The Wild Woman's Guide to Traveling the World Read online

  Of course, my one-woman excursions always made Grandma a little nervous.

  “Don’t make eye contact with anyone on the subway,” she’d say, “and if someone tries to mug you, throw your wallet in the opposite direction and run!”

  No one ever tried to mug me, and I’d made eye contact with more than a couple of cute guys on the subway, too. But I smiled and said okay, assuring her I’d be home before midnight. And I always was.

  Soon it came time to apply to college, and I searched far and wide for schools offering degrees in travel and tourism. When the brochures started appearing in the mailbox, Gram sat me down at the kitchen table and peered at me over a steaming cup of tea. “What’s your plan?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what are you gonna do with a degree in tourism?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” I said. “I could work as a travel agent. Or maybe as a tour director.”

  “You think you’re gonna make back enough money with those kinds of jobs to pay for the student loan debt you’d rack up?”

  Turns out I hadn’t given that much thought. “Maybe I’ll get a scholarship,” I offered. “My grades are really good.”

  “Sweetie, please.” She spoke slowly, her patience wearing thin. “Don’t waste those good grades on something so frivolous. Get a real job and make real money. Go to a real college.”

  With that, she dumped my brochures in the trash, and I set about trying to find a college that Gram would consider to be “real.” One weekend, on a trip to the city, I found an ivy-covered oasis in the midst of skyscrapers smothered in soot. Grandma nodded in approval when I showed her the pamphlet. Several months later, I received my acceptance letter, and I was delighted to discover that not only was my tuition taken care of, but so was my room and board. Grandma, however, was less than pleased.

  “Why can’t you live at home and commute to school, like Elena’s doing?” she asked.

  “Elena’s school is only twenty minutes away,” I said. “And she has a car. I’d have to commute for an hour and a half in each direction.”

  “So? You take the same train ride every weekend and I never hear you complain.”

  “It’s different if I’m going to school there every day, Gram. I’m going to have classes really early in the morning and really late at night. Plus, there are going to be extracurriculars, internships, clubs. I can stay way more focused if I’m living in the dorms.”

  While, technically, everything I told her was true, for me, the most important reason to board at school was to get the hell out of Woodbridge, and more specifically, to get away from Grandma’s constant supervision. On the surface, I humored her anxious meddling, her persistent barrage of questions and comments and unsolicited advice. But deep down, it was eating away at me. She’d always been overprotective and opinionated, and after my grandfather died, I became the singular focus of all her earthly fears. The only person left in this world whom she loved. The pressure was too much to bear, and I found myself becoming resentful. I needed to get out before things got worse.

  So I moved to the other side of the Hudson River, but I don’t think Grandma ever got over it. Case in point: My old bedroom remained preserved in the same condition in which I’d left it seven years earlier. The same striped bedspread with matching valance and dust ruffle. The same posters hanging on the walls, depicting rock bands who’d long since broken up. The same stack of dusty guidebooks on the shelf. I kept urging her to redecorate the room, turn it into something useful, like a comfortable space to read or sew.

  “I want to keep it the way it is,” she’d say. “Just in case you ever decide to move back home.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that would never happen. But I did try to visit her whenever I could. In between business trips, if I could spare a few hours, I’d hop on the train and do the familiar commute in reverse.

  When I arrived on Grandma’s stoop that cloudy Sunday morning, she greeted me with a lingering hug and a tear in her eye.

  “I missed you so much,” she said, then ushered me into the front hallway. “Are you hungry? I’ve got eggs. Do you want some eggs?”

  “That’s okay. I ate a bagel on the train.”

  “How about some coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  We sat around the dining table and she served me coffee in my very own mug, the one I’d had since high school with the purple cartoon cats on the front and the brown ring around the inner lip. After all these years, she still remembered exactly how I liked it: extra light, one sugar. I sipped it and felt gratitude begin to warm me from the inside out. Sure, she was a handful, but she’d also given me so much love. Love my own mother had never expressed.

  In order to keep my visits with Grandma as pleasant as possible, there were certain topics of conversation I needed to avoid. Guys. Travel. Any experience I’d recently had that might be construed as questionably unsafe. They’d only lead to arguments, in which she would insist I took too many risks, and I would grit my teeth, trying desperately to find a way to change the subject. Usually I’d start off by asking about things that were going on in her life and steer clear of discussing my own.

  “What’s going on at the senior center this week?” I asked.

  In general, this was a safe question. It guaranteed fifteen minutes of uninterrupted gossip, in which she criticized everything from the quality of available lunch selections to the shoes Sadie Sherman wore to Bingo, which, in Grandma’s opinion, were “tacky and over the top.” She took great pleasure in delivering her diatribes, while I sat wordlessly and offered the occasional sympathetic grumble.

  “We had a good-bye party for Sadie,” she said.

  “Where’s she going?”

  “She’s moving down to Florida with her sister. The two of them bought a condo in Miami. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous?”

  “A lot of people retire to Florida. What’s so ridiculous about that?”

