Tales From A Broad

by Fran Lebowitz

  ‘Sweetie,’ I whisper in Sadie’s ear, ‘this is a time we’ll always remember. It’s about togetherness. Being a family. If you complain one more time, I will leave you with that man over there … Oh, Sadie, I’m kidding … a joke … stop crying …’

  Like most resort airports, Phuket’s is just a place that holds a lot of pamphlets and hangs advertisements on the wall. I collect 16 fliers within the first few minutes. Huxley’s winning with about 900.

  ‘Boy,’ I say, flipping through some of them, ‘we’re going to be biii-zzeee.’

  Frank is several yards ahead and I gather the kids and my bag and shuffle to catch up. ‘Oh, listen Frank, we have to see some of these wats on Wan Phra Day so we can hear the monks pray and then we can go to the aquarium.

  ‘Hey Frank,’ I say as I move out of his way while he digs around for some documentation or another. ‘We could do this one today: the national park. They have gibbons. The kids will like gibbons, don’t you think? And then we can take a little walk up to the waterfalls. It’s just a short trail, not much more than a mile or so.

  ‘Oh, here’s a good one,’ I continue as Frank closes his briefcase and walks to the money exchange, ‘Thai Village elephant show and cultural performance. We could do that before dinner or maybe we should …’ Frank is talking to a man at a counter. I check to make sure the kids are still here.

  ‘Hey, Huxley, what’s that one? I don’t have it.’ I take a brochure from his clenched little hand. ‘Oh, a museum, I don’t want to do that.’ He looks crestfallen. ‘All right, all right, that’d be a great thing to do on Thursday.’

  Enough with the child’s play, we have serious things to go over. ‘Frank,’ I continue, ‘maybe tomorrow we should do the town and Sea Gypsy Village.’ Frank is scribbling on forms. He’s trying to balance all the passports on a narrow shelf and his backpack is sliding down over his shoulder, as he grapples with the pen. I don’t think he’s heard a word I’ve said, so I add, ‘And I’ll be working out every morning from eight to ten so you take care of the kids. Thanks.’

  We go through Customs and Immigration, get our luggage and look for the driver. I see ‘MARKS’ held aloft on a corrugated banner also bearing the name ‘Meridian’.

  ‘Oh, here we are!’ I yodel to the man.

  ‘Fran, that says Marks.’

  ‘Yeah, they never understand me with this American accent.’

  When we finally arrive at the Meridian on Relax Bay, we are greeted with a gong. A handful of tiny, delicate men and women serve us a welcome drink and drape us in flower necklaces as our luggage is carted off to the check-in counter.

  ‘Have a nice stay, Mr Marks, Mrs Marks,’ they beseech.

  We get to our room, a suite at the far end of the building, facing the ocean. We have a large master bedroom, almost as large as the bathroom. There is another section – that would be the living room, I presume. It has a bar, fridge and two pull-out sofas. On the bar is a basket of what must be fruit since it has a heavy, sweet, biodegradable smell and lots of tiny flies hovering protectively nearby. The shapes and colours are monstrously alien, though. There is a note tucked between two gigantic hairy strawberries saying ‘Welcome Marks Family’. I know who I’ll be calling later today. Great job, Mala. Anyway, let’s see that basket again.

  Sticking out of a post that has been thrust into a green, human-heart-shaped, lumpy, tough-skinned fruit is a descriptive tour of the basket, a map if you will. Shall we explore? To begin with, the post is anchored in a sugar apple – you break it in two and eat it with a spoon, discarding the few seeds. Its neighbour on the left is the sapodilla, which is shaped like a kiwifruit – you peel the soft skin off and cut the fruit in quadrants. There are red litchis about the size of large cherry tomatoes. Shouldering them are two dark green, smooth pomelos – each is about the size of a small melon but the inside reminds you of a dry, ropy grapefruit. The hairy strawberries are rambutans and I can’t understand if we’re supposed to eat them hairs and all so I’ll just keep away. Spilling over the rim is what looks like a dried yellow brain but is really a cluster of long-gongs – you press them open with your fingers and scoop out the inside, avoiding the seeds. There is a branch bearing longans, which are different from long-gongs in every way but sound. My favourite is the mangosteen, not just because the name suggests that the more mainstream mango was really a Jew who needed a cover, but because it is delicious. The size of an apple, with a deep purple, leathery skin like an avocado and a plastic-like green cap, it is to be cut around the middle and the segments scooped out. The taste is sort of like a grape meets a peach that’s been hanging around a banana.

