What Could Be Saved

by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

  “Yes,” said Robert. A gust of relief within him as the Boss pulled his hand away from the papers. He left them unacceptably disordered, tiny triangles pointing in various directions, where before there had been a smooth-sided block of white.

  “What did he have to say?” asked the Boss. Now he had taken up the framed photograph of Genevieve from the desk. Robert had wanted a different picture in that frame originally, a black-and-white image of her boating, a lock of hair blowing across her face, her even white teeth showing in a laugh. Genevieve had overruled him and selected the formal portrait.

  “Nothing really,” said Robert. Thinking about the old woman lying dead on her bedroom floor, blood running out of her mouth. How could he possibly explain that? “Small talk.”

  “He’s alone here, you know, no family to anchor him,” said the Boss. “Might be spending too much time in the field.” So that was where Bardin took himself when he wasn’t in the office. To the field, wherever that was, to do whatever one did there. “How are your children doing?” the Boss asked. “The little one must be seven by now?”

  “Just turned in March,” said Robert, surprised as he always was by the other man’s genius for minutiae. “They’re all fine.”

  “I got my invitation to your shindig this Friday. I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “Your wife’s parties are the best in Bangkok.” He made an exaggerated Oops face. “Don’t tell my wife I said that.” Robert put a finger to his lips, playing along. “I haven’t stopped thinking about that coconut shrimp thing she served last time.”

  “Oh yes, that was very good,” said Robert. He had no recollection of a specific coconut shrimp dish.

  The Boss put Genevieve’s photograph back onto the desk.

  “Did you happen to invite Bardin for Friday?” he asked.

  It seemed no matter where this conversation turned, without fail it would veer back, licking steadily along like a brushfire in undergrowth until it reached its target: Bardin.

  “I’m not sure,” said Robert, and recognized the lengthening silence as a prompt. “We can add him, though.”

  “That would be, that would be just—” The Boss left the sentence unfinished. Nodding, he looked toward Robert but not at him, then veered his eyes away over the rest of the room: the file cabinet, the coatrack, the window. “We all need refocusing from time to time.” While Robert wondered: Was the person who needed refocusing Bardin, or himself? “Well,” the Boss said, rising out of the chair. “I’ll let you get on with it.” He waved in the direction of Robert’s desk. He paused at the door, hand on the knob, head down as if he was brooding. When he looked up, his eyes lit on Robert and his eyebrows went up slightly, as if surprised to see him there; with a little smile he pulled the door open and left.

  Robert took up the telephone and dialed.

  “Would it be possible to add another to the guest list for Friday?” he asked Genevieve.

  A pause, and then “Of course,” said Genevieve. “Who?”

  “Bardin. I’ll tell him to bring a date too, if that’s all right.”

  “All right.” There was another short pause. “Is there anything else? I’m just going out.”

  “Hair or fingernails or shopping?”

  “Is that all you think I do,” she said.

  She wouldn’t actually rush him off the phone, but her voice had a tautness to it, a smooth glassy quality that wouldn’t permit conversation to get a handhold.

  “Righty-o, won’t keep you,” he said.

  They hung up before he could tell her, as he’d intended, that he hoped Friday’s menu included a coconut shrimp dish of some kind. In the silence, he took up the stack of papers that the Boss had been thumbing through and held it vertically between his hands, tapping its bottom on the desk while smoothing the sides upward with his fingers. When it was a clean-edged brick he laid it down on the desk and opened a drawer, took out a folded soft cloth. He set about polishing the silver frame around Genevieve into smudgelessness again.

  She was beautiful, really perfect. A wife for other men to envy. She had been right, the dignified portrait had been the appropriate choice; the other picture showed her in an unguarded moment, something only a husband should see.

  Chapter Nine

  DURING THE cocktail hour before the dinner part of the party, the children—clean, sedate versions of their usual selves—were presented and allowed to mingle. Laura and Philip took themselves into a corner and ate crackers stolen from a tray while Bea lingered among the adults, chatting.

  “Bea looks like a grownup,” Laura whispered to Philip.

  “No, she doesn’t,” he said, not looking. “Her socks are different.”

