Her Here

by Amanda Dennis

  —What happened? I asked.

  —You were moving here, see?

  I looked. My arm was a blurred patch in an otherwise-focused photograph.

  —I like getting people when they don’t know they’re being watched. It’s the only way to get people looking natural. It changes everything when they know they’re in the picture.

  —I take a lot of pictures, he went on. I was in India two months, three hundred and eighty-nine rolls of film, and that’s not counting digital images. I upload when I can, but it’s so slow that I mostly copy files to drives and send them home. I’ll send you these if you want.

  —You’re from the United States? I asked.

  —More native than you. Native American. An eighth Athapaskan. It might not be true, but it’s what my family says. They were nomads—the Athapaskans. I’m interested in nativeness. Native populations—it’s the name of my series. Most of the pictures are from India.

  I was suddenly exhausted.

  —This is my third-to-last stop if I go to China. I end in Mongolia. You know the takhi?

  I shook my head.

  —Wild horses in Mongolia—ponies, actually. I’ll photograph them and live in a ger with nomads. You know, you can take the ger with you when you move—I mean, I can’t, but they can.

  I started to say something, but he cut me off.

  —Do you know the Przewalski horse? It’s another name for the takhi, after a Russian scientist who rediscovered them in the nineteenth century. They think the ponies were common in Europe during the Stone Age because they look like the horses in cave paintings.

  He shrugged.

  —Their lifestyle is incredible. Kids learn to ride before they can walk, and the ponies just stay, without fences or anything.

  He paused for air and then went on, speaking uncommonly fast.

  —They drafted a global management plan to stop extinction. It’s a good cause, but if I’m trying to do something, I can’t capture as much. You start worrying about the UN or whatever instead of the image in front of you—you know, things like color.

  He grew thoughtful for a moment.

  —If I see a scene, I capture it and take the consequences later, rather than trying to re-create something lost because of politeness. I’ll send you the photos—good ones of you watching the fire spinning.

  He showed me more images in the display: Seb laughing while I gestured with ghostly hands, a second photo, then a third of us entranced by blurry flames.

  —The moving fire makes it hard, he said. People move, too. I tried different lenses, but it didn’t stop the blurring. If you jack up the ISO, it gets grainy. Slow shutter, everything shows.

  He took my e-mail address.

  —You live here? he asked.

  —No, in Chiang Rai.

  —North, right? You like it? Good place to decamp for a while, earn money?

  —I think so. But I just got there.

  He said he’d send the pictures, and I turned to go.

  —I’ll see about a job in the north, he called after me, since you recommend it.

  From the lawn, I saw him change lenses and go back into the house. After a lap around the lawn, I caught sight of Seb. This time he was alone in the driveway, swinging chains with coals extinguished above his head and across his body, the way the fire dancers had done. Roosters crowed in the neighbor’s yard, and I watched him duck swiftly as the chains veered out of the orbit he controlled.

  12

  THE WEATHER HAS TURNED, but I cross the city to the Seine. The pleasure of watching the water—gray-green under a changing sky—propels me down along the quais. I step up to the boulevards when they dead-end and rejoin them when they begin again beneath me. Collars are turned up. Trench coats, scarves. Walking keeps me warm. Bridges go by. In a café, outdoors under heat lamps, I sit close to the woman at the next table. She wears a fur coat.

  Two hours later, I reach the allée des Cygnes. There are other walkers. We move back and forth along the alley of the island like weights on a pendulum: an elderly man and a child, two men speaking seriously, two women, hands entwined. We pass one another twice, three times. At the pont de Grenelle, I leave the island and walk up to the Bois de Boulogne. A museum is open. My fingers have grown cold. Inside, there are textures: paint, flowers, ponds. A thin man with a dark beard is painting in one of the galleries. I sit on a bench and watch his wrist flicking and dabbing, his gaze lost inside the image he’s copying.

  Ella. A still point, my doppelgänger, myself in a twisted mirror; she’ll show me what I’m missing, what I’ve yet to understand: how to live. Find her.

