The creepiest individual I have ever seen lurks around our group sporting a full priest dress and a buzz cut. He’s gearing up to lead the Catacomb tour. I’m starting to panic. I can’t walk through dark tunnels of tombs. I hate tombs.
“So what’s after this?” Uncle Billy says. “Should we try to make it back to the Vatican?”
“Don’t popes hate gay people?” Janie says.
Dad shoots her a look and nods toward the creepy priest.
“Sorry,” she whispers. “I thought it was a costume.”
“I can’t do this,” I blurt. “I can’t deal with tombs. And I want to spend time with Enzo in Rome. Okay? Sue me.”
Silence.
Why aren’t they talking? Was I too bitchy? Is there a virginity stain on my shorts?
They look at Enzo.
“Am I missing something?” I say.
“I’ve decided to join you on the ship awhile longer,” Enzo says. “I wanted to surprise you, but I had to make sure Astrid was okay with it.”
“Are you joking?”
“Nope. Not joking. Want to come help me pack?”
We don’t wait for the creepy tomb tour. We fly through the city, hand in hand, high on sex and anticipation. Not far from the banks of the Tiber River, we stop at a carousel, the old kind that has probably inspired thousands of love stories. The breeze. The boy. The smell of popcorn. The sound of a carousel song. We circle and circle.
EIGHTEEN
WE’RE TWO HOURS away from Taipei, Taiwan. Right before we boarded the chartered jet, I texted Paige: Never have I ever lost my virginity to Enzo Ivanhoe in a park in Rome (and liked it very much). She texted back immediately: OH MY JELLY BEANS!!!!!!!
Gram loves that Enzo is with us. She thinks he’ll add a healthy dash of young man testosterone to the mix. I tell her to keep her knobby hands off him. I don’t know exactly how Dad feels about the boyfriend travel companion. He can’t mind all that much, since he spent the first three hours of the trip comparing Egyptian and Roman burial techniques with Enzo while I played UNO with Wes and Aunt Rose.
“Do you believe in life after death?” I ask.
Enzo and I are snuggled under a blanket on cushy reclining seats.
“Life after death? Yes.”
“So sure?”
“Yes. I don’t know about the heaven-hell religious stuff. That could be true.” He shrugs. “I just know the stuff that’s happened to me since Dad died.”
“What stuff?”
“I’ll only tell you if you can be open-minded. If you think it’s rubbish, it’ll piss me off.”
“Okay, okay. I promise.” I wrap my pinkie around his.
“So remember how I told you I used to watch TV with Dad and give him his tea? One day, it was springtime and kind of cold, but we opened all the windows to get Dad some fresh air. We both dozed off and woke to thousands of ladybirds in the house.”
“That’s terrifying. How did you know they were lady birds?” I’m picturing some freakish female bird mating ritual.
“The spots. How do you not know a ladybird?”
“Oh. You mean ladybugs. Okay. I get it.”
“Yes. We say ladybirds. So I saw the swarm of bugs and screamed and jumped around. Dad laughed for a long time. I had to usher all the little beasts out of the house, but it was quite funny. Anyway, I was devastated after we lost Dad. I was ten years old, and I had lost my idol. Everything in the house reminded me of him, so I would sit on the front step every day. One day I was on the step and a ladybird landed on my knee. It kept me company for the best part of an hour. I knew it was a sign from Dad.”
“How?”
“I can’t explain it, but I just knew. They started showing up in the strangest places. One landed on the end of my toothbrush. One landed on the cheek of a girl I was kissing.” He sees my face change. “I mean, it was a long time ago. One even flew onto my exam paper last year. I’m telling you, Maddie, the dead like to mess with you.”
I don’t want to know he kissed a girl. I snap myself back into the moment.
“In some weird way, this is comforting to me,” I say. “Like Gram and I joked that she would come to me in the form of a chipmunk.”
“Chipmunk, huh? I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a chipmunk.”
“They look a little like the moles in Whac-A-Mole, only spotted. Like ladybirds.”
He laughs and takes a sip of tea. “There’s other stuff,” he says.
“Like what?”
