The Lotus and the Storm (47 page)

A faint smile crosses the proprietor's clouded face as he moves into their line of vision. He tells them he bought the photos and letters thirty years ago.

“Why?” James asks.

“So things that deserve to be passed down to someone won't be discarded. Their owners fled and left everything behind.”

James nods and gives him a smile in return. He is leafing through a pile of old maps. His eyes widen as he follows the many red and black lines and the circles and stars used to designate towns and cities.

The proprietor intervenes. “These date a long time back,” he says. He tells James he has sold many of them to film people making movies about Vietnam. He proudly names some of the movies he has been involved in.
Indochine, The Lover,
and
The Quiet American.

When they leave that store, with its unclaimed photographs and letters, I feel a discomforting countercurrent. There is a swell beneath the waves. I muster all the strength I have to suppress it, for fear it will seep through our shared skin and infect Mai's time with James. And then I am surprised by the realization: This is the first time I have wanted to protect Mai from the invading presence of my turbulence. This is the first time I have wished to avoid a deliberate escalation with her. Indeed, for this moment, as I watch her walk with James toward the harbor, her pale face for once serenely disposed, I feel a rare surge of kinship with her.

Mai wonders aloud to James whether any of our family photo albums might be among the pile edged against the wall in that store. What would be the chance of that?

 • • • 

One day in the late afternoon, almost early evening, Mai takes James by the hand and tells him she wants to do something with him that day. They are at the harbor of the Saigon River again, where several large ships, one a rusty oil freighter, are waiting to be repaired. A gauntlet of shirtless men, wearied by the sun's heat, nonetheless take aim, striking molten iron with hammers half the length of their bodies. Downstream, a row of boats are rafted together by the shore, swaying and tugging against the mooring lines. The water naturally draws one's eyes toward the horizon, across the river, where coconut trees etch the water and sky with reflections of meditative green. A lone fisherman stands on the wharf by a railing of eroded plywood and casts his rod, its monofilament dancing with the movement of wind and water.

Mai has made all the arrangements by phone. She has timed it so that the trip will be swathed in the purple half-light our parents loved. She searches for a boat with a large dragon's eye. The boat's owner, a frail middle-aged man, looks at her balefully. He is full of reverence and sentiment. He understands the purpose of the trip.

He crouches down, gives the motor cord a scrupulous tug, and pulls it in a single stroke. We are under way.

Mai runs her hand against the boat's warm, wooden flanks. This is a busy river with boats chugging upstream and downstream. Green water hyacinths float on the water in tight, twisted swatches past a pale crescent of gray-shingled houses and houseboats where families are cooking and eating. James leans against the boat's side, his hands wrapped behind his neck. Hydrofoils slice through the oil-filmed water, taking passengers on a two-hour trip to Vung Tau. As we get farther from the city center, away from the sluggish cloud of smog, I smell a trace of sea salt in the air. I feel the ripple and pull of currents under the boat as it heads into the gathering distance, toward the deep, past-dispelling curve of the open waters. James switches positions, pulling Mai toward him. He is so close to her I can feel his breath against my cheeks. He offers her a bottle of water from his knapsack.

Of course I know what Mai is doing but I don't think James knows the plain facts of the voyage. It is a nice enough evening for a river cruise. After a few moments she asks him if he knows why they are on the boat. Before he can answer, she puts her hand in her rucksack and with great deliberation removes an object from it. She holds it with both hands and stares into the deep blue before us.

She shows him the smooth metallic box that contains our father's ashes. Mai looks at James and tells him she wants both of them to drop her father's ashes into the water. I feel sad our father's life turned out as it did. But I am also strangely reassured. Through our father, I see it is possible to love one person in your lifetime, the way he loved our mother. It is possible for love to endure.

Mai is sending him off the way he would want to be, not fixed and earthbound and weighted down by a headstone but free and flowing, untouched by ephemera. And then suddenly, a thought she has been quietly struggling with enters her head, and with clarity and precision takes on the shape of a decision: She will not try to find our sister's grave. The cemetery where Khanh is buried is run-down and half-abandoned. There can be nothing consoling about it.

