The Paradise Guest House (14 page)

“The day that Ethan got sick, I was working on a story in South Boston. I used to be a journalist. My wife called me and told me that his fever had spiked. I told her to call the doctor. I said something awful about being in the middle of an important story, that I couldn’t leave work every time he got sick.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, remembering the way she’d yelled at him. “You don’t have to be an asshole,” she said. And for the hundredth time since his divorce, he wondered: How do people who love each other come to treat each other so badly?

Gabe had reimagined that day so many times—he would tell Heather that he’d meet them at the doctor’s office. Poor kid, he’d say to her. Poor you.

When he got to the clinic, Ethan would already be feeling better, as if a mere change in Gabe’s behavior could rewrite his story.

“What was wrong with him?” Jamie asked.

“It just started with a fever. By the middle of the next day he was in the hospital. Twenty-four hours later he was dead.”

“My God.”

“Spinal meningitis. But we didn’t know that until it was all over.”

They had gone to Legal Sea Foods for dinner the night before. “My head hurts,” Ethan complained as soon as they ordered their food.

“Come here, sweetheart,” Heather said.

Ethan climbed onto her lap, and Heather leaned over and pressed her lips to his forehead.

“He’s warm.”

“It’s hot in here,” Gabe said.

“He’s really warm.”

Ethan closed his eyes and curled up on his mother’s lap.

“I’ll take him home,” Heather said. “Do you mind getting the food to go and meeting us there?” She was already lifting Ethan up and adjusting him in her arms.

By the time Gabe got home with three boxed dinners, Ethan
was asleep in his big-boy bed and Heather was lying beside him.

“I’ve got dinner,” Gabe said to her, standing in the doorway.

“Sleeping,” Heather murmured.

He ate alone that night; he slept alone.

“He was four,” Gabe said to Jamie. “He was in a hospital bed that was too big for him. His skin was ghostly white. I said to my wife, ‘Remember how tan he was after the week at the Cape? What happened to his summer tan?’ ”

Gabe waited a moment. Years later, and the memories were still too raw.

“My sister, Molly, stayed with us at the hospital all night. She was just here in Bali—I took her to the airport … yesterday? Was that only yesterday? Before the bombing.”

He looked at Jamie, suddenly disoriented. She nodded.

“Molly told Ethan stories about a dog named Ethanopolis. The dog had superpowers, and whenever his owner was about to succumb to great danger, Ethanopolis would sweep in and save the day.”

Jamie was smiling. Gabe thought: She’s beautiful. Even now, with her face half covered in bandages, there’s something alluring about her. He pushed the thought away.

“We could all use an Ethanopolis in our lives,” she said.

“Molly was telling Ethan a story about a tornado in the small town where Ethanopolis and his boy lived, when Ethan started having a seizure. The nurses and doctors poured into the room and we were pushed out. This is crazy, but while we were sitting in the waiting room I kept imagining all the ways that Ethanopolis could save the day. Ethan was caught in the eye of the tornado, and while he was carried across Massachusetts,
Ethanopolis raced along, barking in fury, until finally he swooped through the swirling mass of the storm, caught my boy in his front paws, and carried him to safety.”

Gabe stopped talking. He heard the sound of a gecko—
uh-oh, uh-oh
, it seemed to say. He searched the ceiling and the walls, but he couldn’t find it.
Uh-oh
.

“I bet he was a wonderful kid,” Jamie said finally.

“He was,” Gabe said. “Every day he told me a secret when he woke up in the morning. First he’d make me promise to never ever tell anyone. I would solemnly swear. Then he would whisper in my ear. ‘I hate peanut butter,’ he’d say. Or ‘Miss Vera smells like poop.’ ”

“And you never told a soul.”

He smiled. “I’m good with secrets.”

“I’ll remember that.”

They both fell silent. Gabe put his book on the floor beside him.

“I could ask you how many people died last night, but I don’t want to know,” Jamie said. She ran her fingers along her cast.

