Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven

by Susan Jane Gilman

  After two days, my nerves are frayed.

  “Claire isn’t sick,” I whisper venomously to Sandy in the bathroom. “She’s just being a bitch, is all.”

  Sandy sighs. “Well, I think it’s more complicated than that. But you are right. She’s treating you horribly.”

  “I don’t fucking get it,” I say miserably—though in my heart of hearts, I actually do. My guilt, in fact, is starting to feel like a vise, crushing my stomach and thorax, squeezing my shoulders. I sit on the faux marble toilet seat and stare at the floor tiles. “It’s because it’s all my fault,” I say softly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “When Claire began having her fantasies about Adom and the CIA, I just thought she was horny and homesick. When she started making all these cryptic comments and going off by herself in Beijing, I just thought she was being melodramatic. And when she threw that fit in Yangshuo, I just thought she was being a spoiled brat. That she was pissed because I was hooking up with Eckehardt. So I ignored her.”

  I start to cry. “I wasn’t there when she needed me. If I had been, none of this would’ve happened. But I just had to fool around with some guy, didn’t I? I just had to let her get on that bus. I could’ve lain down in front of it to keep it from driving off. But did I do that? No.”

  Sandy looks at me, aghast.

  “I know.” I yank the toilet paper from its roll and blow my nose in it. “And the thing is, my friends are usually the most important thing to me. But I was such a fucking idiot. I was lonely. I had my head up my ass. I didn’t even see—”

  “Stop it,” Sandy hisses. Standing up, she reaches over, grabs the wadded toilet paper out of my hand, and hurls it into the trash can underneath the sink. “Since when are you so special?”

  “Huh?”

  “Who do you think you are, lady, the second coming of Jesus? ‘Oh,’ ” she says mockingly, “ ‘If only I had been there.’ I’m sorry, but you need to get a clue, honey. Your friend is mentally ill. Nothing you did or didn’t do made her go crazy. You think that if you just hadn’t kissed some guy, Claire would be perfectly fine? You think if you’d somehow been magically able to pull her off that bus, she wouldn’t be hearing voices? Please. That’s like saying, ‘If I’d been a better friend, she wouldn’t have gotten cancer.’ Jeez Louise. You really think you have that much power?”

  “But, Sandy, she thinks it’s my fault, too.” I blink tearfully up at the ceiling. “She keeps looking at me like I’ve violated her. Why does she hate me so much?”

  Sandy’s face softens. She kneels down before me and brushes a strand of hair out of my face. “Because,” she says gently, “you saved her life. She’s embarrassed. Trust me. I’ve worked in a hospital. Nothing can make people feel more resentful and humiliated than needing to be rescued.”

  ———

  Finally, after three days in our own little biosphere of the Kowloon Holiday Inn, it is time to depart. Early Saturday morning, we arrive at Kai Tak Airport in excellent spirits. Our backpacks feel as light as balloons. It is barely daybreak. Light is beginning to seep up from the horizon and silhouette the mountains. The airport is more deserted than when Claire and I arrived there seven weeks ago. In the ghostly terminal, it doesn’t seem possible that we are actually going home.

  And then we discover we’re not.

  “I’m sorry,” says the airline representative at the check-in, handing us back our tickets. “But these were for yesterday.”

  “What?” Sandy and I say in unison.

  The clerk leans over and points with his ballpoint pen to the line on our tickets where the travel agent has written in Saturday, November 7.

  “While it is Saturday,” he concedes, “today is November 8. The seventh was yesterday, Friday. Whoever filled these out made a mistake. They booked you on the flight that left yesterday. You’re no longer on the manifest.”

  At that moment, I experience what feels like a coronary fibrillation. “Well, isn’t there any room left on the flight leaving today?”

  The clerk scans the manifest and frowns. “There’s still space on the flight as far as Seoul. But after that, the connection to New York is completely booked. In fact, that flight appears to be sold out for the rest of the week.”

  I look desperately at Sandy, who looks desperately at Claire, who slowly removes her headphones and looks desperately at both of us. We all stand there for a moment in a triangle of horrified disbelief. “Oh, my God,” I say. Then simultaneously all three of us burst into tears.

