After the Hurricane(56)
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Fernando says, softly. He has interpreted her silence as anger, but it is pain. It is grief. Elena feels exposed, naked before him, even though he has no idea what she is really feeling or thinking. She does not want to show so much to a stranger, no matter that he doesn’t seem interested in her rape or death any time soon.
“It’s okay. You’re right. Do we say addict for alcoholic?” Elena wonders.
“I think it’s allowed,” Fernando tells her.
“I wasn’t offended,” Elena says, trying to reassure him, trying to keep her voice even, calm. “Just thinking.”
“What about?”
Elena sighs. It is a dangerous question. She says the first thing that comes to mind.
“I hope Mario manages to help the other coffee makers make an island blend. I like Puerto Rican coffee, and it will help buyers know the industry can survive this bad year.” Fernando nods in agreement.
“If anyone can do it, it’s Mario. He was a pretty successful banker before he bought the plantation. He used to live in New York, but he wanted to raise his family here.”
“Is that why you came back?” Elena doesn’t see a ring on Fernando’s finger, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have children.
“I came back because I want this to be a better place. I left because I felt, my parents felt, that there weren’t good schools here.” Fernando laughs, a little bitter. “Well, good enough for me. Fine for other people, I guess. But not for their kid. I guess I felt the same way. I don’t think you think as much about other people as a kid, you just want what you want for yourself. But when I was doing my master’s, in forestry, my research is in tropical tree species—”
“Ceiba,” Elena interrupts. She remembers. She’d looked it up. “That’s why you put one on your chest.” Fernando nods.
“We came down here on a research trip. I wanted to use local kids, from the university, to help. My advisor said it was a bad idea. I did it anyway, I thought he was being a dick. He is a dick. But he was right, it was a disaster, they had no idea what to do, they contaminated samples, they didn’t know how to observe, what to look for. I was so angry, angry at them, angry at myself, angry at him—he had been right, the dick. But later, I thought, why don’t they know what to do? This was basic science student stuff, stuff I knew back in college. Why didn’t they know?”
“No one to teach them,” Elena said, softly.
“Exactly. So after I got my Ph.D., I applied for jobs here. It was easy to get one—I mean, all my friends were desperate for anything and I had, like, three offers. I picked the one closest to San Juan, I always wanted to live there. My family is all over the U.S. now, they think I’m crazy. Especially after Maria, they’ve been sending me job postings for mainland universities. But I’m happy here.” The car slows, stops, traffic is being diverted ahead for roadwork. They inch along, the few cars on the road quickly forming un tapon, a traffic jam. As they pass the work, Elena gasps. Whole chunks of the road are missing on the left side, all the gravel and asphalt and other road materials stripped away, the rusted metal supports left bare. It looks like someone, some giant bird, ripped through the highway with iron-hard talons, clawing away at it.
“Mario said it was bad. I haven’t been out of San Juan much since Maria, I haven’t seen this,” Fernando says. Elena can do nothing but nod. It takes them ten minutes, maybe fifteen, but then they are past the work, back on the open road. They are silent now, sleepy, perhaps, or maybe both a little shocked, embarrassed to be shocked, but shocked all the same.
The world around them is deceptive. The island is beautiful, inherently, it holds great beauty. There are lush rich green trees, even some of the ceibas Fernando is so fond of, and bright dancing flowers along the sides of the highway. There are hills and mountains, and if she does not look very hard, that would be all Elena would have to see. The lush vegetation covers up many sins. Downed trees could be from the storm, or a heavy wind. Things grow fast in the Caribbean, and the landscape has already absorbed the shock of the hurricane and started to recover. But the man-made parts visible to her are a wasteland, cracked, bruised, destroyed. She sees cement-block houses whose roofs have caved in under the weight of telephone poles, and downed trees on little streets, their roots still reaching out for what the air cannot give them. She looks over at Fernando, and his eyes are nailed to the road. She wonders if this focus, now, is more to not have to see what is around them than to see the highway itself.
Elena leans her head against the window, and feels her body want to give into sleep. She tries to keep her eyes open, to keep seeing, bearing witness, but she loses the battle, and before she can try to wake herself, she is lost in sleep.
She wakes up somewhere around Quebradillas. She does not know where that is, and the sign does not tell her how near or far it might be, it only has the name of the town, no other information. She checks the time; it has been over an hour since she dozed off, and she is being a terrible road trip companion.
“Good morning,” Fernando says. “We’re making good time, actually. I wonder, do you want to stop in Isabela? I’ve heard it’s a pretty beach, haven’t ever been.”
“Oh. Sure, of course.” Elena would rather not stop, actually, but it’s his car. Fernando’s eyes are still glued to the road, blinking slowly behind his glasses.