chapter 9 - family matters

“Fancy an empanada?” Hamish asked rubbing his hands in gastronomic anticipation.

Afterwards, still peckish, Hamish bought a hot sausage in a bun with onions, a skewered braid of intestines fizzing on a streetside brazier and a huge square of cake. “What?” he said to my look. “It’s our responsibility as visitors to try everything.” He has always taken those kinds of responsibilities very seriously.

Our last two days in Arequipa passed calmly, both of us trying not to show how hard we were trying for each other. We’d dress and go out, drink wine, collect email, talk to others, or sometimes we’d stay undressed and stay in, and play cards. I’ve taught Hamish Canasta but we know each other‘s moves so well it’s never much of a game. “I miss Babby.” I said out of the blue. Hamish nodded, knowing that the game is what brought her to my mind.

“She lived a good life. 93. Healthy to the end, dying in her home. Death is no more real than the horizon. It looks like the furthest point there is, but we can only see that far, as far as sight takes us. If we were to reach that horizon it would only lead us on to another one. And on and on.”

“I’m glad you knew her.”

“She was always welcoming to me.”

“She adored you! The minute you opened your mouth and that accent came out she was all ‘Oh Hamish, talk posh. Say something. Anything.’ Totally charmed. You could, and did, say the most outrageous things to her, and no matter what you said she loved it. She even laughed when you made fun of her cooking, calling her molasses cookies ‘hockey pucks’.”

“They were as good as.”

“I know. Babby was a horrible cook. But no one ever had the courage to tell her except you. And she loved it! I can see her now, sitting at the table, in her usual baseball cap and windbreaker.”
“Half squinting while she rasped 'Hit me' in a broken glass voice.”

“I noticed you got an email from your parents today. How are they?”

“Oh, fine. The usual. Mom wants to go to Palm Desert and Dad just wants to stay home and put in a row each of Oregon Blue Lakes and Purple Peacocks.”

He looked at me.

“Beans.”

“Of course they are.” Hamish looked back at his cards, then dumped a black three on the discard pile.

As I wrinkled my nose at him for freezing the deck, I picked up two cards and carried on, “Mom’s on the hunt for a new hobby, now that she’s finally given up smoking thank goodness. She wants to do something that doesn’t make her muddy, like the divining did. She’s considering fashion design, you know how she’s always loved clothes.” I started to laugh. “She got Dad to trace her outline on a piece of paper as she lay on the ground, which she then used as her pattern. But she is finding it difficult to make different sizes, and just adds half an inch all around, which doesn’t work apparently. Dad’s getting fed up with finding bits of fabric and thread all over the place, but Mom just says it’s pay back for all the seed packets and twine she’s had to deal with over the years.” I laid down 4 sixes. “It’s nice to see the bickering hasn’t stopped.”

“And yet I’ve never seen them anything but polite in public.”

“Oh yes, they are outstandingly polite in public. It’s how they work. It’s what keeps them together.”

“I’ve often wondered about that. They really are so different from each other. Unsuited in a way.”

“In almost every way. They’ve never really wanted the same things out of life and so they are always pulling at the opposite ends of the string. Dad was Mom’s parents’ choice. Things bound them when they were young - their children, house, work, friends. But those bonds are not enough anymore. Mom has started referring to Dad as her ‘current husband’, jokingly of course, but still. They should really have married other people I guess.”

“Did they ever consider that? Divorcing and remarrying?”

“Of course not! What would people say?”

“But you girls are all grown-up. People divorce all the time.”

“Not my parents. All the things they’ve said about other people divorcing would then be said about them. They wouldn’t be able to handle that.”

I sighed, fondly, given that I was several thousand miles away. When I was a teenager I thought my parents were idiots. Of course now I realize I was the idiot who had so much to learn.