“Can I get you something to eat?” he asked. “There’s soup.”

“No,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Your boss called. Larson. He said he’ll fire you if you don’t come home right away.”

“That’s Larson.” She offered a half smile.

His phone rang in his pocket. He pulled it out and answered.

“Hello?”

“This is Jamie’s mom.” He heard the woman’s worry right away.

“Hold on,” he said. “I’ll put her on.” He walked over to the bed and placed the phone in Jamie’s hand.

“Mom,” she said. She sounded exhausted.

The woman started to sob—Gabe could hear the sound reverberate through the room. Jamie closed her eyes.

“I’m okay,” she said. “Really. Some cuts. A broken arm. Nothing—”

She shook her head and her face darkened. “Don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to know.”

After another moment she said, “Stop. Mom. Please.”

Pushing herself up in the bed, she rearranged the pillow under her arm.

“I’ll find out about Miguel’s body. Then I’ll call his family.”

Gabe walked toward the French door. He should have called already. He wasn’t thinking clearly.

“Tomorrow,” Jamie said behind him. “I’ll get a plane out tomorrow. I’m not flying tonight.”

Gabe walked to the edge of the patio, looking out toward the garden.

He could hear Jamie say, “I love you, too.”

And then she was quiet. The next time he looked in, she was sleeping again, curled on her side, the blanket pushed to the end of the bed.

From the garden, Gabe called Wayan. He asked him to stop by at the end of the day and take a look at Jamie’s cut. He was worried about infection.

“There is no end of my day,” Wayan said.

“What have you learned?” Gabe asked. “About the bombing.”

“Over two hundred dead,” Wayan told him. “Many of them Australian. The hospitals can’t cope. Hundreds seriously
injured. We’re shipping everyone out. It’s a nightmare at Sanglah.”

“Has anyone claimed responsibility?”

“I don’t know,” Wayan said. “All I know is that we need doctors and supplies and we need a fucking burn unit. We don’t even have enough IV saline to keep this many burn victims hydrated. We don’t have the morphine to keep them from wailing with pain.”

“You don’t need to stop by,” Gabe said. “Call in a prescription for antibiotics. I’ll take care of her.”

“Just send her home,” Wayan insisted.

“She’ll leave tomorrow,” Gabe told him.

“There are flights out right now. They’re putting medical personnel on the planes. They’re getting victims to good hospitals.”

“I’ll tell her,” Gabe said.

“Rai is going to a cleansing ceremony on the beach tonight,” Wayan said, his voice softer. “Maybe you should go. It might be good for you.”

“Thank you, Wayan. Good luck with all of it.”

It was almost evening when Gabe heard Jamie cry out—a sharp scream and then a muffled cry. He ran from the edge of the patio, where he had been watching the colors of the garden change with the fading light.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She was sitting in bed, cradling her arm.

“A nightmare,” she said. “And pain.”

He got a pain pill from the vial in the bathroom and poured water into a glass. He handed her both.

“In the nightmare,” she said, “Miguel was alive. He was covered in blood. He tried to speak but blood spilled from his mouth.”

Gabe sat at the edge of her bed.

“He was alive when I found him,” she said, her voice shaky. “He was crushed by part of the wall, but his eyes were open and he could see me.”

“Could he talk?”

Jamie shook her head. “He tried to say something, but nothing came out. I told him I was going to get him out of there. I told him he was going to make it.”

She was trembling, and Gabe pulled the blanket up to her shoulders. He rested his hand on her arm.

“I don’t even know if I loved him,” Jamie said. “We only spent a few weeks together—whenever we could see each other between my trips to South America. I never met his family.”

“I made some calls earlier,” Gabe said gently. “The morgue identified his body.”

“How?”

“He had his wallet. They were able to let his family know.” Gabe had spent an hour on the phone with five different people at the makeshift morgue. Most of the bodies were so badly burned that the process of identifying them was very difficult, the woman told him. But they had already listed Miguel Avalos of Santiago, Chile.