“Like the dreams. The Wishwell used to trigger awful dreams, awful memories. I needed to get distance from that ship for a while.” He exhales deeply. “But now when I have the dreams, they’re visions of our holidays in Tuscany, and Granddad with his pet canary, and Dad grinning.”
“Maybe heaven is another dimension, and our dreams are a portal.” I sound like Rachel’s friends.
“Sometimes it sort of feels that way,” Enzo says, running his finger over the sapphire. I’ve decided to wear it for safekeeping. “Anyway, that was a long answer to your question. How about you? Do you believe in life after death?”
I shift in my seat and pause for a few seconds, distracted by the loud poker game behind us.
“I’ll have to get back to you on that one.”
“Fair enough.”
Taipei, Taiwan, in the summer is hot, crowded, and as far from Connecticut as we could possibly get.
This leg of the trip has been the most mysterious of all. We know we’re not here for long, because we’re meeting the Wishwell tomorrow. But only Gram knows why we’re here.
Gram asks the bus driver to show us some sites. The bus meanders through streets packed with cars and mopeds. Everywhere we go, we see the same building, about a thousand stories higher than all the other buildings, sticking up like a steel temple. I’m just grateful I don’t have to find my way around, since I can’t read one single street sign.
The hotel isn’t terrible. It’s the same decor as all the nail salons I’ve ever been to, with bamboo plants, peach-colored bedding, and cold floors. The problem is they overbooked the hotel, and Gram refuses to stay at a crappier place. I end up sharing a room with Janie and Mom, and poor Enzo gets Dad and Jeb. I pray he still likes me after rooming with those two.
“So? Can you believe this is happening? Is it sinking in that Enzo is with you right now?” Janie is holding me by the shoulders and shaking me, while Mom tries to figure out how the shower works.
“I have to tell you something, but if you tell anyone, ever, I swear to you I will punch you in the head.”
“Okay, maniac. I swear.”
“I’m not a virgin anymore.”
“Can somebody help me figure out this shower?” Mom comes out in her underwear with her boobs flopping around. Janie runs in and says “shit” about a hundred times before she finally figures it out and comes back.
“Okay, when could you possibly have lost your virginity? Did you join the mile-high club while we were playing UNO?”
“No. Remember when you left us in the park in Rome? We did it there in a grove of trees. It was romantic and perfect, and in case you’re wondering, he used a condom.”
“Pain?”
“Probably like a four on a scale from one to ten.” She nods like that sounds about right.
“Pleasure?”
“Probably a four on a scale from one to ten, but who cares? It was Enzo, and it’s done. I don’t have to think about it again. I mean I’ll think about it, probably every day for the rest of my life. But I don’t have to wonder anymore. I’m so happy, Janie.”
“I’m so happy for you, Mads. I mean he’s gorgeous and smart. He’s like Ty.”
Except for the pickle part.
Mom walks out in a towel. God, she takes the shortest showers ever. Did she even use soap?
We’re so jet-lagged, we don’t even know if it’s night or day. Finally, everybody—even Aunt Rose, who is slightly more with it since she started antibiotics for her urinary tract infection
—meets to go out for dinner. It’s after nine at night, and we end up at a famous open market with stands filled with questionable-looking food. An Australian couple tells us it’s called Snake Alley because they sell snakes, living and dead.
Wes strikes up a conversation with two local guys who are obviously desperate to practice English. They apparently have nothing better to do than guide us through this market. It smells so bad I gag at least twice. I’m trying to talk to Enzo and appreciate this experience, but it’s awful. I won’t try any of this stuff, even though I’m starving. Dad buys chicken feet, something called bean curd, and fried shark, which Bob describes as “chewy.” I can’t believe they’re gnawing on actual shark meat and the bony little disembodied feet of chickens.
“Not bad,” Wes says. “Kind of crunchy.”
My bee buzzes. A little tip: You need to get some again soon or you’ll forget how to do it and you’ll be back to square one. My little Maddie is all grown up. Janie gives me a wave from behind Aunt Rose, who is now also chewing on a chicken foot.
The random guys stop at a beverage stand and start laughing. They want us to try deer penis wine. What the hell is wrong with these people?
