I called my dear ma for guidance, which turned out to be a bad idea on several levels.
She vaguely remembered Kevin but categorically denied that they were related in any way. I sketched out the whole bizarre scenario as best I could.
“You know, that rings the faintest of bells,” she said. “My mother was always vague about that side of the family.”
“So you know Kevin?”
“Barely. I haven’t seen him or his wife in fifteen years.”
“Are they nice?”
She hesitated.
“I’m sure they’re very nice.”
This was a typical non-answer from a woman who had spent her whole life studiously avoiding saying anything unpleasant about anyone, including (but not limited to) Slobodan Milosevic and Atilla the Hun.
“Let me re-phrase. Do you know of any reason why we wouldn’t want to rent our house to them?”
“Sweetheart, I haven’t seen these people in decades. Rent away.”
☼ ☼ ☼
Kevin called me from the airport in Vieques.
“How do we get to the house?”
“Didn’t you call Jane from San Juan?”
At Jane’s request, we always asked our guests to call her just before boarding their flight to Vieques, because (in Jane’s memorable phrase) “time slips in Puerto Rico.”
“No, we didn’t think it was necessary,” he answered impatiently. “Our flight left on time.”
“In that case, I’m sure she’s sitting at home waiting for your call.”
“She should be here. We told her our flight number. She could have called the airline and found out it was on time.”
“She used to do that, Kevin. And she ended up spending hours sitting at the airport waiting for so-called on-time flights that were seriously delayed.”
A short pause while he retrenched.
“Anyway, I’ve lost her number.”
“I’ll be happy to call her for you. Just wait at the airport.”
Jane called a couple of hours later.
“Did you say these folks are relatives of yours?”
“Very distant. Emphasis on ‘very.’ And ‘distant.’”
“I thought Southern people were supposed to be polite.”
“There are still a few left. Take me for instance.”
“We’ll let that pass for now. In the meantime, your cousins have asked me to come back tomorrow and drive them to the beach. Because they didn’t rent a car.”
She spoke the last sentence in the same tone one might use to say, “He stabbed his mother to death with a butter knife.”
“I know. It’s part of their budget travel routine.”
“What should I do?”
Jane so rarely asked my opinion and I could barely muster a response.
“Don’t take them.”
“I already said I would.”
“I’ll call Kevin.”
I reached him ten minutes later.
“Jane can’t take you to the beach.”
“She said she would.”
He sounded very relaxed.
“It’s not her job.”
“Well, she shouldn’t have said she would if she didn’t want to.”
“She was surprised by your request.”
He repeated this to his wife, who laughed with gurgling delight.
“You know, our philosophy of travel can be traced back to one of our favorite Beatles song, the one about getting by with a little help from your friends.”
I’d had enough.
“Jane’s not your friend.”
“But you are.”
I thought about my mother, living in a small town within spitting distance of this man. If she ever ran into him at the supermarket (which, I admit, was a highly unlikely scenario since she very rarely did her own shopping), she might be forced to acknowledge the reality of his connection to us and our house.
“So you’re really not going to rent a car?”
“No way, José,” he said breezily.
“Fine,” I said, breathing deeply, “how about renting scooters?”
“Are they cheap?”
Not as cheap as you are, I longed with every fiber of my being to reply—but I didn’t.
“I think they’re relatively inexpensive.”
“Let me just confer with the old ball and chain.”
A brief pause.
“We’re ready to scoot. Are you willing to pay half?”
“Oh God, yes.”
It turns out my mother did run into Kevin and his fair bride a few months later.
“Your son’s house is lovely,” Kevin told her. “But, just between you and me, our visit to Vieques was the most expensive vacation of our lives.”
☼ ☼ ☼
Another thing stands out from that season.
Jane reported that she’d spoken to our contractor, Steve, the week before.
“I’m afraid it’s not good,” she said.
I caught my breath.
“Tell me.”
“We only spoke a minute. Then he handed the phone to Sue.”
Oh God.
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“No.”
I tried to marshal my thoughts.
“You think he’s near the end?”
“I do.”
She called two days later to say he was gone.
The next time we visited Vieques we stood in the middle of the kitchen Steve had so lovingly built and raised a glass to his memory.
Thirty-Five
Branching Out
We’ve talked a bit about the amazing fauna of Vieques. Now a word about the island’s flora, which is pretty stupendous too.
As I’ve mentioned, our small yard alone boasts an amazing array of trees: mango, breadfruit, banana, and papaya, as well as many flamboyant smaller shrubs and plants that flower at various times of the year.
Our mango tree, situated at the top of the driveway near the road, is so enormous that the utility department has to come out every few months to give it a ruthless trim so it won’t pull down the neighborhood’s power lines.
On the opposite side of the house, near the bottom of the lot, our breadfruit tree grows so fast we have it topped every four to six months to keep it from blocking our view of the big island. And when I say topped, I don’t mean a couple of feet each time; I mean four or five feet. Every few months. That’s how fast it grows.
