Chapter 8 - Twenty-Five Hundred Dollar Beach Lots

Chapter 8

We got back from Mexico that year and celebrated Elizabeth’s 3rd birthday with a big outdoor party. Our uptown Victorian had an extra lot next to it, just the spot for a party. The ancient old plum tree in the back of the yard was in full bloom and the grass was a vibrant spring green. We invited lots of friends and started a birthday party tradition that continued until Beth was 17. Susan and her girls were a big part of our celebrations, Susan felt like my sister and the girls my nieces. Dessa and Ryka, Susan’s twins, loved my kids. They had known Cameron since he was born and they were the first to hold Elizabeth after she was born. Our families did everything together. Thomas has been gone from our lives almost 4 years. That he had been dead almost as long as he had been alive was hard for me to grasp. I was so stuck in the past and yet my kids were rapidly getting older, next year Beth would be four years old, the age Thomas was when he died.

I started working for Susan that summer at the store and I loved it. I had a knack for talking to people. Susan had gone from having just used clothes and toys to a new line of clothes that she hand dyed. She bought shirts, long johns, any cute kids cloths and dyed them really cool colors. I could be a good salesman when I believed in something, and I believed in these children’s cloths. They were soft and comfy and my kids were walking models. In fact Beth was actually in a few of the catalogs when she was little. Also as I had every summer before, I threw myself into working in the yard. I had 2 lots now, where I had 4 lots before at the red roof house, but I still found it a challenge. I built several privacy fences toward the back of the yard and made a huge garden in front of them. I planted flowers against the fences and the old photos remind me how beautiful they were.

Sometime that fall I started thinking. “Susan”, I said, “I love you dearly, but you know, this is not right; we need to meet some guys. We are still young enough, though Thomas and Robert’s death have taken their toll, we need to meet someone.” “Na”, she said, “I don’t want to meet someone.” “Come on, there must be some type guy you like. Blonds, redheads, manly men?” “Well” she finally said after months of teasing, “someone like Lynn, the guy who is working for me.” Susan had made the big jump from her small store to a large rental downtown on Main Street. She was quite the business woman in those days. She saw how Port Townsend was growing and that many tourists were starting to come through. She rented the whole space downtown and had it made into 3 stores. She rented two and kept one for her business, Kidstuff. She had hired Lynn to finish the remodeling. Lynn knew who I was, I lived right around the corner from him uptown. “I know”, I said, “I’ll invite him to my Christmas party”. Well Lynn was not too sure he wanted to come until I told him that Susan would be there. It turned out to be a memorable night. Lynn showed up, Susan looked gorgeous; they fell in love right then and there at the party I swear. That Christmas magic.

Luckily Susan and I had tickets to take the kids to Mexico on January 1. She and Lynn had to drag themselves away from each other and it made her more exotic and harder to get – guys love that, I told her as we were leaving. We had a great time in Puerto Vallarta. I have photos of the kids swimming in the big pool at the hotel, they had a blast floating on inner tubes and learning to dive. It wasn’t the Hotel Marisol, but one just down the beach. I was walking in front of the Hotel Marisol one afternoon when I ran into my old friend Javier. I had made friends with he and his wife on my last trip to Vallarta, they lived in a lovely home up the hill from the main church in downtown, with a great view out over the city. He was a wonderful artist. He was surprised to see me and anxious to tell me that they had moved from the ever growing crowds of Puerto Vallarta to a small town north of there called Bucerias. You have to come he said, the beach is so much cleaner, safer and inexpensive. That is all we needed to hear, next day we were heading out to Bucerias in a taxi.

I had always wanted to buy land in Mexico. I had looked in Baja for property on every trip. I didn’t want to live in Baja though, it was a great place of adventure and camping, it didn’t feel like the mainland. I though Bucerias would be a good place to look. We rented a two bedroom apartment with a nice balcony and a view of the Bahia de Banderas, the big bay that Puerto Vallarta is at the center of, for $100 a month. In front of us was the trailer park, or would be when someone started using it, and the water was in front of that, I love easy walks to the beach. I was frustrated though, that even in this small and it seemed miles away from Vallarta little town, real estate prices were out of my range.

