A Trip to the Beach (5 page)

“Do you have two-by-fours?” Bob began.

“Finish,” he answered.

“How about half-inch plywood?”

“Finish.”

“Sixteen-penny nails?” Bob continued.

“Finish.”

Bob looked at me with dismay, and I could tell he was losing patience.

“Two-by-eights?” he tried again.

“Finish.” The young man didn't seem to mind this line of questioning at all.

“Where are you from?” I asked, anxious to change the subject.

“I fron Santo Domingo,” he told us, “but my fadda fron here. Why you ain' go south fo' dis stuff?”

“Go south to where?” Bob asked.

“St. Martin.”

“I guess we'll have to
go south,
” Bob said, emphasizing his new vocabulary. “Thanks.”

We left the Albert Lake empire and drove past the high school, where hundreds of teenagers were getting out for lunch. They poured through an open gate in the yard, clogging the sidewalk and overflowing into the street. The girls were all dressed in bright green pleated skirts and tan blouses, and the boys wore light brown pants with tan short-sleeve shirts. Just past the school, at a four-way intersection, a slight fender-bender had occurred. Traffic had stopped as the two drivers stood in the road shouting in disagreement. In the middle of the intersection, a hand-painted sign propped up on a neat mound of tires read TRAFFIC EXPERIMENT—apparently the experiment had failed. We turned around and drove back past the school.

“Melinda.” My name was being called from the sea of school uniforms, and I spotted an arm waving frantically in the air. The girl pushed through the crowd, yelling, “Melinda,” and we recognized Marina, one of Joshua's grandchildren. She ran up to the car, smiling from ear to ear. “A lift, please,” she said, and hopped in the backseat. We drove her home to Joshua's for lunch and found Evelyn on the front porch with two-year-olds Amalia and Kim-Misha running circles around her, tugging at her apron.

“Them's bad lil' childrens,” Evelyn said lovingly, and shooed them into the house. Marina skipped inside, dropping her book bag on the front steps.

“You sure have a houseful,” I said to Evelyn from the open jeep.

“I's gettin' too old for all these childrens.” Evelyn shook her head, but we knew raising this next generation was what kept her going. We backed out of the yard, waving goodbye, and went to look for lunch.

Our lumber search was discouraging, but that did not hamper our appetites. Our stomachs were empty, and we needed to regroup. Patricia and Rosalind from the front desk at Malliouhana had recommended a local place called Hill Street Snack Bar, which we had noticed on the way into town. Although tempted by the Chinese food, we decided to save that for a special occasion and give Hill Street a try.

It was packed. We had discovered a local hot spot.

“Sit anywhere,” a large, smiling woman said from behind the bar. “Everything on the menu is right here.” She pointed to a blackboard hanging next to her.

We sat at a painted plywood table and considered our options, glancing at the wrestling on a TV over the bar. The menu was simple:

Conch

Goat

Pork Chop

Chicken

Oxtail

$16.00 E.C.

“Bob, sixteen dollars E.C.—that's only six dollars U.S.,” I said. “That's a great deal.”

“How much could they charge for oxtail?” Bob said.

We ordered one conch and one chicken, a Coke, and a Carib beer. We sat with our drinks and listened to the chatter around us. A group of five women in Cable & Wireless uniforms were laughing at the next table. Three men in blue coveralls with PUBLIC WORKS across the back were seated at the bar, engrossed in the wrestling match, and behind Bob, a table of four businessmen in suits discussed politics.

“So this is the power lunch scene in Anguilla,” Bob remarked with a smile. A giggly young girl brought our lunch, and we stared at the enormous mounds of food, each plate heaped with enough rice and peas for an army. Giant pink conch shells had intrigued me on beaches for years, and I was curious to taste the meat. Bite-sized pieces had been simmered in a spicy curry sauce with plenty of onions, celery, and tomatoes, and I was surprised to find it so soft and tender. I remembered reading somewhere that conch was tough and chewy, and wondered if there was a trick I should know about. The rice absorbed the extra sauce, and the fried plantains on the side gave my mouth a sweet break from the spice. The chicken was fall-off-the-bone tender, stewed in a Creole-style tomato sauce with onions and green peppers. We devoured everything.

