The Woman in Front of Me

The people who have early flights from Iceland are dropped off at the airport, and those of us who will depart later are loaded on to a bus for a final excursion. First stop, the Viking Museum, where we’re to spend forty-five minutes. Though I’m certain it’ll be boring, it turns out that there’s one thing kind of cool about it, which is that a longship is suspended from the ceiling. Access is on the second floor, so I go on up, clamber into it, and spend a delightful five minutes fantasizing that I’m a conquering Viking. To my surprise, no one else seems interested in exploring the boat.

As I’m walking down the stairs, I meet a woman ascending.

“The ship’s kind of fun,” I tell her.

“Oh honey,” she responds. “It’s scrawny compared to the one I saw in Norway.”

Her tone is uppity. She’s doing that thing tourists do where they show off how much they’ve traveled, and prattle on about what they saw in which country. David and I learned long ago not to enter into these competitions—the same way we learned not to discuss our brilliant children with the parents of other kids. Other people simply can’t top us, and there’s no joy in pointing it out.

When we return to the bus we’re told that we’ll be traveling ninety minutes to see a geyser. A few people behind me moan. We’ve seen plenty of geysers. This is the second day of a miserable cold for me, and as soon as the engine roars to life I shut my eyes, planning to catch a nap. But the woman in front of me starts sharing her thoughts with her husband. I admire the way she talks, low-pitched and slow as syrup—Alabama is my guess.

“Home tonight,” she says. Then again, “Home tonight. I want my bed. Oh, I want my bed. And then tomorrow I’ve got to get groceries and pick up Baby from Barkingham Palace. Groceries and Baby. Barkingham Palace. I signed her up for a bath and she’ll be soft and clean. This was a good trip. Oh, the food was so good. That’s what I look forward to when we take a cruise—the good food.”

Throughout this there is no response from the husband. She continues.

“And then day after tomorrow I’ve got that dental appointment. For a cleaning. A cleaning. I hope I get that other gal this time. She was nice. The last one was harsh with the floss. Harsh. I need to call Millie May about that book. Oh, that book. She wants to recommend it for our book group but I don’t know if it’s too controversial. There’s so much political turmoil these days. So much political turmoil.”

She’s incessant. She drones on as I lean my head against the window and fall asleep. She’s still talking when, an hour later, we roll to a stop.

It looks like David also had a snooze. As he’s coming awake, I lean toward him and ask in a whisper—Have you been listening to this woman? His response: I’ve been trying not to.

Some people get off to go look at yet another eruption, and some stay put. I elect to remain, as does the couple in front.

“You need to get off and go to the restroom,” the woman tells her husband, who obediently rises, dons his coat, and shuffles toward the exit. Then, though he’s gone, she continues her monologue.

“Where is it?” she asks as she lifts herself taller so she can view her husband as he walks away. “Where’s the men’s? There it is. A line. Oh, a long line. Get in the line! Go ahead! Okay, he’s in line. All these buses. All these buses. No wonder there’re so many in the line. I don’t know about that book Minnie May suggested. Maybe I’ll talk to Carla about. Has Carla read it? I don’t know. I don’t know. What’s he doing? He’s getting out of the line! No. Get back in line! He’s coming back.”

Pretty soon he appears in the doorway and makes his way back to his seat, but she won’t let him claim it.

“What are you doing? Why did you get out of line? You need to go to the restroom. Oh, you need to go. Go. Get back in the line.”

With a shrug, he turns away. Once again, she watches him leave, then keeps watch.

“Good. That’s good. Get in the line.”

Later, as we’re heading back to Reykjavik, we pass a grocery store with a dancing pig on the front. The woman says, “Dancing pig. Dancing pig.”

At the airport, as we’re waiting to hand over our baggage, I give her repetitive way of speaking a try.

“Icelandair,” I say, then again, “Icelandair.” Then, “American Airlines. American Airlines.”

The repetition is bizarrely comforting and, even more bizarrely, addicting.

“Stop it,” I say. “Stop it.”

In our cabin on one of the dressy evenings.

Another one of the many beautiful faces of Iceland.

The Iceland Tour

There’s a reason why tourists flock. There are some places in the world that are so breathtaking, so humbling, that they simply must be experienced. Iceland is one of those places. There is no landscape your eyes light upon that is not stunning. Volcanos, old and new, in the distance—majestic, ominous. Massive lava chunks dragged downward by glaciers—dogged gravitas. A mossy vale with trickling brooks—fairy knoll. Pounding rivers—deafening percussion; steam floating from fissures—affable ghosts.

