Young and Revolting: The Continental Journals of Nick Twisp (3 page)

While our domestic arrangements are coming together, our marriage seems to be falling apart. Wife just handed me this alarming note:

Nick/Rick,

If anyone asks, tell them you’re 18. And please don’t mention that we’re married. Why are you speaking Spanish???

—
Sheeni

Why? Because two can play those games, kiddo. Yep, I have dredged up my primitive schoolyard Spanish. Every time Sheeni speaks to me, I reply: Habla Ingles, por favor. This ploy, though, may be backfiring. I just noticed that she has removed her wedding ring. Talk about blatant “don’t exist” messages. And this one from my loving wife!

MONDAY, May 17 — Middle of the night. Awakened by a mystery noise. Traced annoying sounds to our closet, where I discovered my forgotten cellular phone chirping away in a suitcase. I closed the door, sat on the toilet, and answered the call. It was Connie Krusinowski, my ally in amours, stuck in desperate traffic on the 405 Freeway in Los Angeles.

“
Rick, why haven’t you been keeping in touch?”

“
Sorry, Connie. I didn’t think my phone would work over here.”

“
That’s obvious. But thoughtful Connie just paid your bill and had the service switched over to international.”

“
Thanks, Connie. What’s happening with Sheeni’s parents?”

“
You can relax for the time being, Rick. They are presently scouring Mexico for their runaway daughter.”

“
Mexico! Why there?”

“
Simple, amigo. I sent my maid Benecia down to Tijuana with some bribe money. She got a suspicious Hunter-Saunders marriage entered there on the public records.”

“
Connie, that’s brilliant.”

“
Yeah, it was pretty devious even for me. So, where are you, guy?”

I filled in my friend on the events of the past week. She was not pleased to hear that Sheeni was no longer wearing her wedding ring.

“
Jesus, Nick, it’s hard enough to drag a Saunders to the altar. Don’t tell me now I have to worry about poor Paulo backsliding on me.” Connie has been conspiring to wed Paul, Sheeni’s jazz- playing incarcerated older brother.

“
They can be pretty skittish, Connie. Kind of like adopting a feral cat. I’m thinking of getting Sheeni 10 wedding rings—one for each finger. So what’s happening with you?”

Connie reported that things were going so well it was almost scary. Her parents’ lawyers were thrashing out the divorce settlement, her dad was now engaged to Lacey (glamorous erstwhile girlfriend of both Paul and my father), and Paul was getting friendlier every time she visited him in jail (where he’s confined on a marijuana rap).

“
Has he asked you to marry him?”

“
Not yet. But it’s only a matter of time. I am resolved on that point. You are my inspiration, Rick.”

“
Thanks, Connie. I appreciate all your help in springing Sheeni from that prison camp for unwed mothers.”

“
My pleasure, guy. So, how many hours a day are you spending with her?”

“
Well, approximately 24. We’re on our honeymoon, you know.”

“
Too many, Rick. That’s obviously your problem. You can’t crowd a Saunders. Remember, Rick, everyone wants what they cannot have. You have to be more unavailable.”

“
OK, Connie. I’ll try.” Promising to stay in touch, we rang off.

Mulling it over, I decided to bone up on my Spanish. Latin men, François reminds me, are notorious for their unavailability—especially to their wives.

7:48 p.m. Another day in language hell. No museum-hopping as most such venues closed on Mondays. Sheeni buried lovely nose in heavy French tome. Hope it’s a book on baby rearing and not a guide to do-it-yourself divorce. To boost my unavailability, I went grocery shopping and did the laundry. No Safeways in Paris? Bought necessities in little specialized shops, where you allegedly receive personalized service and certainly pay through the nose. Lugged ten days’ worth of laundry and two bags of groceries up six flights.

Made dinner with our antique pots and pans. Surprised they weren’t melted down for cannon during the Napoleonic wars. Must upgrade soon to Teflon. Wife had seconds of pot roast and commented, I hope, approvingly on the cuisine. She apparently never heard of the rule that the person who doesn’t cook does the washing up. Should have worked out the division of labor back when we were still speaking English. Since I didn’t know the Spanish for “Look, the dishes are stacking up,” I washed them myself.

