one whole good day. Influenced as I was by the fact that my health had failed from the first day I arrived, I make an effort to remove myself from that, and to consider the whole picture. There were definitely happy times when we had been to parties with our circle of friends, and times when we entertained at home. We became well acquainted with the buyers from the cover company and, in retrospect, we got to know them all personally. They always spent time in our home, because almost all of them had been sick during previous visits and welcomed a respite. One buyer had refused to visit India again, until he knew he could stay with us in our home. And all of this augured well for Frank and his fine reputation with the cover company. The branch of the company had more than prospered under his direction.
I had redecorated the house and everyone commented on its beauty. Where else could I have curtain fabric woven to my specific request . . . sheer silk with gold thread running through it? And rosewood tables and carved chairs, beautifully crafted and polished by hand? These things followed us everywhere when we moved.
I wasn’t afraid of the people, but the circumstances under which we lived were frightening, because I did not understand the culture or the language. The one trip to Old Delhi had absolutely terrified me and was indelible in my memory. It was visceral and influenced me always.
Later in our lives, when we were reunited with friends we had made in India, the reunions were especially sweet. At one of our farewell parties before departing India, a dear Indian friend said to Frank, “Will we ever see you again?” And Frank said, “Of course. We may be living someplace else, but we will always summer in India.” There was always the laughter. It was a life lesson.
I feel slightly less guilty about my judgment of life in India when I think of the three non-Indian women who had married Indians. Two were American and one was British. When I talked to them about my unhappiness there, the unanimous reaction was “Look at us! We’re condemned to stay here!” Condemned was the word they used.
We did have strong bonds with the other foreigners who were there when we were. In most places, it is said that we talk about the weather because it’s the one thing we have in common. In New Delhi we talked about our intestinal tracts.
I think India was a good experience for the children because they were not exposed to the difficulties that confronted me. Kristin took riding lessons, at 5:00 a.m. to escape the heat, and was driven to the stables by our driver. She became a passionate horsewoman and rode in dressage horse shows at the famous Red Fort. John played soccer with the British school. And Johanna became friends with Sharma’s 14-year-old daughter, Madhu. They were six years apart and didn’t speak each other’s languages but they spent every afternoon together after school, riding their bicycles or sneaking off to the servant’s quarters to help Madhu’s mother make dinner. All three children made fast friends while there, and not too long ago Kristin found a childhood friend from that period. When she called, it was as though no time had passed. They talked about how much fun India was. I’m glad.
We had a few Indian friends who were for the most part educated abroad and this made a difference. They had seen Paree. And they could stand back and look at their own country objectively, not with bitterness, but with amusement.
Everyone we knew counted the days until he could leave. Perhaps the people who lived under the protective umbrella of the embassy had an easier life, but we didn’t know them.
THE YEAR OF THE IVY LEAGUE
(1974-1975)
Contentment
We sublet a clapboard house on stilts, with floor-to-ceiling windows filtering the autumn sunlight. It was at the end of a long and winding driveway, set in a glade in the middle of the woods with a path to an enormous pond for swimming or ice skating. There were deer grazing calmly from the edge of the yard, and apple trees and tomato plants and a deck, which wandered all the way around the house. There was a television and stereo and a washing machine and dryer. There were ice cubes from the refrigerator and water from the faucet and milk from a cow, and a huge supermarket. There was clean, clean air and the glory of the changing leaves and the smell of smoke from the chimneys and a phone that worked. There were price tags on everything and Carly Simon on the car radio, and bakeries and wine shops with every kind of cheese. There was feeling safe all the time and stopping the car to look down at the placid lake, and movies to watch and neighbors to chat with. There were wool scarves and boots and Thanksgiving with old friends watching the football game, and John Denver singing, “Gee, it’s great to be back home again.” There were floating snowflakes on Christmas Day and a huge, sparkling Christmas tree and a monstrous fireplace. Every morning I was glad. We had everything.
I hadn’t known that campus buildings in the Ivy League were truly covered with ivy. Everything smelled good. An orange school bus stopped at the end of the driveway to take the children to school, and nobody wanted to kill them.
My ugly green station wagon cost six hundred dollars, and we could pile skis and bicycles and children in the back, and slide into a ditch in a blizzard knowing that the man in the house nearby will call a tow truck and offer me coffee. I was content.
Me the Driver
This was a hard time for Frank, because his Japanese class was an intensive crash course, three years in one, shared by young graduate students who had studied the language before. Other businessmen had tried, but none had stayed, in most cases because they fell so far behind. It was a small class, self-propelled, and the pressure was intense. Frank was determined to get through it with a passing grade. He got up at 5:00 a.m. after sleeping just a few hours, and plugged in to his Walkman, pacing, muttering Japanese phrases and very tired.
