An Inescapable Paradise (Short Story)

My father was in his early fifties that summer when he purchased that island off the coast of Puerto Rico, not far from San Juan. I was twenty. He was a CEO of a successful paper company in Chicago, a company that provided specialty printing paper for celebrity agencies, Hollywood production companies and all that--things that never really meant anything to me. He also doubled in online watermarking services as the demand for paperless solutions continued to grow. He wasn't just a CEO, but something else I couldn't really explain, as I'd be lying no matter how I put it, because I'm not really sure. The closest I can come to describing it is that it involved management. It was always business with my father, even fatherhood and his marriage. And when it came to his business, it was none of mine. His mysteriousness outweighed his presence, like he was never really there no matter how often he was in the same room.

The island was something along the lines of a hundred acres; it had a great view of the ocean all around it and I remember taking a break from college to go see this island with him, to scope it out before he finalized the purchase. When we got to the island, it was virtually an empty oasis with the exception being a house of about two thousand square feet, a handcrafted mansion of a cabin which was constructed by Puerto Ricans in the early eighties, natives we'd never meet, some of whom had probably died in less-than-dignified ways. All the blinds were made of authentic bamboo, the carpets handwoven quilts over glossy hardwood flooring. It was the only icon of perfection on in this imperfect circle of an island.

My father had bought this property two months after my mother killed herself, the reason for her doing so I suspect being my father's neglect; he was always having affairs. He'd had two throughout their marriage, both with seniors from my high school, girls I knew but not as friends, and those were only the ones my mother and I found out about when my mother had caught him both times. There were always hints of others, nights where he wouldn't return to the house until the next morning, having more likely than not checked into a hotel for the night, and yet the word “divorce” never crossed their lips, at least not in front of me. So, it was no surprise that when my mother downed two bottles of Xanax with half a bottle of champagne to chase them, my father would feel the burden of being a family man lifted from his shoulders. He'd been keeping an eye on the island not long before she passed, he told me on the ride up on the realtor's sailboat, but it was only once she died that the dream could exist in his life as something more than my mother ever was.

“What do you think?” he asked me when I was in the high-rising foyer of the house, looking out the front door to the expanse of sand leading up to the docks where the realtor's boat sat. As if my father really cared about my opinion. “I think it's just what I need.”

The Latin realtor himself was sitting in the living room, working on a clipboard and filling out paper after paper, eyeglasses out toward the end of his bronze nose. He sipped occasionally from a Long Island Iced Tea my father had prepared for him and he spoke perfect English, even if his mouth was shut most of the time we were there. My father had fixed another Long Island for himself, but I declined it when he offered one to me, making myself a Mai Tai instead.

“It's perfect, isn't it?” my father exclaimed with an enthusiasm that still felt foreign to me, a statement disguised as a question. He stared out the kitchen window, which overlooked more of the Atlantic, both edges of the view shrouded in lush yet shallow rainforest.

I had no idea how often my father would want to go down there. He told me he'd visit every time he had to go to San Juan for “business,” never informing me, as usual, of what this business entailed. I really didn't care. I didn't really even care about the island or San Juan, but he seemed to see it as more of an adopted son of some sort, a person he'd visit from time to time and spend weekends with, my mother's replacement. My replacement. Of course he offered to let me come with him, and when the realtor had my father fill out all the forms and figure out the mortgage payments, he finally had a vacation home. It was just a matter of workmen furnishing the place and stocking it with all the alcohol my father specified. Most of that was various types of rum and tequila, with Maker's Mark whiskey thrown in.

That first weekend visit lasted a week. When my father asked me to come, even if at this point I viewed my father as nothing more than a kind of drifter in a suit, I accepted the invite and flew with him to San Juan where he met with a client. I sat in his Lexus convertible patiently while he met, and took the opportunity to sunbathe outside the office building this way. I was anxious to see the island, to get there and go out on the speedboat docked there which seemed to have come with the house, but I was also extremely wary of this time I would have to spend with my father. I must have waited in that car for thirty minutes and by the time my father returned I had gained a mild sunburn.

