Chapter 34

In those days the cheap airline connections between India, where I went after Kathmandu, and Europe were better than the connections to get back across the Pacific, so it was a better deal going to Europe, and then figuring out what I was going to do when I got there. I had been there before, after all, and I knew there were things I could do.

One interesting thing happened on that leg of the trip: as much as I had flown from place to place over the last few years, this was the first time I’d actually tied the knot. When I landed in England, I’d finally traveled around the world, but it didn’t even cross my mind until I happened to think about it.

Although I’d had to spend money on the Nepalese trek, it really hadn’t cost that much, so I was still set for a while. On the other hand, it was getting to be July, and if I wanted a teaching job for the following winter it was time to get something arranged. So, with that thought in mind, I figured I ought to head back home and see what I could work out.

So after only a couple of days in London I decided to head back to the States, on Icelandic, of course – saving a buck is saving a buck – and since I was living off savings at the moment saving a few of them was important. On the way back across the Atlantic, I gave some thought about what to do next, and somewhere along the way it crossed my mind that it had been over three years since I’d seen Cat and Steve. While we had exchanged letters right along if not terribly frequently, there was obviously some catching up to do. Besides, I think the evil part of me wanted to rub her nose in some of the possibilities she had missed by being married.

I knew that they were no longer around home, but that they had moved to Alexandria, Virginia, not far outside Washington DC. It wouldn’t be a long ways out of the way to go see them.

When I got to New York I decided to give them a call. It took a while to get their number from information, but I finally worked it out. It was good to hear her voice again; it had been a long time, and she had been so much a part of me that it still seemed a little strange that we weren’t running around together. She sounded happy to hear from me, and invited me to drop by so we could catch up on what had happened since we’d been together.

It took a ride on the New York-Washington shuttle, and then a rather expensive taxi, but eventually I was knocking on the door of a relatively modest and totally nondescript suburban house, and there she was.

Things had indeed changed for her; she had a small toddler wandering around the living room, and was obviously pregnant again. I had known she had the baby, a boy they had named Dale, but he was old enough for it to have been a while back.

Back when we were all in our closing days at Venable while she and Steve were planning on getting married, the plan had been to hold off on the kids for a while so they could have some time together without the complications. Well, that obviously hadn’t worked out quite the way they had planned. “Oh, Jo!” she said as she took me in her arms for a greeting hug. “It’s so good to see you! How have you been?”

“I’ve been pretty well, traveling a little,” I smiled. “I’ve been some places you would have liked to go, and done some things you would have liked to have done.”

“I’m afraid those days are in the past,” she sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to have Dale and have another baby on the way, but I miss doing that kind of stuff, too. Come on in, I’ll make some coffee, and we can sit and talk for a while. Steve ought to be home pretty soon. I called him at work and he knows you’re on your way. He’s looking forward to seeing you, too.”

I went on inside, stripping off my rucksack. I had shipped most of my luggage home from New Zealand, so I was traveling light and had been for some months now. I was wearing the same shorts and khaki shirt I’d worn for most of my trek in the Himalayas with Bruce. They were all right for traveling in those days when hippies were common on international flights but I did have a change of clothes in the rucksack just in case something happened.

The house seemed to be nice enough for a young married couple, if not excessively nice. Cat bustled around making us coffee while Dale sort of wandered around aimlessly, mostly at her feet. “So how come you moved here?” I asked as I tried to avoid tripping over him.

“Long story. We were having grandmother problems, and it seemed like a good way out.”

Over the next few minutes I learned that the relationship between Dale, Cat, and each set of parents wasn’t as nice as it might have been. The problem hadn’t come up until after Dale had been born. Both grandmothers wanted to be involved with raising him, since he was the first grandchild for either of them. The problem was that they each had their own ideas of what Cat ought to do with him, and they didn’t agree on anything. Ever. Cloth diapers versus disposable, breast feeding versus formulas and so on, for each granny it was her way or the highway. According to Cat it got pretty nasty at times, and she was caught right square in the middle. They had been driving her batty; she was having enough trouble with Dale as it was without their help. Dealing with a baby all the time was more of a pain in the neck than she had imagined, and the grandmothers were making things worse, not better.

