We Are Not in Pakistan (17 page)

Normally, Ted would have invited me next door to his home for a nightcap after the last guests left the bar. He'd usually have a little Courvoisier in a snifter. I always had a Pepsi, because if I took anything stronger, I might keep drinking, and I knew it. But this night I would not yearn for what had flown.

I stopped at Jesús' shack on my way home to my cabin in the valley and told him what happened. And I admitted I had wanted … yes, I wanted very much to kiss Consuela and make sure no one made her cry ever again.

Jesús reappeared the next morning. “Señor Wilson,” he said, “I delivered the milk to Buena Vista and I tell you the gringo has gone mad. He says maybe I have poison in my milk. He said, Milk —
venenoso!
I told him, The cows are tethered in my yard and I milk them morning and night. Where from would there be poison?”

“He has anthrax on his mind,” I said. “He's annoyed even with me. Things will calm down.”

But they didn't. I was working with two labourers on the hillside below Ted's home, picking crimson coffee cherries, when Ted swaggered over and pointed at the burlap bags hanging at our waists. He told me to load them all onto the hotel truck. Our agreement was over at his whim, with no mention of payment to the labourers — or me. Embarrassed, I turned to the labourers, translated what Ted had said, added an apology on Ted's behalf
and paid them myself. Maybe Ted's shares in some big American companies — Enron or Worldcom — had fallen. But then I saw on TV that Ted's president had also decided he was not bound by previous agreements — larger ones, international ones.

Ted was just following a bad example; he would return to normal when his president did.

Jesús said a good friend would leave Ted Grand alone because that's what Ted wanted. “You yourself were like that only a few years ago.”

“You didn't leave me alone.”

Ted's anger and suffering wouldn't leave me alone. I could not be his “brother” any more. I hoped I was still his friend, but I remembered him saying there are no friends, only interests. Did I have any right to call myself more than an employee? Servant, perhaps? I sat on my veranda that evening as the sun faded over the rainforest and the cicadas pulsed sí, sí, sí all around, while my blood pulsed no, no, no.

My Suzuki Samurai was all beaten up and rusting out, and my cabin was little better than Jesús' shack, its only claim to beauty being a shrine I built to the Virgin from half a concrete pipe. Actually it was a shrine to Madelina and Carmen.

I talked to the Virgin now — I told her I had neglected my own life in favour of the gringo's. I made him my centre. The hotel was my life because it was important to him. But all Ted cared about now was cheering his country's troops through the liberation of Iraq. Fool, fool! What did I have for myself if he went away? I hadn't even saved very much.

During Holy Week everything was closed in Alajuela and no alcohol was being sold anywhere. I drove Ted to the coast, his air-conditioned van sealed against the humid warmth — slower than usual, as everyone had the same idea. We drove in silence, as if neither of us could think of anything to say. I longed to blow foam from a chilled mug of Heineken. Coffee trees flowered in
surrounding farms; I opened my window a crack to get a whiff of their fragrance. Woods of teak and mahogany flowed past.

Madelina and I used to take Carmen to the coast every Easter. One time I drew two concentric circles in the sand. We each caught a hermit crab, placed them in the inner circle and blew. Madelina's crab moved first, and went far from the centre — and better still, out of its shell. I think she won.

It didn't matter who won.

Afterwards, we warned Carmen about the poisonous manzanillo trees by the beach, and she listened solemnly, then ran into the Pacific, shouting her glee.

This day, the drive did Ted some good — he closed his eyes most of the way. I wondered if running the hotel was becoming too much for him. I resolved to help him more.

Jesús brought his new monkey Luisa, and she swung from my rafters, her funny white face hanging below her long curly tail as if righting our upside-down world. She reached for peanuts, and I confided to her, though really to Jesús, “It's cancer. It's eating señor Grand from inside.”

“In the brain?” said Jesús.

“No, in his spleen.”

“If it was in his brain, it might explain his behaviour,” said Jesús. “But the spleen — that excuses anger and pain, but not injustice.”

“I went to see him in the hospital,” I said. “He complains of insatiable hunger and unquenchable thirst. They have told him he can go home because they can do no more for him.”

