The few who’d witness the gradual decline in the waterline were the people who refused to abandon the appliances and electronics they’d raised on concrete blocks in their homes. Others who’d evacuated could only keep track through those who’d returned to feed pets or retrieve personal items. They asked after the condition of their own homes, whether anyone had caught a glimpse of how far the water had risen on a given street.
As officials reopened areas deemed safe for return, photos of damaged rooms became fashionable in the capital. Young and old posed in living rooms, up to their knees in mud, or reaching out to point at a tea-colored wall to show where the flood had reached. They squished their noses closed to hint at the moldy, rotting stench. Where the water hadn’t fully receded, they threw damaged items into garbage bags, which were then floated to overburdened garbage trucks on drier land. They left books out for the sun to dry, let clothing and furniture bathe in the warmth of rooftops. They recovered family photos now adorned with hypnotic swirls of bled color, torn where the paper had stuck to glass. When the news anchors declared Krungthep crocodile-free, they cheered.
BECOMING
They recognize each other; they both struggle to say how. Then Mai remembers him from the building where she lives with her parents. She has watched him walk across the outdoor rec area with his daughter. She knows the squeaky sound of his flip-flops on the tile. Dr. Wanich thinks she looks familiar but isn’t sure why. Maybe she once accompanied another of his patients and sat on the sofa reserved for family and friends. Maybe she’s a friend’s daughter, one of the many shown off during encounters at the supermarket. Come meet Khun Doctor. If you study hard, you can be like him.
He supposes that he could be wrong about having met her. He likes to think that he never forgets a face and finds it disappointing that his memory, usually so reliable, has failed him. Then he remembers: the long-haired young woman by the pool, there not to swim but to read textbooks beneath an umbrella. Here she is now fully clothed in a university outfit—a white short-sleeved blouse, a black knee-length skirt. She’s pretty, he admits, in the way of Thai movie stars from his parents’ generation, with a youthful beauty more comforting than striking.
She is the one to bring it up.
“I’m sorry if I’m mistaken, Dr. Wanich, but you live in my building, don’t you?”
“I was about to ask,” he says, relieved. “Hello, neighbor.”
His assistant steps in to guide her inside a yellow circle painted on the floor. The room dims. A blue bar of light appears and slowly swivels around her.
“That’s it,” he says. “If you’ll wait just a minute.”
His voice could lull a stampeding elephant, just as Pig had described. It had been Pig’s referral that let Mai skip the yearlong wait for an appointment. If there were a calendar for the clinic, like the kind given out to customers at banks and supermarkets before New Year’s, Pig ought to be on the cover, with her assembly of pleasing curvatures and contours—that smidgen of a nose, those hypnotic feline eyes. Even before the surgeries, Mai thought Pig the least suitable nickname possible for someone who received weekly declarations of love from strangers. Pig blames the name on her now eradicated baby fat. Mai wonders if, had she grown up with a more damning moniker, her own cells would have divided more pleasingly, in defiance.
“Okay, we’re ready,” he says. “Have a seat over there.”
Mai sees her own face hovering in front of her. The face is staring straight ahead, like it’s in line at the twenty-four-hour minimart and elsewhere in thought. A cold glow radiates from its skin. She’s reminded of sitting last year in her art history elective, watching detached head after detached head of Sukhothai-era Buddhas blip into place. Sitting down, she hears Dr. Wanich tapping on hushed keys. On the screen, the heaviness under her chin disappears.
“Better?” he says.
“Better. I think.”
“You already have a very nice bridge. What I would do is lower the nose only a little.”
He models potential options for each procedure. As he taps, the eyes on her new face widen into almond-shaped ovals. He draws three versions of her jawline. The droop of her chin flattens out to the sides. Wordless, she nods at the screen.
