Vacation (4 page)

I don’t know what to say, so I pick a petal off my hair.

“Remember that French scientist I told you about? Gattefosse?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that time when he burned his hand and healed it with lavender, it changed his whole life. He devoted himself to studying essential oils and their properties. He’s the one who came up with aromatherapy.” She sits up straight and pulls her velvety box from the picnic basket. “That’s what these are. The oils. They all have their own individual powers, but for the most part they can calm you, and they can open you up. They can bring back memories that you don’t know you have.” She thumbs open the lid. “You want to try?”

Karaoke and sake surge through the mouths of the crowd. They’re here to forget.

But I nod.

So.

One after another, she positions the tiny vials a range of distances below my nostrils.

Peppermint, eucalyptus, lemon, rosemary, frankincense, chamomile, jasmine…

One after another, nothing happens.

Until something does. Maybe because of the smell. Maybe because I’ve given myself permission to search my memories.

The bear with pink fur and blue marble eyes, she’s on her knees on the carpet crying tears of honey that she licks the instant they touch her mouth. Mom, you’re there, and you, dad. You’re both standing at my bedside with your arms crossed, and you’re not crying.

Every night me and Bear talk and fall asleep, side by furry side. Tonight though, mom, you say, “It’s time to say goodbye, Berny.”

Dad, you say nothing.

“No!” I scream. I’m angry. I’m desperate.

“You’re too old for this, Berny,” you say, mom. “Say goodbye.”

Dad, you say, “She’s not real.”

Yeah, that may be true, but Bear doesn’t know that.

But my parents are my parents, and when they’re standing there, arms like x’s, looking at me like I’m a bad channel on TV that you flip away from the moment I enter the room, well, then, there’s really nothing else I can do except say, “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye who?” you say, mom.

“Goodbye, Bear.”

“Good.”

You leave the room, mom and dad.

Bear’s gone.

I’m alone.

Mom, I know. I know you were doing it for my-own-good. I know I’m picking out a moment of cruelty from a lifetime of affectionate and loving parenthood.

But.

I’m making a point.

I’m trying.

You think, because Aubrey died before I was born, I had it easy.

You think, I didn’t have to grieve, so it didn’t affect me.

Grieving is a terrible feeling, but at least it makes sense. Someone you love dies so your heart shatters.

But what I feel, it doesn’t make sense.

Here’s a trauma I own, but don’t know how to feel.

Years later your little boy is in a big body and he’s passed out blotto in his bathtub, and his sister says, “So those statue things, the maoi, they were, like, magic to the people who built them.” She smells like manure, and she flosses her teeth as she speaks. The yellow stones point out of her gums in all directions, compacted, so the floss snaps at her each time, and she flinches with every hit. “Eventually, these same people started breaking the statues. Now some people think they did this ‘cause of tribal competition. Whoever has the most magic wins, right?” The floss smacks her gums especially hard and she yelps. “But there’s another theory that the tribes broke their own statues. The people were tired of their religious leaders like obsessing over who had more magic. They got sick of focusing their whole lives on building the stupid heads. So one day they said, ‘Forget this crap,’ and busted all the magic right out of their lives.” She twirls the globby red string around her finger. “Personally, I like this theory best. Because, sometimes, what you think is magic in your life is actually poison. And other times, what people say is a poison, is actually magic.”

And, what you don’t know, what I never told you, is an imaginary bear isn’t always an imaginary bear.

Sometimes she’s an imaginary sister.

“Remember anything?” Krow says.

I think about how much she’s shared with me, and how much I want to share with her, but still I say, “No.”

Part 5

The only asymmetrical part of the Taj Mahal, Jack tells us, is the casket of Shah Jahan, who built the mausoleum for his second wife Mumtaz Mahal. Jack says that Jahan wanted to construct a replica of the Taj out of black marble, where he could be buried, and the two buildings would be linked by a bridge across the Jumna River. But, Jack says, Jahan battled with his son Aurungzeb for the throne, and lost, and so the replica was never made.

However, the night before, before we even visit the Taj, Aubrey says, “Anyone that knows anything about Islamic law, knows that bodies are supposed to be buried with their heads pointing toward Mecca. And the husbands are supposed to be buried on the right side of their wives. So the notion that he was, like, gonna build another Taj Mahal, is stupid.”

