Sanita, with her money in hand, spent it all within another month buying a worthless lot in a valley a mile away, almost a ravine, a jungle plot thick with mosquitoes, and none of it flat, so that it would have to be bulldozed for weeks just to start any construction. She had some vague plan to build a house for her and her mother, who’d recently moved to Rincon to be close to Sanita and Jaime, her grandson and even me, whom she liked a great deal. She was to contribute some of the money for this project. I don’t know the details, except that nothing ever came of it, not even a start. Sanita reminded me of Lindsey and her money smarts. So with all her money gone, she lived on the four hundred a month I gave her.

At first we tried to go through the court-mandated system, where I’d send the check to their office and they’d pass it on to her. But we found that when I’d send it by September first, she wouldn’t receive their draft till November ninth, such was their inefficiency. After a few months of this ridiculous delay I simply gave her the money directly, in cash. They never noticed this change, never sent me any letter, just like they never noticed when she broke the one, cardinal condition of our divorce and left with my child to the States, without my permission or telling me where.

Puerto Rican bureaucracy was a joke, easily bypassed and just as easily ignored, with never a ripple of a repercussion. Just as I mentioned earlier, they hated paperwork of any kind. It’s true to this day, from what I’ve gathered watching the news and seeing their slow recuperation from the hurricanes. What would take weeks here takes months or years down there. In part it’s the tropical climate, which I’ve found dulls all mental faculties and promotes lethargy. In part it’s the Puerto Ricans themselves, as sleepy a race as their Spanish ancestors. Sancho Panza from Don Quixote comes to mind.

But back to Sanita. She was happy in her new rental, happy with Will’s schooling in Mayaguez, which I also paid for, (some two hundred and thirty a month). With five hundred a week I could easily afford it. She led a tranquil, leisurely life, just as she’d always enjoyed with me. One summer, for more income, she tried being partners in running a bar with Cindy Stevens, another Rincon American.

But that job didn’t suit her. She hated drunks and distrusted any man with a beer in his hand, (this might have something to do with her father, a serious, daily beer drinker). The fact that she never found a boyfriend or even a date serving so many single men in the months she worked there suggests this. Then again, most of the clientele were younger surfer dudes or near-broke, jobless Puerto Ricans. The place was a cheap dive on the outskirts of town.

A year later, during tourist season in the winter, she set up a smoothie hut on a popular beach and made a few dollars at that, like a seven year old’s lemonade stand. That was the extent of her business acumen.

In these three years I was extremely busy at work, building stores everywhere, over sixty of them. Sanita was the perfect hostess to my family, my mother and sisters visiting Rincon, and Bill and Muriel coming back every winter because they liked it so much, even convincing my two aunts and uncle to join them, much to everyone’s delight as Sanita always found them beautiful rentals right on some gorgeous beach. What Americans considered a budget price, the local owners of these rental homes thought a fortune, so she picked the most luxurious ones.

Then she’d drop by each day, (with nothing else to do), and be their tour guide, shop for them and provide their every need. I’d come home on weekends and spend the two days with them on their week long stays. She was so accommodating, pleasant and smiling it made everyone wonder why we weren’t a couple anymore.

Sanita with my aunt and uncle, the perfect hostess.

Even at dinners together, with the whole group of us, she’d be perfectly polite. We’d talk of the events of the week, she asking me about my latest stores, while I inquired about Will’s progress at school, his teachers and projects. We’d sit right next to each other at each restaurant, Willy in my lap or hers, or hopping between us. We looked and acted the perfect picture of a man and wife. My relatives even played along, never mentioning our split-up, as if it never happened.

A dozen thoughts spinning behind those eyes.

It was a strange time for me, hard to digest. But I didn’t try. I was too busy at work five days a week and on weekends just as busy with Will in my shack and all his friends, playing constantly. Then the Sunday night dinner and send-off. It was all so seamless and smooth I couldn’t complain, except that I had no sex and no wife.

In those three years she had exactly two dates, which she related to me in every detail. It seemed strange she now told me the personal details of her private love life, as if I were her confidant, when before she kept all her feelings on that subject a closed door to me. I suppose at this distance from me she felt safe, and one she could confide in. She also told me of her changing feelings towards her women friends, as if I was her closest friend and best to understand her and give her advice.

It all seemed oddly perverse to me, pretzel logic, that apart we were now closer than ever. But I have a suspicion this happens in other split-ups too, more often than men would ever imagine, the woman now at perfect ease after the separation and the ‘ex’ her best advisor. With all legal and social obligations severed she could dismiss me, or my advice, at any time, without the slightest qualm of guilt.

