Mama Kitty

I once biked past a family of Canada geese crossing the intersection of Ashland and Elston. From my peripheral vision they looked like plastic bags blowing across the street, but then I saw their forms - first of two adults, then a brood of tiny yellow ducklings. They were at the crosswalk right in front of Horween Leather Co., and began to walk single file across Ashland towards Reliable Computer Source. I was mad with worry for them, Ashland and Elston is one of the busiest intersections that I navigate by bike. I was in the flow of traffic and had to keep moving, but I thought about them all the way downtown. On my way back home I kept an eye out for them, as if they’d be walking back and forth between Horween and Reliable all day like shooting gallery ducks at a state fair.

We get our fair share of wildlife in Chicago. Every spring our neighborhood is overrun with bunnies, and there was a possum who took up a short-term residence under our front porch. M once spotted a hawk swooping over his shoulder in hot pursuit of a pigeon who’d done the same only moments earlier, and one Thanksgiving we saw a hawk sitting in a tree - possibly the same one, dining on the remains of a pigeon. The red blood in its beak and claws showed starkly against the bare tree branches.

At our apartment on Glenwood there was a family of raccoons living on the porch of the top floor. I was out there reading one day and heard something above me. I assumed it was my neighbor, but as footsteps began to descend the stairs I realized there were two sets of footfalls - were both occupants of the apartment walking closely together? Perhaps they were carrying something heavy, a piece of furniture or a rolled up carpet. Halfway down the stairs I saw it, the raccoon halted on its descent and stared at me as if it had caught me trespassing. We both froze, and after a few moments it turned and walked back up the stairs. Later that summer I heard tiny grumbling barks coming from the third floor porch, and the same raccoon I’d seen earlier descended the stairs, followed by two mumbling babies. They made it all the way down the stairs, into the alley, and climbed over a fence to the neighboring building, setting off motion detecting floodlights.

When we lived across from Graceland Cemetery in a courtyard building, I was haunted by the nighttime sounds of a homeless cat. He was skinny, orange, and had a pointy head. I thought he might be part Siamese because his howls were so tortured, and one day I couldn’t take it anymore and put some food out for him. He was too skittish to eat where I could see him, so I placed the dish around the corner from our back door and listened to him crunch on the dry kibble, it sounded like someone walking across gravel. One night as I sat listening I popped my head out the back door to get a glimpse of him and saw a three foot long possum eating from the bowl.
“Shoo!” I said, and it skittered away, then turned its albino, ratlike face back around towards the food dish. “I said shoo” I repeated, and it scuttled down the back steps and into the alley.

When our upstairs neighbors’ eldest daughter was two and a half, she reported seeing dragon babies in the vegetable garden in our yard. Closer inspection revealed that a mother cat had given birth to three kittens, two orange and one black, and they were living in our yard behind the raised vegetable beds, between the garage and the compost bin. If I walked out to the garden and stayed quiet I’d see their tails weaving through the eggplant and tomato plants, and tiny eyes peeking out from behind the jalapenos. I recognized the mother cat, she was the tortie I’d seen wandering through our yard the previous year with a black kitten who was already half grown.

I called all the no-kill shelters in the area, but it was high season for stray kittens, and none of them had room. We took it upon ourselves to be their benefactors. We bought a cat toy that looked like a fishing pole with a feather on the end of it, and dangled it in front of their hiding spot. One of the orange kittens was curious enough to come out and play with it, and eventually the second orange kitten followed. The black kitten, the tiniest of the three, stayed close to its mother and watched. I got one of the orange kittens close enough to reach out and touch his head, it was no bigger than a golf ball, and he scampered away. Over the next few weeks I managed to pick him up once or twice, but he squirmed and scratched his way out of my grasp, his tiny claws leaving a trail of raised, puffy lines on my skin. I took pictures of them that I sent in an email to everyone I knew who might want a kitten, or who might know someone who wanted one.

And then one day they were gone. We put food out for them, but only the flies ate it. The next day they hadn’t returned, and we began to worry. It rained hard that week, and I looked for them in the yard and the alley, but didn’t see them. My heart sank. I had taken too long to rescue them and now they were gone. I figured I’d have time to draw them out of their feral shells, socialize them, and find homes for them. What made me think they would stick to my schedule? I tried not to think about it.

And then, just as suddenly, they returned, as if they’d been out of town on a family trip and had simply forgotten to tell us. M spotted the kittens chasing each other through the tall prairie grass that he’d planted near the fence. I saw the mother cat, and the black kitten, but there only one orange kitten. I hoped that maybe our efforts to socialize them had paid off, that perhaps the missing kitten had walked right up to a kindly stranger who’d taken him in, though I doubted it. In any case, we couldn’t let them stay outside any longer.

We bought a wire cage sized for a medium dog from a pet supply store, and set it up in the yard with a plate of food inside. We’d tried using a regular cat carrier, but they were wary of entering it, maybe because it was too dark and enclosed. I imagined that it would take several days before we trapped them, or that we’d get them one at a time, but all three walked right into the cage like guests invited to a party minutes after we left it in the yard. I tiptoed up to the cage and closed the door behind them. As soon as they heard it shut, the kittens climbed up the sides of the cage to the top looking for a way out, the mother cat remained strangely still. We stuck two brooms through the top of the cage and carried it like a royal litter onto our porch. We couldn’t bring them inside, we had two cats of our own and couldn’t risk exposure in case the feral cats were diseased, but we couldn’t leave them out on the porch for long either. We made arrangements to take them to the vet the next morning.

They had fleas and three kinds of worms, and the mother cat was slightly anemic, but other than that they were healthy. We had the mother cat spayed and got her left ear tipped, set her up in our guest room to recover, and kept the kittens in the dog cage on the porch. The orange kitten was easy to socialize, as soon as he saw me coming towards him he walked towards the front of the cage and started purring. The black kitten hissed and stayed in the back. We didn’t give them names because we didn’t want to become too attached to them, calling them simply “Orange Kitty”, “Black Kitty”, and “Mama Kitty.” This strategy failed miserably when we found a home for Orange Kitty, we’d only had him for a week but I was crushed. The sight of his tiny orange figure sitting in the windowsill of our neighbor’s kitchen was bittersweet; I was glad to have found a home for him, but I missed him and his purr, a tiny engine in his belly that rocked his whole body.

We let Black Kitty into the guest room with Mama Kitty, thinking that perhaps they would socialize better if they had each others company. Every day I’d spend time in the guest room, enticing the kitten out from his hiding spot with toys, and he soon came around. All I had to do was enter the room and sit on the bed and he’d come out of his hiding place and climb into my lap, purring. We found a home for him too, one of M’s colleagues had a round tabby named Fatty who was lonely, and she wanted to find a companion for him. She came to our house to meet Black Kitty and he came out of hiding for her, I was impressed. He didn’t hiss, and he didn’t try to hide when we put him in a cat carrier, or make noise in the car ride over to her apartment. Although Fatty was easily twenty times the size of Black Kitty they were just as shy, and within minutes of introducing them they had settled into a corner together. It was a perfect match, but my heart broke when we had to leave him there. He’d been in our house for three weeks.
“Next time I’m keeping him,” I said to M on the ride back, as if this were a dress rehearsal.

