It’s hot inside the flat. I open the long windows and sit at the writing table in front of my computer. Clicking open the browser, I find the road Ella calls the “superhighway,” Phahonyothin Road, listed on the map as Highway 1. It snakes up the screen, connecting the city of Chiang Rai to Thailand’s border with Myanmar. It passes a university. Another search shows that pineapples are native neither to Chiang Rai nor to Thailand. Europeans brought them, having discovered them in South America. The plants grew well in the tropical climate.
I should type up what I’ve written, but the two flimsy scenes don’t feel like enough. There needs to be more Ella: something she wants, something she’s running from.
Delaying, I take the beige book to the window. With the summer air—skin temperature—on my face, I read that every office in the Faculty of Arts and Letters has its own large window. Ella’s looks out over hills and pineapple fields, while Muay’s faces an inner courtyard, with views across into other offices, even on floors above and below. Sitting again at the writing table, I draw a line under the scene with Anthony in my notebook and write:
Ella unwrapped a piece of candied ginger from a jar on Muay’s desk. Slowly.
—Every Thai nickname means something, Muay was explaining. Lek means “small,” Yai means “fat,” Gai means “chicken,” Mu means “pig.” If you look like something, you get the name. Or it’s your personality. Like if you love to eat, you’re called Yai.
—But nicknames are given to babies. How can you know what they’ll look like or what their personalities will be?
—The personality grows up to suit the name? Maybe it’s that way, Muay said, squinting at the large computer screen in front of her, which lit up the lenses of her glasses.
—What does your name mean? Ella asked.
—Ah! It means “woman of Chinese descent.”
—But that’s not a personality—
—No, it’s my beauty!
Muay laughed, squishing up her eyes. Large dimples flowered on her cheeks.
—Chinese origin means light skin. It’s why women from the north are famous for beauty.
Ella knew how little cultural obsessions with beauty mattered to Muay, whose doctorate in political science had earned her a professorship before she turned thirty, who valued wit above all.
—What could my nickname be? Ella asked.
Muay adjusted her glasses and peered through them at Ella.
—I’ve got it, she said: A.
—Okay. What does A mean?
—No meaning. The letter A maybe?
Ella was about to protest, when one of Muay’s students came into the office. He wai’ed deeply. Muay returned the bow. As Ella turned to go, Muay called after her.
—Don’t forget! Smoothies at the market after work. I’ll come get you.
What isn’t there—the space between words—gives me an image of Ella walking back to her office through big open rooms, sitting down at her desk, and staring at her reflection in the black computer monitor. Then she takes out her journal—the same book I’m holding open next to my notebook—and writes:
October 15
Two hours until Muay will come with her bottomless cheer and we’ll go to a market that has smoothies, arroy mak maak. Delicious. Muay is thoughtful. She gave me a collection of short stories in English she’d found at a traveler’s bookshop in Chiang Rai (Hemingway disproportionately represented, as if he were the god of all literature). I told her I didn’t know what to teach, but that’s not the problem. I don’t know how to teach. I can’t say that! I should turn on the computer but don’t want to because there will be messages. The monitor is a black mirror. It shows me how my hair sticks out of my ponytail. My eyes look wild, dark. Better look at the hills. The view will never get old. It will mend the spirit and make it wise.
I’ll keep this book open when I turn on the computer, for strength, because these pages are the best of me. Five e-mails from her. Her justifications: blood not mattering, nothing changed, not lying, but obeying the truth of feeling. Truth of feeling! In her heart I am her daughter. They are worried. They want to know I’m okay. No apology—no acknowledgment that I’m right to be angry. My whole life until they told me was a mirage. Now the ground of the world is gone. Nothing is real. Was I an object to give and receive? How could they look at me every day of my life and lie? Breathe, look at the hills, little gold patches now, lighting slopes of green. Thai alphabet. Letters, squiggles, lines.
