Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived

by Lily Tuck

  Don’t you want to go swimming? I am naked and standing awkwardly with one foot inside my bathing suit.

  I think I’ll take a nap, Jim answers. I’m beat.

  I’ll just go for a quick dip, I tell him.

  Yeah, and watch out for sharks! Jim calls out after me.

  The beach is crowded with Thai families and their children, thin-legged boys hawking cold drinks and hot spicy food on sticks, soldiers on leave drinking beer. A few of the soldiers have Thai women with them; one soldier has a small brown bear on a leash sitting next to him. The brown bear looks hot, sick. I walk past a bunch of soldiers who are playing a noisy game of volleyball. One of them holds out the volleyball to me, I shake my head and keep walking. Finally I set my towel and bag with suntan lotion and a book in it down on the sand. I don’t see Maynard or Evan anywhere.

  The ocean is warm and the water is very shallow. I have to walk quite a way out before the water reaches my waist and before I can swim. I am a good swimmer but instead of swimming my usual crawl, I keep my head out of the water, I keep an eye out for sharks. Also, for water-skiers. The speedboats pulling them along race back and forth heedlessly and too close to the shore.

  The summer I was fourteen, my family went to stay with my mother’s sister in her cabin on a lake in northern Maine and there I developed a crush on my first cousin, Carl. Carl was a little older and he was a natural-born athlete as well as an avid water-skier. From the back of a speeding motorboat I used to watch him do stunts like turn completely around on his skis and not fall in. Also I remember how Carl offered to teach me how to water-ski, but for some reason that I no longer remember—maybe I had my period and I was embarrassed—I declined. A few years later, Carl lost his arm in a freak traffic accident, but Carl’s fortitude was so exemplary, his mother, my aunt, said, that undeterred, he continued to sail, to play golf, to play tennis, to do everything exactly the way he had before. I saw Carl again not too long ago at his wedding; I even danced with him—a good dancer and never missing a step, Carl held me tightly with his one arm—and I told him how I regretted not taking him up on his invitation to teach me how to water-ski. Waterskiing was easy and the least of it, Carl answered me; on account of the music and all the people talking around us, he must have misunderstood me, for he went on to tell me how he still could feel sensation in his missing arm. A phantom limb, he called it.

  When I go back to my towel on the beach, the bag with the suntan lotion and my book in it is gone. When I go back to the one-room bungalow, Jim is lying exactly how I left him, he is asleep on the bed.

  What was the book? Maynard asks me at dinner.

  The four of us are seated at a table at an outdoor restaurant. The restaurant has a Thai name and the sign for it at the entrance shows a picture of rock lobsters boiling inside a pot. When Jim orders a rock lobster, the waiter shakes his head.

  Mai mi—not here—he says.

  But the sign, Jim points and starts to argue with him.

  Leave it, Evan tells him. The sign means shit.

  The Bell Jar, I answer, by Sylvia Plath, she was a poet.

  Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of her. She killed herself.

  How? Jim asks.

  She gassed herself in the oven while her children were asleep.

  What’s a bell jar? Evan asks.

  It’s a glass jar you put over small plants, seedlings really—I start to say, when suddenly a coconut falls out of a tree and on top of our table. The coconut smashes dishes and scatters the cutlery; it breaks a glass and a bottle full of beer rolls into my lap.

  Jim! I yell.

  In his hurry, Jim has knocked over his chair.

  Jim, I say again.

  Sorry, Jim says. He is embarrassed; also he has gone very white. I overreacted, he says.

  Maynard picks up Jim’s chair, then pats Jim on the back. No big deal, man. Sit down. It can happen to any of us.

  Neither Evan nor Maynard look over at me.

  Look, I say to change the subject. I point to a sign tacked up to a nearby tree: People having fragrant names do not liter here. What do you suppose that means?

  When we come back from the restaurant and before we go to bed, Jim and I sit on the wooden steps leading up to our one-room bungalow. We look up at the stars and smoke cigarettes. Jim has his arm around me.

  That writer, Sylvia what’s-her-name, why did she kill herself? he asks me.

  I don’t know. She was depressed, I guess. Depressed about her writing, I answer.