“So of course he called you to come bring him back to Buena Vista?”

I nodded. “Ted said he has been through difficult times before. And he has resources I never had.”

“You're comparing your loss to his illness,” said Jesús. “But each loss, each trouble is itself. Right now he's not here with us. In his head, he's in los Estados, in New York.”

I had to agree. Ted was only following what had happened or was happening in los Estados, and he seemed to believe no people ever, anywhere, at any time, had suffered as great a tragedy as norteamericanos. Could I blame him? All he ever read was
USA Today.
And the many stories he read me to improve my English featured only norteamericanos. No norteamericano, no story. As if the rest of the world was inhabited by non-persons and monkeys. And he never heard my story or had any point of comparison because he never asked.

I should have asked more questions, I should have tried to find that thing in his past that was eating him now.

“Is it good that his head is in the United States?” I wondered out loud.

Jesús nodded. “Sí, sí, it's good. If his body was also there, not only his mind, he'd have to pay a lot more for doctors.”

“He has extra expat coverage. Six months free hospital in los Estados.”

But Jesús' compassion had fallen low. “Señor Grand has everything he needs. He lives in fear and anger anyway. But, amigo, why do you look so anxious?”

“Should I go with Ted to los Estados? I mean, when he goes for treatment?”

Jesús said, “Señor Wilson, I will say to you what I would say if you were my son: don't go. Mr. Bush's Injustice Department would stop you at the border. And now they take people who want to stay a long time in los Estados and put them in camps and prisons. We wouldn't even know you were gone, we wouldn't know how to find you.”

I thought about this. I thought about never seeing Consuela again. Then I thought about the employees of the hotel — some
of them my relatives — who all relied on me now. I thought about how many years I might have left and the things I still wanted to experience. I decided I did not wish to disappear.

But Ted once called me brother. What should a brother do?

Eventually, I didn't go because Ted didn't ask for my help. He believed he could do everything by himself: be angry alone, fight cancer alone. And he still needed a caretaker to run his hotel and send money to the hospital up north.

Ted left Costa Rica on a night the monsoon decided it must arrive. Torrents hammered the roof and pounded the broad leaves of trees. Titi monkeys swung downhill before us as I drove his van to the San José airport.

It wasn't exactly goodbye, but I didn't sleep much that night. A clay-coloured robin woke me with its drunken
dudududu.
After Jesús delivered my milk, I got in my Suzuki and drove to the coast. The rain lifted early in the morning, and I eventually noticed I was in Manuel Antonio. In the Parque Nacional, I sat facing the beach, my back to the smooth trunk of a Naked Indian tree that had sloughed off its bark.

On the path behind me, a park guide had set up her telescope on a tripod. “Some species have adapted so well they can't survive any place else,” she chirped for a group of tourists. White-maned waves reared and tossed on the shore. Turquoise water, shady palms. In the distance a smooth hard island rose from the water, a lighthouse at its peak.

This was what Ted saw: the postcard he had crawled into for a while. Maybe he could only be blown so far from his origin. Maybe he feared that if he crossed into the next circle of the world, he would lose his American shell.

•   •   •

Ted went into remission a few times but never completely recovered. His cancer claimed him one day in a hospice in los Estados. My sorrow at this death of a friend and brother shouldn't have been so vague, so much like the sorrow I once felt for the man beaten to death at the top of the Buena Vista hill. His death should have mattered more than the death of that stranger.

But one-way caring has become difficult for me.

The same year Ted died, Consuela and I agreed to care for each other. She did me the honour of marrying me. Jesús brought his only son to play the guitar, and our friends and relatives danced the salsa with us at our wedding. Soon after, Jesús moved closer to Irazú, the smouldering volcano — his family said he was needed there. More opportunity for his son, he said. More swinging-trees for Luisa. He comes to see me when he needs a favour for someone — that's as it should be.

Now Consuela and I operate the Buena Vista, take salaries and send profits to its new owner, Ted's nephew in Portland, Oregon. The hotel gives travellers so much joy that it has made Ted's life matter. And the view from the mountain continues to bring joy to its guests: people from los Estados and the rest of us.

