The Far Shore

by Paul T. Scheuring

Yes…do you have any idea when…?

  I really don’t, ma’am…I’ll try, okay?

  And a moment later Lily’s off the phone.

  She doesn’t like her prospects.

  She feels cut off at the knees, helpless.

  And thus, unknowingly, she’s got her three-cylinder car pinned at ninety as she blazes back south on the highway.

  (Could hop the wall in the middle of the night.

  Ninja, Lily the ninja.

  Find Bennett in his bunk.

  Shake him by his lapels.

  Robe, lapels?

  [Who attacks a monk?]

  Girls with Ditka mustaches.)

  But it’s for the right reasons.

  Discover the truth about her grandfather, liberate those lost assets, Johnny Appleseed it around the world, planting money in a hundred good causes so they might flourish—

  —including the monastery!—

  But.

  There’s a line, isn’t there?

  Goddammit, there’s a line.

  Waiting for Godot.

  This is hell.

  She won’t do it.

  Can’t turn her mind to other matters.

  She wants to live and breathe this thing, to the exclusion of all else.

  So, on the way back south, she turns off I-95, heads for Falls Church.

  I’m going to Burma, she tells Tish.

  She’s way over her skis in saying this.

  She has no idea how she’ll get to Burma.

  But she’s saying this nevertheless.

  Willing a world into being.

  She tells Tish about everything, about the travels, about all the things she’s learned regarding Gray: how he survived the war, how he went to India and then Burma.

  Tish absorbs it all in silence.

  Soaking up a Pimm’s as she listens.

  Lily searches her face for reaction.

  None there.

  Does any of this register with you, she asks.

  Quite an adventure, young lady.

  Good to hear you got out of your box.

  But you know where I stand on that man.

  What if he’s alive?

  HA!

  Tish barks this so loud it nearly makes Lily jump.

  Lily didn’t know the little old body still had so much firepower in it.

  How defiant that syllable!

  A fuck you to Gray—living or not—a fuck you to the universe.

  As if to say, I will not even consider the possibility of that man’s existence.

  He’s not an animal, Tish.

  Says the one who’s never met him face to face.

  Who’s never shared a bed with him, felt the hell of his presence.

  You’ve come all this way to tell me more ghost stories?

  No, I’ve come to borrow money.

  Ha.

  This one a little more contained, an acknowledgment perhaps that the discussion has come to topics a little more palatable.

  To go there, I assume.

  I’m broke.

  Quit running away from your life, Lily.

  Lily has so much to say in response that she ends up saying nothing.

  Nothing at the end of this will deliver you, you know that, don’t you?

  Money won’t.

  Gray Allen won’t.

  The adventure won’t.

  I’ve done all of those things, Lily.

  She says this with a nod to the penthouse—both museum and mausoleum—around her.

  Look at me.

  I am embittered.

  Tired of the bullshit.

  Tired of the chase.

  You know why, because I chased in the first place.

  Thought something was out there that would fix me.

  What do you want?

  Why are you doing this?

  What is it in you that is missing?

  A single-word retort comes to Lily, an answer to the question, but she doesn’t dignify Tish with a response.

  She will hold that word.

  She will hold it until she leaves.

  Until she climbs in her car and drives away.

  She never says it, not out loud.

  But it inhabits her, a landscape in its own right.

  Everything.

  But something happens on the drive home.

  Her phone rings.

  It is Tish.

  She who never uses phones.

  You won’t leave it alone, will you, says Tish.

  You just won’t.

  Lily is taken aback by the woman’s voice.

  It is shaking.

  The words seem like they are acrid in her mouth, things to be expunged as quickly as possible.

  Tish, I’m sorry if I overstepped my bounds.

  No, I want to be done with this, says Tish.

  Lily gets the impression that this will not be a two-way conversation.

  That a freight train has been let loose somewhere deep in Tish’s soul and it roars forth with a momentum that cannot be stopped.

  I sent him the letter, is that enough for you?

  The Dear John letter.

  I sent it to him.

  He could scarcely write!

  I had a baby in my tummy and a husband that had gone away to war, a war that was chewing up everything in sight, and I was scared, do you understand?

  That the baby would grow up with no father and the two of us would have no income.

  I left him for another man.

  For David.

  There.

  You’re right he was no animal.

  And you’re right there was no French whore.

  But the one thing he was, was gone.

  And I couldn’t take that.

  Now you know what a dirty two-timer your grandmother was.

  Is that enough for you, in your adventurism?

  Lily is flabbergasted, and for a long time searches for something to say.

  She can hear Tish’s ragged breaths on the other end of the line.

  I didn’t mean to dredge this stuff up, Tish.

  It wasn’t my intent.

  Oh, but you kept pushing.

  I just don’t want any more of these visits, Tish says.