It makes me surmise that a part of the female psyche is fear-based, much more than in men. They see ‘obligations’ (as in marital duties) in the literal sense of being tied down, and a panic sets in and they clam up. Free of these ties, or bonds, and once again they’re at ease to talk. At least Sanita was that way with me.

Then again, I shouldn’t use her behavior or mentality as a pattern for any theories on female psychology. I lived with her for eight years, the closest I ever came to some acquaintance with the female mind. And all I can say with certainty, (from my observations of her and all the women I’ve known) is that I have little idea how it works. I’ve seen a few patterns but that’s not saying much. Yet I conjecture on, like some scientist with a gut feeling he’s headed down some dead end road.

The two dates were both disastrous and telling. She was single now and considering a new partner in her life but had no clue how to go about finding one, and Rincon had very limited choices in that department (or any other). Sex wasn’t her issue. She was attractive, even hot in a bathing suit and could have hooked up with any one of the many, cute surfers at the Calypso, which her brother and Cindy now ran. She could have nailed any one of them any night of the week if she wanted sex. I never heard of any such trysts and Jaime or Will would have told me about it.

But as I said, she hated bars and considered anyone drinking a drunk. We were divorced and she could do whatever she wanted with her body, just like me. But I think she was sexually dead. She was hoping to find a spiritual partner, rich in mystic or Hindu lore, (from her love of yoga) to hold hands and sing chants with and practice yoga. But she didn’t have the vaguest clue how to find this mate. After Becky’s break-up with Bill there were no more sweats or clubs in Rincon, which was hardly a good place to discover some ‘enlightened one’. Surfing never did rank high as a mystical or intellectual practice. Though a few of my friends there would dispute this.

Twice while we lived there I paid for week-long spiritual retreats she took in the States, expensive ones with the plane flights. Both times the glow she came back with and the excited talk about them disappeared after a few days, (from which I deduced she didn’t fit in or gain much). Otherwise she might have joined some Ashram for life. But I think even in this course of life she was ambivalent and unsure. What happened three years later was incontrovertible proof of her total blindness.

There was one couple about our age who had a small farm right up the road from where she bought her piece of land, a steep valley. They were middle-aged hippies and made a humble living selling fresh produce and herbs to the finer restaurants that catered to tourists, fresh oregano and cilantro and such stuff. They were a happy couple working side by side in the dirt each day. Sanita knew the woman and liked her. But one day she ran into the husband in town, acted charming, and he asked her to go to the movie theater in Mayaguez that night. She accepted.

There in the dark he made the obvious pass at her, leaning in, arm slowly slipping around the neck, wanting the kiss. She rejected it (not even suspecting it was coming) and demanded he drive her home right away, in the middle of the movie. She told me the whole story the next weekend, and how bad she felt afterwards, betraying her woman friend and how naively she’d acted.

Date number two was even more laughable, about a year later. It was some young American staying in Rincon a short while whom she met in a store, talked to for a bit and as he didn’t know anyone in town she invited him over to dinner at her place. He was well dressed, with short hair, obviously no surfer, and out of place, like some young traveler completely lost.

Around four p.m. my phone rang. She wanted me to come over early and bring Willy. It was Sunday. She explained she had a nice young man sitting on her couch, a stranger, but had absolutely no idea what to say to him and the silence was stifling. Could I come over and help out as company? So I came by and as we were served snacks by Sanita we fell into a conversation that lasted from the coffee table through dinner. He had a college education and we started on that topic, college life. But I soon perceived he had a distinctly evangelical drift, over-polite, saying only the nicest things about his teachers and ‘Alma mater’, (a sure sign of devout Christians, where saying anything bad about anything is a sin).

I asked its name, never heard of it, and dropped all further inquiries, knowing it must be some obscure, religious retreat and he its sensitive handiwork. This curbed my range, any comparisons or criticisms, any real talk, as I didn’t want to offend such a delicate soul. So we drifted along exchanging equally lame generalities, praising schools, life, libraries, books, what good they are, all in the vaguest terms, naming none.

After dinner he thanked us profusely and left us both with a handshake, probably Rincon too, as we never saw him again. I didn’t even ask what brought him to Rincon. I didn’t care to know. It must have been some horribly wrong turn on a road map as he was ridiculously out of place, and Sanita just as ridiculous for inviting him over.