An Apple a Day (20 page)

“One of these days, Em, you'll have a breakthrough.” We're at a gas station two hours outside Boulder, somewhere in the Rockies. “I'll be filling up the car and you'll go inside for sodas, and you'll come back to the car with some Krispy Kreme doughnuts and you'll just eat one.” Tom reaches out and puts his arms around me. We stand on the courtyard in the crisp, bright sunshine, delaying the moment when we have to get back in the car. “You'll just eat a lovely doughnut and enjoy it—that's the breakthrough I'm waiting for.”

I don't think he knows how far I am from eating a Krispy Kreme doughnut, ever.

* * *

We're driving though Wyoming. My feet are on the dashboard, Tom's at the wheel of our red Mustang. It's been five hours since we left Boulder and we've seen nothing but the highway ahead and the endless, barren prairie. Wyoming is true cowboy country, more than 97,000 square miles and only 500,000 inhabitants. Just to put that in context, the whole of Britain is only 88,000 square miles and has over 62 million inhabitants. We drive and drive and see nothing but the endless road ahead and the big sky and waving prairie grasses. Wyoming feels like 97,000 square miles of emptiness.

Thank God for the radio stations: Bigfoot 99 has kept us going since Colorado, singing along to Emmylou Harris and Woody Guthrie and Dolly Parton, all our latest discoveries. Is this new appreciation of country music a sign of getting old, we discuss at length, as the road unfurls ahead of us. There's “Jolene,” “This Land is Your Land,” and “Almost Home.” There are newer tracks like “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off,” a catchy bluegrass number we know by heart by the time we reach Saratoga.

Saratoga, Wyoming: a one-horse town. Well, there's a small grocery store, a gas station (which looks like it hasn't sold gas since the 1940s), and a trading post selling cowboy boots for cowboys, not tourists. Then, just on the way out of town, tucked into the bend of a river, the Saratoga Hot Springs Resort. We drive in and park outside a small wooden shed with a swinging sign marked
RECEPTION
. It's nearly 6
PM
and we've been driving since morning; flakes of snow swirl around as we wrestle our suitcases out of the trunk.

The motel grounds are floodlit, to illuminate what Saratoga is proudest of: its natural hot springs. It's an extraordinary experience, slipping into the boiling waters from the near-freezing night air. As well as the large rectangular swimming pool, around which the bungalows are arranged, farther off in the darkness is a cluster of tepees atop miniature plunge pools just big enough for one (or two in romantic mood). We float in the sulphurous waters until long after the sun has set, enjoying the therapeutic effects on our car-weary muscles—and soon getting used to the foul sulphurous stench of egg. There is no one else around but we find ourselves talking in whispers. Looking up at the night sky and the millions of tiny stars, it feels like we're the only people on this planet.

Later, over a snack dinner in the homely dining room (fresh granary rolls and a bowl of tomato soup for me, steak and fries and coleslaw for Tom), the owner tells us the waters come from
the underground springs in Saratoga . . . “It comes clean outta the ground up to 140 degrees but we make sure to cool it down with the nearby stream.” She looks so nicely presented, this lady of a certain age, all neatly permed hair and frosty pink lipstick, even though it's late and out of season and we're her only guests. You want her for your auntie, or an older best girlfriend. She speaks in that correct, slightly formal way Americans have when they're not used to foreigners. “Right now, I'd guess it's about 100 degrees out there . . . maybe somewhat cooler after nightfall.” (Later, as we're leaving the dining room, she confides in me, “I sure love your British accent, I could just listen to you folks talk all night.”)

* * *

The miles are adding up: five days on the road and we've driven nearly 1,000 miles. At the Colorado–Utah border, we do not see “God in the sky in the form of huge sunbathing clouds above the desert” (as Jack Kerouac did), but we marvel at the steep miles of curving, rolling highway on our descent into Salt Lake City. After the remoteness of Wyoming, SLC is a revelation: stylish and much livelier than we'd expected. Despite its reputation as a “dry” state, we find plenty of bars open. And it must be the cleanest city in the world: walking around town for two days, I didn't see a single piece of trash on the streets, not a wad of chewing gum or even a cigarette butt.

