Six Car Lengths Behind an Elephant, page 4
We knew nothing about customs and passport control, and Frank looked after these formalities while I waited. John and Kristin loved their leashes, and almost immediately stretched them as far as they would go, then ran around me in circles. This should have been comic relief, as the coils were all tangled together. I had no sense of humor at that particular point, and I lapsed into tears. The Three Stooges.
What the hell was I doing, standing in an airport with three small children and a crazy husband who was taking us to a foreign place where we didn’t know the language? It was like being caught in the middle of a bad dream, never to wake up. We should have been in a sunny town in California, deciding which preschool would suit the children and not hanging on to them with leashes.
SPAIN
(1964-1972)
Arriving in Spain
Being a good mother was of paramount importance to me. I loved my children fiercely, and whatever upheaval we experienced, my first consideration was the children: that they would have space, and always feel safe. Johanna was a happy baby, easy to look after. Our first dreaded plane trip to Madrid was not the nightmare I thought it could be. We sat behind the bulkhead, and the stewardess brought a basket for Johanna to sleep in, which sat at my feet. The changing of cloth diapers was a messy and odiferous business, and I tried to avoid looking at the passengers nearby. John and Kristin sat together with coloring books and actually liked the flight. I looked forward to the suite in our hotel, which had been reserved by the Agency.
When we arrived in Madrid, and registered in the truly quaint apartment/hotel complex, it was more thrilling than I had expected it to be. It was a beautiful city, and from customs through cab drivers and hotel personnel, the Spaniards appeared to be a courteous and congenial people. When our luggage arrived and I began the ritual of counting the suitcases, I realized to my horror that my brilliant idea of packing all the diapers in one large bag had backfired. It was the only bag that had gone to Switzerland. (At that time, there was no such thing as a disposable diaper.) The housekeeper at the hotel spoke English, and she was an enormous help, supplying me with towels until the next day when the airlines returned the lost bag.
We had an old-fashioned suite of rooms with a balcony that overlooked one of the most beautiful streets in Madrid. My major discovery when I appraised the hotel facilities was that there was no laundry room, and Madrid had no laundromats. I tried not to acknowledge the washboard that was part of the huge kitchen sink, but I had to face reality, and diapers needed to be washed. Our hotel allowance did not cover laundry. Once more our living room and dining room were festooned with drying diapers, draped on chairs and hanging from tables.
We had also been told that the reason we had a suite was because we were not allowed restaurant privileges and could therefore make use of the kitchen. The largest utility in the kitchen was an enormous wood stove. This, I thought, was taking “quaint” too far. A business executive would not have been deprived in this way. In the days that followed, we discovered that this was a family hotel. We met other people of every nationality, all with children, and I was the only woman who did not send diapers to the hotel laundry.
I learned how to shop for groceries, bobbing along with a borrowed pram provided by the housekeeper, with a new infant and two toddlers, going from tiny shop to tiny shop. This was a clumsy business when I discovered that shopkeepers in Madrid did not have paper bags. Eggs were wrapped in newspaper, and the long, fragrant loaves of bread were deposited in the pram. I tried to treat this as an adventure, as the children were greeted with cheerful clucking and pinching of cheeks, extolling the angelic blond beauty at every shop on the street.
I needed help. I needed advice.
Waiting
We had expected someone from the U.S. Embassy to contact us at our hotel, in order to brief Frank about assignments and “targets,” but we did not hear from anyone. Frank was prohibited from approaching the embassy, but had been told that his case officer was going to be a new man in Madrid. There were no messages. We floated in limbo and wondered how we would pay the hotel bill, since he had received no salary. (We heard later that we had been “lost in the files.” It appeared that nobody knew we were there.)
I learned how to say, “Is this house for rent?” in Spanish, and began house hunting. Because I had to take the children with me, I was restricted to the vicinity of the hotel, which was such a beautiful area that it would have been my number one choice anyway. Whenever I saw workmen by a house that looked empty, I asked my memorized question, but was not prepared for the onslaught of rapid Spanish replies or explanations. I soon realized that the Spanish people are verbose and cheerful and loved children. Their ebullience won me over, but I still had no idea what houses were for rent.