James looks at Mai solemnly. “Your father used to stand by a patch of flowering weeds and watch us kick the ball around the soccer field,” he says. “He wanted to hear you talk.” I know James is referring to the time when Mai lost her voice after Khanh died. “He wanted to hold on to the sound of your voice,” he adds.

It is a pleasure for Mai to be given that memory of our father.

Mai chooses this moment to tell him that she has another sister somewhere in Vietnam. She goes on to tell him about our mother and Cliff. She anticipates questions but James is unfazed.

“She was taken to an orphanage in Vung Tau. I think I should go there to see if there is a record of her. Maybe find out what might have happened to her,” Mai says.

“There was only one orphanage in Vung Tau and it was demolished a few years ago,” James tells her. He explains matter-of-factly that our sister might have already left the country. There is a program for Amerasians who want to leave, James tells her. Many have left.

Mai asks him if he is surprised by this story and he tells her no.

“Anything can happen in life,” he says. “Look how we have found each other.”

The steel-gray water churns, far from the seductions of the world, its surface sequined with a spectrally silvery foam. The boatman turns around and flashes his wide-eyed, brows-up look, as if to ask, “Here? Or here?”

“Here,” she volunteers.
Here
has a fine, generous sound to it. This body of water will merge at some point with the South China Sea. Mai smiles at him, and he takes that to mean anyplace in this vicinity is fine. Here it is, then. Seaweed tinges the water green. He turns off the motor and lets the boat drift in the salt-smelling breeze. Their names differ and they seem separate and distinct but oceans and seas are all connected to one another in a tumultuous web.

From where I sit, the great body of water before us prophesies not boundaries but continuity. I know Mai picked this body of water because of our mother. I stare it down. For years she was a ghost, invisible, absent, living a life apart from us, occasionally pantomiming devotion. Now she is somewhere in the South China Sea. Soon our father will be released to join her.

A conflicted tide moves through me. I still feel the piercing pain of Mother's rejection. With clarity I see the angelic face, not looking at me. Years later I am still waiting for her to complete her gaze toward Father and me. But now on this boat I feel tiny valves opening up in me, expanding the blood vessels and opening up the pores. I fight to contain myself. A strange sound escapes me. The barriers between Mai and me have been weakened. She feels my cries and I feel hers, as if our nerves glow, crosshatched, and we are bound together by a maddening, common vulnerability.

This is as good a place as any, I think. Waves slap the sides of the boat and produce a ravaging swell of foam. Mai stands up with James. The water is alive, its skin breathing. Mai looks straight down into the exploding waves. In one swift movement, she dips her hand into the box, as if what she is doing requires speed and determination. The ashes are there, inside a plastic bag. They feel personal—velvety and soft, fine like soot, with the occasional grittiness of bone. Mai gives the bag a little shake and tilts it toward the water, sifting the last handful into the waves where they immediately disappear. It is both shocking and comforting. At that instant I do not feel bereaved. There is beauty and fierceness in the moment itself: shafts of purple, granular light hammered against the water, a profound distance at once vast and seemingly bottomless, the sun beginning its preternatural descent, disappearing slowly beyond the curve of the earth.

With sudden force, the waves turn choppy. Mai hands an envelope to James and together they scatter petals of roses on the water's surface where the ashes were and watch them float away, pulled inside a membrane of shimmering ripples, inside a submerged, reconfigured symmetry. The boatman nods. I imagine it is a signal of his implicit approval—here is a little golden hush of consolation, the surprising relief of death held and released.

This is what I would want for myself as well, when the time comes. This is one way of putting to rest the question about home. Tears well up in my eyes. And just like that, with a modest turn and tilt of the mind, everything shifts as I slip into an invisible line of trip wires where equilibrium itself is provisional and arbitrary.

Mai feels it too. She presses thumb and index finger against her lids. The interior voices are back in full punctuated heave. I calm myself and, in so doing, calm Mai.

Sometimes things are aligned and we feel singular and contained. Sometimes things are jumbled and mixed up, a shuddering mystery that needs to be carefully dealt with.