  Jim—

  What?

  Nothing. I wonder who stole my book, I say instead. Some kid, probably.

  Jim squeezes my shoulder and we stand up and go inside.

  In bed, I get on top but Jim says he is too tired to make love now. Still, I try to arouse him; I kiss his chest, I kiss his nipples; he pushes away my head.

  The other thing I remember about our stay at my mother’s sister’s cabin on a lake in northern Maine was how, upstairs, from my bedroom window I looked directly down on the outdoor shower. Without even wanting to, I could see how my mother and my aunt soaped in between their legs, I could see how tenderly my aunt washed her large breasts, how carefully my father pulled back the foreskin to wash his penis, and how, wet, the black hairs on my uncle’s back and buttocks formed themselves into perfect ringlets. One time I watched Carl start to masturbate but the awful grimace on his upturned face made me turn away from the window—the same awful grimace that was on his face, maybe, when the arm that was sticking out of his car window got shattered by a pickup truck whose driver ran the stop sign at an intersection.

  The next morning, the four of us go to the beach. Evan brings along a deck of cards and we sit on our towels facing each other, we take turns playing gin rummy.

  You should watch your back, Maynard tells me.

  I turn to look around.

  No, I mean the sun, he says. You’ll get toasted.

  You’re right, I say. Already, my back feels stiff, sore.

  Gin! Evan says again and again as he slaps another card facedown. He keeps winning and after a while I stand up and tell Jim I am going in for a swim.

  I’ll go with you.

  With Jim next to me in the water, I feel safer. I don’t worry so much about sharks or motorboats. When we have swum so far out that I can no longer make out Evan and Maynard sitting on the beach, I turn over on my back. Jim does likewise. We float for a while without speaking, letting the little warm waves lap at us, jog us a little. For the first time, since I have been in Thailand visiting Jim, I feel good and like my own self again.

  You know, I like your hair short, I say turning back on to my stomach and paddling toward Jim. It feels nice, kind of like bristles.

  Yeah? Jim holds me by the shoulders. What kind of bristles? He butts me lightly with the top of his head. We are both treading water. He butts me again a little harder.

  Badger bristles?

  Already Jim is pulling down the straps of my bathing suit. Take it off, he tells me.

  Here?

  Yeah, here.

  Because making love in the ocean is awkward, I start to laugh. When I laugh, I swallow water. The sea water makes me cough. The more I cough the more water I swallow.

  I’m going to drown, I say, in between coughing and spitting out seawater. Jim, I mean it, I also say. With one hand I cling to Jim, with the other I cling to my bathing suit; our heads, like loosened buoys, bob up and down in the ocean.

  Jesus, Jim finally says.

  When we get back to the beach, Maynard has left and Evan is sitting cross-legged on the towel smoking a joint. He holds out the joint toward Jim and, closing his eyes, Jim takes a long drag from it. Then, he passes the joint on to me. Not to appear unfriendly or prudish, I take a small puff and hand the joint back to Evan. During our absence, the beach has gotten crowded again. Next to us, her long dark hair framing and fanning her face, a young Thai woman in a bikini is squatting astride a man, massaging his large pink back.

  It is
dark when we drive back to Bangkok. From time to time, the headlights from oncoming cars and trucks illumine the inside of the jeep. Some cars do not dim their headlights and momentarily blind us; the other headlights, on account perhaps of the potholes, bounce weirdly around and briefly illumine the deserted paddy fields that border the road. Maynard who is driving again asks, How much longer are you staying over here?

  Another four days, I answer. In the backseat, I squeeze Jim’s hand.

  What are you guys going to do? Evan turns around just as a passing car lights up his exaggerated wink.

  What’s it to you, Jim answers him. Maybe we’ll head up to Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is a lot cooler.

  Sounds good to me, I say, giving Jim’s hand another squeeze.

  No one says anything for a while, then, all of a sudden, Evan says, Hey! I’m thinking of someone.

  Who? Ho Chi Minh!

  Westmoreland, the asshole!

  Is it a woman? I ask.

  Yes, Evan answers.

  Is she alive?

  No.

  Madame Nhu?

  Was she good looking? Maynard also says.