  It was true: Bea wore the same frilled little-girl white anklets as Laura, and the same patent-leather shoes with the single strap across the arch.

  “What is this cheese stuff?” said Philip, sniffing at a cracker.

  “She looks like Mum,” said Laura, still watching Bea.

  Philip scraped the suspicious matter from one cracker onto another, and ate the naked one. “Mum is beautiful,” he said, chewing. “Bea’s got a monster face.”

  Laura laughed, although she knew it wasn’t true. Laura and Philip both looked like their dad, brown-eyed and blond and knobby at the knees, with skin that tanned in the sun. Bea was a miniature Genevieve, dark hair and fair skin with deep blue eyes; she had to use special cream to prevent sunburn. Choy had done Bea’s hair tonight, pulling it back with a velvet bow. Laura’s own hair, which had a tendency to tangle, was kept short.

  Across the room, Genevieve laughed a lovely long peal, putting a gloved hand to her neck, fingers splayed. As Laura watched, Beatrice mimicked her exactly, one dimpled hand flattened above her collar, her head cocked to one side.

  I’ll never look like that, thought Laura.

  “That’s a shiny lady,” commented Philip with approval.

  Laura looked. It was obvious whom he meant. The woman glowed near the center of the party room, as if drawing all the light there and focusing it: on her hair curved around her skull in a high glossy beehive, on her lips gleaming with pink lipstick, on her yellow silk dress. Her gloves were yellow too, and long, reaching up above her elbows. Her dress had little caps over the shoulders and a slit up one side of the skirt; the fabric was splashed with brilliant red flowers. Laura wondered if she could ever have such a dress. Their mother’s dressmaker seemed to make only ordinary clothes, in ordinary fabrics, with round flat buttons and zippers. No knot buttons or shiny flowered fabric or petals instead of proper sleeves. Laura didn’t even consider the bright yellow gloves; she had a feeling they might be common.

  * * *

  When an hors d’oeuvres tray appeared, the lady in yellow turned from the redheaded man at her side and plucked a morsel from the decorative swirl. She held it with the tips of her gloved fingers and smiled at the Pettises, who were monopolizing the conversation in the little group, alternating sentences like a comedy team.

  “They promised they’d return to collect us at five,” Clara Pettis said.

  “But at six there was still no sign of them,” said her husband.

  “There we were, in the wilds of Ayutthaya—”

  “Night falling and no return transport in sight—”

  “They didn’t arrive until seven fifteen. Not one word of apology.”

  “Pretty standard,” said Helen Malcolm. “Unfortunately.”

  “That’s the Thai for you,” said Joan Benderby. “Late for everything.”

  There was a little silence, during which all eyes went to, and quickly away from, the lady in the yellow dress. Joan colored. “I mean—” she began.

  “She didn’t mean anything by it,” Mr. Benderby said.

  “Oh, but you are quite right,” the lady in yellow said. “The Thai have a horrible habit of tardiness. Of course, in their opinion it is no matter. For the Thai, everything is sanuk, sanuk.” She laughed. “You know—fun.” The redheaded man beside her looked te
nse, and the rest of the group wore faint uncomfortable smiles. She looked around, puzzled. “Oh,” she said, her face clearing. “You are worried that you might have offended me. Not at all.” She took a sip from her glass. “I am not Thai. I am Vietnamese. We are very punctual.”

  The silence deepened for a moment, then exploded into bits of speech, each fragment highly pressured, like conversational shrapnel.

  “Not really,” exclaimed Helen Malcolm.

  From Mr. Benderby, “What is your home village? Do you—”

  From Mr. Malcolm, “I’m sure you have some interesting—”

  “Hi, look, there’s Robert. We should say hello,” said the lady’s red-haired companion, taking her elbow to steer her away.

  “Stay just a moment,” Mr. Benderby said, laying a hand on the lady’s forearm.

  “We need to greet our host,” said the redheaded man, keeping his own hand on his companion’s other arm.

  “He’ll come over here,” said Benderby.

  The three of them stood like that, the slender girl flanked by the two men, all of them quite still, as though they were equally matched at a tug-of-war, with the girl as the rope.

