Sleeping Tigers

by Robinson, Holly

  Chapter seventeen

  Over the next two days, we took turns staying with Cam around the clock: Jon, Melody, myself. Even Domingo and Fernando took a few shifts. Cam’s skin gradually cooled and he began to hold down liquid and soft foods. Finally he was strong enough to sit up and eat on his own.

  During one of my trips outside to wash that second day, I left Melody with Cam and came upon Fernando sitting outside on the steps. He was counting his gems, literally laying out glittering diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires he’d picked up in India. Fernando poured the stones out of their tiny velvet bags, letting them mix like colored gravel in an aquarium. I had no idea if the gems were real, and said as much to Fernando.

  “Por supuesto, they are real,” he purred. His shirt was open to the waist; now he picked up my hand and pressed it against his slick, bare skin. “You can trust me, no? Was I not the one who carried your pesado brother to his bed?”

  I picked up a handful of sapphires and let them run through my fingers, just to feel them. I’d gone shopping for gems exactly once in my life, when I looked for an engagement ring with Peter. Part of me had been disappointed that Peter didn’t surprise me with a ring of his own choosing, a ring he’d put inside a fortune cookie or on my pillow the day he proposed.

  Instead, Peter had carefully scheduled a mutually convenient time for us to meet at a jeweler’s in Brookline. We sat on metal stools in the back room while the jeweler showed us hundreds of diamonds, starting with the smallest, dimmest chips and moving up through the grades to better diamonds.

  We’d settled on a high quality, two-carat diamond set in a plain gold band. “It’s the sort of ring every one of your friends will want,” the jeweler had assured me.

  I had loved that ring; I’d even bought a special stand to keep it on by the sink, so that I wouldn’t risk dirtying the stone while cooking or cleaning. The ring, and the husband to go with it, were what I had been waiting for all my life. But what was that diamond, really, but just another rock like these?

  “So what will you do now?” I asked Fernando.

  “Guard my jewels, what else?” he said, and guffawed when I shook my head and went inside.

  Still, I couldn’t find it in my heart to really hate him. Like the others, Fernando had done his part for Cam. My brother was surrounded by a makeshift family, all of us doing what we could to pull him through.

  Cam finally opened his eyes for good that third day, his body free of fever. All evidence of pain was gone except for the circles beneath his eyes. We all happened to be gathered in his room when he woke and said, “Yo, what kind of weird dream is this?”

  Cam and I walked to the river together when he was well enough to eat and drink on his own. It was just three days until my flight home from Kathmandu. The mountain peaks gleamed around us like crystal pyramids, their glacier skirts shadowed lavender and pink where they fell to the earth’s green surface.

  We waded into the hot springs in our shorts and t-shirts. We dunked our heads like retrievers and then came up, sputtering, our noses full of the metallic water, our hair slicked back in an identical way from our foreheads.

  I studied Cam’s eyes, so like mine, so like his daughter’s, and thought of the night Paris had croup, of my terror at the thought that I’d lose her, of the slight wheezing weight of her on my shoulder in the steamy bathroom.

  Our mother had held me, had held Cam, through fevers and colds, accidents and tearful fights, through the years. As children, being loved by our parents and caregivers helped us find the courage we needed to join the world and think we could survive. I looked at Cam, who now rested his head against a stone thick with moss, and thought sadly that Paris would never know her father the way I did.

  I had to try one more time. “Come home with me. Just for a little while. I’ll buy your ticket.”

  “Not yet.” Cam lifted a hand and let it fall flat on the surface of the water between us, splashing my face.

  I splashed him back. And then we were laughing and paddling at top speed, until a pair of egrets hidden in the tall grass along the river’s edge shot into the air like spirits rising.

  “When?” I asked, once we were at rest again and the water had calmed.

  “Someday.” Cam grinned, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll visit when you’ve got a husband and four kids besides mine. And a mortgage and a minivan. Oh yeah, and a job to pay for all that.”

