THE PORTALS OF TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES
by Suzanne Westhues
2021
I land in Albuquerque, New Mexico with just a black leather jacket and backpack. It’s October of 2021, and I’ve just traveled solo across country from Boston.
I have booked a driver to take me the last two hours to a writers’ retreat in Truth or Consequences, a town renamed for an old American game show about forty years ago.
“Is this the address?” The driver from Albuquerque asks. “Do you want to stay?”
“This is the place.” I pick up my bag and roll it across the small courtyard. The weather is summery but no one sits outside. No one seems to be working at the desk, either, even though it’s one in the afternoon. Maybe I see someone from camp in the distance. Maybe I wander around taking photographs. Maybe I relish that I am thousands of miles away. Maybe I feel a sense of adventure because nobody knows where I am.
Across the street, there’s a chorus of southwestern birds, hills covered in cacti, palm trees. A lone dove coos endlessly in the distance. I feel a slight wind in my hair, sunlight on my face, and there are so few cars that when one passes by, you hear the exact sound the engine makes. Dry heat in the southwest is far gentler than the humidity of the northeast.
I almost wish that a place like this would have chosen me when I was young, but I’m out of place. Just an east coast girl here for a short adventure. What stories do I have to tell this time? What stories do I share? What stories do I keep only for myself?
I promise myself that this will be a new chapter.
The town is sparse and spread out, and the Pelican Spa is a series of red and pink stucco buildings laid out over a couple of streets.
Truth or Consequences is full of murals, tiles, and the Rio Grande; it’s also known as movie New Mexico, and the buildings are painted cobalt blue and yellow. There are oversized healing spa tubs in the main building and as soon as I can tear off my clothes from flight, I draw a bath of hot water from the hot springs, the original name of the town and what it is also known for. I soak in the deep, slightly tiled tub for an hour. I am here for renewal.
The cycle my mind has traveled for months. It’s time for a long soak and to let go.
I’m two thousand miles from home in a place that has no connections or reminders to anything else in my life. No one knows that I’m here, except my family.
I go to the to the Art Hop in town, so I can buy tee-shirts for my husband and daughter, beaded earrings for my mother, my daughter, and my aunt. A small band plays Joni Mitchell covers in front of the gallery. Then I go back to the loft where I will attend the night’s readings. There are oversized canvases on the walls, two king-sized beds, three sofas, a kitchen area. The room is full of other writers, lots of ink, dyed red hair, mohawks and printed dresses. We sit at a distance from one another in all kinds of masks with plates of tortilla chips and small plastic cups of red wine. The doors of the loft stay open, and people wander in and out. I am going to read my work-in-progress, the last piece that I have written, and I read powerfully in a room of strangers. `
It has been a long day and a long journey. After the reading, I look down to see a text from my facilitator: “Great job!” I am surprised and yet strangely satisfied—like the universe has heard me, like I can finally move on from the past couple of years, that my life will go beyond to newer, unwritten chapters. I step into the portal. I am ready to go.
2024
Three years later I’m still a person haunted by the past, so much so that my dreams often take place in my childhood home. Sometimes the dream is so convincing that when I get up, I reach out for the bedpost at the left side of my childhood canopy bed when I have slept in a king size bed for decades. But when your world changes so much and so quickly you cannot live in the past anymore. The past is gone. You can only live in the present.
I make a list of the things that have changed me in the last three years. My mother’s death. My aunt’s death. The children moving away. The relationships that ended. I make another list of the things that have saved me. Trips to Greece and learning the language. All the new people and experiences who have come into my life.
And I remember—swirls and swirls of pale yellow and green on the other side of the world. I time-travel to Greece, again and again in Truth or Consequences.
A year earlier when I physically leave for Greece, spending two months there, I create a space in time after my mom died. I stop retelling the details of the day. I regroup in myself, to remind myself to check in on other people and their lives. I get to know new people who have nothing to do with the past. People who did not know us the way we were before.
I meet sixty other people in an immersion program. I also learn to leave myself open to wherever the day will go. The morning after the program ends, I sit on one of the benches and drink my cafe Americano in front of the lake.
I see four of my former fellow students from the program walking. “Hey!!” I yell.
“We are on our way to Meteora but we are going to have breakfast first. Want to join us?” The voice belongs to Zoran, one of the students from Macedonia. He is walking with Miguel from the Canary Islands, Gabriela from San Sebastian, and Jasmina, his girlfriend from Skopje.
We pick one of the lakeside cafes and order spanakopita and bougatsa.
After breakfast we drive country roads, stopping at huge waterfalls called “Cataractes.” We take off our sandals in the cool water and photograph each other. We share a meal of tomato salad, tzatziki, chicken souvlaki, rose wine and ice cream.
Eventually, Miguel looks at his phone. “Sorry guys, it’s three more hours to Meteora.”
At that moment, it doesn’t matter whether we make it to our destination or not. The company is good, and we share life stories in the compact car.
On the way back to town, we encounter packs of stray dogs and horses on the roads. Maybe we’ll meet the following year. Maybe we’ll carry the memory with us instead.
I come back to the moment in Truth or Consequences and look around the room.
I like to imagine my mother saying nice things about Ioannina, about some of the special people I have been lucky enough to meet in the past eighteen months. I like to imagine her being happy about the way I handled things.
I step back into my life after time-traveling this weekend through this difficult period of my life, a river that is sometimes calm and sometimes choppy.
Back in Boston. I have lunch at Emmett’s near the university where I work. There are already a few people at the bar having a few laughs. The college students play Zach Bryan and Megan Mooney, instead of traditional Irish music. The walls are painted emerald green, and there are odd shaped frames with Brendan Behan, William Butler Yeats, and James Joyce looking on as they always have.
Suzanne Westhues has been writing all her life, and she has had the lucky circumstances to be able to teach English literature and writing since 1995. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and her new rescue beagle.
