Water from My Heart (25 page)

T
he euphoria of the previous night was muted early the next morning when Paulina woke me, crying. I checked my watch. It was 3:17 a.m.

She said, “You mind driving me up? It's Roberto. He's…” She trailed off.

I jumped out of bed. “Sure.”

Paulo asked a neighbor to sit with sleeping Isabella, so the three of us climbed the mountain in Colin's truck. Thirty minutes later, we walked into Roberto's room, where a vigil was under way. Candles had been lit, and beneath the whispers, I heard singing. Soft and angelic. Coming from the voices of the mothers and several of the children. All the women wore scarves, covering their heads.

I held back while Paulina and Paulo tiptoed their way through the crowd to Roberto. Another woman sat next to him, waving a fan while a second woman gently swayed the hammock. He was pale in the dim light, his eyes half-open. Paulina tied a scarf around her head, and then she and Paulo stepped through his door, but they weren't the only ones to do so. Death was there, too.

Paulina knelt next to him and slid her hand in his. The right side of his face twitched upward and held for a second. At one time, that would have made a smile. His clothing was dry. As was his skin. Without moving his head, he held up his right hand, beckoning her. She leaned in, placing her head on his chest, where he rested his hand on her head. The movement exhausted him, and he lay several minutes catching his breath. Finally, he whispered. Faint. She nodded. Crying but trying to smile. He whispered some more. She cried harder and the pain peeled the forced smile off her face entirely. Tears streaming, she lifted her head; he placed his right thumb on her forehead and crossed her. Three times. Sobbing, she held his emaciated head in her palms and kissed his forehead, then his cheek. When she kissed his cheek a final time, he relaxed, exhaled, and died—his hand inside hers.

She hugged him several minutes while the crowd continued to sing. Paulina knelt on the floor, buried her face in her hands, and cried. Out loud. The cries were deep, echoed across the room, and I had the feeling that more than the pain of Roberto's death was leaving her body.

After several minutes, Paulo lifted her to her feet where she stood along with the rest and sang a quiet song. When the song finished, someone stretched a dirty, tattered sheet over Roberto, covering his body and face. Silently, each person filed out of Roberto's cramped room and the hallway that led to it.

Outside, Paulo asked,
“Mi hermano—”
He searched for the words. “Please, may I drive?” He pointed at Paulina. “She asks you to walk.”

I gave Paulo the keys and followed Paulina off the mountain. She had wrapped her arms around herself as if cold in the hot night air. I walked alongside. Saying nothing. Stepping around the rocks, which were difficult to see in the darkness of the new moon. She was sweating and her soaked blouse stuck to her back. The first several miles, she said nothing. Halfway home, she stopped, stared up at me, then off toward Las Casitas in the distance. She stood, shaking her head. Tears drying on her face. Every few seconds, another would trickle down, hang on her chin or the side of her lips, before finishing its fall. Unaware, she didn't bother with them.

Around us, swarming in the trees, parrots and howler monkeys lit the early morning in a cacophony of sound and prelight activity. Either unable or unwilling, she didn't speak on the way home until just a few hundred yards from the house. Finally, after a silent six miles, she turned. Her face looked tortured. She said, “I wonder if I could trouble you.”

“Anything.”

“We need to build a coffin. This morning. Would you help Paulo?”

“Certainly.” A pause. “Anything else?”

“I—” She searched my face. “I'd like to…we used to…a funeral—”

I handed her two hundred-dollar bills. “What else can I do?”

She held the money in her hand and choked back a sob. Collecting herself, she said, “Thank you.”

When Paulo showed me his rudimentary tools and a coffin, which he had built months prior for a man who had yet to die, I asked if there was a hardware store close by. He said, “León.” We drove to León, I bought the tools we needed, and then Paulo led me to a lumberyard, where we bought planks of seasoned Nicaraguan hardwood. It was some of the most beautiful wood I'd ever seen, and Hack would have really appreciated it.

