“Of course.”
“Cool.” He turns back to the television, The Love Squad dubbed in Spanish. From the words I can make out, it seems two brothers are fighting over the same woman. “You ever catch this show?” he says as I’m walking out the door. “It’s goddamn great TV.”
I’m trying not to feel disheartened that the competition is more than three months away. In three months a child could starve or suffer terrible abuse. In three months a child could die. In three months, anything could happen.
66
I CATCH AN afternoon bus back to Hermosa. Watching the hills roll by—the coffee plantations and cinder-block homes, an occasional horse, scattered shacks—I feel a gnawing sense of defeat. Back in Hermosa, I drop my stuff off at the cabin and head over to Sami’s bar.
“No luck, huh?” she says.
“How can you tell?”
“You don’t exactly have a poker face. What next?”
“I’ll spend a couple of nights here, then hit those other towns Dwight told me about. If all else fails, I’ll head back to Boca Barranca in June for the contest.”
“You’ll find her,” Sami says, but there’s no conviction in her voice. She can’t meet my eyes when she says it, can’t back up her reassuring remarks with any kind of reason. I know she’s the kind of person who just tells you what you want to hear. I can imagine her on the phone with her boyfriend in Texas, year after year, telling him she’ll be back to the States in a jiffy. Telling him she loves him, she misses him, it’s no fun here without him.
I pay another month in advance for the cabin in Hermosa, and from there I take day and weekend trips all along the Pacific coast, with its long, brilliant beaches and occasional upscale hotels, hidden coves and sleepy surfing villages, palm groves and paddy fields. I ask questions, thrust my card into the hand of anyone who will take it. Sometimes I ask about the board, and sometimes I describe the man from Ocean Beach. “Medium height,” I say. “He’s got this tattoo of a wave on his chest. Drives a yellow van. Possibly traveling with a blonde woman a few years his senior.”
My story shifts to suit the person I’m talking to. Sometimes the guy’s my long-lost brother who has fallen out of touch with the family. Sometimes he’s my ex, and I broke his heart, and I’ve realized I can’t live without him. The stories get more outlandish depending on how much I’ve had to drink, or how little I’ve been able to sleep. There’s the story about how my mother needs a kidney transplant, and he’s the only match. And the story about how I owe him money, and I just came into an inheritance, and I want to get my accounts in order. The one about how I found the Lord, I’m apologizing to everyone I ever wronged in a serious way, and he’s number five on my list. There are stories about the board, too: it’s my sick brother’s dying wish to have one. I work for a big movie production company in L.A. and we’re doing a groundbreaking documentary, a sort of Endless Summer for the new millennium.
I’m getting good at lying. I can look anyone in the eyes and tell them any story. Yet, my lies amount to nothing. Occasionally, someone will say they’ve seen a Rossbottom board, but the details never add up with the couple I’m looking for. It was always a long time ago, or in some other country, or the board was seen by a friend of a friend. Among the rumors, I find no real leads, and I push the thought out of my mind that this trip was a stupid move, just a lengthy diversion leading nowhere. I can’t allow myself to believe this, can’t accept that I will go home without Emma. Everything depends on my finding her.
Once, near the town of Puerto Coyote, stopping to pee along an empty trail, I’m startled by a loud rustling in the trees. I look up to see a pair of toucans, their comical yellow beaks streaked with brilliant orange, the tips stained blood red. These magnificent rare birds, which once would have sent me into photographic ecstasy, mean little to me now. Just birds in a tree on a trail leading into the woods.
In Tortuguero, I rise early with the roosters. They’re ubiquitous in this country, a nationwide alarm clock. I make my way along the rocky beach and watch the giant sea turtles, like large brown remnants of shipwrecks, moving slowly just below the ocean’s surface. In the forest behind the beach, the trees drip with snakes and howler monkeys. There is an unsettling, dangerous beauty in this part of the country, the kind of place where a person might simply disappear. Here, I am struck by the impossibility of my mission. Even as my body regains strength, I worry that my mind may be slipping further away.