Only Mama Kitty remained, and we weren’t sure what to do with her. She hid so well from us that M frantically called me at work one morning, convinced that she’d escaped. She had wedged herself into a two inch space between the wall and a bookshelf. The only real evidence we had of her existence was that the food we left for her disappeared, and tiny hard turds appeared in her litter box. It was like a secular miracle of transubstantiation. We considered releasing her back into our yard once she’d completely healed from her stitches, but just couldn’t bring ourselves to do it. I got in touch with a cat behavioralist at Tree House, who said we should encourage her to play with cat toys, and that if all she did was follow the toy's movement with her eyes, progress was being made. She said eventually Mama Kitty would trust us, but would attach only to us, and that if we gave her up to a shelter she would revert back to being feral immediately.

I got over my hidden resentment - we'd given up two perfectly playful kittens and were stuck with an invisible feral cat who refused to be tamed; it turned out I was kind of pissed off about it. I began spending time in the room with her, even sleeping in the guest bed so she would get used to my presence. I made the fishing pole toy dance around the floor, and Mama Kitty followed it with her eyes, but stayed safely between the wall and the headboard. One day she reached out a paw and touched the feather dangling off the end of the toy. It was the tiniest mark of progress, but I was thrilled. Gradually she started playing with the toy more enthusiastically, purring and rubbing her face against the corner of the bed between swipes at the feather. I’d only tried to touch her once, when she still lived outside. I'd approached her as she ate out of a bowl and lightly rested my hand on her back. She jumped, spat at me like she was cursing the day I was born, and retreated behind the compost bin. After several weeks in the guest room she developed a funny little dance that involved circling the entire room, allowing me to pet her as she passed by. She’d walk behind the bed, emerge from behind the headboard, brush past my right hand, continue walking behind me, brush pass my left hand, and then continue on until she was behind the bed again. She purred loudly as she did so, rubbing her face against the corners of the bed so hard that I thought she might hurt herself. Clearly she enjoyed the attention, but didn't know what to make of it.

Our cat Oblio was intensely interested in what was going on. He’d stand outside the closed guest room door and stick his nose under the door jamb, inhaling deeply. Mama Kitty watched his white paws dart in and out beneath the door, but kept her distance. Mignonne was a different story, if she so much as picked up Mama Kitty’s scent on my hands she’d hiss. We’d just adopted Oblio from Harmony House a few months earlier, and Mignonne hadn’t been very nice to him at first either.

We closed Oblio and Mignonne into the basement and opened the door of the guest room to let Mama Kitty explore. After a few minutes I went looking for her, and found her pressed tightly between the wall and the headboard in the guest room. I got her to come out by leaving a trail of dry food from the guest room to the living room. She swallowed it all, following the trail like a vacuum - one thing Mama Kitty never did was waste food. If I dropped a piece on the floor she stopped it from sliding past her like a cowboy in a Western halting a mug of beer. She expertly stopped it with her paw, and drew it to herself. Who knows how many rats she’d managed to kill this way. When she’d inhaled the last piece in the dry food trail she looked around, realized she was in new territory, and ran back to the safety of the guest room.

She began to let me pet her, but only on the back. I tried touching her head and she shot a front paw out at me. I snapped my arm back before she made contact, and then felt guilty that I’d reacted so preemptively. I tried again and she stuck her paw out, tapping me lightly on the hand, her claws retracted. I was amazed. I tried again, and she did the same thing. She was like a grandmother lightly touching a small hand that had reached into a bowl of candy too close to dinnertime. This was a far cry from the cat who’d spat at me in the yard.

She’s been with us for almost three years now, and Oblio has adored her from the start. He was half grown when we took Mama Kitty in, and she had just been separated from her kittens, so the two of them bonded quickly. Mignonne has learned to live with her, and is sometimes even sweet to her, licking the sides of Mama Kitty’s face or squashing herself down right next to her on the couch.

We tried to think of a proper name for her: Arrow, Lucy, Suziepants Palmer, Bananabread Jones, but none of them stuck. She’s come out of her shell more and more, even demanding attention from us, standing at our feet and mewling until we pet her.

I still stop in my tracks when I see a stray cat in our neighborhood, and M tells me “you can’t save all the kitties.” That’s true, I can’t. But we did manage to save one.

The Triathlon, Part VI - or - Fried Chicken at Thirty Thousand Feet

I’d packed light: running shoes, bike gloves, swim goggles, athletic bra, tank top, running pants, bike glasses, a rented wetsuit, and everything else I’d need for six days were crammed into a wheeled carry-on bag and a backpack. I printed my boarding pass at an easy check-in station and went through security, unpacking my compact bags into no less than four different bins like a strand of DNA unraveling in a black hole and reassembling itself on the other side. I was hungry already when I saw the sign for BJ’s Market in concourse K. One side effect of all this training it that I’m hungry pretty much all the time, and not just for any food, but for high fat, high protein items. BJ’s makes a mean fried chicken, and the more I thought about it the hungrier I became. My flight was about to board, but I didn’t think I could make it until I landed in Logan Airport two and a half hours later before eating. I walked to the counter at BJ’s with purpose.
“Can you put it in a container that I can carry with me onto the plane?” I asked the bespectacled server. She nodded patiently with a look in her eye that let me know I wasn’t the first customer to ask this. “Great, I’ll take a quarter chicken,” I said.
“What sides would you like with that?” she asked.
“Mac and cheese, and mashed potatoes,” I said.
“You want gravy on you mashed potatoes?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, without hesitation.
“You get a corn muffin with that too,” she said. I couldn’t have been happier. I paid for my meal and rolled to gate K19, where boarding had begun.

“This is a full flight,” a woman announced, “passengers are allowed one carry on item and one personal item. If your carry on bag is too large, or you have more than two items, you may be asked to check your bag.” It dawned on me that my fried chicken might send me over the number of items allowed onto the flight. I didn’t have time to eat it before getting on the plane, but I wasn’t going to let anyone take it away from me. I stood up and arranged myself so that I was wearing my backback, pulling the rolling carry-on with my right hand, and holding the box of fried chicken in my left. I draped my sweatshirt over my left arm, concealing the fried chicken container. I approached the gate with my fried chicken-bearing arm dipped below my waist so that the man who scanned my ticket wouldn’t see it. I passed him without incident, and walked down the length of the ramp to the airplane. I found my seat and put the fried chicken container in my lap, and continued to conceal it with my sweatshirt. I was on the aisle sitting next to a pair of blonde, teenaged girls who were traveling with their mother and younger sister seated one row ahead. I was at risk of becoming part of their travel story, I could picture their father picking them up in Boston and asking about their flight.
“The woman sitting next to us came on board with a box of fried chicken," they’d say, and then maybe roll their eyes or pop their gum or put their hands on their hips, “I mean, who brings fried chicken onto an airplane anyway?” Then their father might say “really?”, or he might tell them that there’s all kinds of people in this world, or maybe he would say that if the worst thing that happened on the flight was that a woman sat next to them and ate fried chicken with beastly voracity that they should consider themselves lucky. Then the teenaged girls would sigh, and sit behind their parents in a car that would be driven to a house where they’d eat their own dinner, and forget that we ever crossed paths.

