by Amy Valenti
“It’s not what you think,” he said. His voice wavered, danced on a tightrope of tension. “Me and the boys, we were-”
“Don’t.” My voice was quiet and full of resolve. Its calm even caught me off-guard. It was then that I knew for sure what I was going to do, and knew what I had to say. “Please don’t. I know you weren’t with your friends.”
He looked at me then. I could see it, that balloon within him inflating. Cornered. Wild eyes. His mental claws were unsheathing themselves. That was when animals and people alike were most dangerous.
“Well, fuck!” he shouted, throwing up his hands before slapping them at his sides. “What the fuck do you want me to say, huh, Maya? You don’t think you played a part in this, too? You don’t think if it wasn’t for the state of our relationship at home-”
I shook my head. So that’s how he wanted to play it? So that’s the path he wanted to walk down? Unacceptable. Pathetic. “No. You’re not going to turn this one around. I know that’s what you’re good at, Bradley.” It was the truth. He was a manipulator. I always knew it. I watched him manipulate his friends, his colleagues. I never thought he would turn that cunning on me.
I realized, belatedly, that he already had. I want to say that it broke my heart, but I can’t be sure of that anymore. Maybe I had already known. Maybe I had always known.
“What the fuck do you mean ‘what I’m good at’? The fuck do you know? You think I’m just making shit up?”
I sighed, and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Please don’t shout, Bradley. You know Kelly has two kids next door. It’s after ten. They’ll be in bed.”
“I don’t care about them right now!”
“Did you come back home to shout at me, Bradley? Is that what you did? You going to shout at me about this?”
He opened his mouth but stopped himself, before heaving a labored sigh. I knew this turn. This is where he tried to convince me he was the victim. This is where he tried to arouse my sympathies. How could he possibly do that now? How could he possibly think that would work now?
“No,” he said. “I came back because I wanted to come clean with you. I wanted to explain to you how our life at home played a factor in me seeking companionship elsewhere. I mean, I’m the kind of person that needs warmth and affection! And, you’ve been a bit out of sorts recently, and-”
“Bradley, can you just tell me how long. That’s all I want to know.” Actually, I was certain that I didn’t want to know. But some things you just have to ask. I have a self-destructive personality. I’m sure that played a part in my asking.
“What do you mean how long? How long of what? What do you think happened?” He pointed a finger at me.
“Never mind,” I said, getting up.
“Wait, where are you going?”
“I’m going to bed. Can you please sleep on the sofa tonight?” I looked at him. “Please?”
Maybe he thought this was his way to secure a second chance. Maybe he thought I’d mull it over and realize that, yes, it was my fault he was cheating on me. Maybe I’d let him earn back my affection, my love, and he would break it off with his whoever, say he needed some time. Maybe, just maybe, I would trust him again, so that he could stay late at work again, and bring the champagne and the handcuffs.
“Okay,” he said with quick nods of his head. “Okay, fine.” He put his hands up, pushed his lips together, and shook his head. “If that’s what you need.”
Even in the face of something like this, his passive-aggressive streak, the smallness of him, couldn’t be quashed. It truly shocked me, the resilience of his ability to lash out and sting. But that’s just what it was. A sting. This was no fatal blow. I would survive.
I closed the door behind me, hearing him utter a good night. I went to the bed, lay down, and tried to cry.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t force even a single tear out.
*
“Hi, Mum.” I untangled the telephone cord and pulled it to the sofa, before falling into it. Dust sprayed up everywhere, but I was too tired to care. I blinked it out of my eyes, wiped it from my dry nostrils.
“Why are you calling me from the old place, darling? Is something wrong?”
“No,” I said, looking around the place I grew up in. It was just a small and spare council estate flat, one of about twenty in the block.
“Yes, there is. Otherwise you wouldn’t be calling me from there.”
“How did you know?”
“I have caller-id on my mobile phone, you know.”
“Oh, yeah. Your new phone.”
“I’m on what’s that app called, the one where you chat for free?”
“I know the one, Mum. I’ll add you tonight.”
“So are you going to tell me what’s wrong, darling? I can hear it in your voice.”
I sighed. Still no tears. “You know, right now, I’m pretty thankful you didn’t sell the place, or rent it out.”
“Come on, dear. As soon as you moved in with Bradley, I knew I wasn’t going to sell it, even if I wanted to. You need a backup place.”
“How are you and Robert?” I asked, picturing my Mum and her new husband in my mind.
“Oh, we’re… well, we’re old.” She laughed. “Old and slow these days. Rob gets tired quite quickly, and it’s a bit odd. We might go see a doctor.”
“You’re not even sixty yet, Mum. That’s not old.”
“Wait until you get to my age, and then tell me if you still think that while rubbing your toes because they cramp at night.”
“How is your knee?”
“Maya, sweetheart. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“I broke up with Bradley last night.”
There was a pregnant pause. “Oh. I’m so sorry, sweetheart. Are you alright?”
“No,” I said. “I want to cry, but I can’t. I don’t know why. I was actually, uh, calling to see if I could take the train up there and stay with you for a while.”
