Chapter 14: World Travelers

“I NEED ATTENTION from my husband!” Patricia cried. I mean literally cried. She was twenty-six weeks pregnant and bemoaning the condition of her body. And Ronda and I had just arrived back home from a harrowing two-week trip through Central America. All we wanted to do was collapse and recover.

“She’s not the only one, you know,” Anna growled.

Oh, shit. There was trouble in paradise.

“We haven’t abandoned you, sweet thing. We want to be home with you as much as you want us here,” Ronda said, holding Anna as I held Patricia.

“You know we aren’t actually lesbians. I love you and I love Patricia, but this steady diet of whining woman is getting on my nerves,” Anna said. Patricia just cried some more.

“Daddy, dance,” Toni said, puckering up to cry as well.

I tried to think back to Patricia’s first pregnancy. She was just entering the third trimester. Wow! That had been a chaotic time. It was prom and graduation and Anna becoming a fully sexual part of our family. My exhibition was open, I had to run to Chicago for shoots and to see Elizabeth. Yes, Patricia had seemed particularly needy during that time, but it was mitigated to some extent because we were all still in Tenbrook. Chris was still with us. Judy and Janice, Patricia’s best friends, were doting on her. And I was spending every Sunday afternoon photographing her, holding her, sleeping with her, massaging her ... No wonder she was feeling abandoned.

“We’re all going to make it,” I said, pulling Toni, Ronda, and Anna into the embrace with Patricia and me. “Our next trip is all together in a Caribbean paradise. We won’t be traveling alone again until January. This has all been much harder than I thought it would be.”

“I’ll look like a whale on the beach. I shouldn’t have done this,” Patricia sobbed. “I shouldn’t have gotten pregnant until I knew we were stable and could handle the stress.”

“Shh, now. We all agreed and we’re all looking forward to having our new little sister in the family,” I said. Ronda and I had Anna, Patricia, and Toni sandwiched between us. “You just can’t imagine how much we love you and miss you when we’re gone.”

“But you have each other,” Anna whined.

“We do, but it might interest you to know that we’ve been too tired to do anything about it.”

“It didn’t help that I had my period right in the middle of this trip. Nate’s been listening to me bitch and moan most of the trip,” Ronda added.

“You don’t make love all the time?” Patricia asked.

“We don’t even come close to Anna’s ‘hardly ever.’” Anna had made that comment when we returned from a trip to Canada, to which she added ‘maybe once a day.’ “We’re doing more work now than we thought we’d be doing since the equipment is literally traveling as our luggage to keep it from being inspected. We have to train people, make sure the equipment and procedures are properly transferred, take pictures of the ambassadors and sometimes their staff, and bail our pilots out of jail.”

“What? What happened to your pilots?” Anna said.

“They refused to unlock the cargo compartment for inspection. Since the pilots carry a red passport instead of a black one, they were considered not exempt from legal penalties. The Ambassador in Nicaragua had to actually appear at the airport police station and demand their release and the release of our airplane so we could leave,” Ronda said.

“I don’t like you being in danger,” Patricia said. “I don’t think you should have to travel to dangerous countries.”

“The whole world is a dangerous place,” I said. “Even staying in Chicago can be dangerous.”

“Why don’t you dance with our little girl, while I hold our wives and tell them how much we love them,” Ronda said. “Then we can think about going to get some breakfast.”

I picked Toni up and started the music so we could dance around the room. She wanted to foxtrot so I spent a while bent double so she could make her feet do the steps. She was getting pretty good at it. I needed to expand her repertoire of dances.

We were really wiped, having not slept most of the night. We hadn’t gotten out of Guatemala until almost dark on Friday. We’d flown around Cuba to Miami as our port of entry, then north to DC. The secretary had arranged a credentialed courier who signed off on our packet about four o’clock Saturday morning, and then we turned and headed for Chicago.

Of course, at five-thirty in the morning, we couldn’t expect our wives to be up and waiting at Midway, so we caught a cab for the exorbitant fare of forty dollars to get us all the way up to Antioch and home. We hadn’t expected the tears when we walked through the door.

