The Wishing Trees (37 page)

In the rear of the van, Georgia was talking to Mattie and Holly about boys. Ian listened, interested in what advice she would give. She told them not to worry about such things, that they’d worry about boys for the rest of their lives and there was no reason to rush into such emotions. Mattie asked what to look for in boys. Georgia hesitated but soon said that Mattie should search for boys the way she might comb a beach for shells. Don’t always seek out the most beautiful shell, she advised, but instead, the most interesting shell, the shell that you could always put to your ear and that would tell you a story, make you feel like you’re still walking beside the sea.

Mattie and Holly kept asking questions, and Ian settled back into his seat and smiled. He was glad that Mattie could hear Georgia’s perspectives on the confusing feelings brought to life by the opposite sex. If Georgia was jaded by the betrayal of her husband, she didn’t hold that event against all men. At least she didn’t verbalize such feelings. She didn’t speak ill of boys, or tell Mattie to steer clear. Instead, she said that it took a long time to walk a beach full of shells, and that no one should prematurely decide on a favorite.

Squinting, Khan pointed to an empty parking lot near the sea. He pulled over, driving as close as possible to the water. Ian asked Mattie and Holly if they wanted a short break, and the girls jumped out of their seats, bobbing up and down, preparing to open the door.

Surrounded by rocks, the beach was about the same size as a basketball court. While Khan took a can of motor oil from beside his seat and opened the hood, Ian followed Georgia, Holly, and Mattie as they hurried toward the sand. The girls kicked off their flip-flops and stepped into the water. Georgia sat on a smooth and sun-bleached tree trunk that had washed ashore. Ian positioned himself beside her, handing over her camera, which she had forgotten on her seat.

“Thanks,” she said, putting the strap around her neck and taking a picture of the girls.

“No worries.”

Mattie splashed Holly, who started to chase her through the shallows. Watching the girls giggle, Georgia smiled, glad that they weren’t talking about boys. She knew those days would arrive soon and she wasn’t ready for them. “They act like sisters, don’t they?” she asked, taking off her shoes, moving her toes through the sand.

Ian was tempted to join the girls in the water but decided to let them enjoy it with each other. “They were about to start fighting like sisters.”

“Well, they were definitely pushing each other’s buttons.”

“They were going troppo, I reckon.”

“Troppo?”

“Too much time in the tropics. Makes you crazy.”

She smiled, still moving her toes through the sand. “You and your sayings. I don’t know where in the world you come up with them. Maybe you’re the one who’s gone troppo.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

He pretended to have a twitch near his eye. “Nothing wrong with a bit of madness, I reckon. Keeps things nice and interesting.”

“You’ve always been that,” she replied, her smile returning.

Holly shrieked as Mattie threw a fistful of seaweed at her. Ian picked up a stone and tossed it into the surf, remembering throwing stones in the Outback with his brothers. A return to Australia would be his next overseas trip, he knew. He’d show Mattie the Southern Cross, let her watch kangaroos bound over the desert and spend time with her cousins. He had thought on several occasions about adding Australia to the end of their trip but decided against it. His brothers were content and married to women they adored, and Ian wasn’t sure if he was ready to see their joy. And though he loved his parents, they had never forgiven him for moving to America. To bridge the chasm between them, he needed to be farther from Kate’s death, from such loss.

He watched Georgia’s toes in the sand. They weren’t pretty toes, having been held too tight together for too long by high-heeled shoes. She’d painted her toenails a shade of mauve that wasn’t in stark contrast to her pale skin. Some of her calf was exposed, and he followed its contours upward until reaching the hem of her skirt. Realizing what he was doing, he looked toward the girls, sighing.

“What?” she asked, turning to him.

Holly caught Mattie and began kicking water at her.

“Do you reckon it’s odd,” he asked, “that we’re traveling together?”

“Odd? You mean wrong?”

“No, not wrong. But . . . but why do you think we’re here? For Holly? For Mattie? For something else?”

She watched the girls. “I don’t know. I don’t want to overthink things. You invited us, so we came. And it felt right to come, not wrong.”

