What Could Be Saved

by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

  “We can give him medicines to help his heart squeeze,” said the female doctor. “But those can take time to work. With the fluid backing up into his lungs and the pneumonia on top of that, he’s not getting enough oxygen.”

  “Right now he needs a ventilator,” the other doctor cut in. “Has your brother ever expressed strong wishes against being put on life support?”

  They both stopped talking. In the abrupt silence after so much information, Laura and Beatrice looked at each other—as if they knew this man your brother at all, or any of his wishes—and shook their heads no.

  At that, the two doctors whisked away down the corridor and a young woman in burgundy scrubs led Bea and Laura back to the waiting room.

  “Did you see him?” asked Clem.

  “No,” said Bea. “They’re putting him on life support.” Something washed across her face and she sat down suddenly, in the chair beside her husband. “The DNA matched,” she said, her voice hollow and wondering. “It’s really Philip.” Clem put his arm around her. “He’s come back,” said Bea. She was staring at nothing, brow wrinkled as though she was working out a puzzle. “And he’s dying.”

  1972

  Chapter Twelve

  MONDAYS AT 9 Soi Nine were mainly recuperative. Their mother spent the whole morning out—at the salon first, then lunch—while the house underwent an intense cleaning, Choy and Noi going back and forth to the laundry behind the building and Daeng calling commands in a loud voice she didn’t use when the parents were there. The children were expected to amuse themselves outside until early afternoon, when the driver would take the girls to ballet.

  They played Red Light, Green Light and Mother May I, both exceptionally dull with only three. When they dragged into the kitchen complaining of the heat, of boredom, of hunger, Daeng gave them each a glass of orange squash and told them Get out, I busy. They wandered out again holding the sweating drinks and settled onto the swings in the garden. Noi, who sometimes played with them, whisked by in her long black skirt, shaking her head sorry sorry when Philip called to her. A minute later, they could hear energetic scolding from Daeng. Who was always scolding the Number Three, but today she sounded more vociferous than usual.

  “It must have been a great big tray she dropped,” commented Philip.

  The children had been dismissed by then, but had heard it all from the top of the stairs. First the crash, then a silence that quickly filled with polite sounds of distress, Robert asking Are you all right? and Genevieve: That’s enough, Sarah, leave it. The carpet had had to be taken away for cleaning.

  From the swing, Laura could see Somchit in the driveway, squatting in the hump of shade beside the car. She felt a sediment of guilt for having spied on him from the window the night of the party. She hadn’t told anyone about that yet. As she watched now, Daeng came out onto the front step and began speaking to him in a quarreling voice; he crab-walked around the car to the sunny side and squatted there instead, slitting his eyes closed against the sun.

  “We could play freeze tag,” said Philip.

  “It’s stupid with just us,” said Bea. “Maybe if Jane and Alex come over.”

  “You always want Alex to come over,” said Laura. She sang, “Alex and Bea, sitting in a tree,” and Philip joined in, “K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

  “Shut up,” said Bea, her face bright red. She jumped off the swing and put her empty glass down onto the grass. “Let’s swim.”

  “It’s Laura’s turn,” said Philip. He turned to her. “What do you want to do?”

  A brief, giddying power. Laura could choose hopscotch, which they never played because Philip hated it. Or army men in the grass, which is what Philip probably would like, but Bea would refuse to participate. Laura could choose swings, but they were sitting on the swings now, so that wouldn’t be like taking a turn.

  Bea was looking at her, eyebrows raised, expectant.

  “Swimming,” said Laura. Bea smiled.

  They all ran toward the house for their suits; at the side terrace, Laura slowed. She let the other two go ahead of her and went around to the front step, where Daeng still stood, scowling.

  “What’s he done?” Laura asked, expecting to be told mai pen rai.

  “Somchit like women,” said Daeng. “My daughter very unhappy.” She spat another furious volley of syllables toward the car and the man hiding behind it, then turned and went into the house.

  In the quiet, Somchit peeked over the car’s white bonnet; seeing that Daeng was gone, he smiled at Laura. She smiled back shyly.