I think of Jake back in San Francisco, teaching his classes and eating dinner alone, keeping the door to Emma’s bedroom shut. I wonder if he ever thinks of me, or if the effort not to think of Emma takes every bit of his energy, every ounce of his fight. I wonder if, every now and then, he remembers what it was like to love me, to be on the verge of marriage. Does he ever roll over in bed, expecting to find me there, and wake with a start when he realizes that I’m gone?
One thing I’ve always admired about Jake is his resolve; after making a decision, he rarely wavers. Now, though, his resolve works against me. Here is what I know: at this point, there is not a thing in the world I could do to make him want me back. We crossed that line when I left San Francisco.
No, I tell myself. Maybe there is one thing, one impossible thing: I could bring Emma back to him.
I keep coming back to that moment on the beach. I keep coming back to the panic, the slow unfolding of fear. One moment she is there. The next, she is not. In between these two realities—her presence and her absence—there is a thing, a dead seal pup on the beach. Its still, spotted body, its blank, staring eyes.
I have a dream, some nights, in which I lay my hands on the seal pup and will it to come to life. Seconds pass in which nothing happens, and then a shudder runs through its cold body. The seal begins to breathe; its eyes open and focus on me. In this dream I turn from the blinking seal to see Emma, just a few yards down the beach, walking toward me, holding a bucket of sand dollars. In this dream, she never left. I turn away from the living seal and see her there, and I think, What a terrible night it’s been. In the dream, I am so relieved I voice my elation aloud: Oh, it never even happened. Emma sets the pail on the sand before me, and we begin to examine the sand dollars, one by one.
67
FROM TORTUGUERO, I return to Hermosa. Sami has no news for me. She’s been asking about the board, to no avail. “Your best bet is still probably Toes on the Nose,” she says. “In the meantime, you should check out the Caribbean side.”
“Dwight says there’s not much surfing there this time of year.”
“True, but most tourists go to Limón at some point or another. It’s really popular with Americans. Couldn’t hurt to check it out.”
The next day, I leave town again. The trip to Limón takes seven hours. The bus, which reeks of sweat and onions, comes to an abrupt halt every ten minutes or so. The driver has the radio turned up high, and passengers have to shout to be heard. I think of California and wish I was there. I imagine clean white sheets and my own car, hushed cafés, my chilled darkroom with its familiar chemical smell. The bus trip gives me way too much time to think—about Emma, about Jake, about the absurdity of my being here. How can I hope to find one couple in an entire country? And what if this one couple—like the man in the orange Chevelle, the postal worker, Lisbeth—is just some false lead, just another one in a long line of interlopers distracting me from the true path? When I’m alone, it’s too easy to doubt what I’m doing, too easy to believe that Jake is right, that my endless search is hopeless.
On the bus I read The Moviegoer. I can understand why Nick loves this book. It’s about a melancholy man who searches and searches but never really finds what he’s looking for. He goes to movies. He dates his secretaries and marries his cousin. He speaks at great length about what he calls “the malaise,” and I know just what he’s talking about.
In Limón, I rent a dirt-cheap room in the center of town for a week and wander the musk-scented bars. The people of Limón speak a richly accented English that I ca
n barely understand. The rhythm of the language is punctuated by calypso music spilling into the street, and the city is crowded with beautiful Jamaican men courting young women from the States. I start showing the sketches of the couple around, asking if anyone has seen them. Limón feels very different from the surfing towns on the Pacific coast; no tight-knit community this, it’s more of an urban jungle. People glance at the sketches and shrug their shoulders, sometimes looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind.
Dozens of times a day I am offered pot, cocaine, heroin. In the street I ignore hisses and groans, dodging local men who offer to sleep with me under the palms for twenty dollars a go. Before, I would have been terrified by such a place, put off by the warnings of guidebooks and other expats, but now it seems I have very little to lose.