  Marilyn Monroe, Mae West, Eva Braun, Janis Joplin, Amelia Earhart—excited, Jim nearly shouts.

  Right. I laugh. Typhoid Mary, I say next. Although I am pretty sure I know who the woman Evan is thinking of is, I don’t want to say her name yet. I want to go on guessing and playing the game. Bloody—I start to say when the inside of the jeep is again illumined. This time the light is brighter and does not move past us. I see Evan put his hand up to his face and I turn to say something to Jim when we hit.

  Jim moves underneath me on the floor and for a crazy moment I think we are making love. Then he hits me hard on the chin with his elbow as he tries to get up. I have been thrown on top of him.

  Are you okay?

  I don’t know. I guess, I say.

  Jesus! Jim says. We’ve hit a truck. A goddamn truck.

  Jim climbs over me and pulls at the door on Maynard’s side. Maynard! I hear him yell. Maynard, come on. Help me get this damn door open! Evan! Hey, man! he also yells.

  Maynard is slumped over the wheel and the horn is blaring. Next to him, I see only part of Evan’s back.

  Jim! I say.

  In the front seat, Maynard finally sits up and the horn stops blaring. Shit, he says. What happened? Oh, God, Evan? Evan! he also yells.

  In the backseat, I am holding my shoulder up with one hand. My shoulder does not hurt, but I cannot feel it.

  Maynard gets his door open and nearly falls out of the jeep. There is blood on his pants. Jim is already standing in the middle of the road. He is shouting, Get help! Get an ambulance for chrissakes!

  A yellow bus has stopped right alongside of us. People are looking down curiously from the bus windows. Someone is speaking in Thai, speaking in a fast singsong, the words sound like nonsense. I pull myself out of the jeep. I am still holding up my shoulder and I have started to feel it. I feel it a lot.

  Is Evan okay? I ask stupidly.

  Evan’s cheek is resting on top of the smashed hood of the jeep, shards from the windshield twinkle in his hair and on his face. His glasses which miraculously are not broken, dangle down still hooked around his ear. His eyes and mouth are open and dark blood is streaming from his nose.

  The road is lit now with the uneven wavering of headlights; people have stopped and gotten out of their vehicles to look at the accident. They have formed a semicircle around the jeep and stare at us from a polite distance; out of embarrassment, they are grinning.

  The truck driver stands next to Maynard. He has a red bandana wrapped pirate-style around his face and he pantomimes holding and turning a make-believe steering wheel. The hood of his truck is smashed in as well, a headlight is swinging from a wire; a good-luck jasmine pon hangs limply from the truck’s fender. An agitated honking noise is coming from the back. Geese. He is transporting a load of geese.

  Gold Leaf

  In the village of Rossinière, in Switzerland, Amy is handed a piece of gold leaf to eat.

  “It’s good for the digestion,” Cécile tells her in her accented English. “It’s good against arthritis, too.”

  Both girls laugh. Both girls are too young to worry yet about arthritis.

  “I eat it all the time—an expensive habit. My parents would be furious if they knew,” Cécile says, as she goes back to the lamp which she is restoring and to which she is applying the gold. Her strokes are quick and sure and she uses a curious instrument with an agate head to make the gold shine.

  Amy shuts her eyes and puts the gold leaf—a little gelatinous and more like mercury than gold—into her mouth. The gold feels like paper and, because her mouth has gone dry, she has difficulty swallowing it. With an effort, she forces the gold down and feels its uneasy passage down her throat. The gold has no taste.

  This is Amy’s first time in Switzerland and her first week in Rossinière where she is living with Cécile and her family for the summer. Cécile’s family owns an antique store that specializes in Swiss hand-painted furniture which they restore and sell. The painted furniture reminds Amy of American Quaker or Pennsylvania Dutch furniture, only it is more artful, more intricate. The armoires and chests in the Cottiers’ store as well as in their house have elaborately painted scenes, landscapes with churches, castles, people, carriages, animals. The colors, too, are a surprise: bright mountain greens, vivid sky blues, startling blood reds, nothing like the more sober and muted Quaker and Pennsylvania Dutch colors. Amy’s bed in the Cottiers’ house, for instance, is decorated with lush garlands of blue and red flowers which inspire her with an unaccustomed gaiety. Already, Amy claims that she sleeps better here than she does elsewhere.

