by Claire Cook
“I am so going to hang ten,” I said.
Cynthia crumpled up the empty peanut wrapper and put it back on my tray table. “Fine,” she said. “Then I’ll hang eleven.”
I didn’t think women like Cynthia had smaller brains at birth. Their brains probably started out the same size as the rest of ours but withered on the vine while other things, like looks and tennis skills, were being nurtured. Cynthia just needed a good role model. I certainly wasn’t going to spend my whole trip being her Henry Higgins, but I thought I could give her some quick coaching that might help her present herself a bit more intelligently to the world.
Sometimes Anastasia would ask me if she was prettier than a classmate at school or even one of the tween flavors-of-the-month at the box office. “You’re exactly pretty enough,” I’d say, “and how great that you’re also smart and creative and kind and funny.”
My ten-year-old daughter would let out an impatient puff of air as I launched into a lecture about what a looksist society we were, and how even if there was no denying that a certain amount of attractiveness might make life easier, everyone’s beauty fades eventually, and what happens if superficial things like the way you look are the entire basis for your self-esteem.
“Never mind,” she’d say when I paused for a breath. “I was only asking who was prettier, me or Emily. I think I am.”
I checked my watch. Anastasia was safely in school, and our flight was on schedule. I’d call Seth as soon as we landed in Miami to make sure he’d be on time to meet the bus. If not, I’d have Cynthia call her house and see if whoever was meeting her kids could watch Anastasia until Seth arrived. Tomorrow was Saturday. The weekend would be easier, and by Monday, they’d have the rhythm down. Everything would be fine.
Anastasia could handle this. I could handle this. Even though the pain in my stomach felt like an invisible umbilical cord was being stretched tighter the farther my daughter and I got from each other, Anastasia and I would both be fine. I closed my eyes. “Fine, fine,” I whispered to myself slowly, like a mantra.
I turned to Cynthia. “Hang ten is a surfing expression. There is no hang eleven.”
Cynthia looked up at the ceiling. “It was a joke. And please tell me you’ve bought at least one new bathing suit in the last five years.”
I ignored her. I’d dug out my ancient bathing suit earlier in the week, and when I gave it a little pull, instead of bouncing back, the tired elastic just gave up and stayed where it was. So I’d been forced to splurge on a simple black tank before I’d left. Even though it was on clearance, I was pretty sure it had to have originated sometime during the last five or so years.
I leaned forward and slid my bag out far enough to get at the plastic folder filled with the tour information Joni had given me. The Costa Rican translator/guide GGG worked with would be doing the heavy lifting, but the more I could help, the better I’d feel about Joni managing to find me a place on the surfing trip at the last minute. I hoped she hadn’t bumped anyone to get me this gig, though in my defense, at least I was bringing a paying customer with me, and at great sacrifice to my own personal sanity.
I pulled a pile of computer printouts out of the folder and started flipping through them. Cynthia recrossed her legs in their tight white capris and started talking to a guy in a business suit, who seemed to be doing his best not to drool.
Costa Rica, the first sheet said, is roughly the size of Vermont or West Virginia. There are over six hundred species of butterflies, and almost ten thousand species of plants, including thousands of orchids. I couldn’t wait to see the orchids.
Temperatures in Costa Rica ranged between eighty and a hundred degrees year-round, and we’d be arriving at the beginning of the rainy season, when it tended to stay sunny until late afternoon. Showers built inland and moved off shore, producing spectacular sunsets. Sounded good to me. The Pacific coast area, where Tamarindo was located, tended to be drier and sunnier, as well as windier.
I skimmed down. There are no street addresses or building numbers in Costa Rica. For landmarks, one used other buildings or even trees. This, and the fact that my Spanish consisted of por favor and gracias, made me glad I was going to essentially be just another set of hands.
Cynthia laughed throatily beside me. “My husband always says I dress to kill and cook the same way,” she said. She shifted toward me. I ignored her.
She elbowed me. I looked up.