The shapes come easily to him. His stylus glides as if it could not have traced a different path. He performs hundreds of surgeries year after year. He knows the spaces his patients long to fill. Some have fled surgery costs in their home countries, flying in from the Arab states, from Seoul, from the gray suburbs of America, where he did his fellowship. They recover in hospital suites that offer hot-stone massages and Ayurvedic consultations. They leave.
“I like this combination best, but it’s up to you.”
After another tap, her current face appears next to her new face. The comparison shot is his most effective persuasion; he saves it for last.
For Mai, the image is no different from pictures of her and Pig posing together side by side. Pig always posts them online, no matter how much Mai objects.
Pig says that she has a huge responsibility to uphold. With the new face, Pig’s following has widened even beyond the campus. Thousands clamor for her every photo. Pig holding up a slice of pizza. Pig pouting with a tilted head at broken sunglasses. Pig brushing her teeth. Likes. Favorites. Hearts.
“Honestly, Dr. Wanich, I’m not sure about this. Some friends just thought I should at least come and see.”
“Everyone has doubts. Take your time. Talk to a few people. I can give you references, if you need them.”
Dr. Wanich pushes a button on his printer. As it whispers out glossy sheets, Mai peers through a partial opening in the blinds. She guesses the view is why he chose this suite in the medical high-rise. The building where they both live is close enough that if her parents were on the balcony, she would be able to make out their silhouettes. It’s a clear, beautiful day. The sky looks as if it has been painted on.
“Here, take these. Any questions, call me.”
“Or maybe I’ll see you at the building.”
“Yes, that, too.”
* * *
☐ ☐ ☐
Weekday evenings, he leaves the clinic to pick up his daughter at the tutoring center, joining the double-parked cars idling in front of the shopping plaza. Decals of smiling cartoon children wearing caps and tassels decorate the windows. It doesn’t take long for his daughter, still in her white-and-red school uniform, to open the back door and rush inside.
Behind him, the door slams. Juhn drops her backpack on the seat. She brings her clasped hands to her forehead to greet him.
“How was the session?”
“We went over sine and cosine and worked on timed exercises.”
She’s in fifth grade and learning subjects he had no idea existed until he entered secondary school. When she asks him for help with homework, he talks cautiously and vaguely, to avoid showing how much he, the learned surgeon, no longer understands.
“Oh yeah, this kid threw up on his desk.”
“Was he sick?”
“He did it so he could call his mom and leave early. She believes anything he says.”
He feels sorry for the mother and also frightened by his daughter’s indifference to the boy’s subterfuge. He thinks about his patient from this afternoon. He wonders if her parents know that she went for a consultation with him. Children, he realizes, keep their own truth and show another.
Juhn still listens to him. If he says something, she nods, because he has said it. Sometimes she asks questions, as if she could trap him in a cage of his answers, but she usually lets go after a bit, distracted by some newer curiosity. He’s thankful. He rewards her duly. On Sundays, he gives her respite from Pia’s regimen of study aids and takes her to the pool downstairs. She swims twenty laps, her goal, not his. He admires her discipline. She slaps at the water and keeps at it until she’s done. He calls
to her from the edge of the pool, with encouraging words he hopes she hears.
* * *
☐ ☐ ☐
Visits to see Pig happen more often in the weeks before finals. As with the last three years, they can expect to sit in the same tiered rows at the university auditorium, the acoustics making every noise louder—the crinkle of turning pages, the faint scratching of hundreds of pens—as they stack arguments and supporting examples in blank booklets. What Mai has a knack for is anticipating exam questions, and Pig has begged her for help with studying. The taxis Mai takes from the Skytrain station never get lost going to Pig’s house. All she has to say is, “To the windmill house near Soi 71.”
Pig’s parents went on vacation in the Netherlands and thought it’d be much too trite to bring back a ceramic souvenir. They brought back blueprints instead. The windmill, built by Thai carpenters out in Ayutthaya Province and trucked into the city piece by piece, stands two stories tall on the roof of their carport. With the wide sloping lawn giving the appearance of a low hill, Pig has said that Van Gogh would have wanted to paint it, minus the office towers in the background.
