Just about the time the Jeep connected with the main road, my clueless brain connected with the fact that I had embarrassed my sister all over again.
“Joanne,” I spoke above the sound of the wind coming at us. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I apologize. Really. I’m sorry.”
For a moment Joanne didn’t move. She was looking straight ahead at the two-lane road. She reached over and rubbed the back of my upper arm. “Sorry about the welt you’re going to get there.”
“That’s okay. All my welts from the allergic reaction have gone away, so I guess I needed one more.” I intended my comment to be funny, but instead of smiling at my joke, Joanne cried.
“You okay?” I glanced at her and then back at the road.
“I will be.” Turning away from me, my sister went into a quiet place inside herself and didn’t invite me to come along.
The first thing I noticed when we were less than a kilometer outside of San Felipe was all the motor homes that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Joanne was driving now. We hadn’t talked much during the past hour or so while traversing the desert on the winding road that lowered us into view of the spectacular coastal waters of the Sea of Cortez. The bright blue of the water and crisp white of the beach contrasted sharply with the muted grays and browns we had been viewing since we left Ensenada.
“Where should we go first?” Joanne asked.
“A gas station,” I suggested.
“Good idea. We’re almost out of gas.”
I hadn’t been concerned about filling up our tank as much as I was eager to use the facilities. If this sleepy town had any running water at the gas station—even from a spigot—I was going to wash my face and hands thoroughly and cool off the back of my neck.
By my watch it was nearly ten o’clock. The dust from the road and the sun in our faces, along with a mouthful of unbrushed teeth, made me feel grungier than I remembered ever feeling in my life.
Joanne pulled into the first Pemex station we saw. While she communicated with the attendant in English, I made use of the less-than-premium facilities. At least the black-encrusted sink had running water. I was learning to be thankful for little things. But I was careful not to drink any of the water, even the drops that lingered on my lips.
Our next stop was at an organized and fairly modern grocery store. We stocked up on food for our stay at Uncle Harlan’s and on bottled water that was outrageously expensive but obviously a tourist favorite because of the label “Bottled in California.” The water could have come from a garden hose on the other side of Tijuana, but Joanne and I fell for the marketing ploy and bought two cases.
Loading our abundance in the back of the Jeep, I noticed something significant as I lifted our straw sombreros and handed one to my sister.
“Joanne, where is our luggage?” I pictured us spending the rest of the week in our already sweaty T-shirts, dirt-streaked jeans, and the outlandishly floppy sombreros.
“I thought I told you.” Joanne contentedly plopped her sombrero on her head. “I paid the guy at the gas station to keep our suitcases safe for us inside his office. I knew we’d be driving around town, and I didn’t want to tote our luggage inside the bank.”
“We didn’t think this through.” I let out a sigh and tightened my sombrero’s string under my chin. “Since we can’t lock up this vehicle, what are we going to do? We shouldn’t have bought all this food yet.”
“There’s nothing perishable.”
“I know, but we can’t park the car and leave it all, can we?”
“Let’s find Uncle Harlan’s house and leave everything there, and then go to the bank,” Joanne said. I noticed she was beginning to look “normal” in her sombrero, now that I’d seen her in it for nearly an entire day.
“We can’t go to Uncle Harlan’s first,” I said. “The bank has the key to let us in.”
“So we ask our guardian angels to keep an eye on the food while we’re in the bank, then we pick up our luggage, and take all of it to Harlan’s.” Joanne twisted the top off a bottle of water and held it out to me.
“What? You want to see if I die when I drink it?”
“No, you paranoid petunia! I was trying to be polite.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
Joanne twisted off the lid on another bottle and took a long swig just to prove she was fearless or something. She came up coughing, and I paused before placing my lips to the bottle in my hand.
Her hand flew to her throat, and her eyes widened as she gasped for air. Then, just as quickly, she straightened up and said, “Just kidding!”
A wild smile returned to Joanne’s face for the first time since we had left the Valdeparisos’ casa that morning. “I’m just giving you a hard time,” she said with a ripple of giggles. The air around us filled with Joanne’s huge laugh.
“You brat.” I squeezed my water bottle so that a straight stream of the precious commodity zipped through the two feet of warm air that separated us. My aim was perfect. The water doused my sister’s dust-caked cheek.
“Hey, don’t start anything you can’t finish.” She squirted me back.
The shot of water from her bottle felt heavenly as it ran down my chin and neck.
“Oh, I can finish this all right. I have plenty of ammo.” I squirted my laughing sibling with a stream that landed in her mouth.
Now she really was choking. That didn’t stop her from squirting me again. This time she stuck the neck of the bottle down the back of my shirt and emptied the contents.
I did the same to her, laughing and threatening to reload with another bottle.
Joanne paused, looking over my shoulder. I turned my head to follow her line of sight. We had a small audience watching our water ballet. Two weathered-looking fishermen stood in the shade along with a distinguished gentleman wearing a dark business suit. They were grinning and speaking Spanish; one of them pointed to Joanne.
