by Amy Stabler
I haven't done much sleeping in Mazatlan. Bold memories pull me from dreams like crashing airplanes. I sit up and reach for him. The mattress is hard and flat next to me. I remember I am alone again. I have done this every night of my vacation. My week of "getting away." And I haven't gotten very far.Alan worked with retarded adults. It was to be the first marriage for both of us. We were going to buy a house in Benicia where we could see the sun set on the Carquinez Bridge from our doorstep. We were planning to take a six month leave of absence to travel India and Nepal. Then there were train brakes that didn't work. A moment of decision. A moment forever altering the course of life.
In my mind, I see them running down the tracks. Alan chases Georgie, who doesn't understand the horn and noise. Alan catches Georgie and pulls his off the tracks, but in his fear Georgie breaks free and runs onto the tracks. Alan runs after him. I want them to go back. I want the tape reversed. I want them off the tracks. I wish I could stop them. I try to stop them. But I wasn't there.
"Alan thought he had a thousand and one lives," his sister Mary once said to me, "and he only had a thousand."
* * * So I have come to Matzatlan. The guide book said, "Mazatlan resembles a tropical hospital sun ward." It also said Mazatlan was the first North American city to be bombed from the air.
A young man in creased trousers greets me at the airport, offering a free cab ride if I would have breakfast at his hotel. I will do anything for friendliness and charity, knowing there is no such thing as a 'free' meal. I will do anything to be around people who don't know what's happened. He gives me a receipt to sign and throws my bags into the back of a bruised Pinto station wagon. Rocks snap like gunshots in the wind as a different man presses the gas pedal to the floor . The car swerves out onto the highway heading north, towards the sea.
The window handles have been broken off long ago. I hold my flying hair away from my face with one hand while I grip onto the seatback with the other. The wind catches in the armholes of my shirt and feels like a warm apparition, tickling the skin of my chest and stomach. We whip past miles and miles of cakey-brown dirt and weeds. The sight is broken up by villages of corrogated tin roofs; groups of school children in uniforms walking home for lunch and a cement block penitentiary decorated with ribbons of barbed wire. The air, dusty and hot , sticks in my mouth.
What do I know? I am alone again. I will never be able to tell Alan any of this. Or see his eyebrow lift the way it did when he was intrigued.
* * * I have made friends here at Hotel Bonita. Every morning I rise and sit in a chaise lounge with front row view of the ocean. I watch children play and dance in the water. Lenora and Roberto have their own baby girl, Iliana, who plays a game of handing me her bottle and taking it back. I delight in this tiny reminder of possibility. Other than that, I lie back, concentrating on the way the sun feels on my skin. At times, the small voice of Eloise rings in my ears. I remember the 27 year old woman with the mental agility of a child saying, "I heard god crying."
* * * Parasailing. We have been watching them for days. Huge yellow, red, blue and purple striped parachutes attached to harnesses, pulled by a speed boats along the shore, like a child's crayon drawing in the sky. They send customers up for 45 pesos. Lenora says it will be good for me and Roberto goes down to the water to enlist the ringleader on my behalf.
I have to wait, they say. So I find myself dozing in the sun, dreaming of being hugged by a ghost.. Then a shadow falls across my face and I open my eyes. Two men are on the beach holding a harness and waving, like brown-skinned angels beckoning me into heaven. I get up, cross over the embankment and step in. They lace up the life jacket and show me how to yank the strap down when the man in magenta shorts raises his flag. The boat pulls out and the wind lifts the parachute behind me. I rise into the enticing sky, wondering if time really does stand still.
