Page 10 of The Deepest Lake
Rose packs the e-reader into her purse and descends the ladder. Four faces look up, including the young, fit blonde from the reception area who reminded Rose so much of Jules, and an equally slim, ebony-haired girl who could easily be a model. In a workshop of mostly older, wealthy women, they’re the young ones: tan, taut and brimming with energy. They don’t realize how beautiful they are, how fortunate. She shouldn’t start resenting young women just for being alive, but she can’t help it.
“Scarlett and Noelani are here,” Isobel calls out as Rose reaches the bottom ladder rung. “Come join us.”
Rose seizes the first excuse that comes to her. “I have to find the ATM in town. I couldn’t get the one in Antigua to work. I want cash on hand, before we all gather for the party.”
“I’ll loan you some quetzales.”
“Thank you, but I really just need to do this.”
“You’re from Chicago,” Scarlett says to Rose, stepping toward her. “I love Chicago. I stopped there on my bike trip—”
“You read Scarlett’s chapter, right?” Isobel interrupts. “From her travel memoir? She biked across America on ten dollars a day. This girl is amazing.”
So was Jules, Rose thinks. She could have biked across the country. She could have climbed peaks in all fifty states. She could have written a memoir, or a novel, or screenplays. She could have done anything, if she’d just had more time.
“I have to go,” Rose says again, aware that her voice is trembling and that she is coming across like a killjoy or something worse. This is all too much. Too soon. She’s out the door before anyone else can beg her to stay.
Rose opens the garden gate separating the hotel compound from a high-walled lane, off-limits to most cars, and heads along the paved route toward the center of town, uphill and away from the shore. This isn’t a vacation. She can’t sit around drinking expensive wine. She needs to start searching, but she doesn’t know where to begin.
When she passes her first corner produce stand, she pauses, thinking of the ten Instagram photos Jules posted over her entire trip. One was a close-up of limes, papayas and some kind of squash—chayote, Matt guessed. The photo could have come from anywhere in Central America. Still, Rose will never stop mentally indexing the photos, trying to match backgrounds, objects and geographical features she is now seeing. It’s a strange way to expend energy, considering they already know every city and village Jules visited. But Rose wants to know her daughter’s trip in a deeper way. To feel like she is standing, at least sometimes, in places where her daughter stood, looking at things her daughter saw.
To the left and right of the cobble-paved lane are curio shops and a few restaurants, including a pizzeria with a sign that says “good Wi-Fi here” in English. Rose remembers Jules’s excuses for the scarcity of her calls and texts, especially toward the end of her time in San Felipe. She claimed that the Wi-Fi was okay at the hostel and at a few places in the village, but unreliable elsewhere. In the words of Eva’s voluminous instruction sheets: If smartphone addiction is a problem for you, get ready for a wonderful detox!
Alleys branch off at irregular intervals, a maze Rose can’t map out just yet. The main lane is mostly in shadow. Some side lanes are so narrow that with her arms outstretched, her fingertips can almost brush both walls. The claustrophobic charm reminds her of Venice—one of those places that could seem either romantic or sinister, depending on how lost you feel.
It doesn’t seem sinister today. She doesn’t notice any aggressive hawkers or leering men. Instead, she passes only quiet, seemingly friendly people. A man selling textiles doesn’t look up, even when she pauses to run a finger along a brightly colored tablecloth. Three children ahead are tap-kicking a soccer ball, gently and carefully, but when she needs to pass, the oldest boy tugs his younger sister close to the wall, out of her way.
Uphill another few hundred feet, two short women in embroidered shirts, wide cotton belts and modest long skirts stand against the alley wall with their shopping bags. One of them is rebraiding the long rope of gleaming black hair over her shoulder.
“Buenos días,” Rose says.
“Buenos días,” the woman replies, lifting her eyes to Rose.
Rose feels she should say something more, so she ventures, “Bonito aquí.” It’s pretty here.
The woman cups her hand over her mouth, covering a silent laugh. Then she drops her hand, dips her head and says, “Muy bonito. Bienvenida.”
These women seem so kind. They are sharing their village, the limited span of lakeshore, these precious narrow alleys.
Mom, it’s different here. The people are really friendly. Stop reading the travel warnings!
If anything, on first impression, it’s the other tourists who give Rose pause.
Passing a jewelry and bead shop, she catches a whiff of marijuana. At a small restaurant just next door, Rose sees a young white couple lingering at a table near the arched doorway. They’re Jules’s age, in full bohemian rags: dreadlocks, nose and eyebrow piercings, baggy Aladdin-style pants. The man’s outfit is topped with a roughly woven sweater, the same design sold in Mexico and Guatemala since the 1970s. Rose owned one of those, a lifetime ago. The woman is only half-dressed, wearing a tiny crocheted bra, the shape of her nipples visible even from this distance. Below the bra: a taut, bare belly. The girl stands, bare foot propped high on the chair, doing an ostentatious sideways ballerina-style stretch, one bangle-covered arm over her head.
Rose can’t help staring. Surely the locals don’t make a practice of dressing so immodestly. Surely they don’t prop their dirty bare feet just anywhere.
The tourists, who seem to have less spatial intelligence than the locals, are the ones who block the alleyways. They stand in spread-out throngs, puzzling over signs advertising locally made chocolate, weaving co-ops and Mayan medicine tours. They’re oblivious to the locals, like a child with a starched white shirt, blue pants and a tiny backpack, trying to dart around their legs.
But Rose knows that she’s noticing more because she’s alone. If she were in a large group, she’d be distracted as well—taking up too much space, chatting too loudly, high on the adrenaline buzz of being in a new place.
Going solo has its advantages. Her daughter had tried to tell her that, but she wouldn’t listen.
I’m not alone all that much, Mom. I always meet people in hostels. I find friends. But when I want to move on, I can. And I like to be alone. That’s when locals talk to me. That’s when I start to feel part of a place.
Rose replied with anxious questions about the civil war, which Jules said happened a long time ago. The midnineties didn’t feel long ago to Rose. They sparred about crime rates. Rose refused to drop it. It wasn’t true what everyone said about the capital being the only dangerous place. The countryside was dangerous, too.
Not Lake Atitlán. Mom, this is why I travel. You can read about a place and you can go to a place and the two are completely different things. Please let’s not fight about this.