The woman from behind the bar came to ask if everything was okay. There is something comforting about large Anguillian women. At home, a woman of this size would be considered overweight. Not in Anguilla. Generous weight is a sign of contentedness, happiness, even success; a thin person, on the other hand, probably works too hard, worries too much, and doesn't eat enough. Here, a large woman has prospered and raised many children, and my need for mothering attracts me to them like a magnet. This woman was no exception.

I responded quickly. “It was great. We're so happy to find you. I would love to know how you made the conch so tender.”

“Pound it with a mallet,” she said. “That's all you do.” I wanted the complete recipe but figured it could wait until another time.

“We're opening a restaurant down on Meads Bay. I'm Bob and this is Melinda.”

“I'm Cora Lee, and that's my daughter, Sweenda,” she said, pointing proudly to the young girl who had brought our food and was now flirting with the table of businessmen. “My husband, Raimy, does the cooking. Where are you going to get your restaurant equipment?”

“We don't know yet,” I replied. “I think we're going to St. Martin tomorrow.”

“There's a place over there called PDG in Cole Bay,” Cora Lee said. “They have quite a bit, but I think they're too expensive and they don't sell used equipment. I'm looking for a used restaurant stove—maybe six or eight burners. If you bring in a container from Miami, I would like to get a stove up there. I could give you the money before you go.”

“Miami? Is that what people do?” I asked.

“It's really where everything comes from. There and Puerto Rico,” Cora Lee said.

Digesting that new bit of information, Bob offered, “We'd be happy to help you find a stove. We'll let you know what we end up doing. Thanks for your help.”

“And a great lunch,” I added.

On the way back to the hotel, we met the little truck
still
inching along with its giant load. It hadn't made much progress.

“This guy's really making a day out of his lumber purchase,” Bob said.

“Island time,” I said.

At the front desk, we thanked Patricia and Rosalind profusely for sending us to Cora Lee's. Agatha was at the desk too and joined the discussion, now centered around planning a trip to St. Martin the next day. Her skirt was tight and short, exposing gorgeous legs that stretched to the sky. She reserved a rental car and gave us directions to Cole Bay and Phillipsburg, which, she explained, were on the Dutch side of the island.

Since our lumber search had been in vain, we opted for an afternoon enjoying the hotel. Once settled in our concrete bunker of a house, the luxury of Malliouhana, its pool, its food, and its service would be a memory. We changed into bathing suits and stretched out on lounge chairs next to the waterfall that pours over rocks from one pool and into another.

I studied the deep green lawns and swaying palm trees, wondering how much water it must take to keep everything so healthy on an island with so little rainfall. Splashes of red, purple, and orange bougainvillea cascaded over a white semicircular wall surrounding one side of the pool area. A terra-cotta path meandered past the wall and disappeared toward the villas scattered along the cliff. Next to my chair, a pink oleander bloomed happily, exploding with flowers in the relentless sunshine.

Where do they get all these plants?
I wondered.
They must have their own nursery, and probably an army of gardeners too.
I let the sun work its magic while the sound of the water lulled me to sleep.

The next morning we were at the ferry terminal at seven-forty-five to make the eight o'clock boat. After paying our $2 departure tax, we sat down in the plastic chairs and waited. We watched the clock on the wall as eight o'clock came and went.

Island time lesson, number one: Anguilla schedules are about as dependable as the weather in New England. Bob asked the woman collecting the tax what time we would leave.

“Eight o'clock boat broke,” she said. “Nex' boat, eight-thirty.”

By eight-thirty, the ferry terminal was jammed with people. A few tourists were going over to explore St. Martin for the day, but mostly we were surrounded by locals chattering a mile a minute. I tried to understand some of the conversations around me, but when Anguillians talk amongst themselves, the English language takes on a new rhythm and sound. Every now and then I caught a recognizable word or phrase, but it took more concentration than I was willing to give it. Instead I sat patiently, surrounded by people who might as well have been speaking Swahili.
Living in Anguilla is going to be an experience,
I thought.

