by Teresa Bruce
If only the golden light would linger on Wipeout a little longer. In better days, she bounded into lakes and oceans, swimming after rubber ducks and tennis balls. Now she checks to see if I am coming in with her. She hobbles out slowly, until the buoyancy of the cool water lifts her off her aching legs and the rhythm of the lake floats her gently back and forth. Gary takes a photo of her when she turns to see that we are still with her. She closes her eyes and sways in the water.
Her hips are so weak that Gary and I have to carry her up the hill to the casita, like a seventy-pound sack of potatoes. Shawn has made us a comfort-food dinner, macaroni and cheese, but there is no comforting Wipeout. Even a gentle rainstorm unnerves her to the point of biting a chair and breaking a tooth. I try everything I’ve learned from a lifetime of loving her, from the “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window” song to folding her soft ears in my fists and nuzzling her lumpy forehead. Nothing stops the quivering seizures of panic.
Susie offers me her cell phone. The number of a veterinarian who makes house calls is already on the screen, and I make the call I have been dreading. The groundskeepers, Tito and Chema, stop by, hats in hand.
“They say, if you want, they will prepare the earth,” Susie translates.
I can’t help feeling it is no accident that my journey with Wipeout is ending in Lake Atitlán. Her work with me is done. There is harmony and resilience in these waters—a strength that comforted me once is offering to do so again.
We are wealthy foreigners, and the groundskeepers barely know us. They have watched their country be torn apart by decades of war and poverty. They have every right to think I am overreacting, that my grief is somehow insensitive, given where it is playing out. Yet no one in this commercialized, contemplative, contradictory place ever tells me, “It’s only a dog,” ever offers anything but compassion and understanding. Even the German jeweler, who drops by the casita and finds me in tears, finds a way to comfort me.
“It’s a symbol of eternity—no beginning or end,” he says, placing my replacement wedding ring in the palm of my hand. “Loss is part of love, and life.”
We agree on a time, the next day at sunset, and I wonder if Wipeout will make it that long. She pants all through the night, but each time I wake her she refuses to drink. She is wobbly on her feet, disoriented and unable to remember where the door is located to go outside. I have to rest my hand on her back as we walk to the garden in the soft moonlight.
The next day feels like there isn’t air enough to inflate my collapsing lungs. We try taking Wipeout for a walk, but Gary, who can normally cover five or six miles without breaking a sweat, turns around after a few hundred yards. His muscles are aching; there is a ringing in his ears and a pounding behind his eyes.
Back at the casita he falls into a fitful slumber. By midday he has a fever of 103 degrees, and I have to lift both his head and Wipeout’s to give each of them food and water. When the vet comes to the casita, he gives Wipeout a quick examination.
“I know how hard this is for you,” he says, holding my hand. “But her passing will be peaceful and painless.”
Gary’s fever has drained the normal color from his skin and replaced it with sweaty blotches. He can barely walk; it’s as if his body is staggering with sorrow.
“I think somehow I’ve managed to bust all the bones in my ankles, knees, and elbows,” he groans.
“It’s probably dengue,” Shawn says. “The locals call it breakbone fever.”
Susie and Shawn walk ahead of us to the spot the groundskeepers have prepared on the steep hillside. A tall, sheltering tree will be Wipeout’s headstone. There are freshly cut flowers from the garden and scented candles flickering at the base of the tree. We are all crying, even the vet, but Wipeout is calm and ready. She is resting now where the thunder can’t torment her and the deep waters of Lake Atitlán are always at her feet.
Chapter Fifteen
THE SHAKEDOWN
My mother’s journal makes sense to me now. It is mechanical because she was. Taking out a pen and opening the little pink binder to a new page each night was a routine to follow. She wrote so that she could put each day without John John behind her. Pretty flowers, quaint cobblestone, he’s never coming back.
