The Furthest City Light

by Jeanne Winer

  Clearly, I was depressed. When Vickie came home that day, she took one look at me and stamped her feet.

  “Enough,” she said. “Get up.” Her tone meant business.

  I struggled to a sitting position.

  “I know it’s been rough,” she began. “I know it really killed you to lose Emily’s case, but you have to move on. This isn’t helping. Fortunately, I have an idea.” She sat down across from me on the rug. “Let’s go back to Zihuatanejo. We ended up having a wonderful time there. I think I can arrange to take three weeks. Dave and Allison have agreed to cover for me. What do you say?”

  I noticed the lines around Vickie’s mouth seemed deeper than a week ago, and I reached over to try and smooth them out a little.

  “Thanks for the offer, babe. I’d love to go on a vacation with you, but not right now. I have to figure out my life first. The thought of lying on a beach in a foreign country while the poor people who live there trudge back and forth in front of me trying to sell me junky things that I don’t want is too much to bear.”

  Vickie nodded. “Fine. If you don’t want to see poor people, let’s go somewhere like Aspen and see rich people.”

  “That would be even worse.”

  My partner tried to laugh, but she was obviously frustrated. “Rachel, you have to do something.”

  I looked into her beautiful disapproving eyes. “Why?”

  She looked surprised and then confused. “Because this isn’t healthy.” She paused. “And you’re scaring me.”

  I sighed and lay back down again, gazing up at a couple of interesting cracks in the ceiling. “Let me get this straight. You want me to stop feeling sad and do something so that you won’t have to feel scared. Under the circumstances, don’t you think that’s a little selfish? Besides, what’s the difference between lying on a beach or lying on the living room floor?”

  Vickie stood up and was now looking down at me. “That’s not what I meant, Rachel.”

  I waved her away, as if she were a bee that wouldn’t leave me alone. “Hey, you know what? If you squint your eyes in a particular way, the cracks in the ceiling look just like stallions racing free across an empty prairie.”

  Vickie tapped her foot a little too close to my head. “What about a few sessions of therapy? It might be really helpful. Allison says Marilyn Samler is great.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “Maybe you could figure out why you’re so fearful. Actually, here’s an even better idea. Why not take a vacation without me? It’ll be a lot more fun that way. For both of us.”

  I could hear the sharp intake of breath, as if I’d punched or slapped her. “Maybe I will, Rachel. A vacation without you sounds delightful. It’s very tiresome being a guest at your self-indulgent little pity party.”

  I smiled icily. “Well, the party’s over. From now on, whenever you’re around, I’ll just put on a happy face.”

  There was dead silence and I guessed she’d had enough. Finally I heard her whisper, “Rachel, we’ve never fought like this before.”

  I sat up, grabbed her leg, and held onto it. “I know and I’m very sorry.”

  After a long pause, she asked, “Are we going to be all right?”

  I closed my eyes, rested my head against her leg and said, “Of course we are.” And hoped it was the truth.

  Later when we couldn’t sleep, I apologized again and promised to make a genuine effort. We curled up in each other’s arms and I wished that love alone could solve all of my life’s problems. Christ, even as a kid, I’d known better. I was obviously regressing, but at least I didn’t have too far to go. A few more years, and I’d only be a twinkle in my father’s eyes. That night, I dreamed Emily stabbed me in the heart with a pair of scissors.

  ***

  Over the weekend, I called Maggie, Ray and our friends Dave and Allison, and told them about my midlife crisis, but saying it out loud only seemed to flesh it out, confirm its solidity. I realized, too late, that no one truly wants to hear about your midlife crisis unless you can make it sound amusing. Even then, in order to punish and deter you from ever mentioning it again, they’ll try to help you figure out why it happened and how to avoid it in the future. Maggie’s proposed solution was to go climbing, but I decided to wait until I was sure I wanted to live.