The next three and a half pages are all squiggles that struggle toward characters, some more successfully than others. The Thai alphabet. Ella copied each letter again and again until she got it right. She probably did this until Muay rapped on her office partition, miming a steering wheel with her hands, lifting Ella’s mood. I skip a line in my notebook:
Muay appeared at six, full of good cheer, and Ella was saved from the whir of her own mind, from thoughts of too many mothers—
No. Ella and Muay in the car, in motion. There is dirt and dust, and sun lighting the land as it sinks toward the hills. The journals give me the scene. All I have to do is copy what I see:
Ella rolled down the passenger window as Muay drove the stretch of road connecting the university to the superhighway. October sky, few clouds. Curves of hills becoming familiar, like the Thai pop music on the radio, like Muay’s hand tapping the steering wheel, out of time.
Ahead, cut out against the landscape, was the back of someone walking, sandals kicking up dust, white shirt billowing against the blue sky like a sail. He wore cotton trousers folded at the waist in the Thai style, but his hair, or something about his walk, betrayed him as a foreigner.
—Is that him? Ella asked as they drove past.
—Who?
The car swerved as Muay turned to look.
—The new teacher, the one my age, Ella said.
—I don’t know.
The car found its lane again.
—But you pointed him out at Big C!
—I was only guessing. You met him already?
—No. He wasn’t at the Welcome Dinner. But … there aren’t many falang here, so … Turning the air-conditioning vent toward her, Ella observed how odd it was that he should be walking.
—We should give him a ride, Muay said.
Ella felt a prick of shame. The heat must be stifling. It hadn’t occurred to her to offer a lift. Brakes screeched, throwing her forward. The car reversed a hundred meters.
—Ask him, Muay said.
Ella got out of the car, struck by the heat of the afternoon. She called to the man ahead, who turned. His hand, visored against the sun, set his eyes in shadow.
—It’s hot, she said. Do you want a ride?
The man moved closer.
—Absolutely, yeah, he said, reaching out his hand. I’m Sebastian.
He had delicate facial features, high cheekbones that didn’t match his tanned skin or his stubble beard. His parts didn’t seem like they should fit together, but they did. He eased himself into the backseat and greeted Muay, who asked:
—Bai nai? Where are you going?
—Just to the main road there. I’ll catch a songteow to town.
His shirt was sticking to his sides.
Muay asked Ella:
—Do you know what a songteow is? A truck with two—song—benches. You pay twenty baht.
—They come every ten minutes or so, Sebastian said. You hail it like a taxi.
He had a formal way of speaking.
—Sometimes they don’t stop, and it can take forever to get anywhere. I’m going to town now, actually, to pick up my motorbike. You have more freedom that way.
—Ahhh, Muay said. Where do you live?
—Ban Du, Seb replied, inflecting Thai like a native.
—Be careful, Muay said, regarding him in the rearview mirror. Get a helmet.
She pulled over at the turnoff to the superhighway, and Seb thanked her in Thai.
—Handsome! Muay said to Ella, grinning.
> Seb was hardly out of the car.
October 16
Each day, topography of mind is different from the day before. Filmstrips flash before the eyes at night. Damp soil under my fingernails, so the smell of my hands is orchids and warm rain and rice fields and mountains. I love drives with Muay. I love the bumps of dirt roads in the villages and the children staring. I am alive, want to be deluged with it all. I want the texture of petals on the tips of my fingers, more touch, skin on skin. Yesterday we met Sebastian. He was walking the university road like a beggar-saint. In the car, he was polite, soft-spoken. Muay thought he was handsome, but he looked so lost walking like that. Today he came by my desk in a bright blue shirt and was cleanly shaven. He asked if I would begin with the hero’s journey. He’s teaching a literature class, too. He seemed like a different person, so I asked if he’d gotten his motorbike, and he said he had.
I know already I never want to leave this place. I never want to feel indifferent to things again, not living fully—as intensely as possible. Here I’m alive, flooded by sensations, suspended over anger and uncertainty. I am whoever I want to be, finally content, finally free.
