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Strangely, Carla never seemed to mind Michael's calls. If someone contacted me every
day to complain about an issue over which I had little or no control, I would do my best to
fob him off on someone else—anyone else. But as ineffectual as Carla appeared to be, she
was infinitely patient.
In the meantime we got so desperate we considered praying to the household gods for
the release of our furniture, though our baser instincts told us we might get better results
offering them something more tangible than mere words. After all, they were withholding
material goods—maybe something equally concrete would appease them.
We bandied around the idea of torching a side table we no longer liked but, when you
live in a condo, the neighbors get surprisingly cranky about furniture incineration.
Instead, we threw out a duvet cover I'd spilled cereal on and donated some cheesy nov-
els and a Spanish dictionary (in case the Puerto Rican gods were monolingual) to the local
library.
And guess what?
It worked!
Two days later Carla called Michael to congratulate him.
“Your items are on the boat to Vieques as I speak.”
Thank you, domestic gods. We love our vanity unit. We hope you enjoy our cereal-en-
crusted duvet.
☼ ☼ ☼
One of the lessons we learned from all this drama is that the good old U.S. Postal Service
is the best and cheapest way to ship things to Vieques—as long as they're not too big or
too heavy.
During the first year that we owned the house we shipped down, via U.S. parcel post,
six ceiling fans, several boxes of track lighting, and untold quantities of books, sheets, cov-
erlets, towels, placemats and kitchenware. And not one thing ever arrived damaged.
In subsequent years we rose to even greater heights of shipping creativity. When we
couldn't find a barbecue grill we liked on Vieques, we bought one in Maryland, dismantled
it, mailed the parts separately to Jane, and reassembled the whole thing once it arrived.
I realize the following qualifies as a minor digression but I have to tell you that Michael
installed all six of those ceiling fans. Among all of my other phobias, I'm deathly afraid
of electricity. Each time he stood on the metal kitchen ladder and twisted the little copper
wires together on yet another electrical connection, I found myself taking a mental invent-
ory of my dark-colored clothes to make sure I'd be presentable at his memorial service.
Needless to say, my fears were unfounded—Michael's father, an engineer, had thought-
fully passed along his fix-it gene to his son. The fans ran like a charm and once Michael
had finished hanging them (having first satisfied himself that they didn't wobble, wobbling
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