It's the first week of September, and leaves are already beginning to fall along the black strip of bike path where Kathleen walks with her grandmother. The foliage is still thick and green, hiding the granite block walls of the canyon on either side. Above the retaining walls, buildings seem to grip the ground and teeter as if they've backed up as far as they can.

Kathleen's footsteps echo in the earth-smelling cool as they pass beneath Lafayette Street. Cars swish above on the over-pass. Beyond the steel trusses of the bridge, the sky is a uniform blue, ragged where it meets the treetops.

“If this were Pakistan, Kathleen,” Grandma says, “whole families would be living under that bridge, would have been living there for years and years.”

Kathleen knows that. If it wasn't for Grandma Miriam and Grandpa Terry and their old house, she and Mom might be living under some bridge.

Grandma's dress sways about her tall lumpy figure. She has a faraway look; maybe she doesn't realize she has really rubbed it in again.

Kathleen is passing through the wedge of shade jutting from the Prospect Avenue bridge. Tires howl and ping on the steel mesh
surface. Past the bridge, a rusty remnant of track runs parallel to the path.

“See the narrow-gauge?” Kohl-ringed eyes turn to Kathleen. “A train used to deliver coal to factories along this path.” Grandma's eyebrows rise under her hatband. “Years before Grandpa and I came to live here, I'm sure. See how straight it is here. And how very, very gradually it turns up ahead.”

Her tone — like she's talking to a five-year-old: Kathleen draws away.

She can't imagine a toy railroad. She can imagine the hard nose of a glacier that once covered this whole area, plowed this U-shaped channel into the western shore of Lake Michigan.

The glacier's back today, a massive ice block at the base of her tummy.

New faces, a new high school.

Grass borders the bike path, fresh and green on Grandma's side. Kathleen takes the brown side, where joggers have beaten the path pale. Far enough away from Grandma, off the road. Kathleen and her backpack. Backpack full of wrong stuff. Old stuff, retro stuff. From back-to-school shopping with Grandma. On Grandma's budget, not Dad's.

No laptop, no cell phone. Every kid gets a laptop and a cell phone except Kathleen.

Insects sing and whistle in the humid grass.

“We're so fortunate,” Grandma breathes, “that Riverside High is so close. And isn't this a lovely shortcut? Thank the Good Lord.”

Kathleen's nerves twang. Grandma's silver crucifix shines at her neck. Her Good Lord meddles in everything, even the location of high schools.

“I could have walked there myself,” Kathleen says. “I could have taken the bus.”

“Yes, but Grandma doesn't like you to go to school alone,” Grandma says, as if speaking of a stranger.

“If I had a bicycle, I could ride to school.” Kathleen injects venom into her voice.

“And if I had a horse,” Grandma chirps, “all my wishes could ride.”

Kathleen trudges faster, closer to the undergrowth. Only wood beams hold this section of the hillside back, keeping earth from avalanching over the path. Houses with peaked roofs peer down at her through the branches. A dog barks above.

A narrow path slants upwards. A street name is stencilled on the asphalt in bright gold: Farwell Avenue. Another path slants up: North Avenue.

A cyclone fence. A rundown old garage.

Kathleen plans to say goodbye when she gets to Newhall Street. She doesn't want Grandma walking her to the school building.

Grandma Miriam and “her world.”

Third world.

If Kathleen's family were normal, her parents wouldn't have jumped from quarrels about whose turn it was to do laundry or control the stupid remote to shouting matches. And over what? The CIA's funding the Taliban (“didn't” said Dad, “did” said Mom), whether General Musharraff was President Bush's puppet (“is,” said Mom, “is not” said Dad), whether the US ought to act unilaterally or wait for the UN (“shouldn't,” said Mom, “should” said Dad). And the final brawl about whether there ever were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and did that suspicion justify killing thousands of Iraqi civilians.

Without Grandma's world hanging its stinking sandals about her family's necks, Kathleen's mom wouldn't have been born in Pakistan or have a name like Safia. And Mom wouldn't have jabbered in Urdu every Sunday on the phone with Grandma. Mom wouldn't have “needed” Pakistani food all the time, so Dad wouldn't have complained endlessly about heartburn. And Kathleen would still be with her old school friends in Eau Claire.