Saving Fish From Drowning

After that day, he knew he had to do what was necessary to make amends and be a dad. How he dealt with Sherleen was another matter. He talked to his mom and her new husband, Gus Larsen. A family’s got to take care of its own, Dot said, and the Fletchers knew how to do right by other people. She told him they would send Sherleen to a county rehab program—they’d pay, of course—and while she was drying out, they’d go to court and file papers saying she was an unfit mother, so they could get custody of the boy. That was best for the boy’s sake, the mother’s, too.

  But Wyatt was reluctant to do anything backhanded. The woman was a mess, that’s for sure, but she still laughed an honest laugh, and at one time in his life he had thought she was beautiful, the sweetest angel on earth. So many afternoons, he had told her, “I love you. I promise, Sherleen, I’ll always love you.” That counted for something, didn’t it?

  He could offer to set her up in an apartment near his mom’s house. That way he could drop by and take his son fishing, to a ball game, or even on one of his expeditions when the boy was older. To Sherleen, Wyatt would say he’d like to be her friend. He knew she would understand it would be only that. He knew her well. She would say what she had always said, “Anything you want.”

  ROXANNE AND DWIGHT were still together, but not in the way you might think. Even before she reached home, she started to justify why she should end the marriage. All those weeks in No Name Place should have strengthened them as a couple, but instead they magnified her loneliness at being with him. His insecurity kept him apart from her. His abrasiveness drove others away. She could not share her successes with him, because he reacted only with terse comments—“Another one for the trophy case”—and that angered her and made her think that all they shared were different disappointments.

  Dwight sensed what Roxanne was thinking. The thought of his marriage’s ending both scared and saddened him, but he could not tell her that. Early in their relationship, he had wanted to protect her—emotionally—and he knew she needed that, even though she appeared strong to others. But she had rebuffed his efforts, maybe unknowingly, and he felt useless, then a stranger, alone. She wanted so little of him. He wasn’t as smart as she was, not as strong, not even as athletic. Her disdain had been evident on this trip. She never wanted his help or suggestions. If she didn’t reject his ideas outright, she was quietly unsupportive. He could see it in her eyes. She was tender only when he was weak, when he was sick.

  After their rescue, neither of them spoke about the inevitable, yet they felt it sharply, the lack of jubilation in at last being alone together. They made separate arrangements: she caught a plane back to San Francisco, and he went to Mandalay to explore the areas around the Irrawaddy. That was what he had come to see. Along those shores his great-great-grandfather had been killed.

  He pictured his ancestor looking much like himself, around his age, his same coloring, having a similar feeling of being displaced, alienated from his disappointed wife, squeezed by the tyranny of a society that would give him nothing by which he could distinguish himself. He was just another cog. He had come to Burma to work with a timber company, to see what his chances were, if his soul was still alive. He looked at the river and its broad expanse. And then came shouts, and he was surprised that death was happening so fast. Crossbow arrows rained down and sharp knives went through him with surprising ease, as if he had no muscle or bone. And then he was lying in his mess, his face close to the water, not feeling his body, but his thoughts still rushing out. He was going to die a stranger on these shores. And as the fiery sparks filled his vision, he had a startling thought—that long after he was dead, this river would still flow and so would he. He pictured a young man, who looked very much like him, about his age, his same coloring. He marveled that his blood would run through this young man, that perhaps it would draw the young man to this wild and beautiful place. And later the young man would have these same thoughts, that one day there would be another and another, with their same coloring and thoughts, who understood them both. And when that happened, neither of them would feel he was alone. They would live on together in the flow of this endless river. He died in peace believing it. And this peace would have been Dwight’s, but for the fact that he had no children.

  When he returned to San Francisco, he and Roxanne agreed to a divorce. There was no fight leading up to it. They agreed without tears or argument that the marriage was over. Two weeks after he moved out and a week after they filed the papers, he learned that Roxanne was three months pregnant. He knew she had wanted a girl. But the sonogram revealed it was a boy. She hadn’t said anything before, she explained, because she felt it shouldn’t enter into their decision whether to divorce. He wanted to cry over this sad irony. But he nodded.

  Fate kept changing course. Roxanne nearly lost the baby and had to take drastic measures. Her doctor sewed up her cervix, ordered complete bed rest, and advised she avoid stress. Without being asked, Dwight returned home. He cooked and brought her meals, cleaned up after she finished, and washed the dishes. He collected the mail, sorted out the junk, paid the bills, answered the phone and took messages when she was sleeping. He helped her bathe and pushed her in a wheelchair the short distance to the bathroom. These were the menial things they had never done for each other.

  Surprisingly, they got along well. Without expectations, they no longer had to face disappointment. Without disappointment, they were often surprised at finding what they had failed to find in the past. But it was too late, and they knew it. Dwight didn’t hope for reconciliation, and neither did Roxanne. They continued to meet with lawyers to divide up the community property and had determined that they would share equal custody of the boy.