  “And a dog? Can I have a dog, too?” I was thinking of David’s little mutt.

  He considered this. “Yep. You can have a dog. As long as you promise not to name the dog after me.”

  I contemplated the gray flannel clouds just beginning to gather around the mountain peaks. “And you? What will you do?”

  There followed such a lengthy silence that I sat up again to study my brother, whose face was calm. Perhaps he hadn’t heard me. “Cam? You okay?”

  “Yeah. Just thinking. See, I’m not like you, Jordan. I don’t have a plan. Or want one. I just want to get away from everything I ever was before this moment.”

  “Not everything you were is something you should leave behind,” I said gently.

  “No, but mostly. I’ve been a coward. A shirker. I let Dad make me into who I was, and blamed him for it, didn’t I? I blamed Nadine for getting pregnant. Hell, whenever I couldn’t make decent falafel, I blamed the chick peas.”

  Cam dunked his head and came up shaking it, so that water droplets sprayed all about the pool. Then he wiped his face and said, “I’ve been clinging to the nihilist view that nothing I do matters, since life’s a bitch and then you die. Thought I’d have some fun, maybe see a little of the world. But now I think that might not be enough.”

  I was afraid to push him too hard, but couldn’t help myself. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Or can’t explain.” Cam slicked his hair straight back from his forehead. “Let’s face it, I probably would’ve bitten the big one if you hadn’t turned up to save my ass. I was determined to stay up in that room and let my body do whatever the hell it wanted. My body could keep breathing or not. Keep thinking or not. Keep pissing or not. It was like I was in this trance, you know, separated from my body, and I could see little pieces of my little worthless life.”

  I smiled. “The old life-flashing-before-your-eyes trick?”

  He smiled back, and this time his eyes danced. “Yeah. Only in my case nothing flashed, and I realized that nothing I’d ever done in my life amounted to squat. I tried so hard not to be like Dad that I wasn’t like anything. I was just a shadow.”

  Cam stopped talking and dunked his head beneath the water again, then came up and wiped the water from his face with both hands. There was no way to detect tears on his dripping, sharp-boned face, but I knew that Cam was crying.

  He said, “I’d given up on myself. And then you showed up in the middle of my really boring slide show of life, Jordy. I tried to convince myself that you only came to get yourself a baby, you know, to get those papers signed.”

  I laughed. “Right. I just happened to stop by the Himalayas. Jesus.”

  “I know.” My brother’s smile was slight, but it was there. “When you kept on hanging around when I was sick, I realized you might have come to Nepal for me, too.”

  “Of course I did, idiot,” I said. “What else could I do?”

  “You could have left me.” Cam looked at me, blue eyes unflinching.

  “No, I couldn’t.” I poked his chest with one finger. “Mom would kill me if you died. So now come on home, why don’t you, and earn me a medal.”

  Cam studied my hand, lying there near the crook of his elbow above the frothy water, and then he leaned down and kissed it. “I can’t, Jordan. Not yet,” he said. “I need to figure things out. I’m going to work up here in the mountains for a while, live clean, save a few trees. Then maybe I can come home again.”

  “Okay,” I said, taking his hand in mine. “But hurry up.”

  Cam left the hot spring
s before I did, saying that he was tired. I lay my head back on the rocks and tried to feel good about our conversation. Instead, what I mainly felt was bereft. How could I leave Cam here, when I felt as though I had just found him? How could I face my mother and Paris, knowing that this missing person in our family wouldn’t be standing beside me?

  I had to have faith that Cam would stay true to his mission here, and come home eventually. For a moment, I breathed a silent prayer of thanks to Jon, who had looked out for my brother and saved him when the rest of us could not.

  At last, feeling as wrinkled as a Shar-Pei dog, I climbed out of the water and shook myself dry. It had been mild all day, but I knew the air would rapidly cool as the sun sank behind the mountains. I gathered my towel and started traipsing back along the path, head down.

  “Hey! There you are!”

