Home Leave: A Novel (17 page)

I lay just inches from Bernard, my body tingling. We were discussing the weather in England, of all things. A topic fit for two Austen characters chatting chastely in the parlor. It was our second day in Koh Samui, and circumstances had conspired such that he and I were alone together on the beach. Rebecca the Rat was getting a mud massage. Leah was off on one of her punishing morning runs. Chris was golfing. I was sprawled out on one of the hotel’s generous terry-cloth beach towels, abandoned by my family members, feeling like a woman in one of those Dove Bar ads, on the cusp of indulgence:
Go on, you deserve it.
The fact that I had not invented an excuse to seek out Bernard, that I had simply been on the beach by myself, sulking, when he’d shown up, seemed to exempt me from any ill doing. He was just keeping me company, and we were talking about the weather, for God’s sake. How much more G-rated can you get? But the feverish feeling I had, lying next to his towel, was not harmless at all.

“Sleety and slushy,” he was saying.

“I remember that,” I said. “But I always felt that the Brits did Christmas quite tastefully.” I never said things like “quite tastefully” to anyone else. I hated how chameleonlike I’d become, how I immediately took on a drawl with Jeanette, spoke clipped Singlish with our gardener and faux British now with Bernard. It was subconscious, which made it all the more impossible to avoid. Where had my own voice gone? The only voice I had managed to hold on to, through all our moves, was my singing voice, but when did I sing? In the car, on walks alone in Singapore’s Botanic Gardens, when there was no one in sight. It had been suggested, when I was a girl, and even later, during the Jericho! years in college, that I could have made a career out of my clear soprano. That’s what Mama had wanted more than anything, I knew. She had always been pleased with Ivy’s singing success, but equally frightened of it, too, like we all were. I suppose she trusted that I would remain just as well behaved and boring were I to rocket to stardom as I had been in the church choir, a thought I’d always found incredibly depressing, largely because it was probably true. Of course I had envied Ivy her years of semi-fame, but what did she have to show for it now? Three CDs, the occasional fan letter, the surfacing memory, in a silent kitchen in Mississippi, of crowds shouting her name. These days, Ivy mostly sang backup vocals for car commercials and country demos. Singing had always been my greatest talent, the thing I loved most, and that’s why I had decided, ultimately, to keep it to myself. I never wanted it tarnished by failure or near success.

Bernard was nodding: as always, with him, my inner monologue had spilled out.

“Sing something,” he suggested.

“No, no.” I was already beginning to blush.

“Please?”

“Another time.”

“I’m not going to let you forget that.”

This partial promise of another meeting, where something intimate would be revealed, seemed to simultaneously terrify and calm both of us, and we fell silent.

I knew we should move to the shade, what with skin cancer and the hole in the ozone layer, but I didn’t want to. In Singapore, the unrelenting tropical glare felt like a hindrance, another foreign obstacle; but here, in Koh Samui, with nothing to do but bask in it, no groceries to haul across the parking lot, no soccer games to watch, it felt good to burn a little.

“A hot Christmas reminds me of home,” I told Bernard, returning to safer ground. “Not hot like this, but I can remember a couple of Christmases in Mississippi where we didn’t even need to wear jackets outside. And some years we would go down to my grandmother’s for Christmas, in Florida. So in that sense, Koh Samui feels just about right.”

“I’m writing a poem about the bizarre feeling of Christmas here, the disjuncture,” Bernard said. “The sound of carols interrupted by parrots, sand castles instead of snowmen…”

I didn’t like it when Bernard talked about his poetry. It sounded desperate to me. I preferred him as a startlingly articulate guidance counselor with a formidable vocabulary, not an amateur bard. This past semester, he had even taught a creative writing class after school, which Leah had made fun of at dinner once.

“He writes poems, too, along with the students, and reads them out loud, can you imagine?” Leah had gasped. “David told me that one was about Bernard’s mother, and how she once caught him—”

“That’s enough,” I’d said. I had secretly been relieved that Leah had shunned the class; I harbored a terror that he might fall in love with my younger version. But Leah hated any kind of creative writing: she liked facts. On Sunday mornings, she and Chris devoured the
Herald Tribune
and then debated the latest current events. My own views were dismissed as sentimental.

