What Could Be Saved

by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

  On the second night the skies burst open with rainstorms, and the clenches of pain grew longer and longer, the pain-free intervals shorter. Noi felt cold despite the heat, shivering alone on her pallet with the cushion of leaves below her pelvis. Her vision went white and green and she saw things in the corners of the room, scurrying animals that turned into shadows. In the middle of a long cramp that made her want to cry out—surely she would die from this—she felt her sister’s hand on her brow. Noi jumped with surprise: no sound of amulets had heralded her arrival.

  Nong Noi, said Sao. This will end soon.

  “It feels like it will never end,” said Noi through gritted teeth.

  Drink some water, Sao said.

  Noi drank from the jar of water beside the mat, then held her breath through another long spell of pain.

  Drink more, said Sao, and then I will sing to you.

  Noi drank again, lay back against her sister’s body. She teased shakily, “You don’t sing very well.”

  I sing to Moo all the time, said Sao. You have to sing to babies, to help them sleep.

  “Oh,” said Noi, at the mention of babies. “Oh.”

  I’ll sing a song about rain, said Sao. It is a very pretty song, with many verses.

  Noi closed her eyes and watched the patterns swirling on her eyelids; Sao smoothed the matted strands of hair that lay over Noi’s forehead and ears and began to sing, in a deep timbre that was nothing like the high off-pitch crooning that Noi remembered from their childhood. The low sound filled the room like water, rising to Noi’s bare knees, and then to her chin, and then to the sill of the window; it rose almost to the ceiling before it dropped and sank around Noi like a blanket, and she slept.

  When Noi awoke, she was alone and the pain was gone. She tied the pha tung around her and went through the garden on trembling legs, through the back gate and across the alley to the khlong. She stepped in and squatted, skirt floating up around her waist, scooping water over her thighs and up between them, using her fingernails in places to loosen the crusted, clotted blood. She crouched for a long time in the warm water, letting the current rock her, until the sky overhead began to lighten. A water taxi went past, carrying a row of orange-garbed monks, their shaved heads like peas lined up in a pod. She stood, squeezed the soaked cloth of her skirt, made its hem into two tails and tied them. In the heat of sunrise she waded out of the khlong.

  Choy helped her burn the banana leaves in the alley.

  “Maybe he’ll come back to you later,” Choy said as they watched the smoldering pile. “When you are ready.”

  “It was a girl,” said Noi.

  The baby had decided for both of them. Noi would go to America. The weed would blow a little farther, that’s all, a little farther away from home.

  * * *

  On the day of departure, Daeng gave Noi a small paper bag.

  “Lunch,” Daeng said in her growling voice. Then, “You’re stupid to go.” She turned and walked away.

  When everyone was asleep on the airplane, Noi opened the bag. She found a small fabric-wrapped square at the bottom, below the packages of food. Inside, an amulet for her neck chain, a Phra Kring Buddha in a silver surround. She shook it beside her ear, listening through the roar of the airplane engines for the noise from inside, the sacred bead repeating the Buddha’s name. The amulet would have cost a good deal in the shops, but Noi knew it was one of Daeng’s own; she’d seen it in the cluster on the chain around the woman’s neck.

  There was also a note on a folded paper. It was written in English; Noi studied the light pencil strokes that wobbled like spider legs. She had no idea what the note said; she folded it carefully and put it away, until she could find out.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  GENEVIEVE LEFT the loose linen dresses and the sandals, the ruined, sweat-stiff gloves. All of the wide-brimmed hats. Over Philip’s clothing she hesitated, the soft stacks of shorts and singlets and the green school uniform, the white socks with the colored line of stitching across their toes. He’d worn them all, they’d lain against his skin. She lifted a shirt, pressed it to her face, smelled nothing: it had been laundered into anonymity. She laid it down again, told Choy to dispose of all of it.