The plane took off, and once the fasten seatbelts sign dimmed a number of passengers opened containers of food that had been bought in concourse K. Sensible Caesar salads and loose meat sandwiches were being consumed throughout the cabin, but I didn’t see anyone else eating fried chicken. I glanced over at the girls on my left, they had both adjusted their seat backs into a reclining position, their eyes were closed, and they had covered themselves with Winnie-the-Pooh blankets. I released my tray table and pulled my box of fried chicken out from underneath my sweatshirt. I probably filled the entire cabin with the smell of fried chicken, but I’ve never had a more satisfying in-flight meal.

II

Muggy picked me up from the Barnstable stop on the Plymouth & Brockton bus line, and was impressed with how little I’d brought with me. We drove to Thuan Loi, a Vietnamese restaurant in South Yarmouth, and when I walked in the owner greeted me with a warm “Hiiiii, long time no see,” although it was my first visit. The owner’s son, an inquisitive boy of about seven years old, was drawn to my purse because it had an image of a bicycle stitched onto it. He stood between me and the dining room asking about it until his mother intervened.
“He asks a lot of questions,” she said. She waited on our table, and when I ordered a lime soda, she jotted something onto a pad of paper and said “number four.”
“Yes, and, um, number twenty four,” I said, reading the number next to a description of a bowl of noodles with fried tofu. Muggy ordered number eighteen, which was the same as mine only with steak, and I wished I’d ordered the same after I tasted it.

We finished our meal and drove to Muggy’s art-filled apartment in Eastham. Muggy is an upholsterer by trade, works part time as an accountant, and has an artistic bent. Her own artwork and works by friends of hers adorn the walls of her home, she has so many that some are in storage. A fish sculpture is fixed onto the wall of her bathroom, and several canvases and prints cover the walls of her living room and bedroom. She’s part of a small population of year-round dwellers on Cape Cod, and I generally visit her off-season when we have the whole peninsula to ourselves. There’s one highway that runs the length of the Cape, Route 6. On Friday evenings in the summer it gets jammed all the way from Boston to Provincetown, and the traffic runs nonstop all night long outside Muggy’s apartment. I unpacked my things in her workroom, where she keeps a working antique sewing machine and a whiteboard to keep track of her upholstering assignments. Above the whiteboard someone had written on the wall in script: “Muggy, always remember: do your best, fuck the rest.” It made me feel good to sleep under this message on the nights leading up to the triathlon.

In the morning we biked to First Encounter Beach, named for the spot where the pilgrims and Native Americans first encountered one another in 1620, so that I could have an encounter of my own with my rented wetsuit. I’d tried it on in Chicago to make sure it fit, but hadn’t actually tried to swim in it yet. The suit is made of black neoprene, covers me from my ankles to my neck, and has sleeves that go to my wrists. It zips up the back with a zipper attached to a long strip of fabric that enables the wearer to get themselves in and out of it. I began sweating immediately under the bright morning sun, and it was a relief to immerse myself in cool, salty water. I quickly discovered that the suit made me buoyant, which was a great relief. I’ve been a little nervous about the swimming part of the race since I signed up; I can always stop biking or running if I get tired, but I can’t stop swimming. I tested what would happen if I remained motionless in the water, and skimmed the top like a waterbug moving in the current.

From there we stopped by Idle Times Bike Shop, where I’d rented a racing bike and helmet for the weekend. The shop is owned and run by a mutual friend of Muggy and mine named Peter, and he let me take the bike Friday and return it Monday even though I’d only paid him for two days. Peter’s largesse is pronounced in the summertime, when his shop is open twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and is always busy. Last summer he gave me a pair of Chrome Shins free of charge, originally he was going to sell them to me at wholesale price but when I came to the shop to pick them up he refused payment. I sent him a reproduction vintage cycling poster when I got back to Chicago as a thank you, and he had it framed and hung on a wall of his shop.

I’ve never ridden a racing bike, so I took it down to the bike path near Muggy’s apartment to test it out. It weighed less than a bag of groceries, and seemed to read my mind. If I so much as thought about turning left, it did so. I called Peter to ask about adjusting the seat, and told him how amazing it was to ride.
“It should be, that’s a two thousand dollar bike,” he said.
“Well I’m taking pictures then, because this is the only time I’ll be riding a bike like that," I said. I began to wonder how much of athleticism is a matter of having the right equipment.

We met up with my co-triathlete, MamaVee, and her family for a pasta dinner at her in-laws house in Welfleet. I’d met her in-laws once the previous summer, and was convinced that her father in law, Dan, wasn’t fond of me. He’d asked me about my job, and seemed put off by my answer to a question regarding the salary of the CEO at my organization. He seemed not to remember me and asked me what I did for a living.
“I’m unemployed at the moment,” I said.
“Are you in town on vacation?” he asked.
“I’m doing the triathlon with MamaVee,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, “you’re doing that?” It was more of a statement than a question.
“Uh-huh,” I said. In the tradition of carbo-loading before a race, he’d made spaghetti and meat sauce, and baked two loaves of bread. MamaVee’s husband Ben added to the feast with a large order of barbecued ribs and fried chicken from Marconi Beach Restaurant. I sat next to Dan at dinner, and we talked about the race.
“We signed up in February,” I told him.
“Oh,” he said, “when you were still working.”
“When I was still working?” I exclaimed, “Wow Dan, I should call you every morning for motivation.” The skin around his eyes crinkled, he reached his hand out and lightly touched my arm. It occurred to me that perhaps he didn't dislike me, that this was just his way. MamaVee confirmed this when she told me what Dan had said to her in preparation for the race: "Good luck. You'll need it."

After dinner Muggy, MamaVee, Ben, and I studied the map of the race site. It started at 7:30, and Falmouth was about an hour drive from Eastham, so Ben and MamaVee would pick up me and Muggy by 5 a.m. with their car and a rack that held four bikes. We’d have time to find parking, bike to the race site, and check in before the race.

III

I set my cell phone alarm for 4 a.m. I wanted time to stretch properly, eat something, and maybe even drink some coffee. I went to bed at 10 p.m., and woke up in the dark. I fumbled for my cell phone and read the time: 11:15 p.m. I'd only been asleep for an hour and was already waking up in anticipation of the alarm. I woke up again at 1:30, 2:15, and finally got out of bed when I woke at 3:20. Muggy was up too, I put on some coffee and started my stretching routine.