The whole trip had been chaotic. Our routing had to consider where the plane was coming from before we could determine where the next stop should be. We couldn’t fly directly from British Honduras to Guatemala because the two countries were practically at war with each other. Nor was it advisable to fly from Honduras to El Salvador because of the action of guerillas in the border mountains. So, we flew from British Honduras to Honduras to Nicaragua, where our plane was nearly impounded along with our pilots. Then it was on to Costa Rica and Panama before turning out to sea and flying up to El Salvador. Finally, we got to Guatemala and after the training there the pilots carefully navigated to the east coast between British Honduras and Honduras, then around Cuba to get to Miami. That whole region was just a jigsaw puzzle of pieces who hated each other.

I guessed South America might be even worse.

At least our Caribbean trip would be a little easier, I thought. Next week, I’d get all the shipments ready to go and they would be shipped to each embassy on a commercial transport. Then, since the whole family was going on this trip, we’d be flying commercial to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Our trip to the Caribbean was a known agenda, so the passport center had not sent their people for the training in Washington, DC. San Juan would be our base of operation and Ronda and I would mostly be making day trips from there to the five Caribbean consulates and embassies. We’d leave San Juan and spend a few days in Nassau in the Bahamas and fly home to Chicago on January 2.

I was getting tired, just thinking about it.

It was clear to Ronda and me that we needed to spend some real quality time with our wives. Anna and Patricia were clearly wearing thin. We spent all weekend just holding and helping them. At least the grass wouldn’t need to be mowed again until spring. I spent time in the little studio taking Patricia’s and Toni’s photos, then spent time in the darkroom with Anna as I processed the photos and printed a few.

Monday, we took Toni to school, but Ronda and I both took the day off from work for recovery and just did everything we could to care for our women. Tuesday, of course, Patricia was home alone. She dropped us at the train station and Anna, Ronda, and I went to work. We got an eye-opener when the work day ended. It was dark out. The sun had just been rising when we boarded the train in the morning. It had already set when we left the office in the afternoon at 4:30. To top that, there was an inch of fresh snow on the ground.

Right. I wouldn’t need to mow, but I would need to start shoveling as soon as we got home.

We spent the next three work days on the phone, shipping equipment and trouble-shooting installations. Mr. Martin assured us that we would have government transportation to each of our destinations in the Caribbean. Then we started scheduling our trips to South America. We’d be flying pretty long distances and coming home every weekend—or so we thought. Only two countries per trip, we were told. An embassy strategist consulted with us to set the schedule. Some of South America was in chaos. We got briefing documents that were to be left in our locked file cabinet in the office and not taken out of the office. The US had something of concern in just about every country south of the US, starting with Cuba to the military dictatorship in Brazil, to the socialist government in Chile. The expectation was a massive refugee problem.

The job wasn’t always scheduled so heavily that we couldn’t see our family. We’d had most of Thanksgiving week off and went to Tenbrook and Sage to visit our families. Kat and Julie had come back from Minnesota that week as well. Kat just wanted to hug Patricia’s tummy. She got Patricia to pose for her so she could do a sketch. She and Julie were both doing well in school, but had to turn around and drive back to Minneapolis the day after Thanksgiving.

I’d celebrated Patricia’s birthday with her in the way she loved most—naked in my studio. But we were going to be gone over Christmas and New Year’s. It was the first time any of us had spent Christmas away from our families. And the night before we left would be Anna’s twenty-third birthday.

Things evened out at home as we were able to spend more quality time together. Ronda’s spent most of our time on the phone to the offices we would be visiting on our long trip to the Caribbean, confirming that they had received the equipment and supplies and making sure our schedule was firmed up. I fielded or placed several calls to places where we’d already been to make sure my trainees and equipment were functioning the way they should. At three weeks, the Caribbean trip would be our longest trip so far. Thankfully, the family would all be together enjoying a sunny winter vacation.

It started going to hell about the time we woke up Saturday morning to go to the airport. Toni was sick. She was tired and cranky and throwing up.

“What are we going to do?” Patricia cried. “We can’t take her like this!”