  The following Monday, Maggie phoned to tell me she’d fallen on the first pitch of the Yellow Spur and broken her ankle. She’d slipped before she could get her first piece in and fallen about fifteen feet. It was every climber’s nightmare. I knew she’d been planning a trip to Nicaragua as a member of some kind of brigade, but I hadn’t been paying attention to the details. I’d been too obsessed with Emily’s murder trial.

  “So now I have to try and find someone to take my place,” Maggie said. “Shit. I’ve been looking forward to this for almost a year. I’m so bummed.”

  “I can imagine. I’m really sorry.” I switched the receiver to my other ear, picked up some dirty dishes and carried them to the sink. “What’s the purpose of your brigade again? I forgot.”

  She sighed, clearly annoyed. “To help rebuild a medical clinic that was burned down by the Contras.”

  “Oh right,” I said. “Sounds worthwhile.” I plugged the sink, and then turned on the hot water.

  “It is.”

  I examined the sponge and decided it was time for a new one. “Where exactly was the clinic?”

  “Where?” She sounded surprised. “In Jalapa, a little town in northern Nicaragua not far from the Honduran border.”

  I nodded, then bent down and found a package of sponges under the sink. As I straightened up, I said, “Well, maybe I could take your place.”

  “You?”

  “Why not? What else do I have to do? Vickie’s going to divorce me if I don’t do something soon. It’ll be good for me. I can get out of my own head and hopefully be of some use. It’s the perfect solution, actually.”

  “Do you know anything about the situation in Nicaragua?”

  I shrugged. “Some. I read The Nation.”

  Maggie started to laugh. “Do you even know who the Contras are?”

  “The opposition.”

  “Good guess. Are they the good guys or the bad guys?”

  I thought for a moment. “The bad guys.” I paused. “Which means the United States is probably backing them.”

  She laughed again. “No wonder you were such a good lawyer. Okay, fine. I’ll ask my friend Laura to bring over a packet of information later on today. Don’t you think you ought to discuss this with Vickie first, though?”

  I turned off the water and started washing some plates. “Vickie’s my girlfriend, not my mother. She’ll support whatever decision I make.”

  “Are you sure? You’re going into a war zone.”

  “Hey, I’ve been in a war zone for twelve years. It can’t be any worse. Vickie will probably be relieved.”

  Maggie snorted. “Don’t be naïve, Rachel.” She was serious now. “This is the real thing. Real guns, real rockets and real people dying. It could be dangerous.”

  I studied the plate in my hands, realized it was cracked, and tossed it into the wastebasket. “Well, you were willing to risk it. How bad could it be?”

  “That’s just it,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  I hesitated for less than a second. “Okay, I’ve been duly warned. I’ll work it out with Vickie.”

  The packet of information Laura dropped off a few hours later was thicker than a small book. Since Vickie wouldn’t be home until ten, I had most of the evening to skim through the material.

  Nicaragua, I learned, had had a long history of struggling against United States domination. In 1927, a local hero named Sandino organized an army of peasants to drive out the US Marines who were then occupying the country. Sandino’s army fought the marines for seven years and won strong popular support. When the marines finally withdrew, they left behind the infamous National Guard headed by Anastasio Somoza as a replacement force. One of the Guard’s
first acts was to murder Sandino. For the next forty-five years, the National Guard, headed by a succession of Somozas (all of them relatives) became notorious throughout the world for its brutality and corruption.

  By this point, of course, I was hooked. I’d always been a sucker for the underdog. I grabbed a glass of iced herbal tea, curled up again on the couch, and continued reading. Backed by the National Guard, the Somoza family not only ran the country, but owned much of it as well, amassing a tidy fortune estimated at four hundred and fifty million. In the meantime, the vast majority of Nicaraguans lived in desperate poverty. The United States, unfortunately, supported the dictatorship. President Roosevelt was even quoted as saying, “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” Eventually the FSLN (the Sandinista National Liberation Front) organized the Nicaraguan people and they ousted Somoza in 1979.

