Not far from where she is standing is the Vegas of the Northeast. For most people New Jersey is about the casinos at Atlantic City, or the airport that's close enough to New York that you are flying or leaving from New York, even though it's really New Jersey. But what else is New Jersey. She came to this little known state in the shadows of the big metropolis that she, of course, knew about since childhood. Her father disappeared when Hurricane Mitchell whipped through her small country. She was a teenager in love with a boy from her school she wanted to marry. But the hurricane changed it all when her family was forced to move out of their destroyed home and into the reluctant hands of her aunt. Her mourning for her father's disappearance, presumed dead had to cut short, as well as her mourning for loss of all her hopes with that boy. His name was Luis. Her dreams seemed to have just gone up with the hurricane and landed in tatters somewhere else in Central America.
But she was determined to find new dreams. Partly it was fueled by her growing resentment living at her aunt's place and depending on her aunt's family. She couldn't stand seeing her own mother subjected to the daily psychological abuse of being a failure, and of course that accusation of failure often spread to her. "Like mother like daughter, I guess", her aunt would tell her uncle. They wanted to marry her off so she wouldn't be "leeching" off them anymore.
Her dad, who loved her dearly, told her that she should never marry a man unless there was so much love in her that her heart could burst for him. She thought she found that man in that boy. Her heart, she felt many times, nearly burst. But the death of her father froze her heart. And the forced move shook it further. She had written to him many times, but there had never been an answer. Maybe his house was never rebuilt either. Maybe he had forgotten about her. She only beginning to understand men when Mitchell washed away everything she had.
But it was her aunt and the stifling atmosphere in which she lived that drove her to her only goal: to get out of this miserable country, find a job in America, and send enough money back to liberate her mother and her little sister from this abusive house. For the next four years she studied like a man woman, reading all the books she could, and trying to understand all the possible ways to get into the United States. She didn't want to do it the dangerous way via Mexico and paying some stranger insane amount of money. She was educated enough in all ways to understand the risks were not worth it. After wall, her goal was to be prosperous, not dead in the Mexican deserts somewhere.
Hurricane Mitchell thundered through her town and pushed her country, as the president back then said, forty years backwards. That was eleven years ago. She made it. She was able to learn enough English after those four years in high school to get the test scores needed to study at a small American university in Tucsan, Arizona. She saved enough money to buy herself a plane ticket and a little more for starting her life there. It wasn't easy, those four years. And the next four years were even harder, getting adjusted to the new country, all alone, and working whenever she wasn't studying, to pay for school as well as sending money back.
She was very proud of herself. She achieved her goals, with her own determination and hard work. All the while she was holding out hope, though she hadn't realized it until recently. that her dad was alive somewhere, that one day, her American telephone would ring and her father would be talking, finally finding his way back to her. And that day she would return to Honduras, with all the extra money she had saved, to help rebuild the country along with her dad. That day still hadn't come.
But it was close. One day the phone rang and it was the voice of a man who sounded so much like her dad that she nearly jumped. She was working in the computer lab as someone people went to ask computer questions. Usually nothing happened and she was working on her senior thesis when the phone rang. The man wanted to know the hours, and she took some time to answer. Later, that man appeared. He didn't look like her father, but did look like him when he was a lot younger. Most importantly, he had that smile, that comforting smile she recognized in her father, whose smile always assuaged her. She was an extremely attractive woman, and many men had tried to win her heart since she made her way to Tucson. But she was determined not to let love get in her way of accomplishing her goals. But here she was, wondering if her father was looking at her. This man's smile disarmed her like no one else could. She felt safe even before knowing this man's name. For all the years of struggle in this foreign land where she refused to take roots, she felt for the first time safe. She always burst out in tears when he started talking, sounding so much like her father. And he spoke to her in Spanish in the most gentleman-like manner. There had been men who tried to be a gentleman to her in order to win her heart, but it never worked. Her walls were too tall for them, scalable only by her own father, or someone similar enough.
Looking at the the seagulls still in midair, Pilar remembers that day when her future husband came in the computer lab. And her anger starts to bubble again. She resents how life doesn't allow her to do what is obviously the right thing: her goal. She doesn't understand why despite her best judgments, life has to force her into detours. Not "force". Tricked. She has done everything willingly. She fell in love with Ramón, whose only dissimilitude to her father at that moment was his name. They graduated together and he got a job in this little dinky town of Kingston, New Jersey, where his family lives. That he was a family man was a positive trait. That his Puerto rican family accepted her without much begrudging, despite her being a foreigner, was another acceptable plus. That this dinky town is boring and the people's minds slower and lazier than those of the seagulls is a problem worth overlooking when you have love. That you marry at the age of 24 is not that abnormal even in the godless Northeast. And for sure, the first year they were extremely happy.
The sound of steps on the old boardwalk draws her attention away from her angry memories. She now has to put aside her resentment that after that first year the fights started, the condescension from him and his family grew more frequent, and her loneliness grew by the day. She looks at him in the eyes. She smiles. His smile is shy but many folds bigger, deeper. He's happy. They aren't on a date; he has never seen her before until now. And what a surprise. For him she must be the most beautiful woman in the world. But before even that, he had felt a connection to her just as she had felt it from him. He is looking for a dream car, a Mustang S281. She was supposed to help him by looking for dealers in New Jersey for him. He has traveled from some other dinky town she had never heard of in Connecticut. But through email, they started talking more than just Mustangs. It has only been a week, but their daily, multiple email exchanges have allowed her for the first time in this country to express her sorrow, her loneliness, but framed not as some pathetic immigrant story but as barriers to a determined woman.
He, on the other hand, isn't an immigrant, though not a native either. He comes from a country she knows of but never imagined visiting but would love to visit one day. It's the country of the conquistadors that put the European blood in her. His stories about his fascinations with cars in Valencia opened her mind like no other time has. Someone from Europe, all the way from Europe, shared something in common with her. She never thought about that. It's not that Spaniards can't be car aficionados too, but she never expanded her horizon to beyond Honduras and Tucson (and now Kingston). This man was exotic. This man was not like her but from a distance she can actually reach. Not only is he European, but also he's a professor at the University of Valencia. She is a graduate of a small, inexpensive college in Tucson and now works as an inventory manager at the local Walmart. He didn't look down on her, but rather opened up so many other images of the world to her. He teaches psychology and has told her so much about his work in such an accessible way that she actually thinks psychology is the most interesting thing in the world now. He also tells her about his travels in Europe, about the politics in his country and his continent. She has found herself interested and engrossed in everything he said.
It's like discovering the ocean after living 27 years in a valley surrounded by insurmountable mountains. There's so much more to life, she realizes. Not only so much more than this pathetic town of Kingston, but so much more than even her own dreams. What if life offered more than just getting enough money to send back and to bring back. What if, life offered more than just being with a father who might not really exist anymore?
She looks at his blue eyes as he looks shyly to her green ones. They smile. There's a temporary distance between them that quickly vanishes. They don't hold hands. Not yet. Too personal.
She is still married.
Kingston is a small town.
"So you want to go visit this first dealer?" she asks, with a smile that feels relaxing, that feels hopeful. The disgust she has with her life, with her marriage, with the people who reject her here, that disgust is now washed away in the briny wind of the cold Atlantic coast. She has only set up appointments with two Mustang dealers. The day is young. They will have finish within two hours. He, she has determined, won't be driving back to his dinky Connecticut town tonight. While her husband is again on a visit in Puerto Rico for again an indefinite amount of time, she for the first time since Mitchell, will feel the world can finally embrace her. She's not in love. She doesn't have to be. The door to her heart has finally started opening, and she is the only one who needs to enter it from now on.
