Story XXI: Iceland — Part 1/3
A long weekend in Iceland, revisited.
REYKJAVIK
My one rule was “English Only” on our trips, but we weren’t out of the rental car lot when Isa started joking in Portuguese. After two semesters in Rio, Paolo had to translate my wife back into English simply to include me. Through the rear-view mirror, I saw her look at me, then at Paolo. She was nodding along with delight at his translation. The trip had begun; she was the center of attention.
“Your Isabella said Iceland is gloomy, but of all the gloomy countries we’ve visited, Iceland is gloomy in the most beautiful way. That’s the best I could understand her Portuguese.” Paolo laughed, clearly for my benefit. Laughing for my benefit was a rule, too. It was all politics.
She took mock offense and let out another burst of Portuguese.
Isa leaned forward from the back seat and cocked her fist like she was about to punch him on his arm until he said, “Go. Go. Go. Go. Hard as you can.” She touched him with the lightest possible tap. It was the first time she’d touched him since we’d met at baggage claim.
He caught her hand and laughed, looked over at me like he was asking for permission, then turned and stared out the passenger window. Paolo never touched Isa until she touched him first. We had nothing but unspoken rules.
Their “Iceland is dreary” and “Greykjavik” jokes wouldn’t die. Every time the sun peeked out between the clouds for a second, Isa announced in English how dreary, yet how beautiful it was. She used Paolo’s English accent. Eventually, neither of them had to say anything or even look at each other. Paolo would struggle to keep from chuckling until it embarrassed all of us.
I always knew the exact moment when she stopped being a wife on our trips and abandoned me. In Iceland it was when she punched his arm.
I had my own private laugh several times loudly enough that they would hear it. I swore “Greykjavik” would be our last trip together, and it was.
GOÐAFOSS
At Goðafoss, we pulled over to see the first of the three waterfalls I’d arranged, but by 4pm we’d already missed the daylight. So, we sat in the parking lot and listened. Somewhere out of sight, the waterfall roared in and out in waves. Paolo turned off the radio and rolled his window down. He started humming.
Snow blew in and melted on the dashboard. Isa leaned forward from the back seat and wiped it with her hand. While she did, she squeezed my shoulder. It was one of her secret message “just the two of us” connections Paolo wasn’t supposed to know about. For all I know, she was doing the same with Paolo. He would always joke this sort of thing was her “managing us.”
“In Iceland, it snows in the car.” Paolo said, holding his hand out and letting the snow settle on it. He couldn’t have been a man any further from poetry, but I knew him well enough to know that he probably did appreciate the waterfall. I must have let him know I was grateful for that.
If he did, then it was the single time on the Iceland trip either of them acknowledged what I’d spent a month planning. For the last two years, I could count these travel agent victories on one hand. Isa called my moments our “quatros.” This was long before she started using numbers about who slept with who in hotel beds.
“There are four different relationships in a threesome. Each pairing and then the last one is everyone together.”
Isabella must have heard the same travel agent victory I did, because she placed her hand over mine on the shifter like a peace offering. Paolo put his gloved hand on top and moved his hand over hers. “A hand sandwich,” he said, looking at me.
Paolo moved our hands around as a unit and muscled the stick shift from side to side, putting the car in and out of gear. Isabella was leaning in from the back seat. Their faces were now the closest they’d been the entire trip.
They hadn’t touched since a quick greeting at the airport. I wanted them to crack the seal and get it over with, not act like they were waiting for me to give permission, like it was my choice somehow.
“Our sandwich,” he said to me. That was enough. I pulled my fingers out from underneath, and Paolo laughed strangely and fussed with a heater vent.
Paolo turned back to Isa and rattled off something. I knew it was too fast for her.
Isa said, “No more Portuguese, and I don’t understand you anyway.”
“I said you’re being a sand crab, Philip, with your hand,” Paolo said. He made some kind of gesture with his glove like I was scuttling. Then he announced, “I can drive” and launched out of the car before I could disagree. I would have been accused of drama if I refused, so I got out and let him. We passed each other in the headlight snow, and I remember for a fact he didn’t look at me.
With that, Goðafoss at Twilight was officially a failure, which was apparently on me. I chose the travel arrangements and named the excursions. It still upsets me I used my own frequent flyer miles to keep the peace.
For another hour, I don’t think I said a single word. I didn’t even like to turn because they said my leather jacket squeaked, and so I avoided being targeted for that. But eventually, I turned all the way around in the passenger seat to see if she was asleep.
She wasn’t. It was like she’d been waiting for me to turn to her. She angled away from the rear-view mirror and pursed her lips as if we were cheating on Paolo.
Isa called our trips with Paolo “Our Abandono.” They were saving our sex life and, by implication, our marriage. This was almost year three of saving our marriage with abandon.
She held her hand out to me. I took it with my squeaking arm. For all the breezy encouragement, I felt her typical agitation to get the first night behind her.
KIRKJUBÆJARKLAUSTUR
About a half hour from the hotel, Paolo pulled over to a gas station in Kirkjubæjarklaustur. He went inside to buy Brennivin and tourist magnets. Isa and I had cheap gift shop magnets for each of these trips on our refrigerator. Paolo sent them after the trips and made a pretend show of purchasing them secretly.
When we got home and things got back to normal, Isa lined them up in a row. Paolo always wrote a note that mentioned the best things I’d planned. He would sort of name them with a word or two. Good luck with “Kirkjubæjarklaustur.”
“Reconhecimentos,” Paolo called them. “Acknowledgments.” I told Isa they looked like planes he had shot down. He probably had these on refrigerators across the world.
Then, of course, Paolo didn’t have money to pay for gas. Or he had the money, but not the credit cards, or whatever it was. I’d stopped listening after almost three years. Isa admitted at one point he had no “financial shame” or “financial dignity” although she walked that back.
Then he needed me to get out of the car to take pictures in front of the gas pump. I knew exactly what this was. We stood there, holding three Brennivin bottles like we were driving drunk and pretending to have a riot of a time. He forced me to put an arm around him, and I could feel he had put on even more weight.
He called these first night pictures the “My Best Friend” pictures. They were proof for his wife that he was visiting one of his closest buddies. This wife of his was his one great mystery. I know Isa didn’t like it.
I was “an American he knew from his one year at university”, although he hardly put it like that, I’m sure. Apparently, we’d grown much closer during his visits to the States. He didn’t have the imagination to create a fake story with me. He just swapped out Isa for me.
“Look at us,” he said, showing me the picture, waiting for his wife’s text back so he could close it off and move on. Because he couldn’t think of anything to actually say, he showed me our pictures. We’re under a gas pump reindeer ad for chocolate. He’d angled it to put the reindeer antlers over his head.
“I have one of you, too.” He showed me another photo where the antlers were over my head. Now I was wearing the horns.
The funny thing is, even standing on the gas island curb, I didn’t even care about the horns. All I could think was he was shorter than I was.
While we were driving away, his wife’s texts started to come in, a whole flurry of them. His wife sent a picture of her out with her friends. She was holding up two bottles, too. Of course, the obvious joke wasn’t lost on me.
Isa reached forward to snatch away his phone to read the texts, but Paolo said no. That was the end of it.