5
OUR TABLE IS TUCKED AWAY, far from the picture windows with their heavy drapes. The tabletops are mosaic suns, candles at their centers. Siobhán stands to kiss me on both cheeks, filling the space with a light musk, oddly familiar.
—You do eat meat, don’t you? I’ve ordered us wine and prosciutto to start.
Her manner is formal. I am nervous. I sit across from her, hands in my lap, wondering if her face holds clues to Ella’s future: skin creased around the mouth and eyes, tautness giving way in her cheeks. She is all refinement, nothing raw or spontaneous. She wears a charcoal blazer. A necklace of silver triangles nets her collarbone in lines of light.
I take the sample from my bag and hand it to her, hoping she’ll read it immediately. She canceled a French translator’s contract at this stage. I want assurance I’ll fare better.
She sets it on the table between us.
Linguistic translation would be easier. Narrative is too much responsibility. I might have brought a foreign flavor to a French version of the journals, rendering them not quite native and a little strange. Already Ella is making my language strange. My thoughts, no longer tired, snuffed out at their ends, unfurl along the contours of her syntax, in the style of the beige journal.
—I don’t know if there’s a thread yet, I say. I’m making up a lot.
Siobhán says nothing.
—I think it would be more accurate to transcribe the journals. She writes well. There’s freshness.
Siobhán looks down, tapping her long fingers on the table.
I go on, wanting to make myself clear.
—A story could complicate things. It might bury her, make it harder—
Siobhán interrupts with a wave of her hand. She says:
—If the journals said where she was, we would have found her already. The information we need is not in the journals—not in what they say. Do you understand?
I stare at her. Not in what they say? Then where? Having moved across the ocean at her request, I need to believe that Siobhán knows what she is doing.
—I see Thailand, I say. Ella describes the colors and smells. It feels like I’m there.
Siobhán inclines her head, pleased, then tenses under the pressure of some thought.
—You’ve read the green journal? she asks.
—Parts, I say, ashamed at my overreaction to its intensities, an effect of too much solitude in this still-strange city.
—If you’ve read some, she says, setting down her fork, then you know Ella was troubled.
Remembering Ella’s writing on the napkin, I stare at Siobhán in horror. Can she know about my mother? Does she realize what she’s asking? Tracking madness would plunge me down a path I’d spent the last six years—if not my whole life—so carefully avoiding.
My mother was institutionalized twice for “nervous paranoia.” It happened the first time when I was eleven, the second time when I was eighteen. She cut off all her hair—that most visual part has stayed with me. She had it styled in a boyish cut and was home in time for my high school graduation. But she was thin, with dark circles and skin so pale, it made her lips too red in contrast. Her death was long after her last episode, tragic in the way accidents are, seeding desire for worlds in which it hadn’t happened. I like to think that my memory isn’t there the months after her death because I was living elsewhere, in counterfactuals. But the terror is that I’m marked for what happened to her, the nervous paranoia. My father is afraid, too. I feel it. Most terrible were the times I lost her without losing her, when her thoughts dipped and lost coherence—when she was there in body but reacting to a world only she could see, one that she, somehow, had created. Both times she was gone for two months and then returned to us, frail. In time, her fun side would flower again. My father didn’t talk about the episodes, and not even our extended family knew. My mother had a small reputation in the sculpture world, a part-time teaching appointment at MICA. She didn’t want others to know, so it was kept private, secret.
—You should have mentioned it earlier, I say.
—I did, Siobhán says, her surprise genuine. What does it change for you?
I look at her, searching. Her manner is so innocent. She can’t possibly know my mother’s history. The condition came on late, after I was born, after she and Siobhán had lost touch. Siobhán hands me a menu.
—Better have a look. I always get the duck, but the mussels are also very nice.
She looks at me strangely as I try to read the menu.
The woman in the alcove last night—had I imagined her? I try not to think about it.
