"What?" I implore.
Her next sentence comes out in individual words as she sobs.
"I. Don't. Want. To. Go. Back. In. There."
I look at the store as if it has done something wrong to her.
"You don't want to go back into Fiesta? Why?"
"Because," she stammers, "you promised."
"I promised?"
"You promised we could leave," she says.
"Oh, sweetie," I say, hugging her. "I know. I know. I just forgot
to go down the Indian aisle, that's all."
"That's what you said the last four times," she says.
"We'll only be a minute."
Apparently, these were not the words she hoped to hear.
"Go."
"But …"
She stops crying.
"
Go."
Suddenly, I decide that I can live without hot lime chutney after
all.
WHEN IT COMES TO TRAVELING, the first thing you learn about
another person is that he or she is not you.
Jessica, for example, has these wacky notions about beaches,
museums, I don't know.
The second thing you learn about another person is that he or she
is wrong.
When in
Houston, for example, why go to the Menil Collection to
gawk at Surrealist works by
Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst or to the
Museum of Fine Arts to gaze at the Impressionist and
Post-Impressionist paintings or to the Space Center or the
Zoological Gardens when you can go to Fiesta?
The third thing you learn about another person is that he or she is
not going away.
These three things form a marital wisdom I like to call
Capitulation.
Jessica hasn't cried while traveling since that unfortunate visit
to Fiesta nearly 20 years ago. I say "unfortunate" for the obvious
reason: I never did end up getting the chutney. But that's
okay.