| —Recordando a Tim
y a Danny.
Karen had been mulling it over in her mind for a while and
finally figured out a polite way to phrase it: "So,
when do I get to meet Miguelito's lovely mother?"
His father nudged him, and Miguelito, clearly delighted,
in return offered what was obviously a much-practiced and
beloved ritual: he tipped an imaginary hat toward her momentarily
and said in a parody of a deep, gruff voice: "It's just us
cowboys here, ma'am!" And then he took himself away
from them, spinning in circles on the grass, giggling, making
himself dizzy, until he fell down, suddenly serious, examining
a single green growing blade he found propitiously in front
of his nose.
"Miguelito!" his father called. "Bring the guest some fresh
starfruit juice, will you?" Turning to Karen, he explained
proudly, "Fresh carambola juice! Bet you don't do that
in New York—sit down in the middle of the day, relaxing
in a giant flowerscape, admiring the hummers and drinking
fresh-squeezed starfruit juice!"
Karen nodded politely and followed his wide-armed gesture.
She'd inquired this morning of her B&B proprietor about
things to do in the area. The woman had suggested this place,
Hummer World, said the resident gringo gave very
inexpensive tours. He'd planted flowering native species to
draw the many hummingbirds Costa Rica was famous for. There
was no phone number. Karen had asked the proprietor, but what
if he's not in? Oh, he's always in, was the answer.
"But don't you ever get lonely, way out here?" asked Karen.
"Don't you ever miss the—I don't know, the energy
of Manhattan?"
"Are you kidding? When I first came to Costa Rica, I instantly
knew I wanted to find a place to buy. It was just a matter
of time, and discipline, till I'd saved up enough—and
it took way too long—to sell my apartment and come back
here and settle. I'll never leave. What more could anyone
want? We have just enough room to live and sleep, no distinction
between indoors and out—and crickets sure make better
lullabies than car alarms!—and fresh air and fruit just
hanging off the trees, waiting to be plucked. Are you kidding?
Forget Manhattan, forget Hawaii even—this is
the real paradise."
Karen looked down at the hand-woven cane chair she was seated
on, at the tropical-wood floor beneath her feet, and out at
the garden area, thrumming with bird and insect life. Like
the last six days she'd been in Costa Rica, it was hot and
humid but just shy of unbearable. "I suppose you're right."
Miguelito returned, triumphant, very carefully balancing
in his young hands a bamboo tray with four small glasses of
bright yellow juice. "I did it, papá! I didn't
spill a drop! I did it just like we practiced!"
Karen eyed the fourth glass curiously. Would there be another
guest joining them; or was it possibly designated for a servant,
currently discreetly out of sight?
Miguelito, still with infinite care, solemnly handed Karen
a glass, then put one on the hand-hewn mesita next
to his father's chair. He grabbed one of the remaining glasses
with both hands and downed it, noisily, in one gulp. Karen
waited for his father to scold him for his manners, but Saul
only laughed and put his arm around his son, squeezing hard.
"I love you, mi hijo. You know that, right?" Saul's
Spanish carried a heavy American accent; his son spoke unencumbered
in both languages.
Miguelito squirmed away and placed the remaining glass very
precisely on the deck railing, then ran off again, this time
to dissect a papery palm frond that had aged and fallen. Neither
father nor son appeared to find the presence of a fourth glass
of juice noteworthy, so Karen refrained from being nosy. Perhaps
it was extra, for whomever wanted it? A dark, green-throated
hummer suddenly hung in the air above the glass, debating,
then, before she could even focus properly on it, was gone.
Karen took a tentative sip of the almost neon liquid in her
own glass.
"Karen, just let me tell you"—boomed Saul—"and
then we'll start the history part of the tour…"
Karen glanced surreptitiously at her watch; she'd already
been here three hours, and she'd assumed that this would be
a quick, half-hour hustle-the-tourists-in-and-out-as-quickly-as-possible
kind of thing. Not that she'd seen any other tourists. She
was going to have to leave soon to reach her B&B's dinner
hour on time. And he still hadn't gotten to the "history part"?