Magma flowing, molten; cooling, drying, scored by ever downward drifting mountains of ice. Tectonic plates crashing, disparate angles rising, faces forming—craggy noses, ancient jowls, vexed brows. What is today may be gone tomorrow. Dynamic Iceland.

Yesterday in Reykjovik we were wearing short sleeves, but today, hiking the five-mile perimeter of Grimsey Island, we wear layers that come on and go off and come back on depending on whether we’re trudging up or picking our way down. It’s forty-five degrees, wind at forty miles an hour. Nesting on the cliffs, thousands of puffins rise high and drop low, go out and come back. They really are cute birds, with their orange-red curved beaks. Their small wings flap frantically, likewise making me frantic—Come on little birds! You can make it! At some point we wander into the arctic circle, which is no colder than it was five steps ago.  

Iceland is all about volcanos, one of which erupted upon our arrival. In our various buses we zig-zag all around the thing, always keeping it at a distance, with each local guide telling us how impressed we should be by the tiny puff of white floating peacefully above a faraway mountaintop.

Iceland is an environmentally conscientious country. Its citizens eschew plastic in all its forms and prefer electric cars; and a large portion of their energy is harvested from their unique geothermal resources, about which they are smug: they are able to do that which no other country can—function efficiently.

As we cross the country and the guides pour information into brains that’re numb from receiving too much knowledge—and also, what we really care about is what we will have for dinner, for the chef on the boat is truly gifted—they tell us that the main industry in Iceland is agriculture. Hah. The massive vehicles rolling up to every mildly notable volcanic peak, crater, and geyser clearly tell us that the most profitable industry in this country is tourism.

We arrive at another island, Heimaey, which is known for a volcano that erupted here in 1973; I recall that the thick ash it belched out caused all the airports in Europe to close. On the whole island, only one person died, whom, it was widely assumed, had been passed out drunk. The islanders excavated one of the destroyed homes and built a small museum around it. We’re dropped off there and told to spend an hour learning about volcanos—and I think how I’d rather pluck every hair from my head than contemplate volcanos for sixty minutes. Later, our guide, a cocky twenty-two-year-old, climbs a cliff and swings around on a rope, demonstrating the locally popular skill of robbing nests; later he will sing us a rather romantic Icelandic song. He tells a story of the 1973 evacuation—people woken from their beds in the dark of night, the elderly taken out on a plane, only to find that they’d all been pulled from their blankets and led out in such a hurry that they didn’t have time to get their dentures. So a helpful policeman was tasked with fetching all the false teeth, which he dropped in a bag and sent along. The notion of how they straightened that out is amusing and we all chuckle.

For our next excursion, we hike to a lovely waterfall, a place for taking pictures. Halfway back the swift wind blows rain straight at our faces. We put our heads down, shiver, and hurry. Luckily, I wore the rain pants I purchased especially for this purpose. For hiking in Iceland rain gear and hiking boots are a necessity. Simply do not go there without these things. An umbrella? Useless. It’ll explode inside out in two seconds.

On the way back to the boat we stop by an artic fox refuge, where two rescued foxes huddle in their shelter, staying out of the icy wind. The attendant tells us that these animals represent the only wild mammals on the island—and in the next breath, she tells us that the foxes eat mice—and I think hmm.

We take a bath in a hot spring, which feels good and which David says smells like poisonous gas. The others in the group don’t want to hear about poison or gas. When we get back on the bus we’re all warm and relaxed and our skin feels new.

A few facts: Our small ship is owned by a French company, Ponant; the senior staff is French with the occasional German thrown in; servers and cleaners are mostly well-trained Philippinos. There are a hundred and forty-eight passengers and a hundred and fifteen crew members. The name of our ship is Le Ballot. Like any sensible person, I pronounce it the way it looks. Not so, the captain, who in a nasally worshipful tone, pronounces it Loobaloo. Cracks me up every time.

The touring company that has pulled us all together here is Tauck, pronounced Towk, which is owned and operated by the Tauck family out of Wilton, Connecticut. Every passenger on board is here with this company. It’s my understanding that Tauck doesn’t always exclusively occupy an entire vessel, but this is our second cruise with Tauck and that’s been the case both times. Tauck’s guides are charming and sincere in their desire to please, and, from my conversations with them, think that to achieve guide status in this company is to reach the pinnacle of their profession.

I highly recommend the Iceland experience; and if you haven’t thought about taking a Tauck tour, I advise you to consider it. If you’re going to do a thing, why not do it in the best way possible?  