“Shh,” I comforted Toni as I held her in my arms. It was five o’clock in the morning and the limo had just pulled up in front of the house to take us to the airport. “We’re going to go have fun in the sun on the beach, sweetie. You want to go swim in the ocean, don’t you?”

“Don’t want to swim on beach,” she sniffed.

“Well, let’s get in the limo and go to the airport so we can be ready when you feel better. You get to fly in an airplane like Daddy and Momma Ronda.”

“Don’t wanna fly.”

Of course, all week she’d been talking about flying to a beach and how excited she was. I had a feeling that was what her problem was this morning. The excitement had gotten to be too much. She didn’t feel hot or feverish, so I got the family out of the house and into the limo. I thought ahead far enough to take a couple of plastic bags and I needed one ten minutes after we left the house when Toni threw up again. There wasn’t much left in the little girl’s stomach.

Once we boarded the plane, I held her on my lap with Patricia beside me, looking out the window. I hadn’t realized it was the first time flying for her. Ronda kept Anna comforted across the aisle from us. Anna, at least, had flown to LA and back with me. Toni eventually passed out and slept all the way to Miami.

Not so, the rest of us. There was turbulence over the mountains in eastern Tennessee. Patricia gripped my arm hard enough to leave marks, and I thought she would need one of the airplane barf bags before we finally landed. Anna was looking a little green, too.

It was 10:30 when we got to Miami and we had time for breakfast, finally. The turbulence had curtailed any food service on the three-hour flight. I didn’t dare even have a cup of coffee for fear I’d spill on the little one. Neither Patricia nor Anna could even look at the breakfast menu on the plane and Ronda passed, out of consideration for our wives. We had oatmeal in the airport restaurant, hoping that would settle stomachs all the way around. I drank three cups of coffee.

We caught our flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico at one o’clock and landed before four. I was used to carting around a fair amount of luggage when I traveled with my cameras, but making sure we had all the bags for five people loaded on a luggage cart and out to catch our shuttle bus to the hotel was an extra complication.

We were so exhausted by the time we checked in that we all just wanted to collapse in bed. Of course, that’s when Toni woke up.

She was hungry and wanted to see the ocean and the beach. She had a hundred questions about the hotel because our suite was different than the hotel in Tenbrook, which was her only comparison. I reminded her of the hotel in Windsor where the desk clerk always gave her a sucker and she wanted to know why the desk clerk here hadn’t given her one. She was a ball of energy after having slept all day and was ready to do everything at once, no matter how tired we all were.

Our hotel was not quite on Condado Beach, but we were only a block away and could see the blue water from our balcony window. We all shed our winter clothes and put on lightweight summer clothes before going downstairs and out to explore. We had to remind Toni that we weren’t going in the ocean to swim today because it was too late. She was comforted, though, when she got to wiggle her toes in the sand, and then we found a restaurant for dinner.

Of course, Toni had difficulty going to sleep. Guess who drew baby duty as my wives all crashed in bed. I told stories to Toni and danced with her until after ten.

We managed to sleep late on Sunday as Toni played quietly in her room, reading stories to her stuffed fox, Reynard. Aunt Addi had helped her choose a name. We all felt considerably better when we went to the hotel restaurant for Sunday brunch, and then dressed for an afternoon on the beach. There had been a trace of rain early in the morning, but the streets weren’t even damp by the time we left the hotel. Ronda and Anna both had nice shorts and tops on over their swimsuits. Patricia wore a sundress that was tight around her bust and then flared out over her pregnant tummy.

The day was warm—hot, in terms of Chicago. It was around 85 degrees. There were a lot of people on the beach and when Toni wanted to play in the water, I was right beside her. She hadn’t learned to swim yet and I wasn’t going to let go of her with her little floaties on. Anna came out to join me in a nice one-piece suit. I wore a T-shirt with my trunks. I wasn’t going to risk getting sunburned, and I was watching Toni carefully. When we got back to our beach blanket, Ronda was lying on her stomach in a tiny bikini with the straps undone and off her back. Patricia was under a beach umbrella with her skirt pulled up to her waist and a colorful bikini bottom on. I thought it was a swimsuit, but the more I looked at it—and it was hard not to look—the more I started thinking it was just a pair of colorful panties.

