Making the Move, part 10

By her own account Ana had been a busy Air Force wife, involved with PTAs and officers’ wives clubs wherever they’d lived. But now, back home, she was living a quieter life, seeing her folks and spending her days taking care of the house. She loved to do just what I couldn’t stand—she air-dried all the family clothing and ironed every piece, sometimes watching soccer or movies on TV. Her house was furnished with a combination of comfy American pieces and some truly beautiful Spanish antiques, which she bought from an American wife and Spanish husband she knew who owned an antiques shop.

Her kids were wonderful people. Troy, a baby-faced soccer star, was warm and funny, with a shock of straight blond hair and crooked teeth. Carmen, who became a favorite babysitter for Julie and Lisa, had long, wavy blond hair and was kind and studious. They gave Ana and Phil little trouble, even as teenagers.

Phil was not too happy in his work at the Office of Defense Cooperation, located in an impressive brick building in the northwest part of Madrid. “Everyone there is an officer, a major or a colonel,” Ana explained. “These guys are used to having a hierarchy, knowing who’s at the top and who has to follow whose orders. But here you have Army, Navy and Air Force guys all together, and everyone is used to being in charge.” The ODC’s function was to coordinate military relationships between the U.S. and Spain—everything from pilot exchange programs to joint military exercises to used airplane sales. With his excellent Spanish, Phil usually got along better with his Spanish counterparts than with his U.S. colleagues.

Ana became my close friend and my most valued resource—a cultural translator who could explain almost everything about Spain to me. When I was invited to a Spaniard’s home for dinner, she coached me on exactly how late I should arrive (an hour). She suggested good places to visit and taught me what to say when I wanted my hair cut. She advised me to tip the gas station attendant who filled my car—“That is a true service,” she said. And she took care of me the day my power was turned off for non-payment of the bill.

There were two ways to pay an electricity bill: by an electronic draft from your bank account or by going to a designated bank and paying in cash. Mike had asked me one morning if I could go down to the bank and pay the bill, since our own bank account wasn’t yet set up right for doing the electronic drafts. I was terrified. “I don’t know,” I said, and I really meant it: I didn’t know if I could go down there and do what had to be done. What if I made a mistake? What if I embarrassed myself and people laughed at me? I hadn’t yet recovered from the need to feel capable all the time.

I did go down there, though. I saw an armed guard near the door, and I asked in halting Spanish where to go to pay the bill I showed to him. He pointed to a teller, and I went over and paid her, heart pounding. I left in a panic, feeling no more competent in spite of my success.

But it turned out that the payment was credited incorrectly, and a week later we received—but failed to understand—a notice saying that the power was going to be cut off if we didn’t pay our bill that afternoon.

The next thing I knew, the power was off. It took us a while to figure out what had happened. The lights were out, and the TV wouldn’t turn on. Worst of all, my fancy motorized persianas weren’t working! Whichever ones were up stayed up, and the ones that were down stayed down. My great luxury turned instantly into a huge liability.

In the Spanish bureaucratic style that we came to know and hate, the bill could now be paid only at the power company’s office, and by the time we realized our predicament, it was closed. We would not be able to pay till the next day between 10 a.m. and noon, and the power would be turned back on sometime after that.

I called my sister and sobbed over the phone to her, totally defeated. “I didn’t know what to do, and we ignored the warning because we didn’t understand that it meant they were going to turn the power off,” I hiccuped. She tried hard to be sympathetic, but she could hardly contain her amusement. “You’ll figure it out,” she said. “You’ll pay the bill and you’ll be okay. You’ve lived without electricity before! You’ll make it!” I knew she was right, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

It was at this point that Ana came by, saw the situation, and invited us over for dinner. It seemed to me the most generous thing anyone had ever done for me. The four of us trooped across the street at dinnertime, and Ana and Phil took care of us like the poor, pathetic creatures we felt ourselves to be, trying hard not to giggle at us. They were fully familiar with the mysteries of Spanish bureaucracy, and they often had to dodge difficulties like the one that had just hit us head-on. I was humiliated, but at least I was not hungry. We went back home and slept with our persianas up, and in the morning we paid the bill, and in the afternoon we got our power back.