Maybe it makes perfect sense that I, Chris Boyer, became her bra-burning daughter from hell. For half of my life, I never even wore underwear. Back in the late '60s and '70s when I was chasing around the world as a journalist, underwear was just one more thing that might weigh me down. It also saved time later in the evening when I was dunking donuts with the guys from all those foreign newspapers who had the most fabulous accents. Well, that was a lifetime ago, and now I own the oldest damn jogging bra in the world and I would give my left tit to have a little support out here on this highway.
I'm the tall, big-boned gal who usually walks toward the back of this small crowd of exceptionally good-looking women. When I turned forty, shit, that was nearly ten years ago, I stopped dyeing my hair, let it grow past my shoulders and bought three dozen long cotton skirts so I wouldn't have to shave my legs any longer. Thank heavens I always wear hiking boots too, because this is like the goddamned hike of my life and I've been around this world a time or two. Yes, these big, honking size 10s of mine have been up some pretty sad-ass trails.
Blah, blah, blah. My mind is wandering around like a Prozac-dosed rat. I like to think that I'm the one out here with no problems who simply came along for the ride, but these days of solitude and walking and frying my brains in the sun have taught me that is definitely not true. In just a few days, I am already looking at myself differently and that thought causes me to wonder how in the world these women are dealing with everything that must be clanging around in their heads.
Not that we haven't talked about it. Shit, people think we are out here praying or something and really, we talk all the time, and the night we stayed at that farmhouse was like the slumber party of the year. So we talk about this, about why we came, about when we might stop, about who we will all be when this is over.
Here's what's on my rambling brain as we struggle up a little hill: underwear, bad shoes, what I might have to do next to get one of my pals through this experience. Am I in a drug-induced flashback? I'm the one who came along because she thought it would be fun, and because I worried that I might have to drive one of my pals to the hospital in Milwaukee where women go who forget to take their hormone pills on a regular basis.
Fun at all costs, that's always been my motto and especially if there was something happening that I could write about. But now, this very second—as we are pushing down the highway and our butts are being followed by some goofy cop hanging his head out of the squad car and whistling and about twelve reporters who make me want to vomit—now, I'm wondering if this might not be the most meaningful thing I have ever done.
I'm pushing fifty these days and definitely not interested in some fucking premenopausal “spiritually moving” experience. I'm the quintessential tough broad who always knows where she's going and where she's been. Everyone thinks Alice is the mom of this bunch but it's me, it's always been me. Here, and pretty much everywhere else I've ever been.
For these women, these pals of mine, this walk or pilgrimage or whatever in the hell the media has taken to calling it by now, is something spiritually moving and life altering. During the past sixteen or so months, I have listened to and watched each one of them expose a torturous moment in their lives that has drawn them to this moment. A rape, death, lost love, mental illness, the bumps and dips of life—there is a story of great loss or love or longing that has slowly worked its way loose from each one of their souls.
And oh, my God, how I have relished watching them turn to face themselves in the mirror. The transformations, the relief—the relief has been an amazing portrait of life. Everything that I have done and seen has flashed before my eyes once again because of them. Because I have witnessed most conceivable human emotions, because they let me witness their march back, and now, finally forward and into something—a place or state of mind or whatever we will get to when we are finished.
I see myself as the great chronicler of life. The journalist who has finally come to this remote area with her man and books and writing instruments to try and touch a quiet side of life that I have ignored all the years of my past. So maybe that is the reason I am here. Maybe I am walking into my own tranquillity here, or better yet, away from the madness that was my constant companion for thirty years.
I have been to war and witnessed many forms of death and dying. I have traveled the world and slept in huts and crawled through the tunnels of darkness beneath a sagging river on my belly. In my arms, one hundred women have wept for the loss of their babies. Men powerful enough to destroy the world have whispered into my ear. I have jumped from airplanes and slithered down the side of a burning mountain. Bullets have whizzed through the edges of my hair, and one morning I walked across a valley as wide as all the plains of Kansas to witness, in the quiet of the wilds, the birth of thousands of birds who filled the fields with a frenzy of wicked chanting.
I had no regrets, and I was happy. I chose not to have children whom I could not be there for. The man I eventually married kept watch over me like a bright-eyed hawk, and he waited, waited patiently. On the day that I came to him and told him I was ready for this quiet part of my life, he was ready too.
“Take me to the farm now, Alex,” I whispered as we drove home toward the apartment for the millionth time from the Chicago airport.
“We'll drive out there tomorrow,” he said, trying to maneuver through traffic.
“No, now please, I want to go now and I never want to go anyplace else, ever, please.”
Alex knew then that I was pleading.
“What is it? What happened?”
“Nothing happened, honey. It's time, it's just time to be quiet.”
He was quiet himself then, thinking, I know, wondering, I'm certain, if this was really going to happen, if he was finally going to be able to live with this crazy woman he had pursued across several continents for most of his adult life.
“Are you scared?” I asked him before he could say anything else. “Worried that you might not like waking up with me every morning for the next thirty years?”
“Thirty, huh,” he grunted. “You're pushing your luck, Cat Lady.”
“No more Cat Lady. This is my ninth life. The one I'm sticking with.”
It took another half hour for him to believe me. First we pulled up to the apartment and he hopped out, expecting me to follow him. But I didn't. I never went back into that apartment. Ever.
We drove three hours to the farm that very night two years ago. The farm is one of those goofy “hobby farms” where city dwellers retire. It occupies about forty-five acres of land on the edge of a huge,
real
farm. Alex had built a house there before we met, adopted several scruffy dogs to fill up the yard, and spent the hours he wasn't working as a marketing specialist on one of those big lawn tractors. When I moved to the farm, I made him let every piece of land we own go wild.