  “You retire someplace calm and quiet, like Fort Myers or Boca Raton. Not Miami! It’s such a crazy city. So crowded and crime-ridden.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be living in a nice part of town, Gram.”

  “They’re moving into one of these luxury apartment buildings for the fifty-five-plus crowd.” She dragged out the word luxury with a roll of her eyes, as if the notion was frivolous and not to be believed. “They kept telling me I should come visit them after they’re settled in. They’re out of their minds.”

  “You should go!” I smiled. “It could be a lot of fun. Who knows, maybe you’ll decide to move down there yourself.”

  “Fun?” Her nostrils flared. “Of course you’d say something like that, with the way you like to gallivant. You don’t know how to stay in one place.”

  “I just like to travel.” I shrank and fell backward in time. Being here always made me feel like I was eleven again, eager for Grandma’s approval, afraid to say anything that might stir up controversy. “Most of my traveling is mandatory for my job. I don’t get to pick where I’m assigned.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re back home now, where you should be.”

  She patted my wrist, and her hand felt like a vise, fixing me in place, pinning me down to the kitchen table. The same table that had been here for as long as I could remember, its varnish now cracked and peeling away. How long had she had it? Twenty years? Thirty? My eyes scanned the room, taking note of how little had changed since my childhood. The same floral wallpaper, the same handmade café curtains, the same photos of me in the same frames, lined up along the top of the same credenza. Everything covered in a thin sheen of dust, everything yellow around the edges. A shrine to the past, a manifestation of all her fears: the fear of loss, the fear of change, the fear of the unknown.

  When the doorbell rang, I jumped.

  “Who the hell is that?” she said.

  “I’ll get it.” I walked toward the hallway, and through the sidelights, I spotted a colorful bouquet of flowers in the grip
of a pale, bony hand.

  Elena.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  She didn’t wait for me to say hello. As soon as I opened the door, Elena started laying into me.

  “You haven’t been answering my texts. Or returning my voice mails.” Her pleading eyes betrayed the chilly tone of her voice. “So I figured I’d come see you in person. You can’t avoid me if I’m staring you in the face, right?”

  I puffed my cheeks and blew out a long breath. “I’m sorry.”

  Elena blinked, suddenly speechless. Maybe she’d expected me to put up more of a fight.

  “I’ve been so busy with work,” I continued, my voice dangerously unsteady. “Things are kind of a mess.” I had to force myself to stop talking before I said too much. My grandmother’s stoop was not the proper venue for an emotional confession about my long-distance love affair, or my miserable job, which I despised more and more with each passing minute. Did I really want the neighbors to hear the details of my quarter-life crisis?

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I’d probably be ignoring me, too, if I were you. I just wanna make sure…I mean, are we okay?”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “We’re fine. It’s water under the bridge. Let’s just move on. How did you know I’d be here today?”

  “Your grandmother said you were coming over.”

  “Wait, you’ve been talking to my grandmother?”

  “No. I think she’s still mad at me for leaving you alone in Hong Kong. But my mom ran into her at the supermarket on Thursday, and she told her you were in town and would be coming over for breakfast today. So I was just sitting at home, and when I saw you walking down the street, I decided to come over.”

  “What do you mean you were at home? I thought you moved to Hoboken with Roddy.”

  She cleared her throat and stared down at her shoes, the corners of her mouth fighting against gravity. “We’re taking a little break.”

  They hadn’t even lasted a full week of living together. Was that why she’d been texting me nonstop? Was she only seeking to mend fences so that I could be a shoulder for her to cry on about this breakup—their fourth? It took every ounce of self-control within me not to roll my eyes and shout, “I told you so!” Instead, I stepped aside and invited her into the foyer. “Come in.”

  Elena shuffled into the kitchen, where she thrust the bouquet in my grandmother’s face. “Hi, Mrs. Bruno. I brought you some flowers.”

  Grandma pursed her lips, as if the asters and Stargazer lilies gave off a foul odor. Elena turned on her Little Miss Innocent look, the one I knew so well, where she raised her eyebrows ever so slightly and thrust out her lower lip in a plea for compassion.

  “Mrs. Bruno, I am really, really sorry for leaving Sophie alone in Hong Kong.”

  Oh God. “Elena, you don’t have to—”

  “I know how much I made you worry,” she continued, like I hadn’t even spoken, “and for that I truly apologize. From the bottom of my heart. You know how much I love Sophie, and I wouldn’t have left her if I didn’t think she was totally fine on her own. I mean, you know how tough she is.”

  Grandma flicked her gaze from Elena to me and quickly back again. Her eyes were slits, her mouth still puckered.

  “I was really unhappy there,” Elena said. “She was actually better off without me dragging her down all week. So I hope you’ll be able to forgive me.”

  She stood batting her eyelashes and pouting, while the room filled with an uncomfortable and humiliating silence. I wanted to scream, to tell them both that this was ludicrous. That I was an adult woman who didn’t need her grandmother’s permission to hop the globe and that this drawn-out, sappy apology demeaned us all. Instead I bit my tongue. No sense in starting a fight.

  Finally, Grandma snatched the flowers out of her hand. “Get me a vase. They’re in the cabinet over the sink.”

