“I’m betting she won’t come out today,” I said.
“Who won’t?”
“The sun.”
Aidos chuckled. “You’re on.” We shook hands.
“So who’d you think I meant?”
Aidos smiled. “Clever boy.”
“So, um, where’s Max? Don’t tell me he’s so weak-willed that he’d let a little hanky-panky ruin his sunrise streak.”
Aidos pointed toward the rocky outcrop where the beach turned. Max was sitting on a bolder staring out to sea.
“What’s he doing way over there?”
“He wants to be alone.”
“What for?”
“To consult the wise silence within.”
“My native tongue, please.”
“He’s thinking.”
“Uh-oh,” I said. “People never go off to have a think because everything is wonderful. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong.”
“Does it have to do with Doreen?”
“Yes, but not specifically her.”
“He slept with her and now he’s gonna dump her, right? Ya know, if it were anyone else I’d be running over there right now to stick my boot right up—”
“Max doesn’t dump people, and he doesn’t use them either.”
“You mean they didn’t…?”
Aidos shook her head, no.
“Well, why the heck not? What’s wrong with my sister? Who does he think he is? Is she not good enough for his highness, Prince Maximilian?”
“I think that meeting Doreen has been a painful reminder of his situation.”
“The deadman with a destiny thing?”
She nodded.
“Why not just take what little pleasures come his way? I mean, most guys would.”
“Max isn’t most guys.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if he’s a guy at all.”
Aidos put her finger to my lips. She nodded toward the horizon and the first signs of daybreak.
···
I was no barrel of laughs either on that plane trip home. I missed everybody. Johanna had escorted Doreen and me from Ko Lanta to the airport in Penang while the others remained behind to go their separate ways, back to whatever the hell it was they did.
Doreen’s broken heart was acute, but where hers had merely snapped in half, mine had been drawn and quartered. I was in love with all the women! When Johanna hugged me and kissed me goodbye I didn’t want to let go. Squeezing her tightly, I felt I was holding all the girls in my arms. I held her until I felt a big fat tear well up. Then I turned, grabbed my wreck of a sister and rushed to catch our plane.
It wasn’t just my mashed feelings that had me down. I hadn’t seen my family since Christmas, and I was returning home with the same sense of dread I had then. After all, what had changed? I was still an incorrigible flunky, and my future was just as dismal as before I left. Sure, I had survived some hair-raising adventures, but all that I had to show for it was an impressive suntan, which would surely fade along with my memories. I didn’t even have any photos of my new friends to wax nostalgic over because we were forbidden to take any. So there I sat, slumped in my seat, my panic-laced breath fogging up my reflection in the airplane window as my grieving sister sought comfort on my bony, tear-stained shoulder.
On the flight from Los Angeles to Phoenix, Doreen managed to pull herself together enough so that by the time Maureen picked us up at the airport her sadness was unrecognizable. In the car the two chatted away as if years had passed since they had last seen one another. I noticed that Doreen spoke only of sightseeing, the beaches, snorkeling, and the food—not a word about her near-death adventures or any of her new friends.
When we pulled into the driveway, Maureen said, “Guy, I’d better warn you. None of us were here to intercept your report card this time. I’m sorry.”
“Oh crap,” I said.
“Yeah,” Maureen said. “What happened, Guy?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, you had better make it a good one ‘cuz dad is really pissed. I don’t know if he’ll hit you with it right away or wait a day or two, but I thought you should know.”
Doreen turned around in her seat, sorry and sad. She reached some fingers out to me in sympathy and I gave them a little tug.
Bunkies
After dinner my dad walked into my bedroom waving my report card. I was unpacking my backpack at the time.
“Hi, Dad,” I said. I reached deep into my backpack and dug out a blue, badly wrinkled Thai silk shirt with pictures of jungle animals on it. I gave it a good snap and held it up. “For you!” I beamed.