  She did keep one of the going-home sweaters, the one originally intended for Beatrice to wear on the airplane ride back to America at age nine, after the promised single year in Bangkok. It would just fit Philip now. It was a sensible navy, good for a boy or a girl. Just in case they found him. She would button him into it and say, You’ll need this, it gets cold where we’re going, it’s not always hot like here.

  PART 5

  2019

  Chapter Forty-Four

  LAURA AWOKE to a smell of breakfast. She found Bea and Philip in the kitchen, Bea at the stove cooking eggs and sausage, Philip slicing tomatoes at the counter.

  “Hello, sleepyhead,” said Bea, seeing Laura. She looked chipper and well rested, no sign of effects from the brandy or having been up much of the night. “Take Mum a cup of coffee, will you?”

  Laura chatted with Genevieve in the sun-dappled dining room, sipping Bea’s excellent coffee and listening to the noises from the kitchen, rattles of cooking and a low murmur of conversation punctuated with occasional laughter. Bea brought the food out on platters and called upstairs to Noi, who came down with her phone at her ear.

  “I hire too many stupid people,” Noi said after ending the call. She took a plate and sat to eat, joined the loose conversation. It was Monday but no one was hurried; to Laura it all felt low-key festive, like the comfortable interstices of a holiday after the main events were complete, Boxing Day brunch or the morning after a wedding. “Someone needs to see about the tree,” said Genevieve at one point, as if she too perceived a holiday vibe.

  “I’ve reached out to Uncle Todd about Mum’s birthday,” said Bea from down the table. Laura nodded, mouth full, feeling heroic for not rolling her eyes. “And Noi, we have to talk about the night nurses.”

  “Later,” said Noi, taking her vibrating phone from beside her plate and getting up. “What,” she said into the phone. “I told you.” They could hear her uninterrupted speech as she carried the phone through the living room and out onto the side porch.

  A few minutes later, a Hellooo from the entry hall heralded the arrival of Philip’s physical therapist; as the two of them went into the living room, Genevieve’s day nurse arrived and took her upstairs for a washy-uppy, Bea scowling at the nursery language. Laura and Bea cleared the table and washed the dishes together, then headed upstairs to strip and remake the beds.

  In the basement laundry room, Laura dropped the puffy tangle of linens into the hamper, then dug out her phone and texted Edward: How’s the day going?

  No response: he was probably in a meeting. She had a gritty-eyed, sleep-deprived feeling, but apart from that she felt good, energetic. Maybe she’d go up into the studio today.

  When Laura came out of the basement, Bea was coming down the main staircase.

  “I was thinking,” she said. As she came to stand beside Laura in the center hall, Philip’s physical therapist urged from the sunken living room, Keep your shoulders back. “Since we’re both here without a car. Maybe we could use that app you’re always using, to call a ride and go to your house? You could give me a tour.” Into the pause after this astonishing statement, the physical therapist’s voice floated, Good work. See you Wednesday. “We could stop by that shop on Connecticut and pick up some of that jam Mum likes.”

  “That would be nice,” said Laura.

  Bea and Laura moved apart as the physical therapist crossed the center hall between them, smiling, then ran down the few steps to the flagstone entry hall and out the front door.

  “Apparently I hunch,” said Philip, navigating the steps up from the living room to the center hall where his sisters stood. “It weakens my rotator cuff.”

  “Join the club,” said Bea.

  “Right,” said Laura. “She of the perfect posture
.”

  “I hunch,” protested Bea.

  “I have a hunch you don’t,” said Philip. The girls groaned at the pun.

  As he reached the top step, the light from the upper-landing windows fell across his face, lighting his scalp like downy blond hair. There were his eyes, the shy crooked smile, that horizontal dimple, like their father’s. Like Laura’s own. He wavered, and Bea put out her hand to steady him just as Laura did the same. The three Preston children stood balanced together, in the center of their family home. Laura felt a pure tone of happiness in her chest—and then a sudden quiet.

  “Where were you?” Laura demanded.

  “What?” said Philip.