“We decided the best thing we could do was to get the hell out of there,” she explained. “In fact, we were originally thinking way the hell away from there. Somewhere Steve had heard of some company that runs American schools in foreign countries. They’re for American kids, kids of expatriates or Americans who work overseas, or diplomats and the like. They’re also for kids who want an American education, and it turns out that they pay real, real good. It sounded like a pretty good deal, so we decided he ought to come down here to Washington to look at it, that’s where their headquarters are.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t follow up on it.”

“We came close to it,” she sighed. “But the only openings they had were armpits that made Phan Loc look like a paradise, or so we were told. I don’t know why Americans would want to take their kids to someplace like that in the first place, but they do, I guess because of their jobs or something. This was last summer, not long after Dale was born, and we decided that it wasn’t the brightest idea to take a tiny baby to a place like that.”

“That’s probably good thinking,” I agreed.

“I think so too. I mean, it would have been great if it had been even some halfway decent place, but to get into the schools the company has in those places you have to spend some time in the less desirable places. It’s kind of a seniority thing, you know how that works. Now, you could do something like that, since you’re still single and you know what a shitty place is like. In a few years you wouldn’t have to put up with the really rotten places any more, and then you would be pretty well off.”

“That’s something to think about. I’m sort of looking for work right now, not real hard, but I need to find something before school starts or I’m probably going to have to move in with the folks again. So how did you wind up here?”

“We knew we had to get the hell out of there, and the idea of working overseas was a bust, so Steve just started checking out want ads in the Post. It turned out there were schools in DC that were crying for teachers, but they were all ghetto schools, full of black kids and drugs.”

“Uh-oh, I get it,” I nodded.

“You probably do,” she sighed. “Steve and I talked it over. We decided, well, he decided since it was going to be him who had to put up with working in that kind of school, that it came down to being in a pain in the ass school or putting up with two pains in the ass grandmothers. It wasn’t a real tough decision, if you know what I mean. At least this way we could live in a decent part of town where we could raise Dale halfway safely. So here we are, and it’s far enough away from home that we don’t get too much crap from the grandmothers.”

“Isn’t Steve looking to get out of there?”

“Of course he is. He has mailed résumés all over the place for the last year. We’ve gotten a few nibbles from schools here and there, but he hasn’t landed one yet. This is actually a fairly nice town, but it’s a real pain in the neck for Steve. It’s probably going to be five years before I can get back into a classroom, but when the time comes I hope we’re in a place where I can find a job and it’s a decent place to live.”

“So how do you like being a mommy?”

“It’s all right,” she sighed. “But it’s only all right, if you know what I mean. I don’t get out of the house very much since it’s such a pain in the neck to go anywhere with Dale. I mean, I love the kid but he’s there all the time, and I don’t get a lot of relief help from Steve. I mean, he’s gone all the time.”

“I thought school was out for the summer.”

“It is, but the pay for teaching is lousy enough in that school that we can’t make it through the summer without him doing a summer job. He has a temp job at a foundation across the river. It’s not a bad job, but the pay is even worse than the school. This is an expensive area to live in, and we’re barely making ends meet. I’ll tell you what, I often think about how easy and peaceful we had it when we were at Phan Loc. It’s real strange to think of those as the good old days, isn’t it?”

I had to agree. I could see that Cat and Steve were trying really hard to make a go of it, but they were going through some rough times to do it. They were in a good position to get out of it in the next few years, but the time hadn’t come yet. How different our lives had become!

Steve got home a little bit later, and we sat around talking in the living room while Dale was mostly being a kid. He wasn’t yet up to his terrible twos, but I could see that they weren’t far away and he was going to be a pistol when he got there. We managed to have a conversation in between times when he was making a fuss, but it was clear to me that Cat hadn’t seen this coming in her future when she started getting sweet on Steve.

