懶人自言自語

DURING my junior year abroad, I lived with other American students in a suburban house outside Cork, Ireland. I was a skinny, eye-rolling 21-year-old with literary pretensions. I thought I was too good to hang out with my housemates, who were all chubby girls from Midwestern colleges.

There was one named Karen who particularly annoyed me. She was a solid large-boned girl, with frizzy brown hair. For fun she made pasta from scratch and baked banana bread.

Conversations with Karen always came around to the fact she had been adopted and how, when she was little, she had imagined her birth mother to be a movie star. She felt alienated from her parents. When they visited, I saw why. They were an elegant, wealthy couple. Karen was thrilled to see them, but she was as different from them as a clumsy puppy is from peacocks.

My own parents didn’t have much money. My mom worked at home and my dad was a minister. They sent me $30 a week for food. This would have been enough for basic student fare if I hadn’t always spent it on a night of drinks with my new Irish boyfriend. Gin and tonics were not inexpensive; neither were Silk Cut cigarettes.

The morning after, hung-over, I’d gather up the little money I had left and buy a cabbage, a bottle of soy sauce and a bag of rice. When I’d eaten up these provisions, I would wait until everyone was asleep, and then eat my housemates’ food out of the refrigerator, cutting slices of cheese and downing half cartons of yogurt. Because Karen was the best cook, I often ate her food, though I’d try to leave a little of her pasta or lentil soup so it wasn’t obvious.

Once, she had roasted a chicken, ate what she could, then cut up the meat and stored it in the refrigerator. That night, I ate almost all the chicken. In the morning she held up the glass container to the kitchen window.

“Looks like a little mouse got into my leftovers,” she said.

Of course, because Karen was feeding me, I felt even more annoyed with her. She was a practical person, more conservative, more stable than I. Despite the fact that I was running around with the college writing crowd, mostly pale Irish-boy poets, I was almost always lonely.

My boyfriend, a charismatic young classics scholar and a radio actor, possessed a studied aloofness, and left me alone many nights. I would stay home on my own trying to read John Donne’s poetry and listening for familiar American songs on my little transistor radio.

In early December, Karen wrote me a letter and left it on my bed. “I sometimes think I might be crazy,” she wrote, “I know you don’t like me, but I want us to try and be friends.” The letter went on to say she knew I was eating her food and it was O.K. with her, and that she admired me for wanting to be a writer. She’d come to one of my student readings and heard me typing in my bedroom. She asked if I would share one of my stories with her.

I didn’t know what to make of the letter; I can still see the white envelope in my dark room. For a few days she looked at me expectantly, her big gray eyes trying to catch mine. But after a while she realized I wasn’t going to acknowledge the letter or her interest in making friends. I still ate her food in the dark and spoke to her only when necessary in the light.

Christmas break was approaching. Some of the girls were going home, while a few of us, including me and Karen, were traveling to London. We stayed at a youth hostel behind the British Museum.

The place was like a military barracks, sparse and smelling of dirty tennis shoes. It was filled with students — Germans, Swedes, a shy boy from Spain and lots of Americans. I took a bunk as far as possible from Karen’s. I think she assumed we’d hang out together, but my roommate from college in the United States flew over, and we ran around going to art films and looking for cool record stores.

If Karen was disappointed, she didn’t let it slow her down. I remember her in her puffy ski jacket and hand-knit wool hat and mittens, lumbering back from sightseeing. She’d seen the Rosetta stone! She’d seen Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript for “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland!” Her cheerful self-sufficiency drove me crazy.

On Christmas Eve the hostel began to clear out. My college roommate flew home. In the evening, I called my parents from a phone booth. I’d heard from my brother that my mom and dad weren’t getting along, and I could tell by their pinched voices that both of them were miserable. My coins ran out while my mom was in midsentence.

I went outside. The streets were mostly deserted until church doors opened and well-dressed Londoners in cashmere coats, Burberry scarves and shiny leather shoes flooded out and dispersed into their town houses.

On the way back to the hostel, I began to feel dizzy and then sick to my stomach. I went to the side of a building and threw up. Once inside the hostel I ran up the stairs to the bathroom and spent the better part of the night lying on the cold tile floor, heaving up bile. My legs and back ached and my sweaty hair stuck to my forehead. As the sun rose I made my way to my bunk, where I slept well into the afternoon.

I woke on Christmas Day feeling sore, cotton-mouthed, fetid. I was so lightheaded I thought I might float up and bump against the ceiling. All I wanted was a hot bath, but I knew I couldn’t make it down the three flights of stairs to the room with the tub, and there was no way I could get down to the front desk on the ground floor to pick up a clean towel.

When I saw Karen come in, I called her, and she came right over. I asked if she’d help me down the stairs to the bathtub and get a towel; I made it clear I didn’t need help bathing, just getting down the stairs. She nodded and took my arm. The well-lighted steps were steep and exacerbated my dizziness.

Inside the bathroom, the tub was gigantic and hallucinatory in its whiteness. I’d never been in an old-style tub before, deep with claw feet and a comfortable backrest. The hot water sent up little wisps of steam. As the water cooled, I worried about getting back upstairs. Should I yell up the three flights for Karen to come back down? Or should I try to struggle up the incline by myself?

I was shaky getting out, holding the tub’s edge and then lunging for the doorknob. When I opened the door, there was Karen sitting on the steps, reading. She looked up and gave me a shy smile. Supporting my elbow, she helped me back up the stairs. Moving slowly, she paused every few steps to let me rest. Once I was settled in bed she brought over a bottle of water and a banana from her stash of supplies.

Back in Ireland, she never said another word about me scarfing her leftovers, while I was maybe less snooty but still aloof. It wasn’t until years later I realized what a great gift Karen’s kindness had been.

Now I often think of the big porcelain bathtub in that ratty British hostel, and Karen’s presence just outside the door, waiting to make sure that I was all right.