We took the private ferry to the island. Once you got to it you could hardly see the shoreline to the south past the docks, out the front of the house. That first trip on the wood-paneled walkway up to the front door of the house--stained glass in a postmodern, nameless abstract shape, almost like the outline of a curvy woman--was one of the most anxiety-ridden. I knew my father had plans of his own, self-kept and hidden from me, nothing in him changed save for a noticeable excitement in his face. He didn't care what I was to do at this island, didn't ask or seem curious about me, but I honestly couldn't have expected different; he never loved me, never saw me as much of a son as he did some kind of baggage provided for him by his late wife. In return I hadn't see him as anything greater than a murderer since she died.

But the island didn't care at all about any of that. Our pasts were vanished, our opinions vacated in this objective land. It gave me a boat, a way out, and it gave my father a house with a beach in back and an indifferent jungle everywhere else. You could hear the seagulls no matter where you were on the island. Their calls were often the only thing I heard while there, and that first day there was mostly spent by my father trying to figure out the stereo system which ran through every room in the house, even giving us two in-wall speakers each in the four bathrooms. Before I knew it I was standing on the beach in back, hearing Bob Dylan singing “Maggie's Farm”, the main chorus scaring crowds of several species of birds from the trees surrounding the house.

“I got it!” I heard from within the walls of the place.

I walked out in the water and waded in it, kicking the sand beneath as I did so, trying to scare away any sting rays that might be hiding. Bob Dylan kept singing those classic lyrics. I don't wanna work on Maggie's farm no more.

The next day my father would stay indoors, making phone calls. He seemed relaxed and somehow slightly tense from anticipation at the same time. I had no idea what he was anticipating, but he made himself drinks all day starting at eight in the morning. He had the stereo blasting which woke me up at eight as well. It was an old Doors album. I went downstairs and my father had been finishing up a Screwdriver at the kitchen island, talking on his cell about “bringing someone up.”

He took a sip and said, “I need some young ones,” in poor Spanish. “Yo necesito unas jovencitas.” He spotted me at the doorway to the huge kitchen, adding into the receiver, “Can I talk later?” He didn't explain why and hung up.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“We're going to have some company today, Ivan.”

“Who?”

“You can take the boat out if you want. I called a ferry.”

“Who?” I repeated, more assertive.

“Who does it matter? You can go wherever you want. You don't have to stay here. I know there's not much to do.”

I went back upstairs, The Doors' “My Eyes Have Seen You” playing all throughout the house. I smoked some weed I'd smuggled in from Iowa before I left ISU to miss class those couple of weeks, which airport staff had miraculously missed in the lining of my suitcase.

***

I didn't take the speedboat. My father took his ferry to the island and I smoked a bud and half of weed in my bedroom instead until all that was left was seedy pulp I would have to pick later. Then I stared out the window toward the east. It wouldn't have bothered me if my father had smelled the pot when he returned with whatever company he was bringing back. It wouldn't have surprised me if he wanted to borrow some. The third Doors album in the stereo system played and I tried to count how many species of bird I could make out of the window, hiding in the trees. I spotted five, but I didn't know what kind they were apart from the seagulls. They were the only ones that made noise.

An hour or so after watching television, my father returned on the ferry. I heard the engine roaring from my bedroom and I went downstairs to see who was on the boat with him. When I went out and walked to the pier, I spotted the driver of the ferry getting out and behind my father four girls walked out, all dark-skinned with flat chests, and it occurred to me as they got off on the sand one by one, barefoot and wearing tight ripped skirts and multi-colored tank tops, that they were a lot younger than either of us. They looked between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. They couldn't have been a day or even a year older, half my age and a fourth my father's. My father followed them out and the girls all laughed together; it was obvious they were friends. They stared and gawked with dropped jaws at the house behind me. They all had these big dark twinkly eyes complimenting their native skin, and it made me uncomfortable and replaced my high with a pungent unease. Then my father met eyes with me, his sandy blond, disheveled hair swept over the left of his pale head. His smile dropped.