  I don’t want this to be a topic.

  So I’m telling you everything.

  I’m clearing the air.

  Lily knows enough to put it to bed, but a thought strikes her.

  She should not, she knows, belabor this conversation.

  But it cannot be helped.

  She must know.

  Did he know about the baby, Lily asks.

  Tish chuckles a chuckle decades-deep with self-loathing.

  No.

  No.

  It was better for everyone if he didn’t.

  She turns all of this over in her head as she flies down the monotony of I-95.

  The perpetual Habitrail of Cracker Barrel signs whizzing past, then McDonalds and Sonic and Waffle House.

  Rinse and repeat.

  All the way down the Eastern Seaboard.

  She cannot make up her mind.

  Whether it was a broken heart that colored his view of the world.

  Rendered it in all those shades of suffering.

  Or whether all he saw subsequent to his abandonment by Tish corroborated the desolation in his heart.

  And yet it’s not really that, is it?

  That’s not the real question that has come on the scene now.

  The question is, if you had known you had a son, would you have come home?

  Would you have finally belonged to something worth belonging to?

  She double-checks everything that Bruce tells her once she gets home.

  Does the same Google search he did: Anagarika Ratha.

  Nothing comes up.

  Her box of Klondikes is empty in the freezer.

  A tease, it should’ve been thrown away but sits there bent and half collapsed beside a bag of ice so old it is a permanent fixture in her fre
ezer, permafrost.

  She calls Bruce again.

  Tells him what she’s found out.

  The family skeletons are of incidental value to him.

  More important to him is the fact that their man—Bennett Daniels—won’t be talking anytime soon.

  But we’ve got the book, Lily says.

  And it’s got the name of the monastery in Burma where Gray supposedly ended up.

  Ended up forty years ago.

  Still it’s progress, it’s something.

  It is something, Bruce says.

  I looked it up.

  Pak Auk.

  It exists.

  But conveniently doesn’t have email or a phone number.

  I suspect that’s probably the whole point of monasteries, she says.

  A long silence hangs in her ear.

  I can’t do it, he finally says.

  Look, I mean, I don’t know why you’re pulling back; if it’s about Japan…

  You know it’s not about Japan; I could give two shits about that.

  It’s about money, he says.

  Sooner or later you’ve got to pull the plug, that’s all.

  Good money after bad and all that.

  But what about how much you’ve put into it?

  I mean we’re narrowing this thing down…

  Lily, he says.

  My bosses are breaking my dick about this, in case you care.

  Of course, I mean…

  No, not of course.

  These guys are assholes.

  Pawnshop guys, remember?

  It’s not all fun and games.

  I’m into them because of this.

  Into them big.

  They expected things and I’m just digging myself a hole at this stage.

  I want to get out.

  I didn’t realize it was like that…

  What did you think it was like?

  There is no money, anywhere in the world, that doesn’t have strings.

  So let’s, let’s just bury this thing, okay?

  Lily is speechless.

  They have hung up.

  Lily has paced around her apartment.

  Has eyed that empty Klondike box in the garbage.

  Has thought with great snarling cynicism: that box, that box is emblematic of the world, isn’t it?

  So full of promise on the outside.

  Look at that beautiful bear.

  But empty on the inside.

  She is angry and deep.

  It makes her feel good.

  But not good enough.

  She calls Bruce back.

  You do know I’ll go without you, she finds herself saying.

  Do what you want, but we own a big piece of that, so you know.

  We will get paid, whether you find it or we find it.

  His tone is a new one.

  An I’ve-moved-on one.

  Oh, that burns her up.

  So much so that she finds herself saying: I don’t see why you should get twenty percent of anything if you’re not doing the work.

  Because we signed a contract, he says.

  I don’t suppose you read the boilerplate on the contract I sent you, did you?

  (Of course I didn’t.

  The only thing I read was “AGREE.”

  And clicked it.

  I’m an American.)

  Then at least advance me the money to get to Burma, she says.

  Lily, he says.

  So much in those two syllables.

  Like he is telling her to sober up, come down off a ledge, and re-inhabit reality all at once.

  Lily, I really like you.

  So I’m going to say this to you with all the warm fuzziness I can.

  Don’t be the chick with the cup in her hand.

  (Oh Bruce.

  If only I could punch you through the phone…)

  No problem, she says instead.

  I can get there on my own.

  Go with God, he says.

  It’s all become so transactional she wants to throw up.

  You’re not getting twenty percent, she says.

  (Lily…)

  Yes we are; read the contract.

  Screw the contract, Bruce.

  Screw you, Lily.

  They both laugh uncomfortable laughs.

  Incredulous laughs.

  Like this is not them, this is not the way they do things.

  And yet it is.

  I guess you did tell me you were a leech up front, didn’t you, she says.