The white marble of the Taj Mahal, Jack says, changes color from milky to pinkish to golden depending on the time of day or night, in order to reflect the various moods of women.

However, Aubrey says, “Seriously though, the Shah probably didn’t even build the thing. Most of the evidence shows that the building was actually an ancient Shiva Temple, which the Shah took and used as a tomb. It’s pretty obvious really. The whole thing is way Hindu style. Go look at the outer wall of the sanctum sanctorum, and you’ll see the Hindu letter
OM
carved there. There’ve even been carbon 14 tests done that totally prove it’s a lot older than the Shah. But this isn’t the common belief, is it? Love sells a whole lot better than conquest.”

Jack keeps talking, and the voice in my head keeps talking back, so I decide to tune them both out and turn to Krow.

She’s wrapped in nine yards of gold now, a silk sari. She also wears dozens of bracelets (which she calls bangles), necklaces, finger rings, toe rings, earrings, anklets, and a nose pin. Much of it gold-plated. Gold, she tells me, is typically worn against the skin, because it has the power to purify what it touches. A red sindoor also dots her forehead. The sindoor, she says, covers the sixth chakra point called agna, which means command. She says it’s the point of intuition and perception. She says it’s the third eye.

And then, right next to us, Pumpkin Head kisses a Horse Face woman.

I glance around and notice that this is not an uncommon occurrence among the tour groups.

Krow bites her lip. “I read somewhere that certain animals can only smell one thing. Know what it is?”

“Food?”

She shakes her head. “The opposite sex. So to them, the world—the entire world, no matter where they go or what they do—either smells like the opposite sex, or nothing at all.”

And at that moment, I don’t feel like an adventurer anymore. All the things I’ve done on this Vacation, all that daredevil stuff, doesn’t mean shit. I’m a coward, and I’ve always been a coward. I do everything I’m told to do. And that’s why I hated Marvin. Why I feared him. Because he had the balls that I didn’t.

Krow may not have those same balls anymore, but I think, initially, I was attracted to her because of the courage I remembered in Marvin. I didn’t want Marvin. I wanted to be Marvin.

But it’s more than that now, isn’t it?

“Krow,” I say.

She looks away from Jack. “Hmm?”

“You don’t have to call me Mr. Johnson,” I say.

“Okay.” She scrunches up her forehead, and her third eye squints. “I just realized, I don’t know your first name.”

“Bernard.”

She smiles. “Bernard.”

I smile back, the way Marvin would.

Aubrey isn’t so ugly anymore. No, that’s not it. She’s ugly, but she isn’t as annoying. Instead of twitching and jerking and scratching and sniffling, she sits behind the counter with her hands folded together. And she must have taken a shower recently, because I can’t smell her from where I’m standing. Or am I sitting? It doesn’t matter.

“This is it, bro,” she says. “The end of the line. India’s as far as we go.”

“What do you mean?”

“No more friendly conversations. No more fun facts. The nature of our relationship is about to change. At this point, there’s really nothing either of us can do about it.”

“You’re not making any sense, Aubrey.”

“Then let me make things clearer. In a very short time, you’re going to find yourself hating me.”

“That won’t happen. It can’t.”

She laughs, and this time it’s not a honk. “It doesn’t end there. Someone you know is responsible for these communications of ours. You’ll find yourself hating that person as well.”

“Responsible? How can someone be responsible for a dream?”

“I’m afraid I’m not an expert in that field, and honestly, there’s no point in delving into the details now, but let’s just say someone fed you something.”

I think about Krow and the peanuts she gave me. One of them tasted bitter. Was that real-life foreshadowing? And isn’t it a little too coincidental that a past student of mine and me would choose to Vacation at exactly the same time, and end up in exactly the same Tour?

Is it possible that Krow’s somehow responsible for all this?

Or do I just want her to be?

Aubrey says, “What I’m really here to tell you is, I’m sorry.”

The first thing I notice is that I’m lying in a white bed in a white room. The second thing I notice is that I can’t leave the white bed or the white room, because I can’t move. The notion that I’m paralyzed ravages my mind, but I tell myself that I’m probably tied down. The binds are simply under the covers where I can’t see them. Probably.

