Twenty Dollar Masks at the Cozumel Pier

I told Fletcher about that box, sitting on the balcony. I had never told him before, not all of it.

He reached over and took my hand and did not say anything, which was the right thing to say.

“I’m going to fix it,” I said. “Not the money. The money’s gone. I’m going to fix the kids.”

“How?” he said.

“The water’s free,” I said. “The water was always free. I just forgot that for a minute because I had a credit card.”

We docked in Cozumel a little after seven the next morning. I was on the open deck before the lines were even tied, watching the island come up green and flat out of water so clear it did not look real.

The pier ran out long and white from the shore, and past it the water went from pale green to turquoise to a blue so deep it was almost navy out where the reef dropped off. I had never seen water like it.

Cozumel is one of the best reef spots in the world, and there are good snorkel places you can reach from the cruise piers without paying a ship a dime, if you know where to look and you are careful.

I had read about it half the night on my phone, on the ship’s slow internet. Public beach access, the safe spots, the swim flags, the current that runs along that coast, which spots families used.

I am not reckless with water. I taught swim lessons at the Vidor city pool every summer from fifteen to twenty.

I have pulled two kids off the bottom of a deep end. I know what water does.

Off the end of the pier there was a row of stands selling everything: sunglasses, hats, blankets, tequila, little carved turtles. And at the third stand, a whole wall of masks and snorkels.

The man running it was older, with a kind face and a straw hat, and he spoke good English.

He held up a mask and snorkel set in a plastic bag. “Twenty dollars,” he said. “Good glass. Not plastic.”

I checked them. I am picky about masks. I pressed each one to my face without the strap and breathed in through my nose to see if it held. The good ones stuck. The cheap ones fell off.

I picked six that held. Two kid sizes, four adult. I bought a bottle of reef-safe sunscreen too, because they will not let you use the regular kind in a lot of the protected water down there.

It came to a little over one hundred and thirty dollars with the sunscreen. The man threw in two mesh bags for free. I said thank you, gracias, and I meant it.

Then I went and stood by the gangway with my bags and waited for my family to come off the ship.

Bernadette and Linus came off first, with their sun hats and their walking shoes. Bernadette wore a yellow blouse with little white flowers on it and had her good camera around her neck.

“Yvonne, honey, what is all that?” she said.

“Beach day,” I said. “Free one. You’re welcome to come, but it’s a walk and the sand is hot.”

Linus looked at the masks and laughed. “I’ll sit in the shade and watch you all drown,” he said.

That was his way of saying yes. Bernadette said she would rather shop and meet us at lunch, and he could go with her.