  This was how Genevieve came upon them. Had some tension in the air wafted across the party room and set her delicate social antennae trembling? Nothing about her face betrayed any consternation as she greeted them.

  “How nice to see you again,” she told the Benderbys and Pettises and Malcolms. Turning to the lady in yellow, “I don’t believe we have properly met. What a lovely dress.”

  “Thank you,” said the lady. Mr. Benderby dropped his hand from her arm. “I use Mr. Sip, on Rama IV.”

  “Well,” said Genevieve. “So do I.”

  “Mrs. Preston,” said the redheaded man. “Please let me present Miss Min Unpronounceable. Or is it Unpronounceable Min?”

  “Mr. Bardin, really,” said Genevieve, mock-frowning.

  “Oh, Mrs. Preston,” said Min. “It’s much easier to forgive him his bad manners than to attempt to correct them.”

  “An eternal truth regarding men,” said Genevieve. The women smiled at each other.

  “Do you hear that, you’re untrainable,” said Clara Pettis, delighted, slapping her hand against her husband’s shirt front.

  “Our family names can be challenging for Westerners,” said Min. “It’s simpler just to be Min.”

  “Well, then, I am Genevieve.”

  “We should have known you weren’t Thai,” Joan blurted out. “Your English is so good.” The sudden silence made her look around the group. “What? It’s true.”

  “Blame it on the cocktails,” said her husband with a practiced air of apology, plucking his wife’s glass from her hand. “No more for you until you’ve had some dinner.”

  “Aren’t you getting enough to eat?” asked Genevieve, looking about for a servant with a tray. “I’m afraid we’ve had oven troubles. You know how it is.”

  “Do I,” said Clara Pettis, with feeling.

  “I’m fine,” said Joan. A flare of belligerence, before a light seemed to go out in her, and she dropped her eyes.

  “My oven quit yesterday,” said Clara, into the silence. “Right in the middle of a soufflé which took hours to make.” She didn’t specify whose hours exactly had been taken up by the preparation of the soufflé. “It was inedible. Like a cheese soup. The repairman said—”

  “The dinner bell’s about to go,” said Bardin. “We haven’t said two words to Robert yet.” And the two moved off across the room, leaving Mrs. Pettis struggling on through her story, no one listening.

  “—the wires were in such a snarl he wouldn’t touch them for fear of electrocution—”

  “Well, really,” said Mr. Malcolm, watching Bardin and Min go.

  Clara seemed to lose the thread of what she was saying, and abandoned her story.

  “I think she was offended,” said Mr. Benderby.

  “To just walk away, right in the middle of a conversation,” said Mr. Malcolm.

  Nothing about Genevieve’s expression betrayed that she might like to do the same.

  “The bartender tonight seems to have a heavy hand,” Genevieve told Joan. “I can’t even finish mine. Why don’t I get both of us something a little lighter?” She signaled across the room. As she did so, she caught sight of a man who had just arrived. He stood alone in a corner, examining the display of pottery on the shelves there.

  “Sarah, please get Mrs. Benderby some ginger ale,” Genevieve said when the Number Three was beside them. “Excuse me,” she said to the group. “I must check on that tray of shrimp before everyone starves to death.”

  * * *

  The shiny lady and the redheaded man were standing beside a large potted plant, having detached themselves from the other groups in the party room. Philip, who was sitting behind the plant with his back against the wall, peered at them through the long fringes of leaf. He had dispatched Laura to find more provisions, but she had been waylaid en route by a conversation with a lady wearing pants, who bent way over and smiled ever more widely as she spoke, as though preparing to unhinge her jaws like a snake and swallow Laura whole. Philip had retreated behind the plant in hopes of avoiding a similar fate.

  “You can’t just say whatever you like,” the redheaded man was telling the shiny lady.

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t play dumb.”

  “You don’t like dumb, big honey?” said the shiny lady, her features sliding into a greedy leer, her voice thickening into a pidgin. “Dumb, smart, you pay me same same.” Then she laughed and her face transformed again, the fleeting ugliness vanished. The man looked away and caught a glimpse of Philip crouching behind the plant.

