See you next Sunday.
A few times in those months, with frequent visits to Jim’s, after Mike was out of the picture, the thought crossed my mind to date her, or at least propose the idea. She was fifteen years younger than me but mature in many ways, practical, brave and intelligent, (the opposite of Sanita). That’s why she accepted Jim’s and my advice to her that one night, to just jump on a plane and fly into another brave new world, choosing Denver out of the blue, with her daughter holding her hand, friendless and unknown as she stepped off the plane. She saw it was the best thing to do and acted upon it immediately. Now that’s what defines a heroine in a woman, from all I’ve witnessed. I’ve seen many precipitous flights from a bad situation but always to a known, safe haven and people they trust, or to some former boyfriend and another, soon to be repeated, disaster.
I loved her daughter, as cute and polite and charming as Willy in every way. I doted upon her, (platonically) as much as Rachel, fascinated by her cuteness and tough boyishness, as rare as her mother’s, obviously taking after her.
But I was busy with work, now in its most rapid, (though brief) expansion. At the same time Sanita, in her limbo and her indecisiveness, drew me into an equally hellish purgatory. Some weekends I imagined I saw hints from her, in the occasional praise she gave me for our company’s success, or a warm smile in a glance, that she might change her mind and come back to me. She had me over for dinner every Sunday night like clockwork, while we discussed matters pertaining to Will’s schooling or my business or the next family visit, in the most polite and civil tones, as friends, stretching our table talk to hours. The only topic we never mentioned was our divorce.
So she played on my thoughts in various forms and colors, changing like a kaleidoscope. Sometimes she appeared like my dear wife again, wayward but soon to return. At others, a trap, a witch, my nemesis, and I was stuck in her frozen hell. I even saw this. Her indecision in her own life put a hold on mine. Her inability to think and move on to something new spread the same stagnation upon my mind, like a cancer. I couldn’t think or move either. I lost two possible soul mates in the next few years because of it.
In retrospect I wish I had dated Rachel and tried to win her heart. Then again, I wished I’d done that years earlier with Amira or Suzanne, or several others, though I was far more immature and unready for any commitments back then. But all of these women played vividly upon my imagination for years afterwards, in my dreams, as loves and lives that might have been.
My imagination has always been strong, a major player in my daily and nightly life. I don’t know what it’s like in other people, but I suspect mine is different and maybe too potent for my own good. I can lay in bed or sit in a chair for hours, eyes closed, and make up imaginary scenarios of living with one of these women and from our past interactions, inductively, invent long conversations between us on a wealth of subjects, in a plenitude of situations, the imaginary scenes themselves soliciting more dialogue. I envisage houses we might have shared, or trips we might have taken, whole futures in vivid detail. And I take great pleasure in fabricating these dreams, always amazed at the unexpected richness of details my imagination comes up with, like a novelist writing a book. And that's what I do, write novels. If I were ever thrown in jail, in solitary confinement, I’d be fine. For me it would be exactly like “The Kiss of the Spider Woman”.
I did manage to have one date with her before she left, by pure luck. I was driving with Will one Sunday morning and saw her and her daughter walking along a desolate stretch of the road into Rincon, dressed in their best, headed for their church, a mile away.
I pulled over, it was a beautiful morning and with devilish eloquence I convinced them to skip church and join us on a day-long pleasure trip to Boquerón, forty minutes South, a tourist spot with a game arcade for children, a beautiful beach, and restaurants and bars all along it’s strand. They jumped in. We enjoyed a perfect day, snacks, the amusements for the kids, laughing and talking the whole time, lasting through a fine romantic sunset and a white, tablecloth dinner overlooking the beach, then we drive home, supremely happy. I should have kissed her that night and might very well have. Willy would soon have a lovely sister to grow up with, and I, Rachel.