“Excuse me,” I try to say.

Either I’m currently unable to speak or I’m deaf.

Once again, I choose to believe the lesser of two horrors.

Here I am, alone in the corner.

Until Jack saves me.

“You alright, Bernard?” He lends his hand to my shoulder. “Feeling alright?”

I try to speak, and this time, crackly succeed. “I can’t move.”

He nods. “The nurse strapped you down.”

“Why?”

“Because I ordered her to.” He takes his hand off me. “It’s a necessary evil I’m afraid.”

I’m wondering if this would make more sense if I wasn’t so drowsy. “Am I sick?” Johnsonitis? My head does feel heavier.

“This hospital isn’t for sick people.” He smiles, then shakes his head. “No, let me rephrase that. Everyone here is sick to some extent, but this isn’t the reason for your admission.”

After another fruitless struggle to budge, I say, “Please…let me go.”

He takes a seat at my bedside, where only his head peeks up above the covers. “A lot of people went a lot of trouble getting you here, myself included. In other words, no way, José.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m going to inject you with a little something, and then I’ll be done with you. The others will take over from there.”

“Are they going to kill me?”

He laughs. “Trust me when I tell you this, Bernard. I could answer all your questions and by the end of the session you’d still feel the same way you do now. So, let’s change the subject to something you’re more familiar with. Namely, yourself.”

“Jack, am I going to die?” I try to scream the words, but I still sound half-awake.

“If I’m not mistaken, you believe your father is the reason you were allowed to teach English to students, and then subsequently to regulate teachers in their teaching of students. This is true, isn’t it, Bernard?”

“Let me go.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He scratches his chin. “Your problem is that you think too little of yourself. While your father may have been a determining factor in your initial success, the fact that you’ve remained successful is entirely your own doing.”

You might think, just by reading these words, that Jack is giving me a kind of pep talk. That he’s complimenting me. But his face shows otherwise. He’s disgusted.

“They employ you because of how you teach,” Jack says. “Do you know why they like you, Bernard?”

I imagine Krow smashing a golden vase over his head.

“Because,” Jack says. “You depress your students. It’s not so much the books you make them read, but how you interpret those books. And how you, in turn, require your students to interpret those books. Whether you realize this or not, you’re a depressing person. In your defense, statistics show that most people in your country are depressing, but you’re especially depressing. And the best part is that you’re ignorant about why you’re depressed. So let’s sum up, shall we? You’re an ignorant and depressing person and you express your feelings through the only outlet you know. Literary analysis.” He peels away a strand of his hair that attached to his lips. “You’re wondering why your bosses would want your students to be depressed.”

I’m wondering why the hell I can’t even hope this is a dream.

“I’ll tell you why, Bernard. The why is that the school is a business. A business with ties to various corporate entities, including the pharmies. Pharmaceutical companies. For every student who’s diagnosed with depression, the school receives a check in the mail. Because, as you probably already know, when a school psychiatrist diagnoses a student as depressed, the school requires that student to pop pills. Otherwise, said student is kicked out of school. And parents tend not to smile on that sort of thing.” He pats the spot where I hope my arm is, but I can’t feel him or my arm. “Don’t blame yourself, Bernard. At least, not entirely yourself. These systems have a tendency of attacking their intended victims on various fronts. You may bum out your students, but the school food, for instance, is also laced with chemicals that give rise to gloomy thoughts. This is all hush-hush, of course, but we have insiders everywhere. And don’t think that what’s going on in the school system is some fluke in an otherwise pic-perfect society. This is a microcosm we’re talking about, folks.” He sounds like the same old Jack again, telling Tour Group Three about the newest attraction. “In a society motivated by money, the various systems within that society are used, rather ingeniously, to increase profit by fucking people over in every conceivable method possible. The media convinces you folks that you’re not being fucked over, and governments suppress said fucked-over folks if they’re fucked to the limit. Because people fucked to limit often attempt to rectify these fucked-up things, which would be, above all, bad for business.” He whirls his arm and checks a watch that I can’t see. “Well, it’s about that time.” He reaches in a coat pocket and pulls out a needle. “When you see her, give her a little message for me, will you? Tell her, ‘Fuck you, bitch.’ She’ll know what I mean.”