Then, one night, as I’m waiting to hail a cab to my motel, a strange man approaches me. He glances around to make sure we’re alone, then holds a knife to my neck and forces me into an alley. “No scream,” he says, pressing the blade against my skin. He whispers obscenities into my ear while groping wildly at my hips. I can smell tequila on his breath, sweat on his filthy shirt. My heart races. The blade is warm against my neck, not cold as I’ve always imagined a knife would be. He tears one strap of my dress with the knife, nicking my skin. Drunk, he struggles to unzip his pants. It occurs to me that this man is going to rape me. I’m surprised to realize that I don’t feel panic. Part of me wants to fight or run, and part of me wants to simply give up. Part of me thinks it is somehow just that things have come to this.
But then I feel something hot and wet on my face, and realize the man is kissing me. His breath is rank, and his thick tongue pressing against my own makes me gag. He responds by shoving his tongue farther into my mouth. If I die here, I think, no one will ever find Emma. If I die here, I will never see Annabel’s new baby.
“AIDS,” I say, hoping the word translates. Then more loudly, pushing him away, “Yo tengo AIDS!”
He throws his head back and laughs, trails the blade of the knife along my throat, down across my breasts, then lets me go. He grabs my purse and staggers away. “You very lucky today, gringa,” he says over his shoulder, laughing. “Next time not so lucky.”
I run into a crowded street. I can feel my money pouch against my skin, strapped around my waist. Somehow, in his drunkenness, the mugger didn’t notice it. Everything is in it: all my cash, my passport. Fortunately, I left my camera in my room. Shaking, I manage to hail a cab back to my motel.
I stand for a long time in the tiny shower, still feeling the place where his blunt fingers kneaded my skin. It’s anger I feel more than fear. I am, after all, an adult, and I was capable of escape. What about a child? What does a child do?
I gather my few belongings and lie on top of the sheets, waiting for dawn. The children in the next room are crying, a woman’s voice attempting to console them with soft words. A man is yelling. The diatribe is followed by a smacking sound, the mother’s cries, another smack, then silence.
I imagine someone hitting Emma, and worse.
I sit on the edge of the bed, my heart beating wildly. The scene of the attack plays over and over in my head. I’m tempted to go home, just catch the next flight to San Francisco, arrive sometime tomorrow in that familiar city with its familiar fog. I could take a taxi to my apartment, sit for a long time in my tub, soaking away the grime of travel. I could fall asleep in my own bed, wake to the familiar sounds of traffic. I could browse through my orderly closet for a clean shirt, clean pants, get dressed to a favorite CD—maybe Al Green’s 14 Greatest Hits. Then I could knock on Nell’s door, and share a cup of strong, good coffee.
I have to keep reminding myself that there’s a reason I’m in this country. There’s a reason I can’t go home.
Finally, a rooster crows, the darkness dissipates, and the smell of frying bacon rises from the street. I leave the key at the desk, take a taxi to the bus station, and board the first bus to San José. Late in the afternoon, following a connecting bus and a long, bumpy ride over ruined dirt roads, I arrive again at Playa Hermosa. Sami is just getting off work. We open a couple of cold beers, sit on the darkening beach, and watch the last surfers coming in from the water. Their slender bodies drip and glow in the leaving sunlight. Each surfer is attached to his board by a leash encircling his ankle, like some seafaring umbilical cord. Even in groups like this, each surfer looks entirely alone, his board held at his side like an extension of his own body; I can’t help but envy the peace they seem to find in solitude.
“What the hell am I doing here?” I say. “This is crazy. This can’t go on forever.”
“That’s what I told myself seven years ago when I moved here.”
“Do you think I’m fooling myself?”
Sami stretches her brown legs out on the sand. “I don’t know.”
The truth is, neither do I. Nonetheless, I look at every surfboard, examine every face. Always, from one coast to the next, in highland and lowland, rain forest and cloud forest, by night and by day, I keep in mind a set of images, the layered mental photographs that drive my endless search: a yellow van; a longboard with a golden frog at its center; a good-looking man with a tattoo of a wave curling over his left nipple; a blonde woman with a wrecked smoker’s face, prematurely aged. I carry the police sketches in my daypack. At night I study them, memorizing every feature.