“Thank you, Guy. It’s, um—”
“Genuine Thai silk.”
“Guy—”
“I got mom something too.” I dug again into my bag and pulled out a hand-carved, ebony elephant. I held it up proudly. “Think she’ll like it?”
“I’m sure she will—”
“I got all the girls something. Wanna see? I think it’s pretty cool stuff…”
“Later. Guy, what I want is an explanation for this.” He waved the dreaded report card again. “You got an incomplete in every class. Why?”
Incompletes? That’s it? Woohoo! Apples for all my teachers when I get back!
I cleared my throat. “What if I said that I have a good reason but that I’d rather not tell you? Would you trust me and let it go at that? I mean, an incomplete is not an F. And I promise you, Dad, every one of those incompletes will be an A.”
“Not good enough. I deserve more than that, don’t you think?”
“It’s complicated, Dad.”
“I’ve got all night.”
I looked at the floor of the closet where I had placed my daypack with all the journals, including the fake ones Noriko and Johanna helped fill in. The journals were the only proof I had that Noriko and Johanna weren’t just a dream. God I missed them.
“I can’t, Dad. It’s…personal.”
My dad stepped up and put his hands on my shoulders. “You can confide in me, son. I’m not as square as you think. I was your age once too, you know. I had my share of troubles and screw-ups.”
Hard to believe, I thought. Dad was a model of reason and competency. I couldn’t think of a single bad call he had ever made. From the stock market and real estate to his obvious professional success, he had the golden touch. His friends knew it too, and not one of them made an important decision without consulting with him first.
“It’s not that I don’t respect your opinion, Dad. It’s just… I’m okay, really.”
“Guy, listen to me. You’re twenty years old. The things you do or don’t do now will affect you the rest of your life. Maybe you don’t see it like that now, but trust me on this one. Regrets are lousy things to live with. The fewer the better.”
“I know,” I said.
“Do you? Really? Think about it. Sleep on it. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow. You’ve had a long day.” He gave me a fatherly hug and left me alone with my conscience—that meddlesome, carping, irritatingly sanctimonious, goody-goody-know-it-all Lilliputian within.
Unable to get a straight answer out of me, dad turned to Doreen. She too refused to provide an explanation. I think our failure to confide in him hurt his feelings, and I felt really sorry about that. But the story was too long to tell, and I thought that recounting only a few parts would have led to more questions and more frustration, for both of us.
I was surprised that Doreen didn’t speak up. I remembered her saying that when she got home she was going to reveal everything to dad and have him sic the police, the FBI, whomever it took, on Ellery and his clan. Her change of heart must have had much to do with those three magical days and nights on Ko Lanta, and especially with Max Stormer.
Did he ask her to keep everything she had heard and seen behind pursed lips? I didn’t think so. He belonged to the Aidos school of thought, and like her probably believed that to have asked Doreen to keep their secr
ets would have meant that he lacked faith in her powers of discrimination. By asking nothing of Doreen, he was conveying how much he trusted her.
Likewise, Doreen didn’t have to ask me to keep her maimed heart a secret, or anything else that she had been through. She usually told the other sisters everything, but not this time. It wasn’t that Doreen didn’t trust them, or didn’t want their sympathy. Rather, I believed, she felt that her silence acted like a long thread of gossamer binding her to Max. Her silence was an expression of her affection for him.
A couple of weeks after we arrived home, Doreen and I took my truck down to Tucson in order to find a new place to live before the fall semester drew too close and there’d be no good places to rent. Doreen and I were going to be housemates. My dad, still teed off over my report card and lack of an explanation for it, insisted that if I were to continue down in Tucson it must be under Doreen’s trusted supervision. We didn’t put up much of a fight. Neither of us wanted the memories attached to our former residences anyway, and actually kind of liked the idea. Doreen liked it because she’d feel safer having such a battle-hardened bodyguard like me around.
“Right, Bunky?” I said.
