A Place To Meet a Husband

I once lived in a house in a small, tourist town in Costa Rica. The house was too big for one person, but it had a television and after six months in the damp forest of Costa Rica, I was happy to have a way of accessing the world. The house sat atop a large hill that required effort to walk up. Once you reached the top you could see the undulating, cobalt waves of the ocean for miles. Below me, a few feet away, lived the caretaker of the house. He would fight with his girlfriend and smoke cigarettes like staccato beats, but he gave me the place for cheap, so I was grateful. Often, people would come up to the house and ask to watch television and I would let them, grateful for the company. Other times, I wanted to be alone even though at night I would be scared, wondering if someone would come up uninvited to the house in the murk and the dark. The house was too big, I would say. It’s too big. But he said to me once, “someone would have to really like you to walk up this hill”. And he was right. And he did walk up the hill. He walked up into my arms and became the father of our children.

Before I met him, I had befriended Sarah. Sarah lived below me, near the caretaker. She was from New York and lived in a small, wooden shack that was rented out to tourists. It had a tiled, open-aired bathroom and a bed with a mosquito net. She was a wanderer, like me. She fell into the place like it was quicksand. She trolled the streets like a vendetta, wondering who owed her what. When she met Eyal she slid into him like a bullet. She came back up the hill to her heat, smudged room and would tell me about him and while she did, she puffed smoke into my face and played music from her computer. “Why don’t you meet his friend?” she asked. No, I would answer. Not now.

When she finally cajoled me, we walked together down the dusty road. She told me he had a past. She said, don’t tell him I told you. I walked into the café with a confident gait and a striped dress. And he came towards me with an outstretched arm and kissed my cheek. I saw a flash of blue (his eyes) and a warm smile. Oh, I thought, here he is. And we laughed and smiled and felt excited because we knew what was to come. He told me that a few days before he had a dream about a baby owl, and I felt sad because I knew his dreams were like photos these days. Snapshots of viscous nights of sorrow and wisps of feathers.

When we finally ate together, he told me about this past. He told me about a beautiful wife who died, and his tears felt like a wave. A wave that could indulge the hundreds of Costa Rican surfers like globules of white specks on a rising wall of salt. We shared a bottle of organic wine and a few days later, he walked up the hill and was swallowed up into me.

It was a few weeks later that he suggested a trip. Let’s leave and fly back to New York for a few days, he implored? Leave the heat and the suffocating claustrophobia of a small town with blonde tourists. Sarah came too. And Eyal. We decided to make a trip of it. Take a bus then a boat then a plane. It was in a small border town that we saw it. We left Sarah and Eyal to give them some privacy in our twin double-bedded room. Wandering, hand in hand, into a large, cavernous outside wooded dining room. It stood, like a totem in the far corner. Its wings brown and silver and its eyes like black, swampy pools. Our bodies stopped in unison, shocked at the owl before us. And when we looked at each other, we knew she was with us. The absence of her became the presence of this creature. It didn’t move, and neither did we.

Back in Costa Rica after New York, we lived together. I moved off the top of the hill. I was glad to, to be honest. Away from my solitude and bad habits. We shared a room with a bunch of Belgian tourists, the loud roosters and burning garbage. We had no plan, but we knew we would move to the next location together. I started working in the local health food store, serving crushed fruit to parched travellers. It was something to do to block the dirty streets and existential whispers and I needed money. But there was this one day. It was cold and windy - an aberration from the balmy tropics and I was alone in the store. I decided to ask her a question. His beloved. His wife. I asked her, “Are you OK with me being with him?” I turn my head upwards when I ask this (a dull whisper to nobody in particular). I’m met with silence and the wind. Until the door opens and there’s a gush.

“Can I help you?” I ask. I’ve never seen her before but there are new people in this village every day. The people come in and out like rain drops, soothing out the dust on the roads and melting into the landscape. She asks for something or rather. I give it to her. She pays me and turns around. And that’s when I see it. Her back, tanned and muscled and young, with a large tattoo. The tattoo is an image of two large owls sitting on a limb of a tree. One of the owls is large and the other slightly smaller. They’re side by side looking outwards with their backs towards me. Looking out into the future. Into the sky. She walks out and I sit down. Breathless with the immediacy of my communication. I asked and she answered.

It’s been twelve years since that moment. We have two owlets of our own now who are turning towards the sun with outstretched arms. Costa Rica has become a distant utopia. A place where anything is possible, even a place to meet a husband. We haven’t seen any owls since then. But that’s OK.