On our first morning we wander a few blocks from our hotel to visit the World Headquarters of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, slap bang in the middle of town. I have to admit, I'm captivated by this whole Mormon thing: elegant temples and glittering gold domes; acres of immaculate grounds, a multi-colored riot of tulips, green lawns, splashing fountains, and gray marble courtyards. There is some secrecy—we're not allowed into the
temple buildings—but apart from that we wander freely through the parks. And every Mormon we meet is normal and welcoming: two young women stop and smile, ask if we need directions, offer us a map. They take our photograph by the tulips and recommend a nearby coffee shop with “the best frozen yogurt in Utah.” No one talks of God or finding the true path: they are genuinely not trying to indoctrinate us, just saying hello.

And this is a wonderful new experience: frozen yogurt. We find the coffee shop and collapse into a booth at the back. Tom goes up to the counter and comes back with two large tubs: vanilla yogurt topped with blueberries for me, raspberry yogurt topped with strawberries for him. Frozen yogurt is like ice cream (which I haven't eaten since around 1989) and tastes absolutely delicious. It's actually fat-free, but that's not the point: it's a novelty to enjoy eating the same thing as my boyfriend, something fun and unplanned, between meals, just for a treat. I don't do that very often—well, never. We spoon it down greedily as it melts, swapping spoonfuls of raspberry and vanilla. Tom keeps smiling at me.

We roll onwards “balling the jack” like Jack Kerouac, across the blinding Salt Lake flats, where we stop the car and taste lumps of solid rock salt on our tongues. Out of Utah and on across the desert into Nevada, stopping for a night in Elko (a small, dusty casino town) and another night in Reno (a larger, glitzier dusty casino town). Leaving Nevada we stop in Lovelock, another small town, with “one of only two circular courthouses in the U.S.” (who knew?), a grocery store, and the town's main attraction: the love-chain. From a stall next to the grocery store we buy a padlock with our names engraved on it:
Tom and Emma, May 2011
. Then we join thousands of previous tourists in locking our cheesy padlock onto the hefty iron chain looped around the courthouse park, thus “locking our love forever.”

I don't know about locking our love forever, but the road trip has tested our relationship. There have been tensions and disagreements—inevitable when you're spending eight or nine hours a day driving—but there's also a sense of camaraderie. We're in this together, through so many unfamiliar situations and alien places, and we're looking after each other. It has always felt like this: me and Tom against the world. We argue a lot, but we're also good at recovering: we forgive quickly and put it behind us. My mother used to say, “Never go to bed angry,” and I'm starting to learn the truth of this—one of the best ways to resolve a fight is just to take someone's hand in the dark as you drift off to sleep.

* * *

We've been on the road for nine days when we finally reach Lake Tahoe. The trip has been more tiring than we'd expected—nothing but the road ahead and the mountains or valleys, the radio, and oncoming trucks and each other to distract us. We need this break.

Crossing into California the landscape changes: it's instantly lusher and greener. The red rocks of the Nevada Desert are replaced by orange groves, and it's abundant in natural resources, sunshine, and fertile land—you can see why early settlers called it the promised land. Driving into Tahoe we open the car windows to smell the pine trees, and the mountain air gets colder and fresher as the car ascends to 7,000, then 8,000 feet. Soon the sky is a cloudless blue and the expanse of water shimmers in clear sunshine. I've heard songs about California since I was little; I've read about it and wondered about it and here we are at last.

We need to get out of the damn car, to walk and rest and breathe fresh air. It's a huge relief to leave the arid desert highway.

In Tahoe we have a “lakeside cabin” for four days—they call it a cabin but we call it a mansion. It's a five-bedroom, four-bathroom
chalet-style palace next to the lake, with a wraparound wooden deck. At night we sit on the deck in shorts and thick sweaters and listen to the waves breaking on the shore. When it gets cold we go inside and light candles, cook dinner together: steak or pizza for Tom, vegetables for me, plus whole-wheat bagels. In the mornings, Tom gets up early and drives to Starbucks and comes back with triple-shot Americanos, while I slice fruit and burn toast. This is heaven, or at least the most beautiful place on Earth.