Cynthia turned in her seat, flipped her hair, and pointed over her shoulder. “Pig,” she mouthed.
“Then stop flipping your hair,” I said, maybe a little too loudly.
Cynthia scratched her cheek with her middle finger. “It’s a free airplane. I can flip whatever I want.”
I ignored her and went back to reading. Costa Rican natives called themselves Tico, by which they meant friendly, laid-back, helpful, educated, and environmentally aware.
“What are you reading about?” Cynthia chirped.
I closed my eyes. “Alaska,” I said.
“Ha,” Cynthia said. She leaned over my shoulder. “Okay, tell me something I don’t know about Costa Rica.”
I took a deep breath and tried to channel my inner Tico.
I ruffled through my papers. “Let’s see,” I said. “Costa Rica is a tiny country nestled between North and South America.”
“Doesn’t it have to choose one?”
“Actually,” I said, “it’s in Central America.”
“Wow, you’d make a great geometry teacher.”
“Why do you do that?” I asked.
Cynthia opened her eyes wide. “What?”
“Pretend to be stupid.”
“I don’t know, I guess because it helps me get away with more. Okay, now tell me about the shopping.”
“Well, tomorrow we’ll hit the outdoor markets in San José. Bartering is the accepted practice—it’s actually expected. It says here we should try to settle at about eighty percent of the original asking price.”
Cynthia held up her hand for a high five. “Stick with me, girlfriend, and you’ll be fine. I haven’t paid retail since whoever was president before that last guy.”
31
I’D FORGOTTEN HOW MUCH I LOVED AIRPORTS. ESPECIALLY at the beginning of trips, when all your clothes are clean and neatly packed, and everything seems possible. Seth and I had spent many a happy day or night, sometimes both, waiting for a cheap standby fare to materialize into an actual flight. We’d flip through magazines, browse the duty-free shops, share a bottle of water, people-watch to our hearts’ content.
The cheap standby fares were long gone, and bottled water now cost an arm and a leg. This was the first time I’d flown post-9/11, and even though I’d watched plenty of airport security news coverage, I’d still been a little bit overwhelmed when I went through security at Logan. I’d flashed back to a long-ago trip to Amsterdam, when Seth and I were separated and interrogated about our visit by separate security guards. Even though we weren’t carrying anything illegal, I was sure we were going to be arrested for something.
I’d felt the same wave of guilt at Logan as a TSA official fingered my Ziploc bag with her latex-gloved hand. I’d guzzled the last of my water and thrown away the bottle, but could the mascara in the bottom of my carry-on possibly be considered a liquid? How about my allegedly solid deodorant?
Cynthia had checked her luggage back in Boston. She walked ahead of me in her ridiculous straw hat, her little paisley Vera Bradley bag swung perkily from one shoulder while I tried to balance my shoulder bag on the carry-on I was rolling.
It was hard to believe I was actually going somewhere. For almost a decade, all my trips had been imaginary. I downloaded Google Earth as soon as I heard about it, and I’d spent many a happy hour looking at satellite photos of the Cornish coast, taking the Art Nouveau tour of Brussels, enjoying the geosights of Utah. Long before that, I’d salvaged old issues of National Geographic Traveler, Condé Nast Traveler, and Travel + Leisure from the GGG offices, takin
g them home and flipping through them ravenously, night after night.
New online travel magazines for women seemed to pop up almost weekly, and I bookmarked as many as I could find: journeywoman.com, tangodiva.com, gogalavanting.com, travelgirlinc.com, womenstravelmagazine.com, womensadventuremagazine.com, wanderlustandlipstick.com. I binged on them all, like a foodaholic who’d never met a box of cookies that didn’t call out to her.
Miami International Airport lived up to its name, since it bustled with people from all over the world. Lots of them seemed to be speaking Spanish, but I also caught bits and pieces in German and French and Chinese, and what I thought might have been Brazilian Portuguese.
I caught up to Cynthia at the departure screen. “God Bless America is what I say,” a woman with a thick accent I couldn’t identify yelled. “Bless them and have mercy on them all at the same time.”
