What Could Be Saved

by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

  “You never told anyone,” said Bea. She sounded as if she were choking.

  “I couldn’t undo what I’d done,” he said. “I tried to make it up in other ways. It wasn’t enough, I know.”

  “It’s unforgivable,” she said.

  “After the driver was arrested, I was going to speak up,” Bardin said. “I wouldn’t have let an innocent man be punished. But then they let him go.”

  “He was innocent?” said Noi. They all looked over: no one had seen her come in. She was standing just inside the doorway, her face puckered with confusion. She asked Philip, “Somchit didn’t take you?”

  “No,” said Philip. “Is that what people thought?”

  Laura was surprised by the relief on Noi’s face. But of course, she and the driver had worked in the same house, they might have been friends.

  “I looked for Min, but she disappeared,” Bardin told Philip. “I spent weeks looking for you on my own, long after the Bangkok police gave up. I turned the slums upside down, street by street, house by house.”

  “I was there,” said Philip. A tremor passed through his voice: how close rescue had come, just yards away from where he had been in that buried, stifling room.

  “I don’t think there was a ransom,” Laura said. She looked at Bea, who nodded in agreement. “If there had been a ransom, Mum and Dad would have paid it,” she told Philip.

  “They would have paid anything,” said Bea. “That woman lied to you.”

  “I think I realized that after a while,” said Philip.

  “Then why didn’t you ever contact us?” Laura asked Philip. “When they let you out on your own, why didn’t you go to a policeman?”

  Before Philip could answer, Bea spoke.

  “Because you thought it was broken,” she said. She was looking intently at Philip, who nodded. “It was already ruined and couldn’t be fixed.”

  “I am desperately sorry,” said Bardin. “I tried to do something good.”

  “You did do something good,” said Philip. “At first. It just—turned into something else.”

  “How can you say that?” cried Laura. “Your whole life. You lost your whole life.”

  “No,” said Philip. Firmly. “I’ve had a whole life. Just not the one I would have had.”

  “I trusted you,” Beatrice told Bardin, her voice cracking.

  “Hello, Mr. Bardin.” The voice cut across the room; everyone turned. Genevieve stood tall in the doorway with Dustin and Dean beside her and Clem behind, holding the drone. “It’s very kind of you to visit,” she said. With exquisite, firm formality. “But I’m very sorry. It’s just family today.”

  * * *

  It was a quiet meal at the beginning, everyone separately burdened by what they’d heard, but Genevieve was in high spirits, drawing one person and then another into conversation, and gradually the atmosphere became more celebratory. The boys had made the birthday cake, four layers of white sponge filled with lemon curd and iced with meringue. They brought it into the dining room with great ceremony, holding the plate between them and walking in solemn step like acolytes.

  “It’s a shame your father isn’t here,” Genevieve said, after the birthday song and the three rounds of hip hip hurrah, and the candles blown out. Laura, who’d been watching Dean cut the cake, looked over, and saw that Genevieve was speaking to Philip. “You’re so much like him. But you don’t have those funny habits he had.”

  “I got over those,” said Philip.

  Bea and Laura shared a startled look—so Mum understood that the man beside her was her son, Philip. She’d forget again, no doubt, but in that moment she did know.

  “Mum,” said Laura, a thought popping into her mind. “However did you get the chocolate Easter rabbits all the way from Washington without them melting?”

  “Diplomatic pouch,” said Genevieve immediately, sliding her fork into her slice of cake, and Laura felt one more small mystery dissolve. Leaving hope for the others. Who knows, at some point she might understand the whole of her life, she thought. It seemed something to look forward to.

  * * *

  “The good china doesn’t go into the dishwasher,” announced Bea as the table was being cleared. “Just scrape and stack, and I’ll get to it later.”

  “I’m tired of being waited on,” said Philip. He turned to Laura. “You wash, I’ll dry.”