While we waited for contact from the embassy, Frank began to feel apprehensive about his future relationship with his case officer. He knew it would make his job much easier if they had a kinship, and Frank hoped he wouldn’t be the stiff kind of government type we had at times encountered. When Frank finally received a phone call from his case officer, he was asked to be at a certain street corner at a certain time. He would recognize his contact by his furled umbrella and red tie. Frank recognized him immediately. As they began to cross the street together, a Mercedes almost plowed through the intersection. “What do you think you’re doing, you fucking Nazi?!” the case officer yelled, hitting the windshield with the umbrella. “This is a crosswalk!” At that moment, Frank knew he liked this man a lot. Indeed, it was the beginning of a long-term friendship between them, not to mention between our families.
During our stay at the hotel, the children played on the large balcony overlooking the street, a favorite place for John to “fly” his little balsam airplane, which was held together with rubber bands. I worried that he might lose it on the street. One day, he came to me and very seriously told me that his plane had flown up to the next floor, and that the man who lived there had stolen it. I had no idea what that was all about, and I was concerned that John had perhaps annoyed the man above us, so I went up the stairs with him, and knocked on the door of the unit above ours. The man who opened the door was Henry Fonda.
“My son lost a small airplane that he was playing with. I’m sorry to bother you, but he thinks you might have seen it,” I said. Mr. Fonda replied that he hadn’t seen it, and I apologized for bothering him. When I took John’s hand to go downstairs, Mr. Fonda was still standing in the doorway, and John said loudly, “He’s a liar.”
Gypsy Children
During our nomadic year and a half, John and Kristin were wonderful. All the moves could have resulted in a complete loss of any sense of security, but there was no evidence of that. Giving birth to two children in one year was very taxing for me. I worshipped sleep. I was staggering with exhaustion most of the time, and some of the time I was a cranky mother, but I knew it was necessary to be strict about their behavior and to display my love at the same time, constantly telling them how good they were. For the most part, I had to be both mother and father to them during Frank’s frequent absences, but when he was home, he was a gentle and caring father.
The up side to having two children in a row is that they became pals. Bringing home a newborn does not cause trauma to a one-year-old. From the time Kristin could walk, she was dogging John’s footsteps, and he didn’t mind. That was a blessing for me, in spite of small incidents when they were found methodically painting the wall with honey and peanut butter. They loved each other then, and they have a special bond to this day, having faced the hostile world of new schools and new countries together. They accepted their baby sister with very little interest and no jealousy.
The Cover Office
Frank found himself in a touchy situation in the Madrid cover office. He was to replace an elderly Spanish manager, who had been employed in that capacity for many years, and when Frank arrived, he discovered that this gentleman, Sr. Sanchez, had not been notified that Frank was going to join the office, far less that he was going to be replaced—by an American. Pride is everything to a Spaniard. Frank was very uncomfortable about his job with an entirely Spanish staff, none of whom spoke English, but the delicacy required in dealing with Sr. Sanchez was extremely dicey.
The president of the American company was a very wealthy man who could be described as a playboy, and between his golf and skiing commitments, he paid little attention to business. He had simply neglected to advise Sr. Sanchez. Given the cultural awkwardness, Frank felt he really should have made a trip to Madrid to explain to Sr. Sanchez that he indeed was being replaced. Frank’s insinuating himself into the office staff made Sr. Sanchez angry and he made no effort to cover up his hostility, treating Frank like a clerk, to be easily dismissed.
When the situation was finally clarified by a phone call, Sr. Sanchez was enraged and insulted. How could he be dismissed at all, far less be replaced by an American upstart? This was particularly hard for Frank because he could understand, and there was no way to ingratiate himself. Sr. Sanchez’s revenge was to obscure the order and contents of files, as well as to completely destroy the telephone index, leaving Frank totally in the dark about his job.
Fortunately, Frank’s grace won over the office staff. They sympathized with his situation and after a short while, he discovered that they all hated Sr. Sanchez, who had been a brusque and cavalier taskmaster. Frank instigated regular staff luncheons at a good restaurant, with everyone in the office attending, and in that way they began to feel at ease with him. They did everything they could to help him.
Home
I found a house. It was three stories high with small bedrooms and a den. It charmed me. It was so Spanish, with its tiled floors and interior walls, all with simple white plaster. It was in a Spanish neighborhood lined with big leafy trees. There was a high wall around the garden, and just outside the back door there was a fig tree, an apricot tree, rosebushes, and a perfect place to put swings. All the rooms were small, as they are in authentic Spanish houses, but there was enough room off the kitchen for an American washer and dryer! Hallelujah! Apart from this, we would have the entire Spanish experience.