At eight-forty-five two full boatloads of people piled onto one boat. We stood in the aisle and tried to keep our balance as the miserable ferry churned its way across the channel. Women were holding children in their laps, most of them blissfully content as the boat ride rocked them to sleep. Several older women looked frightened and grasped the seat backs in front of them for security.

Tabitha,
a ferry in the loosest sense, was a steel cargo boat fitted with rows of old airplane seats. The cabin was totally enclosed and the windows and doors were shut. I immediately felt claustrophobic, but outside there was no place to sit or even stand. I was trapped. The engines were so loud, neither of us could hear a word the other was saying, and the vibration of the floor and the smell of diesel fuel made the trip very unpleasant. The decorating job, however, kept us smiling. Blinking Christmas lights were strung all over the ceiling, and a VCR hung from the wall, entertaining the passengers with an old Eddie Murphy movie. The sound was completely inaudible over the roar of the engines. The most curious element, though, were the plaid curtains. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to create a certain ambience by covering the windows. To me, the best part of a boat ride is the view. Clearly, the locals saw the trip to St. Martin as no more than a taxi ride and had little interest whatsoever in the spectacular scenery behind the curtains.

The trip took thirty minutes, and by the time we stepped onto the pier in Marigot, I felt seasick and had a splitting headache. I sat down on a bench to recover while Bob went to locate the car rental agency. The car was a gem. Its front bumper was missing, the windshield was cracked, the passenger side was dented and smashed, and the door handle was gone.

“Great car,” I said as Bob opened my door from the inside. “Was this Hertz or Avis?”

Bob smiled. “The contract just says Car Rental Agency.”

We crept along through the one-lane streets past patisseries and bistros. We passed
la poste,
where lines of people stood holding baguettes they'd purchased earlier, and blocks of duty-free shops selling perfume, cameras, and jewelry.

It looked more like the French Riviera than the Caribbean—tall, skinny blond women hurried along the sidewalks in tight little dresses revealing as much of their tanned bodies as possible. Sleek-looking men in gauzy shirts and blue jeans also bustled past, many with a cell phone glued to one ear. Not at all like Anguilla. Instead of St. Martin, we could have landed in St. Tropez.

We plodded out of Marigot's traffic and were abruptly propelled onto St. Martin's version of the autobahn: a three-mile stretch of relatively straight country road with one lane traveling in each direction. At seventy miles an hour our mangled Toyota developed a severe wobble, warning us we had reached top speed. Bob felt as though he were in the Indianapolis 500 as other cars passed us in a wild race to some imaginary finish line. As drivers overtook us from behind they would flash their lights and blow their horns, and if they saw just a little bit of open road, they'd fly by as if we weren't moving.

“How can this island be so different?” I asked. “We're only seven miles from Anguilla, and look at this place. The traffic is worse than the New Jersey Turnpike.”

“Thank God they all want to stay over here,” Bob answered. His white knuckles gripped the steering wheel as we sailed past the sign welcoming us to the Dutch side of the island. Coming down the hill into town, the traffic slowed to a snail's pace, and a line of cars disappeared from sight. We parked illegally alongside the road with hundreds of others and walked the rest of the way.

Unlike Anguilla, St. Martin has no duty on purchases, making it a popular stop for cruise ships. On this particular day Bob and I counted five giant ships anchored in the harbor. A frenzied mob of sunburned shoppers had been shuttled ashore and turned loose. Hordes of tourists equipped with cameras pushed and shoved their way through the grimy streets, determined to find the best price on everything from T-shirts and Cuban cigars to Rolex watches. We fought our way through the crowd, in search of restaurant supplies and building materials.

We bought plastic dishes, an inexpensive set of pots and pans, some glasses, and cheap silverware, allowing us to set up housekeeping until our things arrived from Vermont. I bought an ice cream machine for $19.95, thinking it would be fun to start testing ice cream and sorbet recipes for the restaurant. Our search for building materials, however, was hopeless. After four frustrating stops at overpriced and understocked lumberyards, Miami felt closer and closer.