The Long Highway Pt. 34

This is about my husband. I understand if you aren't interested in reading it and choose not to.

Hiroko translated.

Mitchell is in some ways a strange person, I think. Maybe that's only my perspective. In some ways I don't always understand or trust his feelings or motives, though he's obviously a good person.

He likes to think of himself as a cut above average, can't stand the idea of being on the same level as others, the great majority, I mean. In a way, he's like a fallen aristocrat.

For instance, he'd like to move out of the city but on his salary at the college can't afford the kind of expensive setting he has in mind: views, privacy and peace and quiet. That's reserved for people with more money than he has, an idea he finds hard to accept. He grew up with people who were upper middle class, was used to a sort of VIP experience. It isn't luxury he wants- in fact, he considers that vulgar. It's good taste, fine sensibility, which he finds lacking in common society- where his income places him.

When he looks at real estate, even seeing the name of suburbs for what he calls "lower middle class" people bothers him. The names themselves put him off. He wouldn't think of living in a place where houses are crammed together and his neighbors aren't as educated as he or whatever- though that's all he could afford.

So we stay in the city. He won't lower his standards. Maybe he is a snob. He even judges the kind of books people read- or don't- won't associate himself with some, like the places in the suburbs he disdains.

His sense of himself as different, above others (in some ways it's a good thing) shows in personal relationships as well. We were going out to lunch yesterday and as we walked through the restaurant dining room someone recognized Mitchell and called to him from his table (it was a deli, brightly lit place with all the inner workings showing, like a factory turned into an art gallery but retaining the original fixtures- this place had exposed pipes, tile walls).

"Hey, buddy! Come sit here!"

He was a former student from Chile, South America.

Mitchell responded, "Sorry, we're heading to the back" and to the friend's disappointment kept on walking. I'd already gone ahead, having to watch my step toward the next room, which was last and at a lower level. It was smaller and had fewer customers.

Mitchell told me he felt bad about snubbing his friend, who seemed to have expected Mitchell (and I) to join him. He was friendly, sociable and clearly found Mitchell's unsociable reaction inexplicable. He was the light-hearted type who wouldn't take the rebuff to heart, would shake it off.

Mitchell felt a little in the wrong but really wanted to be alone with me. Our marriage separates him from others people to an extent and he both regrets that and likes it, I think. He likes being with a woman different from others, from a very foreign country, inaccessible to most. I think that gives Mitchell back and reinforces his sense of himself as elite, above average. Do you see that I mean?

I really don't think he's a bad person. I find him hard to understand but sense where he's been hurt in his life and try to soothe him.

We had an enjoyable lunch, by the way, and soon forgot his friend, former student, who I can describe a little from how he looked at us, turned at an angle from his deli-table against the facing wall to the left of the corridor where we walked. He was chunky, thickset, with a dominant torso, shortish legs like many South Americans, I guess. His face matched his frame, also looked squarish, I mean, and was fleshy, so that his smiles formed furrows on his brow. But he wasn't dark, had a reddish blond (or bright orangish), grown-out crewcut that suited the square shape of his big head, made him look flat on top.

His face was very expressive. I saw it light up on seeing Mitchell, a friend he hadn't in a while. I didn't see his expression fall when Mitchell sidestepped his invitation but I could imagine it. Animated. With extended arm, he'd patted the table, as if holding it for us. The kind of person whose emotions flow easily over a wide range, even to extremes. Am I like that? South Americans are different from Japanese, of course, but passion exists all over the world and can flow powerfully if brought out, as you and I know.