  “Please, you’ve got to help us,” Sandy pleads desperately across the counter. “We have got to get home. It’s a matter of life or death.”

  ———

  Airline representatives, it seems, will sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to keep customers from making a scene at their check-in counter.

  No sooner do all three of us start weeping, begging, and arguing than a manager rushes over. Then another. In a few minutes, the counter is almost a reenactment of the lobby at the Osmanthus Hotel the day that Claire disappeared, except now the people who keep materializing in uniforms are Korean Air representatives. They take turns staring at our tickets and frowning, then barking things into walkie-talkies and making telephone calls and throwing up their hands in frustration. It is not our fault, Sandy and I keep insisting, thumping the desk. The tickets say Saturday first, so why would we think to show up on Friday? We purchased these in good faith. Korean Air should honor that.

  Proposals are put forth, none of them acceptable. One of them is that we simply re-book the flight for the following week. “Spend a few days here in Hong Kong and go sightseeing,” one of the representatives suggests chirpily. “Why, you can even get a tourist visa and spend a few days in the People’s Republic of China if you want.”

  Another informs us that she can refund our money and get us on a United flight leaving Monday. “It’s business class,” she says. “One way will run you ten thousand dollars a ticket.”

  Finally the check-in clerk comes up with a solution. We can in fact leave for New York City today, provided we’re not terribly picky about arriving anytime soon.

  “I can get you on a flight to Seoul immediately,” he says. “There’s a stop in Taipei, but you don’t have to deplane.” From Seoul, however, we’ll have to reclaim our luggage and check in all over again at a different terminal, then endure a nine-hour layover in South Korea for a flight to Hawaii. Once we land in Honolulu, he might be able to get us on a flight to Los Angeles on stand-by, in which case, we’ll have only a four-hour layover on Oahu. But there are no guarantees, so we might spend a night in Hawaii.

  Provided we do make the flight to L.A., we’ll have a four-hour layover for the last leg of the trip to New York. But we’ll be arriving at LaGuardia, not JFK, he says.

  I tell him that at this point, I don’t really think it matters.

  “Oh, but one other thing,” he adds. “That flight to New York? It isn’t direct, either. There’s a forty-minute stopover in Philadelphia where you may have to switch planes.”

  ———

  Is there any reason to fill you in on every interminable detail of this journey? All anyone really needs to know is this: By the time the Korean Air representatives finish rerouting us and handing us the revised paperwork, we nearly miss our flight.

  Since we have no time for Claire and I to contact our parents before departing, I have the perverse thrill of calling them collect at two o’clock in the morning from a pay phone in South Korea.

  Nine hours later, just before boarding the flight to Hawaii, an announcement comes over the loudspeaker: Passenger Miss Claire Van Houten, please report immediately to security.

  Of course as soon as Claire hears her name booming over the PA system, she seizes up in a panic. Her paranoia reignites. And by this point, of course, the last Valium is gone.

  Armed with her passport, I go in her place.

  It turns out that the U.S. Army canteen that her stepbrother Dominic gave her h
as set off the metal detectors in the baggage handling area and made the South Koreans extremely nervous. After disemboweling her entire backpack for inspection, the security officers finally release both it and me, though they insist on confiscating the canteen.

  By the time we land in Honolulu, we have already been traveling twenty hours, and the gate attendant there says to us, “Oh, we’ve heard so much about you.” Word, it seems, has traveled. The three of us are starting to be treated like marathon runners following a grueling, nearly insurmountable course through the sky. Every airport we land at, Korean Air personnel come out to greet us, cheer us on, urge us forward.

  “Let’s see if there’s something else we can do to help you girls out,” says the clerk in Honolulu, typing our names into her computer. By the time we board the plane to L.A. four hours later, we’re so groggy and disoriented, we don’t understand right away what has happened. Why are we being segregated from the rest of the passengers? How did our seats get so big and puffy? Since when do they serve crab cakes for lunch? It’s not until the flight attendant hands us a wine list that we realize we’ve been upgraded to business class.

