After the Hurricane(94)
If she broke down out here, what would she do? Who would help her? There is no one to call out to, no one would pass by. She might be left here, alone, lost. The thought is frightening, but not overwhelmingly so. If she got lost, disappeared from her life, she could lay down her burdens. She could consign the task of finding her father to someone, anyone, else. She could escape the world, live wild, let go of houses and jobs and wanting things she cannot have. She could stop asking for information that will never be hers, stop excavating the past, desperate for answers that may not even exist.
She pulls over to the side of the road, both sad and elated at her total isolation. She puts her hand in her pocket, to find her phone, but her hand brushes something else, her father’s rosary. Why did he keep this? she asks herself before she can help it, and knows the wild is not for her. She could not stop asking questions if she tried. And besides, she would be found by someone eventually, taken to a nearby Church’s Chicken and fed until she recuperated. It’s a small island, a hard place for anyone to truly hide. Anyone but my father, she thinks.
She looks at her phone. There are texts from her mother, and Diego, but she doesn’t want to talk to either of them. She thinks about her friends in New York, but the idea of contextualizing all of this for them, telling them all the things she hasn’t told them so they will understand where she is and why, sounds exhausting. As far as any of them know, she’s in Puerto Rico visiting family. She thinks of calling Daniel, but then she remembers sitting in his childhood home last Rosh Hashanah, and how calm and normal his parents were, how moderate and gloriously boring and sane. Daniel, who could never understand why her father hadn’t just gone into rehab. Daniel, who had asked if an intervention would work, and never understood that a person had to care about other people, what they thought of him, for their intervening to be efficient. Daniel, who had started monitoring her wine consumption the day she told him her father was an alcoholic. No. She doesn’t want to talk to any of them right now.
Instead, she pulls up a contact, and dials. He picks up after two rings.
“Where are you now?” Fernando asks her, no hello, no nice to hear from you. His directness is comforting. She doesn’t have to explain her emotions to him, just her location.
“Near San Sebastián. You ever been here?”
“No,” he says. She hums. “You think he’s there.”
“If he’s not, I don’t know where else to go.”
“I shouldn’t have left you all alone there,” he says, a pinch of regret in his voice.
“We hardly know each other. You don’t owe me anything,” Elena says, and for some reason she can feel tears in the backs of her eyes.
“I shouldn’t have told you like that. I’m sorry. I should have . . . I shouldn’t have said anything at all,” Fernando says.
“I know why you would want the house. It’s, it’s the same reason I do,” Elena says, a peace offering.
“I think I just want a piece of this place. The storm, it makes me feel like the island is going to blow away. Everyone I know is jumping ship. I want to stay. I want to be rooted here. Help it grow.” He’s such a botanist, Elena thinks.
“Tell me about the ceiba tree,” she demands.
There is a pause, Fernando clears his throat.
“It has thick roots that rise like walls. When I was a kid, I pretended this one in a park was my fort.”
“Fort-tree. Like fortress.”
“Fort Fernando. I wasn’t very creative. I’m still not. Later, I learned it was sacred to the Mayan people. They believed it bridged the gap between the underworld, the human world, and the heavens.”
“A botanical ladder.”
“I suppose so. I like the idea of something natural that connects realms, something from the earth, something born, not made.”
“It’s a nice idea,” Elena agrees.
There is silence on the line, but it is not uncomfortable. She hears him clear his throat. “If you find him, Elena, can you tell him something for me? Tell him thank you.”
“I’ll do my best,” she says, and ends the call. Well. At least someone knows where she is now. She puts the car in drive again.
Soon, too soon, she is crossing the lines between Lares and San Sebastián, a sign welcoming her to the new area that looks just like the area she has left. She comes upon the town itself quickly. It is colorful, as all Puerto Rican towns are, and dingy, which some are, fraying at the edges, and she can see things that might be the storm or might be neglect and lack of money: an overturned postbox, a broken shop window, some abandoned buildings, a for sale sign, then a dozen more.
She parks the car near what her phone tells her is the main town square. Puerto Rican towns mimic European ones, with central market squares flanked by a large church in many of them. This church is a dull tan trimmed with white, Parroquia San Sebastián Mártir inscribed above the entrance of the building, echoing the words on her father’s rosary. The square houses a fountain, which isn’t running, and it is surrounded by bright buildings, a green mansion, a gray and pink building that looks like a movie theater from the 1920s, now vacant and for sale, a blue building that says Alcaldía, the mayor’s office, and a pink and burnt-sienna building that proudly proclaims it is the Archivo Histórico, the history archives. She takes photos of it all.