At this rate she'd be stuck here all night.
"Can you imagine?" he said. "I haven't had to deal with the
traffic of more than a two-lane road for seven years now—since
Miguelito was born." His eyes became moist and tender, a small,
private smile appearing—as happened, she'd begun noticing,
nearly every time he referred to or gazed upon his son. "Every
day we get up at dawn—no alarm clocks needed!, bathe,
pick our breakfast off our own trees, take a walk around the
property to make sure everything's in order. We examine all
the different species, and I explain them to Miguelito, who's
getting so good—" Miguelito was back, ducking under
his father's beefy arm and staring curiously at Karen's footwear,
new hiking boots she'd bought specifically for this trip (and
her feet were hot, sweaty, and uncomfortable every minute
of the day; when she got home she was going to throw them
out with a vengeance).
"—he'll be ready to do all the tours himself soon,
won't you, cariño?" Saul planted a loud, wet
kiss on the boy's cheek. "I tutor Miguelito for exactly four
hours, as specified by Tico law—and what a student he
is!—and then we prepare dinner together, always something
simple, mostly rice and beans, you know, the casado.
We go to bed early, to the songs of the peepers. Or whatever
they're called around here. What could be better than this
life, I ask you?"
He tousled his son's light-brown hair and looked at Karen,
seemingly waiting for an answer. Karen just smiled, shook
her head slightly. "Sounds wonderful," she lied. Karen knew
she would go insane if she lived here. She wouldn't know what
to do with herself without the internet, without CNN, without
so much as a cell phone.
About two hours ago, Miguelito, acting as Tourmaster (his
father had deemed him ready to do it alone) had stopped her
and pointed upwards, into what was, to Karen's skyscraper-accustomed
eyes, an impenetrable green mass high overhead, and announced,
with great ceremony, "An' that's the perfume tree."
She'd tried to get more information out of him, but for whatever
reason, none was forthcoming. She'd taken a few tentative
sniffs of the air, eliciting peals of laughter from Miguelito,
who'd whispered, incomprehensibly, to nobody, for all the
world as if performing an aside in a play, "Silly lady—isn't
she a señorita bobita, Josefina? Quién
no sabe que el perfume tree doesn't start till la
tarde!" Karen had stared at Miguelito, wondering if there
was something wrong with him, and why his father would allow
him to give the tours, if that was the case. But then all
kids talked to themselves—or at least to imaginary friends,
right? Karen wouldn't know. No one she knew had chosen to
have children. In any case, she decided not to try to smell
the perfume tree anymore.
Orange-throated hummingbirds, a short white stripe bisecting
the sides of their black temples, had buzzed like bees. A
few were painted with iridescent turquoise caps and a lilac
throat. Karen had never seen a live hummingbird in her entire
life, and there all around them, accompanying the two on their
flower tour, was a seemingly infinite variety. Miguel named
several of them in a happy shout—Violet-Crowned Woodnymph!
Snowcap! Volcano!—until his attention was distracted,
and Karen could only marvel at the tiny flying gems in ignorance.
Back at the house, she'd asked Saul about the "perfume tree."
He stated proudly that Chanel No.5 was made from it, that
it was called ylang-ylang and put out a beautiful scent every
evening. Not during the day, hence the reason the boy had
laughed at her. "I know every tree, every bush, every vine
on this property. I walk it every day, pausing to speak at
length with each one of my plants, as they deserve."
The starfruit juice she drank now turned out to be tart and
delicious, with a thick grainy residue of sugar undissolved
at the bottom of the glass. It was true—she'd never
tasted anything like that back home. Karen couldn't help but
reach for the extra glass, with a hopeful smile. "May I?"
Miguelito was suddenly there like an angry lion, shouting,
"No! No! Papá, no le dejes!"
"Sorry," Saul apologized to Karen while smiling, unconcerned,
at his son, "guess that one's not available."
Karen was mystified. Were they both mental cases?
She was afraid to ask why it was unavailable.