There were some comforts that we missed, but they were insignificant. There was only one bathroom, for example, with a bidet. (An American friend who lived in an apartment had turned her bidet into a planter, thereby missing one of the finer things of life.) Without self-consciousness, the children picked up whole chunks of Spanish phrases while playing futbol (soccer) on the street with the neighbors’ children. What a wonder to have found a house where children played in the street, going in and out of each other’s houses, always being chided by the maid in a strident voice, who very graphically addressed one small boy as mucosa (mucousy) because his nose was always running, and another as gordo, which means fat. Their little psyches did not seem to be at all damaged by this lack of respect. Spaniards’ use of language is not known for nuances.
We were glad to move into a neighborhood of old and charming houses, although most of our American friends lived in another area near the American school or in apartments with a lot of other English-speaking people. At times, I envied the convenience they enjoyed, but when they visited us, they always exclaimed how much they liked our house.
We spent five months in the hotel, waiting for our furniture to arrive, and during that period of time we made friends with families of every nationality who also stayed in the hotel. We hosted a cocktail party and invited everyone in the hotel, which was an excellent mesh of people, and who became our good friends over a number of years, giving us an entrée into a number of different cultures and a varied group of people. I was happy. We had a home. And we had friends.
Just around the corner from our house was a school run by Dominican nuns, which was a combination nursery school and elementary school. John’s friends in the neighborhood attended this school, and in September, they were preparing for the school year, and being measured for their uniforms. It occurred to us that our children had spent every day since we arrived with these friends, chattering in Spanish, no matter how mangled. The kids didn’t care. What if we sent them to that school? Could it hurt them? How difficult might it be? I approached the good nuns about the possibility of our foreign towheads going to their school. They clapped their hands with enthusiasm and almost insisted that they come. They beamed and gestured with outstretched arms that our rubios (blonds) would be more than welcome.
On the day school started, I left John and Kristin holding hands in line, looking stoic and pale, like frightened waifs, surrounded by those black-haired children, noisily communicating in rapid Spanish. What had I done? I ran home and burst into tears. I called Frank, weeping. I watched the clock. I had to control myself from rushing back to the school and pulling my children out of the schoolyard, back to the safety of our walled garden. It was years before John told me that on that first day, he didn’t know how to ask about the bathroom. He wet his pants and had been punished! I felt like killing myself when I found that out. I was such a terrible woman.
We soon found out that preschool in Spain was not finger painting or watching puppets. It was reading, writing, and arithmetic. A Spanish child cannot enter first grade until he can read and write. It was the opening of an entire new vista, particularly for Kristin, who loved books and now could read them by herself. She became a voracious reader, and ultimately read all the Enid Blyton books in Spanish. While I studied Spanish with a tutor, I was both intimidated and proud when the children corrected my grammar and pronunciation. (To this day, John, a grown man, says he does math in his head in Spanish.)
Good To Be Me
Being the boss’s wife was a new experience for me. As far as the Spanish staff was concerned, I played no role at all. They were cordial and courteous when I came to the office, which was infrequently. When the company president visited Spain, he came for frolic and fun; his wife came for the shopping. I, the lowly manager’s wife, was summoned to do her bidding. That is, to accompany her to boutiques, translate for her, and dash around the shop while she was in the fitting room shouting orders to me. She was rude and loud if she ever had to interface with the very chic clerks, but none of this bothered me, because I was really somebody else; I wasn’t the woman she assumed me to be. I didn’t give a damn whether she liked or approved of me. Ass kissing wasn’t on my schedule, nor was it on Frank’s, although he did go out of his way willingly when they were in town, and he genuinely enjoyed spending time with his playboy boss.
On one shopping outing, Mrs. President glanced at her watch and dismissed me when it was time for lunch, informing me she might need me later in the day. I put her in a cab and told the driver her destination, a very expensive restaurant. She joined her husband and his friends there, including Frank, who had arranged the lunch. He was stunned when she arrived without me. When Mr. President asked her where I was, she shrugged and said she didn’t know. If this had been a “real” situation, I would have been humiliated, but I did have the best of both worlds, so her attitude didn’t matter to me. She was in no way an influence in our lives, and no pandering was required, although it was definitely expected.