Finally we get to a bakery. I pull Enzo inside while the others are out in the street inhaling steaming noodles from plastic bags. He exhales like he’s been holding his breath for an hour. I certainly have. I look up at him. He leans down to kiss me, and they all rush in to kill the moment. They fawn all over the fruit-covered cakes and sugared pastries in the case. I’m so hungry I eat half a spongy, fruit-covered cake in the span of three minutes and chase it with a Coca-Cola. Even the Coke tastes bad. Uncle Billy makes a toast to great adventures, and we clink Coke cans and milk tea cartons, because half my family is drinking something called milk tea.
I’ve barely heard Gram talk the whole night. Maybe she’s still recovering from her all-nighter with Bob and Celia. It’s probably not easy to party all night when you’re really old and dying of cancer. But Gram said it was one of the best nights of her life. Maybe it’s all finally hitting her. Or maybe she’s hurting more than we know.
Gram was the last person to get to the lobby this morning. And she was holding a teddy bear. Mom and Uncle Billy worriedly whisper that she’s regressing, wondering why else she’d suddenly be holding on to this teddy bear. It’s making me nervous. She clings to Bob Johns like a security blanket—he’s the binky to go with her bear.
This bus ride sucks. We’re careening down roads with no guardrails through the countryside of Taiwan toward an unknown destination. This morning Dad pressed Gram for information, until she got all cranky and called him an irritating little asshole. We pass through towns congested with smog from mopeds and cars. Then we go through a stretch of mountains, green and lush, with mist rising from the tippy tops and quaint temples dotting the landscape.
Dad gives us the speech about our bus getting rear-ended, but we decide to take our chances and sit in the back. Enzo talks to me so close, he’s making it impossible to concentrate on anything but how he looked naked. How can his breath be sweet and fresh after the fried scallion pancakes we ate off a cart for breakfast?
“Is your gram always mysterious like this?”
“She likes to be dramatic, so she delivers these surprises all the time. But she’s not acting normal. I have no idea what is going on. And that teddy bear is freaking me out.”
He leans over and kisses me on the forehead. It’s an innocent kiss, but it triggers a response from someplace deep inside me that fills my whole body. I thought lust was a fake thing somebody made up to be gross. I was wrong.
The bus stops near a pedestrian bridge in the middle of a street in a tiny village surrounded by mountains. A man wearing one of those wide-brimmed straw hats squats over a small patch of land next to the bridge. We all climb out and stretch as the bus driver pulls Gram over and points to a house halfway up a steep hill.
“Come on, we have to cross that bridge. Billy, help your aunt.” Gram starts walking.
“Oh, come on. This thing doesn’t look like it can hold a hundred pounds,” Dad says. “Do you really think this is a good idea, Astrid?”
“Well, the Orientals have been doing it for centuries,” politically incorrect Rose says.
“The ‘Orientals’ weigh a hundred pounds,” Jeb says. Apparently we all have a bridge phobia.
The river below is not deep. That makes it even worse, because all the rocks stick out from the bottom. Two men stand ankle deep with fishing poles, not far from the bridge, but too far to help us if it collapses.
After several minutes of our complaining, the bus driver loses his temper. “Go, cross the bridge. Just go.” He says it with such force that we listen.
We climb the steep dirt road and knock on the old wooden door of the mystery house. It looks like it’s made out of concrete slabs, like somebody’s garage.
A woman in her fifties or sixties with a short salt-and-pepper bob opens the door.
“Oh, hello, hello. Astrid.” Gram holds up her hand, as she fights to catch her breath.
She leads us through a large room with white tile floors and bamboo furniture. There’s a TV and a shrine on the wall with little statues and incense and oranges.
Before we even know what to say, we’re in a back garden, if you can call it that. It’s a patch of grass with two chickens running around. An ancient woman sits on a stool. She gets up with the help of the other woman, takes one look at Gram, and starts the lip quiver.
“Astrid.” The two old ladies embrace. Now I feel silly for calling Gram a shriveled raisin. This woman is a shriveled raisin. She makes Gram look like an NBA player.
“Lin, I feel like I’ve embraced you a thousand times.”