Finally one really nice agent took pity on me, “there are some twenty five hundred dollar beach lots in Punta Mita,” she said. “Where?” I said, perking up, two thousand and five hundred dollars for a beach lot, wow. “How do I get there?” “Punta Mita is on the northern tip of the Bahia de Banderas,” she said. It makes me smile just to think of my first visit there. Susan, Deborah my other friend who was with us and all our kids got onto the bus. We took the bus from Bucerias to La Cruz where we changed buses. The road to Mita was a narrow winding road along the bluff next to the bay. The village of Mita was 2 kilometers from the actual point of land where the bay ended and the big ocean started. We got off at the edge of town and walked straight to the beach along the cobblestone road. It was sure gorgeous there, like a picture, white sand and aquamarine colored water. Huge shade trees lined the shore, there was no development on the beach and because you were still in the bay the waves were fun to swim in and not too big. It seemed like paradise. We started walking down the beach. We went to the left, if we had gone to the right, we would have found the town, the palapa restaurants on the beach and the bus back. We didn’t, we went left and walked for a long way and finally found, thankfully one small restaurant with palapas for shade and tables in the sand. We had a wonderful lunch; the kids had a great day in the sand and water. Then we walked miles in the setting sun down a dirt road that would take us back to the main road, which we hoped the bus would come down, sooner or later. As we left the beach, I knew I would be back.

After Susan and Deborah left for home with their kids, I took the bus out to Punta Mita again. This time I turned right when I got to the beach. I had not walked very far when I saw a small unfinished looking house above the beach on the road. It had Se Vende written in black spray paint on the side - for sale. That was the place, the only house on the whole shady beach. The road from town curved down, went in front of the beach a little way and then headed back inland toward the road. This place was perfect, could it be? I approached the door and in my limited Spanish tried to explain to the older woman in a hammock on the shady side of the building that if this place was for sale, I was interested in buying it. Well that was way to direct and got very little response. We smoked a few American cigarettes and made some small talk, smoked more cigarettes, finally she said come back on Thursday and her husband would be there. Satisfied that I had at least gotten somewhere, I boarded the bus back to Bucerias.

On Thursday I was cautious, I brought her a pack of American cigarettes and we smoked several together before I asked about her husband. She pointed down the street. There was a small bar a few corners down. She said he was in there. I was about to go down to the bar when she said no, woman are not allowed. “Well how can I talk to him?” I asked. She suggested that I go down and wait at the corner for him to see me and he would come and talk to me. He knew I was coming. No point in explaining how ridiculous this seemed to me. I waited at the corner for awhile feeling like a complete fool, when sure enough, here came a man who introduces himself as Telesforo, the owner of the property. I had done fairly well up until now with my limited Spanish. Now I realized I needed help.

Jessica, Javier’s wife, who was also my friend, agreed to act as my interpreter if I paid her daughter’s babysitter. She and I made several trips out to Punta Mita and neither Telesforo nor his wife seemed in any hurry to sell me the property. It was finally decided that I would not actually buy the little casita which was on a tiny badly shaped lot, which they wanted roughly $10,000 for, but the small lot to the left of it for $2,500 and the larger lot to the right of it for $7,500, two lots for the price of one unlivable bodega. I figured that I could build a small casita myself one day. I figured wrong, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

I wanted to make this deal happen and we were getting nowhere. Jessica, I said, tell him that I have the money in cash, in Dollars and that I will bring it to him in 3 days, well that got his attention. They did not want to deal with a gringo, let alone a woman. But as soon as he understood, 3 days, $10,000 cash, I was finally a real person and he was ready to go to the office in La Cruz and sign papers. To close the deal, three days later we again went to the office in La Cruz. The offices were in the upstairs of an old hotel. They did not make appointments and you waited in line in chairs on the long outside hallways in front of the rooms. You could see some rooms piled high with folders and boxes of papers, no real filling system or cabinet to be seen, only one old typewriter off to the side. There were 3 or 4 desks in the outer office for girls that worked there. The only things on each of the girl’s desks were a bottle of white out and a bottle of nail polish, bright red.

When we got into the inner office, we met Chela Medina, daughter of the great Medina bus lines. She was the head of the Fideocimiso for the state of Nararit. She was dressed to the nines, heels, heavy make up and fiery red nails. The first thing she asked was if we had the money, it turns out the lot was owned by her and Telesforo sold it for her, he only got a cut. It was pretty interesting to count out $10,000 in $100 dollar bills right there on her desk. I felt like I was in some B movie. She drew our lots on the Mita subdivision map, recounted the money, handed us the signed paper work. We shook hands all around and left. As I glanced over my shoulder, Chela took the pile of money off the table and was beginning to lay down what was Telesforo’s cut.

The kids and I were ecstatic. We spent many days hanging out in Punta Mita on the property that winter. The big lot had large trees that provided shade to set up under, swimming and playing in the sand all afternoon, taking the last bus back to Bucerias in the evening.