I just wanted to touch him. It was torture to be freed from the school grounds, to spend time together on what was arguably one of the world’s most romantic islands, and to remain politely platonic. As if to reinforce this fact, Rebecca the Rat bounded up to us, all ribs and bad teeth.

“Elise, what a lovely surprise!” she said, balancing an enormous plate of fish and chips. She spread her blanket next to mine and chattered on about her fabulous massage. “I
must
give you the name of the masseuse,” she gushed, and offered us fries. She seemed utterly unthreatened by my presence, which I found insulting.

Ten minutes later, Chris and Leah showed up. Chris shook hands with Bernard in a stiff, businesslike manner, and then talked rising commodity prices with Rebecca before pointing down the beach, where he and Leah had laid their towels. “We’re going to jump in,” he said. Leah hadn’t even come over to us; she was already in the water, bodysurfing. I had a sudden urge to be with them, with her. I was grateful for it.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” I said. “I need to cool off.”
Cool off?
As soon as I said it, I kicked myself inwardly. Why was I talking like I was on
Baywatch
?

“See you later,” Bernard said.

“We should all do dinner one of these nights,” Rebecca suggested, mercifully, so I didn’t have to.

“Sounds great. I’ll check in with those two and give you guys a call.”

Bernard gave me a smile and a wave, one that felt so private and so close that I walked away wrapped in it, dazed. It wasn’t until I laid my towel next to Leah’s and Chris’s that it hit me, like a kick in the stomach: how badly I wanted Sophie’s hand now, how much I still expected her to be here, to run with me into the waves, to laugh at their cold slap.

I hadn’t always minded losing basketball games, back at Chariton High and UGA. If we were better than the other team, sure, losing was embarrassing. If it was a close game and we couldn’t sink enough shots in the last five minutes, I’d be pissed along with everyone else. But a game where the other team was obviously better was a different story: I wasn’t one of those guys who came in the locker room afterwards and started kicking things. I almost liked those clear-cut losses, because the outcome was assured from the beginning. Not that I didn’t try. I ran as hard as anyone out there: it wasn’t in my German genes to slack off. But to humbly accept your fate at the buzzer, your inevitable failure: I didn’t mind it.

I felt something akin to that now with Bernard Pinker. Of course, on the face of it, most would agree I was the superior male specimen. More attractive, taller, in better shape, without Bernard’s nervous tic of playing the piano on the table when he got agitated. But that is also to say: I lacked Bernard’s adorable eccentricities, or at least any eccentricities that were easily recognizable. Nobody knew that I often shampooed twice in the shower, for example. But even that habit wasn’t fascinating; it was just silly and wasteful. I always felt like showers went by too fast. I didn’t want to start using conditioner—too feminine—but I felt like I deserved a long shower. Standing under hot water doing nothing felt like wasting time, hence the double shampoo. Every now and then Elise would point it out, on the rare occasions we showered together. I always pretended I’d forgotten that I’d shampooed already.

But I did not have a British accent; I did not have one thousand Monty Python scenes at the ready, to reenact; and I was not the opposite of myself. It was painfully obvious to me that Elise was attracted to Bernard, in large part because he represented everything I was not. On a rational level, I didn’t mind: I could even sympathize. After eighteen years of marriage, you start to gravitate towards something different: in my case, it seemed to be effusive Latin types. The furthest I’d gone was not far at all: I maintained a strict no-sex policy, which did not preclude taking attractive women to my hotel room on business trips and driving them crazy by pouring wine and talking, and talking—kissing at the end, maybe, a little bit of fumbling around on the bed, but no penetration. Most guys couldn’t have managed it, but I’ve always enjoyed the triumph of discipline over bodily needs; it’s what made me keep running sprints in practices, when the other guys were bent over double. And there was nothing keeping me from satisfying myself once the women had left the room.

And so, with Bernard, I’d decided to just let it happen. I saw it as a foregone conclusion, and, I’ll admit, it was a good excuse for me to tune out even more. Elise was the one who had insisted we needed this vacation together, the three of us, so if she wanted to spend it drooling over some balding community-theater type, more power to her. It took her off my hands.

