Crazy Good Fortune Out of the Blue - 28*
In the late summer (according to North American reckoning; it was mid-winter for the tropics), Richard’s mom came back for another visit. This time she came by herself, and in fact, Jane had spent some time with Kackie in Little Rock before she came, convincing her to take a leave of absence from the university. Kackie finally agreed and the two of them started the process of packing up her office, then flew to Costa Rica.
Jane felt worried about Kackie, and if Jane was concerned, Richard and I were, too. It wasn’t entirely clear what all was going on, but it seemed that Kackie was carrying around so much repressed anger that it was taking an exceptional toll. Add to this the fact that she was overweight, never got any exercise, and as a gourmet cook who loved to spoil her friends and family with her culinary skills, ate lots of rich food—and she had a pretty serious health crisis in the making.
Kackie had been raised, as countless other Southern women have, not to express her anger in any but extremely oblique ways. She was supposed to maintain a pleasant demeanor at all times, and she usually managed to do this. However, this visit, she seemed preoccupied and distant, so angry it made her mute. Her color wasn’t good, either; she looked flushed. We went on some excursions about the country, but she didn’t display the same delighted, childlike interest she had always taken in new places before. She seemed weary of everything, and so loathe to face her anger that it literally deflated her. When she said goodbye to Richard and me the day she flew back to Little Rock, she started crying when I reminded her what a special lady she was. She clung to Richard like she might never see him again, and after she left, Richard and I both felt misgivings.
Two weeks later, we were driving over to Quepos with Paul, looking forward to some R&R. Richard and Paul had been working quite hard lately, trying to get their business off the ground, and Kackie’s visit had left Richard feeling sad and uneasy. Jane had gone back to Little Rock to help Kackie finish getting her office organized for her sabbatical, which helped us to feel better about Kackie’s chances of getting her life back on a track that was agreeable to her. Richard’s dad felt helpless. He was extremely adept at knowing how to help everyone in his congregation, but when it came to his own wife, his love for her and all their complex emotional history made it impossible for him to minister to her in the same way.
When we reached the coast, we checked into our villa and changed into our swimming suits, then headed down to the pool area to order a couple of chicken sandwiches at the bar for lunch. Paul met us there. We had downed our first ice-cold beer and our lunches had just arrived when the phone rang behind the bar. Garth and David called down regularly to make sure things were going smoothly when they weren’t there in person, and occasionally a guest would receive a call there, too. Waldon answered, then held out the receiver to Richard, saying the call was for him. Somehow I didn’t think it was going to be good news, whatever it was. It turned out to be Jane, calling from Little Rock. Kackie was in the hospital.
“Jesus!” Richard exclaimed. “Is she okay? Is she going to be okay? What’s the matter?”
Apparently, no one knew what was the matter, exactly. She had slept restlessly the previous night and gotten up in the wee hours, saying she didn’t feel well. She felt nauseated, she said, and when Dick got up to help her to the bathroom, she collapsed. Since then, she had sunk into a coma. Jane had been waiting to call, to see how things might go, but it was now clear that Richard needed to get home as soon as possible.
He hung up, stricken and pale, and filled us in on what Jane had told him. Paul and I sat speechless, reaching over to rub him on the back and squeeze him on the shoulder. A few minutes later, the phone rang again. It was Jane again, calling Richard. Sobbing, she told him, “Your mother just passed away, sweetheart.”
I could tell by the look on poor Richard’s face what had happened. He froze. Jane continued to talk, telling him that he needed to leave the country as soon as possible to get back to Little Rock for the funeral. She told him to call Luis and get him to charter a plane to take us back to San José that afternoon. She also said to call Don Orlando to get us on a flight out of the country.
By some amazing stroke of good fortune, it so happened that we had given Don Orlando our passports the week before. He was going to try to get temporary residence visas for us so that we wouldn’t have to keep going back to Imigración every six weeks to renew our tourists visas and relive our Kafkaesque experience. Because of that, he would be able to procure exit visas for us so that we could leave the country. As this was a Friday, we wouldn’t have been able to get out for days if he hadn’t had our passports.
“Tell Don Orlando it doesn’t matter how much it costs,” Jane said. “I want you here tomorrow at the latest.”