When we got back to Port Townsend that spring, I realized I needed to consider driving again. It is not like I didn’t ride in cars. I was making everyone else take the responsibility for driving and I just rode. It seemed like if I was going to be a responsible part of my culture, I had to drive again, take my turn driving to play group, it was only fair. It sounded good, still I couldn’t convince myself. Later I saw a car for sale that I was just so attracted to; it was a big old Mercedes, white with red leather interior. I bought the car and had to drive it home. I hadn’t thought about that, I was planning on parking it out front for a while and get use to the idea. So there I was driving it home from Quilcene, 25 miles from Port Townsend. It was a very tense trip, but it went okay. The car did sit out front for a while, then slowly I started driving. I was determined to be a good driver not a wimpy and timid one, that is even more dangerous. When Don Juan got in the car, Carlos said, he crawled in like he was going into a cave and then he would announce, “today is a good day to die.” That is about it, you take your life in your hands every time you take the wheel, you might as well get good at it.

I was not sure that I wanted to stay in Port Townsend. Thomas has been dead 5 years. I had never really planned on moving there permanently, I had just never left. I was musing on what it would take for me to want to stay. First I was ready to move again. The Victorian only had 2 bedrooms and while that did not seem to be a problem when I moved it, the kids were now 7 and 4 and needed their privacy, also living uptown was not all it was cracked up to be. People were really fussy about how everything looked. The neighbor next door called the city on me because I had a pile of wood in the yard. I needed more space and privacy. I found the perfect house. I am attracted to empty forlorn houses that just need someone to love them. Well the house on V Street certainly was that. The family who had owned it moved up to Alaska and their boys had rented it with friends, then it had been empty for years. The boys had trashed it before they left and the animals did the rest of the damage in the following years. The grass was waist high and the house was badly in need of a paint job. I feel in love with it immediately, the view out the front was of the shipping lanes of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, and on a clear day you could see Mt. Baker, a huge snowcapped volcanic cone that looked like it rose out of the sea behind the straits. The house was an old farmhouse and the rooms were arranged a little odd, but the saving grace was the stone fireplace in the living room. It also came with a big old red barn. My friends were against it, too rough and scary they said, finally they came around and I remember Seiza helping me paint the kitchen so we could stand to eat in there.

While musing if I would stay in Port Townsend, besides a cool house to play with, my other wish was that I would meet a man. I was ready. It had so not worked out with the kid’s dad. It had taken me five years after Thomas’s death to really think I might be ready. Susan and I had talked about it last year, now she was with Lynn. Was there someone out there for me?

Soon after that some friends of mine, Becky and Peter, told me that there was someone that I should meet. Peter had been working with William and he really thought I would like him. I knew who William was; he was the founding director of the Swan School, the small progressive private school in town that Cam and Beth went to. The school was sponsoring Japanese exchange students for the summer, all the families had one, I had seen him at the Hello dinner we had for the Japanese students and a couple times in the morning when we were getting them on the tour bus. We had never talked though.

One week-end I was at a community dance. My friend Lana had William’s kids with her; she does day care and had just moved in next door to him. She was really stuck and had to leave the dance before William got there, could I take Noah and Sadie until he came. Sure. Cute kids. When he came to pick up the kids, he said something about being divorced, and then he mumbled something about his being a diamond in the rough. Since I was just in the process of buying the house on V Street and he being a contractor and all, I called him and hired him to come over and inspect the place. If he thought I was interesting before, he thought I was nuts after. He gave me a good inspection, but you could see he would not touch that old house with a ten foot pole. He tried not to be negative, but I could tell. I went on to buy the house, expecting to never hear from him again. A few weeks later he called and asked me if I wanted to go to Bumbershoot with him, Bumbershoot is a music festival in Seattle. I told him I thought that was too ambitious, that maybe we should meet for coffee and work our way up to dinner, Bummershoot was hours away and an all day affair. “No”, he said, “we’ll have a good time.” Okay. Not only did we have a good time, we had a great time, we got home late and sat on my back porch swing talking and laughing until even later.

William is the love of my life. We couldn’t have missed each other in a million years. Not that everything went smoothly, not by a long shot. He understood when I told him about Thomas’s death, he was no stranger to sudden death himself, his younger brother had been killed in a car accident when he was 16 years old. William was away from home in his second year at college. It changed his life. He said that his parents never talk about it. There are no pictures of his brother. One of the first things I said to his parents was, “oh so you have a dead son too.” I thought William was going to faint, but his mother looked right at me and saw that I had been there, that I understood and she starting opening up to me. The next visit to their house they showed us baby photos of William and his brother Ted. I know that talking about it for them with someone they knew understood had helped them get past an important point in their grief.

William noticed that I kept the box with T’s ashes it in my dresser drawer. He was looking at the box one day and said, “Wow, June 13th, that’s my birthday.” I just stared at him. June 13th? I ran to the box. I had forgotten that Thomas’s birthday on the box was wrong. His birthday was June 23 and they wrote the 13th. William’s birthday was the 13th, I couldn’t believe it. I remembered saying to myself years ago to watch for June 13th in my life, that it would be an important day.