The four girls saw me and started walking toward me, speaking to each other but not in English, and as they did so I finally realized that these were working girls, and likely not the youngest in their neighborhood. My father must have hired them, I thought, but why so young? And were they from San Juan? I walked back in the house, feeling a slight nausea, but it was nothing a sea sickness pill couldn't have neutralized. I didn't have to do anything with these girls, but I saw my father walk past me, only looking over his shoulder at me once the girls arrived at the front door of the house and the ferry had taken off. I wondered why the ferry driver hadn't done anything, why he let my father bring these girls, but when I thought about it he looked as poor and desperate as the girls, with a bland yellow T-shirt and jeans that looked as though they hadn't seen a washer in weeks.

“You sure you don't want to go out on the boat?” my father asked.

“Why are those girls here?” I asked.

“Just some company.” He rubbed his upper back above his flamingo pink polo T-shirt, hiding his face away from me for a moment. A bit muddled, he murmured, “Boat's all yours, Ivan.” He said nothing more and met up with the girls who were waiting at the door to the house.

My father smiled and said something in Spanish to the four girls, something like “como te llamas,” asking their names, but the girls just kind of smiled back shyly and my father let them inside, holding the door open for them once he stepped through the door.

I wanted to go back in, but at the same time I didn't. I walked over to the boat instead and more gulls cried. I didn't really want to think about what my father was going to do with those girls. I had to go inside to grab the keys for the boat, though, and so I walked back in through the front door. Another Doors song was playing. My father was in the kitchen at the island, the four girls facing him, lined up with their backs to me and leaning on the counter as he made drinks for them. He was putting ice into four glasses.

“This is a Chicago Fizz I'm making for you,” he told them, in English. They all simply looked at each other and giggled while he shook the cocktail shaker. I walked away and back upstairs, smoking some more of my weed and setting my laptop up to play a Spotify playlist, but the Doors' Strange Days album started playing again and I didn't know how I could drown it out as it reminded me of my father. I heard the girls laughing downstairs along with the music and I leaned back on the bed, letting my eyes rest on the ceiling. The sun began to sink lower, gleaming in the room with a melancholy pink-orange.

The higher I got the more I thought about going outside and so I walked back downstairs. I walked into the kitchen but nobody was there; my father must have led the girls to the basement, as I'd heard no girly laughter or footsteps up the stairs. I fixed myself a drink, a Mai Tai, and walked outside to the sand. Looking to the west the sun was coasting down over the shallow jungle, half-hidden behind the trees as if it was peeking at me, at the house. I still heard The Doors and wished my dad would change out that infernal album, but he never would, I knew it. I'd never be able to listen to that band again once we returned to the States.

I stared out with my Mai Tai to the south and as I sipped at the drink in-hand I began to hear more laughter from inside and then it went quiet. The only occasional sound I could hear was the call of birds in the trees and maybe the waves on the ocean colliding along with Jim Morrison singing muddled lyrics in the background. And then it started, several minutes later: the frequent gasping, followed by screaming. I detected what I thought was pain in those screams.

I didn't know what transpired in that house behind me and I didn't want to contemplate it, even for a second. I couldn't think about anything other than the way the alcohol tasted on my tongue and the birds hiding around me. I once again started to count how many different species of bird I could make out whenever I saw them leave the trees and fly out over the shoreline. I walked to the edge of the sand, removed my sandals and stood ankle deep in the water, counting four, five, six different types of birds, wondering if maybe I was counting males and females of the same species who simply bore juxtaposed colors, but it didn't matter at all to me.

More gasping I tried not to hear, the shrieks of those girls which I couldn't decipher as pleasurable or pained. I tried not to think of my father doing anything in that house. I tried not to think of my father. I tried not to think about the house itself or anything other than the birds flying, the one with the white wings and black body circling a small area over the sea for fish. I watched the thing make a dive and thought about how it sounded beneath the water, wondering how deep it swam before resurfacing for air. I thought about how birds had wax on their wings to keep them from getting soaked. I wished that I had wings.