  Bravo, I thought, and rubbed my eyes. It was almost nine o’clock. The artichoke I’d been steaming was finally ready. I mixed some fresh cumin into a bowl of mayonnaise and then carried everything to the kitchen table. The light was better here anyway. I propped my pages against the bowl and resumed where I’d left off, right after the revolution. When the celebrations ended, the Sandinistas began implementing an ambitious program to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, which had been neglected or destroyed in the decades leading up to the revolution. After years of exploitation, the country was in terrible shape and the Sandinistas had to make a number of decisions benefiting the majority but alienating a percentage of the middle and upper classes, some of who had already fled to Miami along with the Somozas.

  In the meantime, the United States leadership, headed now by Reagan after defeating Carter in 1980, disliked the Sandinistas who were admittedly brash and not respectful enough of their powerful northern neighbor. Worse, if left unchecked, the Sandinistas’ idealistic rhetoric might very well inspire other little countries in the region to overthrow their dictatorships as well. And so when a group of the losers—who came to be identified as the Contras—appealed to the United States for money and support, they were rewarded with both. With bases mostly in Honduras, the Contras were surprisingly effective. Increasingly, the Sandinistas were forced to spend the bulk of their time and resources fighting yet another war, necessitating greater and greater sacrifices from the population.

  I was back on the couch and just beginning to read how various international brigades were forming to aid the Sandinistas when I heard the front door opening. Suddenly, I knew Vickie wouldn’t feel at all relieved that I’d decided to go to Nicaragua, that she’d be extremely upset instead.

  “Hi honey,” I said, covering my reading material with one of the pillows I’d been lying on.

  “Hey sweetie,” Vickie replied. “Anything happen today?” She crossed over to the couch and sat down next to me. She was dressed in a beige linen pantsuit that was wrinkled from a long day at work and then dinner with her friends. No matter how tired she was, she was always gorgeous, which mattered more to me than her. Vickie was a grown-up Girl Scout who valued less ephemeral things like integrity, truth, and kindness. So did I, although like most attorneys, the truth for me was much less static.

  “Not much,” I said.

  She shook her beautiful head. “You’re so full of shit, Rachel. I already know you’ve decided to take Maggie’s place on the brigade. Her friend told her sister who’s a nurse at the hospital. The nurse told Allison who, of course, told me.”

  I threw my hands up in a gesture of disgust. “I hate living in a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business.”

  “Go to hell!” And then she started to cry, which unnerved me more than any show of anger.

  Immediately, I put my arms around her and pulled her close to me. “Please don’t cry,” I murmured. “I’ve been such a mess since losing Emily’s trial. No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m ninety percent sure that quitting was the right thing to do, but parts of me don’t know it yet and they’re still freaking out. I’m really sorry, babe.”

  Vickie wiped her face with the edge of my shirt. “Why didn’t you consult with me first?”

  When a lawyer doesn’t have a good answer, she has to decide on the spot whether any answer is better than none. Vickie, however, put her fingers against my mouth. “We’ve been together nine years, Rachel. I thought we were partners.”

  “We are.”

  “You’re not acting like it.”

  I sighed. “I may be a rat,” I said, recalling President Roosevelt’s famous quote, “but I’m your rat.”

  Vickie must have understood what I was trying to say because she didn’t pull away. Or maybe she knew these were tricky times that called for tricky measures. Or maybe she just loved me and didn’t want to lose me.

  Lying in bed that night with the ceiling fan whirring overhead, Vickie asked me a hundred questions about the situation in Nicaragua. I told her as much as I knew.

  “And so where did the Contras come from?” she asked.

  “They were National Guardsmen who fled the country after the revolution. The CIA trains and funds them to attack the country in an attempt to destabilize the Sandinista government.”

  Vickie rolled on top of me and kissed me. “It sounds dangerous, Rachel. I’m scared you’ll get hurt.”