  I’ve made quite a mess already but I take my fruit salad outside to the balcony to share. The balcony is large enough to accommodate a couple of games of badminton at once. I go to the edge to see the view. Relax Bay is sheltered by two opposing cliffs. Our beach is small, very small indeed. The sea is hugged and captured in the arms of the curving shoreline and granite walls. And, well, it appears to be rather contained, stagnant in fact. Okay, so that means it’s safe, a better word than ‘boring’ or ‘predictable’. I reach into my pocket to make sure the pamphlets listing things to do are still there. The pool runs the length of the entire hotel and has several different areas devoted to specific activities – if you can call sitting in a whirlpool bath an activity. There is a considerable number of guests. The robust ladies from the airport, for example, are here, of course, in my vacation, on my beach. It seems the sun has already taken its toll.

  ‘Hey, Frank.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Frank calls from the bedroom where he is meticulously refolding and storing his clothes, having already used up all the good hangers for his trousers and shirts.

  ‘What’s black and white and red all over?’

  ‘I dunno, what?’

  ‘The other guests here. And guess what, they’re the group from the airport. Let’s check them out. To the beach everyone!’ I direct.

  We race down to the shore, buckets flying, kids laughing.

  ‘I bet it’s a package tour from Philly,’ I challenge.

  ‘No way. Americans don’t come here. Definitely not,’ Frank asserts, pride on the line.

  ‘Hey, you wanna go to Sea Gypsy …’

  Sadie stops and begins to loudly bawl. Huxley’s bawling now, too. I stop to see what’s the matter and start to howl. Frank falls onto his hands and knees. The sand is deadly, it is burning, it will cook a steak in ten seconds flat. We can’t take another step. That would mean forward or backward. Standing still ain’t no grand treat either. We all do what Frank’s doing. He’s the worldly one, after all.

  Oh my God, definitely time for a new leader. Getting on all fours is stupid. Feet can take it much better.

  ‘Run to the water!’ I decree. Frank and I scoop up a kid each and sprint out to the water. It’s warm and mellow and soon we have splashing and happy laughter, chicken fights and toss-the-kid; we dance, we wind down and then grow quiet as we swim with a kid on our backs out in the clear sea. No doubt why they call it Relax Bay. I swim in deeper. Omigod, what was that? I get a wake-up call. I’ve been stung by a swarm of something.

  ‘Out of the water, everyone!’ I holler in a panic.

  ‘Is it happy hour, Mommy?’

  ‘Frank, grab Huxley. There’s jellyfish all over the place.’ But as I look around, I don’t see a thing. Frank is already close to shore and Sadie and I follow. We’re all huffing and puffing. I sit on the wet sand. I look for welts that don’t materialise, even though I’m feeling prickly and rashy.

  ‘I didn’t actually see them but all of a sudden, I was, like, attacked,’ I try to explain. ‘I’ll just rinse off over there,’ I say, pointing to a shower in front of the pool. ‘Be back in a flash.’

  A woman three times my size, with a sunburned face, is pressing the nozzle every now and then as she absentmindedly, unhurriedly washes off a patch of sand here, a blob of sunscreen there.

  Her friend, who could be her
stand-in, is stirring a straw in a young coconut, saying, ‘Mel, vashtin pushtin.’

  ‘Tchai schmmpt?’ says shower gal whilst trying to catch a tricep that keeps flapping away. I’m going to be here a long time. A single leg will take another 15 minutes to cover.

  ‘Um, excuse me. Mel?’ I take a stab.

  ‘Vah?’

  Okay, I’m gonna call you Mel. She turns and flops a breast out over her bathing suit. The breast is visibly relieved to be free. It says, ‘Achh.’

  ‘Mel,’ I speak slowly, ‘well, I know I’m behind you, but could I just do a really quick shower? I think I got stung by jellyfish.’

  ‘Shpentin foon?’ Her eyes bug out in astonishment. She cups her breast in one hand, pulls the top of her suit out with the other and lets it fall, finishing the job with some smushing and aligning to achieve a parallelness. I hear the breast’s muffled curses.

  ‘Yes, I believe so,’ I say.