The two walls mark the clash between the Northern American tectonic plate and the Eurasian tectonic plate. The crevices were quite deep in some places and it was really cool to walk around in there.

Halfway back from this waterfall the wind and rain pounded us.

Beautiful pictures everywhere you look.

Appropriate Dressing and a Corpse

We’re having guests for dinner and David comes out dressed in olive camo shorts and a fluorescent salmon T-shirt. I step into the hallway, see what he’s wearing, and have a new-jerk reaction—No! No! Those colors were never meant to be worn together!

Apparently I’ve hurt his feelings because his response is a petulant—Well, look at what you’re wearing!—which makes no sense because I’m dressed in clothing which is, in fact, attractive, appropriate to the occasion, and won’t make anyone’s eyes bleed. He stomps off and comes back wearing the same shorts with a T-shirt he wears when working on Habitat houses—frayed at the seams, faded black, and covered with white paint splotches. I wisely don’t say a word.

He also goes his own way clothing-wise when we’re traveling. For the tour’s getting-acquainted luncheon in Reykjavik, he shows up in olive pants and a maroon T-shirt (Clash!) with TEXAS A&M printed across his belly, though he swore off wearing billboard T-shirts long ago. Though I know better than to chastise, I’m unable to restrain myself from lifting a derisive brow and muttering a snarky, “Really?”

“It’s a conversation starter,” he tells me with an unconcerned shrug.

And indeed it is. Men he doesn’t know cross the room to slap him on the back and tell him they know someone who went to A&M; or that they went to A&M; or that their son or daughter is going or is planning to go to A&M. Or contrarily, they announce that they went to UT but they won’t hold his having gone to A&M against him. All these conversations are hyperbolically convivial. And David’s right. He invited attention as soon as he entered the room.

The next morning we go for a walk. For all we’ve heard about Iceland being, well, icy, there’s no wind and the temperature is a mild seventy-two. Across from the hotel is a walking path that is noticeably pristine, bordered by healthy green grass, and well-planned—a divided bike lane on one side and a divided walking path on the other. The few people using the paths follow the rule about staying to the right. Gotta love a country where its people follow the rules even when there’s no one there to monitor.

We head to the right, and about two hundred yards along we come across a man sleeping in the grass. He’s wearing a cap, a pair of sunglasses, and colorful workout clothes.

As we continue on, we discuss the man who’s passed out and how Reykjavik used to have a reputation as a hard-drinking wild-partying town; and though, in recent years, they’ve worked to change their status, we nevertheless assume drinking too much is the reason he’s passed out in the grass.

When we’ve put in our half-hour, we turn back, and once again come upon the sleeping man, who’s in the same position he was in earlier.

“He’s not breathing,” I tell David.

“Let’s watch and see.”

So we stop and stare at his chest for several minutes. There’s not the slightest rise and fall. What’s the protocol here? Neither one of us brought a phone. David suggests we take the few steps up to the street and see if we can flag down a cop—and there’s no cop in sight; in fact, traffic is so light that there’s only a single set of brake lights in the distance. Ludicrously hopeful, I scan the buildings looking for a police station. No luck.

We decide to return to the hotel and notify the front desk. On the way, we come across a man heading in the opposite direction. David stops him, tells him about the dead body, and asks if he’ll call it in.

“I’ll take a look,” the man says in a skeptical tone, offering no confirmation that he’ll make a call.

When we get back to the hotel, David tells the concierge, who calls the police, who request that David stay and guide them to the body. We need to get cleaned up and packed, so David denies the request, gives a clear description of where the body is (across the street, to the right, adjacent to the socker fields, next to the bench), and returns to our room to get ready for the day.

Later, when our tour comes together and we’re all standing in huddles the way people do when they’re waiting for things to get going, we mention that we came across a dead man on our morning walk.

“I saw him, too,” a woman says. “What time were you walking?”

“Eight-thirty,” we tell her.

“Oh. When I walked by at eleven, he was still there.”

Well, that’s disturbing.

At this point we’re herded on to our buses and are driven around to view the highlights of Reykjavik for a couple of hours before we’re taken to our boat, which will take us to see fjords and puffins, and to hike in the artic circle, where our heads will be attacked by arctic terns. For these excursions we will dress appropriately and as advised—in layers, and in such a way that T-shirts broadcasting personal information will be concealed beneath sweaters, jackets, and windbreakers.