It was bright and cold in Denver and Boulder, snowstormy in Wyoming, and finally sunshine and warmth in Lake Tahoe—and I get to wear my new bikini. This is something of a departure from my usual black two-piece—it has tropical fruits and flowers in orange, pink, and green, splashed onto a halter-neck style, and Tom loves it. I know my shape is changing, or else why would this new bikini fit me? Although I don't feel “heavier” (as I'd feared), my clothes don't hang off me as they used to. My jeans are snugger around the thighs and bum, my arms a little less angular. I don't know what to feel about this—mostly I try not to think about it. I've always avoided looking at my body in the mirror anyway.

* * *

In San Francisco we're back in city mode: rushing through Chinatown, climbing the 210-foot-high Coit Tower, scaling the hilly streets, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. We spend a day on Tom's Kerouac research: visiting the Beat writers' former hangouts in North Beach and browsing for hours in City Lights bookstore (where the old Beatster Lawrence Ferlinghetti is actually in the office upstairs, although we don't get to meet him). After a few hours in the Beat museum, we cross Kerouac Alley and drink cold beer in the Beat bar Vesuvio. I haven't drunk beer for years; I'm starting to relax, I realize: it tastes divine. This is the bar where
Allen Ginsberg first read
Howl
and where Dylan Thomas hung out; it's now full of aging hipsters who look like they spent too much time with Jack Kerouac (and Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise) back in 1947.

We take a tour of Silicon Valley, thirty miles out of San Francisco in the miraculous microclimate of Palo Alto. It's blisteringly hot out here and the fog of the Bay Area seems a distant memory. We drift around the enormous Google campus, soaking up the general weirdness of the place: the signs for the free Google canteens and film nights for employees, health talks and motivational seminars, the famous red, blue, and green primary colors of the Google bikes (employees pedal to meetings in different buildings), everyone we see is surfing or messaging on the latest Google Android phones, munching on free candies or potato chips. “Never more than 100 feet from food” is a Google mantra, which makes Tom look at me and roll his eyes. I wonder where this comes from: is it simply an American obsession with snacking, do they believe that food helps fuel creativity, or what? I've been doing OK with eating on our trip, but mostly sticking to safe foods: not exactly super-sizing myself.

Farther out of town, the Facebook premises are a low-key affair. There's no sign of Mark Zuckerberg—despite being a billionaire he allegedly works in the open-plan office along with his staff—but we score some free bottles of Vitamin Water from the friendly receptionist. (Raspberry and Pomegranate flavor, delicious, ice cold.)

Back in San Francisco Tom and I walk along the waterfront and stop to watch the sea lions. In a café on the Embarcadero we track down more fat-free frozen yogurt and fall on it like hungry animals. We're worn out. The trip is coming to an end in a few days and I think we're both ready. We drive out to the westernmost point of the city, where there's nothing but the Pacific
Ocean stretching into the distance, endless. This is it, the end of the continent: we've run out of places to drive, there's literally no more road left. We stand on the cliff tops and stare at the Pacific, dazzling in the sunshine, and I wonder what Tom is thinking.

I'm thinking it's time to face things; it's time to go home. I'm so tired of living out of a suitcase and packing up hotel rooms and never being in London for more than a few days at a stretch. Tom and I are always moving, and suddenly I long to slow down. Is this about having a baby, this longing to put down roots? But again those impossible questions rise up:
Am I responsible enough to be a mother? Are we really ready to give up our freedom to become parents?

Chapter 10

Right Here, Right Now

“
While you're writing, you ain't living
.”

—Bob Dylan

T
here comes a point in all this when I have to say: enough is enough. The procrastination has to stop: the food avoidance has to stop. What am I waiting for, after all these years? All the words in the world are not going to “cure” me of this eating disorder. In fact they're just distractions from the hardest challenge of all, which is to put on weight. And that Bob Dylan line reminds me that while I'm writing, I ain't eating.