  At porte Dauphine, I catch the Métro. Lights glow on in a hundred city windows before the train sinks underground. This must be the opposite of lonely: a body flowing through the city, drawing closer to the quiet and the dark.

  13

  A FEW DAYS AFTER MY RETURN FROM X, Soraya called to ask if I’d like to visit the mineral baths of Chiang Rai. I looked forward to the outing. X left me craving a wholesomeness that everything about Chiang Rai represented by comparison, and I was in a phase of wanting to turn myself inside out and rub into the country, every sight, smell, and taste of it.

  For all her glamour, Soraya had a childlike, fragile side that didn’t emerge until we’d spent time together, just the two of us. The mineral baths were one of the great benefits of the region, she assured me—the sort of thing she used to do with her daughters, but they were in school in Bangkok and didn’t have time anymore.

  At the baths, Soraya showed me where to store my things, and an attendant escorted us to a row of individual clay pits, corked at the bottom, with spigots for hot and cold water. The hot water smelled of sulfur. I watched Soraya’s pool fill. She had brought a terry-cloth headband to keep her hair out of her face and dabbed sweet-smelling liquid from a vial onto her temples.

  —It’s peppermint and lavender, she said, handing me the vial. It helps you relax.

  Soraya’s eyes closed, and her skin began to sweat from the heat of the pool. I dabbed the fragrant oil under each nostril and filled my pool, adopting her pose of relaxation.

  After the baths, we had massages with two sisters Soraya promised were the best outside of Bangkok. The sisters served us tea and kanom. Soraya spoke to them in Thai.

  —I tell them you’re my “Western daughter,” she said, patting my arm. They ask what kind of pressure you like for the massage.

  I discovered muscles I didn’t realize I had—the muscles in my big toes, for instance, which, like every other muscle in my body, were kneaded and stretched to release the tension of years. Remolded like clay, twisted and re-formed.

  Colors seemed brighter, smells stronger as we walked back to the bath complex’s wooden terrace overlooking the hills. There were other bathers on the chaise longues, sitting and talking. Soraya ordered nam duk crai, juice made from lemongrass stalk, and explained its cleansing, detoxifying properties.

  —But you don’t need to detoxify. You are young. Still a baby! Too much of a baby to leave home! Why have you come so far?

  —I came to study meditation, I said, and believed it.

  My reason for having come seemed to find a new form every time I was asked.

  —You know, my elder daughter—probably your age—she is in her last year at university. After her studies, she wants to become a bikkhuni, a Buddhist nun. She goes every night to meditation at the temple. Everyone meditates together three hours by candlelight. When I am in Bangkok, sometimes I go with her. Have you been to a temple before?

  I shook my head.

  —We must go! She clapped her hands. There is a beautiful temple near Mae Sai! The nuns wear white. There are candles. You will like it.

  Our drinks arrived in bamboo cups. The juice tasted like earth and flowers.

  —My younger daughter is in high school in Bangkok. Both girls live with their father.

  Soraya shook her head, to dispel the bitterness. But her features darkened. Mother moods d
id that, changed suddenly like storms.

  —They hate me, she said, her eyes lit with new intensity. Yes, they hate me.

  Soraya focused on a point ahead of her, staring without seeing. Then she turned back to me, childlike again.

  —My husband made me lie to them. They hate me, but they are right. I don’t blame them, you see. I cannot.

  There was pain and rage beneath Soraya’s innocence. Still, she had lied to her daughters. I could think only of that.

  —He made you lie? I asked, bitter, mocking. How?

  Soraya fell out of her reverie, surprised. She’d counted on my sympathy. She considered me a moment.

  —He didn’t want them to know why I left, she said slowly. I left because I caught him. Everyone said I should stay, that it wasn’t so unusual. But I saw him! I couldn’t stay after that. He didn’t want to lose face in front of his girls—he wanted them to think it was my fault, that I was tired of our family. I was allowed to leave, but I lost everything that mattered. I lost the trust of my daughters.