  Philip, wearing his bathing trunks, raced out of the side of the house toward the pool. “Last one in is a rotten egg,” he shouted.

  “No fair,” cried Laura. “I’m not even changed yet.”

  * * *

  Inside the house, Noi was aware of Somchit outside in the driveway, his presence like a burning point of energy focused on her. From his second day of work, he’d been bringing her presents. First a box of candy, sugar-dusty fruit pastilles with soft jelly centers, left on the front step for her to find when she went out at dawn on Thursday to sweep. He’d watched her pick it up, open the lid, look nervously back at the house; when she’d put it into the pocket of her skirt, he’d smiled. In the afternoon of that day he’d stood in the driveway blowing onto a pinwheel made of thin colored foil looped onto notched wooden blades. When she approached, he held it out to her, his fingertips just touching hers as she took it. The next day, Friday, he’d stood at the bottom of the front step, hand behind his back; she’d gone close, then closer, then put her own hand out and he’d produced a sweet iced coffee from the vendor just outside the gate, in a small plastic bag with a rubber band twisted tight around the straw. He’d settled it into her palm like a cool egg. On Friday afternoon, he’d brought her a dress. She, who had never worn anything but a pha tung or the Number Three uniform of white blouse and black skirt, beheld the sheath of colored silk with something like amazement.

  “Let me take you to a movie,” Somchit whispered as she reached for it.

  A movie. She immediately thought of her sister. Enough about cleaning, Sao’s spirit had told Noi just the night before. Do you ever do anything fun? Noi turned her head to look into the house—Daeng was deep within, occupied with last-minute party preparations—and then turned back to Somchit, and nodded quickly. Somchit relinquished his hold on the dress; it fell like an empty woman into her arms.

  She ran with it to the Quarters, examined it there. Bright red, Sunday color, a shiny-soft material. It would need a little alteration to fit her properly; she could do that on Saturday night. She ran back to the house, got there before Daeng noticed her absence.

  Late that evening, when the party was done and the guests gone and the house tidied and closed up, Noi lay on her sleeping mat exhausted, wondering if Madame would make her pay for the carpet cleaning, and how much it would cost. She heard a whistle from outside, peeked out her window to see Somchit standing in the garden below. He beckoned, put a finger to his lips.

  Did he mean to take her to the movie now? In a Sunday-color dress? It was wearable, although she hadn’t yet taken in the waistline—and red wasn’t Friday-unlucky… but she was so tired… but a movie! Finally, she slipped the dress over her head. Buttoning the last button, she looked outside, saw that he was gone. She’d taken too long; he had tired of waiting. She was surprised by how disappointed she felt.

  When she went out to sweep the front step on Saturday morning, there was nothing waiting for her. Somchit stood smoking on the far side of the car in the driveway. It was the same on Sunday, and again this morning. She’d taken her time pushing the broom over each step, sneaking her eyes at him, but he never even turned his head.

  * * *

  “Look what I can do,” said Philip as Laura stepped down into the pool. She stood on the second step, a line of cool water bulging at her thighs, and watched as he clasped his hands together and squeezed. A jet of water shot upward.

  “I can do that too,�
� said Bea from the deep end. “I taught you.”

  “No you didn’t,” he said. “Alex did.”

  “Let’s not show Laura,” said Bea.

  Laura pretended not to hear them, going another step, watching the butterflies on her swimsuit go darker as the water touched them.

  “I’ll teach you, Lolo, and then we can have water fights,” said Philip.

  “Thank you,” Laura breathed. Under his direction, she held her hands half-submerged and let him shape her fingers around each other. Now go, he said, demonstrating with his own hands, and she pumped her palms together. A small pulse spurted up.

  “You’re getting it,” said Philip. “Maybe more like—” He frowned down at her hands, adjusted her finger placement.

  She had an impulse then, to confide in him about seeing the new driver in the garden the night of the party; perhaps it was something Philip could explain. But telling even one person might be a mistake. Some secrets were better when shared; others were weakened. She wasn’t sure yet which kind of secret this was.