  “Hallo, and who are you?” he said.

  “Philip,” said Philip.

  “Of course,” said Mr. Bardin. “I’d have known you anywhere. You have your father’s eyebrows.”

  Philip was pleased by that. He liked that this man didn’t bend his knees or make a big show of leaning forward to speak to him, as almost any other grownup would have done, and that he didn’t comment on Philip’s hiding place. He didn’t laugh, or seem as if he was trying not to laugh. He spoke in an ordinary voice through the branches of the potted tree.

  “Your hair is orange,” observed Philip.

  “Indeed,” said the man, rubbing a hand over his head. “A family curse.”

  “Really?” said Philip. This sounded interesting.

  “Every good family has one,” said the man. “Doesn’t yours?”

  “They haven’t told me yet,” said Philip.

  “Mr. Bardin, you are terrible,” said the lady. To Philip she said, “He’s only teasing.”

  Mr. Bardin stepped back a bit, made a sweeping bow. “Philip Preston, may I present—” and he said something like MinWin. It sounded like a joke name and Philip almost laughed but stopped himself in time.

  “Hello,” said Philip, getting up and coming around the plant. He made a wai, bringing his hands up high so that his thumbs touched the bridge of his nose. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

  “Sawadee-kha,” said Min, making a smiling wai back. “It is nice to meet you too, Philip Preston. I take it”—she indicated the plant with a small bright flutter of her gloved fingers—“that you are not fond of parties.”

  “I hate them,” said Philip with vigor. “The food is awful and the people are so boring. They always want to talk to me about school.”

  “Unimaginative,” said Bardin. “To be fair, though, school is what one mostly does at your age. Bear up, that won’t be forever.” He added, “And I promise that not all parties are like the ones your parents give.”

  “I wish Uncle Murray had come tonight,” said Philip. “But they never invite anybody good to the important parties.” He glowered at the crowd, then brought his eyes back to Bardin and Min, and flushed. “I didn’t mean you.”

  “Of course not,” said Mr. Bardin easily.

  “What makes th
is party important?” asked Min.

  “Some guy is coming,” said Philip.

  “Ah,” said Mr. Bardin. “Well, think of it this way, Philip. Your parents are teaching you a valuable skill, forcing you to learn how to cope with dullards. The world is absolutely stuffed with them.”

  “Stop teasing him,” said Min.

  “Never more serious,” said Mr. Bardin. And to Philip, “If you don’t like to talk about school, what does interest you?”

  Philip shrugged.

  “What do you do during the summertime?” Min asked in her gentle voice.

  “Swimming, and riding lessons, and judo,” Philip said.

  “Riding is very good for the posture,” said Min. “Do you enjoy the judo?”

  “No,” Philip said. “It’s the wrong class.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Bardin.

  And in the shadow of the potted plant, to the accepting ears of strangers, the orange-haired man with the curse and the shiny lady, Philip divulged his secret. They listened without comment, all through.

  “They call me Nitnoy,” he whispered at the end.

  “How horrible,” said Min. She was frowning. “This is very unusual for Thai.”

  “Well,” said Bardin, raising his glass to his lips. “Boys.”

  “Is this the place near Khlong Toey?” said Min. Philip nodded. She turned to Mr. Bardin and said something in a quick language that Philip didn’t understand.

  Mr. Bardin gave a low whistle. “Philip, you really are in the wrong class,” he said. “Muay Thai boxing is not judo.” He set his glass down on a little table beside the potted plant and took a cigarette box from the inside of his jacket. He opened it and offered it to Min, who shook her head. He then gravely offered it to Philip, who also shook his head, then he put it away.

  “I can’t tell my parents,” said Philip. “They’d just say ‘Stiff upper lip.’ ”

  “Naturally,” said Mr. Bardin, cocking open a square silver lighter. “Quite a dilemma.” The hollows deepened in his face as he puffed the cigarette into life. He flipped the lighter closed, put it away. “You could sustain a small injury, I suppose. Sprain a finger, break a toe. Nothing too serious. Something just incapacitating enough to keep you out of class.”