“Come on.” I reached for another bottle of water—this time to drink it. “We can finish this later. Without an audience.”
Joanne pulled the car keys from her pocket and swung into the drivers seat with a gleam in her eye. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Backing up the Jeep, Joanne nearly collided with an off-road motorcycle that was going far too fast. The helmeted driver halted and motioned for us to go first. “I had no idea this was such a recreational destination, did you?” Joanne asked.
“No, San Felipe is a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be.”
“And more spread out. I’m sure it wasn’t much when Uncle Harlan first built his place in the sixties.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Joanne, what do you think his house looks like?”
“I don’t think it’s going to be very large. But you know how he and Aunt Winnie always have lived with the finest of everything. I’m thinking it’s simple but elegant.”
“That’s what I thought at first, but now I’m not so sure. What if it’s a little nothing place?” I asked. “Then what do we do?”
Joanne turned to look at me and then focused back on the traffic at the upcoming intersection. Clearly she never had considered that bleak possibility.
“We’ll figure that out when we get there. I think it’s going to be run-down and old, but it seemed to me the lawyer made it sound like something of value.”
“I don’t doubt the land is of value, especially since the area obviously is a growing tourist attraction. But don’t we only lease the land from the Mexican government? It’s not as if we can sell the land.”
“Like I said, Mel, we’ll figure that out when we get there. First, let’s retrieve our luggage, go to the bank, pick up the key and directions, and see what we see. We’ll know soon enough what we’ve inherited.”
“I thought we were going to go to the bank first and then pick up our luggage.” I felt perturbed that Joanne was messing up a perfectly good plan by switching the order of things—without conferring
with me.
“I just realized we have no idea where the bank is, and the guy at the gas station spoke English. We might as well pick up the luggage now. Then one of us can stay in the car while the other goes into the bank.”
It took everything within me not to open our suitcases inside the gas station office and do a careful inventory to make sure nothing had been touched. Joanne was much more trusting as usual and handed over several dollars to the attendant. He seemed grateful.
“Can you tell us how to get to this bank?” Joanne held up her copy of the official letter Aunt Winnie received last week and pointed to the letterhead.
The attendant seemed to study the paper a little too long in my estimation. Reaching over and snatching the paper, I read the name of the bank for him. “El Banco del Sol.”
He spoke a few words of English and pointed the direction we had just come.
“Thanks.” I nudged Joanne to move toward the car.
“Stop being so pushy,” she said, when she pulled out of the gas station.
“He was reading the letter. I don’t think we should let strangers know what we’re doing here.”
“Okay, fine. But you can be polite about it.” Joanne drove past the grocery store, and a block later we spotted the bank. “How do you want to do this?” she asked.
“I’ll go in with the letter and see if I can speak with the bank president. You don’t mind being the one who waits in the car, do you?”
“No. Make sure you get a good map to the property and the key.”
“I know.” I started toward the front door of the bank and then stopped and turned around, realizing I might be taken a little more seriously if I weren’t wearing a sombrero. Combing back my disarrayed hair with my dirty fingers, I said, “I wish I wasn’t such a mess. The bank president isn’t going to take me seriously.”
“You can change if you think you need to, but—”
“Good idea.” I got back in the Jeep and forced my sister to drive to the Pemex station, where I went into the despicable restroom and changed into my nice pants and a crumpled but clean blouse. I flipped my eyelashes a few times with a mascara wand and applied some lipstick. The whole process seemed ludicrous, but if Joanne and I were to be taken seriously as landowners, at least one of us should look the part.
“Ready?” Joanne asked when I climbed back into the Jeep.
“Yep. Drive slow so my hair won’t flip out.”
“Mel, your hair is—”
I shot her an evil eye, and she hushed up. She knew better than to make any comments about my hair or ears or any other of our “almost twin” features on sixth-grade-picture day or on going-to-meet-the-Mexican-bank-president day.
With renewed confidence I entered the bank holding the all-important letter. I walked up to a young woman who sat at what looked like a receptionist’s desk.
“Pardon me. Do you speak English?”
“Yes.”
“I need to speak with the bank president.”
She nodded and walked to a large desk in the back corner. A gentleman rose and followed her to where I stood waiting.
With my best posture and my rehearsed lines ready, I greeted him with a cordial nod and offered my hand to shake. “My name is Melanie Holmquist. Your bank sent a letter to my aunt Winifred Clayton regarding some property owned by my deceased uncle Harlan Clayton. I’m here to process the necessary paperwork.”
The man in the dark suit tilted his head and looked at me more closely. He then looked over my shoulder and seemed to be studying Joanne in the Jeep parked in front of the bank window.
A smile brightened his face. “The women with the water fight. I was going to place a bet on your friend.”
Caught off guard, I stammered, “She’s not my friend; she’s my sister.” All my efforts to appear professional were pointless.
“Won’t you and your sister please come sit at my desk?”
“We have all our things in the car,” I stammered once more.
He waited for a further explanation.
