The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy

[continuing the entry on Rarotonga from Scented Isles , a guidebook to the South Sea Islands by the Christensen sisters] Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

ARIANE THREW HERSELF into the task with great verve. She studied Rarotonga and the route that they would take to get there. She found from the start that Rarotonga itself interested and appealed to her more than sailing the sea to get there, ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

“I WANTED TO KNOW all about it,” she said. “Everything. More than John did. Enough to surprise him, anyway. So I went to the library. I was amazed to see how many books they had about Rarotonga.” Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

GRANDFATHER gave her his charts and the books he had about Rarotonga and points along the way, and Ariane took them home and studied them when she was alone in her room at night. This meant that she was more often alone in her room at night, and this made her family suspicious. Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com...

“THERE WAS A LOT OF WORK to be done,” she sa id, “and I threw myself right into it. If you think about it in terms of being on a boat—and I did think of it in those terms—I wasn’t really the first mate. I was the cook, and a deck hand, and the navigator—sort of—you’ll see—and also the boy —”     “—the young landlubber who runs away to sea and will do whatever dirty job gets thrown his way, just fo...

UNTYING her apron and tossing it onto a hook, she said, “Red, I’m taking off.”     Red didn’t seem to have any objection. He was as impassive as ever, but Ariane could read his immobile face better than others could, and she thought she saw some small annoyance there.     “Look, I’m sorry,” she said, “but there’s something I’ve got to do.” She thought of trying to explain, but gave up. “There’s ju...

36 AFFECTING THE VOICE of the movies’ idea of what was at the time called a dizzy dame, Ariane said, “Then I got another idea!” The dizzy dame seemed enormously pleased with and quite surprised by herself. “And the discovery that I could have two good ideas eventually led to my recognizing the dual nature of my personality.”     “Wow,” I said, in my own voice.     “Of course,” she said, continuing...

35 ONE NIGHT, when my grandfather walked into Corinne’s and took the round table in the back, Ariane saw something in the way he walked that told her things had changed. What she saw was enough to keep her from calling out a greeting to him. If this were a melodrama, she would have dropped a glass, and she would have cut herself when she bent to pick up the pieces.     The men at the bar didn’t se...

     Dr. Roberts was my grandfather’s best friend. He was sometimes with my grandfather during those Sundays that he spent on the bay, and Dr. and Mrs. Roberts were part of my grandparents’ “set.” This set consisted mostly of people from families that had been in Babbington for generations. Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy...

WE WERE SITTING at the table in Ariane’s kitchen. I was working on my second helping of lasagne. She was still poking at her first.     “Night after night, he would stand at the window,” she said, “as if he were standing at the porthole of their cabin, and he would describe their progress.” Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy...

ONCE THE VOYAGE was underway, there could be no turning back. It wasn’t an easy trip for Grandfather. Often, along the way, he had doubts about the wisdom of having set out at all. Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

GRANDFATHER WALKED ALONG, toward home, through the rain. As he walked, he began to think his way through Ariane’s idea. He tried it out. He imagined himself putting it into effect, standing at the window of the bedroom, while he and Grandmother slid down the Bolotomy River on their way to Rarotonga. Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at p...

     He told her about Grandmother’s illness: pancreatic cancer. He told her about the trip that they had always talked about taking, and the way that he and my grandmother talked about it, planned it, and imagined it. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

     Bitzer nodded again. They all nodded this way, just before they returned to their places at the bar. It was the nod that ended the encounter, but it was also a nod of admiration for my grandmother’s toughness. In the nod they saluted her bravery, without having to get into details over what she was being brave about, or having to start exploring the question of the value of bravery in the fac...

ONE NIGHT, my grandfather was sitting at his usual place, the small round table in the back. It was not a pleasant night. He had come through the rain for his usual couple of drinks. Two or three of the “boys” at the bar had made their ritual trips back to his table to see how he was doing and ask how Eleanor was getting along. Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Obs...

WHEN MY GRANDMOTHER FELL ILL, she and my grandfather talked more and more about a trip that they had always hoped to make, someday, when they had the time, when there wasn’t so much to do, when they had some extra money—someday. They wanted to go to Rarotonga, one of the Cook Islands, in the South Pacific, west of New Zealand. Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Obse...

ARIANE AND I were in her kitchen. She was making lasagne, going about her work with the queer verve of a chef on a television cooking show, slicing and chopping and stirring with the cool indifference of a weary pro, but sniffing and tasting with the ecstatic delight of an obsessive gourmet. Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterlero...

“TOOTSIE!” said Red. “Where the hell you been, girl? Want a drink?” Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

29 “I SAID TO MYSELF, ‘Ariane, let’s face it. Things haven’t been going your way. You need a change. Time to travel another path.’ ” Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

FROM The Films of Gregory Tschudin , by Andrew Cargill: A Little Mischief      Anne Coffin (Deirdre Frost) is a college student who has returned to her home town for the summer and taken a job as a maid at a resort. She’s from a working-class family that is just scraping by. Sending her to school is a sacrifice. Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Pet...

WHEN SHE TURNED THE CORNER and saw home, she knew what she was going to do. It made her shiver, and it made her smile.  Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

27 “I DID. I went away. Actually, I let him lead me away—down the corridor and out the door. And he watched me until I was off the grounds. I was—dazed. I felt ashamed, just as ashamed as I would have felt if I’d been guilty. And I felt—” Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

IN MOVIES, there are always clues. A spy will walk into a deserted square in Bratislava and we, the viewers, will know—from the way the shadows fall, the stillness in the air, the unusual way that the pigeons are pecking at crumbs—that this is a setup, that he’s walking into a trap, but the clues in life are subtle, unreliable, and often misleading, so we rarely spot the setup or see the ambush co...

“THAT’S WHEN the son of a b***h hit me. He punched me. In the stomach.” She shuddered and drew a breath. “I lose my breath even now,” she said, “remembering it. ... Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe

“THEN I SURPRISED MYSELF again,” she said. “There isn’t any way around this—it sounds so square to say this, but I remembered that it wasn’t right. It was shameful, it was—”  Get full access to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy at peterleroy.substack.com/subscribe