Pig opens the gate herself. “Bubble and Caterpillar are already here,” she says with what sounds like impatience but is simply how she talks after too much caffeine.
Mai has known Pig since convent school. Still, they might never have become friends if not for neighboring seats in second grade. On days Mai’s mother couldn’t pick her up on time, Pig gave her a ride in a chauffeured Lexus. Mai looked forward to the smell of the trip—musky leather mixed with the crisp, vaguely fragrant air-conditioning. She spent a lot of her childhood in Pig’s car, the traffic on Petchburi Road abetting, each sipping from the straw poking from their bagged iced tea, one of the few things to which Mai could treat her friend. Once, in fifth grade, Mai told Pig about her savings account, the one her parents opened to teach her about money. When it was large enough from her small allowance and relatives’ gifts, she would buy a car to drive her friends around.
“I can’t imagine having a bank account,” Pig said. “That’s so amazing.” Money surrounds Pig, and she barely knows it exists.
Mai follows Pig into the house and up the staircase to the room where Pig’s father keeps the audio system. On the wall hang framed blues and jazz record sleeves collected from business trips to America. They find Bubble and Caterpillar, two wavy-haired mermaids beached on the sectional sofa, leafing through foreign fashion magazines and looking very much like they do in their online postings. Caterpillar specializes in seconds-long videos featuring lively adventures with her bangs. Bubble’s followers can’t get enough of her signature pose: one hand at the hip and a big wink. When Mai checks their posts, she feels she might as well be watching a Japanese cartoon.
“So?” asks Pig.
“Pig told us all about it,” says Caterpillar. “We should have gone with you.”
“I didn’t want anyone with me. It’s not like I’m going to do it.”
“Then show us,” says Bubble.
Mai takes the printouts out of her purse and shields them behind upright elbows. Pointing at her cheek, she says, “I’m sure you can imagine them yourself.”
With a sudden leap, Pig snatches the printouts from her. Mai tries to grab them back, but it’s too late. Pig is already holding them up to the window light.
“Tell me the truth,” says Mai.
“You’re beautiful,” Pig says to the printout. “So, so beautiful.”
“Oh, I love it,” say Bubble and Caterpillar, almost in sync. “You look like that Korean pop star—I always get her name wrong—or maybe a Thai Katie Holmes.”
“They asked if I wanted to schedule a date.”
“Sometime this term break,” says Pig. “You can do the procedures in one shot.”
“Shoop,” says Bubble, her hand imitating scissors. “Done.”
* * *
☐ ☐ ☐
That night, they go to a new hotel bar near Lumpini Park, somewhere Pig wanted to try. They sit around a booth designed in homage to a scallop shell and pass around the cocktail list. Mai mulls over the names on the menu. What makes this one old-fashioned? Who’s Tom Collins? She orders whatever Pig orders. Their responsibilities split that way: Mai reads about political economy theories and tells Pig what’s important, and Pig takes care of what her policy professors might call carrots. The drinks come to them in ambers and reds and yellows. They clink the glasses, arms raised, the way they’ve seen people do in movies about young people living in large, civilized cities.
“Do you think we’ll have to buy our next round?” Bubble says.
“Which one do you think it’s going to be?” asks Caterpillar.
They chose their booth at a corner where eyes are inclined to converge. Feng shui matters, as Pig says.
“That guy over there is throwing us looks.”
“Ew,” Caterpillar says.
“He could be a pedicab driver, even with the tie on,” says Bubble.
“Actually, he’s not that terrible,” says Pig. “If he’d use some whitening cream, and if you squint, he might look like Jay Chou.”
Mai makes herself laugh with them. She knows her role when Caterpillar and Bubble are around. She’s the one not pictured. She’s the one to step away. The photo snapping will start, as it always does, and she’ll volunteer to get up from the table and capture the triptych.