  Chapter Thirteen

  IT WAS the same hotel where the Prestons had stayed upon their arrival in the country, the one at Rajaprasong intersection with the rock-face swimming pool and the three-headed elephant on every towel and sheet and cocktail stirrer. Going into the lobby, Genevieve felt exposed, as though she might be recognized. But of course the hotel staff wouldn’t remember her: it had been years ago, and she had been just one wife among so many, stopping with her husband and children at one of the best hotels in Bangkok.

  She walked past the desk unchallenged, to the elevator bank; once inside the ascending box she was seized by misgiving. So far her transgression was merely theoretical. When would it become actual? At the moment that the clothes came off, or at some time before? When she had had the driver drop her at the club, telling him to return at four, and then stood outside pretending to fuss with her gloves until he’d gone? When she’d walked back down to the street and caught a tuk-tuk and given the address of this hotel? Or was it when she’d brazenly crossed the lobby with the brisk, assured gait of a guest? Each of those acts had committed her, and none of them had been the first. The first was at her own party, in her own house, with her husband just across the room, when she had looked into Maxwell Dawson’s eyes and replied to his invitation in a low, complicit voice.

  Of course, she hadn’t yet passed the point of no return; she could stop right now. She could simply stay in the elevator when the doors opened, ride it down again and leave the hotel, take a tuk-tuk back to the club and meet the driver at four after a Monday afternoon spent like any other in the last four years, gossiping with the ladies, reminiscing about home. But when the elevator doors opened on the fifth floor, even while imagining her hand reaching out to press the Lobby button, she was walking forward into the corridor. And then she was standing outside the door of 510. She castigated herself for her waffling: Hadn’t she decided all of this already? In all of the minutes between Friday night and now, hadn’t she gone back and forth a thousand times? She had come, she was here. That must mean she’d decided. She knocked, two quick raps.

  When he opened the door and saw her, he raised his eyebrows, and Genevieve had a moment of chilling panic. Perhaps it had been a joke. Perhaps he hadn’t actually expected her to come. But the faint surprise on his face did not birth actual puzzlement; he smiled and stepped aside. As she passed through the doorway he put his hand to the small of her back, not touching her there, but bringing his palm within an inch of the fabric, the heat from his skin driving her on.

  It was one of the suites, the main room furnished with soft furniture arranged around a low table, a small desk against one wall and a bar in the corner, a balcony overlooking the pool. Two doors on the far wall, both ajar: one to the bathroom, the other—her mind went blank.

  He went over to the bar counter and put his hand onto the familiar green bottle with the red stamp.

  “If gin isn’t your fancy, I can call down for something else,” he said.

  “It’s fine,” she said, her first words in the room, her voice sounding clogged and unnatural. She cleared her throat.

  He made the drinks with quick, sure movements. Four cubes of ice rattled into each squat glass, three fingers of gin. He rolled a lime briefly under his palm before slicing into it, crushed a wedge over the mouth of each glass. The citrus tang reached Genevieve where she stood watching. She turned to put her purse onto the desk, heard from behind her the sigh of the tonic bottle as the cap came off, and then the glug of pouring.

  “Here you are,” he said, and she turned. Their fingers touched as she took the drink. “Cheers,” he said, lifting his glass.

  She looked into her glass at the tiny bubbles collecting on the ruined piece of lime and streaming upward in hectic lines. Gin and tonic. Genevieve had met wives who’d drunk it in Africa, in India, in Ceylon, in all the places lumped together as overseas where they’d found themselves, following their husbands. Whiskey was ubiquitous, of course, in all of its forms, rye and bourbon and scotch, but gin was the expatriate staple. She put the glass to her lips and tipped it up, let the clean juniper taste roll across her tongue. Gin and tonic. When she got home, she would never have another one.

  “I’m glad you came,” he said. He took a packet of Pall Malls and a hotel matchbook from the end table, shook out two cigarettes. He handed one to her and lit it, brought the match back to his own. The flame throbbed down and up with his inhalations. He blew out the match and laid it, ribboning out a bitter whiff of sulfur, into the glass ashtray with the three-headed elephant cut into the bottom. Putting his glass to his mouth, he took a long drink, scrutinizing her.

  “What did Robert do to deserve you?” he said. “You are flawless.”