When we returned, Paulo clued in to the fact that I had some experience with wood, so without steamrolling him or making him feel like his coffin wasn't good enough, he and I set out to build Roberto's coffin. When I fashioned my first dovetail together with seamless edges, Paulo sat back and patted me on the shoulder. “You finish.”

By midafternoon, I'd finished the coffin. Paulo ran his fingers along the smooth edges, along the rounded corners, the cross that would rest above Roberto's face and nodded. “
Mi hermano
, you honor us.”

The four of us drove up the mountain for the beginning of the procession. The women—each head covered—had prepared Roberto's body, dressing him in a white dress shirt and pants, which Paulina had bought with some of the money I'd given her. Then they laid him on top of a thin mattress covered with a blanket hand knit by one of the older women in the plantation. When the women began singing, the procession of almost two hundred lifted Roberto onto their shoulders and began walking down a path that led toward the remains of the mudslide. The younger men carried Roberto, sharing the load, passing him from shoulder to shoulder. Other than the almost subaudible singing from the women, the procession walked silently. Stepping quietly. Reverently. While Paulina and Paulo walked up front, alongside Roberto, Isabella remained next to me and slipped her hand in mine.

When the path leveled out, we walked out from the trees and into a valley spiked with several dozen tall white crosses. A cluster of three sat off to one side, and alongside them, someone had dug a hole. When the young men reached the hole, they laid the coffin on top of the boards that crossed it. The soft-spoken preacher spoke several minutes, followed by Paulo, who said a few words. Finally, Paulina stepped forward, and without saying a word, she opened her mouth and sang a song I'd never heard but will never forget. It was beautiful, mournful, and the other women joined her in the chorus.

Without being instructed, the young men slowly lowered Roberto into the hole and, one by one, each individual in the crowd crossed themselves, whispered words I could not understand, and dropped a gentle handful of dirt onto Roberto's coffin. When they'd finished, Paulo handed me a rudimentary wooden shovel, and I helped him fill the hole. When we'd finished, the crowd had filed out of the valley and back up the hillside. Silently.

When I turned around, Paulina, Isabella, and the rest of the crowd had disappeared while one older woman stood next to me. It was Anna Julia. She tugged on my shirtsleeve and looked up at me. Paulo listened as she spoke. When she'd finished, he nodded, and she turned and followed the others uphill. Then he turned to me. “It was the most beautiful coffin. She's never seen its equal. She say God will surely accept him and the angels will be jealous.”

I didn't know Roberto but evidently everyone else did, and the fact that he was beloved by young and old was evident by the reverence with which they handled him. Seldom, if ever, had I seen such tenderness toward the living or the dead.

When we returned uphill, we found the beginnings of a banquet in full force. Huge pots of steaming rice, beans, and hundreds of handmade tortillas lay mounded on tables. A rather large pig hung roasting over a spit, where four boys took turns turning it, and greasy, sweat-soaked women began pulling the meat off the bone.

The subdued party continued long into the night as everyone ate plate after plate. Isabella conscripted me to help her make coffee and stir the punch in coolers and then pour it into paper cups. Near midnight, I took a break from cleaning up, from carrying food, from pouring punch, from doing whatever was needed. When I stopped to drink some punch and wipe my head, Paulina appeared next to me. Dripping with sweat, her scarf soaked to her forehead, a satisfied and weary smile on her face, she hooked her arm inside mine, leaned on me, and said nothing as we stood staring at the party around us. Several older folks came up to her, speaking quietly, nodding, and holding both her hands in theirs. She spoke softly as well, nodding to each one and hugging several. When they'd left, she turned to me. “Thank you for this.”

I'd known beautiful women. But I'd never known a human being whose inward beauty had the effect Paulina's had on all those around her. Her outward beauty was unequaled, but it was her inward beauty that left me speechless. I said nothing.

She waved her hand across the dwindling crowd. “They've not eaten like this…since my father. They were thanking me for that.” She turned to me. “So thank you.”