Frank was angry about my not being invited to lunch; it was something he had taken for granted. In this particular instance, I had the luxury of vehemently disliking the boss’s wife, and not letting it affect me. It was my first brush with the corporate world, and I could see the advantage of ours, by comparison. I was at home when Mrs. President called later in the afternoon. I told the maid to say I was out. Rah.
I was keenly aware of the drudgery required of embassy wives, who were forced to entertain “properly,” and more than just occasionally. I was immune to that suffering as well. I was under deep cover and I was glad.
I remember when an American family moved in across the street. They had a son John’s age. John asked him, “Do you know how to speak Spanish?” and the boy replied, “No. How?” The boy’s father was a colonel in the Air Force and because there was no vacancy at the Air Force base, they had been forced to take a house in the city. His wife was so terrified at having been separated from the American base that she never left the house alone in the entire year that they lived there. There were numerous shops within walking distance, but she would venture no farther than my house gate.
She had lived in another foreign country, but only in military housing There, every one was American and everything she needed was nearby, including a movie theater, restaurant and bar, and swimming pool. When she needed any bread or bakery goods, she asked me to buy it for her. Otherwise, every Saturday she went with her husband to the base to shop at the commissary. She always generously asked if there was anything she could buy for me there, but I had no trouble finding everything we needed in the local markets. If her doorbell rang, she phoned me to come over to see what they wanted, because she didn’t understand the language. She never imagined what she was missing, and she returned to the United States without having brushed with the lifestyle of Spain and its people. Her memory of Madrid would be of the delicious bread from the corner market, a store she had never seen.
The Contessa
Our Spanish tutor had been recommended to Frank by one of the people in his office who was acquainted with her. Her name was Carmen and she professed to be a countess. She introduced us to a varied group of people in the Spanish community, which was, at times, agony for me, as I wondered if I would ever speak Spanish well enough to get through a dinner party without a migraine headache. Hosting a dinner in our home, it was both interesting and insulting to note how the Countess would very openly snap her fingernail against the rim of the wine glass to test the “ping” that identifies good crystal, or how, when seated at the dinner table, she would turn over the plate to see how our china rated. We had come beyond Captain Kangaroo glasses, but not much. We were a long way from English china and Swedish crystal.
What the hell was I doing, standing in an airport with three small children and a crazy husband who was taking us to a foreign place where we didn’t know the language? It was like being caught in the middle of a bad dream, never to wake up. We should have been in a sunny town in California, deciding which preschool would suit the children and not hanging on to them with leashes.
SPAIN
(1964-1972)
Arriving in Spain
Being a good mother was of paramount importance to me. I loved my children fiercely, and whatever upheaval we experienced, my first consideration was the children: that they would have space, and always feel safe. Johanna was a happy baby, easy to look after. Our first dreaded plane trip to Madrid was not the nightmare I thought it could be. We sat behind the bulkhead, and the stewardess brought a basket for Johanna to sleep in, which sat at my feet. The changing of cloth diapers was a messy and odiferous business, and I tried to avoid looking at the passengers nearby. John and Kristin sat together with coloring books and actually liked the flight. I looked forward to the suite in our hotel, which had been reserved by the Agency.
When we arrived in Madrid, and registered in the truly quaint apartment/hotel complex, it was more thrilling than I had expected it to be. It was a beautiful city, and from customs through cab drivers and hotel personnel, the Spaniards appeared to be a courteous and congenial people. When our luggage arrived and I began the ritual of counting the suitcases, I realized to my horror that my brilliant idea of packing all the diapers in one large bag had backfired. It was the only bag that had gone to Switzerland. (At that time, there was no such thing as a disposable diaper.) The housekeeper at the hotel spoke English, and she was an enormous help, supplying me with towels until the next day when the airlines returned the lost bag.
We had an old-fashioned suite of rooms with a balcony that overlooked one of the most beautiful streets in Madrid. My major discovery when I appraised the hotel facilities was that there was no laundry room, and Madrid had no laundromats. I tried not to acknowledge the washboard that was part of the huge kitchen sink, but I had to face reality, and diapers needed to be washed. Our hotel allowance did not cover laundry. Once more our living room and dining room were festooned with drying diapers, draped on chairs and hanging from tables.