More gasping and shrill high-pitched shouts emanated from the house over and over and I thought of them as bird calls. Was it a bird that I hadn't spotted yet? No matter how I tried to convince myself of what wasn't happening, I failed. I never wanted to step back in that house again. I considered stealing that boat and taking it back to the island and boarding a flight on my own, leaving my father here with these preteen whores. At the same time I was scared of not only what I would do once I got back home, but what my father would do without my presence.

The boat tempted me, though. It stood at the pier, bobbing in the waves which bumped its side repeatedly. But I realized that thing would only take me halfway out between the islands before running out of gas. The thing was a speedboat, and I'd be stranded out in the middle of that blue space I began to see as a nightmare.

***

I sat on the beach for about thirty minutes by the time the little cries from within the house had quit. I walked back into the house hesitantly, and the group had moved upstairs to my father's bedroom, the door shutting as soon as I went up to head back in my room. I shut my door quietly so no one would know I was up there, making the whole thing even more painfully awkward and stressful than it already was, but I smoked the resin in my chillum and sat at the edge of the bed for a minute. The image of my home had crossed my mind, and then I went back downstairs and aggressively blew out the remaining smoke I had held in my lungs as I trudged down the stairs.

In the kitchen I made myself another drink, a Margarita, and I grew tipsy after I finished it in a few gulps. I must have drank the thing in under two minutes. I went back outside, making sure to slam the front door as I did so, so my father would hear, and I was determined to take that boat out on the sea. I was in possession of the keys which I'd snatched off the kitchen counter. All I had to do was release the boat from the pier and I was off. I didn't even care if I ran out of gas before docking the thing again. I didn't want to be anywhere on foot on this island.

The Doors stopped playing in the house, the end of the album for the fifteenth time or so. They played me off as I started the ignition and started off the coast. I cruised out to the point where I couldn't see the island as anything more than a minuscule speck on the horizon, a median between the ocean and the sky. I shut off the engine with half a tank of gas left and sat out on that boat for what must've been four hours. I lay down on the back seats once I had it anchored and looked up at the afternoon sky as it grew more colorful during the sun's descent. Out on the ocean my thoughts returned to my mother, like this was the exact distance from the island I had to travel in order to reach her memory. The thread between me and dad had been cut in this spot, and I let out a few streams of tears.

“You are what you want to be,” she had told me once when I was ten, after I had gotten in trouble for punching a kid at school for calling me small. “If you want to be a good person, all you have to do is be one. If you want to be a bad person, it works the same way. If you think the line is blurred, it's because you haven't thought about the line.” It was weighty for a ten-year-old, but it stuck with me because of that, which was of course her intention. Complex thoughts are like glue if they resonate, until you can figure them out.

Sitting up in the late afternoon, I looked toward the horizon, opposite the island, where the sun fell. The line where the ocean and sky met seemed to be the line I should think about this time. I tried to dismiss the island from my memory entirely. It represented the man who had only used me as an excuse to come here, only to use others. In spite of this knowledge, I enjoyed the memory of my mother, even if I found a sharp agony as it occurred to me that her physical image was fading from my mind. I confused her imagined smile for my ex-girlfriend's when I attempted to recall a time when she was happy.

As soon as the sun was half over the horizon I returned to the island. I parked the boat and walked back inside the house, the clear night sky serving as a condemnation of my return there. The dread was almost vomit-inducing.

Inside the house I was greeted with the sight of my naked father in the dimly lit living area next to two empty bottles of Sailor Jerry's, sleeping on the pull-out couch with the four girls lying around him in their underwear. Turning him in was an appealing idea, but the fear of what he might do to me came immediately after, and while he was never really a violent man, the knowledge that he didn't care about me was enough to unsettle me. It suddenly occurred to me why he would dare do all of this in my presence, perhaps to spite me in my helplessness as a product of my mother. It was another level of cruelty I hadn't before perceived him as capable of achieving.

In my defeated passiveness, I walked up to my bedroom, smoked the last of my pot and fell asleep.