  “You could have contacted us. You could have come home long before now.” Harsh, angry. “I saw the doors in that house; there were no locks on them. There wasn’t even a lock on the gate. Why did you stay away?”

  “Laura,” said Bea, a sharp syllable. “Stop it.”

  “You stop it,” said Laura, dropping Philip’s arm, turning on her sister. “Stop treating me like a child.”

  “Stop behaving like one,” said Bea.

  It was the first discord between them in weeks, yet it jumped up instantly and enormous, like a spark applied to a chronic invisible hiss of gas, a giant panel of flame appearing out of the air.

  “We were having such a good day,” Bea said. “Why do you have to ruin it?”

  “I’m not the one,” said Laura, but she knew she was, she was ruining things. She felt a tsunami of rage building inside her. “We could have all grown up together,” she said. “He took that from us.”

  “He didn’t take anything,” said Beatrice. “He was the victim.”

  “I’m not—” began Philip, but Laura rode over his voice.

  “Yes, let’s all get into our boxes,” she told Bea. Hearing her own snotty tone and hating it, unable to stop. “Philip’s the victim, I’m the baby. You’re the perfect one.”

  “Are you not happy unless others around you are unhappy?” said Bea.

  “Girls, stop squabbling,” called Genevieve from upstairs.

  “Sorry,” chorused the girls. They glared at each other.

  “You think only of yourself,” hissed Bea.

  “Someone has to,” said Laura.

  Bea’s face went very white.

  “That’s all I have ever done,” said Bea. Her words evenly spaced, emphatic. “I have babied you your whole life.” She spat out the next sentence: “Where were you when the boys were born?”

  “What?”

  “I asked you to be there, and you didn’t come. I know—you thought I didn’t need you.” It was exactly what Laura had thought. “I was forty-three years old, Laura. The odds weren’t great. I was scared. I wanted my sister.”

  “You could have told me,” said Laura. Bea, scared? It seemed oxymoronic.

  “You shouldn’t have had to be told.” Bea was furious. “You are a child, Laura. I have spent an enormous amount of energy allowing you to be a child. And you—have squandered all of it. You threw away college; you married an idiot, then threw your marriage away. And what do you have now? An empty monstrosity of a house, paintings that no one will buy. A nice man who loves you, but you’re doing your damnedest to sabotage that.”

  “What?” said Laura.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” said Beatrice. Her face stricken, the anger suddenly gone.

  “What did you mean, paintings that no one will buy?” said Laura.

  “Please,” Philip said in his soft, not-quite-American voice. “Please stop fighting.”

  Laura rounded on him.

  “Talk about being babied,” she said. “We’ve all been tiptoeing around you. Why haven’t you told us anything about what happened? Why didn’t you come home? Mum spent her life grieving you, looking for you. Daddy died.” Their father’s death hadn’t been caused by Philip, but Laura wasn’t making sense now, rage flowing out of her like a malignant honey, indiscriminate, engulfing everything. “You broke our family,” she shouted.

  Iron fingers were on her arm.

  “Quiet,” Noi said.

  “I’m only telling the truth,” said Laura. She stared around at the ring of faces. “Why do we never, ever tell the truth to each other? Why do we keep so many secrets?” She tore her arm from Noi’s grip. “I’m done,” she said. “I fucking quit this family.”

  She went the back way, through the kitchen and out the side door, down the path that ran through flanking panels of herbs, to the back gate that led to the alley. The way she used to go when she was new here and exploring. Down the alley, a sprint across the parkway whizzing with cars, down the grassy bank to the buried creek. She began walking, balancing on the domed stones with the traffic going by above her, ignoring the phone alerting from her pocket. When the creek swelled into a broad rush, she stepped to the bank and kept going.

  When finally she ascended the slope of grass to reach the sidewalk, she was at the back entrance to the zoo. She made her way through the clumps of selfie-taking tourists and emerged through the front gates with feet squelching and wet, walked to the corner and waited at the light beside the kiosk where the notice of the stuffed pink pig still cried LOST.