  “Funny,” Amy has told Cécile and her parents, “I had expected Swiss art to be, you know, kind of dour and sad. Instead, it’s very lively, it’s very—” Unable to think of the proper word, Amy blushed, stopped.

  In addition, Amy likes the Swiss furniture because each hinge, each fastening and joint, however old, still works simply and perfectly, and Amy says that, for the time being anyway, she prefers craftsmanship to invention. Also, she says she likes the fact that all the furniture is clearly dated. Josef et Marie-Thérèse Henchot—1785 is painted below the garland of blue and red flowers on the headboard of Amy’s bed so that she does not need to speculate or guess, or, in turn, be wrong.

  Cordial and noncommittal with Amy, Cécile’s parents, Monsieur and Madame Cottier, right away include her in their routine with neither surprise nor, as far as Amy can see, any adjustments. Their lack of curiosity about her and her family, Amy attributes to discretion rather than to indifference; when Amy on the first evening volunteered that she was a twin, Madame Cottier did not immediately ask Amy if her twin was identical or fraternal the way everyone else always did.

  Instead the conversation around the Cottiers’ dining room table tends to remain general and devoid of those personal remarks and innuendos Amy resents in her own family (although one time, Madame Cottier did mention Cécile’s short—no, shorn—hair, and with a look of long suffering on her face said to Amy: “You should have seen her hair before! Beautiful thick hair! Now, she looks like—how can I say?—one of those poor people, one of those victims!”)

  Mostly, however, the talk is about food. Monsieur and Madame Cottier discuss the quality of the gruyère and whether it has aged properly, the butter and whether such-and-such a dairy is better than another or whether it has fallen off in quality, they speak about the peaches and whether they are as good, as ripe, as firm, as cheap, as last year’s peaches, and Amy cannot help but think of her own family’s meals and how everyone bolts down his food without a word, barely tasting it, as if eating were a chore rather than a pleasure. Still, Amy is amazed that such a banal topic proves inexhaustible and that even slim Cécile who looks as if she ate nothing but celery stalks, joins in the conversation with enthusiasm and eats twice as much as Amy ever does.

  In her hiking boo
ts, Cécile’s slender legs look thinner, longer. Also, she is wearing short shorts.

  Amy is wearing jeans.

  “Where are we going?” she asks. Then, since Cécile does not answer, Amy says, “I love to walk.”

  Early afternoon in early July, the road that runs through the village of Rossinière is almost deserted—too soon in the season yet for tourists—only an occasional car passes them. Most of the cars in Switzerland, Amy has noticed, are red—perhaps to match the geraniums, she thinks. The window boxes of the chalets in Rossinière are filled with geraniums, the blossoms are full, large. Gladiola, peonies still, sweet peas, snapdragons, and weedless rows of vegetables fill the gardens that border the road. In the last garden, an old woman dressed entirely in black is hoeing. Slowly, she straightens herself up and, leaning against her hoe, she watches the two girls, Amy and Cécile, walk past. No one says a word.

  “I like your hair. Really, I do,” Amy says to Cécile.

  Before Amy has a chance to say anything else, a car drives up—no exception, the car is red—slows down, stops, honks. The young woman sitting next to the driver rolls down her window and gestures with her hand. For a moment, Amy thinks she and the driver are friends of Cécile, but Amy can see out of the corner of her eye that Cécile has raised a strand of the barbed-wire fence that runs alongside the road and is crawling underneath it into the adjoining field.

  “Ici, est-ce bien la route pour—” the young woman calls out to Amy in halting French.

  “Excusez-moi, Mademoiselle, mais nous sommes bien sur la route de—” the young woman tries again a little louder while Amy continues to stare at her. No mistaking the young woman’s accent.

  “Cécile—” Amy starts to call out before she turns away. She can feel the eyes of the couple in the car on her as she crawls awkwardly under the fence. A barb snags the sweater she has tied over her shoulders, the wool tears as Amy pulls it free.

  Cécile is halfway across the field.