Compare our view of the big island when the breadfruit tree has been allowed to grow unchecked for a few months to the view after the tree has had a trim.
Nearly every time we visit Vieques we come across a type of tree or shrub we’ve never seen before. If we have a camera or cellphone with us, we take a photo. If not, we try to go back and take one later. Then we go home and do some research.
One of our favorite ghoulish discoveries is the manchineel tree, affectionately known as the death apple. We first encountered this large, deciduous tree in the stretch of land between Playa Grande and the huge lagoon that lies to its north.
The manchineel has many charms—it’s not only attractive to look at but also produces a sweet-smelling apple-like fruit. But don’t be fooled. As we later learned, this tree is one of the most poisonous (not to mention devious) in the world. Droves of people have died in torment after snacking on its enticing fruit. I’m so glad we didn’t have the munchies that day.
And then of course there’s the enormous, ancient ceiba tree just off Route 200 past the airport.
Ceiba tree (reputed to be 300 years old)
Although it may or may not be three hundred years old (as many claim), the tree is certainly impressively large, not to mention weird-looking.
Base of ceiba tree
Its roots rise up from the ground in flat, wall-like configurations positioned at odd angles from the trunk.
Although Vieques is delightfully behind the times in many ways, occasionally it’s ahead of the times, particularly in the Green department.
&n
bsp; Yes, Green with a capital G.
Consider this. There’s a hotel on the island that has been effortlessly integrating nature and architecture for several decades.
The hotel’s architect and his wife reportedly moved to Vieques from Canada to escape air conditioning (how’s that again?) in the late 1970s. They built an eco-friendly house on a centrally-located hill with good views. Eventually they transformed their house into an eco-friendly hotel. This was long before Green was The Thing.
Each of the hotel’s rooms has three concrete walls, with the fourth completely open to the outside. Some people love this. I’ve seldom come across as many rave reviews of a hotel as I’ve read of this simple concrete eco-experiment: Changed my life; once in a lifetime experience; felt like I was in a dream (all authentic quotes about this property).
Others hate it, complaining of geckos in their shoes, iguanas in their bathtubs and bats in their beds.
Personally?
I admire people who savor this kind of experience, but it’s not my bag. I prefer to close the door at bedtime, crank down the louvers and power up the air.
Call me pampered.
You wouldn’t be wrong.
Thirty-Six
Let’s Get Plastered
I considered the house finished. Michael didn’t.
And of course he was right. The whole side facing the garden was unfinished. We never saw it because the garden was such an unmitigated disaster. In other words, we never saw that side because we never went into the garden.
And by unfinished I mean it consisted of a wall of unpainted cinderblocks adorned with exposed plumbing.
You might say I’ve always been a tad too focused on the obvious, the flashy, and the decorative to fully appreciate the importance of the underlying structure. That was Michael’s department.
But once he pointed out the possible negative effects of leaving the house unfinished—creeping moisture, foundation deterioration, termite infestation (yes, Puerto Rican termites will even munch their way through unprotected concrete)—I was an instant convert.
“How soon can we get it done?” I asked, now gripped with a sense of impending doom.
Come on, admit it—creeping moisture does sound pretty bad. Michael looked philosophical and said he’d ask Jane to get some bids.
Within a month (lightning fast by Puerto Rican standards) we had three estimates. One was staggeringly high, one suspiciously low. But the third seemed just about right. We asked Jane to arrange a meeting with the contractor to coincide with our next visit.
Before the meeting, Jane sketched out a few ground rules.
“Please, let’s just have one person speak for the group. Humberto doesn’t speak a word of English so he’s bringing along his cousin to translate. I’m afraid lots of chatter will just confuse him.”
She looked at me as she said this. A guy could develop a complex.
“Fine,” I said.
“So Michael will do the talking?”
“Sure,” Michael said, not looking any too pleased by her bossy tone.
“And another thing,” she went on. “Whatever you do, don’t mention windows.”
We waited a moment for the other shoe to drop. “Windows?”
“The windows on that side of the house. Humberto and I had a little disagreement about them the other day. He claims he can’t work around your old windows, and he wants to sell you new ones.”
“I don’t think we can afford that right now.”
“That’s what I told him. But he’s pretty persistent. I’m sure his mark-up is hefty and he wants the extra cash. So he’ll probably bring up the subject again today. If he does, just ignore him.”
Okay.
Fifteen minutes later Humberto and his two sidekicks arrived in a truck so broken-down that the Beverly Hillbillies would have turned their noses up at it.
All three smiled a lot and nodded energetically when spoken to. It was unclear if they understood one word we said but it was an impressive display of goodwill all the same.
At the conclusion of what felt like unnecessarily lengthy preliminaries, we wandered into the side yard and stared up at the three-story unfinished wall. It looked like a huge task to me but Humberto’s cousin, Roberto the Translator, appeared unfazed.
