What a time I had had getting Thalia interested in travel! When we were first married and her mother was still alive, they had both thought I was crazy to want to travel to foreign countries for a vacation.
For all their money, the farthest Thalia and her family had ever been from Akron, Ohio, was the Grand Canyon. Until her mother’s death, after which I worked hard to introduce her to the joys of travel, Thalia thought the Grand Canyon was the end of the earth.
Well, all that had changed, and for five years now I had spent my semester break planning one exotic vacation after another. Making hotel and plane reservations, reserving rental cars and Jeeps, tracing on maps just where we would go and what we would see. At first Thalia had been enthusiastic. I suppose my own passion for travel was catching — at least, she tried to enter into the plans. She was, however, woefully ignorant in geography. Thalia couldn’t even keep the continents straight; she was always confusing Africa and South America, and she couldn’t find Australia to save her soul. “Oh, it’s down there,” she would say in surprise, when I finally pointed it out for her.
Those first trips were the fulfillment of life-long dreams for me. For Thalia — it was hard to tell what they were. Someone once told her that a trip abroad was like having a baby — difficult at the time, but afterward, well worth the trouble. That analogy appealed to Thalia, and she went around repeating it to everyone. The trouble was, each and every trip for Thalia was as difficult as the first one. In truth, Thalia had been far from the ideal companion for my travels. The wonders of the world were like Disneyland attractions to her, and her simple remarks had often been painfully embarrassing. There had been that awful moment in the elevator at the Cairo Hilton last year.
We had just arrived and I was aching to jump in a cab and head for el Giza and the pyramids, but Thalia was exhausted from the plane trip, so I agreed to postpone going until morning. It was then that she said, in her high penetrating voice, “What time do the pyramids open, Harold?” The elevator had been crowded, and an amused titter passed through the car.
For five years, then, all went well. Last spring, however, when one day I received in the mail a fat manila envelope and started poring through folders on Mexico and Central America, I had seen a look of determination on her face. An unusual look for Thalia. She had set her little mouth as rigidly as she could, even though I could perceive a slight trembling at the corners, and said that this summer she intended to find a nice quiet lake resort — maybe in Wisconsin or Minnesota — where it would be cool and restful and where the most exotic dish served would be roast beef and mashed potatoes.
Having made her big announcement she had hurriedly left the room. She knew how easily I had always been able to change her mind, usually by pointing up the romantic aspects of a distant place. Moonlight on the pyramids, sunrise over the Acropolis. Even though she knew she would probably be seeing the moonlight or the sunrise from a sickbed, she had always given in to me. But not this time; her mind was made up.
I even tried to convince her that this would be our last foreign trip, that next summer I would help her to find that Wisconsin lake resort where we would sit and rock on a shady veranda and eat roast beef and apple pie every night of the week. She knew better, and so did I. There was no way I could have endured such a vacation, trapped in one spot and subjected to the kind of dull, insipid people who frequent such places. They would all, I thought, be exactly like Thalia.
So after five trips Thalia had had it. I couldn’t complain that she had been stingy with her mother’s money. It was all kept in her name, of course. Her mother had trained her well in the matter of hanging on to her own money. I really didn’t care, as long as Thalia was willing to finance our vacation trips. Traveling was all I had ever wanted out of life, and I had had five wonderful summers. But was I ready for it all to end? My appetite for travel was by no means assuaged; rather, it was heightened by what I had already seen. On my salary I would never be able to travel in style, for a whole summer, as I had been doing. The thought of a budget trip every two years depressed me.
Now my life had changed again, with the loss of my Thalia. It was still difficult for me to believe that she wasn’t with me on this trip, that she was gone from this world. How strange, how final, is death... My travels could go on indefinitely now, of course. I tried to take comfort in that thought. I might even give up my job at the junior college. I had thought many times of traveling full-time. Why bother owning a home? It was just something to worry about and pay taxes on. There was enough of the world left for me to see, after Mexico and Central America. There was the entire Far East — and Russia! I might even put some of my adventures into a book, tell the world about the joys of travel.
All this I thought about while sitting on an iron bench in the charming little public square where I had gone after dinner. My thoughts drifted between the past and the present, which was a parade of colorfully dressed Mexicans, out for the evening in their very best. For some reason I glanced across the square just in time to see a black-and-white taxi take a fast corner and speed down Hidalgo Street. I jumped to my feet as though the bench were charged with electricity. In that brief glance at the taxi I had seen a white face looking through the rear window. The small face reminded me of a skull, but it was framed in fine, red hair — Thalia’s face and Thalia’s hair.
I sat down abruptly, trying to recover my composure. I hoped no one had seen my foolish action. The woman in the cab bore a striking resemblance to Thalia, that was all. There must be thousands of such women in the world. My heart was beating rapidly, though, over that shock of recognition. My knees trembled as I got up to walk back to the hotel.
Crossing the street, my mind was still full of Thalia, and I decided to visit the nearby cathedral to get her off my mind. Besides, the sky had become unusually dark, and people were scurrying along the streets, picking up their small children to hurry the process of getting home to shelter.
The huge carved wooden doors were ajar as I walked up the uneven stone steps. Flower sellers trying to make a last sale hurriedly offered me bright scarlet gladioluses to place on the shrines inside. I entered, my nostrils assailed by a mixture of scents — flowers, incense, burning wax. The hushed atmosphere was restful, and I slipped into the last pew. The altar was magnificent. Gold leafing covered all the pillars and niches where delicately sculptured statues stood, pure white and eyeless.
Glancing over to the side of the altar, my attention became riveted on one of the confessionals. A woman in the act of confessing was kneeling with her face almost completely covered by her hands. The curtains on both halves of the confessional booth were open, probably because of the heat. I could see the priest, a dark figure, slumped in his seat, with his arms folded over his ample stomach.
The woman had the same color of hair, the same general build, the same white skin as Thalia’s. She was even wearing a white dress that looked exactly like one Thalia had worn on our last trip. I sat watching her, telling myself that it was just another woman who happened to look like Thalia. Then, gradually, there was an impression of familiarity about her. I sat up straight in the pew. Those infinitely small details that make you identify a person subconsciously, from even a great distance, told me that the woman was Thalia!
I leaped to my feet for the second time that evening, almost calling out to her. Suddenly she was leaving, and very quickly. Never looking my way, she seemed to sense that I was approaching, and to fear me. She reached a side door and left through it with remarkable speed. I reached it seconds later, pushing the heavy door open roughly — but she was gone. I scanned every possible direction, but she had disappeared.