  She leapt to Grandma’s command and dug through the cupboard. “Do you want the cut glass or the ivory porcelain?”

  “Glass,” Grandma said. “And put some sugar in the water. It makes them last longer.”

  As Elena busied herself trimming stems under the running faucet, I sat back down, eager to shift the conversation back to safer, more pedestrian topics. But Elena started asking me questions before I’d even parted my lips.

  “So, Sophie, how was the rest of your vacation?”

  I could tell by the way Grandma’s nostrils were flaring that my solo trip to Hong Kong was neither a safe nor a pedestrian topic.

  “It was fine,” I said hurriedly, eager to keep things as vague as possible. “Saw a lot of sights, ate a lot of food. But now it’s over. Time to get back to the grind.”

  “Have you been at home in New York all week?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s weird.” Elena placed the flowers in the center of the dining table and sat down across from me. “You almost never stick around the city for more than a couple days at a time.”

  “I’m on an in-house project right now. In the Bryant Park office.”

  “Doing what?” she asked.

  I sipped my coffee. “Do you really want to know? I mean, it’s not like it’s that interesting to talk about.”

  “Stop that,” Grandma said. “Your job is very interesting. And very important. You work for one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world. You know how many people would kill to be in your position?”

  Had I not heard that exact phrase only a few days ago? I began to suspect my grandmother was having covert conversations with Elizabeth, in which they both decried my lack of gratitude and enthusiasm.

  “I know,” I muttered. “I’m lucky to have this job.”

  “It’s not luck,” she said. “You earned it. You worked hard and stuck to your plans, and now you’re shooting straight to the top. You’re gonna run that company one day. Just watch.”

  She patted my hand and beamed with pride. In that instant, I realized there was no way Grandma had been talking to Elizabeth behind my back, because Elizabeth would’ve set the record straight about my status at McKinley. Which, at the moment, wasn’t exactly on a meteoric rise.

  “You know who’s lucky?” I said. “Seth Ramsey. He’s my partner on this project, and he’s done absolutely nothing to contribute. But his dad is a founding partner, so no matter how little he works, he’ll never get fired. Even if he did, what would it matter? His family’s got plenty of money to sustain him for the rest of his life. He’ll never need to worry about a paycheck.”

  Elena straightened up in her chair. “Is he single?”

  “I think so,” I said. “But trust me, he’s the furthest thing from a great catch.”

  “What are you asking about single men for anyway?” Gram chimed in. “I thought you were shacking up with that boyfriend of yours.”

  “I wasn’t asking for myself. I was asking for Sophie.” Elena’s lower lip began to quiver, and this time, I couldn’t stop myself from rolling my eyes. “Roddy and I…we’re on a little break,” she whimpered.

  “Good,” Grandma barked.

  Elena was so taken aback by the terse reply, her tears dried up before they spilled. “What do you mean, ‘Good’?”

  “You’re better off without him. What does that kid have going for him? Nothing!”

  “Roddy has a good job at the gym.”

  Grandma snickered. “Isn’t he interested in getting an education?”

  “He already has a degree. In kinesiology.”

  “What the hell’s kinesiology?”

  “The study of body movement,” Elena said.

  “But he couldn’t ever get a real job with that kind of degree.”

  “Gram,” I interjected, speaking slowly and cautiously, like I was talking to a five-year-old, “Roddy has a real job.”

  “Yeah,” Elena added. “Not everyone’s cut out for the corporate world, Mrs. Bruno. Besides, he makes more money than I do. Sometimes I wonder why I even bothered to get a degree. Three years after graduation, a
nd I’m still stuck at a receptionist’s desk, with no clue of what to do next.”

  “Maybe if you’d spent less time chasing after that gym rat, you would’ve had more time to devote to advancing your career.” Grandma shook her head, sneering down into her coffee cup. “I don’t know what it is with you girls.”

  Normally, I would’ve ignored a comment like this. Or maybe I would’ve nodded in agreement before swiftly changing the subject. Either way, I would have let it float away with little acknowledgment, in the interest of keeping the peace. But this time, I couldn’t tune it out. This time the comment lingered in the air, hovering above my head, taunting me, imploring me to respond.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

  Grandma widened her eyes at me. “Is it so hard to find a man who does something respectable?”

  “Being a personal trainer is a decent, respectable profession,” I said.

  “And that artist of yours, I suppose he’s decent and respectable, too?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, he is.”

  In the edge of my vision, I saw Elena cock her head to the side. As far as she knew, I’d never been involved with an artist. Or anyone at all, for that matter. At least, not for more than an evening. I’d have some explaining to do, but now wasn’t the time. Not when Grandma was on one of her tirades against blue-collar work and relationships.

  “Don’t be so naïve,” Grandma said. “You two associate with these boys who are so obviously beneath you. Do you honestly think either of them can give you a good future?”

  “Why does a good future have to be about having a prestigious job?” I said. “What about happiness? Doesn’t love count for anything?”

  “Love?” she snorted. “Give me a break. Love causes nothing but problems.”

  “So you think I should be alone forever?”