Harley and Me (23 page)

Before the night is over, the tinder burns away. The awkwardness he predicted fails to materialize. He takes a photo of our clothes clumped together on his bedroom floor. “My favorite picture,” he says.

The next day, I wait for the panic to set in.
What have I done?
But it doesn't arrive. Then I wait for my imagination to dress up this little excursion in fancy dreams of romance. That doesn't happen, either. There is nothing manic and grasping about how I feel toward him, and that alone is unusual. I am calm. And feel appreciated.

We make plans to see each other in a day or two, and then again. And again. It's nice to be partnered, however casually, with a man again.

Three months later, I try to hold my expression neutral as he tells me that, from his perspective, playtime is over. My life has become too complicated for him. We've already discussed my plans to go to French Polynesia for three months on sabbatical and he's not pleased. He's decided he's not into the long-distance thing. Plus I'm in the midst of moving farther away from Hollywood, where he lives, making me geographically less desirable. And my risk taking is pulling me in directions he doesn't care for. While I'm fine with this kind of upheaval in my life, he's not.

I'm not completely surprised. He has been pulling away in the weeks leading up to this night. I say good-bye and make it all the way to my place, front door shut and bolted, before I allow myself to feel the stings. One by one, the little dreams I'd conjured to share with him—whale-watching excursions, tours of the old downtown Broadway movie theaters, camping trips, meeting my kids—disintegrate like partially emerged butterflies, dead before they've extracted themselves from their cocoon. Maybe that's the course of these things, I console myself as I destroy a box of tissues. If you're not moving toward a deeper intimacy, you're moving away from it.

I haven't been dumped in thirty years.

Still, I regret not one moment. During those months with him, I exorcised the young-girl mentality that held me hostage for decades, convinced me that to be with a man is to plan a concrete future. I learned to appreciate the experience-by-experience nature of the
time we shared. I learned to be fully present with another person—body, spirit, mind—and yet to hold no huge expectations of what things mean and where they are going.

I also learned that I am an attractive woman who heartily enjoys sex, that I can navigate a grown-up world in which male-female relations do not revolve around marriage and the future. I no longer feel as if I'm withering away for lack of human touch. The more desperate feelings of desire have substantially eased, as have my fears of being left by a man. I have learned to be alone and to value my own company.

Now that the supposed “worst” has happened and I'm on my own again, I know from tangible experience that being alone can be a good and rich thing.

And I have figured out to some degree what I want.

Which, it turns out, is decidedly more than a playmate. Some of my favorite moments with him were far from sexual. The joy of texting someone to see how his day is unfolding. Making plans. Inviting a person inside my life. Sex is great, but those other moments are key.

Plus my favorite: listening to another's heart next to my cheek, my head on a welcoming chest, knowing that when he snuggles close enough he can hear my pulse, too.

It may be a while before I experience this closeness again. I am leaving for three months in Tahiti to visit family and will probably be alone for the foreseeable future. But now, I feel my own heart doing its thing. The pulse and beat, the whoosh and release. It's magnetic and draws me. I still wish to reach out and feel another's heart thump, but for now, my own is enough.

This heartbeat. My heartbeat.

This is what is keeping me alive.

•
    
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    
•

THE HUMAN RACE

Do one thing every day that scares you.

—ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

I crouch at the starting line at 4:30
AM
, stretching tentatively, my palms indented with loose bits of asphalt, feeling twitchy. It's still dark, the stars hidden beneath cloud cover. Already eighty-four degrees. With humidity running well above 80 percent, it feels like the midnineties, though the sun has not even begun to rise. Not an ideal day to run the 21 kilometers (13.1 miles) of a semimarathon, as it's called here in French Polynesia, especially for someone used to running in the arid climate of Southern California.

Half an hour ago I watched as participants in the full marathon took off with the blast of the air horn. Many of them looked like the runners back in Los Angeles: iPods strapped to upper arms, waists garlanded with energy packs and electrolyte goo, legs striated with sinewy muscle, singlets sporting competitor numbers hanging slack on slender torsos. Most were wearing regular-looking running shoes; more than a few ran barefoot.

Now the rest of us cluster together waiting our turn. I'm nervous. This will be the first race I've run without Rebecca. (
Trot
is actually a more accurate description for what we do,
run
being a little too ambitious.) I'm in a foreign country where I don't speak the language, about to run a race I haven't trained for, amid weather conditions that are utterly unfamiliar and punishing.

Why, dear God, did I sign up to this? The feedback loop of risk taking is clearly at work.