"So," said Saul, and finished his own juice, obviously savoring
the slow wet ooze of sugar from the bottom. He smacked his
lips and settled back in his bear-size rattan chair, which
well accommodated his large, heavy frame. He wasn't fat but
just big and generous-looking, like…a giant teddy bear,
she thought, though it was a cliché that had surely
been used to describe him before. "Now I'll tell you the history
of this place—or, what I call The Story of Miguelito."
The boy smiled hugely, obviously recognizing his father's
words.
"Come to Daddy, you adorable child." Miguelito climbed onto
Saul's lap, though he was really too old, thought Karen, for
such a childish gesture.
Pondering the forbidden full glass of juice, Karen recalled
the other oddity about the boy during the tour. Miguelito
had forced her to walk about three feet away from him, and
only on one side of him—even when it meant she had difficulty
seeing the items he was lackadaisically and seemingly randomly
pointing out. When she asked if she could walk on his other
side, he'd answered that, no, that was where la Nancy
was, claro; 'cause she liked to go on the tours,
too. Karen had dismissed it as more of that usual stuff she
knew about children from novels and movies.
"So—The Story of Miguelito. Which is really
the story of my life, too, because that's when my reason for
living truly began," said Saul. Miguelito was beaming. "I'd
always known I wanted a child someday, but I never felt ready…"
"Mm-hm," said Karen, glancing again at her watch.
"And when I moved here, I could sense that everything was
finally going the way it was meant to, that I'd found my place
in life. Now sit tight, because here comes the best, most
amazing—" He tickled his son in the ribs and Miguelito
squealed happily. "—part of la historia. Right,
Migue?"
"Sí, papá!"
"That knowledge, that surety, that I'd have a child
of my own someday—I don't know where it came from, but
I call that the 'Conception' of Miguel, Part One." Saul chuckled.
"So the very day that I began building our house here…"
Karen admired the small, octagonal wooden residence, nodded.
The structure was beautiful and austere; the man clearly had
talent.
"Um, sorry—do you mind if I use the bathroom?" Karen
put in quickly.
Saul waved his arm regally, as if granting Karen license
to far grander deeds.
The two had showed her around the house when she'd first
showed up for the "hummer tour," pointing out stark living
quarters, almost Japanese in their spareness, their compactness.
Inside the surprisingly spacious bathroom, Karen now eagerly
crossed the uneven stone floor to have a look at the exuberant,
exotic flower arrangement on the far counter that would fetch
two or three hundred dollars in New York but here grew almost
rampantly: amongst some large tropical leaves hung a pendant,
fuzzy, enormous heliconia bloom, resembling a monkey's tail.
The sudden thought that it had to have been Saul, arranging
fresh flowers—albeit bizarre ones—all alone…the
image gave her a pang.
And then, almost within reach of the vase, she tripped over
a paving stone that was perhaps an inch higher than its neighbors—and
actually fell down. She got up as quickly as if there'd
been a gun to her head, face flaming with embarrassment and
knee already bleeding. Every muscle tensed, Karen stood perfectly
still for half a minute, praying that Saul and Miguel hadn't
heard, from the porch, the thud of her body, the thwack
of her open palms on the floor.
But no one called out, asking what happened and was she all
right, so Karen hastily used the toilet, then washed out her
wound and the tiny pebbles from her scratched, bruised hands.
The soap was amazing—striped in colors of tangerine
and lime, and equally fragrant—and, like the flower
arrangement, not something she would've expected from an apparently
single man. Karen fervently hoped they wouldn't notice that
she suddenly had injuries where there were none just a couple
of minutes ago. Fortunately, father and son were involved
in a conversation about shampoo gingers and barely glanced
at her as she sat back down across from them, crossing her
legs in such a way as to hide the evidence of her mishap,
even though doing so made her wince with pain.
"So, where were we?" Saul asked Karen cheerfully.
"Um—that you'd started building your house?" Karen
realized she'd have to stay, now, at least long enough to
be sure the bleeding had stopped, which she could feel, stinging,
mixing with sweat underneath her top leg. Even if they didn't
notice a small scrape, they'd surely notice a stream of crimson
blood running down her shin.