“Wow,” Cynthia said. “I guess she likes it here already.”
Two big guys in TSA uniforms stepped up to either side of the woman and grabbed her arms.
Cynthia looked up at the overhead screen. “San José de Costa Rica,” she read. “Is that us?”
“It is indeed,” I said. “Great, the plane’s on time. And they said it couldn’t be done.”
I rolled toward our departure terminal on the other end of Terminal D. We were walking past the escalator that went to the lower level.
Cynthia stopped and looked down. She made a movement with her shoulders that was half shiver, half shimmy. “Ooh, how about that little girl who got her foot stuck here? My mother always used to tell me if you want to get your money’s worth on your pedicure, Cynthia Paige, keep your toes out of the escalator.”
“What?” I said. “What happened?”
Cynthia tried to raise her eyebrows, but nothing moved. “To my mother?”
“No,” I said. “The little girl.”
“Oh, she was wearing those plastic garden shoes.”
I looked down at the sharp metal teeth swelling toward us. “Like the pink ones Anastasia has?”
Cynthia nodded. “I’m not sure what color they were, but apparently escalators gobble those little shoes right up.”
I was already calling Seth.
“Listen,” I said when he answered. “If you take Anastasia anywhere that has an escalator, make sure she doesn’t wear those pink garden shoes of hers. And make sure she stands in the middle of the step and doesn’t lean into the handrail. And what ever you do, don’t let her sit down.” I took a breath. “Maybe you should just avoid escalators altogether and take the elevator. Or use the stairs. Unless it’s a soccer day and she’s tired.”
“Jill, I don’t even know where the nearest escalator is. Come on, relax. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“You have no way of knowing that,” I said.
There was a pause. “Okay, I have no way of knowing that. But I’ll be on time for her bus, I won’t let her stay up too late, and I’ll keep her off escalators. Try to have some fun, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
I stopped to put my cell phone back in my shoulder bag, then started rolling again.
Cynthia fell into step beside me. Her phone rang.
It kept ringing.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” I said.
“No way,” she said. “I’m in my perfect window of relaxation.”
I scanned the restaurants we passed. “We should definitely try to get some Cuban food if we can,” I said.
Cynthia’s phone rang again. She unlooped her Vera Bradley bag from her shoulder and fished out her phone. She pushed a button and the ringing stopped.
A moment later her phone rang again.
I stopped walking. “Answer that,” I said. “Or I will.”
Cynthia held the phone out in my direction. I shook my head. I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Hi there,” she finally said in a singsongy, little girl voice. “Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I bet, baby. Listen, the plane is about to take off, so I have to hang up now. Okay, okay. Wait a minute.”
She took the cell away from her ear. “What’s your ex’s number? Deck needs him to get our three off the bus, too.”
It seemed only fair that Seth got a true taste of my world, so I gave it to her. I didn’t even feel guilty.
My stomach growled. I went back to scanning the terminal restaurants for possibilities. “Ooh, La Carretta,” I said.
We made our way over to the take-out line. “What’s your most popular sandwich?” I asked the man behind the register.
“The Elena Ruz,” he said.
“Does it come with plaintain chips?” Cynthia asked.
He nodded.
“What are they?” Cynthia asked.
I looked up at the clock over the register. They’d be boarding our plane any minute. “We’ll take two,” I said.
Cynthia didn’t immediately reach for her money, so I held out my hand until she went for her wallet. I’d learned this way back in my college days, when the richest girl in my dorm kept hitting me up for quarters to do her laundry and never once paid me back. If I ran into her today, it would be all I could do not to ask for my $3.75 back. I’d worked hard for my money, even back then, racking up as many boring hours as my federal work study grant would allow each semester.
