Reading: Betsy's Wedding

Moving: Fitlinxx lesson

Listening: Black-Eyed Man

28 March 2000: Cookies

KMJ has left the University of Toronto to write for a small newspaper in a wee town in remotest Arizona. Did I mention that the town is predominantly Mormon? So, driving through, she spent a night this past weekend in Grand Rapids chez JEM--he wasn't home but his wife was--and Monday night with Barbie and Tuesday with me. Monday I grocery-shopped. Costco for juices, cheese, and cranberries, and Alfalfa's for fresh basil and tomatoes and a margharita pizza.

I liked the selection of the woman behind me in line. "Broccoli and chocolate-covered espresso beans," I observed. "The hallmarks of a healthy supper."
"Carob-covered raisins," she corrected. "I'm allergic to chocolate."
My eyes widened. What a gruesome fate. And so we were off and running, comparing meat-eating habits or lack thereof and chocolate substitutes and how carob might taste okay all on its own if you weren't expecting it to taste like chocolate. This is like how soy milk tastes okay on its own if you don't expect it to taste like dairy milk.
We left together, still talking, and as we separated in the parking lot, she asked me my name. We shook hands. She is Andrea with an On- and because of the vowel and her last name I keep thinking her name is Aubrey. Which is a tragically underused name, in my opinion. But even if I see her again, I probably won't remember her name. That is, I'll remember her name but not her face, so if I see her again it won't be a matter of my being unable to remember her name, it'll be a matter of not having opportunity to use it.

As I amply demonstrated Tuesday night.

KMJ arrived after getting only slightly lost in the parking lot. She brought in her bike and its rack and I pointed out how I wasn't helping her with any of that. I fed her salad and spinach & feta ravioli with pesto, talked her ear off, and didn't insist she pet Blake. Around 9:00 she looked at her watch. I immediately apologized for dominating the conversation, which in fact I was. That wasn't it, she insisted; she wanted dessert, which I had failed to supply (an unforgivable oversight, since I myself nearly had starved chez HAO two days before, when she made the same mistake for the Oscars).

So we went to Safeway. We might have headed straight for the bakery section except I saw someone. "Shh!" I insisted to KMJ. "It's the red woman! We have to follow her."
"What?!"
"Shhh! I'll tell you later!" This was me being subtle as a gravity-impaired player piano. (I say "player" instead of "grand" because a player would be loud on the way down as well as at impact.) "Okay, the red woman is this chick at the gym whose gym clothing matches unnecessarily excessively and who carries her red knapsack--which also matches--along with her from machine to machine. Not only do we both belong to the Y but we work in the same building and now she lives near me too! I have to keep an eye on her!"
KMJ was choking at this point, either with laughter or with dismay at the prospect of stopping the night with a paranoid schizophrenic.

Then I got a better look at the woman. It wasn't Red Woman. It was someone else.

"KMJ, do you know I am completely incapable at distinguishing among members of my own species? Maude could see the individualities of daisies, and I sometimes think I can do that more than I can with humans."

Monday at the gym I saw Red Woman and was pleased--she seemed quite normal this time. She had restrained her hair and maybe had learned how to use the equipment. As I was reprimanding myself for being such a mean person, though, the real Red Woman came in. Ah. That's why the first woman had seemed normal--she had been someone else. Red Woman was just as goose-steppingly bizarre as ever. And now, 30 hours later, here was yet a third person entering the mix. I wasn't free-associating perfect strangers out of thin air, really. I recognized each of the three women in some kind of gym-context: this third person led step classes at the city rec center a few times last winter when I first started going. She did such a bad job, though, that we drummed her out.

I called her the Martha Stewart of step. She didn't give oral instructions but wanted all us to look at her gestures instead. She would gesture at us to keep our eyes on her. The fact that we needed to be visually reminded to take visual cues should have clued her in that we needed oral instruction instead. The "eyes on me" gesture was her hand held palm up in front of her, chest level, with index and middle fingers forked, hand on its hinged joint flapping at her face. She looked like she was directing airplanes into their parking spots.

Now that I knew that this woman was not Red Woman, and that as a local rec center instructor she was allowed to live near me, I could leave her alone. So I did. KMJ and I proceeded home with our kill: a tube of Nestlé cookie dough and a quart of skim milk (ugh). Not without trepidation did she bring a dairy product into my house. Earlier in the evening she wanted tea and asked if we had any milk.

"Just soy milk," I apologized, "but I think there's some half-and-half in the back. She reached in for the carton; there were two. "You might want to check the expiration date."
"March 6."
"Hmm. What's the other?"
"February 2nd."
"Aha. Can you drink your tea black?"
She could. I poured the better part of two pints down the sink. The older one had chunks.

Later when she wanted dessert, the only thing I could offer was the 3-quart Tupperware full of Ghirardelli chips and a tub of vanilla ice cream that's been in the freezer since Thanksgiving. That decided her to go to Safeway.

Refrigerated cookie dough tastes much better raw than baked.

I put myself to bed at 11, and I took the couch. It made a lot more sense for her to sleep in the bedroom where my and Blake's morning routine wouldn't wake her. When I got home Wednesday, I found the note she left, and it made me grin. It's only the second time I've seen her handwriting, but the first time was memorable and I'll never forget it. One spring break she and HAO went to New Mexico and wrote me a poem on a postcard. I'll have to excavate it but I can remember the first two lines, approximately:

Two young lasses went to Truth or Consequences
And there both did endure their menses

Several people have honored me by writing me poems. I only laughed at one. (I laughed with another.) No one's ever rhymed as well as KMJ.