  When they were alone in the kitchen, Laura asked Philip, “Why aren’t you angrier? I would be angry. I am angry.” She scrubbed a dish in silence for a minute. “They took a lifetime of having a brother from me.” Feeling a tear slide along her nose and drop into the stream of rinsing water from the faucet. “We won’t get those years back.”

  “No, we won’t,” he said. He took the dish from her, turned it round in the drying cloth. “My life hasn’t been worthless, just because it wasn’t the life I would have had. Longing for things to be different—Gerhard would have said that’s the bottle. Not something we can control, or even touch or see.” He set the dry plate onto the counter. “Dr. Gomez would call it a stuck point: What if, what if.” He smiled. “I like to think of the bees, working the flowers without a thought of past or future, doing the good thing that is right in front of them.”

  “But aren’t you sorry?”

  “I’ll never not be sorry,” he said.

  After a sniffly pause, Laura said, “I’m horrible at meditation, by the way.” He laughed, and after a moment she joined in. “Seriously. What am I supposed to see in that damned snow globe? If I ever even get that far.”

  “It’s not about supposed to,” he said. “You see what you see.”

  “Don’t zen me,” she said. “What do you see?”

  “A Buddha,” he said. “A small green Buddha. I’ve only seen it a few times.”

  “Did it do anything for you when you saw it? I mean, did you reach enlightenment, or Nirvana, or something?”

  “It made me realize that it didn’t matter what I saw,” he said.

  “Oh my God,” said Laura. Laughter bubbling through her tears. “The Dalai Philip.”

  But she felt better. Calmer. She’d been living so long with an illusion, that they’d been whole and happy once, a perfect family shattered by tragedy. All her life mourning that loss. When instead they had been more like bits in a kaleidoscope, falling randomly to make small areas of beauty, falling apart again with the next twist, into a new disorder and a new beauty. Perhaps everyone was that way, living their lives out in the clung clump of color in which they found themselves, never seeing the bigger picture and how it all fit.

  “So, this is kind of a happy ending,” she said, giving Philip the last dish to dry.

  “What’s happy?” said Philip. His face grave but his eyes dancing, looking very much like their father. “What’s an ending?”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  “MY GOODNESS,” said the old lady on Laura’s doorstep, leaning back. “This is a very tall house.”

  “Can I help you find someone?” said Laura.

  “I think you might be the someone I am looking for,” said the lady, bringing her eyes down again and scrutinizing Laura’s face. “Laura Preston, yes? I knew your family in Bangkok.” She stood with one hand on a walking stick. “You may not remember me. You were very young.”

  Something about the way she cocked her head, that wide smile as she spoke, ignited a memory.

  “You told me not to learn how to make coffee,” said Laura slowly. “In Bangkok, at one of my parents’ parties.”

  “That’s right,” said the woman, her smile broadening further still. “I used to tell all little girls that.” She leaned on her cane, put her other hand out; Laura took it. “I’m Marietta Schultz.”

  “Please come in,” Laura said, opening the door wide. Mrs. Schultz crossed the threshold and went into the living room, settled on the sofa and accepted a glass of water.

  “You might also remember me as the one with the househusband,” she said, as Laura sat on the chair acro
ss from her. “In 1972! The ladies were abuzz. No?” A smile. “Oh, well. We always think we are more fascinating to others than we actually are.” She sipped the water. “I saw a story in the newspaper about your brother. Is it really him?”

  “Yes,” said Laura.

  “Amazing,” said Mrs. Schultz, shaking her head. “I’ve thought about you all for years. How the time slips away. I meant to write to you after your father died. That was a terrible loss.” Laura nodded. With studied care: “I’m not sure how much he told you about his work.”

  “Not much,” said Laura. Something in her tone communicated itself, though, and Mrs. Schultz gave a tiny nod.

  “I remember your brother too,” said Mrs. Schultz. “A sweet little boy. Very like your father.”

  “They looked alike,” agreed Laura.

  “Your father and I only worked together for a short time in Bangkok, but I knew him for years after that. So, I knew him before and after.” She drank a little more of the water. “I lost my husband this year.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Laura.