  ‘Sphpentin foon mar glch. Foy!’ Mel adds, looking at her friend with some wonder, scepticism and genuine concern for me.

  ‘Well, yeah, I didn’t see them, though. Suddenly, I was just stung all over,’ I say.

  ‘Lpshun,’ offers non-Mel, nodding her head. She wobbles down the steps. She gets close, examines up and down the length of my body. I don’t have welts but now there is a rash of rather high-definition red dots covering my legs.

  ‘Brooshtin, brooshtin. Vroom.’ She pretends to shave her legs.

  ‘No, come on, it couldn’t just be from shaving.’ I look up. ‘Could it?’

  She comes even closer and with all her might, twists her great oak of a thigh clockwise and indicates with her chin that I am to look down. I don’t want to. Please don’t make me. Please don’t make me. I am being given the treat of glimpsing her inner, should-stay-covered-and-secret, inner inner thigh.

  She is showing me that my rash is just like hers. Yes, we are all alike on the inside … we’re a mere language away from being sisters, separated at birth.

  ‘Flertwick shnard opu December. Crombt.’

  ‘Damn right,’ I say, ‘even if it is December. It just doesn’t look right. You gotta shave.’

  ‘Tmirit, dunplop.’ She fishes around in her plastic bag from duty free and hands me a tube of cream.

  ‘I made my husband and kids get out of the ocean.’ I laugh and they join in.

  I meet Frank and the kids at the pool. Huxley’s in his durable rubber ring with fitted leg holes and a steering wheel and horn so he can play captain. Sadie is practising her strokes and floating on her back. She’s already fairly competent in the water. Frank is pulling the last dregs from a pina colada at the swim-up bar facing our ever-so-buoyant young ones. I take the seat next to him.

  ‘Are you okay now?’ he asks, concerned.

  I explain about the ladies and their likely correct diagnosis and how Mel’s cream eased the pain and itch.

  ‘We have to get some of that sombremsh.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The cream, sombrembsh. You know, yak fat.’

  A young waitress approaches and I tell her I’ll have a pina colada too. She says, ‘Yes madame’, as she hefts a keg up on the bar.

  Sadie slithers onto my lap. We order her a virgin drink. She says, ‘Why is that man dressed as a lady?’

  I look around. ‘Who?’

  ‘Her!’ she says, going for a sip.

  I look around again. Frank knocks his knee into me, a ‘shut up’ sort of a nudge. Without moving his head, simply with dead-accurate eye directionals, I am being told to observe our waitress a little more closely.

  ‘Hmmm.’ I nod, letting them know I’ve spotted the transvestite. We’re all staring a bit since ‘her’ back is turned. Next thing I know …

  ‘Huxleeey!’ His vessel has capsized. I jump off my stool, fly through the pool. Mel is there already. She flips Huxley back around so that his head is now above the water and his legs below. Hux is unfazed.

  ‘Omigosh. Thanks, Mel. How long was he like that?’ I ask as I take my seat next to Frank.

  ‘Thrumpten, futhm, jasheva.’ Mel tosses her arm around my shoulders and gives me a hard squeeze.

  ‘Frank, this is Mel.’ She extends her hand assertively to Frank.

  ‘Oh, and here comes Bernie.’

  Mel points to a table across the way where five ladies are playing something with tiles and dice and, if I’m not mistaken, pine cones. ‘Grek?’

  ‘Thanks. No, I’m just going to hang out with the kids,’ Frank says politely.

  ‘Well, maybe I will,’ I respond.

  They take their drinks and return to the other shore to their friends.

  ‘Fran! You aren’t really going over there, are you?’

  ‘I might, just for a half hour. I mean, they’re nice. They’re fun. Happy. I like happy people. Is that so wrong? Come with me, the kids can go to the Penguin Club.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Anyway, I owe them. First they save me from death by exfoliation and then they get Huxley.’

  ‘All right, whatever.’

  We all get to talking. My half hour turns into an hour. When I return, there’s a note. Frank’s taken the kids to pick up a rental car.

  Sadie storms in while I shower. ‘Mommy!’ She is breathless. ‘The lady at the car was really a man. I showed Daddy.’

  While I’m wondering what to do about shaving, Frank calls through the door, ‘Fran, Mala just called. Said she was sorry her maid didn’t bring the phone to the bath but you can call her back.’