“Darling, you get your backside on a train as soon as you can, and text me the time. I’ll pick you up at the station.”
“Thanks, Mum.”
“You know I would drive down to you if it wasn’t for my knee.”
“I know, Mum. I wouldn’t want you to drive that far. It’s too tiring.”
There was a pause again. I realized I was holding the phone so hard my knuckles were white. I pictured myself snapping the cigarette-smoke-stained plastic receiver in two.
“Don’t sit there, Maya. Don’t just sit there and wallow. You get up, and you get yourself to that train station. Are you carrying much?”
“I’ve just got a suitcase. It’s actually not that big. Guess I didn’t have that much stuff I wanted to keep.”
“Good, you’ll manage. Take a taxi to the station, too. Don’t bother with the bus. Call a taxi, and get to the train station. I’ll pick you up.”
“Thanks, Mum.”
“Go. Now!”
“Okay, okay. Bye. See you soon.”
“See you soon, honey. I love you.”
“I love you too, Mum.”
I hung up the receiver, picked myself up off the sofa, pulled up the handle of my suitcase, and walked out of the door.
*
“I was thinking of going on a small holiday, actually.”
Mum and Robert looked at me, and both nodded. “That sounds like a good idea,” said Mum.
“I want to go somewhere warm.”
“Don’t we all,” Robert lamented.
“I was thinking Thailand.”
“Thailand?” Mum echoed. “To see your sister?”
I paused. I hadn’t thought about that. Scarlett and I hadn’t seen each other in years… not since her and Mum had completely fallen out.
“Maybe. I honestly hadn’t considered it. Well,” I added. “Obviously I had. I guess it’s no coincidence I chose Thailand.”
“Well, see your sister, and tell me how she’s doing.”
“You could always call
, you know.”
“Maya, don’t start with that, okay? Your bloody sister cut me out of her life. God knows I’ve tried.”
“She has,” Robert said, his tone grim.
“But I can’t keep putting myself out there and being rejected by her.”
“I don’t think it’s like that, Mum.”
“How would you know? Have you spoken to her in all these years?”
I shook my head and sighed. “Let’s not talk about this right now.”
“Fine,” Mum said. “Can you get time off work for your trip?”
“Actually, I quit.”
“You what?”
I looked at my mother, with her spectacles halfway down her nose, and her white hair neatly pulled back into a bun. She fingered the handle of her walking stick, and I saw her idly rubbing her right knee.
“Is your knee swelling?”
“A little. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine. I’ve been through worse. Gave birth to you! You were a big old thing.”
I laughed. “Even now I’m still bigger than I’d like to be.”
“Nonsense. Standards these days are ridiculous. You look just fine.”
“Agreed,” Robert boomed, fiddling with his mustache. His brick-red shirt was done up right to the top, and what was left of his hair parted neatly to the side, but it failed to completely cover his blotchy dome. “I’ve always liked a woman with a bit of meat on her.” He pinched Mum’s thigh.
“Stop that, you dirty old man.”
“Guilty.” He winked at me.
“So, yeah, I quit.” I sighed. “I can’t work there anymore. I mean, Bradley’s company regularly contracts us to do design work for their clients.”
“Good thinking,” Robert said, patting the top of my hand. He then took a sip from his tea, before leaning his weight on the small dining table. It creaked in complaint. “Graphic design seems like such an ethereal profession. I think you should get a real job.”
“I shudder to think what real job for a woman means to your generation.”
“Hey, hey,” he said, wagging a finger at me. “Back then, I was considered a progressive.” He smiled warmly, and took my hand. “But come now, you should leave the job. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, and I haven’t learned much in my long and boring life, it’s that when things go wrong, people need space, and if you don’t give them space, it simply begets more trouble.”
“Thanks, Robert.”
“What are you going to do for money?” Mum asked. “I have some put away.”
“Please, Mum, no.” I shook my head at her. “I’ve got some savings.”
“Then yes, go on holiday, Maya. You haven’t gone anywhere in a few years now, right?”
I breathed in slowly. “Right.”
“And you’re still young.”
“How old is she?” Robert asked.
“I’m thirty-one.”
“Ah, big girl. All grown up, eh?”
“Go to Thailand,” Mum said, and she took my hand. “Go have some fun. See some sun. Take a tour.”
I nodded, and began to sense a pinprick of brightness in my otherwise dark thoughts, like a single star visible through thick cloud cover. There was still some optimism left in me. I’d make it out of this just fine.
I really would.
“I think I will.”
“Thailand, eh? Stopped there when I was in the navy I think.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. The natives there are very kind. Lovely people. Always smiling all the bloody time, too.”
I snorted into my cup of tea. “You’re not supposed to call them that!”
“Why?” he demanded, but I saw the twinkle in his eye. “That’s what they are, aren’t they?”
“You’re a man out of time, Robert.”
“Ridiculous. So, when can we be rid of you?” He paused. “I mean, when are you leaving?”
I slapped his hand. “You must drive Mum mental.”
“Oh, she was already that way before I met her.”
Mum turned to him, wide-eyed. “Carry on like that.”