It was dark when Ben and MamaVee arrived, but already there were birds singing. Ben loaded the bikes onto the rack, and the four of us piled into the car. We flew along the near-empty highway as the sun rose, giddy with expectation and sleep deprivation. We arrived at the race site by 6:15. MamaVee and I headed to the registration table, Ben and Muggy went to find something to eat. I was assigned number 394, MamaVee was 343, and we were given corresponding chip timing devices to wear around our ankles. We parked our bikes onto numbered racks, and got our bodies numbered with black marker. Our race number was written on our right arm, and the letter E was written on our right calf, which corresponded with the 35-39 age bracket. All around us people with numbered and lettered limbs milled around, and it was strange to know just by looking at someone’s leg what age group they belonged to. Waiting in line for the ladies room I stood behind a D and an E, and later I spotted Gs, Hs and Is. It was unsettling at first, but then became an interesting point of demographic study. There were people of all ages at the race, and all body types. At first I only noticed the fit, elite athletes in skin-tight, aerodynamic clothing, but there were types of all kinds represented.

We walked onto the rocky beach and assembled ourselves into swim waves, MamaVee was in wave number 4, I was in wave 5. A race organizer called the first wave into the water and they ran in, sending a spray of water three feet into the air. Three minutes later wave 2 was called, and three minutes after that wave 3. I looked out at the floating orange markers in Nantucket Sound, the masses of people swimming furiously through it like schools of fish, and the wet-suited, swim-capped people waiting for their turn. Standing on the beach in my green swim cap that indicated my status as a first timer, my stomach began to sit low in my body. Wave 4 was called, and MamaVee ran out into the water and started swimming like a pro. I joined wave 5 at the tide mark, and waited. I ran in when my wave was called, swam a few strokes and had to stop for air. My adrenaline was high, and I couldn’t get my breathing under control. I tread water and did a weak version of the breast stroke as I took fast breaths. I put my face back into the water and swam a few more freestyle strokes, then had to stop for air again. A woman in a white cap a few feet ahead of me spotted my green cap and asked me if this was my first triathlon.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re doing great, keep going,” she said. I swam in this manner, starting and stopping, for the entire length of the race. At the end I saw Muggy and Ben on the platform, Muggy was jumping up and down and yelling
“Come on champ!” I climbed out of the water and ran past the timer, and a high pitched noise emitted from it. I ran to my bike, unzipped my wetsuit and wrestled my way out of it, switched my goggles for glasses, dusted the sand off my feet, put on my socks, sneakers, bike gloves and helmet, and headed for the bike race start.

I went so fast it felt dangerous. In my mind it seemed that the physics of it couldn’t possibly work - the bike was so light, how could it keep from flipping over? I passed by an injured athlete off the side of the road being tended to by a medic, and it seemed like a warning. There were hills that made me stand on the pedals and push with all my strength, something I'm not used to as a flatlander, and valleys that made me go so fast that at one point I started pumping the brakes. My experience of biking is through city streets on a commuter bike, negotiating traffic, red lights and stop signs. This was entirely different. People along the side of the road had come out to watch, some of them sitting passively in folding chairs, others on their feet clapping and cheering as we sped past. Ben and Muggy were at the finish line again, cheering me on. I crossed the timer and walked the bike back to the rack.

I unstrapped my helmet, removed my gloves, and took a few minutes to stretch. We’d been given goodie bags containing a water bottle, a t-shirt that I’ll probably never wear, and an assortment of energy bars. I grabbed a tube of something that claimed to provide instant energy. It was liquidy and sickly sweet, and tasted like raspberry yogurt. I sucked it down and went to the run start line. Ben and Muggy were at the race start, cheering me on still. The run was flat, and I began to zone out with the repetition of putting one foot in front of the other behind a long line of other people doing the same. At one point I felt like I wasn’t actually there in the moment, that I was recalling a time when I’d run down a stretch of road along a beach. I had to remind myself that I was still in it, experiencing the race as it unfolded. Halfway through I caught up to MamaVee, she’d just made the hairpin turn at the midpoint of the race and was heading back. We held out our hands and high-fived each other. During the last mile and a half the crowds of onlookers had thinned, but the few who remained were enthusiastic.
“Come on number three ninety four!” One woman yelled as I ran past, “looking good, almost there!”
“Thank you!” I said, and kept going. At the race end, I crossed the final timer, and having read my name from the information on the chip, an announcer's voice said:
“Number three ninety four, J. Palmer from Chicago, Illinois!” I clasped my hands together and threw them high above my left shoulder, and then my right in a victory dance as I ran under a digital clock readout. A staffer stationed nearby watched my dance and said:
“Okay, hand over the chip showoff .” I reached down and released the Velcro grip from my ankle, and handed her my timer. “Did you come here on vacation?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“This isn’t how to spend a vacation,” she said. I chuckled and moved on.

I found MamaVee, and we exchanged a sweaty embrace.
“How do you feel?" she asked.
“I feel good," I said.
“I feel weirdly okay," MamaVee said, and I nodded in agreement. “I would do this again."
“Yeah, so would I." I said.

After rinsing off under an outdoor shower and stopping for coffee, the four of us loaded back into the car and headed back to Eastham. It wasn’t even lunchtime, and the main event of the day was already over. We spent the afternoon at a pond with Tuber and Girlpie, Mamavee and Ben’s kids. The still, clear pond water was cool and relaxing.

The race results were posted online by Sunday night. Here’s the breakdown: I swam 1/3 of a mile in 12:23, biked 9.25 miles in 47:38, and ran 3.1 miles in 35:01. My overall time was 1:35:04. MamaVee's times were 10:39, 45:18, and 39:55, with an overall time of 1:35:53. We finished within a minute of each other.

Not bad for first timers.

The Triathlon, Part V - or - how I paid my way to Cape Cod with French

I've been busy. Running, swimming and biking take up a lot of time. I'm getting better at swimming, but it's still hard. I swam 15 laps in a row once last week and was really proud of myself; I've been doing "bricks," where I do two of the three sports in quick succession; and one day I did all three parts - with breaks, over the course of about four hours.

Then I got an email about getting paid to be a test subject for a French fluency exam at Northwestern University. The timing was tight - there were two days of listening comprehension last weekend, and two days of reading comprehension next weekend which I can't do because I'll be on Cape Cod. They were testing during the week too, so I could squeeze the reading test in just before departing this Thursday for my sporty journey to the east. I could sign up to do just the listening comprehension test and get paid $280, or sign up for both and get paid $560. I've been keeping a mental list of the costs associated with the triathlon, and it goes something like this:

Flight to Boston $180
Race registration fee $65
Bike and helmet rental $50
Wetsuit rental $50
Running shoes $80
Swimming lessons $120
Total: $545

The allure of covering my triathlon costs was strong, my French fluency almost never results in cash rewards, and I can't think of another time when I was offered money in exchange for taking a standardized test. I signed up for both sections.