Three weeks ago, I moved to the village of Pao Pao on the island of Mo'orea in the South Pacific. (Look at a globe. Put your finger on Hawaii and then draw a line directly south. Those microscopic dots between South America and Australia? I'm on one of those.) I'll be here three months, living with my brother Frank and his Tahitian family of six. The languages spoken are French and Tahitian. I know only English and some rusty Spanish. Most people here are dark haired and bronze skinned. With red hair and freckles, I don't quite fit in. But I'm hoping there's a place for me somewhere here on the island of Mo'orea, and that in finding it I might also find my place in the larger world.

The question of what I'm doing in French Polynesia in the first place is hard to answer. Here's the pat response: I'm on sabbatical from the university. Sounds ideal. But the truth is stickier. I'm here in many ways to lick my wounds. I feel as if I've run at least twenty marathons since my marriage ended, just surviving the challenges and upsets, learning how to hang in no matter what. Back in L.A., my life used to fill two thousand suburban square feet shared with three kids, a dog, and husband. It has now been pared back, stripped away one shred at a time, until it's just me, tender at the bone, fitting into four hundred city square feet.

When my daughter, Hope, left for university this past fall, the all-consuming child-rearing portion of my life came to a bittersweet end, leaving me to figure out who I was and where I was going. So I'm staying on a tropical island many people call paradise, trying to make
sense of it all. J would tell you I'm having a midlife crisis. But it's more than that. And though friends and colleagues think I'm indulging in an extended vacation highlighted by fruit-rich drinks served in coconut shells by handsome cabana boys in the languid postswim/postyoga afternoon, the truth is different. And I knew it would be when I bought the plane ticket.

Many days I take in my surroundings as if I'm inside some kind of tropical snow globe. Lagoons and bays of transparent blue-green water, sandy beaches, coral reefs, and lushness surround me. Yet my life is also a shambles. I stare at the bay as bits of snow-like debris from the self-inflicted agitation settle. I am lonely. I feel disconnected from all I've known. I'm hoping I'll recognize a path forward when I can finally see objectively again.

I had no idea, for example, that a semimarathon would be part of the deal.

In the three weeks I've been here, the challenges have been considerable. I live in a house open to the elements—think
The Swiss Family Robinson
treehouse, minus the tree. The house has a roof and low walls that rise from the foundation to waist level. Everything else is open to the great outdoors. Vegetation creeps its way in. Geckos scale my bedroom walls and click at me during the night. Insects are at home here, as is the occasional wild chicken that flies into the house, causing me to screech while my nieces and nephews laugh. Feral dogs congregate outside my bedroom hoping for scraps, and a 150-piece rooster orchestra breaks into song every morning at 3:00
AM
. It's hard to shower without being bitten by mosquitoes or stepping on insects.

My second week here, the rains came. Eight days of nonstop torrents, sometimes so loud that normal conversation was impossible. The turquoise bay filled with runoff from the pineapple plantations until Cook's Bay looked as if it were filled with chocolate milk. This was not the tropical paradise I had been promised. Meanwhile, everything in the open-air house—sheets, towels, clothing, pillows—became dank and smelled of mildew. Clothes could not be washed
because there was no way to dry them. My leather belt grew a mildew fur coat one day that, when washed off, came back the next. I climbed into damp sheets at night, put my head on a damp pillow, and wished for Vicks VapoRub to put under my nose to overpower the clammy, mildew stink. Those were the nights I wanted to cry myself to sleep, but I dared not for fear of insulting my brother and his family. I know they're doing all they can to make my time here pleasant; it's just so foreign.

And some days I feel so broken.

Meanwhile, my legs have taken on a leprous look, thanks to the toxic reaction I'm having to the mosquito, no-see-um, and other insect bites. My sister-in-law Hinano sewed me a mosquito net that is both gorgeous and functional. There are no Target stores here, no Internet to order what you need and have it sent to you by express FedEx. You go to the market each afternoon to see what's available, and whatever's there, that's dinner. If there's no fish, you pick something else. No tomato sauce, no spaghetti tonight. You need something like a mosquito net, you make it. And as long as you're going to the effort, you might as well make it beautiful. Even the light poles are festooned with flowers and coconut palms woven by anyone in the mood. The desire for beauty seems deeply entwined in the DNA of all Tahitians.

Little by little I am grasping new ways of being. One night, Frank asked if I knew how to make pizza. Aware their kitchen had limitations, I first queried him: “You have measuring cups, a rolling pin, a board to roll out dough, pizza pans?”

“Yeah, yeah. Let's just get the ingredients,” he said. But when we got home, the truth came out. “I lied,” he said, “but I'm sure you can figure it out.“

Substituting glasses for measuring cups, an old wine bottle for a rolling pin, the dinner table as a rolling surface, and large pans never intended for pizza, I improvised. Whatever I created was sure to be a disappointment. But the dough rose miraculously, then rolled out to just the right size for the three extra-large pizzas I was constructing.
The first one came from the oven to
ooh
s and
ahh
s of my impressed nieces and nephews. Everyone sat around the dinner table, expectant. Maybe my efforts would pay off, after all.