“Uh oh.”
I smiled. “I’m thinking next week.”
“That soon?”
“Why not?”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Mum asked. “Are you sure you’ll be alright on your own?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. I think being alone is just what I need.”
*
CHAPTER TWO
Patong was seething. The heart of Phuket, Thailand, it was a veritable throng of seediness, a confused and inextricable web of vice and innocence. Everywhere I looked, I saw at once the dark and the light. I saw the hustling tuk-tuks, the street scammers, the hush-hush whispered offerings of drugs. I saw children holding their parents’ hands as they walked down the bar-lined streets, filled with expatriates looking for a bit of alternative escapism, seeking to fulfill sexual fantasies I couldn’t begin to understand.
But that was Patong. That was, more generally, Thailand. A mish-mash of good and bad, so impossibly intertwined as to be utterly inseparable. That was Thailand’s charm.
At least, that’s what the travel book told me.
It was nice to know that things had stayed the same since I was last in the country nearly eleven years ago, on my university graduation trip. Back then, I was much younger, and with a bunch of other kids, too. We had been stupid. We had taken whatever was offered to us, peeked our drunk and juvenile heads into bars we had no business setting foot in.
I allowed myself a broad grin as I ambled down a busy road, coming to a four-way intersection where moped, car, and tuk-tuk traffic all merged without any semblance of grace or order. Of course, there was order. It was just an alien kind to my senses, which were softened by the rigid traffic rules of back home.
“Phi Phi?” a lady asked, falling into step with me. “You want to go to Phi Phi?”
“How much?” I asked, hoisting my sun-specs onto the top of my head and looking down at her. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old, but already she wore an expression of weary confidence.
“Phi Phi Island, very beautiful. Where they filmed The Beach. You know Leonardo DiCaprio? Very handsome. Very beautiful.”
“I know what it is,” I said, smiling at her. “But how much?”
“Two thousand baht. Return trip to your hotel.”
“Two thousand baht?” I echoed. “My guest house offering for just nine-fifty.”
“No, no. No good. My company is the best.”
I laughed. “No thank you.”
“Come on,” she persisted, walking in front of me and handing me a leaflet. I took it, but didn’t look at it.
“No thank you,” I repeated. I watched as her expression turned to annoyance, and she scurried off to find some other lone tourist woman to ask. I knew that I was a target. Any tourist on their own was a magnet for hustlers, salesmen, scammers, and pickpockets.
I might not have minded going to Phi Phi Island if I wasn’t alone, I reflected. But the tiny beach whose sole claim to fame lay with a Leonardo DiCaprio flick would be packed shoulder to shoulder, edge to edge, with tourists, many of them less than savory. Beyond that, I wasn’t keen on mixing with so many people, nor being forced to wear my bathing suit, or at the very least, shorts, in front of so many. I was quite comfortable in my summer skirt that reached my ankles. I didn’t have the confidence nor inclination to explore beyond that conservative fashion, and nor did I, quite honestly, have the body to, either.
I’d let myself go with Bradley. Not much, just a little. But combined with all that had happened to me within the last two weeks… well, I simply wasn’t up for it. I’d taken a beating to my confidence, and just wanted some peace and quiet. I wanted to get a massage, sit on the beach and read my book while sipping on a cheap white wine, or maybe even a beer, and relaxing.
And possibly seeing Scarlett.
I stopped walking, and sighed. Scarlett. I hadn’t even told her that I was
coming to Thailand. That was complicated. Her and Mum had fallen out years ago, over a boy, no less, and Scarlett had left Britain, followed him to Thailand, and made a life for herself here.
At least, that was as much as I knew. I hadn’t spoken to her in over five years. I rummaged through my rattan purse – it was a cute thing I’d seen upon arriving in Phuket just the day before – and found the piece of paper I had with her address scrawled down on it.
“Fuck it,” I murmured, pulling out my street map. She wasn’t far, an easy walk. She lived in a nice set of newish flats down one end of the beach, and so I continued my easy walk to the seaside, through the hordes of tourists lying on recliners sunbathing and drinking, until I was able to dip my feet in the lukewarm seawater.
Jet skis sprayed water endlessly, and paragliders were tugged along by speedboats fifty feet in the air. Salesmen roamed the beaches, offering scuba tours and other fun, overpriced things to do, while children built sandcastles and couples lounged languidly on towels. Farther up the beach were where the old-timers had staked out a bit of land to call their own, and there I could see at a glance two dozen lobster-red, white-topped retirees reading and relaxing.
Thailand was so different from back home. Asia was in general, I supposed, but poorer countries in Southeast Asia doubly so. I’d brought along a Lonely Planet travel guide and there were teaser chapters on Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Suffice it to say, my interest had been piqued, and on the plane ride over, I’d wondered if I could somehow swing a planned two-week trip to Thailand into a two-month long trek of Asia. It would be nice to travel.
Wading ankle-deep through the slurping waves, I approached the end of the beach, and saw the compound that Scarlett lived in. There was a gate, a guard, and a fingerprint scanner, which I found quite funny.