  Her bare shoulders felt suddenly obscene, rising in gooseflesh in the river of cool air flowing out of the air conditioner. She cast about in her mind for a gracious way to respond, and then she realized: She had already broken many rules by coming here. No need to respect the others.

  “I’m not here to talk about my husband,” she said.

  He smiled. “Why are you here, then?” he said.

  The rain began to pelt the windows, spat spat. In Washington, the summer rain beat down like a cleansing curtain, pulling a delicious smell of dirt into the air. The spring before they had left, she remembered, Philip had had a little boat that he’d played with during a rainstorm, dropping it into one of the rushing street gutters and then running alongside. Robert had run with him, to pluck it out before it could swirl down into the sewer through the slot at the end of the street. Over and over they did that, while she watched from the screened side porch. Her two men laughing hugely, the rain falling into their mouths.

  “You have the most poignant look on your face,” Dawson said. His voice was gentle.

  “I hate the rain,” she said. She sat in one of the chairs, took a swallow of her drink. “Let’s talk about you,” she said. Rudely changing the subject. She felt ugly, exhilarated. “Is this your first visit to Bangkok?”

  He laughed. “No,” he said. “But it’s shaping up to be the best.”

  He crushed out his cigarette, then drained his glass and put it down on the bar.

  “Finish up,” he said, as though she were a child. “And then we’ll go.” At her surprised look, he said, “You did promise to take me shopping.” He added, “Or did you have something else in mind?”

  An odd mix of relief and dejection. She’d sidestepped the yawning pit of adultery; she’d bungled the seduction. She jolted the last of the liquid down her throat, set the glass on the table, and extinguished her own cigarette.

  “Shopping it is,” she said. She stood up, smoothed her skirt.

  “You must show me your secret places,” he said as they got into the elevator. His expression innocent of double entendre when she shot a glance at him. “Perhaps the shop where you got those little pots.” He pressed the elevator button, stood a decent distance from h
er in the small enclosure. “There’s nothing like being taken around by a native.”

  “I’m hardly a native,” she said.

  “Close enough,” he said as the elevator doors closed.

  * * *

  “You have that mislabeled,” Genevieve told the shop owner, pointing to the cream-colored card taped to the shelf beside a bowl. “This is Ch’ing Pai, not Ting.” The man stared at her. “Not Ting,” she said again. He retrieved a large book from a shelf behind him, opened it flat on the counter, turned some pages, and squinted down, reading. Then he came around the counter and peeled the card from the wood.

  “Sharp eyes, your wife,” he told Dawson, turning the card over to its clean reverse, dipping his pen.

  “Don’t I know it,” said Dawson easily. He wandered to another display. “Uh-oh,” he said. “This one’s broken.” He held up a pitcher, turned it to show Genevieve a seam of gold curving around its side.

  The shopkeeper, carefully printing onto the card, looked up at Genevieve; they both smiled.

  “It’s Kintsukuroi,” said Genevieve. “A Japanese mending technique.”

  “I would think a mend would do a better job of hiding the damage,” said Dawson.

  “The whole idea is not to hide it,” she said. She went over, inspected the pitcher in his hands. “This is very valuable.”

  “Not really,” he said, looking skeptical.

  “Art is not just what it looks like,” she said. “It’s also what it means.”

  “This one seems to mean that its owner was too cheap to buy a new pitcher.”

  She didn’t laugh along with him.

  “This wasn’t reconstruction,” she said. “It was creation.” She put a finger beside one of the wide seams. “This is urushi. The sap of a specific tree.” She took the pitcher from him. “After the repair, it had to dry for weeks at just the right temperature and humidity, in a box built specially for the purpose. Open enough to allow air circulation—but not too open, or the sap would become brittle. If the piece survived without even one fragment shifting out of place, the joins would be painted with lacquer and dusted with gold powder, then given a final coat of clear lacquer to make them shine.” She turned the pitcher between her hands; the fracture lines glinted in the dim shop light. “Kintsukuroi doesn’t attempt to re-create the original. It acknowledges that the original is no more.” Her voice sounded almost mournful. “It celebrates impermanence, and the imperfection wrought by change.”