After the Hurricane(13)
When Daniel was still there they had plans, but his life mirrored hers; his work as a tax accountant was busy, demanding, and he was not the kind of person to invest himself in hobbies, to have large groups of friends, to deviate from the path of most stability. When Elena met him, she wondered if he was boring, for she could not really tell, anymore, what bored and what excited her. There was nothing about Daniel that did not fit neatly into her life. Nothing disruptive. Friends of hers talk about the euphoria of new relationships, how they demand all your time, all your energy, and you are thrilled to give it, so intoxicated are you with this new person, the scent of new skin. Elena has never felt this.
Before Daniel were other men like Daniel, men whose lives ran parallel to hers, men who seemed like they were on the same route that she was, toward good jobs, stable lives, practical existences. She lived in fear that they would leave her, and tried to ask for as little as possible from them so they would have no excuse to do so. When they began to push for more, try to understand her better, she gave them crumbs, whatever she could spare, and watched their interest turn to pity, to sadness for her, watched their shoulders sag under the weight of how very much she needed, how desperately she longed to be loved, to not be left behind. Daniel had lasted longer than any of the others, and it had come as a complete surprise to Elena that she had been the one to pull away. She did the leaving.
Elena has always thought, at the back of her brain, in her secret heart of hearts, that she does not do well at forming deep connections because of other people, that the people she has met were not the right people for her. But now, as she stares out the window looking at graffiti and Burger King ads and squat colorful buildings on the road to San Juan in the dying light as the sun sets, she wonders if it is her. If there is something about her that makes people leave her, something she cannot control. If she is simply a person worth leaving. A person incapable of drawing others close, in getting them to change, to stay. After all, this is certainly the case with her father, and she is his child. What chance does she have with anyone else?
Some of the streets are getting dark, but most, the highway she is on, are lit, streetlights shining, their orange tinge dull against the bright ball of fire dipping into the sea. She sees debris, downed palm fronds, but those must be more recent than the hurricane, it’s been months. She knows that there are overturned trees and destroyed roofs all over the island, but here, it all looks the way it looked before to her, other than a few new restaurants here and there. She realizes that she was expecting a wasteland, a postapocalyptic vision. She expected to see what she has seen on the news, roads torn asunder, downed buildings and power lines, crying children. The knowledge that they are out there, and that she is completely separate from them, that the road from the airport to San Juan has no evidence of what has occurred, is strange to her, wrong. Chilling.
They pass Condado, and this, at least, looks different. No destruction, but some of the hotels are completely dark, they haven’t reopened yet. The curved lagoon with its sleek hotels and resorts is the place many people stay when they come to San Juan, she knows. She has met people whose entire experience of Puerto Rico begins and ends with a hotel in this area of Santurce, be it the historic Vanderbilt or the newer, more modern Marriott. When she was a little girl, her mother would insist that they take her father’s family out for dinner during their trips, and it would usually be a place in Condado, which made her mother sigh with relief, at this return to civilization, to prim places with cloth napkins and all-English menus, while her grandfather would scoff at the prices and order too many Heinekens.
The road curves and they zoom past Escambrón beach, where she once saw a family carry a whole sofa out of their car onto the beach, blasting reggaeton the entire time, and then a coal grill, a crib for their squalling baby, and a cooler bigger than Elena was at the time. They pass El Hamburger, another of San Juan’s top-rated dining establishments, shuttered now but, Elena is sure, hardly defeated by the storm. She sees the sea on the other side of the car, framed by palms bent like old men, but unbroken. They pass the capitol building, the stone statue of San Juan Bautista, his finger wagging disapprovingly at Elena, who, as she has since she was young, waves in return, and then hang a left after the San Cristóbal fort, a hulking structure that has shaken off this and hundreds of other hurricanes.
The steep hill of Calle Norzagaray opens up to another view of the ocean, churning, a blackening sea as the sun dips and dips. Then, suddenly, Elena blinks and they are there, in front of the house that her mother had been so excited to have, now so eager to give away. It is a bright shade of violet, or at least, it was when Rosalind finished renovating it. Now it has cracked, faded, her father has not maintained it. Violet was Rosalind’s choice, which had been strange to Elena, who had never seen her mother in that shade, never heard her remark upon liking it. Perhaps, though, Rosalind had known the whole time that this would never be hers, and painted it something she could walk away from easily. Perhaps she was always planning on giving her part of the house to Santiago, giving him something he can pass on to Elena, the way she used to buy him birthday gifts to give to her, every year. Elena does not know, has never asked. There is so much they have never spoken about in their family, so much Elena has not been able to ask, and now she does not know how to start. Why has her mother, at least, never told her anything? Why have they both left her alone in the dark? She swallows her resentment as she always does, like cough syrup. Like vodka.