  My head shot up. I squinted against the sun and saw the figure of a man. Back lit like this, I couldn’t make out his features, but I knew it was David. I started running toward him, slipping a little on the damp trail.

  “You can’t be here!” I said, nearly skidding to a stop in front of him and flinging my arms around his neck. “How did you even find me?”

  He held me about the waist, not drawing me close, but not pushing me away, either. “Your mother told me where you were, and said you’d changed your flight. I knew that you wouldn’t really tell her the truth about Cam, because you wouldn’t want to scare her. So I came to see if you needed help. I wanted an excuse to come back to Nepal anyway.”

  A pair of Nepali women passed us, bundles of laundry on their heads; they cast sidelong glances at us and giggled.

  “Namaste,” David said, nodding his head at them and pressing his fingertips together with a little bow. The women giggled harder and hurried along.

  “You came all this way to check on my brother?”

  “I did,” he said. “I was worried. I hope you don’t mind that I came.”

  “No, of course not.” Still, I took a step away from him. David was a good person; it was plausible that this kind, compassionate man would travel to Nepal for this reason, especially because this was a country he knew and loved so well. He had worked here; he probably still had friends in Nepal among the aide workers.

  The realization began to set in that David hadn’t come for me after all. This wasn’t a movie or a fairy tale. This was simply the case of a man doing the right thing.

  “It’s nice to see you,” I said. Conscious of the rapidly falling temperature and my wet hair, I wrapped the towel around my head like a turban.

  David burst out laughing. “You look very royal that way.”

  Annoyed, I said, “Have you seen my brother yet?”

  “Yes, just now. I stopped at the lodge.”

  I didn’t bother asking him how he had found the lodge or the village. He had been to Nepal many times; besides, my mother probably told him. I started walking. David fell into step beside me, his hands in his pockets.

  “How does Cam seem to you?” I asked.

  “Good. He seems fine,” David said, glancing at me. “How about you? Are you okay?”

  I stopped on the trail so suddenly that David bumped into my shoulder. “My health is fine,” I said. “I’m over the altitude sickness. I’ve been purifying the water.”

  He looked confused. “I’m glad,” he said. “Why are you angry?”

  I barely refrained from stamping my foot. “Because I was so excited to see you—you know how I feel about you, you must know, after that idiotic phone message I left you a few days ago—but now I can see that you’re here for all of the right reasons, none of which have to do with me.”

  He laughed and reached for me, pulling me close to him while I was still sputtering. He kissed me hard on the mouth. I didn’t put my arms around him, but it didn’t matter: it was as if my whole body were being embraced, even absorbed by his. Lips and chests, hips and thighs, even our knees were touching. I felt as if we were surrounded by a vast space, here in the mountains, holding each other in thin air, no gravity necessary.

  David pulled back. “How about that? Was that the right reason to come to Nepal?”

  I sighed and put my head on his shoulder, finally wrapping my arms around him. “The best,” I said.

  When I said goodbye to Cam, he was digging an irrigation trench, a bandana wrapped around his hair. He looked lean, but tan and healthy again.

  “You will write to me, and you’ll come home soon,” I said.

  “Promise me you’ll tell the baby our stories,” he said.

  “Tell her yourself,” I answered, and kissed him.

  Cam hugged me briefly, his embrace so rough that it knocked the air out of my body. Then he began digging as if the life of every tree and plant in the nursery depended on how well he determined the course of the snow melt coming off the mountain. He was focused on a future he could control for the moment, and that was a good start.

  David was going to stay on in Nepal for another week. His goodbye kiss was deep, and he held onto me for a long time before letting go. “Will you still be in San Francisco when I get back? Or am I going to have to fly to Boston?”

  “I’m thinking of staying in California,” I said.

  He smiled and kissed me again. “Hurry home, then.”

  Jon insisted on accompanying me to Kathmandu, making some vague excuse about the mail. It was early in the morning when we left; the sun was as mild and yellow as a Chinese lantern. I gave Didi my magnetic backgammon set as a goodbye present. She grinned and slipped a turquoise necklace over my head, the beads as big and blue as a robin’s eggs.