“Easy job,” he said, flashing a mouthful of gold teeth in my general direction.
“Really?” I asked.
I could hardly believe anyone would consider this job easy.
“Sí,” he smiled again. “It’ll go just like that.”
He snapped his fingers sharply to demonstrate his point. We’d heard this before from contractors who proceeded to work at such a glacial pace we forgot what we’d hired them for or how much we’d promised to pay them.
In any case, it was an intriguing line of thought but when I opened my mouth to continue our conversation, Jane gave me a look that said, in no uncertain terms, knock it off.
Message received.
“Michael, would you like to go through your list with Humberto?” Jane prompted.
“Sure,” Michael grumbled, still obviously annoyed by Jane’s heavy-handed orchestration of our meeting.
“So here’s how it’ll work,” Jane continued like a school marm on amphetamines. “Michael, please speak slowly, in English of course, and then pause while Roberto translates. Once he’s done, you can say the next sentence.”
It was a laborious process.
Michael would say something like, “We’d like you to plaster under and around the pipes…” only to be interrupted by Jane before he could complete his sentence.
“Stop there!” she would exclaim. “If you say too much he’ll get lost.”
Dramatic pause.
“Roberto?”
And Roberto, looking slightly miffed (possibly at having his powers of recall so maligned), would translate the phrase into Spanish.
Then Michael, struggling to recall where he had left off, would continue with the disembodied conclusion of his thought: “…so they can be easily repaired or replaced,” which Roberto would duly repeat to his cousin in their native tongue.
This went on for some time.
It was like a special session of the U.N. General Assembly where the diplomats, having ingested massive amounts of tranquilizers, embark on an exhaustive discourse about the building’s plumbing system instead of advancing world peace.
Humberto, for his part, appeared to be getting Michael’s drift just fine. He continued to smile gamely, nodding his head with such energy I feared concussion.
Finally, with a look of intense relief, Michael completed his list.
“That’s it,” he said.
“Eso es todo,” said Roberto. (That’s all.)
We all assumed expressions of extreme satisfaction, as if we’d formulated an obscure mathematical equation or Mastered the Art of French Cooking. Jane even patted me on the back, presumably for managing to keep quiet for ten whole minutes.
There was a general movement towards the lower veranda. It had been intensely hot standing in the side yard in the mid-day sun, and I thought maybe I’d serve some iced tea to cool everyone down.
That’s when we noticed that Humberto wasn’t with our little group. In fact, when we looked back he was standing exactly where he’d been standing the whole time, staring intently at the side of the house, sweat streaming down his face.
Without a word, Jane doubled back to his side, smiled beatifically, and said, with a flirtatious toss of her head, “¡Vamanos!”
His expression never changed.
“How about the windows?” he said in perfect English.
Oh God! I thought. Meanwhile, some other lobe of my brain screamed: he speaks English!
To her credit, Jane didn’t miss a beat.
“Hey, amigo, we already discussed the windows. That’s not going to happen.”
Like him, she appeared to have forgotten that he wasn’t an English-speaker. Humberto cocked his head slightly, expelling air t
hrough his teeth. Michael and I looked at each other. What was coming?
Pointing to the most decrepit of our windows, Humberto let loose a volley of complaints, laments and warnings, all in perfect English.
“You are wasting your money and my time asking me to work around those old-time windows, which are crap,” he said, addressing Michael. “They are rotten. The plaster that I apply around them will fall away from them and you will blame me. This is a bad investment. You must buy new windows.”
Who knew the subject of windows could stir such depths of emotion?
Jane had entreated us to ignore Humberto if he mentioned windows, but ignoring this particular verbal eruption was like asking the citizens of Chernobyl to ignore that pesky little explosion down the road.
“And where would we buy these windows?” I asked.
Jane stared at me for a moment in stunned silence, then threw up her hands and walked away.
“From me, of course,” was Humberto’s straightforward answer.
“And how much would they cost?”
“$800 each,” was his excited reply.
“Excellent price.” Roberto chimed in.
Jane, meanwhile, was pacing back and forth across the top of the yard, fit to be tied. Her carefully planned meeting had devolved into chaos.
“We’ll think about it,” Michael replied treacherously.
Humberto’s radiant smile returned.
“Very reasonable price,” he said. “You won’t regret.”
“Harumph,” Jane said.
☼ ☼ ☼
“I tried to protect you boys from yourselves,” Jane said after the rickety truck sputtered away.
That was the thing about Jane. As annoying as she’d been all afternoon, she really did have our best interests at heart. We had named our top price and she had duly noted it and done everything in her power to ensure that we didn’t exceed it.
But sometimes she got a little carried away.
“So how big do you think his mark-up is?” I asked, struggling to wrestle the conversation back into the realm of fact.
“Huge!” she said. “Probably a hundred percent.”
This wasn’t particularly helpful. I doubted that the retail price of the windows was less than $600.
The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House Page 22