I heard about the test through an email from the Groupe Professionnel Francophone. I attended a couple of their meetings a few years ago while on a job search, I wanted to find a job where I could use my French skills and thought it might be a good networking opportunity. I signed up to be on their email list, and have been receiving communications from them ever since. They meet on the last Thursday of the month in the restaurant of the Renaissance Hotel on Wacker Drive, and their meetings generally start with a speaker, followed by wine and hors d'oevres. The first meeting I attended went well; the speaker was from the Haitian consulate, and I managed to speak French with a number of people without slipping into English. The next time I went, a roundish man in his fifties who recognized me from an event at the Alliance Francaise sat next to me at the bar, and after talking to me for a few minutes asked me for my number, ostensibly so that we could practice speaking French with each other. I froze and submitted to his request rather than politely declining. I sat next to him, mute and powerless, as he dialed my home phone number on his cell phone. He explained that he was doing this so that he'd have the number programmed into his phone and wouldn't lose the scrap of paper that I'd written it on. My secret hopes were realized when he held the phone to his ear and said:
"Allo?" in a tone of genuine surprise. "Someone picked up," he said to me.
"Yes, my husband," I said. I haven't been back since.

Early last Saturday morning I took the #93 California/Dodge bus from the corner of Lawrence and Kimball to the campus of Northwestern University in downtown Evanston. I hitched my bike onto the rack on the front of the bus so that I could bike the nine miles home in the afternoon, fulfilling the need for continuous training. I'd never been on the Northwestern campus, so I parked my bike and asked a woman seated on a bench nearby if the building in front of us was University Hall.
"Yes, for ze French test?" she said, in a French accent.

Inside people were milling around a lecture room on the south side of the building. My friend Carla spotted me and I sat near her, we know each other from taking classes at the Alliance Francaise and I'd forwarded the information about the test to her in case she wanted to cash in too. The woman who'd emailed us the information was standing at the front of the room with a name tag hanging around her neck on a lanyard. I asked her if I could come back on Tuesday and Wednesday for the reading portion of the test.
"I don't know," she said from under a helmet of dyed, dried and sprayed blonde hair, "I am not the one administering the test." The testing hadn't even begun and already I was being subjected to French, not just the language but the bureaucracy and minimal customer service. If this had been a test for English, the woman wearing a lanyard would have distributed pencils at the door and thanked us all for taking time out of our weekends to join her for this important, final phase in creating a fluency exam. I sat down and waited for the test administrator, whoever that might be.

A slight, gray-haired man in ironed khakis and a polo shirt entered the room carrying a stack of test booklets. He placed them at a podium at the front of the room and addressed us in a calm, French accented voice. There was a problem, he said. The announcement about the tests had resulted in an overwhelming response, and while he was very happy with the turnout, there were only twenty-five test booklets and about fifty of us in the room. Would it be possible for half of us to leave and come back on Monday? A handful of people stood up and left the room. Someone asked if it was possible to make copies of the test booklets. Yes, the man said, but this would take time, and the test had to start in a few minutes. The woman seated to my left suggested that we split into two rooms, and each room take a different section of the test, since there were four sections to be administered. It took a few minutes for the ironed-pants man to consider this logic; it was out of the box thinking, and he was staying true to the French ideal of making everything more complicated than it needs to be. Eventually he acquiesced.

The booklets were distributed, along with answer sheets. The test was multiple choice, and the answer sheet had round circles to be filled in with a number 2 pencil, like the SATs. At the top of the page there was a spot for marking our name, test section, and testing location. Near that were sections asking for military rank: officer, enlisted, or civilian, and branch of service: army, navy, air force, marines, or other. I'd had a hint that this was for the Department of Defense, the email had mentioned something called the Defense Language Institute. I felt a sudden pang of discomfort, and soothed myself with the thought that at least I'd be getting some of my war tax dollars back, and since I was doing this in the name of physical fitness it couldn't be that much of a conflict of interest. I signed a confidentiality agreement stating that I won't divulge the contents of the exam, so I can't tell you what the questions were or I'll end up on a list somewhere.

I spent ten hours over the course of the weekend in that room listening to recorded questions emanating from a small CD player propped up at the podium, and filling in circles with a pencil. Although I wasn't directly interacting with anyone, by the end my fellow test takers were getting on my nerves. As time passed, the amount of sneezing, coughing, and sighing increased markedly. One person even blew their nose as the rest of the room strained to listed to an audio question.

There were more subtle annoyances too, things that ordinarily wouldn't bother me became irritating due to close proximity and time elapsed. One woman showed up to the test wearing a dress made from fabric that had the map of Paris printed on it, just in case anyone was wondering why she was in the room, and a woman in the front row did everything possible to draw attention to herself. Her hair was cut short and dyed dark red, and she wore chunky Chanel glasses frames. She sat on the far left side of the room, and adjusted her chair so that she was sitting at a jaunty angle to the rest of us. She made a grand demonstration of erasing pencil marks from her answer sheet and brushing away the eraser remains with her right hand, creating continuous background noise to our test-taking activities. During breaks she turned around in her seat and asked questions like:
"What did you put down for number twenty-seven?". On the second day of testing I arrived early to find her writing things on the blackboard and explaining the finer points of French grammar to the only other person who had shown up as early as me.

Annoyances aside, it was a satisfying experience. I got paid for using my brain, got to pretend I was a student at a prestigious university for a couple days, and the bike ride home was gorgeous. I headed west to McCormick Boulevard and followed the North Channel Trail all the way home, and even spotted a baby bunny on the way. Yesterday I went back for the first two parts of the reading comprehension test, which was easier since everyone goes at their own pace and there's no audio cues to listen for. Today I'll bike to the Y to swim my 15 laps, and then take my bike onto the #93 up to Evanston for the two remaining sections of the reading test. Then I'll come home and pack my things for the flight to Boston in the morning. Four days and counting till the triathlon...

The Triathlon, Part IV

There’s a sign at the Y informing swimmers that the presence of feces in the pool constitutes something called “code brown”. I made the mistake of thinking about this too hard while swimming and laughed underwater, sending a shot of chlorinated liquid up my nostrils. Swimming has gotten easier over the past few months, but it’s still the hardest of the three sports that make up the mini-triathlon, now just fourteen days away. I can swim 10 laps without stopping, up from three when I started training. There’s 44 laps to a mile at my local YMCA pool, and the swimming portion of the race is 1/3 of a mile, or just under 15 laps. I’m not sure how this is going to work on race day, unless I just go really, really slowly.