It was nearly 3:00 a.m. when we got home. Isabella had been asleep on Colin's front seat for the better part of three hours. Paulo carried her to her bed. I stretched out in the chicken coop and was too tired to kick off my flip-flops.

F
riday morning appeared and only Paulo woke before me. We shared a quiet cup of coffee while Paulina and Isabella slept, and then I called Colin. Time to check in. I told him about the poker game, the truck, and about finding someone who'd seen Zaul—and about the blood on the hammock. I thought about not, but it's not my place to withhold from Colin. Zaul's not my son.

Colin listened quietly and then agreed that if Zaul was out of money, and possibly hurt but unwilling to go to the hospital, chances were good he'd return to the house in Costa Rica to rest, heal up, get whatever money he'd left there, and put together plan B since plan A had failed. I told him I was heading out in a few hours and that I'd be there tonight. We talked about Maria, her improvement, and he told me they were scheduling a follow-up surgery with Shelly to reduce some of the scar tissue. They had yet to tell Maria.

Before he hung up, I said, “Wonder if you'd do me a favor.”

“Sure.”

“You have any attorney friends in this part of the world?”

“You need one?”

“Maybe, but not for anything criminal. Least not yet.” I told Colin what I needed, or wanted, and when I finished, he was quiet a minute. Finally, he said, “Give me a few days.”

Sometime after 11:00 a.m., Isabella woke, shuffled out her door, climbed up into Paulo's lap, and fell back asleep. A few minutes later, Paulina appeared. She didn't look much better. Coffee only raised her eyelids to half-mast.

“I have an idea I'd like to run by you.”

She and Paulo looked at me agreeably. Isabella cracked open her eyes and stared at me with little interest. “I think Zaul may be returning to his parents' house in Costa Rica. I need to check it out. If you're not opposed, I'd like to show it to you. There's a pool where maybe we could teach Isabella to swim, and there's a beach with miles of sand in either direction.”

Uncharacteristically, Paulina rubbed her face and consulted no one. “I think I'd really like that.”

Paulo and Isabella nodded. We left at noon. The problem I had with this excursion is that while I could pass myself off as a vagabond in flip-flops and cutoffs who had a little cash to flash around, Colin's house would not let me get away with that. It was one of the nicer homes in Costa Rica. By taking them there, the disparity between my life and theirs was about to become apparent and that would give rise to questions that might be tough to answer.

We drove the shoreline. Paulo played the role of tour guide and showed me the facets of his country that never make the travel books. He was right. It was beautiful—and nothing more so than the smiles of the people. For nearly seven hours, we stirred up dust on dirty back roads and drove on the asphalt only long enough to cross over it en route to another dirt road. Never once did he consult a map. Paulo knew this country like the back of his hand.

We arrived at the house a few hours before sundown. If passing through the security gate itself wasn't an eye-opener, then driving through the gate and down the long drive was. When we pulled up before the front door, Paulina spoke through an open mouth. “What business did you say your partner was in?”

Isabella's eyes were large as silver dollars. Paulo sat speechless with both hands on the wheel.

I laughed. “Come on.”

The house was clean, dry, and mostly put back together. Some finish work remained but it was livable. Looked like a contractor had yet to clear out the punch list. I gave them a tour, during which they were mostly silent and afraid to touch anything. The house was much as I'd left it, only cleaner, and unless he was hiding, Zaul had yet to show. I showed them their rooms and then told them I'd meet them at the pool. Paulina spoke up. “I don't own a bathing suit.”

I hadn't considered that, so I took her to Marguerite's closet. “Probably find something in here. I'm not an expert judge of size, but you and Marguerite look to be similar.”

“Marguerite is your partner's wife?”

“Yes.”

“She won't mind?”

I shook my head. “No.”

Paulina pointed to a picture on the wall hanging in the closet that depicted Marguerite in her bathing suit, wearing a tiara, after having just won one of many pageants. “That's her?”

“Yes.”

“Great.”

It didn't take them long to change.