“Plaintains,” I said as we hurried to our gate, “are actually in the banana family, but they’re cooked instead of eaten raw. A fully ripened plaintain tastes like a cross between a banana and a sweet potato, and plaintain chips taste just like sweet potato chips. Plaintains are very popular in Cuba, as are malangas, which are also a lot like sweet potatoes, and boniatos, which are similar to sweet potatoes, only they’re white.”
“Thanks,” Cynthia said. “But some of us just like to eat our food.”
I saw a green triangular flag that read great girlfriend getaways surrounded by a group of women. And then I saw Joni.
I sprinted over and gave her a big hug and a kiss. “I can’t believe you’re here!”
She ran one hand through her coarse gray hair. “I just thought, what the hell, I might as well enjoy the perks as long as I own the business. And I haven’t been to Costa Rica in ages. I hope it’s not one big parking lot yet. Come on, you two, let me introduce you to the group.”
The group turned out to be a mixed bag. Mostly midlife, about half of them traveling solo. Three old high school friends, a couple of sorority sisters, a freelance journalist, some real surf enthusiasts who let the rest of us know they even traveled with their own boards, an attorney, a recent divorcée who was already telling everybody about her divorce, some retirees. A few younger women were in the group, too. They were fully engaged with texting, and the expressions on their faces were skeptical, as if they thought they might have picked the wrong trip.
There was a buzz in the air. Excitement. Expectation. A little bit of apprehension. It was almost palpable, whirling around our group and connecting us to one another with a force field of energy.
Joni did a head count, then rolled the GGG flag around the little wooden pole.
“What do you need?” I asked.
“Some fun,” she said. “And you do, too. How’re you holding up so far?”
“Great,” I said. “Well, not great, but pre-great.”
“Give it time,” Joni said.
Cynthia had managed to find a seat and was already working on her sandwich. I walked over and grabbed mine before she had a chance to eat it. “Mmm, this is good,” she said. “I have no idea how turkey, cream cheese, and strawberry marmalade got to be Cuban, but do me a favor, don’t illuminate me, okay?”
32
THE FLIGHT ATTENDANTS PASSED OUT THE COSTA RICAN Immigrations/Custom Form for us to fill out during the flight, so when our plane landed at the San José airport two hours, forty-five minutes, and many bumps later, we were ready to head right to customs.
We gathered around Joni for a head count. “If you haven’t already done it,” she said
, “don’t forget to change what ever gadgets you’re carrying to Central Time. Not that time really matters on this trip, except for meeting up purposes.”
A few women reached for their watches or cell phones. The rest of us smiled tentatively at one another. It felt a lot like the first day of summer camp, when you looked around and wondered who would be your friends by the end of the week.
“I’m Joni, and if you haven’t met her yet, I’d like you to meet Jill, who’s been with Great Girlfriend Getaways for almost seven years.”
“Hi, everybody,” I said. I thanked Joni silently for not pointing out that I’d been tethered to my headphone the whole time.
Joni nodded at the woman to her right. “This is Vianca. She’s been guiding our Costa Rica trip from its inception. If you need to know anything about anything, Vianca will help you find the answer.”
Vianca was about my age. She had exotic features and a sleek geometric haircut, and she was wearing jeans and a black tank with a big chunky ethnic necklace. She wasn’t beautiful by conventional standards, but she carried herself in such a way that you couldn’t take your eyes off her. I wanted to be her.
“¿Qué hubo? Vianca said. “That pretty much means ‘what’s up?’ Costa Ricans normally say it like ¿Quiubo? The weakening of the e to an i at the end of a word is very common in Costa Rican Spanish.” She grinned. “Or you can just smile and leave the rest to me.”
“Thank you,” one of the women said.
“Gracias,” someone else said.
“Show off,” somebody else said.
“Okay,” Vianca continued. “There are only eight gates in this airport, so even though we’ve come in at the farthest gate, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump over to immigration.”
Cynthia put her hand up.
Vianca nodded at her.
“Do we have to immigrate?” Cynthia asked.
A couple of women swallowed back laughs, but Vianca looked at her kindly. “Don’t worry,” she said, “they won’t try to keep you here.”
