The End of the Beginning

     Molly stood in front of the dark closet and sighed. She reached into the back and pulled out John's shirt, a muted plaid of teal and brown, celadon and ivory. She poked her finger into the chest pocket like a person probing a tender tooth with her tongue. Of course the scotch tape was still there. It taunted her, “Bad wife, lazy bitch.” It told her she deserved this life of freakish longing. He never mentioned his favorite shirt needed mending; how could she have missed it when she did their laundry? Maybe she didn't.  Could a few well-timed stitches have saved him?

     She pressed her face into the soft flannel. Molly felt shame, but also wonder. After all this time -- three years for her, eternity for him -- his clothes still held the scent of milk soap, cold fresh air. The scent of him. She smelled him with his sleeves rolled up, looking sweetly sexy. She smelled him reading at the dining table, head bent low to accommodate Meowser, always draped around his long smooth neck. She smelled him striding toward her on the sidewalk with his pea-coat collar high against the winter wind, his watch cap pulled low above the crinkly eyes that turned to smiles when they caught sight of her in the evening rush. He'd reach up and rub the hat around, using the dark wool to scratch his warm but itchy forehead. He looked so much like a Danish sailor, yet he'd taken to the sky and not the sea. Had he, in his child-like infatuation with the clouds above, unknowingly broken some natural order? Could that be why it happened? The indignity – crash landing in a landfill. At least Icarus splashed into history.

They'd moved together into a top-floor corner bedroom, where the light was pale and blond, like him. The big back windows opened onto the sky above an urban park with a pretty, squiggly parkway and a big zoo just beyond. Some mornings, when the winds were right, John and Molly could hear the creatures rousing, and squawks and roars and grunts would stir them from their sleep.                                                                              

Another window opened over the garden courtyard between their building and its twin next door. Nell downstairs knew all about the neighborhood; she'd told Molly that the occupant of the apartment directly across from hers was the D.C. correspondent for some big New England newspaper. In the muggy summers, Molly'd open all the windows, desperate for a breeze, and she wondered if the reporter could hear her crying in the night. 

     And if he did? Who the fuck cared? She could see him sitting on the pot. Just his head in profile, but that was enough. He had to know: The layout of their apartments was identical. Why didn't he put up a damn curtain? A shutter, a blind? He'd be there, looking down, illuminated like the subject of some Edward Hopper painting. Molly would try to focus on her space, on the expensive pussy-willow wallpaper that was intended to cheer her, but like a masochist at a horror film with a hand thrown up to shield her face, she was compelled to spread her fingers. She was complicit in disgrace.

     When Molly was out, she would sometimes see the short man with the shiny bowl haircut trudging up the next-door steps with his briefcase, and she couldn't help but think of defecation. Not good. She realized that she never saw him peeing. He must do that sitting too. Not good. But what really wasn't good, what was horrid actually, was that John would have thought this witness-shitting thing was funny, and he wasn't there to make her laugh. He wasn't anywhere for anything; not to eat a banana, or smoke a fatty, or dandle his new niece, or wake up warm all pressed against her, pressed deep inside, where monkeys howled in distant cages.

I miss everyone. I miss Anthony Bourdain.

I wrote this in the throes of grief two years ago. My feelings haven’t changed, but the Saab’s been replaced by a larger Volvo; the Bernie sticker was transferred over and joined by another.




I can’t stand it. Anthony Bourdain is dead and Donald Trump’s not.

I’ve been crying like I lost someone known to me, not just the voice on the shows I taped in case someday I’d get to the places he’d seen.

I regret the so-out-of-character tossing away of the printout I carried on that “Perfect Day in Hanoi.” The rationale was that paper is heavy, and I could always print these pages again. I remember hesitating above the can: But now it’s too late; those sheets bore the crumpled, fish-sauce-stained evidence that I was there, and, through his gift, he was there with me too.

It would’ve been easy to only envy Anthony Bourdain: Instead, he was revered. My friend James has also been affected by this adventurer’s death. He’s not much of a cook, having had to do that for himself when he was just six. He won’t eat a fish with eyeballs staring, but he’ll get on a bike, rev the engine, and inhale the world’s scents up close, just as Bourdain did. In Hanoi, after treating President Obama to that iconic six-dollar dinner of beer and bun cha, Bourdain said, “Right after this, Mr. President, I’m getting on a scooter and I’m going to disappear into the flow of thousands of people.” How sad that that freedom ceased being enough.

The day after the horrid news came, James and I talked about depression, and he revealed to me that there are times he’s so weighed down he fears he won’t ever, ever leave his chair. But like Bourdain, he knows the power of movement: He’ll force himself to go outside, and empty his car of its collection of cups. “It’s something,” he said. On a day I thought I couldn’t laugh, I did. Thank you, James, for that brief reprieve.

I’m not doing terribly in the cup department, but I do have a bunch of stuff weighing down my old Saab. In the rear, there are sad antiques packed in labeled boxes waiting to land in a depressing storage space. I have to get to that. There’s a huge green umbrella from a long-ago market day in Sienna, and excessive shopping bags for our blessed, abundant sustenance cramming the floorboards below two car seats. A glass bottle or two of Gerolsteiner, so no one ingests plastic melted by the sun.

The other day, my four-year-old grandson Felix said he thought the car might be growing too small for him. He always tells me he likes my car, which makes me happy, cars being as important to this boy as his approval is to me. I won’t let him on the roof, but I do let him scramble up to sit on the hood for our backyard discussions. He seems to like those too.

Felix hasn’t yet asked about the “Feel the Bern” sticker on the back bumper, but I’m sure he will. It depicts in outline Bernie’s impish smile, his glasses, and his unruly hair; the outlines of a hopeful future. That bumper sticker’s a source of pride, but also an enraging reminder. This man’s a mensch, as was Bourdain: Instead we live with the deranged.

After a recent afternoon at my house – play at Nana Nan’s – I drove Felix and his little sister cross-town, home. Everyone was happy with fun behind us and more fun ahead for them that night. As I unbuckled Ami from her car seat, I spontaneously gushed, “I love you both so much, I just can’t stand it!” Felix was watching me tend to his sister, and -- his face beaming with unfettered, loving reciprocity -- he shouted, “And I can’t stand you!” My burst of laughter took him by surprise, but he clearly relished in my delight.

Bourdain never thought he’d make a good father, but it was evident he liked kids and that he deeply loved his daughter. Of course I never presumed I’d get to share any stories with him, about street food or far-away places, let alone pedestrian tales of little ones learning the complexities of words in their driveway, but I think he would’ve liked this story. It touches on our ability to communicate even when literal meaning is beyond our reach. The language of love transcends translation.

Anthony Bourdain embraced complexity. He always showed us that more than one thing at a time can be true. Legless Laotians can embrace Americans despite the landmines. Cambodians can look ahead, not just back at The Killing Fields. A meal savored sitting on a plastic stool in a Hanoi alley can be as fulfilling as one prepared by his best friend, served up in Le Bernadin’s sleek dining room.

Anthony Bourdain was joyful and brave; now we know he was also sad and afraid. There’s no solace in the fact that he wrote his own end, that he propelled himself to life’s furthest reach. I can’t stand it now, and I never will.

Remember when I asked...

why I don’t unpack when I return from a journey, and why I don’t care that I don’t?
Well here’s one reason. Look!

Slim gets away from it all in her cozy comfy hotel room!