Life and Other Near-Death Experiences (8 page)

FOURTEEN

It wasn’t enough that he almost scared the pants off me twice in one day. No, Shiloh had to go and inform me that nearly crashing into the Caribbean—to say nothing of the cluster muck of cells sapping away my life force—was no different from the unpleasantness of everyday existence.

Well, that pithy pilot was lucky I hadn’t assaulted him, I thought to myself the following morning. Which was progress on my part, I reasoned as I pulled off the T-shirt I’d slept in and stood before the bedroom mirror. It was a cheap full-length, and the wavy glass narrowed my waist while lengthening my incision, making it look even worse than it already did. I’d removed the bandage a few days before, thinking that some air would do the wound good, but the two-inch gash remained red and angry.

Stepping into my bathing suit, I commanded myself to stop thinking about Shiloh and cancer and anything that remotely rankled. I was going to the beach, and darn it, I was going to enjoy it.

This time I heeded Milagros’s warning and left everything of importance in the house, triple-checking the door to make sure it was locked. It was still early, and aside from an absurdly fit woman jogging barefoot down the shore, I was alone. I laid my towel out on the sand and headed for the water. The waves were cool as they rushed against my legs, then warm as they retreated back into the sea, so I waded in deeper. My incision stung, but I dove into the surf, determined to make friends with pain—or at the very least, to learn how to ignore it. Sure enough, the discomfort let up, so I went back under, holding my breath while the sea enveloped me, filling my head with its blunted gurgling sounds. Saltwater seeped into my mouth as I surfaced. I felt invigorated and alive, or whatever it is to be aware of your body as it is pacified by a fresh burst of oxygen and momentarily oblivious to the disease eating away at it. For the next few weeks, at least, I was going to be fine.

Except it didn’t appear that way, because Milagros, clad in a short orange housedress, came running down the beach hollering my name.

Reluctantly, I trudged back to the beach. “What is it, Milagros?” I asked as she approached the water’s edge.

“Ay, Libby, I thought you were drowning!
Por favor
, be careful. The tide is very strong right now. You see those waves?” she said, pointing into the distance.

“Those are, like, a mile out.”

“They’ll suck you right under,” she insisted. “Don’t go in past your belly unless you’re at a roped-off beach.”

“Okay,” I said, trying not to sigh and failing miserably. Luisa instructed me to give myself away like the sea, but come to find out, I was only able to do that in designated swimming areas.

“
Bien.
Oh, and,
mija
? I take drinks on my back porch every day at six. Join me if you can.”

Take drinks. This woman was too much. “Okay, Milagros,” I agreed. “See you then.”

While Paul inherited our mother’s sharp cheekbones, dark hair, and warm complexion, my resemblance to her was evident only in my medical files. As such, even with SPF four hundred slathered on, my pale skin was no match for Vieques’s proximity to the equator; after an hour on the beach, I was forced to head back to the house. I changed into a sundress and attempted to make myself presentable, then drove to Esperanza. Though it was not yet noon, the tiny town was bustling: families roamed about, smiling and squabbling in equal measure; bronzed surfer types in bodysuits toted boogie boards and kiteboarding equipment toward the water; and couples held cameras at arm’s length to snap nauseatingly gleeful selfies.

With no small effort, I parked the Jeep on the side of the road. Then I secured my wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses and set off on foot. As far as I could tell, most of the town proper was situated along a strip on the island’s southern coast. As I walked from one end of the strip to the other, I passed dive shops and trinket stands, white-tablecloth restaurants, and food trucks parked along the grassy stretch dividing the road from the beach. After weighing my options, I stopped at a restaurant with generic fare and private dining verandas overlooking the water.

“Just you?” asked the hostess.

“Just me,” I said. You would think I’d know how to dine alone, but you would be wrong. Although I’d devoured many a sandwich on a park bench during lunch, I’d never intentionally sat down at a real restaurant and eaten by myself. Given that I was traveling solo for an entire month, it seemed a good time to learn.

