Traveling while Married by Mary-Lou Weisman

Author:Mary-Lou Weisman [Weisman, Mary-Lou]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2003-08-06T05:00:00+00:00

No sooner is the boat in the water than Larry refocuses all of his considerable type A talents on controlling this adventure. He ties things down. He pushes off. He wants to row.

I try a different tack. “How do you get out of here if you’re having a terrible time?” I ask Tony. There is no way, he tells me, unless you are really disabled, like your back is broken, or you’re dead, in which case they radio for a rescue helicopter and bill you or your estate $350 an hour. Tony also tells me about two women from a former trip who flounced onto his boat the first day with their husbands and announced that the trip was not their idea. “They were determined to hate every minute of it,” says Tony, “and they did.” And then he tells about the lady “who came down here all high-strung. In a coupla days she threw away all her tranquilizer pills she was taking.” Sitting across from Tony, trussed in a life jacket, swathed in Gore-Tex from head to toe, anticipating my first rapid, I wondered which it would be—the helicopter, the six-day sulk, or born again drug-free?

By day two I know it will not be the helicopter or the six-day sulk. As anticipated, I am scared of the rapids and uncomfortable in a sleeping bag. But as well as I know myself, I have failed to take into account a serious character flaw that is serving me well on this trip. I tend to behave myself when people are watching. If I were alone with Larry, lying in my sleeping bag, and I learned that the birds flying around the night sky were really bats, I might scream or gag or make unreasonable demands about making them go away. With twenty other people watching, I just take a sleeping pill and roll over. Or if I were alone with Larry on a rubber boat, bouncing off boulders, while sheets of icy water invaded my Gore-Tex and streamed down my cleavage, I would not say, “Wow! This is fun!” In other words, I’m a show-off.

Larry, on the other hand, is getting bored and restless. He’s seen enough rocks. He’s seen enough water. He’s been through enough rapids. Now what?

By day three the canyon walls loom red and mauve as the river cuts its way deeper into time, taking us with it. We stop on a white, sandy beach for lunch. We eat our way up and down the food chain, specializing in bacon, peanut butter, and M&M’s. It’s as if we’d never heard of low fat.

We hike five hundred feet straight up to explore an Anasazi granary. I am very frightened but I behave, although I do most of the trip up and back on all fours. After the climb, I am too hot, too hot not to throw myself into the Colorado River.

Now I am too cold. So cold that my brain throbs. And still I behave. “Hey!” I cajole the others.

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