For a reason I’m unaware of, this sphere marks the Arctic Circle. They have to move it every year and it’s expected to be underwater in five years’ time.

This shows how dynamic Iceland is.

Shouting in a Viking-like manner on an ice throne in a frozen cave. Why? Who knows? Then, of course, there’s the T-shirt.

Bug of the Year

There’s a dominant bug every summer. Last year it was stick insects. They were everywhere. If you put your hand on an outdoor chair or railing without checking first, your palm would land on a stick bug.

This year we thought it was going to be gnats. They came at our eyes and buzzed into our ears, leaving us foolishly waving at our faces. They got caught in our sweat and swam around in our dents and wrinkles, which tickled or stung, depending on the desperation level of the gnat. But as June aged and a bit of rain passed through, the gnats quit aiming for our moist orifices and we weren’t unhappy about that; though their retreat left room for the more predominant miscreants: Flies. I’m looking at one resting on the wall in front of me right now. We open the door to go out and a fly buzzes in. We come inside and a fly hovers along behind. I pause at the kitchen sink to put a few glasses in the dishwasher and four flies rise up, indignant that I’ve disturbed them at their leisure.

Flies. They’re annoying and I don’t like ’em. Once, many years ago, one of them buzzed lugubriously around my head and shoulders. So heavy and sluggish was it that when it landed on the kitchen table it occurred to me that I might be able squash it with my bare hand. Why I thought that’d be an interesting achievement I do not know. But reach out I did, and squash it I did. The wet body beneath my palm felt gross and when I pulled my hand away, the black carcus was covered with writhing maggots.

Excuse me. I must step away for a minute to wash my hands. Okay, I’m back.

When I was about twelve my father finished the addition he’d been building on to the back of our house. Instead of a cramped and squatty Craftsman-style three-bedroom home, we now had an extended living room with a slate floor, a fireplace with a broad hearth, an upstairs, and a basement. A household comprised of introverts, we used the space to put as much distance between us as we could. My older sister claimed the upper floor of the addition and I claimed the basement, which was dark and dank and cool even in August when the heat caused every plant and beast to long for death. From the outside, the new portion of the house loomed behind the original construction like an ill-conceived geometry project, but on the inside it was lovely.

My living area was composed of two large squares—one where I slept, read, and practiced my flute, which I did for hours every day; and considering the low ceiling and brick walls, the acoustics caused any grouping of notes to echo magnificently, which made it easy to fool myself into believing that I was indeed a magnificent flute player. And the other room was an open area in which I arranged a green leather chair and ottoman to face an old black-and-white television. During my first summer downstairs I painted alternate colors on the descending steps—red, gray, and light blue; and I painted the walls pink and the furniture red. It looked better than it sounds.

From the time my sister moved above and I moved below we spent very little time as a family. We were all hunched in our own remote chambers, going about our business in our separate paradises and communicating very little. For me, this was great. None of us got along all that well and developing far away from the parents’ watchful eyes and constant judgement gave me a freedom that I deeply appreciated.

I got off track. Bugs. As you can imagine, when it was a hundred degrees outside I wasn’t the only creature who found the pleasant temperatures underground to be delightful. All manner of bugs made their way to my sunken abode. Primarily spiders and crickets.

While technically spiders aren’t insects, they fit my personal definition, which is any creature that’s small, scary, and void of intelligence. My relationship with the spiders was convivial. Their corner webs caught smaller bugs like sowbugs, silverfish, and pill bugs. They were respectful, polite, and industrious, so I let them be.

What I came to loathe were crickets. In my resonant underground lair, the chirp of a single cricket was deafening—and for crickets, chirping is an all-night thing. From mid-June through mid-October I was robbed of my sleep on a nightly basis. When a body’s tired, battling crickets is frustrating and enraging. At first chirp I’d leap out of bed, grab the nearby can of bug spray, and then, due to the reverberance, be unable to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. The cricket’s battle technique was to crouch beneath the bed or behind the dresser until it was ready to hop out and make me scream; and then, as I sprayed half a can of poison on it, jump at my frightened legs until it died. It could take me as long as a half-hour to put a cricket down, at which point I’d pull out my flute and, making hyperbolical use of the lower register, play “Poor Jud is Dead,” the ironically mournful dirge from Oklahoma, dedicated to a man whom no one loved. Then I returned to my slumbers.

A spider is not an insect, but it kind of is.

This is a dead fly. If you’re a fly and you come into my house, this is how you’ll end up.

This is a worm, which is most definitely not a bug, but it meets my criteria.