But I have to admit, I lied about never leaving our quiet retreat again. I occasionally take an out-of-state magazine assignment, though I pretty much spend most of my time writing and on the phone from the farm, talking to people who have yet to come in from the cold, cruel world. I'm working on a biography of obscure writers who died before everyone thought they were supposed to, and I'm trying hard to get up enough courage to work on a novel.
Mostly, Alex and I sit around like a couple of old farts and talk about how wonderful we are and how great our lives have been. He still drives to Chicago three days a week to work on his advertising campaigns, and works the rest of the time out here in heifersville.
There have been some days when we don't bother to get dressed, and finally one of us looks up and becomes frightened by what the other person looks like.
“Jesus Christ,” I'll mumble. “Alex, you look like hell. How about a shower, big fella? The dogs are scratching at the door.”
“They're after you, Christine.”
“In your dreams. The dogs love me.”
“The dogs?”
“Yeah, the damn dogs. They think I'm Elizabeth Arden.”
“These are the same dogs who tried to make it with the garden hose.”
“Oh, shut up,” I yell, throwing a ragged couch pillow toward his face.
And on it goes until we realize someone is supposed to come over or we need to drive into Granton to get groceries. One of those zippy drives brought me into the lives of these women with the inappropriate shoes. Sandy Balenga was standing on one of those little stools in the produce department separating a bunch of jalapeños from red chili peppers. I watched her for a while from over by the red peppers because I was trying to figure out what in the hell she was looking for in there. Then she dipped forward and fell right into it.
“Shit!” she screeched, and I knew that perhaps I had found a soul sister out here in the wilderness.
I yanked her back out of the midst of red pepper hell. “There's pepper juice all over your face.”
“Do you like hot peppers?” she asked as the juice ran down her face and dripped onto her sweatshirt.
“As a matter of fact I'm fairly crazy about hot peppers.” I wiped off her face with one of those soft, spongy tray liners kept beneath fresh vegetables.
“What in the hell are you looking for?”
“Oh, I dropped one of my priceless bracelets into the bin while I was flicking one of those little fruit flies off my hand,” she said, holding out her right arm, adorned with at least twenty bracelets. “The jewelry is a forties thing, you know, and the one that fell in here is from some old hippie from Montana. That sucker was really special to me.”
So that pepper juice bonding (and the profanities) formed our critical connection. Within about ten seconds, I was ready to reveal all the deep secrets of my heart. We're talking about periods, sex positions, favorite old rock groups and our need for freedom—in a matter of moments. This quick leap into a new woman friend's arms wasn't as if I had ventured out into the great world of rural friendliness since I'd quit one life for another. I had a hard enough time simply getting out of bed in the morning without a plane ticket in my hand. Worrying about friendship had not been a high priority for me, but Sandy floated out of those peppers and into my life when I didn't even know how badly I needed a friend.
When I left my fast-paced journalist-on-the-go world to try my hand at the contemplative world, I had no idea how quickly I would miss all that human contact. Getting into the silent groove was not as easy or as natural as I had expected, so when Sandy popped into view, I found a wonderful friendship I didn't even know I was looking for.
“Listen,” she said that first day, hands on hips, pepper seeds in her ears, “what are you doing tonight?”
“Well, let's see. There's happy hour at five, and then I have to try and convince my husband to make us something to eat, maybe a few hours of work. That's my thrill-filled plan. Why?”
“There's this bunch of women I know, we get together on a pretty regular basis to just bitch and moan. Our husbands think we're studying books or something, but we just use those for props so they don't get pissed that we're having so much fun.”
“What the hell,” I said. “I really don't know anyone else around here.”
That night I was amazed at the incredible women who sat around me in Sandy's living room. They all seemed so different and yet so alike. I felt mesmerized. Maybe it had been so long since I'd sat around like that, with women who had real lives, that I was just in a state of shock. Everything felt like normal but yet it was all so odd to me because I had never done things like go to Tupperware parties or baby showers, because I was always catching planes and writing stories on the floors of bathrooms in Nairobi.
“So,” J.J. said. “Tell us about yourself, Chris.”
That was a question I was used to asking, so that's what I told them. That I was a woman who usually asked the questions but was finally looking for my own answers instead of making someone else do it.
What I remember most about that evening was that all seven of the women listened to me. I could tell from the way that they leaned into each other, touching arms and hands, and legs, that they had genuine affection for each other, too. They were in a way like new lovers who can't seem to get enough of each other and think if they let go or stop touching, the other person will fly right off the chair and disappear.
Suddenly, just sitting there on the edge of Sandy's plastic kitchen chair, I knew I wanted a piece of this action, to plug into this energy. I wanted all those women to love me and to call me and to stop over for a glass of wine and a walk through the woods. And so I said it, right there, moments after I met them.
“I need some friends,” I told them honestly. “I've never been in one place long enough to have a real friend or to know what to do with one. Friends. I really need friends.”
Well, hell's bells, it was like kicking over a lantern and starting the barn on fire. I've never heard so many goddamned “oohs” and “ahhs” in my life.
“According to some people, we're about the friendliest group of people in the world,” Gail said as if she were drinking at Cheers. She was straddling a huge bar stool as if she were riding a horse. “We're so good at being friends, we formed this here club just so we could sit around and look at each other.”
“Geez,” I answered brightly. “Sign me up before you change your minds.”