—Elena, you’re an artist on commission. Read the journals, first to last, then tell me if you still want to accept.
I nod, suddenly afraid that she’ll rescind if I hesitate too much.
—A journal can mean a lot of things, she says. It’s the patch of land traveled in a day. It’s the record an I makes of itself as it passes into things.
She turns to the waiter.
—C’est bon, merci.
He fills our glasses. Light through the wine casts ruby patterns on the table. Siobhán holds my gaze a moment. I look down. Passes into things? I must have misheard her.
—You knew my mother in London? I ask.
—Yes. Your mother was there when Ella was born.
I look up, very still.
—It was a long time ago, she says, picking up her glass. I love this wine.
It tastes of pomegranates. When I imagine her and my mother together, Siobhán grows younger. She might tell me about that time. There may be more to my mother than I know, an alternative she missed that I might take—one that doesn’t lead where she went. Siobhán and I might help each other.
Suddenly, as if just remembering they’re there, Siobhán takes the pages I’ve written. She reads in silence.
I wait, swirl my wine in the glass the way she did, smell it. At another table, a man leans in, candlelight on his lips and teeth as he talks, gesturing with his arms, fingers splayed, telling a story.
—No, Siobhán says, setting down her wineglass. Not like that. No.
—What? I ask, alarm spreading.
—I can’t find Ella here. I don’t know what she’s feeling. There has to be … more feeling.
I look at Siobhán in confusion. The scenes do have feeling. I remember my thrill at seeing the place arise from the journals, its colors and smells.
A plate of prosciutto arrives with a basket of bread and miniature pickles.
—Do you know where Ella is? I ask, sensing I’ve asked this before.
There’s too much urgency in my voice; I need to know I’m on the trail of someone living.
Siobhán’s eyes catch the lights, flashing anger in the dim room.
—If I did …
Her face falls. Her loss of composure disarms m
e. We sit in silence, not touching our food. My words come on their own, out of instinct to quell Siobhán’s distress, to comfort her.
—What can I do?
Siobhán looks at the pages still in her hands, mouths some of the words, then turns to me.
—The journals say “I.” You say “she.” Maybe you would capture more if you—
—You want me to write in the first person?
Siobhán hands me back the pages. I scan them. It’s a strange request, but it makes sense. Siobhán wants to find her daughter. If I write from Ella’s perspective, if I say “I” and not “she,” I’ll feel her feelings as my own. I’ll be with her at every juncture, making her choices, going over her steps to find her way. Siobhán looks so inconsolable that I push away my suspicions.
The waiter approaches, clean and professional. When he has taken our order and gone, Siobhán requests five new pages from Ella’s perspective. I should deliver them to her at the Ormeau Gallery at noon. Tomorrow.
II
Loi Krathong
6
SIOBHÁN SOFTENED. She gave me three days to write the new pages—three days, ample and round, like peaches ripening in the summer markets. But the visions do not return. Now that I must be an actor, involved in the scene, the journals withhold their magic. I’m left cold. No vision, no spark.
Since I cannot write, I follow the black-eyed man. He lives in a timber-frame house up the road (there are a few in Montmartre; they must be expensive), above a café with a glass front. The smell of roasting coffee beans draws me inside. No one is behind the bar, so I sit for a while. The blue journal is with me, but there is the tug of the world and the fear that if I open it, the smell of coffee, the warm wood of the table and dust in the sun might slide away. Irrecoverable.
The black-eyed man appears behind the bar. I open the book, so that I’ll seem busy.
She is forty-two and needs to be reborn. Soraya. On the full moon, we’ll strip off our memories, wash them in the river, and put them back on, purified, like clean clothes.
The blue book is easier to read. The beige book was terrible—a summer of malaise with one mother too close and Ella plotting her escape in desperate fury. Rage at the other mother—Siobhán—who had given her up. The blue book begins in Thailand with Ella’s ersatz family, with Soraya, her chosen mother.
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