We had also been told that the reason we had a suite was because we were not allowed restaurant privileges and could therefore make use of the kitchen. The largest utility in the kitchen was an enormous wood stove. This, I thought, was taking “quaint” too far. A business executive would not have been deprived in this way. In the days that followed, we discovered that this was a family hotel. We met other people of every nationality, all with children, and I was the only woman who did not send diapers to the hotel laundry.
I learned how to shop for groceries, bobbing along with a borrowed pram provided by the housekeeper, with a new infant and two toddlers, going from tiny shop to tiny shop. This was a clumsy business when I discovered that shopkeepers in Madrid did not have paper bags. Eggs were wrapped in newspaper, and the long, fragrant loaves of bread were deposited in the pram. I tried to treat this as an adventure, as the children were greeted with cheerful clucking and pinching of cheeks, extolling the angelic blond beauty at every shop on the street.
I needed help. I needed advice.
Waiting
We had expected someone from the U.S. Embassy to contact us at our hotel, in order to brief Frank about assignments and “targets,” but we did not hear from anyone. Frank was prohibited from approaching the embassy, but had been told that his case officer was going to be a new man in Madrid. There were no messages. We floated in limbo and wondered how we would pay the hotel bill, since he had received no salary. (We heard later that we had been “lost in the files.” It appeared that nobody knew we were there.)
I learned how to say, “Is this house for rent?” in Spanish, and began house hunting. Because I had to take the children with me, I was restricted to the vicinity of the hotel, which was such a beautiful area that it would have been my number one choice anyway. Whenever I saw workmen by a house that looked empty, I asked my memorized question, but was not prepared for the onslaught of rapid Spanish replies or explanations. I soon realized that the Spanish people are verbose and cheerful and loved children. Their ebullience won me over, but I still had no idea what houses were for rent.
While we waited for contact from the embassy, Frank began to feel apprehensive about his future relationship with his case officer. He knew it would make his job much easier if they had a kinship, and Frank hoped he wouldn’t be the stiff kind of government type we had at times encountered. When Frank finally received a phone call from his case officer, he was asked to be at a certain street corner at a certain time. He would recognize his contact by his furled umbrella and red tie. Frank recognized him immediately. As they began to cross the street together, a Mercedes almost plowed through the intersection. “What do you think you’re doing, you fucking Nazi?!” the case officer yelled, hitting the windshield with the umbrella. “This is a crosswalk!” At that moment, Frank knew he liked this man a lot. Indeed, it was the beginning of a long-term friendship between them, not to mention between our families.
During our stay at the hotel, the children played on the large balcony overlooking the street, a favorite place for John to “fly” his little balsam airplane, which was held together with rubber bands. I worried that he might lose it on the street. One day, he came to me and very seriously told me that his plane had flown up to the next floor, and that the man who lived there had stolen it. I had no idea what that was all about, and I was concerned that John had perhaps annoyed the man above us, so I went up the stairs with him, and knocked on the door of the unit above ours. The man who opened the door was Henry Fonda.
“My son lost a small airplane that he was playing with. I’m sorry to bother you, but he thinks you might have seen it,” I said. Mr. Fonda replied that he hadn’t seen it, and I apologized for bothering him. When I took John’s hand to go downstairs, Mr. Fonda was still standing in the doorway, and John said loudly, “He’s a liar.”
Gypsy Children
During our nomadic year and a half, John and Kristin were wonderful. All the moves could have resulted in a complete loss of any sense of security, but there was no evidence of that. Giving birth to two children in one year was very taxing for me. I worshipped sleep. I was staggering with exhaustion most of the time, and some of the time I was a cranky mother, but I knew it was necessary to be strict about their behavior and to display my love at the same time, constantly telling them how good they were. For the most part, I had to be both mother and father to them during Frank’s frequent absences, but when he was home, he was a gentle and caring father.
The up side to having two children in a row is that they became pals. Bringing home a newborn does not cause trauma to a one-year-old. From the time Kristin could walk, she was dogging John’s footsteps, and he didn’t mind. That was a blessing for me, in spite of small incidents when they were found methodically painting the wall with honey and peanut butter. They loved each other then, and they have a special bond to this day, having faced the hostile world of new schools and new countries together. They accepted their baby sister with very little interest and no jealousy.
