middle-aged lovers in europe, summer 2008

the euro

Are you aware of how far the dollar has fallen against the euro?

* * *
Plan C is quite aware.

He was aware of the fall of the dollar against the euro about seventeen hours a day.

* * *

I had to place a limit on the number of times he mentioned it.

* * *

Each time, Plan C would prognosticate and euro-ate as if it were the first, as if he had not said the identical words in the identical order seventy-five minutes earlier, with a frowning expression on his face:
I’mnotgoingtoEuropeagainuntilthedollargoesup.
It’sturriblebushandhistax/fiscal/monetarypoliciesetcetcetc
there’sgoingtobeworldwidedepression
oiloiloilit’sexpensiveoverpricedthepriceisdrivenbyspeculators
oiloileuroeurodollardollarbadbadworstdepressionsince1929
worstworldwidedepressionsince192919291929
oiloileuroeurobadbad
europeanscomingtonewyorkwithemptysuitcasestofill
canyoublamethemdollardollarbadbadeuroeuro
notgoingtoeuropeagainwhiledollarsolowagainsteurobadbaddepression.

After our second day together, when he began euro-ating for about the fifth or sixth time that day, I said firmly, “I’m going to have to limit these euro-ations. You’re going to be allowed only two a day. To be fair, I’ll allow you one more today.”

Plan C accepted this quota at once. He found it amusing.

Once when he made pronunciamentos about the euro a third time in a single day, I said, “You’ve just used up one of tomorrow’s. That means you only have one left for Thursday.”

* * *

I gave a party in our hotel one night and invited among others a friend who’s a banker. I described him beforehand so Plan C could recognize him and announced, “L is a banker. I want you to meet him and talk about the euro. For the duration of that conversation, your quota is lifted.”

Over their beers, L and Plan C talked for quite a while. “What did you talk about?” I asked Plan C after the party. “The general state of the world economy, and oil,” he said.

* * *

Plan C in a pensive moment

Plan C is sitting low in a comfortable chair, no reading matter in his hand, staring into space, looking pensive. Is he mulling over the changed nature of our relationship, in its pleasant but moribund phase? Is he musing about this foreign culture, entirely new to him, and its differences from American culture?

I ask him what he’s thinking about.

PLAN C: I’m counting my socks.

* * *

Golf

I was happy that Plan C had two good golfing days in Europe.

I began to understand why golf was the perfect sport for him:

– it has special socks;

– it has special outfits – shorts, specific styles of shirt, hats, shoes, gloves – and altogether a distinctly tidy look, with lots of pleats and folds, and Plan C especially likes folds and pleats and creases;

– no running is required; and in fact, no speed is required; you don’t need to rush or get out of breath. Is golf aerobic? I doubt it.

– it can be played in peaceful solitude or in pleasant, knowing companionship;

– there are lots of numbers, lots of items to be counted and tallied;

– it has lots of little rituals, tools, and rules, a special and set-apart space, players who are aficionados, who understand one another’s taste as soon as the common interest is acknowledged. It crosses national boundaries. The Pro in the second course Plan C played in [the European capital city] welcomed him warmly, advised him about clubs, which Plan C was renting, and seems generally to have made him very happy. Golf creates its own little world that is orderly, predictable, and challenging, but only as challenging as any one player wants it to be.

And it offers exercise, I guess, for those who enjoy it in that form, but exercise in little white socks and special hats and gloves and shoes.

Plan C’s dream, the night of July 1

Plan C dreamt about talking dogs. There were a mother dog and a puppy, and the mother dog was talking away, and then it emerged that the puppy could talk also, and Plan C said to someone that it made sense, if the mother dog could talk, that her puppy could also.

* * *

three hours from JFK

In the air, three hours from JFK. A young man across the aisle from us is shuffling a deck of cards repeatedly and playing solitaire.

MIMI: I can’t imagine playing solitaire with real cards, now that you can play it so easily on the computer.

PLAN C: I hate playing cards. Every night for the first three years of my marriage I had to play Russian Bank with W. I hated it.

* * *

This was the first and only manifestation of W on our trip. Definitely, definitely, she didn’t make it through Customs.

two hours from JFK

MIMI: You still have both euro comments left for today. Feel free to use them up.

PLAN C (smiles but returns to his reading).

one hour from JFK

I’m sitting beside Plan C (who is engrossed first in The New Yorker and then in the Hillary issue of New York Magazine), watching him….a man I know, sort of. Or know well; or know better than any other man in the past three years; know his clothes, his walk, his tan golfer’s arms, his widely-spaced, slightly startled-looking hooded eyes with the light freckle on the right eyelid, his serious, slightly frowning expression, his little angers (“That’s very rude, for him to put the seat back that far into your space”), his nail-biting (occasional bandaids on his fingers), his frizzy grey hair, what’s left of it; his stomach, not too bad at all for a man his age; his carefully creased pants, his Movado watch, gold with black leather band, his maroon short-sleeved polo shirt, his tortoise-shell glasses (on his head, because he doesn’t need them for reading) – – – and his complete unconsciousness that I’m staring at him from inches away and taking notes, engrossed as he is in his reading…

* * *

I’m watching a man who is slowly turning into literary material.

and so the question remains

And so the question remains: how conscious is he of us? does he know I’ve completely rethought our relationship? does he have any idea?

He’s (in some ways) the least aware man in the world….but it’s hard to say. He takes things in, sometimes, without articulating his thoughts about them or even having thoughts, while he is still absorbing little bits of reality that indicate something important.

* * *

My plan: to do all the things we had already scheduled, which take us through about the first weekend in August, and then stop seeing him.

* * *

On the warm side:

– He has alluded a few times to our future, saying he would eat his chocolate in my refrigerator “over time,” and alluding (at the last dinner party we went to, Wednesday night, in the European capital city) to his son’s wedding (in October 2009) as if he thought I would be there.

– He kissed me warmly in the airport when we parted yesterday evening; he initiated the kisses, and the warmth was his. And in the (European) airport, while we were waiting at the gate, he turned to me almost with tears in his eyes – remember, he’s emotional, often tearful, though you haven’t heard about that for a while – kissed me, and said with great feeling, “Thank you for this trip.” He put it that way not because I had paid for it – we split most costs – but because it was my friends, my knowledge of the country, my vision of it, that drove the trip and that made it so much fun. Why the tears? I wonder. Perhaps because he felt that I was being true to my promise, true to my word, true to all our plans, in spite of all the doubts he had expressed about “us” a few weeks earlier, doubts, in fact, which he had been expressing one way or the other since the end of April.

– I arrived back in New York with a mild injury, a swollen foot, no idea at all about the cause (it began last week 6 days after we arrived, so I don’t think it could be attributed to the flight), and was limping because I couldn’t bend it. The half-mile walk from the plane to the baggage carousel didn’t help. I had to cancel my 4th of July plans to visit a friend. Plan C called late at night, after he got home, and was ready to come here immediately if I needed help etc. I was reminded of his uninterest in having his name be that of the “person to contact in case of accident or serious injury,” and thought it notable that nevertheless he was ready to be at my side for something so insignificant as a swollen foot.

On the cool side:

He sent me an email this morning, the 4th, that (for the first time) was not signed ‘love’, was not signed with the special nickname I used to call him by (but have not used since our crisis a couple of weeks ago), and did not address me as ‘darling girl.’

So unconsciously, at least, he is responding to the new tone of things, a modus operandi (affectionate but non-commital) that we have created jointly, without once talking about it.

* * *

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