  Soraya dabbed her eyes quickly with the edge of her sarong and looked out at the hills. Chastened, full of sympathy, I asked how her daughters had learned the truth. It felt important.

  —Oh, no, they don’t know, Soraya said airily, her gaze lost in the landscape.

  —They still think you left for no reason, that you left them as much as him? Indignation rose within me. The solution to Soraya’s trouble was unbearably simple. The misunderstanding had only to be cleared. Her daughters would understand.

  —I don’t know what he tells them, Soraya said.

  She pulled her gaze from the hills to look at me, her face all lines and tiredness. Then she laughed, buoyant again, in good humor, her eyes alive with unearthly charisma.

  —It wouldn’t be good for them! They should believe their father is a good man.

  I stared at her helplessly, wanting to tell her how I hated lies, how I’d grown up not knowing who I was. You can’t lie out of love. You only lie out of fear. I was thinking of my own mother saying she’d lied to protect me, a justification I didn’t believe.

  —My mother lied to me, too, I said finally.

  —Jing law? Soraya broke into Thai from surprise.

  As I spoke, the present shrank around me and the past welled up—not only the recent past—conversations on the porch in June, silence rising like smoke through the house after I’d gone upstairs—but the distant past I hadn’t lived, the world my mother tried to conjure for me: her closest friends, like sisters, the three of them in London, beginning art school the same year. My biological mother was the youngest of the three.

  —When I finished university, they told me they weren’t … that they weren’t actually my parents. They lied my whole life—out of love, I said bitterly.

  Soraya patted my shoulder, drew in breath and let it out in a long sigh.

  —Your birth mother, did she never try to get in touch with you? she asked.

  —They asked her not to when I was growing up. They thought it would be hard for me. It was hardest learning later. They say I can call her. She has an Irish name that isn’t spelled like it sounds. She lives in France.

  —You should call her! You should call your mother. That bond—Soraya’s voice broke off abruptly. She must want to see you!

  Her concern irritated me. I stared into the gaps between the planking of the terrace, bits of earth, grass, and rocks below us.

  —I never knew my father, either, Soraya said after a while.

  She blinked at me, as if I should notice something.

  —Green eyes! she said. Western father. That’s why I’ve had such an easy time with English. For TV, it has to be perfect. I have a bilingual show. Sometimes I think English is more natural to me than Thai. But still, she murmured. How strange for you. All the more reason for you to be my daughter, she said warmly—my Western daughter.

  Soraya’s stare caught the light, gold outlines of hills. I felt warmed by it, late sun in the deep calm of early evening.

  —Life is sad, you know, Soraya said with a laugh. Thai people, we never say that. We say it is beautiful. It is also true. It is beautiful, yes, and sad, both at once.

  Not knowing what to say, I followed Soraya’s gaze into the distance, where the sun was sinking down among the hills.

  14

  SORAYA HAS MY MOTHER’S GREEN EYES. Why shouldn’t she? I made her. The still air ripples. I’m with Soraya on the terrace by the mineral baths, skin slick with oil from the massage, taste of nam duk crai on my tongue. Lingering in her presence is satisfying, as if what’s lost moves in her, animating her speech and gestures—her solicitude for Ella, whose role I play.

  There comes a time when a writer must see the whole. Gone are the days of god’s-eye omniscience, so I’m told, but a daughter and her substitute mother by the mineral baths, what is it driving toward? What torque does it give to plot, to the story of a girl who disappeared?

  If I’m to use the mechanism of plot to my advantage—to the advantage of my story—it is necessary to know how it ends. Meanings are in endings.

  So far, I’ve been “translating” as I read to put myself in Ella’s body-mind. But now I need to see ahead, to gain narrative distance. I can’t go becoming my character, can I?

  Yesterday, I finished reading the journals from cover to cover.