After experiencing severe tooth pain, Frank visited a local dentist who told him that he needed oral surgery. He recommended an oral surgeon in a city a hundred miles away. Because he would be heavily sedated, he was told he couldn’t drive, making it obvious that I would have to drive him. I had just obtained my driver’s license two weeks earlier, and dreaded this drive in my terrible car. Frank drove on the way up, and the surgery took two hours, after which he was like a sleepwalker, leaning heavily on me to get to the car. It had begun to snow. I had never driven in snow, but sure, I could do this. Frank fell into a stupor in the car, his head lolling down his chest. I turned on the windshield wipers, and discovered they couldn’t handle snow.
The rest of the drive was terrifying. I could not see where I was going, so I jumped in and out of the car, wiping the snow away from the windshield. Frank slept on. I could not read the signs. Had I driven into another state? Oh my God. Please, God, I said quietly, guide me home. Other cars were turning onto what looked like a highway that we had driven on that morning. I took a chance, muttering my pleas to God and the Virgin Mary and anyone else who might listen. I was on the right highway. I drove slowly from there, until finally I saw the mailbox at the end of our driveway. Thank you, God and the Virgin.
All I could think of was a hot cup of tea. I put the kettle on, rubbing my nearly frozen hands together. I put a teacup beside the stove, and hugging myself, I looked out the kitchen window at the blizzard. Then I realized that I had left Frank in the car. I scrambled down the steps to the car. Frank was still apparently unconscious. I shook him and said we were home, and helped him up the stairs. I never admitted to him that I had forgotten him in the car. “The wipers don’t work very well,” I told him later.
When the anesthetic wore off, Frank was in excruciating pain. His mouth had numerous stitches and was packed with gauze. The painkiller didn’t help much. He insisted the next day that he could not miss class. His face was swollen and ashen. He was trying to drink warm orange juice through a straw when he slid off his chair in a dead faint. I called the professor and said my boy Frank would not be in school today. I knew he would rather I had schlepped his unconscious body into the station wagon and driven to school. I guess he thought he could trust me.
Frank was the mascot of the class, an old-timer at forty, always charming and funny, with self-deprecating humor that endeared him to his classmates. When a young woman in Frank’s class, in the bloom of idealism and spirituality, asked him, “What did your experience in India teach you? What did you learn from that incredible country?” He replied, “Always drive six car lengths behind an elephant.”
There seemed to be no generation gap in his relationship with the other students, and they always hung around our house for swimming and meals and beer drinking. They rooted for him all the way and applauded when he passed, tutored him when he flagged. He made it through the entire term with a passing grade.
He was the celebrity of his class.
He said it was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life.
Back to School
At the beginning of the school term, we were advised that I, too, could attend classes at the university where Frank was learning Japanese. That mandate was not specific, and I was eager to take advantage of their excellent drama department to study playwriting, an opportunity that wouldn’t repeat itself in my future. I knew I could study Japanese in Japan.
I was not the mascot of my class of eighteen-year-olds because I didn’t have the fashion sense demanded. Instead of wearing oversized overalls and army boots, I dared to attend class in a black pants suit. I was, however, teacher’s pet, because I was the only one who paid attention, took notes, and did my homework. When we were assigned to write a one-act play, we were asked, at random, to read the play aloud. After listening to two students read their work, I realized I would be considered mundane, even boring, as I had not once used “fuck you” or “motherfucker” or “shit” in every other utterance. My drawing-room setting and sophisticated banter elicited raised eyebrows and a rolling of the eyes. When I was leaving class and walking toward my car, one of the other students was walking with me, and a passing professor nodded toward me and said hello. “I don’t know him,” I said. “Yeah, well, he knows me,” the young man responded, “and he probably thinks you’re my mother.” How sharper than a serpent’s tooth.
The children once again had to face the cliques of the public schools, Johanna at an elementary school, John and Kristin at a junior high. Early on, they learned not to talk about their foreign experience, because the reaction was usually that of someone who had just met a space alien. They quickly excelled in their classes, discovering that international schools are far more demanding. In a short time, they became bored and even lost interest in television, drifting back to their books. John took a renewed interest in the guitar, now learning to play rock and roll. “When are we going to Japan?” Kristin asked one day. “The kids here are all blond and boring.”
They already knew that the world was a place of variables, that life had different flavors and colors and languages. It was the seeding of sophistication. I think I was pleased, but I wasn’t sure. At least we knew there would be no emotional wrench when we left. The wrench would be all mine. I was enjoying my life, but I also felt that I couldn’t demonstrate this too vividly, because I was a Good Wife and Good Mother.
It became clear that I really didn’t belong in that area when I attended a mother/teacher meeting at Johanna’s school. The school was located in a bucolic setting and most of the students were children of farmers. Once more, I did not know the dress code and that the accepted garb was a quilted parka and boots, and even rollers in the hair. It was the pants suit gaffe again. I just couldn’t wear that anywhere.