I’ve definitely gotten into better shape; I have noticeable triceps now and I can’t stop touching them and showing them to people, but being in good shape is all relative. The first time I ran around Horner Park without stopping, the music in my head shifted from the theme to Chariots of Fire to the Rocky theme song as I rounded the corner to finish the last fifty yards to my house. Some boys sitting on the porch across the street started laughing, and I wasn’t sure why until one of them yelled:
"Joo wanna take a breather?" I pretended not to hear them and ran up my front steps like Rocky at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Once during Adult Lap Swim Time at the Y I stopped to ask the lifeguard how many laps make a mile because I’d forgotten. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, his straight brown hair hung down into his eyes, and the Beach Boys’ "Surfing USA" blasted from a portable radio next to his chair.
"How many laps make a mile?" I asked from the shallow end of the pool. He looked at me from his perch.
"What?" he asked over the music, a rescue tube hanging over his shoulder like a large, reddish sausage.
"How many laps make a mile?" I repeated, louder this time.
"Do you need help?" he asked.
"No," I said, the skirt of my bathing suit floating up to my waist in the water, did I really look that bad?

I haven’t lost any weight but my clothes are loose; I can pull my jeans off without unzipping them, which is a fun party trick. I thought I was ready for a new bathing suit - one without a skirt, but I just don’t have the confidence to flash my pale, meaty thighs to the world, powerful and muscular though they may be. Sometimes I feel like Bruce Banner’s half-creature, the thing he becomes just before turning into the Hulk, minus the shredding clothes and the rage. Sometimes people notice that there’s been a change in my appearance, and I’m always disappointed when they don’t.

Today I’m going to attempt all three parts of the triathlon, with breaks between them. Wish me luck.

The Wedding - or - The Road to Pentwater

I set the alarm for 6 a.m., but it didn’t go off. M magically woke at 6:30, and we hit the road an hour later in a borrowed car heading towards Michigan, Eastern Standard Time, and Holly and Jeremy's wedding. I met the bride in late 2002 when we were coworkers at a national nonprofit organization. I walked into her office shortly after being hired and saw an image of comedian David Cross on her computer monitor, and knew then that we were destined to become friends. We were even neighbors for a while, I knew the guy who owned the house next door and the rent was cheap, so she and Jeremy moved in. They had a set of E.T. walkie talkies, and we kept one in our kitchen, turning it on now and then and speaking into its belly to see what was going on next door. It wasn’t very effective since we’d have to call first and tell them to turn their E.T. on, but it was fun nonetheless.

Time spent with Holly and Jeremy is frequently spontaneous and immature, and makes me laugh until my stomach hurts. Once while driving on Ashland Avenue Jeremy began yelling things out of the passenger side window. I told him to yell "alcohol is a social lubricant," and he did, hanging his head out the window like a dog and howling it at pedestrians. Eventually the phrase was condensed to "social luuuuuuube," and still later to a single word, "soshalube." For days afterward we muttered it to each other in a kind of half-cough.

We were fairly casual about visiting between our homes, and I walked into their living room once to find a small pile of toenail clippings on the edge of the coffee table.
"Are those toenails?" I asked Holly.
"Yes," she answered, mortified. I knew what they were instantly, and I knew that they had to have once been a part of Jeremy’s foot because M does the same thing in our living room.

Their apartment was in the attic and had slanting walls where the roof inclined. It was cute, but small and poorly heated, so they moved out after a year to a bigger space near Logan Square. Holly quit her job in August of 2005, and I followed suit shortly. It was an adjustment; towards the end of our time working together we shared an office with a window that overlooked Lake Michigan, and it was fun going to work knowing she’d be there. About a year ago Holly and Jeremy moved to Grand Rapids, and we’ve seen them once or twice since then. They’d been together for seven years before they got engaged, so it was almost as if they were married already, but I was looking forward to watching them make it official. They'd chosen the small town of Pentwater for their wedding because Holly's family has been spending summers there since before she was born; for years they've had a bumper sticker on their car that says "Pentwater, Heaven, What's The Difference?"

We took the Kennedy to the Skyway and drove through Gary and northern Indiana before crossing the border into Michigan and connecting to Route 31. Signs for the Blue Star Highway appeared on the side of the road, and I thought it sounded like the most beautiful highway in the world. We passed Schmuhl Road, crossed the Paw Paw river, and as we approached Holland I realized I had an urgent need to find a bathroom. M pulled into a gas station and I walked into the adjoining convenience store, where a woman sat behind the counter engrossed in a phone conversation. I looked around the small space hoping that the bathroom was inside the store, but saw no evidence of one. I got the cashier’s attention, and hadn’t even finished forming my question before she threw a key attached to a piece of wood on top of the glass-topped counter in front of her without breaking the rhythm of her conversation. I walked outside and slipped the key inside the lock of the bathroom door, the promise of sweet relief just seconds away. What I saw sent my urine into reverse; even with the lights off I could see a pyramid of toilet paper sitting glacier-like in the middle of the toilet bowl, accented with streaks of brown that cascaded down onto the toilet seat. Like a glacier, a small percentage of its mass showed above the waterline. I walked back into the convenience store and threw the key onto the counter with the fury of relief denied. The cashier absentmindedly picked it up and hung it back on its hook behind the register.
“Do you have another bathroom?” I asked, “that one’s dirty.”
“Oh really, is it bad?” she asked, the phone receiver still pressed to her ear, "yeah," I said.
“No, that’s the only one we have,” she said, and turned back to her conversation. I marched towards M, who was finishing up at the gas pump.
“That toilet is disgusting,” I announced, “we have to go somewhere else.” We drove a few hundred feet to a Denny’s, and I marched right past the hostess to the back of the restaurant. I burst through to the first toilet and was so relieved that I started laughing as a torrent of urine exited my body. I heard a rustle coming from the adjoining stall and realized that I wasn’t alone. I finished quickly and washed my hands, and giggled again after reading a sticker affixed to the paper towel dispenser that read:

BEFORE YOUR SHIFT BEGINS
AFTER A BREAK
AFTER BEING SOILED BY WORK
AFTER A SMOKE BREAK
EMPLOYEES MUST WASH HANDS

On my way out of the restaurant I passed by a friend of M's, a professional painter who, in exchange for tattooing from M, painted our living and dining rooms when we first moved into our house six years ago. He was on his way from Chicago to a wedding in Saugatuck, and I wouldn't have recognized him, but he'd approached M in the parking lot and they'd exchanged greetings.

Back in the car I began to notice that the town of Holland, MI had a Dutch theme; there were signs for Tulip City Airport, I spotted a mini golf course with a windmill on the putting green, and we drove past a sign in the shape of a Dutch clog advertising the Wooden Shoe Antique Mall & Restaurant. At Felch Street we spotted a car with four Jesus fishes attached to the rear.
"That guy just really, really, really, really wants you to know that he believes," I said.
"He also really runs red lights," M said, as the believer blew through an intersection ahead of us. We continued on past both Ransom Street and Ransom Street West, Macatowa Legends Golf Club, and a convoy of vehicles transporting boy scout troops to a jamboree.

We pulled into Pentwater at about 12:30 p.m. Michigan time, changed out of our traveling clothes and walked to the village green. The wedding ceremony was short but poignant. Holly walked across the green with her father and stood on the steps of the gazebo with Jeremy, where they exchanged vows. Their dog Enzo served as the ring bearer, with assistance from Brian, the brother of the groom. Once Enzo delivered the rings a round of applause came from the guests, and a woman with salt and pepper hair who I recognized as Jeremy and Brian's mother leaned forward and said:
"Good job Brian".