Lots to learn about being married, I can see that now. Not just uninhibited sexual congress 24 hours a day. Wonder who started that myth? The need to remain aloof now in fundamental conflict with desire for sex. I must deny my need for what Sheeni isn’t willing to give so that she will want what she cannot have. I’m beginning to understand now why married men seek out prostitutes. Paying for it in cash is just so much less complicated.

TUESDAY, May 18 — Fixed my darling a big plate of bacon and eggs this morning. Miraculously, this culinary return to our Anglo-Saxon roots restored her facility with English.

“
Nickie, this isn’t working out.”

I froze, fork stalled in mid-air. “What isn’t?” I gasped.

“
Full immersion in French. And do you know why?”

“
Why, darling?”

“
Because you’re not making an effort. And I’d like to know why not!”

Pushed to the linguistic wall and just aced out on the last piece of bacon, I confessed. Science had determined, I informed her, that I was incapable of learning a second language.

“
That’s awful!” she exclaimed. “But why didn’t you tell me?”

I sipped my coffee. “I don’t know. It’s, uh, a guy thing.”

“
OK, Nick, I admit it. I’m not a guy. So please explain.”

“
Darling, when a fellow gets married, he wants to be . . . the hero. He wants his wife to admire him, to be proud of him. He doesn’t like to admit to, well, any weakness.”

“
But speaking infuriatingly crummy Spanish in France is OK?”

“
Well, it’s not great,” I admitted.

“
But, Nickie, what are you going to do if you can’t learn French? How will you get by?”

“
Search me, Sheeni. That’s why I suggested we conserve our money by living in Topeka.”

Sheeni sighed and slumped down in her chair. “Nickie, this is terrible.”

“
I know,” I admitted. “If Hemingway had had my problem, he would never have met Gertrude Stein.”

6:15 p.m. Distressed wife, at least, was cheered by the news that her parents were off combing Mexico on a fruitless quest. Perhaps they’ll turn up Ambrose Bierce instead. To get reacquainted, we only toured one museum (Musee de Cluny: more medieval detritus— from moth-eaten tapestries to Charlemagne’s jockstrap) and spent the rest of the afternoon in bed. After sloppy seconds, I dared to broach the subject of my love’s naked ring finger.

“
Nickie, marriage is a very private affair.”

“
Really? I thought it was a rather public statement of one’s mutual and loving commitment.”

Sheeni thought this over while I fondled an area once off-limits by statute to anyone except lawful husbands. What a travesty this modern age has made of those customs!

“
Nickie, we’re residing in one of the world’s most sophisticated cities. Even you will have to admit that being knocked up and married at age 15 is rather déclassé.”

“
Lots of great people got married young, darling.”

“
Please, Nick, I’d rather not hear any more about your Mr. Gandhi and his child bride. I think we should keep our marital status a secret until we’re older.”

“
And if other guys ask you out?”

“
Nick, I’m in France to learn, not for the opportunity to date a slew of attractive and fascinating Frenchmen.”

Somehow I was not entirely reassured by that statement.

TUESDAY, May 18 — Another middle-of-the-night phone call. I can see I’ll have to send Connie a Rolex set to Paris time.

“
Freeway backed up again, Connie?” I yawned.

“
The pits, Rick. There was another police chase. What some people won’t do to get on TV. You know somebody named Joan Twisp?”

“
Sure, she’s my sister,” I replied, suddenly alert.

“
I thought maybe there was a connection. There can’t be that many Twisps around. I mean it’s kind of a funny name.”

“
Connie, were the cops chasing her?”

“
What? No, there was an article about her in the
L.A. Times
. She had a kid.”

“
Oh, right. She was due about now as I recall.” More yawning.

“
Well, Rick, your sister made the front page.”

Another familiar quiver at the base of my scrotum. Why was news of my family always so dire?

“
Why, Connie? What happened?!”