It would have been a fitting solution, just ditching Sanita and getting her out of my life. It would have been an illegal flight away from her, according to our custody agreement. But that was the exact same crime she committed against me two years later. And by doing this, it would have been the just reward for the pain she caused, by divorcing me. But instead I waited, the honest fool, earning a prolonged dose of torment, until she finally did the inevitable and left me, with the worst partner possible.
She fell in love and left the island with her new man, so blindly in love she didn’t even hesitate to steal my son and take him with her to Florida, breaking the agreement we had and Puerto Rican law, without a qualm, to start a new life without a thought for the old, not even telling me where she went, as if our troubled past could be escaped as easily as the brown exhaust of the jetliner, and her whole future clear blue skies ahead, to a rosy new dawn.
Well it wasn’t so easy for Will, who knew he’d been stolen away from me. He was now nine, hated Mark, (her new boyfriend) and began his long, slow journey into hating her, seeing what a bad choice she’d made, how Mark fooled her completely in promising to reform himself from drink and drugs. When their break-up occurred a short six months later, with Mark beating her up (as all her girlfriends told her he would before she left the island with him) and a late night flight out a bathroom window with a few belongings hastily packed, Will began to see how unstable she was, how undependable. She was a total fool in that crazy love affair and didn’t realize the pain she caused me or him or all her friends that year.
They say when a hurricane hits, the first half does the most damage. In my case it was the second. Our divorce wasn’t preceded by any fights or threats or even tears, not even any expectation of it on my part. I don’t know what was going on in Sanita’s head before she announced her decision. She hardly showed any emotions to me. Perhaps there was a great deal of turmoil inside her, or tear soaked pillows when I wasn’t there, working away in St. Croix.
But I doubt it from the cold, matter of fact way she told me and carried out her plan. Until that night, I imagined our life together to be a fairly calm and pleasant progression, business as usual, smooth sailing, with just a few small waves buffeting our craft, as in any marriage.
When I returned to Puerto Rico we did have arguments, sometimes loud, as I tried to talk her out of that folly. But they weren’t vicious fights, they were civil for the most part, me trying to be reasonable and show her the loss it meant for her financially and the confusion to Willy’s feelings and peace of mind. She had no way to support herself alone, no employment history, no experience. And in such a limited backwash as Rincon, almost no chance of finding any work. But she answered all my pleas with one reply, that she could no longer be my wife. I gave up trying. Her mind was settled and her eyes and ears were closed.
The eye of the hurricane was the divorce itself, the legal proceedings, as they went smoothly, serenely one might even say. I gave her the top half-acre of the property, with a right of way down the hill entailed for mine. Her half was fit for a house with a fine view, right next to the road, and with no twenty five steep steps to climb down. I even began to build the foundations for a house up there. At the top of the hill with a little excavation I laid out and poured ten cement footings for a studio for her. It was to be twenty feet long and twelve deep, a single room and a bathroom. When she first mentioned divorce I proposed this scheme of a studio where she could teach yoga and live, we’d be close together for Willy’s sake and she agreed.
Notice the slats I put on the tree so Willy could climb it. The project of a studio didn’t get much further. Good intentions and no money.
But I didn’t have enough money or the time to get beyond the foundation. I spent a few thousand dollars, hiring others to do this initial work before our court date. It was money wasted for me but a selling point for her, when she had legal possession of that lot and promptly sold it. She told me it was an unrealistic plan, she couldn’t live that close, and sold it within a month to an American couple, a postal worker and his wife, for twenty three thousand dollars, the exact price I’d paid two years earlier for the whole acre. They built a house on it twelve years later and hated the Arizonian hippy who bought my lot and rebuilt my house on a larger scale a few years before they started on theirs. They didn’t have much money and it took them all those years to save up and build. Even postal workers in Puerto Rico make close to minimum wage, like everyone else there.
This couple called me in Canada several times to buy my half but offered only twenty thousand for it, thinking I might be desperate, since I abandoned the place and seeing my house in ruins. The fact was that I had abandoned the island for a far better life, unlike them.