Neither is Wipeout. I know that losing a sixteen-year-old dog in no way equates to the tragic death of a three-year-old son, but her absence is so fresh and disorienting that I keep turning around, convinced I’ve heard the huffing sound she makes when she flops to the ground at my feet. Her smell lingers in the seat cushions, the carpet, and my clothes—still covered in strands of her long white hair. My grief is instinctual; every speed bump sends my left arm flinging over the back of the seat to stop her from flying forward. At night I still wake every three hours in case she needs to go outside.
When I can’t go back to sleep I turn on my laptop and write down every single thing I can remember, as if regurgitating details will keep her from disappearing. Whereas my mother minimized her words, I record pages and pages. But there is no structure or narrative; my thoughts are clumped into blunt bullet points.
• Found the church where dad’s steps were stolen thirty years ago. It’s the only church with a parking lot we could have camped in. The church looks the same but I don’t remember all these stalls selling candy. Dixie cups filled with meringue. I’m sure those weren’t there before. I would have eaten them until I puked.
I reread each entry before moving on to the next and find no comfort in the relentless, meticulous documentation. I want to wake up Gary so he can reassure me that this pettiness I see on the monitor, this ungrateful and ungraceful prose, wasn’t in me all along. Surely he wouldn’t have married me if it were.
• We’re always getting lost. You can’t trust Guatemalan directions. They all wave and say “todo derecho” but nothing is straight ahead. I want to scream with frustration.
The truth is that I am directionless without Wipeout. Without her I have lost not one discrete sense, like a person suddenly blinded; I have lost a degree of each of them. The gears in my heart and brain and muscles can’t find their proper grooves and move me forward anymore. She was a soft, patient reminder to slow down and appreciate the balance and the beauty. I will have to relearn the best parts of myself.
Shawn and Susie try to help. They will travel with us as far as Antigua, guiding us through villages along the winding route with spirited discourses on the differences in traje (costumes) and indigenous languages. It is like trying to distract two zombies. They sit cross-legged on the back bench seat, but they cannot fill the space where Wipeout would have been.
We drive in such a daze that Gary doesn’t see the traffic cop standing at an intersection of near-empty roads. He is holding a traffic sign painted green as if directing us through nonexistent road construction. As we approach, he flips the sign to the other side, fire-engine red. He fumbles for his whistle, almost dropping the sign in excitement.
“I think he wants something,” I tell Gary. “Better pull over.”
What he wants is to tell us that we have disobeyed him, have ignored the laws of Guatemala’s roads, and could possibly go to jail.
“And where, exactly, would we find a jail around here?” Gary wants me to ask. We have passed no building more official looking than a tiendita selling chicle chewing gum.
“Adelante, muy cerca,” the cop responds. “Somewhere ahead,” I translate for Gary, a place as imaginary as our infraction. The cop begins embellishing his outrage, an extemporaneous monologue that I can decipher only in bits and pieces. It is not right to ignore a police officer. Our truck is very large and could have killed someone.
Gary’s fingers are tapping the steering wheel as if he wishes it were the cop’s chest. I don’t know which seems less familiar: Gary’s temper or the effort it is taking him to hold it back. I have never known the first or seen the second. I have no idea how to diffuse the situation or return to the normal pattern of our relationship.
“This is j
ust machismo. We have to give him a way to save face,” I suggest. “I’ll try apologizing.”
The sign was very far away. Of course we want to obey the law. He is right to be vigilant. In the future we will stop even if the sign says go.
“Doscientos,” he insists. “Americano.” The fine is conveniently in dollars, two hundred of them. Or we can try explaining to a judge why we almost ran over an officer of the law.
“Fine,” Gary says. “Tell him to drive ahead of us and we’ll follow him to see the judge. If he even has a police car.”
But it is Friday afternoon, the cop counters. We will have to wait until Monday, behind bars. Unless we pay the fine to him, in person. He will make sure the judge gets it and our truck is not reported to Interpol.
Gary’s forehead is dotted with sweat and his entire face is flushed. I have no idea if he’s about to implode or if it is just residual dengue fever overheating the blood pounding through his temples. I reach for the wallet in the glove compartment, just to check. This is, after all, the country where my father was thrown in jail for refusing to pay a bribe, and I have no confidence I could rescue Gary from the same fate.