I pretended to study the menu, but the words blurred together, so when the waitress came to take my order, I blurted out the first thing that registered—a pulled pork sandwich with yucca fries, whatever those were. She left, and I looked around awkwardly. It was not unlike the airport bar. I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I hadn’t even thought to grab a book from the selection I’d packed. After some time, I settled on the water as an appropriate place to stare.

Maybe a leisure vacation was a bad idea. There would be countless opportunities just like this, during which I had nothing but thoughts of impending doom to occupy me. As I watched a ship depart from a marina not far from the restaurant, I found myself thinking of my mother—at the end, but before things became really bad. She quit her job as an elementary school teacher to concentrate on her health and spend time with us. During those months, she napped a lot and went for chemo; but every day, Paul and I each got at least an hour alone with her. She and Paul often went for walks or headed to the library or comic book store. She and I spent most afternoons baking, even though I rarely saw her take more than a bite of the things we made.

One summer afternoon—or perhaps it was several, conflated by memory—we stood side by side at the counter making chocolate chip cookies. The sun streamed into our small yellow kitchen. Her hair was long gone, and she had wrapped her head in an ivory scarf; with the light on her face, she looked angelic. “The secret is to put a pinch of salt on top of each cookie before you put them in the oven,” she whispered in my ear. “Remember that, okay, Libby Lou?” I didn’t understand that she was preparing me for life without her. I didn’t
want
to understand. I thought it would always be like that: her taking us to Chuck E Cheese’s, and falling asleep with us in our beds, and pulling us out of school to drive us across the state to see a park or lakefront beach where she’d played as a child. I couldn’t comprehend that she was stuffing us full of happiness to prepare us for the famine that was to come.

The waitress must have put my food down in front of me while I wasn’t paying attention, because she startled me by returning to see if it was okay. I glanced down at the untouched plate and stuck a suspiciously pale fry in my mouth.

“Nothing’s ever tasted so good,” I told her, but of course, I was referring to the cookies.

Paul called as I was finishing lunch. “Where are you?” he said.

“What do you mean, where am I? I’m in Chicago,” I said blithely, just as a large bird landed on the veranda banister and let out a ridiculously tropical-sounding caw.

“Oh, are you?” he said dryly. “Am I also to believe you just purchased a toucan?”

“Ha, ha. No.” I hadn’t planned on telling him where I was just yet, as I was still feeling vulnerable and was pretty sure that spilling the beans on one thing would prompt me to unwittingly share other secrets, including a particular revelation that started with a
c
and ended with
ancer
. In retrospect, I probably should have let Paul’s call go to voice mail, but I didn’t want him to worry, especially after my panicked text message the day before.

“Come on, Libs. As if your freaky-but-sweet message yesterday wasn’t alarming enough, now you’re going to try to convince me Chicago has been invaded by exotic fowl? You know I can have the tech guys at my firm run a GPS data search on your cell and pinpoint your exact location in four seconds flat.”

“I hope you’re joking, because that is fricking creepy.”

“Not as creepy as me being forced to read your mind. Give it up, Libs.
Estas en
Meh-ee-co?”

Unlike me, Paul had been smart enough to study Spanish in school, which he mastered in about two months before moving on to Mandarin.

I exhaled loudly so he would sense my wrath over the transom. “I’m in Vieques.”

“Is that near Bogota?”

“Ask your security guys.”

“Libbers,” he said playfully. “Stop being cranky and throw your beloved brother a bone.”

“Fetch this, Toto. I’m south of Cuba and east of the Dominican Republic.”

“
Puerto Rico?
How the heck did you end up in Puerto Rico? I hope there’s a cabana boy next to you right now.”

“That was him you heard crowing earlier.”

“Libs on the loose!” he said with delight. “Vacationing by yourself. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks. I’m proud of me, too, if only because I managed to royally tick Tom off when I ran into him on the way to the airport.”