“Actually,” she said, “I just want to save on rent. What’s your excuse? You think it’s a good way to meet chicks?”
I nodded. “Uh-huh.”
We got lucky and within a week found a little two-bedroom house with a fireplace and yard on Helen Street, just a short walk from campus. It was an old house but well maintained. We moved Doreen’s stuff in first. Zeeva had been right, somebody had turned Doreen’s place inside out. It was spooky.
When we finished moving her stuff we tackled my place. It was in the same state of disarray as I had left it. Doreen insisted I toss out nearly everything I owned but my clothes and books. Zeeva’s influence hadn’t worn off, and Doreen still had every intention of living the simple life, as well as ridding me of the distractions that might keep me from my studies.
I told Doreen about my conversation with Zeeva on the beach and how genuinely sorry she felt. I asked her if she had forgiven Zeeva yet.
“We had our own talk,” Doreen said. “You can stop worrying.”
“I wasn’t worried. I just think—”
“Yes you were. And I think it’s sweet.”
“Yeah, well… So everything’s cool?”
“Yes. She even gave me her ring. Check it out…” She held up her hand for me to see. The ring was a simple silver band.
“So now you two are going steady?”
“A friendship ring, dickhead. It used to be Aidos’. I get to choose who to pass it on to next.”
“How fraternal. So, um, did Zeeva ever talk about me?”
“Let’s see… Nope.”
“Oh…”
“But I know she likes you, Guy.”
“But she doesn’t like me, you know, in that way, right?”
“What way?”
“Don’t make me say it. You know, the good way.”
“Oh, the ‘good’ way… I don’t know, Guy.”
“I know that she’s older than I am but that doesn’t bother me one bit. And you know me. I’ve always had a thing for hot older—”
“Not interested, Guy,” Doreen said. “But come to think of it, Zeeva did have a few words for you.”
“Yeah?” I said, hope returning to my voice. “What?”
“She said that you shouldn’t give up.”
“That’s it?”
Doreen nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Well what the hell does that mean?”
“It means whatever you want it to mean, I guess.”
“Give up on what? On her?”
“I don’t know, Guy. But I can tell you this much, Zeeva would never go for a quitter.”
Mirror Mirror
Doreen and I had now been back in the States nearly a month. Our school quarters secured, Doreen planned to spend the rest of the summer working in my dad’s office making a little money. I had to decide if I wanted to find a McJob, or pass the next eight weeks going to movies, watching TV, and generally driving my mother and myself crazy. I had $618 left over from my Thailand trip. If only all decisions were this easy.
Zeeva and the others still occupied most of my thoughts. I wondered where they were and what they were doing. When I was in Thailand I gave them a lot of crap for being so cryptic and secretive. Now I missed just that. I missed the mystery, the riddles, and the feeling that I was part of something big and dangerous and conspiratorial. I felt now as if I had been an unfit and undeserving initiate into an order more elite than the Freemasons. My membership revoked and stripped of my cloak and dagger, flunky me had been cast back into the world of the humdrum and mediocre. I never even got to learn the secret handshake.
I wished that Max or one of the girls would pop up from out of nowhere with an urgent message saying that my services were needed, spiriting me away to some distant corner of the world where Melody or Johanna would be waiting, orders in hand. But, it was only a dream. My actual life was on track to be no more exciting than the infomercials I was now watching on late night TV as I slurped from bowls of Cocoa Puffs.
Doreen started work the day after we returned from Tucson. I slept till noon, raided the fridge, caught a matinee, wandered around a mall, and watched TV until three in the morning. Two solid weeks of TV, malls, and junk food successfully erased all meaningful feelings and memories of Thailand and those persons I had met there.
On day fifteen my apathy was such that I couldn’t bother climbing into bed at all. I just lay on the carpeted floor of my bedroom with the lights out, and gazed blankly at the ceiling. At some point my head rolled lugubriously to the side where I spotted the outline of the bag of journals in the open closet. I stared at it a long time, fighting the temptation to open it and chance losing the gains I had made over the past two weeks, my hard-won numbness.