Richard got on the phone while the rest of us sat in shock. I remember looking at my lunch sitting on the bar, realizing that I wasn’t going to eat a bite even though I’d been starving only moments before. It suddenly looked like fake food in a deli display case. I remember listening to Richard speaking in Spanish on the phone and Garth and David coming down to the bar to give their sympathy.
And then the next thing I remember is that Richard and I were standing on the runway at the “airport” at Quepos, waiting for a small plane to touch down. We had had to offer to pay the pilot three times the usual amount for this trip because we were asking him to fly during the afternoon in the rainy season, when the skies are nothing but enormous thunderheads all jostling up against one another. But we didn’t think of him as gouging us. He wasn’t. In fact, he was the only pilot who agreed to make this trip at all.
When the plane came to a rest, the pilot jumped out of the cockpit, a tall, solid, handsome man, relaxed and reassuring. I was very glad to have someone of his confidence and skill flying the plane because once we became airborne, we entered another type of zone that encourages your spirit to leave your body and that is the Insanely Extreme Danger Zone. Some people, of course, like free-climbers and sky-divers, seek out this sort of adrenalin rush on purpose and actually enjoy it. But for normal people, the Insanely Extreme Danger Zone is no cause for celebration. My heart was beating so fast it felt as if it wasn’t beating at all, it was just locked into one impossibly long contraction that lasted a half an hour. What we were threading through was ethereally beautiful: canyons of burgeoning, massive cumulus, their oddly crisp, cauliflower shapes churning weightlessly in the scattered sunlight, a Maxfield Parrish extravaganza drenched with hues of apricot, charcoal, azure, and magenta.
But they were also deadly. In the heart of some of these gorgeous clouds lay tornado-force winds that could shred us and our trusty little plane into pieces of horrific confetti. Occasionally, we weren’t able to find a space between clouds, and we had to fly through them.
At times like these, my heart would contract even harder and I would think, “How ironic if we died trying to get to Kackie’s funeral!” The plane bucked and rocked and shuddered repeatedly as we hit pockets of turbulence. But the pilot had nerves of crystal and ice, and he flew serenely through this meteorological minefield. I think, quite frankly, that the guy used some magic. He sure seemed to have the knack of it.
When we arrived in San José, Luis was waiting for us at the airport, his face grim and drawn. Kackie had made a big hit among the staff at Los Kelton, and everyone was extremely fond of Richard, too. And in Costa Rica, the death of one’s mother was considered perhaps even more calamitous than one’s own death. Luis told us how terribly sorry he was to hear this news, and then we drove in silence back to the house where the rest of the teary staff crowded around us to comfort us. Don Marcos was taciturn and physically undemonstrative, as usual, but he made a big point of drawing himself up and addressing Richard with stiff, heartfelt formality to offer his condolences.
It was a weird, sad time. Poor Richard, a tender-hearted soul who cries easily, wept and shook in his sleep that night and I tried my best to comfort him. There’s not much anyone can do, though. It’s pain that you simply have to endure. The next day, we flew out on Lacsa, a bit of a miracle in and of itself, as the Costa Rican national airline was always, always overbooked with about three times as many travelers as they had seats for. We indulged in some guilty Schadenfreude as we lifted off the tarmac, knowing we were the bumpers instead of the bumpees. This was yet another example of Don Orlando’s amazing powers, we knew, and we felt lucky to have him on our side.
Neither of us was looking forward to the funeral in Little Rock, as we anticipated that we were going to be deluged by people from Dick’s congregation— kind, loving, well-meaning people, to be sure, but lots of them nevertheless. And they were all going to be grieving as well. An emotional maelstrom hovered in front of us, and we were already shell-shocked as it was.
The house teemed with people when we got there, and Richard’s two sisters, Kathleen and Elizabeth, and their husbands had already arrived. Kackie’s death had been so sudden and unexpected—she was only fifty-seven—that everyone looked not only sorrowful, but dazed as well. Richard got swept up by family and friends of the family, and I was feeling a bit lost and lonely when I walked into the den. Much to my surprise, there stood my mom and dad.
They had made the eight-hour drive the night before so that they would be here when Richard and I arrived. They were impeccably attired, as usual. I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered such clothes horses as my parents. Most reassuringly, though, they radiated strength and calm. My mom had faultless posture most of her life and she looked straight and tall and strong, and my dad’s integrity and spiritual path always gave him a significant presence, too. I was so happy to find them here that I burst into tears.