The Cover Office
Frank found himself in a touchy situation in the Madrid cover office. He was to replace an elderly Spanish manager, who had been employed in that capacity for many years, and when Frank arrived, he discovered that this gentleman, Sr. Sanchez, had not been notified that Frank was going to join the office, far less that he was going to be replaced—by an American. Pride is everything to a Spaniard. Frank was very uncomfortable about his job with an entirely Spanish staff, none of whom spoke English, but the delicacy required in dealing with Sr. Sanchez was extremely dicey.
The president of the American company was a very wealthy man who could be described as a playboy, and between his golf and skiing commitments, he paid little attention to business. He had simply neglected to advise Sr. Sanchez. Given the cultural awkwardness, Frank felt he really should have made a trip to Madrid to explain to Sr. Sanchez that he indeed was being replaced. Frank’s insinuating himself into the office staff made Sr. Sanchez angry and he made no effort to cover up his hostility, treating Frank like a clerk, to be easily dismissed.
When the situation was finally clarified by a phone call, Sr. Sanchez was enraged and insulted. How could he be dismissed at all, far less be replaced by an American upstart? This was particularly hard for Frank because he could understand, and there was no way to ingratiate himself. Sr. Sanchez’s revenge was to obscure the order and contents of files, as well as to completely destroy the telephone index, leaving Frank totally in the dark about his job.
Fortunately, Frank’s grace won over the office staff. They sympathized with his situation and after a short while, he discovered that they all hated Sr. Sanchez, who had been a brusque and cavalier taskmaster. Frank instigated regular staff luncheons at a good restaurant, with everyone in the office attending, and in that way they began to feel at ease with him. They did everything they could to help him.
Home
I found a house. It was three stories high with small bedrooms and a den. It charmed me. It was so Spanish, with its tiled floors and interior walls, all with simple white plaster. It was in a Spanish neighborhood lined with big leafy trees. There was a high wall around the garden, and just outside the back door there was a fig tree, an apricot tree, rosebushes, and a perfect place to put swings. All the rooms were small, as they are in authentic Spanish houses, but there was enough room off the kitchen for an American washer and dryer! Hallelujah! Apart from this, we would have the entire Spanish experience.
There were some comforts that we missed, but they were insignificant. There was only one bathroom, for example, with a bidet. (An American friend who lived in an apartment had turned her bidet into a planter, thereby missing one of the finer things of life.) Without self-consciousness, the children picked up whole chunks of Spanish phrases while playing futbol (soccer) on the street with the neighbors’ children. What a wonder to have found a house where children played in the street, going in and out of each other’s houses, always being chided by the maid in a strident voice, who very graphically addressed one small boy as mucosa (mucousy) because his nose was always running, and another as gordo, which means fat. Their little psyches did not seem to be at all damaged by this lack of respect. Spaniards’ use of language is not known for nuances.
We were glad to move into a neighborhood of old and charming houses, although most of our American friends lived in another area near the American school or in apartments with a lot of other English-speaking people. At times, I envied the convenience they enjoyed, but when they visited us, they always exclaimed how much they liked our house.
We spent five months in the hotel, waiting for our furniture to arrive, and during that period of time we made friends with families of every nationality who also stayed in the hotel. We hosted a cocktail party and invited everyone in the hotel, which was an excellent mesh of people, and who became our good friends over a number of years, giving us an entrée into a number of different cultures and a varied group of people. I was happy. We had a home. And we had friends.
Just around the corner from our house was a school run by Dominican nuns, which was a combination nursery school and elementary school. John’s friends in the neighborhood attended this school, and in September, they were preparing for the school year, and being measured for their uniforms. It occurred to us that our children had spent every day since we arrived with these friends, chattering in Spanish, no matter how mangled. The kids didn’t care. What if we sent them to that school? Could it hurt them? How difficult might it be? I approached the good nuns about the possibility of our foreign towheads going to their school. They clapped their hands with enthusiasm and almost insisted that they come. They beamed and gestured with outstretched arms that our rubios (blonds) would be more than welcome.
On the day school started, I left John and Kristin holding hands in line, looking stoic and pale, like frightened waifs, surrounded by those black-haired children, noisily communicating in rapid Spanish. What had I done? I ran home and burst into tears. I called Frank, weeping. I watched the clock. I had to control myself from rushing back to the school and pulling my children out of the schoolyard, back to the safety of our walled garden. It was years before John told me that on that first day, he didn’t know how to ask about the bathroom. He wet his pants and had been punished! I felt like killing myself when I found that out. I was such a terrible woman.