“What the hell are you doing?” Gary asks. “We’ll just call his bluff. Put that away.”
But before I can, three crisp twenty-dollar bills fall out on the bench seat, in plain view.
A deposit is a very good idea, the cop says. Maybe it will be too late today to report our violation after all. I lean over my sweaty, fuming husband and place the day’s entire travel budget, plus breakfast and lunch tomorrow, in his fleshy hand.
“We are never, ever going to do that again,” Gary says as he rolls up the window. We sit inches from each other but for the first time feel miles apart. “Unless you want to run out of money and hitchhike from here to Bolivia.”
JANUARY 23, 1974.
Antigua is a beautiful town. Teri’s sandals fixed free. Stayed under deserted gas station
Antigua is draped in fragrant bougainvillea, more inviting than any other town so far in Guatemala, but we drive right past its elegant cathedral and colonial zócalo and pull the camper up to a grungy gas station.
“I don’t know,” Gary says. “This looks pretty dodgy.”
“Or providential,” I counter. “We can start making up for that ‘deposit.’”
Except for a modern, walled-off resort hotel across the street, it could be the same deserted spot my parents found. Shawn and Susie don’t try to convince us to follow them to the youth hostel where they’ll be spending the night; even sympathetic and understanding angels need a break from despair.
So they aren’t with us the next morning to translate when someone raps on the door. If it were possible to pretend this elephant-sized camper is invisible, I’d curl up in the bed and hold my breath. The knocking is insistent; whoever this is has more endurance than we do.
I open the door and a rotund man with a handlebar mustache gallantly offers his hand to help me down, as if I were the visitor and not he. The audacity of it makes me giggle and I accept his chivalry. Gary jumps down right behind me, barely landing before the man grasps his hand in a vigorous, theatrical handshake. It’s only then that I see a woman hanging back in the camper’s shadows. It must be the fact that I’m half asleep and still mourning Wipeout, but she seems, well, furry.
“Me llamo Señor Jordan.” The man’s voice is resonant and deep, like he’s announcing his arrival rather than merely introducing himself. At least he’s speaking Spanish instead of K’iche’ or Tz’utujil; there’s a chance that even before I’ve ingested any caffeine I’ll be able to figure out what he’s selling. He hands me a red-and-white paper flyer with the headline “Jordan Bros. Circus—de Mexico.” Ah, that’s why he’s patting his chest. He must be the owner, or maybe the ringmaster.
“I think he’s inviting us to the greatest show on earth,” I whisper to Gary. “Or at least in Antigua.”
The freshly photocopied flyer shows illustrations of African lions, juggling clowns, and monkeys. Mr. Jordan points to a bullet-pointed list of attractions. The world’s smallest pony is easy to translate, especially when standing next to a mustachioed man squatting in a Cossack position, pretending to hold reins and gallop. I have no idea what “avestruces” means, but Gary guesses “ostriches” when Mr. Jordan tucks his hands under his armpits and stretches his head into an imaginary pile of sand.
When the pantomiming ends, he motions for the woman in the shadows to join us. She stands two heads shorter than me and is covered in swirling, black body hair. She flashes a gleaming smile, and the gap where her two front teeth should be is so perfectly spaced I could swear they were intentionally removed.
“Mi esposa,” he says with dramatic flair. “Bety la Fea.” It’s right there on the flyer: “Presenting… Betty the Ugly.”
I’m debating whether it would be more insulting to act like the moniker isn’t horribly demeaning or insist that his wife is merely hirsute when Mr. Jordan whips out a crocodile-skin wallet. It bulges with quetzal notes, pesos, and dollar bills and is securely attached to its owner’s belt by a heavy silver chain.
“Tengo tanto dinero,” Mr. Jordon proudly tells us. Then he points to the Avion. “¿Cuánto vale su casa rodante?”
We are barefoot, dogless, and dejected, and a complete stranger wants to buy the roof over our heads. My first instinct is to say yes. There’s enough money in this ringmaster’s wallet to buy two, one-way plane tickets to DC. Or to Gary’s parents in Wisconsin since we don’t actually have a house or jobs to return to.
