Tales of a Female Nomad (34 page)

Nearly every day, en route to Pert’s deli for coffee, I walk by a “For Rent” sign on a ground-floor apartment that has Lake Washington in its backyard. The rent is fifteen hundred dollars a month, which is high for Seattle . . . and for me. To avoid temptation, I don’t even write down the owner’s number.

Then one day, while Mitch and I are passing by the sign on our way to look at what we know will be yet another box down the street, we impulsively ring the upstairs doorbell. John introduces himself and tells us he and his wife are tenants; the owner doesn’t live here. John offers to walk with us around the back so we can see the view and peek in the windows.

I like what I see. There’s a glass-walled living room that looks out on the lake. And a backyard with a boat dock. I do not own a boat, but I like the idea of having a slip, just in case a boat comes into my life. Who knows? If I live here, maybe I’ll buy a kayak.

The apartment is unfurnished and I don’t own any furniture, but I can live with very little, and I love the location, the view, the picture window, the charcoal grill, the umbrella table, the benches, the dock, and the lake. And I like the second bedroom. If I’m going to settle in for a while, I want a guestroom. John says the owner is flexible and would probably give me a six-month lease if I ask for one. I give in and write down the owner’s name and number.

I have plans to fly to New York the next morning, so Melissa meets Bron, the owner, at the apartment, with my check in hand. I call Melissa from the airport. She reports that the apartment is great.

Then I call Bron. She and I talk until the plane begins boarding. Melissa has told her that I write children’s books. Bron tells me that she grew up with books; her father is a literary agent in New Zealand.

As soon as I return from New York, I move in, with a futon and bed linens from Jan’s apartment, a table and three chairs from Mitch and Melissa’s house, one towel, one toothbrush, a bag of clothes, my computer, and a book. That’s it. No couches, dishes, glasses, silverware, pots, or lamps . . . not yet. I feel as though I’m still on the road, which makes the transition easier.

The day I move in, I phone John, my upstairs neighbor. A woman answers. I introduce myself and invite her to stop in and say hello. I apologize in advance for the fact that I have no dishes and I won’t even be able to offer her a cup of tea, but I’d like very much to meet her. She tells me that John will be home in a few hours and they will come down together.

It is already dark when the doorbell rings. I open the door and find John and his wife, Jip, holding a pot of tea, three cups, and a plate of cookies.

The three of us sit facing the lake, at the lone table and chairs, in the dark unfurnished living room. It takes less than a minute to know that I am going to like them. John is a librarian in an elementary school and Jip is from Thailand. They met in a Cambodian refugee camp in northern Thailand, where John was a volunteer and Jip was a nurse. Three and a half years later, after they both finished graduate school, they married, with weddings and receptions in Seattle, Washington; Chicago, Illinois (where John is from); and Ban Krud, Thailand.

I furnish the apartment from Goodwill, my kids’ closets, and a care package of kitchen utensils from John and Jip that they had packed up to go to Goodwill. (This is only a brief detour, since everything will eventually find its way to Goodwill.) Mitch and Melissa have extra glasses and dishes, a colander, and a few pillows and sheets. Jan has some pots and pans and towels. Jan’s friend Christine delivers a combination TV/VCR that she isn’t using. And Jan has a closet full of my mother’s paintings, which turn the place from a space into a home.

I buy a twenty-dollar open-up couch from Goodwill and another for thirty-four dollars. I also buy four Goodwill lamps, a bunch of serving dishes, a small cast-iron frying pan, and a few low tables, one of which I put at the foot end of my futon, and two sets of placemats.

Jan has also given me a good, firm double bed that she doesn’t want. I put the bed in the guestroom and opt to sleep on the futon on the floor.

I finish my decorating with a couple of cotton throw rugs from Goodwill. The only new things I buy are a wok and a grapefruit knife with two close-together blades that straddle the sections; I’ve never seen such a thing before, and I can’t resist buying it.

For the first time since I started my new life, I am living on my own in the United States. Over the years I’ve stayed with my mother for long stretches, with my kids and friends and family, each for no more than a week at a time. And I’ve had brief stints house-sitting and house-sharing. Now, I am about to live the life I decided, thirteen years ago, that I never wanted to live. My kids are here with their own lives and jobs and friends. I’m sure we’ll see each other a lot, but I don’t ever want them saying to each other, “Oh, God, we better do something with Mom on Sunday.” It’s not the doing I worry about. It’s the “Oh, God.”

So, as I begin my six months in Seattle, I set about building my own community. John and Jip are my first friends. They’re responsive, close by, and spontaneous. Jip and I do yoga three mornings a week, we plant a vegetable garden together, take walks, have dinners. And twice we go to a Buddhist center for all-day meditation. I visit John’s school and talk to the kids about books and writing. And one day, early on, when I mention to John that it’s a terrible waste for me to have a boat slip and no boat, he tells me he has a friend with a boat and no slip. And that’s how I meet Tom.

Within days there’s an eighteen-foot sailboat in my backyard, and Tom and I are sailing mates. Tom, who is in his thirties, single, and a child advocate in Seattle’s Department of Health and Social Services, is happy to have a pal to sail with. And I’m thrilled to be seeing Seattle from the waters of Lake Washington. Tom loves pointing out lakeside attractions such as Bill Gates’s mansion and hidden coves filled with spectacular homes. From time to time we tie up somewhere and go off for lunch or a walk.

Tom is part of John and Jip’s extended Seattle family. Tom’s mother, Libby, welcomed Jip from the first moment Jip landed on U.S. shores. Now Libby is welcoming me, another stranger, at her potluck dinners. It feels good.