We soon found out that preschool in Spain was not finger painting or watching puppets. It was reading, writing, and arithmetic. A Spanish child cannot enter first grade until he can read and write. It was the opening of an entire new vista, particularly for Kristin, who loved books and now could read them by herself. She became a voracious reader, and ultimately read all the Enid Blyton books in Spanish. While I studied Spanish with a tutor, I was both intimidated and proud when the children corrected my grammar and pronunciation. (To this day, John, a grown man, says he does math in his head in Spanish.)
Good To Be Me
Being the boss’s wife was a new experience for me. As far as the Spanish staff was concerned, I played no role at all. They were cordial and courteous when I came to the office, which was infrequently. When the company president visited Spain, he came for frolic and fun; his wife came for the shopping. I, the lowly manager’s wife, was summoned to do her bidding. That is, to accompany her to boutiques, translate for her, and dash around the shop while she was in the fitting room shouting orders to me. She was rude and loud if she ever had to interface with the very chic clerks, but none of this bothered me, because I was really somebody else; I wasn’t the woman she assumed me to be. I didn’t give a damn whether she liked or approved of me. Ass kissing wasn’t on my schedule, nor was it on Frank’s, although he did go out of his way willingly when they were in town, and he genuinely enjoyed spending time with his playboy boss.
On one shopping outing, Mrs. President glanced at her watch and dismissed me when it was time for lunch, informing me she might need me later in the day. I put her in a cab and told the driver her destination, a very expensive restaurant. She joined her husband and his friends there, including Frank, who had arranged the lunch. He was stunned when she arrived without me. When Mr. President asked her where I was, she shrugged and said she didn’t know. If this had been a “real” situation, I would have been humiliated, but I did have the best of both worlds, so her attitude didn’t matter to me. She was in no way an influence in our lives, and no pandering was required, although it was definitely expected.
Frank was angry about my not being invited to lunch; it was something he had taken for granted. In this particular instance, I had the luxury of vehemently disliking the boss’s wife, and not letting it affect me. It was my first brush with the corporate world, and I could see the advantage of ours, by comparison. I was at home when Mrs. President called later in the afternoon. I told the maid to say I was out. Rah.
I was keenly aware of the drudgery required of embassy wives, who were forced to entertain “properly,” and more than just occasionally. I was immune to that suffering as well. I was under deep cover and I was glad.
I remember when an American family moved in across the street. They had a son John’s age. John asked him, “Do you know how to speak Spanish?” and the boy replied, “No. How?” The boy’s father was a colonel in the Air Force and because there was no vacancy at the Air Force base, they had been forced to take a house in the city. His wife was so terrified at having been separated from the American base that she never left the house alone in the entire year that they lived there. There were numerous shops within walking distance, but she would venture no farther than my house gate.
She had lived in another foreign country, but only in military housing There, every one was American and everything she needed was nearby, including a movie theater, restaurant and bar, and swimming pool. When she needed any bread or bakery goods, she asked me to buy it for her. Otherwise, every Saturday she went with her husband to the base to shop at the commissary. She always generously asked if there was anything she could buy for me there, but I had no trouble finding everything we needed in the local markets. If her doorbell rang, she phoned me to come over to see what they wanted, because she didn’t understand the language. She never imagined what she was missing, and she returned to the United States without having brushed with the lifestyle of Spain and its people. Her memory of Madrid would be of the delicious bread from the corner market, a store she had never seen.
The Contessa
Our Spanish tutor had been recommended to Frank by one of the people in his office who was acquainted with her. Her name was Carmen and she professed to be a countess. She introduced us to a varied group of people in the Spanish community, which was, at times, agony for me, as I wondered if I would ever speak Spanish well enough to get through a dinner party without a migraine headache. Hosting a dinner in our home, it was both interesting and insulting to note how the Countess would very openly snap her fingernail against the rim of the wine glass to test the “ping” that identifies good crystal, or how, when seated at the dinner table, she would turn over the plate to see how our china rated. We had come beyond Captain Kangaroo glasses, but not much. We were a long way from English china and Swedish crystal.