Yet even thinking such a thing felt cruel, and lazy, something I’ve never been. I could tell that Elise was waiting for me to intervene, as she chatted about Bernard, getting dressed for dinner; as she informed me that the two of them were going for a walk; and later, as she filled me in on the hilarious things Bernard had said on the walk. But I didn’t have the fight in me. I could see her slipping away, and I wished her bon voyage.

Then came Christmas Eve, the night we all had dinner together at the hotel.

Halfway through the meal, we were all fairly tipsy. Rebecca left soon afterwards, to do something quintessentially boring and British, like watch the Vienna Boys Choir sing “Silent Night” in her hotel room. Leah was drinking wine like it was Gatorade, while Bernard and Elise were giggling over something the Spanish teacher had said to the principal at the faculty Christmas party, leaving me responsible for refilling Leah’s water and making secret signs to the waiter to skip my daughter’s wineglass. Then Leah got up from the table, swaying a little, and told us she was going to bed.

“I don’t want to catch Santa Claus in the act,” she said. “If that happens you don’t get any presents.” It sounded like a veiled accusation, but we all laughed obediently.

She wasn’t going to bed, I could tell. If Elise noticed, she didn’t say anything.

“You think she’s all right?” I asked Elise about fifteen minutes later.

“I don’t know, honey,” Elise said. “I hope so.”

“Chris.” Bernard leaned in, his lips all ruddy and purple from the Malbec, like he’d been making out with a packet of grape Skittles. “I would give her some space. Not that I have a teenager, but from what my students tell me…I think kids this age know what’s good for them more than we give them credit for.”

Elise nodded emphatically. “Cheers,” she said. “To giving them credit.” She lifted her glass.

Give me a break. I pulled back my chair. “Well, you two can stay here, but I’m going to check on her,” I said, ignoring their hovering glasses. As I walked away, I heard the crystal clink. For some reason, I took my wineglass with me and crossed the lobby as though it were my living room. Up on the fifth floor, I removed my keycard and opened the door. We were in a suite, but Leah had her own room. I tapped on her door.

“Leah?” Nothing. I opened it hesitantly. I’d never been an intrusive parent, and I didn’t like reversing that precedent now, but then again, I wasn’t going to ignore my niggling nervousness. I flipped on the switch. As I had suspected, the bed was empty. No note, of course.

I pondered my options. I didn’t feel like enlisting Bernard’s help or putting up with his and Elise’s conspiratorial smirks. I would do a quick search myself, I decided. Where would I go if I was her age? Was she at one of the other bars? Had she met a boy? The last thing I wanted to do was find my daughter making out with some pimply Belgian teenager behind tropical ferns.

I put my wineglass down, changed into sneakers, and began the search. A quick half-hour sweep of the hotel grounds revealed nothing. She wasn’t by the pool, the bar, or the garden that stretched to the end of the cliff, overlooking the bay. I checked my watch. Ten thirty. Maybe she was in the hot tub, I thought. They had separate spa areas for men and women in the locker rooms of the gym. Maybe she had gone there to relax. But how was I going to check? Ask a female hotel staff person to run in? I decided I would figure it out once I was down there.

And that’s where I found her. Not in the locker room, but in the gym itself, a possibility that had never occurred to me. She was on the treadmill, running fast, on a steep incline. I walked over and pressed the emergency stop button. She stumbled a little as the treadmill suddenly slowed, and she whirled around. I had never seen such a raw wreck of feeling on a person’s face. Ever since Sophie died, aside from the occasional panic attack or violent outburst in therapy, which I had always let Elise or the therapist handle. Leah had remained removed, distant, numb. Right now she looked humiliated, furious, and caught. Her face, which should have been red from the exercise, looked frighteningly pale, like she was about to pass out.

“Just thought I’d get in a run, so I could sleep better,” she said between gasps of air, trying to sound casual.

Elise had mentioned Leah’s overexercising to me, but I’d always dismissed it. I’d actually taken pride in the idea that Leah was just as committed to being in shape for her soccer season as I’d always been for basketball. But this was something different. I steered her to one of the weight machine benches and sat her down. She was shaking. I saw, for the first time, in the garish light of the gym, how skinny she’d grown in the last few months. I went to the cooler and got her a cup of water. She downed it and I retrieved another one. I wished it was that simple, that I could just keep bringing her cups of water until she was hydrated, until she was no longer hurting.