After I’d kissed each of my wives, Toni and I settled down to build a sand castle. I made sure she was covered up, though. After we’d been on the beach a couple of hours, we picked up our things, dressed in our walking clothes, and went back to the hotel. A lot of things in San Juan were closed, but we managed to find dinner and eventually had our first loving night on the family vacation.

It wasn’t terribly far from our hotel to the passport agency, but Ronda and I took a taxi as soon as we’d finished breakfast. We didn’t want to take any more time here than we had to. We were met by the local director of operations and Ronda presented an envelope from Mr. Martin. We were given a brief tour and were taken to the conference room we’d use for training. I was surprised that ten people showed up for the training.

“We’ll all be called upon at one time or another to step into the position,” the director said. “Better to be trained on it in advance.”

I had to agree with his assessment and we started the training. It went smoothly, but took longer than we’d anticipated simply because there was only one unit and ten people to train on it. Eventually, we got everyone to a level we considered competent to operate the system and we handed out certificates. This was something new we’d decided on before we did our Central America tour. We were carrying a packet of blank certificates and Ronda filled one out for each student, which I signed. Then we had a photo session and Ronda took my picture handing the certificate to and shaking hands with each trainee. We’d decided to give each of them an official certification as a Department of State Passport ID Operator.

We finally got back to the hotel at almost four o’clock. Anna and Patricia had taken Toni back to the beach during the day and then spent part of the afternoon shopping and exploring. They returned soon after we got back.

Having Ronda and me back at the hotel for dinner and the evening helped to relieve some of the parental stress that both Anna and Patricia were under, watching Toni in a strange city. But early the next morning, Ronda and I were at the airport for our flight to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. It was a smaller plane than either of us had ever flown before. It had two propellers and a single seat on each side of a short aisle, with just six rows. Ronda and I could sit facing each other across a table.

There was just one pilot for this plane, but it still had a stewardess, who we soon discovered was also the copilot. Francis and Danielle introduced themselves and were very cordial. Ronda and I were the only passengers. The flight was an hour and a half, and we were met at the plane by a car that took us directly to the embassy.

Ronda delivered the packet she carried to the ambassador and we set to work training the two people who would operate the equipment at the embassy. It went pretty fast and after the training, presentation of certificates, and photos, we met with the ambassador again for his formal portrait. He gave a packet to Ronda for delivery back in Washington, DC, then we headed back to the airport.

“If you’d like a drink on the way back, I’ll be happy to get you one,” Danielle said. “I don’t know your preferences, but if you give me a list, I’ll have the right things in store for you tomorrow. I understand this week is all fairly short hops, but this one is the shortest. We don’t have much of a galley, but I can get packaged meals and make drinks.”

“We’re going to have a really long day tomorrow,” Ronda said. “How far is Jamaica?”

“Close to four hours. We’ll land in Port au Prince Haiti to refuel. What time would you like to leave? I’ll make sure Francis is up to speed.”

“Oh, gee. Four hours means we should get out of San Juan by five or five-thirty,” I said. “Is it possible to have coffee?”

“Absolutely. I’ll make sure we have some breakfast rolls at least,” Danielle said. “The plane is yours for the next two weeks, so we’ll stock it with whatever you want.”

“I don’t need any drink today, but I’m sure a drink would taste good on the flight back tomorrow,” I said. Ronda asked for white wine and I agreed.

We all knew Wednesday was going to be a long day, so Anna and Patricia were prepared to function completely alone until we got back that night. The least time we could possibly be gone door-to-door was fourteen hours, and more likely sixteen. We’d need to sleep on the plane at least part of the time and Danielle promised to pick up dinner for us in Kingston.

We were at the airport at five and the plane was in the air at five-thirty. We didn’t anticipate any problems entering Jamaica as we were both flying with black passports and only carried Ronda’s diplomatic pouch and my Zero Halliburton camera case. It wasn’t a problem as we were met at the plane by a car to take us to the embassy. Once we were off the plane, though, Francis and Danielle had to pass customs or else sit on the plane all day. It was a cursory check and they managed just fine. They had the burgundy or red passports that identified government contractors. It was just a step below our black passports.