  They are so far from recounting what happened as it happened that Siobhán’s request for a narrative makes sense. There is a sharp decline in decipherability in the last three journals, making the lucidity of the early ones eerie and portentous. I tried making a transcript, thinking it would free me of her disturbed penmanship, the verbiage that magnetizes my own, causing a swerve. But I got only as far as the third book.

  Only when I’m writing do I begin to understand. Only when I’m writing the story of Ella’s life do the journals make sense. There is no outside the project, no outline; it’s here, growing out of each scene I write.

  I want to call Siobhán to tell her how terrifying it is to have this kind of power. She’ll tell me it’s only a story, that whatever happened to Ella has already happened. I don’t have to save her, just find her.

  Did she know the journals would remind me of my mother’s most terrifying moments? Or, even worse, that I’d recognize myself in Ella—a seed of who I might become if I’m not careful? I’m moved by passages that were nonsense to me a month ago. I see connections others can’t. But I find myself holding fast to furniture, edges and corners, because of how solid they are. Is this all part of Siobhán’s plan, her “process”?

  SIOBHÁN HAS INVITED ME TO DINNER with her brother and his partner, in town from London. In the small, crowded restaurant, we sit close to one another. Siobhán’s brother seems surprised when he sees me, about to say something, the way people do when they think they know you from somewhere. But he says nothing about it, and the strange look fades.

  Aidan is garrulous, full of jokes and warmth, with none of Siobhán’s reserve. He’s been in London over thirty years, he says. His partner speaks little. I don’t know whether he is a business partner or a lover. Probably the latter. The lover is decades younger, closer to my age than to Aidan’s. He is good-looking and seems almost apologetic about it.

  After ordering our third bottle of wine, Aidan leans across the table. His neat white hair in the low light lends drama to his gestures. Raising his voice over the buzz of the small restaurant, he says:

  —She’s lost her mind, my sister. And we’ve abetted. We’ve spent the entire day disassembling a press—an 1847 Albion, mind you—and putting it together again three feet nearer the stairs. You can’t move the thing without taking it apart. It’s too delicate.

  He appeals to me:

  —Why, for a week, has she spoken of nothing but presses? And then why purchase one—terrible whim—and call me down to help with delivery, tempting me with opera—it always works—and making us labor for hours to reposition it? Why?

  —For pleasure? I
suggest, playing along.

  Siobhán leans back in her chair with an inscrutable expression.

  —Oh, the old aesthetic pleasure argument! Aidan says. Reaching back to her Slade days! Do you sculpt?

  At Aidan’s mention of the Slade, a pulse in my ears cancels all noise. Aidan knew my mother, too. I cock my head, acknowledging this.

  —Don’t be an idiot, Aidan dear, Siobhán says. Elena is a film scholar. She doesn’t do everything her mother did.

  Aidan apologizes, murmuring something about the byways of associative thinking under the influence of Côtes du Rhône.

  —Siobhán simply didn’t tell me, you see. I didn’t know about the funeral—

  —It was a long time ago, I say.

  —It was impossible! Siobhán says sharply. We were looking for Ella.

  Of course, they don’t know—my father had no reason to mention it—that if they had been at the funeral, I wouldn’t have remembered.

  —What a time, Aidan says. Let’s switch the subject, shall we? The press. You have to understand—my sister does nothing if not impeccably. Excellent architect, like our father. She retires early, builds a gallery. I had my doubts, but she pulls it off, yes, impeccably. Gorgeous space. But the press—at least she went with the antique. If you spend ten thousand on a whim, you must at least get the original, not the “modern” Albion some nice obsessive is re-creating in Utah. Still, it’s a baseless expense.

  Siobhán looks annoyed. There is no safe subject upon which we can land.

  —You knew my mother in London? I ask Aidan.

  He bows his head, smiling.

  —She wasn’t the kind of person you forget.

  Full of courage, I turn to Siobhán.

  —When was the last time you spoke to her?

  I meant the question to sound casual, not accusing, but even Aidan’s partner, silent for most of the dinner, looks surprised. My hands start to tremble, and I stick them under the table.