Love on the Road 2015 Read Online Free PDF

diamonds, a piece of night sky caught in a lasso of stars. But I couldn’t. Richard gave it to me on our fifth anniversary, and I swore I would never take it off. That’s why it was covered in yellow Nicaraguan dust that day I dangled my hand outside the window of our van. Richard, our four children and I were making this trip out of Costa Rica to extend our visas. An old, Costa Rican Peace Corps drop-out had told us that Panama was too risky for tourists, but Nicaragua was safe – war torn, but no longerdangerous. Richard believed him, and I had to believe Richard. Cross the border, stay overnight, and return with a stamp that extended the deadline for another four months, like feeding a meter.
    I was reading and translating out loud a sign in Spanish, PELIGRO , ‘danger’, watching the landscape morph from tropical to lunar, from lush coffee plantations hugging impossible cliffs to barren gullies beckoning to be filled – I hoped not with us – as we crossed the demilitarised zone into a country known for its contra rebels. The route was less road than a series of mouth-like craters waiting to rip and swallow the green gringos. Us. Richard gripped the steering wheel like a bronco-busting cowboy. Rugged, dark and laconic, his square chin and broad shoulders pulled me in and held me fast from the first. They still did. I bit my tongue when our van bounced into what could have been an excavation for a small skyscraper. Our children shrieked as if Disney had arranged this little treat for them. When the front tires found purchase on the other side, the van tilted crazily before righting itself again. Richard settled his nothing-to-worry-about grin on me. I swallowed the salty pocket of blood that had gathered in my cheek.
    ‘Daddy, do that again.’
    I turned to look at our youngest daughter, Laurie. Her chubby, pink face smeared with peanut butter, the only food she, Daniel, Chloe Kate and Julie would eat when we were travelling, if McDonalds weren’t an option. I pulled a few sheets off our precious roll of toilet paper – we’d been told not to expect anything more absorbent than newspaper, if we were even that lucky – and swiped at Laurie’s face while she bounced in and out of my reach.
    Peanut butter, not rice and beans. How could I pack enough Skippy – or Charmin – for a year? That was my first innocent question that day, a few months after Richard had sold his orthopaedic medicine practice for so much money it felt like a super-jackpot lottery win. He had had a rough night and awakened agitated, excited.
    ‘I had this amazing dream,’ he said. ‘We were drinking papaya con leche in Costa Rica on this porch with chickens and monkeys, all of us. But it wasn’t a vacation. We were home.’
    I wanted to say, ‘Sounds more like an hallucination.’ I did say, ‘Maybe that was your subconscious telling you to find another job before we all end up like that crazy family in Mosquito Coast , blowing up an ice factory in some tropical rainforest.’ I thought I got my refusal across with just the right amount of humour to pass. Richard didn’t think I was funny.
    Months passed. The vision moved from a fantastical dreamscape to a real reservation to have our van shipped on an empty banana boat from Wilmington, Delaware to Limon, Costa Rica. Daniel, our ten-year-old, threatened never to ride in the van again if there were even a hint of Chiquita left behind. When Richard asked the captain if he could accommodate our family along with the van – we would apprentice ourselves to the crew – the captain politely demurred, something about not having insurance for children. Daniel stopped gagging. I stopped laughing. Plane reservations were made. I helped the kids pack twenty duffel bags –half of them stuffed with books – and told my friends how excited and lucky I was to have this great opportunity, changing the subject when they asked me howI really felt. It was only for a year. Besides, Costa Rica was