Playing with Will

Another complication in our fading relationship began when Will reached the age of five. We had different views, (once again never openly discussed or resolved) in parenting. I took to heart a kind, humanistic approach and had read many of the best books on the subject, from all ages. Children should be indulged, encouraged in their fancies, gently guided away from harms and misbehavior but always with explanations framed to their level of understanding, and always with alternatives offered, better choices, to replace the things denied.

She was the authoritarian, with simple ‘no’s’ and slaps, and ‘you can’t do that’ or worse ‘you’re being bad’, with no explanations at all. I wasn’t going to let her harm my child’s mind with such ignorant, belittling cruelty. And on that front I was adamant, ready to drop Sanita in a second for my son’s welfare. This displayed itself clearly in our first two fights. The spotlight of my affection and care slowly shifted from her to Willy, and there it remained, only to grow more focused, to her ultimate loss and Will’s gain.

It was lucky for both Will and I that Sanita lasted with me so long. She stayed till the day I ran out of money (a cynical detail but true). It was luckier still that she picked the island of Puerto Rico in which to divorce me, with it’s simple laws. If it happened in the States there would have been huge court expenses, convoluted custody battles and her winning control in the end, being the female, and ruining his entire life, making it a mirror her own.

She was a runaway at fifteen, never going back to Jack, or near him for years. She never talked about it, or shared her secrets with me, but I knew she had some dark one’s or she would never have run away at such a young age, to live on the streets for several years, a rough life, until her mother and Jaime helped her out a few years later.

I suspected she’d been abused by her father, (he fit the type) beaten frequently or worse. I never asked about this past but a few clues slipped out now and again at the strangest times. One night we watched the movie ‘Drugstore Cowboys’ and she told me at the end that it was exactly the life she lived at fifteen and sixteen, with one boy and another girl, always high and on the run. A photograph I have of her at fifteen shows her emaciated and in a drugged out state, and pictures don’t lie. One night after we first arrived in St. Croix, living at Jack and Kitty’s, we wanted to have a romantic night out, (her sexuality heating up in the new place, which ticked like clockwork). So they agreed to babysit Willy. We went to a bar for several hours, came home and made sweet love.

But the next morning we asked them how Will behaved and Kitty told us he cried a lot, this being the first time neither of us were with him. Later that day we both noticed small bruises on his thighs and bum. We didn’t say anything, but knew he’d been beaten. Never again did we leave him with Jack or Kitty. It made me suspect this might have been Sanita’s fate too, from an early age. Jack was a brute, and Betty totally unable to control him, or anybody.

An earlier date, Sanita still with me.

The house expands.

I added one more room above the addition but it wasn’t quite finished when I sold it in 2004. You can see the bedroom I added on. Laundry machines filled the indent on the front porch and a water tank was set up on the hill just above it for a steady supply. I put what money I had into it but the place always had a shabby look, the yard a mess, but fine for me and my friends, drinking beers on the kitchen deck Friday nights, snorting lines, enjoying the wonderful weather and the great view.

It was also fine for Willy and his friends, each weekend. We had a V.C.R. and television and couch and rented plenty of movies. We had a fire pit. The hillside below was empty and the scene of our many adventures.

But it pretty much mirrored my failed marriage with Sanita, a shack at best. I built it for her with what money I had, for our family and our happiness. It wasn’t much but it was all I could do.

‘and no man likes to have his ‘all’ despised’. Samuel Johnson.

And this is what it was a decade after she left me, derelict.

Luckily, I didn’t fall into a similar state of dereliction after our separation, (or more accurately, abandonment). It took a few years to get over that shock, a few more to gain Will into my custody, and the sixty thousand I sold the property for went all into my pocket, not hers.

In many ways my life became much simpler and played out much truer to my personality and natural inclinations and ultimately, to my happiness, both daily and overall. She did me a big favor by leaving me. I didn’t see it then, but now with so much reflection on every aspect of our lives together, (this account is that re-evaluation) I even think, in moments of goodwill and a higher estimation of female intuition, that she left me, at least in part, for my own good, a sacrifice on her side, knowing deep down we weren’t right for each other and that I’d be happier without her.

But all this is hypothetical reasoning, dreamy and perhaps delusional. People almost always act on purely selfish and foolish motives. I dream of angels too much and sometimes she was one of them, in my overstimulated, poetry drenched imagination. I live in literature. ‘But it keeps me just like I keep it’, just like Friar Tuck, the beekeeper says about his bees, in the movie ‘Robin Hood’.

Many of my friends loved the uniqueness of the place, especially the outdoor shower. I think Sanita even loved it too, the first months we moved in. Too bad, too sad, she no longer loved me. I suppose this was my last try at saving our marriage, and it certainly was a labored attempt on my part, shaping wood into walls with my hands, working all day, my head out of books.

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