Mai leans back, resting her head against the bulk of James's chest. Her stomach claws momentarily inward. For now she focuses all her attention on calming the unruly tendrils of my frayed nerves.

The boatman whistles a tune. The wind blows a cool breeze into my face. I keep my eyes shut and feel myself being on the same side as Mai and little Cecile. All of us are here to remember our father and mother. Mai breathes deeply. She is aware that all of us are caught in the same vortical web of emotions. Too many feelings collide, clashing and canceling one another. My heart is stilled and inverted, suspended inside a long slow wave of conflicting tides. It will soon be over. I imagine the thin strip of verdant coastline that lies ahead as the boat makes its way, by infinitesimal degrees and on an even keel, back to shore.

 • • • 

Mai holds James's hand when she steps onto the dock and does not let it go. She hangs on to him to reassure herself of his continuing presence. The little trip to release our father's ashes has bared her nerves. The road opens up in front of them, as if to coax them along the shortest route to the hotel. James puts his hand on the small of her back to nudge her small, erratic steps forward. She allows the fatigue to take over even as her body rights itself and cooperates with his efforts. He walks into the lobby with her and ushers them into the elevator.

Without a word, he picks her up and carries her to the bed, a gesture both innocent and charged. His bare arm rubs against her hair, making electricity. The mattress sinks slightly but holds firm, offering relief. He lies next to her, caressing her hair and stroking her face. A silence, deep and pervasive and free of explanation, floats and swirls about. The air conditioner blows, stirring coolness into the flush of humid air. Her head rests on the slope of his shoulder. There they lie in their somber colors and lingering warmth, caught between stillness and motion.

He holds her tightly, his face wet from her tears and his. Their shared memories come at them obliquely. “Mai,” he keeps saying, whispering her name merely for the sound of it. Coming from him, the word is uttered with a slight upward tone, as if to suggest a question when it is in fact meant as a declaration. Occasionally his tone takes an upward, then downward, turn, and her name pronounced thus takes on a different meaning—“always.”

His voice is barely audible. I can hardly hear him but I can feel the scratch of his nails, against the length of her back. He speaks wistfully, almost covertly. He tells her he has never stopped missing her and her sister. Mai lies still, clasped inside his embrace. She tells him she loves him. James sighs. He strokes her hair into place, a fledgling to soothe, ragged ends to heal. There is strange comfort in watching them and listening to their voices. The night seals itself off to the rest of the world.

He shifts position, rolling on his side and onto his elbow. He tries to move her closer to him, and even though she lies still, he does not take this as a rejection. He edges closer to her and massages knots in her back.

A strong wind moves through the trees. It starts to rain. James pulls her with surprising delicacy into a fetal position closer to him. Mai senses everything around her. The faucet drips. The clock ticks. A door closes across the hall. Either she lacks the nerve for reflection—the kind that serves to restrain temptation—or she is overcome by a rush of longing.

She wants to shed her skin; she wants to be close to him, for the entirety of his body to be fitted against hers. He clears his throat and hums a descending line that hangs stealthily until it fades into a simple heartfelt declaration of “Yesterday.” Mai lies back, ignoring the tide of contradictory impulses within, watching attentively as he hums a few notes, his fingers strumming an imaginary guitar held in his arms.

Mai loves the melody, its phrasing like light and shadow. A flush works its way through her and she feels a hotness on her cheeks. It is as if something tightly reined within her has begun to loosen and is waiting for release. The heart, redeemed and reconfirmed, stumbles and swerves. There was that life then and there is this life now, although it seems almost impossible for both to coexist at the same time.

She feels a warmth radiating from his body, his breath rising and easing, rising and easing. So this is what it feels like to be moved.

Mai and I are overpowered. Here, with the sound of the wind rustling through the plants outside. Here with the darkness making its way stealthily through the mysterious imperatives of the heart. Something perilous and strong moves through us. We feel it all—the certainty of old devotions; the weight of impermanence; the age-old human flaw of wishing for more than what can be instead of accepting with gratitude what has been given.