  Jon and I made the descent to Pokhara on foot, sliding a little on the muddy trails just below the village, where mushrooms had sprung up beneath the trees like entire villages of tiny elf houses. By the time we arrived, sweaty and hot after the jolting crowded bus ride from Pokhara to Kathmandu, it was early evening.

  We ate dinner at Marco Polo. There was no sign of Leslie; I wondered if I’d ever see or hear from her again. The pizza tasted unnaturally heavy, after the rice and lentils I’d been living on, and the cheese was as sticky and unpleasant as glue. The incessant restaurant music assaulted my senses, too, after the quiet of the lodge and the mountains.

  But the beer was cold, and Jon was good company, pacing the conversation carefully, seeming to sense that I was nervous. Finally I thought to ask him what he planned to do next.

  “Never say what you’re planning to do,” Jon reminded me. “That just invites the gods to play with you.” He reached into his pocket and handed me a key. “I want you to have this.”

  “What? Your house key?” I asked. “You want me to look in on things, make sure Val’s okay?”

  “That, yes. And I want you to have access to the house in case you ever need a place to stay,” Jon explained. “You might not want to go back to the East Coast, with everything you have going on in California, right? And this will at least give you a place to take the baby if you need more space while you figure things out. Your mom is welcome, too.”

  I was stunned, holding the key in my hand. “But why not just sell the house? You’d have more cash, fewer hassles.”

  Jon shook his head. “Not interested. Besides, you never know. I might need a place to crash. Cam might, too,” he added. “I have a feeling he’ll be home before long.”

  By the light of the candle on our table, his balding forehead gleamed like the head of an old man. Seeing the sunburned skin made me think of the retired men who used to sit on the town common across from my childhood home. The men would line up like pigeons in the sun and sit there all afternoon, occasionally bringing out chess boards that they balanced on their knees. Jon wasn’t an old man yet. But you could see the reach of age across his face.

  “Thank you.” I took the key and pocketed it. “You might find my entire oddball tribe camped out there when you come home,” I warned. “I seem to be collecting people these days.”

  “There are worse th
ings,” he said, and smiled.

  When my cab to the airport arrived in front of the restaurant, I kissed Jon on the cheek, glad to have found the goodness in him.

  The second leg of our flight, from Hong Kong to San Francisco, was delayed for several hours. I stayed in the waiting area and watched women mud wrestle on television. The women looked as joyous as children flinging mud at each other after a rain.

  Three muddy matches later, the airline gave up on getting the plane off the ground and announced that we would have to fly out the next morning. I was bussed along with the other passengers through Hong Kong’s downtown, a smoggy cinematic city of glass towers and bright neon signs, to a posh business hotel, the sort with a phone in the bathroom and a soft white robe laid out on the bed. I made good use of the enormous, sparkling bathtub, then ordered a grilled fish through room service with a bottle of white wine.

  By the time I’d finished the fish I had somehow emptied the bottle as well, watching Seinfeld reruns dubbed in Chinese. My messages to my mother and Karin were long and slurred as I vented my frustration about never being able to reach anyone by phone.

  “San Francisco might have been swallowed up in an earthquake, and how would I even know, since nobody ever answers my texts or calls?” I said as I recorded my new arrival time on Karin’s machine.

  The next day, I tried hard to recollect exactly what I’d said in my phone messages as the pilot on my flight out of Hong Kong announced that he, too, was having trouble getting us across the ocean.

  “We seem to be hitting some severe turbulence,” the pilot carefully explained, first in Chinese, then in French, and finally in English. The man’s tone was rational, even chatty, the sort of tone anyone would use during an emergency to keep others from panicking.

  The sort of tone designed to send everyone into a panic, I realized, as the plane fell silent and the tiny Chinese businesswoman beside me pulled a string of rosary beads out of her briefcase and ran them through her immaculate fingers.