The rest of the visit passed by in more or less of a blur. The sanctuary was packed to overflowing for the funeral and as Kackie had loved music, Dick rounded up as many musicians to play for the service as he could. Kackie had loved bright, noisy, joyful music, so that is what Dick arranged: drums and horns blasted away along with the pipe organ which sounded as though it had every stop pulled out. The congregation seethed with energy; grief and shock mingled with a determination to celebrate Kackie’s life. It seemed somehow that we occupied a coliseum rather than a church and that we were attending a Chinese New Year’s celebration, not a funeral. I cried through the whole thing.
Kathleen and Joe and their new baby Patrick, and Elizabeth and Ted were all staying with Dick, so a couple that had been close to the Hardies for years and years offered to put up Richard and me. Bruce and Margie Talheimer lived in an upscale, modern penthouse on the edge of downtown Little Rock. This was a second marriage for both of them and they were both having the time of their lives, with their children grown and plenty of money to spend. Bruce was Jewish while Margie was a member of Dick’s church. She was half Native American, but she looked eminently Junior League.
They were sort of hipsters for their age and social group, and for breakfast, they ate health shakes that were quite delicious. At the cocktail hour, Bruce loved to pour drinks that had about eight ounces of hard liquor in them so that I always ended up having to sneak to the bathroom and pour two-thirds of it down the sink. He was the kind of big, loud person who liked to have all the musicians at a Mexican restaurant come cluster around his table while he stuffed money in their hands, totally unaware that he was often embarrassing his guests while trying to impress the hell out of them. No one minded, though, because he had a huge, friendly, generous heart and he meant well, always. Margie was refined, sleek, and elegant, serving Coquilles St. Jacques and steak tartare for appetizers; she loved Bruce and thought he was adorable.
Their place was quiet and relaxed—they had a Jacuzzi, too, which Richard loved—and it was a welcome retreat when the grief-stricken social whirlwind taking place just a few miles away became too overwhelming. The time passed quickly, and before we knew it, we were back in Costa Rica, feeling strange and still uncertain as to the cause of Kackie’s death.
Myself, I think that people die when it’s their time, even if they haven’t lived out their full life expectancy. Determining the “cause” of death is simply a formality, something we cling to because we want to believe that it’s something we couldn’t possibly have prevented. But my feeling is that Kackie wanted to leave and so she left. The will to live, regardless of any exercise or supplement regimen, high tech intervention, or robust genes, can be what keeps us living in many cases. And I believe that Kackie had lost her desire to live this life any longer.
Above: Kackie (left) with Richard’s Costa Rican “mom,” whose family he lived with for the six weeks I spent building the hexagon.
*Intro:
At the end of 1982, both Richard and I had been out of work for a year, despite constant looking, and the best we had been able to come up with was scrounging for odd jobs. It was an economic climate much like the one we’re in now, and we were feeling both dejected and panicked about what the future might hold for us. We certainly could never have imagined what happened next: a dream job in a dream country for a dream boss.
This is Chapter 28 of the memoir I wrote about the year-and-a-half that Richard and I spent living in Costa Rica. It was quite the adventure, living with a an eccentric and flamboyant heiress** from Dallas, her elegant and erudite husband who wrote Westerns, and their handsome, bad boy son, whom Richard used to babysit. Oh, yeah, and next door resided the safe house for Eden Pastora, aka “Commander Zero,” leader of the Contras who were waging a civil war with the Sandanistas in Nicaragua at that time.
This was a particularly golden era in Costa Rica’s history, before it became “discovered,” even before the introduction of television there, really (it started coming in during the time we lived there). It was wild and exotic and magical and amazing.
So once a week, I’ll be excerpting a chapter from Crazy Good Fortune Out of the Blue until I’ve told the whole tale. I hope you enjoy these stories!
**Jane, sadly, passed away not long ago, but she left a legacy as colorful as she was. In 1984, she commissioned one of the largest environmental sculptures in the Western Hemisphere, a set of standing stones in Arlington, Texas that were designed and built by sculptor Norm Hines. Caelum Moor has been a source of enormous controversy over the years, which I’ll write about one of these days. In the meantime, feel free to Google “Caelum Moor” and see what turns up. It’s fascinating.
Thursday, September 17, 2009