Isabella, wearing a suit that was two sizes too big and sagged in the butt, walked up to the edge of the pool, where I was standing in the shallow end. I held out a hand. “Come on.”

She shook her head.

“I'll catch you.”

She leaned, her feet weighted to the pool deck, and fell forward into my arms. As I held her afloat and talked to her about kicking her feet and pulling with her hands, Paulina walked out wearing a rather modest one-piece and a chiffon wrap tied around her waist. In my defense, I was holding it together pretty well until she untied that chiffon, folded it, walked to the steps, and stepped into the pool, where I guess my jaw was hanging open. She reached up and closed it with a smirk. “Haven't you ever seen a girl in a bathing suit?”

“Not like that I haven't.”

I don't know if she was flirting with me or if I was flirting with her, but somewhere in those few seconds, we passed from woman helping man find kid to woman allowing herself to look appealing and wondering if man was interested.

And he was.

Paulo joined us a few minutes later, we swam, I tried my best to teach Isabella to swim, and at sundown we all walked down the steps to the dock, where I gave them a tour of the boathouse and Colin's Bertram. Paulo ran his fingers along her clean lines and loved every minute of it. From the boathouse, Isabella led us out onto the beach, where the tide was low and the breeze was welcome and cooling. We walked until the sun disappeared behind the edge of the sea. Living on Bimini, I've seen some beautiful sunsets, but I've never seen one more beautiful.

I cooked dinner—spaghetti—and the conversation while we ate was relatively muted. After dinner, Paulina pointed at a door we'd not entered and said, “What's in there?”

“That's the theater.”

“Theater?”

I led them into Colin's twelve-seat theater. I don't know the dimensions of the screen, but it was the size of the wall, which was huge. The chairs were plush leather, stadium seating with motorized recline, massage, and footrests. Paulina pointed at the wall of DVDs. “Will you pick us your favorite?” I made my selection, started the video, and left as the nuns began lamenting the problem that was Maria. The three of them were glued to the screen.

I checked in with Colin, reported on the condition of the house, and told him there was no sign of Zaul but that we'd stay through the weekend. Talking about Zaul was painful for Colin as it was a constant reminder of his failure as a father, so to deflect and change the conversation, he told me I should take my three guests on the ATVs tomorrow. The trails leading out the back of the house go for miles along the ocean. “It's one of the more beautiful vistas in Costa Rica.”

When I first went to work for Colin, Zaul was just a ten-year-old kid. He always saw me as the guy coming and going in his dad's boat, so it was only natural, when he was about eleven, for him to meet me on the dock of their house in Miami one morning and ask, “Can I drive?”

I loaded him into one of Colin's smaller boats, a twenty-four-foot Pathfinder, because it's more maneuverable, and we eased off into the canals that led out into Stiltsville. Zaul stood at the console, up on his toes, staring through the windshield, craning his neck, one hand on the throttle, the other on the wheel. I stood beside him, watching. He was a natural, and unlike his father, he was good with boats. Coordinated. He was good with his hands, and when you could get him to, he would work hard and wasn't afraid of hard work. He drove us out of the canals and between the homes that make up what's left of Stiltsville. Off to the northwest of us, several kite surfers rode the famous break that existed about a mile offshore. It was breezy, not a cloud in the sky.

I remember him staring at those homes, mesmerized by how they rose up out of the water and rested on stilts, at those kite surfers suspended in the air flipping and spinning with ease, at himself driving that boat, at the blue water and the porpoises rolling nearby, and I remember him being happy. I remember him smiling. I remember a kid at play. The problem is, I don't have too many memories of him being happy after that nor of him playing. And that's what I was sitting there thinking about, staring out across the ocean below, when Paulina snuck up behind me. I don't know how long she'd been standing there, but when I turned around, she asked, “What're you thinking about?”

“Enjoying the view.”

“You're not a very good liar.”

“Thank you, but the truth is I'm an exceptional liar. I've made it an art.”