But then the oven, which doesn't seem to have any temperature settings, started to cool. Perhaps the propane had run out? The second two pizzas drooped in the oven, the dough gummy and failing to crisp. We ate the first pizza—not nearly enough for seven people—and fed the second two to the wild dogs.

What I haven't learned yet is how to fully belong.

I feel at times like an intruder in my brother's family, as if, in giving up mine I've also surrendered the right to belong to any family. Plus there's all the history. Frank is older by nearly five years. Growing up, we both struggled to help raise our younger three siblings in the shadow of our mother's mental illness. He adopted a stance of impenetrable self-sustainability, a can-do attitude that I tried to emulate, but often failed. At university, when he couldn't afford the dorm fees, he set up a tent in the redwood forest surrounding the school, showered in the gym, and studied in the library. He has little patience for the rest of us who are not quite as capable as he is. When the rains started here, he gave me the keys for a small, five-speed truck. The vehicle had no power steering, reverse gear was located in a different place than I was used to, and the two-wheel drive was wholly inadequate when the road to the house had become a muddy, boulder-strewn river. After I drove home one night in the downpour, terrified I'd get stuck, I told him I'd prefer to wait for the rains to let up to continue driving.

“Oh, come on!” Aggravation made his voice sharp. “We grew up in the same house. If I can figure out this stuff, so can you.” I sulked, until twenty minutes later when Terava, his adult stepdaughter, got stuck in the same stretch of rapids where I had nearly swamped. With Frank's four-wheel-drive truck and a lot of cursing, we extracted her car. I was sorry she got stuck but was glad I'd held my ground.

Still, the old impulses remain. This is the brother I looked up to as a child. He was a star on the high school swim and water polo teams. I floundered in that same pool, trying and failing to make my mark.
In college, he pursued marine biology. I tried to follow suit until I failed chemistry. It's painful to admit that I'm often unable to live up to his ambitions for me, or even the targets I set for myself. And yet, the discomfort is easing. I'm learning to tease him, the lion whom, as a child, I would never dare taunt. We're getting comfortable with each other.

He gave me a hard time the other night when, serving as his sous chef, I asked how he wanted the broccoli and carrots chopped.

“For God's sake: Make a decision. Chop the damn things!”

Instead of moping, I shot back at him, brandishing my chef's knife in his direction. “Be nice to me or you can chop the vegetable yourself.”

“You tell him, Auntie!” his family rallied to my side.

“Hey, it's been decades since we lived with each other,” he said, defending himself from the sudden onslaught of support they gave me, his arms raised in surrender. “I have a lot of shit giving to make up for.” We all laughed. Something is healing.

In packing to come here, I brought my running gear with the thought that I'd go for the occasional trot. The heat and humidity have forced me to scale back my normal 10K training runs, so when I first heard about the Mo'orea marathon, I knew I couldn't be ready in time. Then I reconsidered. If I lowered my expectations, did only the half marathon and gave myself permission to walk as much as needed, perhaps I could complete the distance. A doctor's physical was required, so I navigated the medical system with assistance from my niece, conversing stiltedly with a French doctor. After that, I registered to run. The night before the race, I walked down the dirt-and-rock road from the house alone in the dark, a headlamp lighting my way, to attend the runner's Pre-Race Pasta Party.

My heart banged as I checked in without a family member to translate. I showed my bib number and the woman welcomed me. Eating my pasta alone, I watched the Polynesian dancers and fire-eaters do their thing. All around me, people spoke French and Tahitian. I felt like an outsider, reinforcing my primary fear that I will never belong.

Race day, I woke at three thirty, dressed in the dark, and followed the beam of my headlamp to the starting line. A man in a pickup truck passed and shouted
“Bon marathon!”
My smile lit the darkness as bright as my headlamp.

At the starting line, the officials give out information about the race and I have no idea what they're saying. But I get the general idea and follow the rest of the runners as we bunch up closer to where they want us to start. Huddled together, I see a man wearing a shirt from A Runner's Circle, the little running shop in my Los Feliz neighborhood in L.A. This flimsy connection to home suddenly makes him seem like a long-lost relative and I want to hug him. Instead, I touch him gingerly on the shoulder. “Do you speak English?” He shakes his head. I point first at his shirt and then at me, trying to pantomime the significance. He nods, smiles. But I don't think he gets it.

Eventually the air horn blasts and we take off in a pack. Less than a mile into the race, we pass the intersection of the little dirt road that leads to my brother's house. I'm surprised to the point of tears to see Frank, Hinano, and my nephew Tangaroa standing on the roadside at 5:00
AM
cheering me on. The path I've been on these past two years has felt so lonely, so void of familial support. To have family, especially my older, revered brother, standing in the predawn light to cheer for me is energizing. And humbling.