He glanced up, his mood suddenly less buoyant than a minute earlier, as if looking at Georgia’s leg was tantamount to cheating on Kate. “I should have died, not her.”

“Why in the world do you say that?”

“Because she was the best part of us.”

Georgia shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense. Us isn’t something that’s . . . made up of parts. It’s made up of one.”

Shifting on the tree trunk, he found her eyes. “Might I ask you something?”

“It’s made of one, Ian.”

He scratched at a mosquito bite, nodding. “I remember . . . when you left Frank. You were in so much pain. And now you seem so complete. How did you go from there to here?”

She closed her eyes for a moment. Nearby, a gull cried. “A day at a time,” she replied, her feet moving again. “That’s how I made it. I survived those early days, the worst days. I took life a day at a time, and then slowly, it got better. Because time was my friend. The days turned into weeks, the weeks to months, and everything just slowly improved. Not that my life is perfect. But it’s good enough.”

“He was crazy to hurt you. What a bloody fool. What a mongrel.”

“He’s still with her, so I don’t know about the fool part. He seems happy. And I don’t care about the mongrel part. I don’t hate him anymore. I hated him for years, and that never did me any good. It certainly didn’t help Holly, and it made me do . . . despicable things.”

“You did nothing of the sort.”

“I hurt him, Ian.”

“No, you—”

“Yes, I did,” she interrupted, shifting her gaze to the girls.

“How?”

She grew still. “You really want to know?”

“Only if you want to tell me.”

A horn sounded in the distance. Georgia glanced toward the road, letting her memories unfurl, memories long ago suppressed. “It wasn’t hard to hurt him. I let his key donors know, anonymously, through a fake e-mail address, what had happened at night . . . inside their museum, in his office, in storage rooms. You think they wrote their big checks after that? That I wasn’t despicable? His donors left him, and he didn’t last long. His dream job was gone. And I had my revenge. But I was even more miserable than before, because I ended up hurting other people at the museum. People whose jobs depended on those donations. And I can’t make that up to them. Ever.”

“You reacted to something horrible.”

“But what I did wasn’t right. And so I stopped hating.”

“He’s still a mongrel.”

“Probably. But to me he’s gone.”

Ian slipped off his shoes. “I wouldn’t have hurt you, you know. Never in a million years. Most men wouldn’t have. Frank was a fool.”

“Frank . . . was being Frank. I should have seen it coming. I was the fool.”

Mattie and Holly had dropped into the water and were waving at Ian and Georgia, yelling at them to come forward. “Reckon we should do a bit of wading?” Ian asked. “Might feel good on the old feet.”

“Sure, let’s wade.”

Ian followed Georgia’s footsteps through the warm sand, wondering why he’d just told her that he would have never cheated on her, why he’d placed them together. What the bloody hell am I doing? he asked himself, the water touching his toes, Mattie reaching out to him, pulling him away from shore. He smiled at her, kissing her wet brow, glancing at Georgia. She watched him and he turned to Mattie and picked her up, pressing his mouth against her neck and blowing.

Feeling as if he’d once again betrayed Kate, Ian turned all his attention to Mattie, continuing to tickle her, his emotions as mixed as the churning sand and water that surrounded his knees. He felt guilt and remorse, liberation and hope.

Holly ran forward to help Mattie tackle him, their legs twisting together, the three of them falling into the sea. Ian glimpsed Georgia staring at him, and their eyes met. Then the girls fell on him, pressing him into the water and sand, pushing him away from Georgia, in the direction that he needed to go.

LATER THAT NIGHT, AFTER THEY HAD CHECKED into their hotel rooms in Hoi An, the foursome walked along a quiet street. To their left stood a row of yellow two-story shops and restaurants with peaked tin roofs. Round red lanterns hung from below the roofs, glowing like embers. On the opposite side, a canal ran toward the distant sea. The canal was bound by granite blocks and held traditional Vietnamese boats, which were small, wooden, and featured flat bows.