She sat next to me. “Well, then tell me one thing that's true about you. What do you remember about life as a kid?”

I thought about this a second. “As a kid, I don't ever remember not feeling dirty. It wasn't so much feeling dirt on my skin as a sinking in my gut. A resident weight. Something I was born with or that woke up with me every day. To combat it, I surfed a lot—thinking the ocean might wash it off. When I got to high school, I ran a lot, thinking I could sweat it out. Same in college. After college, I lived on planes and in hotels, thinking if I didn't stop moving, I could outrun it. That the newness of my environment would replace it. Finally, when none of that worked, I moved to the ocean and bought a little place where I could watch the sun go down every day and sleep every night under the sound of constant waves crashing.”

“Did it work?”

I shook my head. “No. And you want to hear something funny?”

“Yes.”

“In all my life, my work, my travels, my attempts not to work, in all my going and doing, I've never felt more ‘clean' than when covered in volcanic mud, hanging from Paulo's rope in the bottom of that dark, damp well.”

Unlike at the hotel in León, she didn't press me but just sat with me. Enjoying the view. After several minutes, she offered, “Thank you for today. It was special. Especially to Isabella.”

I smiled. “You would do well not to take advice from me, but if I might—you should think about wearing a bathing suit more often. It suits you.”

A chuckle. “It's been a long time.”

“Doing so would really spice things up in Valle Cruces. Spend about thirty minutes walking around in that, and you'd have more men knocking down your door than Paulo could keep away.”

“That's not the kind of man I'm looking for.”

“You mind if I turn the tables and ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You've been a widow more than a decade, and you don't seem to be trying to change that. You're beautiful, you laugh with an easiness I don't think I've ever known, you bend over backward to serve folks, you are constantly pouring out, so—”

She interrupted me again. “What's wrong with me?”

“Yes.” I laughed. “For the life of me, I can't find anything wrong with you.”

“I have my moments.”

“Well”—I scratched my head—“I have yet to notice any. Seriously, what kind of man are you looking for?”

“Not the kind who is solely attracted to me because of how I look in a bathing suit.”

“I hate to break it to you, but…you do look good in a bathing suit and I'm not apologizing for recognizing that.”

More easy laughter. “I guess that's some relief. It's been so long since I've tried to get noticed.”

“So, without getting overly personal, have you dated?”

“There have been guys.”

“That's not an answer to my question.”

She smirked. “You're perceptive.”

“Don't let the flip-flops fool you.”

“I'm beginning to see that.”

“You're stalling. What kind of guys?”

“The kind that never call when they find out I have a d
aughte
r.”

“Okay, let's say you could script the perfect guy. Order à la carte.”

She considered this. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“The kind I can walk beside, lock arm-in-arm with, who's not afraid to pull teeth, drop down into a well, work with Paulo, hold hands with my daughter and it not be weird, who doesn't complain about a bucket shower, who would stand up to the neighborhood bully and then give back more money than I've made in most of my adult life and”—she held a finger in the air and grinned with a wide smile—“one who can definitely ride a motorcycle. For starters, a guy like that.”

“And how many guys do you know like that?”

She turned away. “A couple.”

“Oh, really. What are their names?”

“Well, okay, maybe it's just one, but I don't know him very well and something about him tells me there's a whole lot I don't know.”

I didn't hesitate before this flirting went much further. “And you'd be right.”

“So maybe we should just leave it right there before we uncover the truth and you disappoint me.”

“How do you know the truth of me would disappoint you?”

“Your face tells me every time I look at you.”

If I'd ever had a gift when it came to poker, at bluffing, at not showing my hand to another, it was gone. Talking with her on the deck overlooking the ocean was when I knew I'd never play cards again. The other players would read my face and take everything I held dear.

She sat back, crossed her legs and her arms, and stared out across the water. “I'm just guessing, but I'd say you've lived most of your life acting as though you don't care. As though you don't concern yourself too much with matters of the heart. But I wonder if you don't feel them more deeply than others.”