"Right! So, there I was, building my house with my own two
hands—I was an architect at one time, in my former
life."
Miguelito blurted, "Tell about me, papá!
Time to tell about me!"
"Right you are, hijo mío. So here's where
you come into the story: a woman arrived to deliver
nails and some other tools…and that's how mi Migue
here came into being!"
The boy laughed, proudly. "Yeah! That's how I came
into being!"
"Eso es, my one and only." Saul took the boy's small
hand in his own and lifted it, pressing it to his cheek.
"Ayyyy! You're all scratchy, papá!"
Miguelito giggled and escaped from his father, ducking behind
Saul's chair and then beginning to march in place while humming
something Karen didn't recognize.
Saul had certainly left out a lot of essential information
from the How Miguel Came Into Being account, thought Karen.
But the good thing was, it had surely cut the story down considerably.
Sitting so long now with Saul's eccentricities felt like a
non-dangerous punishment, like when she'd once been forced
to "sit with her insecurities" for an hour in a meditation
class.
Suddenly, the rumbling of an engine. The child whooped with
joy and ran from the porch, shouting over his shoulder. "El
frutero, papá, el frutero!" A beat-up, filthy
white pickup with handmade, splintering wooden rails along
the back appeared in the long driveway, where Miguelito was
already awaiting to receive it. Would it be unforgivable if
Karen scurried now while she could, took advantage of this
distraction? Hadn't she been more than a good guest?
"Excuse me for the interruption of our history," said Saul.
"This is the fruit-and-vegetable man. He only comes once a
week—sometimes not even that—so we really do need
to do our shopping right now. This is how we shop around here,
Karen. No grocery lines for us!" He stood up.
Karen was relieved. "Oh no, it's fine, I can go, if you…"
she tried, but Saul was vehement.
"We're not done with the history!" He walked down the porch
stairs and gestured for her to follow him. Sighing, she did.
"Hola!" shouted Saul toward the truck. "Bienvenida!"
he called, his grammar exuberant if incorrect. The seller
was a short, thin, bowlegged man with long hair tied back
in a ponytail, already unloading creased, much-used cardboard
boxes from the back of his vehicle. He stacked them on the
stone countertops in Saul and Miguelito's "kitchen," a tiny
open-air gazebo about twenty paces from the house. "Qué
tenen para nos?" asked Saul.
The seller began removing from his boxes handfuls of potatoes,
papayas, and some kind of green vegetable that Karen didn't
recognize.
"Tenen mango?" asked Saul. The seller explained,
politely, in laconic native Spanish, that there were no mangoes
available right now. Saul was clearly disappointed. "Because
I specifically asked for mangoes," Saul commented to Karen,
who was hanging back, not wanting to intrude in this domestic
scene. She was feeling very uncomfortable—she really
should leave. But how to make a departure while Saul was painstakingly
counting out colones?
Finally, the man got back in his truck, and, with a wave,
began backing the vehicle back up the driveway. As he rumbled
off, Saul commented to Karen, "Shoot. I was really
wanting those mangoes." She nodded, unsure what response was
called for. Was she supposed to offer to go get some for him
from the nearest shop, wherever that might be? Or was it not
mango season, or did they just not have any mango trees on
their property? But she didn't ask, reluctant to get Saul
started on a whole new topic, about which he'd probably happily
expound for hours, when he still hadn't even finished the
current one.
"I should…" she began again.
"No, no, no! I insist on finishing the story! The
history really is the best part of the tour, trust
me."
"Okay," she agreed reluctantly. Was she going to miss her
already-paid-for dinner tonight? Why not just go, and screw
the story? But she found that she couldn't make herself do
it. She dragged herself back to her chair, which was starting
to feel more familiar than her own furniture in her apartment
back home.
"So anyway," continued Saul, "there he was, in my arms—the
person I'd waited all my life for. My newborn baby boy. I
swore at that moment that I'd always love him like all parents
should love their children, but rarely do—though
I'll never understand why. Miguelito has been my pride and
joy since day one. No, even before that—even while he
was in his mother's womb. Even when he was just an idea."