Bron Richards, my landlady, also becomes a friend. Until I entered my nomadic life, I thought of “friendship” as a relationship that needs years to develop. To truly call each other friends, I thought, two people need a history together in which they share and celebrate and mourn the events in each other’s lives over many years. But my lifestyle doesn’t give me the luxury of a shared history, and I need friends.

So, like other long-term travelers I’ve met (all women), I have learned how to compress time through introducing, early in my conversation, intimate details of my life. My “homelessness” is always a good way to begin. And I openly talk about my divorce, my discovery of a nomadic alternative to a traditional life, and the joy and occasional loneliness that goes along with it. Once I’ve opened the conversation with intimate details of my life, the usual superficialities of an initial conversation have been bypassed.

Bron and I click immediately. She is recently divorced and still struggling with the trauma. The first time we talk (she has come by to cut the grass in the communal backyard), our conversation lasts through dinner. At some point I mention that I’m in the market for friends. The next day I get a phone call from a friend of Bron’s, inviting me to join a writers’ group, and a new set of friends is born.

Being near the kids is fun. We get to spend a lot of lost time together. It feels very comfortable. I thought I was going to learn how to be alone in the U.S.; I never have to.

Then one day, Jan calls me.

“I just picked up a message on my answering machine from Lars,” she says. “Call him.”

Lars is the chef I met in Lombok. I visited him and Nirin last year, in Nantes, France.

He and Nirin are desperately looking for me. It’s 5:00 P.M. in Nantes and they just got a call from their travel agent, who has found them a cheap ticket to Seattle. They have to pick up the ticket in the next two hours and be on the plane in Paris tomorrow. They need to know immediately if they can come stay with me. If so, they’ll be here at five tomorrow afternoon. I call France.

Lars and Nirin will arrive half an hour before Don from Vancouver, who booked in for the weekend two weeks ago. (I’m glad I bought the open-up couch.) First I’ll meet the plane, then the three of us will meet Don’s bus.

As I am planning dinner, I remember my week of gourmet eating in Nantes, when Lars cooked fois gras, vegetable puff pastry appetizers, fabulous shrimp, lemony desserts, homemade bread, and quiche. We breakfasted on personally preserved jams and snacked on home-cooked chutneys.

How do you cook for a great chef? I decide the only direction I can go is Asian. As far as I know, Lars doesn’t cook Asian dishes; but I have no doubt that he and Nirin like them. A foodie is a foodie in any cuisine.

Seattle is a great place for buying Asian ingredients. As Lars and Nirin are winging their way across the Atlantic, I shop in Asian markets and spend the day chopping. For our first dinner, I grill Vietnamese shrimp balls and chicken
sate.
I cook mu shu pork (I buy the pancakes), chicken and broccoli with hoisin sauce, beef with snow peas, eggplant with garlic sauce, and pork lo mein. Bron happens to stop by, and she joins us. When dinner is over, we sit outside and enjoy the lake and the moon.

It must have been Jan who told Lars that I had a birthday coming up. He and Nirin decide to throw me a dinner party. The invited guests are Jan, Melissa, Mitch, John, Jip, Bron, Jan’s friend Craig, and Lars, Nirin, and I. My pots are OK for the cooking, but my Goodwill placemats do not satisfy Lars’s vision of elegance. So, while the gravlax is curing in the refrigerator, and I am vegetating in my hammock by the lake reading
A Year in
Provence,
they raid Jan’s cabinets for tablecloths, linen napkins, crystal wineglasses, dishes, serving platters, and candleholders. And then they go off shopping in my car.

By the time the guests arrive, my Goodwill room is transformed into a romantic paradise, with candles flickering, wineglasses sparkling, and escargots, brought from France, waiting to be dipped in melted garlic butter.

The gravlax (made from a whole fresh Seattle salmon, boned and cured in the refrigerator for three days with equal parts coarse salt and sugar and lots of fresh dill stuffed into the middle) is served with a traditional Swedish sauce: three tablespoons French mustard, two tablespoons sugar, one-half cup vegetable oil, and chopped fresh dill, ground pepper, and salt.

Nirin, who is a doctor, cooks the main course, which hails from Réunion, an island next to Madagascar where his father is from. It’s a spicy chicken stew.

And Lars whips up a chocolate mousse for dessert, struggling with American ingredients and measurements and having to add more and more cream until we have mousse for fifty.

Good people. Great birthday. Makes up for all the birthdays I’ve spent alone and feeling lonely.

On a Saturday several weeks later, I find myself alone. Jan’s in New York, Mitch and Melissa are off for the weekend, John and Jip are down in Oregon, and Bron is taking a weekend class. I don’t feel like being alone, but I can’t think of anyone to call. I decide to take a public bus down to REI, the recreational equipment store. My mission: buy a rain parka. I need one and they’re having a big sale. I do have an umbrella, but hardly anybody in this rainy city uses one. They just pull up their hoods and go about their business. I’ve been wanting to see REI ever since I got here. There’s an outdoor mountain bike track and I’ve been eager to see the giant pinnacle for climbing inside the store. And it’ll be fun to look at the kayaks and tents and exotic equipment.

I’ve never used the buses in Seattle; I still have the old Honda. But I like taking public buses. I call Metro and get the bus route. Then I throw on some sweatpants, a turtleneck shirt, and my worn purple fleece jacket. I take $1.25 in change out of my wallet and put it in my pocket. I toss my empty book bag (I’ll put the parka in it later) over one shoulder and I’m off.