Kinky Gazpacho by Lori L. Tharps

Author:Lori L. Tharps
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster

11: La Reconquista

I couldn’t eat. I left my appetite in Spain. In my journal I wrote, “The pain of starvation is preferable to the pain of remembering.” Somehow I had placed all my memories and my love of Spain and of Manuel in my stomach. The pleasure of eating would be a betrayal somehow. So I didn’t eat. The food my mother set before me didn’t even tempt me.

“You better eat something before I have you committed to a mental institution,” my mother threatened. She had come to the end of her tolerance for my dramatic transition back into American life. It had been a week since I had returned home from Europe. I was weepy, didn’t talk much, and spent a great deal of time in my room playing the guitar and writing really bad poetry in Spanish and English.

“Why should I eat,” I responded, “when I have nothing to eat for?”

My mother rolled her eyes and tried really hard not to slap me back into shape.

“Here’s something you need to eat for,” she said instead. “You need to eat so you’ll have enough energy to get a job so you can pay us back some of the money we just spent on you to have your European experience and so you can go back to Smith with some money in your pocket. How about that for a reason to eat?”

“I was thinking about getting an internship,” I said to my mother.

“Will you make any money?” my mother asked, cutting to the chase.

“Don’t you want to know what kind of internship I’m thinking about?” I queried.

My mother sighed. She was used to my “guess what I’m going to be when I grow up” ideas that changed quite frequently. Before I had settled on teacher, being a midwife, innkeeper, actress, and veterinarian had all been serious considerations.

“What? What are you thinking about now?” Mom asked with a sigh of resignation.

“I want to get an internship at a magazine, because I want to see if magazine journalism is the kind of writing I want to do,” I said. “I really want to be a writer, which means I may have to change my major at Smith to English, which means I might have to stay one more semester.”

My mother looked at me like she wanted to choke the life out of me. When she spoke, though, her voice was very calm. This was a technique she’d perfected working with crazy people for a living.

“Lori, you can get whatever internship you want. But if it doesn’t pay, you better get a real job as well. A real full-time job. And you will not change your major because I will not be paying for a fifth year of Smith College. No way! You will finish your degree in education, because no matter what you finally decide you want to do, you will always be able to have teaching to fall back on. End of story.”

“You know, Mom,” I said, trying to sound worldly and wise, “work isn’t everything.

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