“We’re not able to lock the car. Our clothes and food would be left out in the open if Joanne came in.”
His expression changed. Apparently I had offended him by assuming that we might be robbed. With crisp words he said, “I will ask my guard to keep careful watch on your belongings.”
I felt reprimanded. We still had business to transact, but my ability to impress him with my tidy appearance or my organized speech was nil at this point. He was no longer charmed to be talking to the woman who fearlessly participated in a water fight in front of the grocery store.
We walked together toward the front door, which he held open for me. As he spoke with the uniformed, armed employee seated by the front door, I called to Joanne to come inside.
My sister left her sombrero on the front seat and managed, despite all her scruffiness, to pick up the conversation where I had exploded a land mine with my distrust. I felt humbled. It was a different sort of humbling than I’d felt at the adobe house last night. This humility was the kind that reveals the truth about one’s deepest and most unpleasant qualities, yet doesn’t make the effort to cover those foibles with an excuse. I felt as if I’d slipped out from under that sombrero of grace and found the elements were merciless.
“I’m Joanne Clayton,” she said, shaking his hand. I don’t think she realized that across her cheek, where I’d first squirted the water, she now had a streak of clean skin while the rest of her cheek still was covered with dirt.
“Please come sit at my desk.”
For the next twenty-five minutes, Joanne pretty much single-handedly managed the transaction. We were given the key inside a manila envelope, a hand-drawn map, and a stack of papers to sign, which we did in the presence of the notary who sat at the receptionist’s desk. It was all surprisingly simple. We walked out of the bank the legal owners of Uncle Harlan’s beach house. Or at least we were the legal beneficiaries because the bank was the holder of the title on all coastal properties held in trust by a Mexican bank.
“Would you like us to mail to you the final documents?” Señor Campaña, the bank president, asked.
“Do you mean this isn’t everything?” I held up a small stack of signed forms.
“Now you must have the official release form from the government.”
“How long will that take to get?” Joanne asked.
“Sometimes weeks. Sometimes a few days.”
“We’ll be here through Friday,” I said.
“Come back Friday,” he advised. “I will see what I can do.”
“Piece of cake,” Joanne said, as we exited the bank.
“It was pretty easy,” I agreed. “If nothing else, we now have all the papers with us. I’m sure we can have them translated into English through Aunt Winnie’s lawyer, and he can tell us if anything is missing.”
“No, I’m saying I’m ready to celebrate with a piece of cake.”
“We don’t have any more chocolate cake. We left it with Rosa Lupe.”
“Then let’s find some.”
“Now?”
“Sure. I saw a bakery back there. Let’s buy something to take with us to the house.”
We took our newly established positions in the car. Joanne was the driver, and I was the one with the map who gave directions. Joanne’s side of our power-balance teeter-totter was up at the moment.
“Why were you so uptight when I first came into the bank?” Joanne asked.
I told her my foible of assuming our things would be stolen.
“I thought Señor Campaña was a nice man.”
“Yes, well, he told me he was going to bet on you in our water fight.”
“Did he really? Smart man. Now I know why I trusted him.”
“He would have lost his bet,” I said. “Turn left on Puerto Lobos.”
“You wish,” Joanne teased. “What do I do after I turn on Lobos?”
“Puerto Lobos,” I corrected her. “And I would have taken you in a snap.
Follow Puerto Lobos to the ocean and then left again on Ave Mar de Cortez.”
“You would have taken me in a snap. Ha! That’s something I’d like to see.” Joanne grinned at the thought as she drove slowly past a mix of old and new in this curious town.
Small cantinas lined one part of the street where old men sat outside on chairs in the shade. It looked as if they were doing the same thing their grandfathers had done and were sitting in the same chairs their grandfathers had sat in. Yet, two blocks farther down the street, a bright, modern video rental store sported posters of the latest releases direct from Hollywood. Next to the video store was a newly landscaped park area complete with a fountain and bright tiles. It was a surprising combination of the past and present.
“Is that the bakery you saw earlier?” I asked.
“No, but it’s definitely a bakery. Let’s stop there.”
We parked in front of a small shop that advertised pasteles in the window.
“I wonder what that means?” I said. “Do you suppose you can order your treats in pastel colors or something?”
“It’s probably the Spanish word for ‘pastries.’ ”
“Good thinking. Are you ready?”
“You go ahead,” Joanne said. “I’ll wait with the Jeep.”
“But you’re the one who wanted the cake. Shouldn’t you be the one to pick out what you want?”
Joanne laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Are you nervous about going in by yourself?”
“What if I am?”
“Listen, Mel, just because the bank meeting got off to a lumpy start, doesn’t mean you’ll have problems grabbing a cake for us.”
“You’re the one figuring out what the Spanish words mean. Like pasteles. I thought it had to do with color, but you figured out it was pastries. You’ll figure out what to order in there. All the signs are going to be in Spanish, you know.”
Joanne tapped her finger on the steering wheel. “Should we toss a coin to see who goes in?”
“No, I think you should go. You’re the oldest.”