For the next few hours I tried to keep things on the positive side. I told them of some of the adventures I had in the past few years, stories of Colorado and Antarctica and the Himalayas, and I could see both of them envying me. Cat was obviously missing her climbing as I knew she would be, as she hadn’t done any since we’d left Venable – Steve was not a climber and made no bones about the fact that he thought Cat and I were crazy to have done such things. Well, some people like it and some people don’t, I thought. In a mixed marriage like that, climber and non-climber, it was clear that something was going to have to give and in this case it had been Cat, who was envious of the adventures I’d had but couldn’t come right out and say it in front of her husband.

Things were more peaceful after Dale had been put down for the night, and we could talk with fewer interruptions. We had to knock it off early since he had to leave early to fight the traffic to get to his summer job, so we didn’t let it get too late.

The house was small enough that there wasn’t any spare bedroom, so I spent the night on the couch in the living room. That was all right for the one night I knew I would be there, but I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it. But after I lay down, I couldn’t sleep despite the jet lag I still felt from coming across the Atlantic.

I knew I didn’t dare say it, or even hint it in front of either Cat or Steve, but I really felt sorry for them! There was Cat with this wonderful, free, adventurous spirit, trapped inside this tiny suburban tract house without the chance to even get out in the country for fresh air. My best friend, the one I had shared so much with, was reduced to a shell of a life because of her dream of becoming a mother. It may have been what she wanted, but in my eyes she sure had come down an awful long way in the world. Dear, sweet, wonderful Cat, who had almost been a second part of me in so many ways and so many places! How could she let something like this happen to her?

Dale was still asleep the next morning when Cat and Steve got up. They were trying to keep from bothering me, but their bustling around as they got ready for Steve to go to work couldn’t help but wake me, as troubled as my sleep was. But, as they got around, I made a decision.

“Cat,” I said, “I’ve only got traveling clothes with me, but do you have any decent clothes I could borrow for a job interview?”

“I’m sure I can find something,” she said. “There’s plenty of stuff around that I won’t be able to wear for a while, and maybe I’ll never be able to wear some of it again. I didn’t know you had a job interview, though.”

“I don’t, not yet,” I told them. “But Steve, if you can leave a few minutes early, maybe you can drop me off at the offices where that overseas school outfit is located.”

“You really aren’t thinking that, are you?” he frowned. “They have schools in pretty crappy places, and as a new hire they’ll want to send you to the crappiest.”

“I realize that,” I told them. “But I’ve been in crappy places before and I probably will be again. What’s more, I’m in a much better position to go to a crappy place than you are.”

“You’re crazy,” Cat said flatly. “But then again, you’re probably right. I know that if I were in your shoes with no husband and no kids I could be talked into doing it.”

 About an hour later Steve dropped me off at the offices of American Schools Worldwide, which was located on the edge of the downtown part of the capitol. I could see the Washington Monument not far away. After being shuttled here and there in a fairly small office for a while, I finally sat down in front of a heavy-set middle-aged man who was well on the way to going bald. He introduced himself as Jonas Logan.

“I’m sorry I don’t have a résumé with me,” I apologized to Mr. Logan. “But I was traveling home from Nepal when this came up. I think my application covers most of the relevant points.”

He had apparently already glanced over it. “I have to admit that you have one of the oddest work histories I’ve ever seen for someone your age,” he grinned. “Not many people come in here with places like Vietnam and Antarctica in their work history. It seems like you get along pretty well in odd places.”

“I decided I needed to see the world before I settled down,” I explained. “I think I’ve done a pretty good job of it.”

“What were you doing in Nepal? I hear the hash and pot is pretty cheap there.”

I knew what he was fishing for. “I heard that too, but I almost never touch the stuff,” I told him. “I was there hiking in the Himalayas. A friend and I got clear up to the Mount Everest base camp. It’s extremely pretty back in there, but the people live rather primitively.”