  I shook my head and held her against the length of my body. “I’ll be fine. The Contras aren’t supposed to kill any North Americans. It’s bad for publicity. And the Sandinistas won’t let us go anywhere that’s under active attack.”

  “Oh great.”

  “Hey, don’t worry. I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.” My God, I was a talking Hallmark card and I couldn’t stop.

  So Vickie kissed me hard and then we held on to each other as tightly as two people can in a world where strong swirling currents are always ripping things apart.

  PART II:

  UNSENT LETTERS FROM THE EARTHQUAKE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

  Chapter Eight

  A few days before I left Colorado, Maggie warned me that Managua would be hot. When the airplane hatch finally opened, I thought I would be ready, but if this was hot, then a ninety-five degree day in the Rockies was downright chilly. No, the word “hot” (three little letters, barely a syllable) was entirely inadequate to describe how it felt as I stood in line to exit the plane. It was almost six in the afternoon. Within seconds, I was sweating profusely and beginning to feeling trapped, as if I’d stepped into a steaming sauna and someone had locked the door behind me.

  As the line moved forward, I watched each passenger in front of me pause in breathless surprise before descending the portable metal staircase to the ground. The low white buildings in the distance looked too far away; we’d die of heat prostration before we got there. Halfway across the tarmac, I wondered whether lobsters really died or lost consciousness after being dropped into a pot of boiling water, or if people just hoped they did. This trip might have been a mistake—okay fine, it probably was—but it was too late now.

  For the past couple of weeks, I’d spent most of my time getting ready: booking last-minute flights through Dallas and El Salvador, buying what I hoped would be appropriate clothes and sandals, borrowing a duffel bag from Maggie, getting vaccinated against diseases I’d never heard of, reviewing my high school Spanish textbooks, and reading every article I could find about Nicaragua in back issues of The Nation. I was a lawyer; lawyers hate being unprepared.

  One of the things I hadn’t been able to do was meet the other members of the brigade who would be arriving together a few hours after me. Maggie, however, assured me they were all regular people (with differing levels of political sophistication) and that I would have no trouble relating to them. Over the past six months, there had been only three or four meetings, which a number of people had missed. Eventually, the organizers had assembled a packet of information and sent it to each participant. If I read that, Maggie said, I’d be up to speed.
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br />   On the flights from Dallas and El Salvador, I’d sat with a brigade from Seattle, most of them teachers who planned to spend the summer volunteering in the national literacy campaign. They all seemed kind and decent. In El Salvador, we picked up a group of male Cuban doctors who were a bit too flirtatious but still very nice. They’d been sent by Castro to help out in the rural areas where medical personnel were being targeted by the Contras. Mixed in with all us do-gooders were well-dressed Nicaraguans returning from the States, their children lugging huge stuffed animals and various souvenirs from Disneyland. The rowdy drinkers in first-class were all reporters who had obviously been to Nicaragua many times before; as the day wore on, they got louder and more outrageous, sounding just like old-time public defenders slugging shots of tequila at the annual public defender conference. Which was, until recently, how I’d always imagined I would end up.

  As soon as they’d heard my plans, everyone at the office, especially Ray and Donald, had tried to convince me to take a vacation instead of joining a brigade to Nicaragua. As I headed for what I hoped was an air-conditioned building, I considered the distinct possibility they’d all been right. But gorging myself on guacamole and chips and then snorkeling around the bay in Zihuatanejo chasing schools of brightly colored fish seemed so purposeless, which I suppose was the point, except I’d already attained that state and was hoping to find another.

  By the time I reached the doors to the nearest building, my clothes looked as if I’d worn them in the shower. The sudden air conditioning was almost as shocking as the heat. After a few minutes inside the terminal, I wondered how I’d ever force myself to leave again. Truth is, I’d have to tell my friends, I never made it past the airport; I spent the entire six weeks browsing through magazines and eating pretzels and Hershey bars from the snack machines. Very restful. Speaking of snack machines, however, I didn’t see any, just a long, slow-moving line to get through customs.