I slipped up on proper protocol another time, when I called a repairman to fix the furnace. He was a young, breezy, personable young man. When he went down the basement stairs, I followed him and stood there while he was looking for the trouble. The basement was dark and cold. After a while, I realized he was looking at me strangely. Was I demonstrating the “bored wife syndrome”? It was the influence of India where any workman had to be carefully watched so he wouldn’t steal. How could I explain this to him? I fled up the stairs.
I recognized the way in which our children were different from their classmates when Kristin, who had just received a letter from a friend saying that her family was being posted in Korea, asked, “Couldn’t I fly to Korea from Japan to visit her?” My initial reaction was that the suggestion was ridiculous, she was only twelve years old. But Frank replied, “Sure, why not?” And later, she did go to Korea by herself. She was fine. The passport and customs situation was old hat.
During the respite in America, I felt comfortable with the lifestyle. I never felt nostalgia for a life with servants; that had never been the good life to me. The most profound glitch was that during the entire time we were there, Frank was under such extreme pressure that he barely communicated with me at all. He was totally consumed with his goal to succeed. Even during the Easter break when he was free for three weeks to relax by the pond or enjoy any other pastime, he remained quiet and distant. He had always been competitive, always at the top of his class, and that could never change. He showed a polite interest in the classes I was taking, but never asked to read any of my writing. He didn’t have the time. I felt rejected during the entire time he was at the university, even though I understood the demands he put upon himself.
We had not been in a position to make friends, and it had been convenient and fun that his classmates enjoyed coming to our house, because they were free when Frank was free, and I delighted in their company. One Sunday when the gang was all there, Frank and I were talking about going out for drinks and dinner on my birthday. His pretty young tutor said, “Why don’t you take her to that place where you took me to lunch?” I felt hurt by that. I had noticed that she was flirtatious with Frank, almost wanting me to notice, tossing her hair and glancing at me. I decided to ignore it.
What was apparent to me was that it would be impossible for us to live in a prosaic atmosphere in the United States when all of Frank’s dreams revolved around living a much more exciting life. We were at odds about what made us happy and fulfilled. I was saddened by the fact that this was the turn our life had taken. Had I promised this in our wedding vows? I married an airline pilot. I had spent hours with a Catholic priest, not to become a Catholic but to be clear about what was expected when I married a Catholic. I had conceded enough.
I was either going to have to martyr myself in the true sense, and move on with the family, or take a stand and resign. There was no question that there was no question. The rock and the hard place. I was never unsure of Frank’s love and high regard for me. If I had sincerely asked him to reject the move to Japan for my sake, I knew he would listen and would be sympathetic. If he had to take a desk job in Washington, I would feel like I had broken his spirit and he’d be miserable. I wanted his happiness for my own sake. When Frank was happy, he exuded joy, and I would be a part of that. My choice was obvious. And ultimately, I guess it was for myself.
During our stay at the university, Frank received a call from our Indian friend, Ashok. He was settling into his new post in Washington, and said he was “radiant.” He wanted to thank Frank for standing by him. Frank was very pleased for Ashok. Frank had won the battle, but he had lost the war. It was a high price to pay.
Shopping for a Move Abroad
Before leaving for Japan, I wrote to one of the executive’s wives in Tokyo, to inquire about conditions there. I had been told that she had four children, and I asked about whether I should be getting a year’s supply of clothes for my children, as I had to do in other countries. The purchases I had made prior to our move to India turned out to be ludicrous (such as leather shoes in graduated sizes, when only sandals were ever worn).
Her reply suggested that I buy as much of the children’s wardrobe as possible. That it would be wise to buy jeans and shirts and shoes. She also suggested that I be careful about the length of the then-popular bell-bottom jeans, because the streets of Tokyo were very dirty. After the country I had just left, I really wasn’t too concerned about any health hazard that the streets of Japan might threaten. I hated the annual purchase of clothing, not just for the kids, but all of us. There was always a quandary about the clothes Frank and I needed, without having a hint of what our lifestyle would be like there. Our budget was very limited and I wasn’t able to splurge. I had always thought the Agency should have given us a clothing allowance when it was necessary for us to revise entire wardrobes to lend to the style and weight required by the weather or the seasons.
I had to settle for two cocktail type dresses for me. During our stay in India, I had been able to collect long skirts and silk pants from the sari silks that were available. Tailoring had been cheap there, and Frank had an attractive wardrobe, which included suits. The shopping for the children was hell. They were now at the age when they wanted to make their own selections, so when I took them to a department store, they all went off in different directions, choosing entirely inappropriate styles for their age or the predicted weather. Any mother of teenagers will understand the frustration of shopping with them for just one pair of pants. It was a battle. I used to get so distressed and impatient, that I told them I was posting myself at a mezzanine coffee shop, and after they had collected their stash, I could be summoned for approval and payment. Once, I actually cried. I sat with my coffee and wept because I felt like leaving the store in the hope that a stranger might kidnap them and the whole problem would be solved.