Afterward there was a reception under a tent on the lawn of the Ida Jean Bed & Breakfast. Teary eyed toasts were made by the two sisters of the bride, the father of the bride and various friends, as well as the single funniest brother of the groom speech I've ever heard. Jeremy and his brother Brian have many similar features, but while Brian has a full head of hair Jeremy has none. In some circles Brian is known as Hairemy, and he opened his speech with:
"People say that my brother and I are a lot alike, but there are some things I do that he doesn't... like buy shampoo." Much dancing and revelry followed, and at midnight the party moved to a local bar called The Antler. M and I headed to our cozy B&B, dog tired from our travels.

We spent the next day with the bride and groom, and a handful of other guests, passing an idyllic day swimming, watching the sunset, drinking beer and sharing stories under the stars. Since we were on the far western edge of the eastern time zone the light lasted until ten o'clock at night, adding to the sense of magic. By the time Monday rolled around it felt as though we'd been there for weeks, and had completely relaxed into the small town routine of greeting strangers on the street and never walking more than four blocks to get anywhere. We'd spent more time with Holly and Jeremy than we have in years, and made connections with some of their friends in the process.

We made the trek back home on the same roads we'd driven up on, with a view of new billboards. One bore an ad for an "adult superstore" called the Lion's Den that featured the silhouette of a lion with a full mane standing closely behind a lioness in a pose just shy of coitus. Another advertised Buck Snort Lodge Products, and a third advertised a restaurant called the Texas Corral with the catchphrase "Just drop the shells on the floor," an odd selling point. In Michigan City, Indiana, a billboard read "What can wash away my sins? Only the blood of Jesus," but I wasn't sold on that either. We pulled off the highway twenty yards from it it to stop at the Indiana Welcome Center, and parked next to a man who got out of his car sporting brown polyester pants and thick lamb chop sideburns. It was as if we'd not only crossed over the state line to Indiana, but had also crossed over to 1975. In the ladies room every third bathroom had a sign announcing that it was out of order, and the clock in the main entryway was set for Chicago time.

Just before stopping at Culver's for butter burgers (if you've never had one you're missing out) M spotted this bumper sticker on a car ahead of us: "If you can read this, thank a teacher... and since it is in English, thank a soldier."
"Wow, that's great," I said, "since everyone in the service speaks English as their first language."
"Not to mention that the only war fought on U.S. soil was against England," M added. I considered this for a moment.
"What about the Alamo?" I asked. We were cloudy on the specifics, but if you'd like to take it up with the driver, they have vanity plates from Michigan with the word "ANJULS" spelled out - in perfect English, naturally.

Michael Jackson

I was watching season four, episode one of Six Feet Under when M said:
“Whoa, you want to hear a celebrity death that will blow you away?”
“In a minute,” I said distractedly. The episode onscreen was heavy, and there were only a few minutes left. From the distance of fiction I watched Nate Fisher bury his deceased wife at the top of a mountain, and then scream into the air at the absurdity of life until the credits rolled. I turned the TV off and walked to where M sat. “Okay,” I said, “who?”
“Michael Jackson,” M said, in a tone of genuine astonishment. I stood for a moment with my hands on my hips, staring at the computer screen with my jaw slightly slackened, and then headed back for the TV.
“He’s not dead,” I said after watching NBC news for a few seconds, “he’s just in the hospital.”
“The TV news can’t say it yet because of HIPPA,” M said, “TMZ already broke the news on the Internet.”
“TMZ”, I said dismissively, and got back on the computer to search for headlines. The TV caught up with the Internet within an hour, and soon we were watching montages of Michael Jackson’s life.

I’d been indoors all day – it’s been hot in Chicago this week and I’ve been moving as little as possible, sitting in one spot like a reptile under a heat lamp, absorbing information through my eyes and ears and only rising to my feet when the occasion absolutely necessitates ambulatory movement. The combination of indoor confinement and uninterrupted television watching was making me twitchy, so I stretched my muscles and went for a run in the waning sunlight, the humidity be damned.

I left the house and started towards Horner Park. I ran slowly, but turned a bright sweaty pink anyway, even the skin between my eyelids and brows turning the color of a watermelon Jolly Rancher. When I got back M was mowing the grass, and our upstairs neighbor and her five-year-old daughter were in the yard. The little girl stared at me as I doused my face with water.

I first became aware of Michael Jackson in grade school, and my friend Anna gave me a copy of Thriller, on vinyl, for Christmas in 1982. I was eleven years old and I thought he was amazing, and – dare I say it, cute. But then I was always a sucker for non-threatening, androgynous male pop stars – I had a raging crush on David Bowie circa the Serious Moonlight tour, even though he was way too old for me; Nick Rhodes, the heavily made-up keyboardist from Duran Duran; and Prince (who I still adore). I broke the plastic seal on the LP and opened it up, revealing the soft-focus picture of Michael Jackson in the center fold, reclining in a white suit and snuggling with a couple tiger cubs. It was the era of disco bashing, and when Miriam Celedonia - one of the preppy girls, saw me carrying the album with me through the halls of I.S. 88, she said:
“That’s disco you know.”
“No it’s not!” I insisted.

This morning on the Red line I heard “don’t stop ‘till you get enough” blasting through someone’s iPod headphones, and the man sitting next to me read the front page news of Michael Jackson’s death in the Chicago Tribune, discarding the paper when he got off the train. I picked it up and brought it with me to the Alliance Française, where I had a volunteer librarian gig for a couple hours. It was a slow shift; they’re between sessions, and only a few patrons came in. On my way out I said hello to Hamid, an Algerian man who’s been working at the front desk for almost as long as I’ve been taking classes, and Frédéric, the shiny bald-headed director of the learning center. Over the years Hamid has shared bits and pieces of his life with me, and his stories have ranged from curiously funny to downright terrifying; he worked at Air France for a number of years and has traveled the world. I’ve never seen him or Frédéric dressed in anything less formal than a suit and tie, even on this Friday afternoon between class sessions.
“Si vous voulez,” I said to them, “j’ai un copie du Chicago Tribune. C’est en anglais, mais…” Frédéric took the paper from my hands and stared at the front page.
“Vous en avez déjà lu?” he asked Hamid, before commandeering it. Frédéric doesn’t speak English well, I’ve only ever communicated with him in French, and I was moved by the fact that he wanted to read the Tribune’s English language coverage.

On the train ride back home I heard “don’t stop ‘till you get enough” a second time, through someone else’s headphones. At home I logged onto facebook, where seemingly everyone’s status updates had something to do with Michael Jackson’s death. I opened a link to a video of “I’ll be there,” and listened to a sweet, pre-teen Michael Jackson sing, music coming from his original, beautiful face. I was doing all right until the line “just look over your shoulders honey,” and suddenly became a soppy, weeping mess. The video ended with the young Michael appearing in the doorway of the grown, troubled, altered-in-appearance Michael, the two of them glancing at each other briefly. I was embarrassed at how much it affected me, and dried my tears with cheap paper napkins. An actual box of facial tissue lives on top of the toilet tank, but I wanted to avoid being seen in this state by my husband, who was taking a shower.