  Only a few more blocks to get home. Or rather, what she called home: an empty house, a quiet studio, a half-scraped canvas. Bea’s words came back to her: Paintings no one will buy. And I have babied you your whole life. Those two sentences collided in her mind; in a flash Laura understood.

  She took out her phone and flicked away all of the notifications, opened the ride-sharing app.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  “I NEED to talk to him,” said Laura, pushing through the front door of the gallery.

  A startled Kelsey looked up. “He’s not here,” she said. And then, “Are you okay?”

  Laura looked down at herself: sopping shoes, jeans cuffed with a crust of mud.

  “Not really,” she said. And then she burst into tears.

  Kelsey’s face froze for a moment, lips pulled back from her teeth in a mask of fearful repugnance. Then she stood, strode to the front door, and turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED.

  “Fuck ’em,” she said when Laura tried to protest. “Come on.” She bustled Laura through the main gallery room into the back office, gently pushed her onto the Le Corbusier knockoff sofa. “What’s happening?”

  “I’m a fraud,” said Laura. “My work is bullshit.”

  “Your early work was great,” said Kelsey, perching at the other end of the sofa. Clearly unaware of how crushing it sounded—early work and was.

  “I mean the Ghost Pictures.”

  “Well, I don’t get them,” said Kelsey carefully. “But that’s just me. I don’t get a lot of the art that we show here.”

  “Sullivan has been lying to me,” said Laura. “No one has been buying those paintings. He’s been letting my sister buy them. They’ve both been lying to me.”

  “Ugh,” said Kelsey. She produced a small crackling bag from her pocket, took something from within, tucked it into her mouth. “Want one?” She held out the bag. Laura looked: a single translucent amber gummy bear. She shrugged and took it, put it onto her tongue.

  “Why couldn’t he just tell me?” said Laura. “I trusted him.”

  “He must have thought he was helping,” said Kelsey.

  “He wasn’t.” Laura’s mouth was filled with juicy pear, the gummy bear’s flavor seeming to intensify as it melted. “This is delicious,” she said.

  “Right?” said Kelsey. “And super mild too. Just takes the edge off.”

  “What?” said Laura. She had just swallowed the last fragment of bear.

  “It’s an edible,” said Kelsey. “Weed.” Then carefully, with an air of translating to a foreigner, “Marijuana.”

  Laura’s only experiences with pot had been back when it was still called that, surreptitious joints with high school friends in Georgetown alleys, bitter smoke in burning lungs that brought paranoia more often
than pleasure. It was weed now, and from what she’d heard a totally different substance, much more sophisticated and potent—also locally legal.

  “Sorry sorry sorry,” said Kelsey. “I thought you knew. Should you make yourself throw up?” At Laura’s look, she said, “I mean, maybe that would work?”

  “I don’t know if it would work, but I know I’m not doing that. How long does it last?”

  “A few hours?”

  What the hell. “I guess I’m here for a while.” She sighed. “You can go back out front and open the gallery again. I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  Kelsey shook her head. “Sullivan’s in New York, prepping a new show.”

  A pang. Laura hadn’t had work in the New York space since 2015.

  “I can’t believe he lied to me,” she said. The drug hadn’t hit her yet. It was like being a teenager again, the endless checking on herself—Am I high yet? How about now?

  “Did he, though?” said Kelsey. She had pulled a lock of her long hair straight between pincer fingers and was examining the ends.

  Laura remembered Sullivan saying gimmick. “I guess he did try to tell me. And I guess I shouldn’t have had to be told.” It was almost a relief to say it: “I haven’t made anything good in years. If anything I made was ever really any good.” That was a thought: maybe her artistic block was less of a block than an epiphany. Real artists couldn’t afford the indulgence of a block, had no safety net like the Preston trust. Real artists painted through a crisis, painted their way out of corners. Maybe Laura had been deluded, thinking she had talent, following a shred of attention from her mother. Like a puppy crawling toward the smell of milk.