  The nearer we get to Mainland U.S.A., the more animated and lucid Claire becomes. She begins flinging her blond hair over her shoulders again, laughing in her old, melodic voice, and even deigns to address me directly. “Hey, Zsa Zsa,” she calls airily from her seat across the aisle, “mind lending me your Chapstick?”

  By the time we’ve landed in L.A. and have taken our meal vouchers to the glass sky restaurant, she is actively flirting with the waiters, quoting Schopenhauer, and demonstrating to Sandy her facility with different accents.

  “New York’s is a cinch,” she says, swirling a French fry around in an enormous dollop of ketchup. “I want a piece of chawklit.”

  She giggles, and I feel like punching her. I’m growing increasingly worried that by the time we finally arrive at LaGuardia, Claire will be fully restored. She’ll stride blithely off the plane, air-kissing everyone and behaving like a returning diva while I’ll stand there looking like some lunatic who ran around Chicken Little–style, claiming the sky was falling when it so obviously wasn’t. Honestly, I imagine Claire saying, I really have no idea what all this fuss was about. Frankly, I think Susie cooked up a little melodrama just because she wanted to come home.

  As I watch Claire unwrap a drinking straw and jab it into a strawberry milk shake, I have to resist pulling her into the bathroom and slapping her around. Listen, I want to growl, after everything everyone’s gone through for you, you’d better crawl off that plane in New York foaming at the mouth.

  But by the time we finally arrive at LaGuardia Airport at 6:45 a.m. Monday morning, we have been traveling for almost forty straight hours. All three of us are shattered and incoherent, none more so than Claire.

  So many times in Asia, I’d imagined our triumphant return. It would be late summer of 1987, and since my brother would be home from college, he’d smartly rally my friends to surprise me at the airport. I’d disembark to see a big hand-lettered “Welcome Home” banner and loved ones throwing fistfuls of confetti and uncorking bottles of champagne.

  If I was feeling particularly grandiose, I liked to imagine that paparazzi would be waiting. On the relentless train rides through China, I kept myself entertained by inventing interviews between Barbara Walters and me. “Well, Barbara,” I’d say diffidently, “sure, China was a challenge. But really, it was nothing that a seasoned traveler couldn’t handle.”

  Instead, exactly seven weeks to the day of our departure, I am staggering off a plane back in New York coughing violently and spitting up fluid, while Claire shuffles behind me looking stunned and demented in my now filthy, ill-fitting purple tank dress and a pair of plastic flip-flops. She is helped along by Sandy, a Canadian nurse with two-toned eyes whom nobody else knows and who, in her pilling white sweatshirt and plaid Bermuda shorts, looks almost as disheveled as we do.

  In 1986, families are still permitted to meet their loved ones right at the gate, and Claire’s stepbrothers are out in force: Dominic, Edward, and Alexander are waiting with their shirtsleeves rolled up like a team of emergency rescue workers. Parker is also there, Claire’s milquetoast boyfriend whom all of us seem to have forgotten. He hovers right by the gate in his Bass Weejuns holding a paper cone of yellow roses. As soon as he spies Claire, he races past the cordons and embraces her desperately. “You’re home, it’s all going to be okay,” he murmurs into her hair. She stands there woodenly, letting herself be hugged. The scratches on her face, I can see now, are starkly visible in the bleached light of the arrivals gate. She looks papery and frail.

  A moment later, our parents are upon us, weeping and hugging. As I embrace my father, then my mother, I hear everyone in the Van Houten clan taking turns introducing themselves to Sandy and thanking her profusely. “Oh, it’s Susie who’s the real hero, ” she insists generously. “No, it’s Sandy,” I say.

  Everybody treats Claire very gingerly. As she stands bewildered among them, her father barrels over, crying, “You saved my little girl,” and hugging me so tightly my ribs almost crack. I am crying now, Sandy is crying, even my father is crying. The only one who isn’t crying is Claire. She glances around in a daze, as if she is not quite sure where she is.

  Somehow Dominic and Alexander appear with our backpacks, thoughtfully collected from the baggage claim. Claire’s father and mascara-streaked stepmother begin shaking our hands strenuously. “Let’s all talk later, shall we? Once the girls have settled in?” And then, putting their arms around Claire, they whisk her away toward a limousine waiting just beyond the arrival doors.