  “He was eighty-three. I’m eighty myself. I knew it couldn’t last forever, but.” She stopped herself there, took on a brisk tone. “Well. I’ve been having an urge to tidy things up.” She pinioned Laura with her gaze. “Do you think it’s possible for one event—one act—to change a person? I mean, a fundamental change.”

  “I don’t know,” said Laura. The old woman hadn’t seemed batty at first, but then neither did Genevieve. Maybe she’d wandered off from caregivers. Should Laura call someone?

  “Oh dear, I’m being cryptic,” Mrs. Schultz said. She smiled. “Occupational hazard. I mean to say that I don’t think a person can fundamentally change. I think whatever is brought out by trauma was in that person all along.” She paused. “I’m talking about your father.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Laura.

  “I don’t think a lot of people knew him well,” said Mrs. Schultz. “He was very contained. There weren’t a lot of people to speak for him, at his funeral; but there should have been. He did some very important things.” Her voice emphatic. Laura nodded. “I used to think he was too soft—too gentle a person—for our work. But as I said, he changed.” She paused, then said, “Your father was a good man. I admired him. I wanted to tell you that.”

  “You wanted to tell me more,” said Laura, guessing.

  The old lady went still, as if listening to an echo, then put the water glass down.

  “Yes,” she said. “I did.” Her worried eyes on Laura’s. “I’ve gone back and forth about it.”

  “If you know something about my family, please tell it,” Laura said. “We’ve kept far too many secrets, for far too long.”

  “It’s not actually my story to tell.” Mrs. Schultz reached into her pocket, withdrew an index card. “If you really want to know, he can tell you.” As Laura’s fingers closed on the card, Mrs. Schultz held on to it for a moment. “But be sure you want to know.” Then she opened her fingers.

  The card bore a name and address, in cursive script. The name was not familiar. “Who is this?” Laura asked.

  “Someone from the past,” said Mrs. Schultz. “I don’t know what state his mind is in now. But he is alive, and that may not be true for long. So if you do want to know what he has to tell you, you should go as soon as you can.” She put her hand on Laura’s. It was nearly weightless, a sparrow settling briefly before alighting again. “And maybe don’t go,” she said. “It might be better to let things lie.” She reached for her cane.

  Laura said, “You know, I was asked to make coffee once.”

  Mrs. Schultz, poised to rise, sat back to listen.

  “In college,” said Laura. “A bunch of us had procrastinated our final projects; we had to work all night.” She described it: about a dozen students gathered in the communal studio, bug-eyed on cigarettes and coffee, over the hours one and then another giving up and drifting away to their dorm rooms and sleep, until just five were left. All men except Laura, although she didn’t realize that at first. It might have been three a.m. when she heard it: Laura, can you make some more coffee? A casual call across the room, from a student a year below her. Deep into her project, hands messy, not anywhere near the coffeepot, Laura had looked up to see a room of male faces turned toward her and felt a shock of surprise. It was 1984, they’d come a long way, baby, wasn’t this the postfeminist era? The faces were impatient, their expressions saying Men need coffee, get over there, woman, and make it.

  “And?” said Mrs. Schultz.

  “I told them the truth: I never learned how.” Laura shrugged. “They had to make it themselves.”

  The old woman laughed with delight.

  * * *

  The nursing home was in Mount Vernon, Virginia. A beautiful spot, a green view from every window of the building. Laura wondered how many of the residents were former federal employees; after all of the peregrinations, so many did come back here. No longer at home in their own hometowns and never having accepted overseas as more than temporary, they chose to retire near the government buildings that they had served from a distance, coming to final rest in another place they didn’t truly belong.

  The front-desk woman brightened when Laura read the name from Mrs. Schultz’s index card.

  “He never gets visitors,” she said, rising to show Laura the way.