This whole trip seems meaningless, more punishment than journey. I am searching for the camper that starred in the slide-show version of my childhood. All I am likely to find is a sad truth. I’ve already seen what happens when a camper echoes with absence. The blameless, beautiful Avion deserves more than the two empty people standing speechless next to it in a Guatemalan gas station.
“Don’t just stand there,” Gary says. “Tell him it’s not for sale.”
But instead, I ask Mr. Jordan and Betty the Ugly to come back again tomorrow morning. I have to think about it.
They drive off in a pickup overflowing with mattresses, plastic clown barrels, and empty cages, and the hair on Betty’s arm flutters in the wind as she waves good-bye. For the first time, we lock up the camper to explore a city on foot without Wipeout. Her leash hangs from a hook inside the door, but I leave her water bowl by the back wheels anyway, just in case some other thirsty dog wanders by.
The entire day turns into a freak show, and we stumble aimlessly from one tent to another. First there is the parade that blocks the main street, with marimba music blaring from loudspeakers atop a flatbed truck. Following behind it could be the possessed residents of a nursing home. It’s impossible to tell the ages of the dancers. Their faces are hidden under wrinkled rubber masks with stringy, silver hair and blacked-out teeth. Their synchronized steps seem to be some sort of deranged death march, the women staggering, unsteadily, as the men grope at overstuffed breasts and swaying hips. A boy in a Batman costume turns cartwheels and smokes a cigarette at the same time.
“The Jordan Bros. Circus has its work cut out to top this,” Gary says, and I know that he too is still thinking of the offer to buy our camper. I picture a giant mural painted on its aluminum side, our compact castle converted into a traveling billboard. Step right up, it would declare. Forget the Pan-American Highway and a homemade camper rotting somewhere in Bolivia. The show must go on.
We’re supposed to meet Shawn and Susie for lunch, and we wait for them in front of an Antiguan travel agency. The windows are plastered with colorful posters—carnival dancers in Rio and high-kicking Rockettes in New York City. It reminds me we’re still in the same time zone as Gary’s parents. If we sell the camper to the circus, Angie would have Wisconsin sweet corn, lake perch, and cherry tomatoes from her garden spread out on a gingham tablecloth, waiting for us.
Instead, we duck down a hallway between the travel agenc
y and youth hostel and into what looks like a tapestry-lined harem tent. An indigenous woman sits in the center of dozens of steaming baskets. She lifts each container’s woven cover for our inspection. Charcoal-grilled chicken parts in one. Stacks of soft corn tortillas in another. A cauldron of peppers and eggplants floating in fresh, cilantro-scented broth.
“Just point to what you want. You get four helpings for about a dollar,” Shawn tells us. “Not even Lonely Planet knows about this place.”
The only sound is the slurping of a half-dozen construction workers sitting on piles of wool rugs in almost complete darkness. The smells are intoxicating, the atmosphere as exotic as it is authentic. But the cramping in my stomach is so powerful that I’m afraid to sip even the soup.
Gary has convinced me to keep a food journal, like my mother did, to see if there’s a pattern that might be repeating itself. Each night I log everything that has passed through my lips. I have been so afraid of eating anything fibrous, fermented, or unfamiliar that except for the delights of Central American bakeries, called panaderías, both lists could be straight out of a 1950s Midwestern garage-sale cookbook.
FIRST TRIP: Breakfast: pineapple bread
NOW: Breakfast: orange-chocolate bread
FIRST TRIP: Lunch: bananas, leftover rice w/can soup
NOW: Lunch: olives, pickles, peanuts, beer
FIRST TRIP: Dinner: spaghetti, bread, pop
NOW: Dinner: canned veggies, spaghetti
I swallow my last Imodium A-D capsule, and we head to a pharmacy for something stronger. I don’t even attempt to read the fine print on the box of tablets I’m handed. A list of side effects will not tell me how to stop the hemorrhaging of my resolve. My body is as broken as my heart. The Jordan Bros. Circus offer could be a sign: get out before it gets worse.