  Her stepbrothers and Parker hurry after her, crowding around her protectively like a phalanx of bodyguards. Watching them, I am suddenly reminded of the Chinese military police clustered around her just days before in the hallway of the Osmanthus Hotel. As the Van Houtens recede, I see in their midst a glimmer of Claire’s blond hair. But then her stepbrothers close rank around her, and whatever remains visible of her is eclipsed, and all I am left with is a wall of their broad masculine backs and the bulk of her father’s tweed overcoat, moving toward the exit. The glass doors slide open, a chauffeur comes around to the back of the limousine, a trunk slams, and in a flash they are gone.

  Less then fourteen minutes after our arrival, Sandy and I find ourselves standing alone with my parents by the empty luggage carousel at LaGuardia. Beyond the doors, the November sun is rising brilliantly. An entire city is stirring and coming to life like a sleeping dragon bathed in gold, oblivious to all that has just happened to us.

  ———

  My bedroom back in Manhattan is exactly the same. A Rolling Stones poster, stacks of old Glamour magazines, a twin bed with flowery sheets, dust gathering on my record albums. The only proof that I’ve been away is a single postcard from Shanghai tucked into the frame of the mirror over my dresser. I’d sent it to my parents the day after we’d arrived. Reading it now is eerie. China is beautiful. Streets all lit up. Big celebrations. Food delicious. Already made two friends—Jonnie and Gunter. Claire great company. Next stop Beijing? Tibet? Having a blast.

  My brother’s abandoned bedroom has been set up for Sandy, his collection of rubber gorilla masks, art supplies, and piles of Mad magazine tucked discreetly into his closet.

  Before either of us shower or unpack, however, my father insists that Sandy and I make up a list of all our expenses.

  “Compile everything while it’s still fresh in your mind,” he says. “I want to take a bill over to the Van Houtens as quickly as possible.”

  For the moment, the Van Houtens are staying in a corporate apartment on Sutton Place. It’s unclear how long they’ll remain there.

  Although neither of my parents says it outright, they are concerned. They do not understand why the Van Houtens did not fly to Asia themselves to rescue their daughter. Certainly they have the resources. Couldn’t they at least have met us in Hong Kong? Their decision to leave it
to me and a strange nurse to get Claire back home smacks of expediency. Now that Sandy and I have effectively cleaned up the Van Houtens’ mess for them, my parents fear that they will simply disappear and stick us with the bill.

  Neither Sandy nor I imagine this will happen. And yet I know my parents have a point. When I was waitressing, the most well-to-do customers were inevitably the ones who’d stiff me on the tip. No one ever got rich, it seemed, being generous with the help.

  Sandy and I empty our backpacks and pockets. Receipts are everywhere.

  My round-the-world airplane ticket is now invalid since I’ve backtracked; I suppose I can negotiate a refund with the airline. “No,” my father instructs. “Have the Van Houtens reimburse you for the remainder, then give them the ticket to deal with. It’s not your fault you had to come home. Also, they should pay for your airfare back to Asia as well.”

  When I look startled, he says, “I want you to have that option. You worked hard for that money. It’s not fair to expect you to shell it out again.”

  I worry that my father is being a hardnose, that it’s wrong and unseemly to get busy with money at a time like this. Claire is still my friend, and I feel guilty asking the Van Houtens to pay me back when they so clearly have more pressing problems to deal with at the moment.

  But Sandy shakes her head, “Nuh-uh, lady. Your dad here is right. People always think that taking care of others should be its own reward, that being a hero shouldn’t come with a price tag. But work in a cardiac care unit for a couple weeks, then tell me if you still think that. The Van Houtens made sure their daughter was taken care of. Your dad is just making sure his is too.”

  By the time Sandy and I finish compiling our expenses, including the cost of three flights back from Hong Kong, the Van Houtens owe us over eleven thousand dollars. Neither of us can quite believe it. “Good,” my father says. “Now give me the bill and go take a shower.”