  Roxanne was grateful to Dwight for the help, and that was enough for him, just thank you, I needed your help. And she knew that was enough, and also that he wasn’t doing this for her. It was for the baby. He was protecting the baby. The baby was a kind of hope for him—she could see that in the expression on his face, not of love for her, but of a sense of peace, of ease. He had abandoned the fight against himself. She didn’t know what the fight was; it had always been part of their problem together. If she had asked why he felt so serene, he wouldn’t have been able to tell her. It was a vague yet satisfying feeling, a strong memory that would last to the end of his life.

  In that future memory that he is yet to have, his child is a man who is very much like himself. He has come to a point in life where he feels lost and rudderless. He has been pulled to a place where he is the stranger. He stands on the shore of the Irrawaddy and thinks about who went before him and who will come after and how together but in separate times they will watch the same flow and feel it in their blood. They were never strangers.

  WHEN LUCAS WAS BORN, Roxanne had sudden attacks of fear several times a day. She was afraid that she would forget to do something critical, like feed the baby, change his diapers, or recognize that he had a fever or was not breathing. She worried she would absent-mindedly walk into a room and leave the baby there, forgetting where she had last put him, as she did often with keys. The baby was so demanding, and it was draining to keep track of all his needs—so many of them in such a tiny person.

  Roxanne’s research project demanded her attention as well, but she was too tired to keep herself and her graduate students organized and focused. She had an ocean of data from various expeditions that needed to be documented and analyzed, research from her students that she had to review, grant proposals to write, an article for a journal she had promised her coauthor she would finish and submit promptly. On top of all this, her office had to be boxed up for a move to another building. She vacillated between tending to her baby and her work. She refused to give up working, yet she did nothing with her work except fret over it. She had never felt so ambivalent about her priorities, and when she could no longer decide, she became depressed. Whenever Dwight picked up the baby to take him to his place or to the doctor’s for a checkup, she felt relief. Freed of responsibility, she wen
t to bed, but she could not sleep.

  “What’s wrong with me?” she wondered to herself. “I wanted this baby so much. A billion women have babies. It can’t be that difficult to raise one.” She attributed her problem to hormonal changes, and blamed her trepidations on her confinement in the jungle. Why else would she feel so helpless now?

  Yet she could not accept help when offered. That was proof she was failing her son and always would. Accepting help was like taking drugs. It would be addictive and in the end leave her worse off than before, she believed. Yet everyone could see that she would soon collapse.

  Dwight moved back in. He had to insist and ignore her protests, her fury that he was implying she could not handle things. Although it had cost him a new romantic relationship with a woman, how could he not help when his son was at stake? Later, when Roxanne apologized and thanked him, he said, “Don’t worry about it,” and she cried. Dwight set up the routines and the schedule. She watched how relaxed he was while feeding and changing Lucas. Dwight had no worries. He sang made-up songs to him about his nose and toes. Roxanne saw how easily Dwight organized the baby supplies. He did not coddle his son, or her. He let her feed and change the baby, and when it was his turn, Roxanne saw his look of wonder and adoration. He had shown her the same expression when she first met him as her graduate student. He had worshipped her. She had unconsciously expected that he always would.

  It gradually occurred to her that she had never known how to put herself second and defer to anyone else. All her life, from toddlerhood on, everyone had catered to her, had lavished praise and encouragement. To her parents and teachers, she was a genius, who required special attention to ensure that her full potential bloomed. Everybody looked upon her as extraordinary, powerful, and infallible, but all along, their solicitous attitude had made her weak, for she did not know what to do with her life now that this bundle in her arms cried and shrieked that he, not Roxanne, must be the only consideration in the entire world. Roxanne still tried to be extraordinary and infallible as a mother. But she failed time and again, or so she thought. She felt that her baby’s cries of distress and anger were accusing her of that.

  With Dwight’s calm and confident presence, her anxiety ebbed. She had not become stronger but more aware of how little she had given him. He was not as selfish as she had accused him of being. She had never allowed him to take care of her, beyond her demands that he acquiesce to her preferences. Now she had come to know him better in a few months than she had in ten years. And she admired him. She still had an affection for him. It was not love, but there was trust in the mix, comfort too, in knowing he did not think less of her for being needy. So what was her feeling for him called? Was it enough for them to be a couple again? Would he ever want that? Did he need her in any way?

  MY DEAR FRIEND VERA wrote the book on self-reliance that she had been hashing out in her mind during her time in the jungle. Thinking about it had kept her going, had given her a focus. Putting her thoughts to paper freed her of some burden she never knew she carried. She wondered whether she had captured what her great-grandmother had written in her book, the one she never found.

  Vera wrote about the funny techniques she came up with to survive mentally. When she felt she could not bear to walk another step, she conjugated verbs in French. She had always wanted to go to France and spend a whole month there. Years earlier, she had signed up for French classes, but she was always too busy to go. She could study in the jungle, where it served no use except to practice it. As she conjugated, she had no room in her brain to think about fear or discomfort or the futility of asking, Why me? “Je tombe de la montagne,” she had recited. “Je tombais de la montagne. Je tomberai de la montagne.”

  And then she came to the uncomfortable questions. She had once been so sure of what she meant by helping others. Wendy had wanted to give Tibet back to the Tibetans. And Vera argued in turn that you had to give up idealism and make the Tibetans self-reliant. You had to find them jobs. Her intention was to make them strong. Her organization tackled social problems in exactly that way.

