All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [80]
In the middle of winter, an editor calls asking me to do a story about women in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, expatriates who have reinvented themselves in that town, pursuing second acts in their careers after forty.
I haven’t been back to San Miguel de Allende, a well-preserved colonial town in the middle of the country—if you were to twirl Mexico on your finger, the tip would be touching San Miguel—since I lived there for a summer when I was ten. In all the years and trips since, I’ve never considered returning, even though I’ve visited several other places in Mexico. I’ve been afraid the town would be as changed as my childhood home in Colorado, surrounded by housing developments that obscure the mountains, and teeming with traffic. I’ve heard the place is full of gringos—bohemians, boomer artists, energy healers, Texas real estate developers, and retirees who realize that all of San Miguel, with its relatively inexpensive maids and medical services, amounts to assisted living, with better food.
I haven’t wanted to mar the memory of the town that so thoroughly enchanted me thirty-five years ago. That summer stands out in Technicolor among the black-and-white snapshots of my childhood. There’s my oldest sister, Cindy, her toothy smile bright as the armful of sunflowers she bought for only a few pesos at the market. That’s Jan, with her long blond hair, trailed around the central plaza by an amorous muchacho in a yellow VW bug. There are Amy and me, skipping over cobblestones in our new leather huaraches, on the way to the blue-doored bakery in the morning to buy pastries in all different shapes that all tasted the same. Here we are in Spanish class with our tiny teacher, whose black braids reached to her knees and doubled back again, pinned behind her ears. Dad’s patting a donkey in that shot. And there’s Mom, sunning her legs in the open courtyard where we lived, her face shaded by the flowering plants that spilled over the wooden balcony.
Yet San Miguel de Allende still tugs at my subconscious. I’ve always been curious about the town, reading about it from afar, hearing reports from friends who have wandered through. I am curious enough to agree to the assignment; in any case, it’s my job.
I ARRIVE VERY late in León and take a shuttle van, an hour and a half, to San Miguel de Allende. The high desert is empty of all but scraggly brush, the distant hills barely visible in the night, stars sprinkling the sky like salt. I sink back into my brain and try to come up with enough Spanish to make polite conversation with the driver, the basics about where he lives and how many kids he has. Younger than me, with five children, he is already a grandfather a few times over.
Because I’m tired and don’t want to try to explain about being single and childless to a man from a culture where that doesn’t make sense, I tell the driver a story when he asks, that I have a son, Antonio, who is studying Spanish for a summer at the University of Guanajuato before he goes to college. I’m in Mexico to visit him and spend a few days in San Miguel with some old friends, I say. My husband—who, gracias a Dios, is still as handsome as the day we married, at least I think so—had to stay at home because he is a transplant specialist and has to be on call in case someone dies in an accident and he has to rush to harvest the organs. In my Spanish it comes out sounding more like “he specializes in people’s organ meats and has to be ready to run and cut out the fresh heart and brains.”
“Ah.” The driver nods gravely, ready to switch topics.
As we pass vast expanses of brush, limbs reaching to the desert moon, I ask the driver what I fear most about San Miguel de Allende, that under the stress of time and