“Yes, me too. Oh, let me look at your family. Oh, who is Trish? And Billy? Jeb?” She looks at Enzo. Not even close.
“Sit, Lin,” Gram says. “I have a very big mouth, but I wanted to wait until we were here to tell them the whole story.” Gram sets the big teddy bear on her lap.
“Yes, Mother. I think we need to know everything.” Uncle Billy’s getting his bratty tone.
We all sit, on various chair-like things, if the rice bag I’m sitting on is a chair-like thing. The lady starts talking, but we keep saying “Excuse me?” and “Can you repeat that?” not because her English is bad, but because her voice box is ninety-something years old and barely works. So finally Gram says, “Lin, just let me tell them, and you can fill in the blanks.”
“Your English is very good, ma’am,” Dad says.
“I had a good teacher.” Lin winks at Gram.
“Wait a minute. You were her English teacher?” Janie looks at Gram.
“No. Martin was.”
“Martin taught English?” Dad asks.
“Oh, for the love of God, let me tell the damn story.”
And the (damn) story goes like this: During World War II, Grandpa Martin and a group of other guys were supposed to sneak into Taiwan to get Japanese military information. But the Japs (as Gram calls them) sent everyone in the group to a copper mine prison camp, except Martin, who escaped into the mountains. In the meantime, Lin, who was a university student at the time, had been sent to live with distant relatives in a remote village to get away from the Japanese soldiers who were notorious for raping young girls. One day, a scrappy-looking American GI wandered into the village looking for shelter.
“We called Martin ‘white ghost.’ We had no food. Everyone was starving. Martin went through danger every week to steal food from Japanese soldiers. He almost died many times.” Lin’s face brightens. She holds up a shriveled hand. “But every time, he brought back food, and he kept us all alive. He was our white ghost. Martin O’Neill saved my sister, me, our village.”
Gram rests her hand on Lin’s back. “Martin and Lin exchanged letters for decades, and when he died, I started to write.”
“Martin was a war hero. I can’t believe he never told us,” Dad says. “That’s something to
be incredibly proud of.”
“You know Martin. He wasn’t one to toot his own horn and, frankly, he was shell-shocked from the war,” Gram says. “Sometimes, though, he would drink a little too much and tell me how those times he cheated death were the times he felt most alive.”
After Lin’s daughter, Bing, serves an entire fish, more chicken feet, and pastries stuffed with bean paste (the worst dessert ever), Lin wants to show us Grandpa Martin’s favorite temple. We tread, single file, over the treacherous suspension bridge and board the bus.
“I can’t believe you kept this from us,” Mom says to Gram.
“You people are always telling me I talk too much, and if someone tells me a secret, I need to keep it. Now you’re bitching that I kept Martin’s secret? The one thing my WASP mother drilled into me was to ask myself the question ‘Is that your story to tell?’ It wasn’t. It was Martin’s. If he didn’t want to share, he didn’t want to share.”
“Not everybody is an open book, guys,” Wes says.
The bus crawls even deeper into the mountains on an unpaved road. As we approach the temple, I understand why this place was so special to Grandpa Martin. It’s mind-blowing.
We walk up a stone pathway to a collection of bright red buildings with the orange curved roofs of all Taiwan’s temples. It feels like the most serene spot on earth, like this is where the earth breathes when it’s sleeping soundly. A lone Buddhist monk, completely bald and draped in a saffron robe, sits on a bench, his hands folded. A stray dog darts over to him and back to us, but the monk doesn’t look up.
We walk to a gazebo, also covered with a curved orange roof and lined with benches, and sit to catch our breath. Lin’s daughter pulls a stack of photos from her messenger bag. There’s one old, tattered photo of Lin’s sister and Grandpa Martin sitting together on a bench and laughing at something in the distance.
“We took this right over there.” Lin points to a shady spot near the main building. “Martin had returned with food. He stole two bottles of rice wine from the Japanese soldiers, and we drank it, and we had a little party. It was so special, that day. War was dark and terrible all around us. Martin gave us little sips of laughter and light. Maybe that is what kept us alive. More than the food.” Lin’s voice drifts.
The Loose Ends List Page 18