I’ve been thinking about what it is that makes me so sad about Michael Jackson’s passing, and it’s this: he had so much promise, and he was so beautiful, and then over time he became completely unrecognizable. When he spoke his voice sounded familiar, but he looked nothing like the Michael Jackson of Thriller, or Off The Wall, or the Jackson Five, and I stopped paying attention to him because I couldn’t relate to him anymore. He was like the childhood friend who had amazing potential; maybe the one who was voted “most likely to succeed” in high school, only to end up broke, living in a squatter’s apartment and sniffing glue out of a paper bag. Only Michael Jackson’s story was sadder than that because he had it all, and nobody was able to stop him from self-destruction. The problem with achieving that kind of fame and success is that nobody ever says “no.” It’s the reason Donald Trump has ridiculous hair, it’s the reason Oprah gave cars to her studio audience and spent fifty million dollars on a single school in Africa when with the same money she could have helped so many more, and it’s the reason nobody ever told Michael Jackson not to get any more plastic surgery. I’m sad for the wasted potential, I’m sad to have watched him self-destruct over the years, and I’m sad for how unreachably strange, troubled and alienated he ultimately became. In the coming days the preparations for his funeral will undoubtedly be covered with the same unrelenting vigor as the rest of his life, and if there’s one wish I could be granted from my voyeuristic perch it’s for child stars to become, if not a thing of the past, then at least recognized for what they are – children.

My efforts to avoid detection by M were for naught, he exited the bathroom and saw me sitting at the kitchen counter, staring at the computer and holding back a new wall of tears.
“Are you sad?” He asked, and I nodded silently. I finally went into the bathroom to get some tissue and saw my reflection in the mirror, the skin between my eyelids and brows as pink as after a three mile run.

Dharma Garden Thai

Sue at Dharma Garden Thai always recognizes me when I phone in an order for pickup. The other night there was nothing to eat in the kitchen, so M asked me if I thought we should order takeout.
“Sure", I said.
“Where should we order from?” he asked. There’s only two places we ever order from - a Persian restaurant on Kedzie called Noon-o-Kebab, and Dharma Garden Thai. If he hadn’t suggested it I would have done so myself. “Do we have a menu?” he asked. We don’t even need a menu at this point, but I went along with this well rehearsed scene, the lines of dialogue etched into our memory as if we were actors at a dress rehearsal. I opened the drawer on the sideboard where we keep all our takeout menus, and ruffled through them looking for the right one.

The way it works in our house I do the ordering, and M does the pickup. He has a phobia of speaking to strangers on the telephone, and I don’t really drive so the work naturally divides itself. I dialed the number, and Sue picked up on the other end.
“Hello, Dharma Garden Thai?” she said, more like a question than a statement.
“Hello, I’d like to place an order for pickup.”
“Okaaaaay, what would you liiiiike?" Sue asked, extending her vowels.
“An order of Thai spring rolls"
“Okaaaaay. Anything eeeelse?”
“Fruits and vegetables salad…” Sue's tone changed suddenly to enthusiastic recognition.
“Oh hiiiiii!" she said, loud enough that M could hear it from a distance of three feet. It is a mark of our frequent patronage of Dharma Garden Thai that Sue recognizes me based on this particular salad, maybe I’m the only one who orders it. I first tried it because they were out of something else, and she suggested that I try it. It’s made of a mix of seasonal fruits and vegetables, which doesn’t sound like it would be good but it is, and I order it three out of four times now. “Anything eeeeelse?”
“Yes, and a potato massaman curry.”
“With what?”
“With shrimp please.”
“Would you like a dessert?”
“What do you have this evening?”
“We have sticky rice with mangooooooo.”
“Oh, great! Yes, one of those please.”
“Okaaaay J... Beautiful skiiiiin,” she said before disconnecting.

I don’t know if all Thai women are as focused on skin as Sue is, but she remarks on this most visible organ of mine every time I place an order, even when I’m not there in person for her to see it. The first time it happened we were dining in, and she approached our table.
“Are you vegan?” she asked me. Dharma Garden Thai is a vegetarian restaurant, so it was a reasonable question.
“No,” I said, “I eat meat, but I come here because the food is delicious.”
“Ooooh. I thought you were vegan,” Sue said. She leaned in closer, “you know whyyyyyy?”
“No.”
“Because your skin," she said, lowering her voice, “it fresh. Like a peeled vegetable.” She reached her hand out and brushed the back of her fingers against my cheek as if she were sizing up the quality of a skein of fabric. Then she walked away, her diminutive figure rocking back and forth slightly as she paced the floor, her years as a mother and grandmother showing only in her gait.

Dharma Garden Thai is located on Irving Park Road between a Dunkin’ Donuts and a store that sells vintage guitars. An antique bar lines the left side of the interior, it has about ten regular tables, and there’s a nook by the window where you can take your shoes off and sit in a sunken couch; this area is referred to as the “Thai Corner”. A number of Buddha statues and lotus flowers serve as decoration, and the radio is always tuned to Lite FM. I’d recommend it for the food, which is unlike any Thai restaurant I’ve been to, but Sue's flattery notwithstanding the service leaves something to be desired. I recently met up with some friends there on a Friday night, when they arrived they were the only customers, and Sue actually asked them if they’d made a reservation. Another time some friends we’d recommended the restaurant to waited twenty minutes for the bill to appear, and there were only two other tables being served at the time. Once, after I’d returned from a trip to Morocco, Sue said to me “why you don’t visit my country?” She asked this in a hushed voice, her dark eyes peering up at me as if there had been a longstanding argument between us concerning travel, and this new piece of information had finally broken her heart.

Until recently Dharma Garden Thai’s website was full of information, most of it having nothing to do with the restaurant. There were pages devoted to the virtues of eating well, and spiritual practices that healed the mind and spirit as well as the body. When I first started ordering for pickup Sue didn’t ask for my name, and once in a while we’d get home before realizing we had somebody else’s order. It added a sense of adventure to our takeout dining experience, and expanded our palette. In more recent months she’s been asking for my name before I hang up the phone.

M walked through the back door holding two hot bags full of food, an expression of confidence and plunder on his face.
“She asked about you,” he said.
“Really?” I asked, “what did she say?”
“How is my girlfriiiiiiiiiiend?” M said, mimicking Sue’s cadence.

I had the folding TV trays set up in the living room, we unpacked the paper bags and dug in. The spring rolls were fresh, and the fruits and vegetables salad was a bright contrast to the massaman curry. We were stuffed by the time we got to dessert but devoured it anyway, the coconut milk-infused sticky rice causing us take a temporary leave of our senses.