It’s fine. She doesn’t need to be in another photo. It’s maddening enough that her parents put pictures of her everywhere in the apartment and never shy from showing her off in the most embarrassing ways. Last week they had asked her to meet up with them at the wedding of one of her father’s friends’ daughters, someone she’d only recognized from a family portrait stapled to one of the delivered New Year’s gift baskets. Mai arrived to see the bride and groom up on the stage singing abridged Elvis hits, the crowd delirious. Her mother called out from a crowd of people Mai might or might not have met at other receptions. “Mai, Mai! There you are! Come talk to my friend Auntie Rain.” Customary introductions followed. Mai’s always late like this when she’s out with her friends, they say, but we’re never worried. She gets good grades and the rich kids line up for her to tutor them. That’s right, international affairs, third year. She wants to go to grad school next, probably in America.
When she’s honest with herself, she acknowledges that she doesn’t mind her parents’ boastful appraisals. The few times anyone ever says something nice about her are when they talk about accomplishments that look great on paper.
What puts her ill at ease are the expectations. She wants; that’s true. Also true is Mai not knowing how she can reach for anything higher than what they can afford. She’s an international affairs major, but she has been out of the country only twice, once to Singapore on a school trip and another time with her cousins on a group tour to Paris. This is their fortune: they’ve inherited respectable family names and obtained acceptable jobs. Her mother works as an assistant administrator at a public hospital. Her father spends his days summing up numbers for a telecom company. All their lives, they will move sideways.
Her parents have said that should they ever need the money, there’s the condo, which they’d bought from the old owner at a quick-sale price.
Mai excuses herself to go to the restroom but instead finds herself at the bar. With everyone at their own booths, it’s quieter here. The bow-tied bartender is wiping glasses dry with a white dish towel. Behind him, bottles lit from the bottom glow like glass lanterns.
“Sawasdee, little lady,” a man says. He stands with one arm leaning on a wall. He’s older but probably believes he hasn’t aged in decades.
“Say, what are you drinking?” he asks. “If you introduce me to your pretty friends, I’ll buy you another.”
He’s not so different from the rest—her friends, her relatives, the department directors
at school, the HR managers thumbing through CVs with the requisite candidate photo clipped to the top left corner. She remembers Dr. Wanich at his desk, considering her face as he taps on the keys. He barely looked at her. His eyes stayed fixed on the face on the screen.
To be seen and wanted: the opposite has given her the comfort of being left alone, free of expectations, able to come and go without notice.
“I’m having a Cuba Libre.”
She will watch them play with him, like cats with a stunned sparrow.
* * *
☐ ☐ ☐
It’s Sunday, time for his daughter’s weekly swim. Juhn holds his hand as they walk down the covered walkway to the pool. Through slats overhead, the afternoon sun draws golden bands across them. Juhn shields her eyes with her other hand. Dr. Wanich stops to stretch anti-UV goggles over her head. She drops her towel, and he picks it up. It takes them five minutes to get to the far side, where the shade is best at this hour.
Into the water she goes. He loves the sound of her splashing kicks. He sees her small feet just by hearing them. He sinks into a vinyl pool chair and assumes the position of lording father—shoulders slouched against the chair back, hands hanging from armrests, his phone on the table. He doesn’t know if his daughter can hear him. He yells anyway.
“You’re doing amazing!”
Juhn has grown taller this year. She now comes up to his chest, and it’s looking likely that she’ll be at his shoulders next year. She has his energy and concentration. He can leave her to a task and trust her to keep at it until he returns. She’s fascinated by nature shows and laughs at dubbed Japanese cartoons. She seems happy, more than he was at that age: an academically promising boy whose duty of future success had meant everything to his noodle-selling parents. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t have enrolled Juhn at the tutoring center. She doesn’t need it, he said. She’ll be left behind, Pia said. With his wife, he has negotiated a balance for his daughter: weekdays of exertion and weekends of joy.
Bangkok Wakes to Rain Page 18