The setting couldn’t have been more spectacular: a tiny resort along the Riviera Maya on the edge of the Mexican jungle, turquoise water as far as the eye could see. It took a train, an airplane, a car, a boat, and a wheelbarrow to get there. The resort, which amounted to a small stone restaurant, a storage building tiled with solar panels, and four cabanas, had the capacity for a mere eight guests. Immediately, things got pretty familiar.
My husband and I were greeted by the owners, a gregarious Jewish man pushing sixty-five and his wife, both from California. George was friendly, and relentless with the kind of jokes you’re not sure you should laugh at: “One of my relatives died in the Holocaust,” he said. “He fell out of a watchtower.” Wife Martha was more standoffish, very thin and very tan, wearing tight pants and dark sunglasses.
It was during the first evening meal, served family style, when we saw what had become of George and Martha’s love affair. Decades earlier, the two had met in the mountains somewhere, fallen hard, married, and then driven in a camper practically to the end of the earth in order to forge a new life. Fifteen years among the iguanas and palm trees, however, with the closest grocery store hours up an impossibly rutted road, had created … well, let’s say, resentments.
George worked in a primitive kitchen, the axis of which was a large pizza oven that kept conking out. The consummate host, he could stir a pot of seafood with one hand and mix a fresh lime margarita with the other. What he couldn’t manage, he delegated to his Mexican assistant. The resort employed a small staff of locals, including a fishing guide who had recently found a duct-tape-wrapped block of cocaine on the beach and “retired,” only to return a month later.
Just as dinner was ready, Martha showed up. She poured a glass of straight white rum and downed it partway. “I’m going to sit with you guys,” she announced and pulled up a chair. George gave her the eye. Martha took another hit from her glass.
It came out that Martha believed herself to be a reincarnated Navajo Indian, though there were no bloodlines. Also, she dearly wanted to leave the state of Quintana Roo, with its birds of paradise and aquarium fish, and move to the Four Corners, the new-age haven where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. “Our marriage was over a long time ago,” Martha said, the waves lapping against the shore. “We haven’t slept in the same bed for years.”
I imagined that Martha longed for the American Southwest in the same way that she must have, at one time, desired Mexico. Not so. She informed us that the adventure had been George’s idea from the start. He’d found this place. He’d been the force behind every standing wall, every handmade chair, every stone patio. Somewhere along the way, George had transformed from the romantic soul mate she’d fallen for back into the salesman he’d always been. When money grew tight, he’d moved himself and his wife from a cabana into the storage shed, where they slept—separately—next to the freezer, a real sore spot for Martha.
“I’m just waiting for a developer to come along and buy me out,” she slurred. “I figure my stake is worth a million dollars.” A gecko chirped. Martha informed us that whatever was said just before a gecko chirps is the truth. She stared at me for what felt like a very long time. There was another chirp from the gecko. Then she got up to refill her glass, noting that she would “get yelled at.” At another table, talking with other guests, George described a ceremony involving his and Martha’s wedding rings. “Sure, we bicker,” he said, “but we couldn’t live without each other.”
In Mexico they have a phrase, cara mala, which means, literally, “bad face.” Martha definitely had bad face. She had the look of a person trapped under the weight of someone else’s ambition. She’d followed George with an optimism she’d attributed to fate, but their grand plan had come down to a lot of dirt scratching and hard work. She wasn’t about to walk away without some kind of compensation.
On our last night, we found the dining table set with just enough plates for the guests. Apparently Martha had received a stern talking to. She hustled about, inquiring whether we had an adequate supply of napkins and beer. There was no mention of crumbling marriages.
At meal’s end, George approached with two drinks in enormous goblets. Called Lalas, the concoctions had, he said, caused a previous guest to “dance with the purified water dispenser.” They were creamy and sugary and strong, with the potential to sweeten the bitterest thought. When I got to the bottom, I glanced up at Martha, marching angrily about the kitchen. I wondered how many Lalas George had mixed for her over the years.
Leave a Reply