  Frank suggests we go to Patong for the evening. It’s the most happening beach and funkiest section of Phuket. We’ll park and walk up the main road, check out some craft stalls, look into a few of the gift shops, see what grabs us for dinner. This is Frank’s idea. A stroll, you might call it, a play-it-by-ear night, a wander. Nothing wrong – except there is a certain pattern to these episodes, a certain plot, a formula when it’s Frank and I in the leading roles. Maybe if there could be a better ending, a happy ending. Maybe this season will be different … we’re older … it’s a new setting … could turn out better. Okay, let’s do it. Places everyone, and action:

  TITLE: The Wanderers – Negotiating Phuket

  After getting lost, they finally find themselves at the general destination. They cannot find a spot to park the car. Up and down side streets, trying to fit in spaces that are clearly too small, covering grid after grid. At last, a car space appears in front of a run-down garage. The spot is too far from town to walk. They stop two tuk-tuks.

  FRANK: To Patong, main street.

  DRIVER ONE: 600 baht.

  FRANK: 400 baht.

  DRIVER ONE: Okay.

  Frank puts Fran and Huxley in the first.

  FRANK (jogs over to driver two): To Patong, main street.

  DRIVER TWO: 400 baht.

  FRANK: 300.

  DRIVER TWO: Okay.

  On main street. Busy. Lots of tourists. Rows of stores.

  FRAN: Wow, it is lively here. [Shit, is everyone here or what?]

  FRANK: Yeah, this is where everyone goes. [Do I know my shit or what?]

  FRAN: Oh, let’s look in that store. [I need to show some enthusiasm.]

  FRANK: Sure, honey. [Well, I guess it is too early for a beer.]

  They enter Batik Boutique.

  FRAN: Isn’t this gorgeous? [As a wall hanging, yes, but to wear?]

  FRANK: Yeah. [As a wall hanging, yes, but to wear?]

  FRAN: You would look so hot in this, Frank. [Why do I bother?]

  FRANK: Ah … I don’t know. Kinda … not me … [She thinks I’m boring.]

  SALES LADY: That will be 900 baht.

  FRAN: 800 baht.

  SALES LADY (deadpan): Oh, you’re killing me. I have to eat. 850 baht.

  FRAN: 845 baht.

  SALES LADY (deadpan): Okay.

  Many shopping bags later, finally, they wander into his store.

  FRAN: Frank, are you even thinking of getting that? We don’t need an
y more trinkets, not here, not back home, not anywhere we’ll ever live again for the rest of our lives. That is ugly. It is junkie. I would be embarrassed to have anyone see it and I’ll hide it with the thousands of other wooden frogs and grotesque masks and bamboo boxes and opium pipes. I don’t care if this is the fucking pewter capital of the universe, we don’t need another beer stein.

  Moments later they are on the street again. They stop outside a jewellery store.

  FRAN: Do you think you get a good buy? [Gimme gimme gimme.]

  FRANK: Yeah, goodbye money. Only kidding. [Not.]

  They enter the store.

  FRAN: I love that. [Gimme gimme gimme.]

  FRANK: Want to try it on?

  FRAN: Nah. [Gimme gimme gimme.]

  FRANK: Go on.

  FRAN: Okay. [Gimme gimme gimme.]

  FRANK: [Did she just say ‘Gimme gimme gimme’?]

  They move on to another shop. Fran shows Sadie how her new ring captures the light. Frank leads them into a store. Cut to Frank pulling out the Am Ex again. The clerk folds up the oatmeal-coloured tennis shirt that looks exactly like the 400 Frank already has at home and wraps two fertility god masks that look worse than the 400 they already have stuffed in the closet at home. Obvious haggling. After two quick rounds of negotiations, close-up on clerk’s face as he says ‘Okay’ with dull eyes. The kids are holding wooden frogs. Fran and Frank stop, face each other. The camera picks up the body language from across the street. We can see the dust recirculating as bicycles and cars whiz past. Frank leaves Fran and the kids on the sidewalk. She shifts her weight from hip to hip, agitated. Her dress is sticking to her. The kids are wandering around and picking up things they shouldn’t. She’s holding two frogs. Half a minute later, Frank returns. He is wearing a baseball hat with SPAM embroidered on the front.

  FRAN: Happy? [Just look at my ring, just keep looking at my new ring.]

  FRANK: Yeah. [I love my hat!]