And Emma. Always Emma. In my mind I make up endless variations of the face I know by heart. Like a forensic artist whose job is to add years to the face of a missing child, I add elements that might alter the image from the photographs: a tan, a pageboy haircut, long braids, a baseball cap. I add and subtract weight, imagine the contours that might be etched into her smooth face by months of worry and fear. I give her scars—a tiny white line on her cheek, a raised gash along her arm, a badly scraped chin.
I return to the same towns again and again, ask the same questions, see the same faces. Everywhere, I look for her. I wake each day with the fragile hope that I may find her. It is this hope that propels me through the day, that gets me out of bed and into the sunlight. It is with this possibility in mind that I am able to eat and sleep and bathe.
Each day is a microcosm, a snapshot of the search in miniature. Each day begins with conviction and confidence: conviction that I’m pursuing the correct path, confidence that I will soon find her through a combination of logic and perseverance. As the day wanes, my confidence fades. By nightfall, I am plagued by insecurity, and I go to bed wondering if Costa Rica has less to do with the search for Emma than it does with my own desire for escape.
Every night, as I crawl beneath the scratchy sheets in some unfamiliar bed, my hope subsides by a fraction. Every moment’s a little bit later. Every day, her face becomes less clear.
At night, in the darkness, the sea is reduced to black and white. All that is visible from my window is the white of the breaking waves, long lines spreading out from their centers. The whiteness rises out of the dark sea. There is no color, no light, no way for the eye to judge what is there and what is not.
68
DAY 278. Poas Volcano. On the precipice of the crater, I find myself staring into a cloud. Inside the crater there is nothing but white, a white with depth and presence. A white so intense it feels as if I have reached the end of the world, or possibly the beginning. A white not unlike the fog in San Francisco—opaque, impenetrable.
The air smells dense and egglike. Below the cloud, I am told, lies a small turquoise lake of steaming water. In 1989, the crater lake gradually drained away, and researchers later found a pool of liquid sulfur about six feet in diameter, the first of its kind ever observed on earth. Volcanoes of this type are common on Io, Jupiter’s glowing moon.
I can’t resist the temptation to bend over the railing and lean into the abyss. I feel a stirring, something internal, impossible to name. A sense of the world opening up, of time unfolding. A dangerous disarming.
I remember Jake, kneeling by the bed, head bow
ed, lips moving silently, fingers working over the beads of the rosary. Is this it, then? Is this what he experiences in those long, soundless moments of prayer? This surrender, this forgetfulness?
But the forgetting only lasts for a moment. Walking down the ash-strewn path, past bromeliads four times the size of my hands, past twisting trees and red-throated hummingbirds, past chattering schoolchildren and big, rowdy families, I am thinking, again, of the search. How it has led to nothing. No child, no answers. Nothing.
In the 1870s, the German philosopher and scientist Hermann Ebbinghaus became the first scientist to take an experimental approach to the study of memory. Shunned by the scientific establishment, he worked alone, with himself as his only subject, eventually producing the classic text Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. The research culminated with his famous curve of forgetting, which showed how rapidly memory evaporates: 56 percent of learned information is forgotten within an hour of being encoded. By the time one day has passed, another 10 percent is gone. A month after the information is learned, 80 percent of it has vanished.
How long will it take for me to forget that day at Ocean Beach? How many years must pass before the sound of waves no longer reminds me of the terrible thing I’ve done? I’ve tried so hard to remember every detail of that morning, yet I’d like to believe that a day will come when I’m not haunted by the image of Emma holding her yellow bucket, walking away from me.
69
TWO MONTHS in Costa Rica, and I have settled in. Sometimes San Francisco seems like the distant past, part of some other life. Jake and I have spoken only once since I arrived. I’ve called more than a dozen times, but I always get his answering machine. Each time, I imagine him sitting in the kitchen, grading papers, listening to my voice, not answering. I try not to imagine Lisbeth sitting there with him.
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