Miguelito came running back to the deck, munching on something
that Karen thought might be a persimmon.
"Mm-hm," she said again. "That's beautiful, really." The
story must be over now; if she drove fast (though that was
treacherous on these pothole-infested roads) she might still
make the tail end of the meal hour. Maybe nab a flan or sorbet,
even if the main dish was over with. And then she needed to
borrow the proprietor's phone at her B&B and confirm her
reservation for tomorrow, and then pack, and…
Miguelito did a sudden handstand—quite a good one—while
chanting, "Soy yo, soy yo, soy yo…"
Saul smiled indulgently. "Isn't he amazing?"
Karen nodded.
Miguelito flipped upright again and began doing jumping-jacks.
"Y ahora papá," he said between exaggerated
gasps and gulps of air, "you have to tell about mi hermanita."
Karen was pretty sure she knew that word. "Miguelito has
a little sister?" she asked, partly out of politeness and
partly from real curiosity. Did the girl live with the mother,
wherever that might be?
"Migue should've had a little sister. His mother
and I were ecstatic—you can't imagine—when
we found out she was pregnant again, and carrying Miguelito's
sister. But then, our greatest tragedy: Marisol lost the baby.
It was totally unexpected. She'd been at six months already,
and we were all happily awaiting the new addition to our little
family, weren't we, sweet one?" He pretend-boxed Miguelito's
cheek, who laughed and made as if he'd been hit so hard that
his head rocked on his neck.
"But we realized later, that must be what God wanted. Or
else how to explain such love being wasted?" Saul had tears
in his eyes. "No. Impossible. But I felt especially bad for
Migue, who'd been so excited about the arrival of his sister."
"I'm so sorry," said Karen. "When did this happen?"
"Thank you. It was two years ago. But it just means I love
my son even more—you know that, don't you, Miguelito?
Do you feel loved enough?"
The child giggled and ran off, chasing an indigo hummingbird
as it zipped from bush to bush. Saul watched him fondly, smiling
with half his mouth.
"Was your wife—er, Miguelito's mother—all right?"
"Yes, yes, she was fine, thank God. But, understandably,
she didn't want to try for another child."
"Yes, of course," said Karen, who'd had no experience of
such consuming sentiments.
"So it's just us and the colibríes, now,"
said Saul softly, his arm raised, index finger following the
dark-blue hummingbird's trajectory. "But I really couldn't
ask for anything more. I'm so blessed already."
"Yes…I'm sorry," Karen finally managed to say. "I really
do have to go." She got up, stumbling slightly due to lack
of circulation from sitting so long. Her knee had stopped
bleeding and begun forming a gooey scab.
Karen thanked them both for their hospitality and the tour.
"It was amazing," she told him, and then couldn't decide whether
or not she was telling the truth. She held out her hand, but
Saul waved away her formality and bestowed upon her a hug
so tight it made her feel she was drowning. Miguelito, from
the yard, waved bye-bye at her the way a baby does, opening
and closing his hand repeatedly like a pulsing starfish.
She left through the sprouting-posts living gate by which
she'd entered—my god, how many hours ago? She couldn't
even remember anymore how to work the wire latch.
Suddenly Karen heard, behind her, lightweight bare feet running,
easily navigating the matted, tangled cloud-forest floor that
she kept tripping on. Before she could turn around, she felt
a small, soft hand in hers, and looked down to see Miguelito
smiling up at her. He began walking with her toward her rental
car. The red automobile looked shocking and somehow fake amid
so many shades of green. She had to blink to get it into focus.
"Sabe? It's okay, lady," said Miguelito, confidently
swinging her arm with his perfect one, "…porque
María Carmen's decided she likes you."
Karen was surprised to feel just how much warmth that ignited
in her. She winked at the boy—probably her first wink
ever. "I thought your sister's name was Nancy. Or Josefina,"
she teased.
Miguelito shrugged and began skipping. He swung their clasped
hands so exuberantly that Karen could feel it all the way
up to her shoulder, a release like a massage. She held her
breath and waited for the moment that the boy would begin
to fly.
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