“I’ll be honest,” he said. “The main problem I have right now is that I’m looking for someone to work in the school in Kinshasa, in the Congo. The job pays pretty well for an entry level position, but that’s because Kinshasa is a shithole, if you’ll pardon my French.”

“I know what it’s like to live and work in a shithole,” I told him, showing by my own language that I didn’t mind how he spoke. I had heard worse, much worse. “I spent fifteen months working in Phan Loc, Vietnam, after all.”

“I was never at Phan Loc but I’ve been in other places in backcountry Vietnam, and I’ll tell you right now, they’re not shitholes compared to Kinshasa. The place is incredibly hot and humid. The people are extremely poor. While Mobutu has managed to keep things more or less under control, he’s a bloodthirsty, crooked dictator who stifles dissent by killing people brutally. The crime in the streets makes the worst parts of this town look positively peaceful. Many of the locals wander around armed, and they don’t mind shooting. There are diseases there that you’ve never heard of before and will kill you painfully. And that’s Kinshasa, the relatively civilized part. The rest of the country is worse.”

“Are you trying to scare me out the door?”

“Frankly, yes. I have a lot of young people coming through here right out of college with stars in their eyes and thinking that an overseas teaching position is somehow exotic and romantic. Most of them would get off the plane in Kinshasa, take one look around and get back on board even if they had to hang onto the rudder to get out of there. If you’re one of those, I don’t want to waste my time any further.”

“I have to wonder if it’s actually that bad, but if it is I think I can handle it. I don’t scare easily, sir. I think I’ve been around the block a few more times than some starry-eyed idealist straight out of college.”

“I think you have,” he smiled. “I think you have. What’s more, I think you’ll do. The fact that you speak French will be a big help, it’s the most common Western language in the Congo. Do you really want the job, or are you just pulling my chain?”

“There are jobs that I would like to have less, and one of them is teaching in a suburban middle school. If you want uncivilized, you haven’t seen what happens with all those raging young teenage hormones. When can I start?”

“Classes start there in about six weeks, but you really need to plan on getting there early so you can find your way around and get used to the place. It’s good that you have that much time, since getting a visa to even get into the Congo in the first place is something of a pain in the ass, and we have to find the right palms to grease this time around. That’s the national sport, by the way, officials or anyone else getting foreigners to grease their palms. You don’t manage to do anything without a little lubrication.”

“It sounds sort of like Vietnam.”

“It is, but worse. Much worse.”

It took a week to get the worst of the paperwork rolling. I hated to mooch on Steve and Cat, but it was cheap staying on their couch and we had things to talk about. Steve thought I was crazy to even consider going to Kinshasa, of all places. A similar lecture from Mr. Logan the year before is what had turned him off of going there in the first place. However, his situation was considerably different since he had a wife and small child to consider. Cat was, well, it was hard to say. Envious, maybe. It wasn’t something she could consider now, but if things had turned out a lot differently I think she would have been there alongside of me. But those days were gone now, and gone forever.

After a week we had the paperwork about as under control as it was going to get for a while, so I packed up my rucksack, gave Cat back her clothes, and got Steve to drop me off at Washington National for a flight home. I had called ahead, of course, and Mom was at the airport to pick me up.

“Are you home to stay this time?” she asked me. “Or are you off to somewhere else?”

“Home for a week or ten days,” I said. “Then I’m going to be off to a new teaching job.”

“Somewhere in the mountains, I suspect?” she grinned. She had that much of me figured out pretty well.

“Nope, not this time. Darkest Africa, in fact, all steamy jungle, even worse than Vietnam. It’s supposed to be a pretty grubby place, but the pay is real good. I should have some good stories to tell when I get back.”

“Joanie,” she shook her head. “I don’t know what to make of you. I thought I had you figured out as a kid, but now I simply don’t understand you at all. Ever since you got out of high school, you do things that are totally unbelievable. I guess I’ve gotten used to it, but I don’t think I’ll ever get to liking it.”