“
Ms. Twisp delivered a gorilla. She dropped an 18 pounder.”

“
You’re kidding, Connie.”

I thought my sister looked more than usually blimp-like the last time I saw her.

“
No, they had a photo of the bruiser. It’s quite a monster. She named it Tyler Twisp. You could tell the hospital P.R. people wanted to make a big deal out of it, but they were kind of embarrassed because she wasn’t married.”

“
I know, Connie. It’s another shocking Twisp scandal.”

“
The father is a guy named Dimby. Some married rocket scientist. He refused to comment on camera. You want me to break up his marriage?”

“
Don’t bother, Connie. The guy’s a creep. My sister is well rid of him.”

“
Apparently his other kids were all on the small side. So they figure it must have been the mother’s genes responsible for Tyler being so tubby.”

“
Eighteen pounds! Is that a new world record, Connie?”

“
Not even close, Rick. She missed it by about five pounds. Still, I wouldn’t want to pass a watermelon that size.”

You can say that again. Wow, the Twisps carry a gene for gigantism. Too bad it hasn’t affected my penile development. You’d think by now all those years of incessant masturbation would have triggered some cataclysmic genetic event.

“
Who was it?” drawled Sheeni sleepily when I crawled back into bed.

“
Connie,” I reported. “I’m an uncle.”

“
That’s nice,” she sighed, dozing off.

The other part of the story I think I’ll keep to myself. I don’t think Sheeni needs to know that Twisps have a predisposition toward awe-inspiring birth weights.

11:22 a.m. Woke to the drone of rain on the lead-sheathed roof. Heavy clouds rolling in from the west. Just a few hours before, those same clouds had rained on English-speaking London, where I could have unfurled my umbrella and ordered beans on toast with admirable fluency. Instead, I joined Sheeni in our tin tub, where I soaped her exquisite curves and she drilled me in French numbers. She says at least I should learn these so in shops I don’t just hold up a fistful of bills and have the clerk pick out what I owe. “Not everyone in France is honest, you know, Nickie,” she pointed out.

I know. I didn’t mention that the last wedge of Camembert I lugged up the stairs from our local alimentation appeared to have cost me over E40.

3:40 p.m. No tourism today. Too wet. Sheeni read her book; I practiced my numbers and studied the view out our rain-splattered garret window. Lots of Parisian pigeons waiting out the storm. Seemingly quite at home, yet they have no more French than I do. The buildings across the street looking grandly immutable in the gray light. All the work of long-dead builders who somehow got it right. Rising in the distance: a lone skyscraper—the tallest in the city— truncated today by low clouds. Locals, I am informed by my wife, refer to it as the box that the Eiffel Tower came in. So now I’ve seen the ugly box, but its famous contents still elude me.

Much noise continues to emanate from apartment of muscular dudes across the hall. Loud bangs, deep thumps, lusty shouts. Could be vigorous group sex (they dress flamboyantly), but from the way they mentally undress my wife every time we pass in the hall, I think not. Sheeni speculates they are Italian stonecutters hammering out gravestones in their living room.

Ray of sunshine. Smiling Babette just knocked on the door and invited us out for an evening at “le jazz club.” Too bad Alphonse is coming along too.

11:53 p.m. Back home from musical evening. Still raining. All four of us squeezed into Alphonse’s Twingo, a radically shrunken micro car. Lots of similar toy-sized cars zipping about Paris. Only practical size as they can be parked in the smallest nonexistent spots. Very scary as death is a certainty if you hit anything. Drove to bustling club scene on rue de Lappe. Don’t ask me where that is. All Paris streets lurch off at crazy angles so impossible to follow any route. Left sunglasses at home to increase perceived unavailability to marriage-denying spouse. Overheard several “Belmondo” comments in line while waiting to pay exorbitant cover charge, but nightclubbing Parisians too cool for blatant celebrity toadying. Thousands of hours of acute suffering and scab picking represented by profusion of piercings flaunted by the younger jazz lovers. Damn, I should have worn an earring or two.