  Makes two of us; you’re the one calling up begging for money.

  Like I said: Don’t be the chick with the cup in her hand.

  Waiting for the world to fill you up.

  It’s beneath you.

  Everything in Lily is fire.

  Keep thinking that, she says finally.

  Really, keep thinking that.

  Blink and I’ll be on the other side of the world.

  She’s really doing this.

  She’s really done this.

  Hung up on him.

  A declaration of independence.

  A declaration of war.

  Then it is just her alone in her apartment.

  Standing there with a silent cell phone.

  Her bluff now called if not by Bruce directly, then by the universe and herself.

  What are you going to do now, Lil?

  The only thing to do is move.

  She begins pacing.

  Loading up a bag.

  Grabbing passport and toothbrush.

  Moving, moving, never stopping.

  Because if she stops, she might not start again, and the ruin of the whole venture would come clear to her.

  So she paces and paces and packs and packs and keeps moving until she is outside in the night air, moving across the parking lot for her car.

  Even then she doesn’t stop, doesn’t take time to put on her seat belt, doesn’t take time to look back at the apartment complex—which she will likely never see again—doesn’t take time to ask Siri directions to the airport.

  I know where the goddamn airport is.

  I’ve known it all my life.

  She is really doing this.

  Buying a ticket at the airport ticket counter the night-of.

  It is reckless, desperate, way too expensive, and in that, liberating.

  The car is gone, the pink slip handed over back at the used-car dealer a few miles short of the airport.

  She basically just pawned her car!

  That thing she fussed over—years of oil changes and which bumper sticker and which level of coverage, what color, what scent of air freshener, and should she get seat covers—poof, it was gone, someone else’s problem.

  The apartment too: she’ll get evicted.

  They’ll get in there and Storage Wars all her stuff, and her credit record would be shit, but to her in this moment it felt like they would be hanging all these things on a ghost, and none of it would hold purchase.

  Because poof, just like her car, she is gone.

  XXV

  Yangon (which was formerly Rangoon).

  Myanmar (which was formerly Burma).

  It is a rain-streaked, over-templed madhouse.

  Shanties and food carts and tangles of power lines over narrow streets.

  People in flip-flops.

  A whole country full of people in flip-flops.

  Their feet are hard and broad and lived-in.

  The air is humid, exhaust-filled.

  Permanently fragrant with curry.

  Everywhere around her the signage is a curlicue jungle of the tightly wound Burmese language—mysterious, dense, impenetrable.

  She is outside the cordon here.

  Far outside the cordon.

  Japan and Hawaii are pressure-washed versions of reality compared to this place.

  She is ridiculous in her Reeboks and her summer dress and her roller bag clattering along the uneven sidewalk behind her.

  A sweating
foreigner with saucers for eyes.

  She is on the other side of a night in a hotel room, a shower.

  It is 8 a.m. and she is sweating already.

  Compared to these people a fragile little snow cone already half melted.

  The hotel has directed her to a transportation company that can take her up into the countryside where the Pak Auk monastery is.

  The transportation company in question: an office so small, tucked between food shops, that it can scarcely accommodate a single tiny desk and a chair on either side.

  It has a fan, a calendar (last year’s), two plastic golden Buddha statues, and a proprietor, who looks across at Lily with great confidence.

  That’s the entirety of this transportation company.

  There’s no computer, in fact nothing on this man’s desk other than his cell phone.

  Of course, he says, Pak Auk, no problem.

  I can arrange, he says.

  You know where it is, then?

  I know where everything is.

  He is tough to look at.

  He has the most genuine smile one has ever seen, at least in shape, but the content of that smile…the color of it…

  His teeth and gums are stained a reddish-black.

  He looks like something out of a horror movie.

  More specifically a zombie movie.

  He has the special-effects mouth of a zombie that just supped on brains.

  She would already be three blocks from here, screaming, her arms in the air, tossing her roller bag as she fled, were it not for the fact that she’d leafed through the Lonely Planet on the flight over.

  Betel nut.

  A national habit, like chewing tobacco.

  She has seen it enough times already on the streets to get her head around it.

  Still, he is a visage.

  And it turns out, this man, with his sublime I-just-ate-brains smile, will be the one who will drive her.

  Then again, she would expect nothing more from a transportation company like this.

  How could there be any more employees?

  With an office this small, where would you fit them?

  A hundred thousand kyat sounds like a lot.

  And it looks like a lot.

  She has a bundle of the Burmese money, almost an inch high and rubber-banded, in her lap in the back seat.

  This, too, is like something out of a movie.

  Bundles of money, like she’s just participated in a heist.

  But at a thousand kyat to a dollar, it’s really only a hundred bucks.

  Still, it makes you think how much money can actually be worth.

  To her driver, the CEO of his transportation company, it may very well be a heist.