“Oooh, the element of surprise. Brills. How long are you going to be there?”

“I don’t know,” I responded truthfully.

“When you do leave, will you please come to New York to see us?” Paul persisted.

“I will.”

“Hurrah! You just made my entire week better, which is no small feat, considering the Dow plunged two hundred points last night.”

It pained me not to tell him that the stock market wasn’t the only thing plunging, but I knew that if I told him about the plane, it would undo years of therapy he’d undergone to deal with his fear of flying. Instead, I said, “I’m here to help.”

Paul got serious. “Are you hanging in there? Because you know it’s okay if you’re not, right? You don’t have to be perky all the time. This Tom crap is pretty awful.”

“I’m not perky all the time,” I grumbled.

“I can hear that, sweetie, and I’m going to take it as a sign of improvement. It’s just that—one sec.” I heard him say something in an official-sounding voice, and only then did I remember that he was in the middle of his workday.

“Hey, I know you’re busy,” I told Paul when he returned. “We can talk again soon. And next time, I won’t wait so long to call.”

“You’d better not,” he scolded. “Anyway, what I was trying to say is that I want you to know that I love you, and so do Charlie and Toby and Max. It’s all going to work out okay. I promise.”

I almost fell right off my rattan chair. If Paul had traded our I-love-you-the-most game for the kitten-and-rainbow routine, I was officially in trouble.

FIFTEEN

I didn’t make it to Milagros’s for drinks the first night, but I wandered over to her place the following evening. I found her on the tiled patio behind her house, chatting with an elderly man.

“I’m sorry,” I said when I spotted them lounging in a pair of chairs. “I didn’t realize you had company.”

She waved me in. Her patio was lined with potted fruit trees, many of which had colorful orchids hanging from their branches. “It’s my party and everyone’s invited. Libby, this is my cousin Sonny. Sonny,
esta es
Libby.” She pointed in the direction of the beach house to indicate my provenance, then turned back to me and mock whispered, “Sonny is deaf in both ears.”

“Milly!” Sonny squawked.

Milagros whacked him on the back. “Just kidding, Sonny! Libby, can I get you something to drink?”

“I’m good,” I said, but she was already well across the patio. I sat on a carved wooden bench across from Sonny. “Hi,” I said.

His face lit up.

“Do you live near here?” I asked.

He laughed like I’d just made a sidesplitting joke. I bit my lip: Was he screwing with me?

“I wasn’t joking,” Milagros said, coming up from behind me. She slipped a drink into my hands and leaned in conspiratorially. “The man can’t hear a thing. If he shows you his dentures, that means he’s just playing along.”

“Oh.” I glanced at Sonny, who was grinning at me with large ceramic teeth.

“Eh, Milly,” he said, and began telling a story—or so I imagined, as he was speaking in Spanish. Milagros cackled along with him, occasionally interjecting a sentence or two. I smiled the way humans will when bearing witness to others’ happiness, even though at that moment I was ill with envy. I wanted to live into my seventies or eighties or however old these two were, so I could tell long-winded tales to my cousins (who I technically couldn’t stand, but that was but a minor detail to be hammered out over the next four decades of this alternate life I was wishing for myself). I wanted a chance to be wrinkled and deaf and without a care in the world, confident I had lived fully and completely in the way that only the old can.

“Libby, you really need to learn
español
.
This is so ridiculous that I couldn’t translate it if I tried,” Milagros told me, wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.

She was right about Spanish. I’d spent the morning exploring the shore, and as I tossed a pound of seashells into my bag and dug my toes in the sand and snuck glances at what I was certain was a couple doing the dirty in the ocean, I contemplated what, exactly, I would do during the rest of my vacation. (As I have mentioned, I didn’t put much thought into this before hopping on a plane out of Chicago.) By the time I dragged my sunburned butt back to the house, it had become painfully apparent that beachcombing could take up only so much of my time.

“I was hoping to do just that,” I told Milagros. “Do you know of any Spanish tutors on the island?”