  The old man sat alone in his room, in a chair by the window, gripping a newspaper folded to an acrostic puzzle in one hand, a stub of pencil in the other. How old was he, a hundred? He looked much older than Mrs. Schultz. The skin fell from his jawline in slack papery folds; a few strands of colorless hair struggled across his skull. After Laura introduced herself, his expression became wary.

  “You’re one of the daughters,” he said. Laura nodded. “That was all a very long time ago. You should know better than to come asking about that.”

  “I don’t,” said Laura. “That’s the point. I don’t know anything.”

  “If you’re thinking you’ll have me arrested, good luck.” He set the newspaper on the rolling tray table beside him, placed the pencil on top. “I’d never live to trial. I’m on palliative care now.”

  “I’m not seeking justice,” said Laura, unsure what they were talking about. “I’m just trying to understand.”

  “It wasn’t wrong,” he said.

  She looked around the room, spied a hard chair at a desk against the wall, retrieved it, set it in front of him, and sat. “What are we talking about?”

  Maxwell Dawson stared at her for a full minute. His cheeks were chased with tiny rosy worms of capillary; above them his eyes were startlingly young-looking, a rich brown, heavily lashed. He tightened his jaw and she had a fleeting impression of lost physical prowess, an ancient panther.

  “It wasn’t wrong,” he said again. “Although I’ve had cause to regret it.”

  “Regret what?” asked Laura, trying not to sound impatient.

  He looked away from her, out the window, his hands quavering on his lap.

  “That driver,” he said. And now, as though the spat-out word had been a stopper holding back a fountain, the story flowed. “He was what used to be called a wolf. A playboy. Married, I think, but had a lot of girlfriends.” He gave a rattling cough. “He told the police he was fighting with one of those girlfriends while the boy—” he looked at Laura. “Your brother.” She nodded. “Was still in his martial-arts class. And then after the fight he’d driven the car away in a drunken tantrum. Not to collect the boy, but out to the country. He said that once he sobered up he was afraid of getting into trouble about the car, so he hid out in a village for a few days. He said he had no idea about the missing boy until he went back to face the music.” The long speech had taxed him; his voice was thinned, nearly soundless by the end. He rested, panting.

  While he got his breath back, Laura waited politely, looking around the room. It was a spare place to end one’s life—no photographs, no pictures on the walls, no per
sonal touches at all, save for a small shelf of knickknacks and a crowd of amber pill bottles at the bedside.

  “The girlfriend went to the police and told them almost exactly the same story,” said Dawson. He lifted a finger. “Almost exactly. Still the drinking, still the fight and the driving off in a huff. The only difference between their stories was the time. He said it happened at three p.m., she said at five.” Seeing that Laura didn’t understand, he explained. “It was a crucial difference. The boy was taken between four and six. Impossible for the driver to have done it, if he was fighting with his girlfriend at five o’clock.”

  “If he was drunk,” said Laura, amazed at the man’s recall of the details of the long-ago case, “maybe he remembered the time wrong when he was interviewed later.”

  “Exactly what the police decided,” said Mr. Dawson with scorn. “And they let him go. On the strength of his girlfriend’s testimony? I don’t think so.” A half minute for a chest-rattling cough, after which he spat into a tissue, folded it with tremorous hands. “I think they wanted to blame the boy’s disappearance on farang parental neglect, and not on a kidnapping by a Thai. They might even have told the girl to lie, and what to say.” Another long, wet coughing spell. “I never understood what your mother saw in him.”

  “Who?” said Laura. “The driver?”

  “Your father,” said Dawson, dabbing his lip with the folded tissue. “She indulged him like a little boy. But the day the police released the driver, she took the kid gloves off.” He chuckled. “She dressed him down savagely, told him to be a man. He was beside himself.”

  “How do you know that?” Laura challenged. Irritated by the chuckle, nonplussed by this picture of her parents. Stolid, serious Robert a milquetoast? Dignified Genevieve haranguing him like a fishwife?

  “He told me. When he came to me, to ask for my help.” He stopped there.