  But how did you know whether your intention would help, or whether it would only lead to worse problems? Sanctions or engagement? How could anyone know which approach would work? Who could guarantee it? And if it failed, who suffered the consequences? Who took responsibility? Who would undo the mess? Would anyone be around to care?

  No one had any answers. And it made Vera want to shout and cry.

  She did not write that in her book. Instead she recalled the night when she was overcome by the pounding drums. She and the others believed for a moment that they inhabited one another’s minds, and that was because they became the same mind. She wrote that it was a delusion, of course. Yet it was a delusion worth having from time to time. Sympathy wasn’t enough. You had to be that person and know that person’s life and hopes as your own. You had to feel the desperation of wanting to stay alive.

  The book had been more difficult to write than she expected. The swirl of important ideas and powerful epiphanies seemed diminished on the page. They became fixed words and were no longer fresh internal debate. Still, she finished, and was excited and nervous to see what people would think, how her work might change their lives. It could have a ripple effect. She did not want to get her expectations up too high, yet writing about personal discovery could prove to be her calling.

  And then she could not find a publisher. She kept sending out the manuscript and received only rejections or never heard back. It had been a waste of time to write the damn thing. She was going to throw it in the trash—it pained her to see it, this big lump of wasted time. But then she reconsidered. She was stronger than that. It wasn’t a failure. She simply had not come out of the jungle yet. She needed perspective. She needed to revise her life before she could revise her book.

  No more excuses about obligations. No more thinking she was indispensable. She bought a ticket for Paris. On the plane, she conjugated verbs that would soon have real meaning: Je crie au monde. J’ai crié au monde. Je crierai pour que le monde m’entende. I will shout to the world to hear me.

  BENNIE REUNITED with Timothy and their children, the three cats. He discovered that Timothy had indeed read his mind. It was amazing, they said over and over: Christmas had waited for them. It was all there: The decorations and the gingerbread house with gumdrops. The twinkling lights around the window frames and the electric candles on the sills. The embroidered runner from the 1950s was on the mantel, the stockings were hanging with their embroidered names. The Franklin Mint plates illustrating the twelve days of Christmas still graced the dining room table, and in the center were pomegranates and tangerines in a bowl; fresh supplies had been required when mold set in.

  “Good thing I came back,” Bennie said. “This place would have wound up looking like Miss Havisham’s wedding boudoir.” He then burst into tears, hugged Timothy, and whispered, “We never let go.”

  Because the fir tree had to be removed for reasons of fire safety, the presents lay under a silk palm tree, which had been sprayed with balsam scent. Their presents waited, unopened and rewrapped with yellow ribbon. There was an extra gift, purchased after Timothy had learned that Bennie was missing. It was a cashmere sweater—and way too big, Bennie said proudly. The sentiment fit just right, he added, and he would keep the sweater, which I thought was wise. The daily celebrations of cake and champagne, plus bacon and eggs every morning, then baby back ribs at night, were bound to restore to him the twenty pounds he had lost, and fairly soon.

  But most everything else fit the same. Nothing had changed, except his sense of gratitude, his appreciation of everything he had. It was just as you expect you should feel and what seldom actually happens without ugly little twists. What Bennie was grateful for most was love. He felt it so deeply that several times a day he cried, just at realizing how lucky he was. He had the kind of satisfaction I never felt when I was alive.

  MARLENA AND HARRY finally had their long-awaited night of p
assion. When they came out of the jungle, Esmé’s father was waiting to take her home. Harry and Marlena flew to Bangkok and checked into a luxury hotel. The lovemaking was again delayed, because Harry had to do dozens of exclusive interviews. When they were finally alone, they took inventory. No mosquito nets over the bed, no citronella candles, no chance of ritual burning of designer sheaths. She was shy and he was bold, but there was no hesitation or awkwardness. With the secret aid of a sliver of Balanophora that Moff had given him as a send-off gift, their night of passion was a great and prolonged success.

  When they had exhausted themselves, she cried, and he was concerned, until she told him it was for joy that she felt free enough to lose her senses. What an endearing girl! Only a few other women had confessed that at the end of lovemaking. He never tired of hearing it. Of course, he was done with other women, he reminded himself, especially the younger girls. It was a strain to keep up with them, especially when he could not always be Johnny-on-the-spot, so to speak. Marlena would understand—not that it had happened with her, but in case it did. She would accept this with love and never pity or laughter. Of course, they could always get more of the Balanophora. Lord, that was a bit of all right.

  Over the months, their love affair continued to be wonderful, a brilliant match. Harry called her his fiancée, as he had declared on the news. He still needed to choose a wedding ring. He told Marlena he was thinking of having one custom-made, but he had not found the perfect designer. The perfect designer would come after they had signed the prenuptial agreement. That shouldn’t be a problem, he reasoned, since Marlena made almost as much money as he did—even more when you considered she didn’t pay anyone alimony or child support, as he did. She probably had the same practical attitude about these sorts of things. Then again, women often took legal matters in entirely the wrong way.