“Tutors? Tutors?!” she said, and I flushed, wondering if I’d made some unintentional gaffe. She pointed her finger at me. “
I
can teach you Spanish.”

“Really?”

“Really. I taught English for forty years.”

I was already in command of the English language, but judging from Milagros’s enthusiasm, I thought it best not to clarify. “Okay. That would be great.”

She clapped her hands together with delight. “
Bien.
We can start whenever you’re ready.”

I thanked her, then lifted my glass to my lips and took a small sip. I had to will myself not to gag as I swallowed. “What’s in this?” I coughed.

“Rum,
claro
.” She chuckled. “If you don’t like it now, you will in an hour.”

My eyes watered as I took another drink. “Uh-huh.”

At one point, Sonny drained his cup and walked off without saying good-bye. When it became clear he wasn’t going to return, Milagros looked at me and said, “So, Libby. What are you running from?”

I frowned. “What makes you think I’m running from something?”

“Single woman rents a beach house for a full month, with no plans to meet friends or family? I’m no detective,
tu sabes
, but I’m not stupid either.” She laughed, then leaned back in her chair, waiting for my answer.

So I told her—mostly. “Well, let’s see. I recently learned that my husband of eight years is attracted to men.”

“Dios mio,”
she cried.

“Yeah, not great news. I found out less than two weeks ago,” I said, and took another drink of the cocktail, which tasted not unlike lighter fluid.

Milagros mistook my sipping as a sign of enthusiasm. “Here,” she said, producing a pitcher from beneath her seat. “Have a little more.”

“I really shouldn’t,” I said as she filled my glass.

“If ever there was a time, this is it. Now tell me, what happened after you found out?”

I took another sip. “I quit my job, emptied our home so I can sell it, and booked a ticket here.”

“
Ay
,
mija
, I know about bad husbands,” Milagros said. “Let me tell you about my third, José. I got really sick at work one day. My boss told me to go home because he was worried I was going to infect all my students. I had a fever and could barely walk, but when I called José to see if he could pick me up and drive me home, he didn’t answer. So I took the bus back and dragged myself into the house. When I got to my bedroom, who did I find but that
hijo’e puta
with my best friend—”

I gasped.

“—and her husband, too!” Milagros whooped. “I mean,
que
pervert! Sorry if that’s your kind of thing,” she added.

“It isn’t,” I assured her. “What did you do?”

“With Miguel?
Claro
, I divorced him,” she said, crossing her arms.

“Miguel? You mean José?”

“Miguel, José—what’s the difference? All that’s left of that man is my version of his story. What I’m trying to say,
mija
, is that eventually the pain goes away. Then one day you think about it and it’s funny.
Te prometo.
”

“That’s what everyone says.” I did not volunteer that I no longer had the luxury of waiting around for such a transformation to happen.

Milagros again topped off my glass and motioned for me to walk with her to the beach. “Don’t worry, it’s safe,” she said as she locked the patio gate behind us.

We stood in the sand, drinking silently as the sun lowered in the sky, cutting wide swaths of sherbet pink and cornflower blue in its wake.

Three months ago, Tom, Jess, O’Reilly, and I had celebrated the end of summer by commissioning a charter boat to take us out on Lake Michigan. The evening seemed to stretch forever, until we glanced up and saw that the sun had dropped, almost at once, and was hovering just above the skyline. Within seconds, it was between the jagged teeth of the city’s buildings—then gone before we’d really had a chance to take it in. I was beginning to feel that, like the sun, my life had slipped past when I was turned in the wrong direction.

“Why Vieques?” Milagros asked after a while.

“My father told me that my mother loved it here.”

She nodded, understanding what I had not said. “I lost my
mami
too early, too. Yours was a smart woman to love this place.”

I watched as the western waves swallowed the last of the day’s light. I’d barely made it to the island, but I
had
made it before it was too late. Certainly that meant something. Didn’t it?