Saving Fish From Drowning (63 page)

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?

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. . .

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 4 5 8

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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, 4 5 9

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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 passion. When they came out of the jungle, Esmé’s father was wait4 6 0

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ing 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.

Somehow things would work out, he was confident of that. Their 4 6 1

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love was based on understanding, on overlooking their small defects and seeing what was most important. Love with companionship. He wanted to slap himself for having been so blind to it. He had sought women in the past as a way to reflect himself. The women’s eyes, their pulsating irises, had been a mirror of what he wanted them to adore. His strength. His knowledge. His social ease. His confidence.

His well-timed words. All the qualities of a man above men. He had presented a parody of the male god, rather like his televised self.

Well, banish that, at least after hours. And at home with Marlena he would simply be himself. He might have to learn what that was, which was frightening, but he was ready.

His show was doing superbly. Ratings were higher than ever. He won another Emmy. All that criticism he received for being a stooge to the Burmese military regime dissipated once he had a chance to explain how he used the limelight to make people aware of the plight of his friends and of all those who lived in Burma under fear. After all, hadn’t things turned out well for everyone?

Harry continued working on his book,
Come. Sit. Stay.
His chapter on adaptability included real-life examples from his friends’ stint in the jungle. It was the perfect opportunity to look at attributes of human behavior in groups under stress and pack behavior among dogs. He had interviewed his friends about the alliances they forged for the good of the group. Who became the leader? How were decisions made? Were there any problems in making decisions? My friends, however, were circumspect, which is a trait that dogs do not possess. They lied for the sake of the group. They said Bennie was the leader from start to finish. He received input from the group, conferred with Black Spot, the leader of the other group, and together they reached consensus. So what if these reports were not reliable? In some instances, lying is admirable.

Marlena wished Harry would change his mind and stay at her

place every now and then. She had a lovely home in Parnassus 4 6 2

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Heights, but she moved into Harry’s apartment on Russian Hill when he declared it their love nest. It was smaller than her place, and made even smaller by serving as a kennel to several dogs, including an Italian spinone and a briard, which were the size of ponies. Because Harry was an expert on dog training, she had expected his dogs would know all kinds of useful tricks, like fetching the newspaper. She didn’t expect their wagging tails would knock over valuable pieces of art on the coffee table. She found them sprawled on the floor in the most inconvenient places. And lounging on the best spots were two little furry foot slippers, Pup-pup and my sweet Poochini, who, I was glad to see, had settled in comfortably. He no longer sat by the door waiting for me to come and take him home.

After a month of living together, Marlena worked up the reasons that she and Harry should alternate homes. She had a big fenced-in yard for the dogs, she pointed out, and a view of the city almost as nice as his overlooking the Bay. Plus it was roomier, with extra space for an office for each of them, as well as a future media room. He said it sounded heavenly. If only his damn schedule were not so demanding and unpredictable—the early-morning calls, last-minute glitches, and unforeseen disasters. That very morning at the studio, a chow dog had eaten a whole box of chocolates that his cretin-brained owner left on the table as a gift to the crew. They had to call Doggie 911 and then work late to make up for that fiasco. Marlena right away agreed that her place was too far from the studio, another fifteen minutes, twenty if traffic was bad. She understood completely.

She and Esmé would continue to stay at her home every now and then, especially when he was immersed in the writing of his book and needed solitude. Dear Harry responded, “Darling, if you really want me to stay at your house from time to time . . .” No! She wouldn’t hear of it. But it was sweet of him to offer. Later, she wondered whether he really had offered.

While the sex continued to be fantastic, sometimes Harry was too 4 6 3

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plastered to make love. Marlena had been having twinges of worry.

The plain truth was, Harry drank too much. It took a while to let this enter her consciousness. But there was no denying it. He lived from cocktail to cocktail, with meetings, lunches, dinners, and parties accompanied by social lubricants. She enjoyed, at most, the occasional half-glass of a bold and expensive French burgundy. He enjoyed bold and expensive as well, a couple of bottles’ worth. She once tried to hint that “they” should drink less—and he joked that her
less
would take her down to dribbles. But he was responsive. He heard the hint, and that night he had only one martini before dinner, but after dinner his math and memory were not working properly, and he increased the postprandial refreshments by several additional nightcaps.

Perhaps she was fretting for nothing. Harry wasn’t exactly in the gutter. He never drove when he was tipsy, or rather, he didn’t seem tipsy when he was driving. Furthermore, he was a successful and respected man, and she was lucky that he loved her. He was a playful and resourceful lover, always trying new adventures, open to every intimacy. He loved every freckle and mole, not that she had many of those. But he named the ones he found. And he spoke of love in all the ways she had dreamed of—of knowing each other’s foibles and laughing about them, of growing old and holding hands, of giving each other secret looks that were part of their language. And he promised they would still do this when they were senile and too aged to lock loins without throwing out their backs or artificial hips. He vowed they would remember it all, and they would be more in love than ever as the years rolled by. He said all those remarkable things to her. If only he remembered the next morning that he had.