One too many bowls of Cocoa Puffs must have caused me to hallucinate, because I could have sworn that bag of journals started to pulse and emit a dull glow. I blinked and forced my eyes to adjust better to the darkness. Finally, I rolled over and reached for the bag’s shoulder strap and dragged it out of the closet.
Blindly, I dug one hand into the pack and pulled out a journal. I held it up to my face and squinted. It was one of the girl’s. I hesitated. Did I dare open it? To do so would be like looking at a picture of a lover who had broken your heart. It meant nostalgia and certain sadness. Did I want to risk that? I let the book drop onto my chest and closed my eyes. I saw Noriko and Johanna on the train scribbling away. I saw their smiling faces and heard their giggles. I remembered too how scared and worried I was for Doreen at the time.
I switched on the light, leaned against the foot of my bed, and picked up the journal. It was one of Johanna’s. I flipped through the pages which were full of writing, but in a dozen different languages. Show-off. Finally, about three-quarters of the way through the journal, I spotted words in English. My brain flexed and squeezed out a shot of adrenaline, snapping me out of my lethargy. She wrote:
If you’re reading this Guy, then it means you and your sister are safe and things have worked out okay. Perhaps months or even years have passed since this moment. Where are you? What are you doing now? What kind of man are you today? I wonder.
Let me tell you what I see, and then you look in the mirror and tell me if I’m wrong.
I see a man who recognizes that the bold life is the only life you don’t regret living. I see a man who understands that virtue without integrity, and integrity without courage, is hypocrisy. I see a man who knows that true success cannot be measured in dollars or fame, but only in the quality of his days, friends, and work.
If the morning delights you with the promise of the day, and the evening congratulates you on a day well spent—you are successful.
If you have distinguished a friend by your love, and demonstrated that your friendship, like your life, is something you will never take for
granted, daily blessing them both with your heart’s highest enthusiasm—you are successful.
If your day’s work, no matter what it may be, is undertaken with passion, framed with patience, performed with diligence, and sanctified by the sweat of your brow and the fragrance of your inspiration—you are successful.
This, Guy, is the man that I see in you. This is the life I envision you living. Go to that mirror now. Is this the man that you see too?
I closed the journal, tossed it back into the bag, and sighed. I didn’t have to look in the mirror to know that the portrait Johanna had painted looked nothing like me.
I opened the window blinds. Dawn was only a few shades of retreating darkness away. I thought about Max and Aidos. I thought how dawn would remind me of them for the rest of my life. What a cool way to be remembered, I thought; to be associated with the dawn. I felt comforted knowing that every day the likes of Max and Aidos stood watch for the sun, escorting it in like chaperons. With them as sentries, I thought, every day was off to an auspicious beginning. What happens next was up to everyone else.
I slipped on jeans, T-shirt, and my boots, and walked outside into the back yard and over to a pine tree that, the story went, my father had planted upon my entrance into the Andrews’ clan. I didn’t know why I was deserving of a tree and my sisters before me weren’t, but I always enjoyed holding that against them. It wasn’t huge, but it did reach higher than the roof of the house. I climbed to the highest and sturdiest branch, and straddled it with my back against the trunk, just in time to see the first pigments of daybreak and hear the birds’ morning salutations. I could scout the whole neighborhood from my perch. I gazed east and marveled at Max and Aidos’ kaleidoscopic sky.
I heard the screen door slam and saw my father in suit and tie saunter out to the middle of the backyard. In his hand was a golf club, a wood. He faced east, raised the club over his head, swung it three times in a wide circle like a sword, and then, in a grand, ritualistic salute, acknowledged the rising sun. For the next ten minutes he practiced his golf swing. Satisfied, he shouldered his club and marched back inside.
Say Uncle Page 32