Only a few cars and scooters navigated the street. Most Vietnamese walked or rode bicycles. The city, Ian knew, had been basically unchanged for the previous two hundred years. The architecture was an unusual blend of Chinese, Japanese, French, and Dutch structures—reflecting Hoi An’s history as a once-famous city and harbor that attracted merchants from all over the world. At some point, Hoi An had fallen out of favor for ports to the south, and the city had all but disappeared from maps.

Though everyone was hungry after the long day in the van, Georgia and Ian had decided to surprise the girls with a trip to one of Hoi An’s many tailor shops. Ian wanted to buy something pretty for Mattie and felt bad about her experience at the store in Hong Kong. Hoi An was well-known for its custom-made silk dresses and cashmere suits, creations that would cost hundreds of dollars in the West but ran ten or twenty dollars in this forgotten city.

As she had in Hong Kong, Holly led them forward, saying hello in Vietnamese to the locals she passed. Mattie did likewise, doing her best to keep pace with Holly’s feet and grasp of languages. Mattie carried her backpack, as usual, but Ian hadn’t seen her sketch pad emerge since the previous morning, which surprised him. For as long as he could remember, she had drawn at least one picture every day.

The girls were excited by the prospect of getting new dresses, which they planned to wear to dinner in Dalat. Still, Holly passed several tailor shops where men stood outside and tried to attract her attention. She didn’t want to enter a shop run by men, as she believed that the men would focus on Ian. Questions would be directed to him. Tea served to him. And while Holly didn’t need to be the center of attention, she wanted Mattie to receive that attention, not her father. Mattie was the one who needed a pretty dress, who had an eye for beautiful things.

Holly finally located a shop where two middle-aged women sat outside on plastic chairs. The women wore black pants and white collared shirts. They were sipping soft drinks and pointing to something in the distance. Holly greeted them in Vietnamese, which produced broad smiles. Switching to English, she asked them if they made dresses, and the women stood up as if they’d sat on thumbtacks, taking Holly’s hands and leading her into an old wooden building.

As Holly walked, she told the women how Mattie needed a special dress, how they were all going out to dinner the following night. The room that Holly was led into resembled the interior of a temple. The ceiling, two stories above, was made of dark wood, as were the walls and the thick pillars that ran from the stone floor to the highest point in the peaked roof. Red lanterns, unlit but vibrant, hung from old chains, descending like spiders spinning webs. Teak shelves lining the walls contained bolts of brightly colored silk. Headless mannequins displayed a variety of traditional and modern dresses.

The women, who looked to be twins, stopped in the center of the room. “You like Vietnamese or Western dresses?” one seamstress asked in broken English, her eyes as dark as the ceiling and the large mole next to her nose.

“Wait, sister, wait,” the other woman said, scowling. “First, we welcome you to our store. Would you like anything to drink? To eat?”

Holly looked at Mattie. “Do you want anything?”

“I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?” Holly asked. “They’re happy to bring us something.”

Mattie looked at the women, who nodded. “Maybe a drink?”

The smooth-faced sister smiled. “A Coca-Cola? A Fanta?”

“A Coke, please.”

The woman looked at Holly, Georgia, and then Ian. Everyone ordered a drink, and the seamstress hurried out into the street. The remaining proprietor lit a stick of incense and picked up a measuring tape. “My sister, Kim, she be back soon. My name Binh. No one come to our shop today, so since you first customer, that mean you lucky customer, and we give you good price.”

Georgia saw Holly’s glance and nodded, sitting down on a granite bench. Ian moved beside her, a cramp in his stomach, making him realize that he hadn’t taken an antacid since arriving in Vietnam.

“What do you think,” Holly asked Mattie, “a Vietnamese or a Western dress?”

Mattie looked at the mannequins. She walked over to a traditional Vietnamese dress, which was almost ankle length and worn over white silk pants. The dress was blue, with buttons falling from the neck to the underside of a shoulder. The top half of the dress featured a variety of blurred colors, like a garden observed through rain-covered glass. Mattie thought that she saw roses, tulips, and a hundred other flowers. She liked the idea of being a walking garden and touched the soft fabric. “I love this one,” she said. “Is it expensive?”