“I have to call his parents,” Jamie said. “What do I say? I invited your son to Bali for a fabulous vacation and now he’s gone?”

Gabe straightened the blanket around her and let his hands drop onto his lap.

“You’ll find the right words,” he told her.

Jamie grimaced.

“Where’s the pain?” he asked.

“Everywhere.”

“Can I look at the cut?”

She turned her face toward him.

He carefully unwrapped the bandage. The wound was swollen, and he could see some weeping from the sutures.

“Wayan ordered antibiotics,” Gabe told her. “I didn’t want to go to the pharmacy while you were sleeping. In case you woke up and needed something.”

“It’s not infected,” she said. “If it were, it would feel hot.”

He placed his hand gently on the wound.

“It does feel hot,” he said. “Wayan said they’re flying the injured to hospitals in other countries. We can get you out tonight.”

“Tomorrow,” she insisted. “I’m staying until tomorrow.”

“I’m going to walk into town. I’ll just make a quick stop at the pharmacy.”

Jamie didn’t answer.

“You
will
get better,” Gabe said. “This will end.”

“I can’t imagine,” she whispered.

“When my son died,” he said, “I couldn’t imagine how to spend another day in this world.”

“How’d you do it?”

“Every day was hell for a while, and then it got a little easier. About a year later, I noticed that I got through a whole day without thinking about him. At first I felt awful, as if I had betrayed him. And then I realized that maybe that’s where I was headed. A life without him in my thoughts all the time.”

“And now?”

“I think about him a lot. But not all the time.”

She seemed to consider his words.

Gabe moved his hand to her shoulder. His fingers rested on the bare skin above the collar of her shirt. He thought of her boyfriend, touching her only a couple of nights ago. Lifting his hand away, he stood and walked to the chair by the window.

“I don’t know anything about you,” he said, sitting down.

“Nothing matters,” she told him.

The day after Ethan died, he stood in the funeral parlor, looking at coffins. The undertaker asked him what he did for a living. He thought: What does it matter? My career, my wife, my beautifully restored Colonial house. Who gives a fuck? Yesterday he had a life. Today he had no life.

He chose a simple coffin, impossibly small.

He never wrote another article for the paper. His wife left him. His house sold for a fraction of what it was worth.

“Ethan had an imaginary friend,” Gabe told Jamie.

She smiled, and he felt relieved to see it.

“His friend was named Fritz, and he was as tall as a tree but he could fold himself into tiny spaces. I pictured him as a kind of origami child. Ethan set a place for Fritz at the table at every meal. Fritz hated corn and tomatoes. He loved spaghetti. After dinner Ethan and Fritz would play in the backyard. He asked us not to come outside, though we were allowed to watch him from the kitchen window. If we came outside, Fritz ran away. He was very frightened of adults.”

“I like this kid,” Jamie said.

Gabe nodded. “I think he’s not alone now. I don’t believe in heaven, I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I believe in Fritz.”

“I believe in Fritz,” Jamie murmured sleepily. She curled onto her side.

“The pharmacy is close by,” Gabe said. “I’ll be back very soon.”

“Good night,” she whispered.

When Gabe walked into town he was again surprised—the streets were empty, the cafés quiet. There was no music blasting from Sammy’s Irish Pub, and only a couple of Westerners sat at an outside table, nursing beers. He heard chanting from the yoga studio in town; a kind of low breathy hum reverberated from the open windows. Prayers, he thought. The New Agers in Bali would have their yoga and chanting and prayer circles to turn to now. The Balinese had their religion. They would have rituals to help them through this crisis; they would have song and dance and their very strong belief in the afterlife to soothe their own pain. Whatever it takes to get you through.

He had nothing when Ethan died. His sister told him to talk to her rabbi in Cambridge. He sat with the surprisingly young woman for a strained hour, listening to her speak about God and his mysterious ways. He made a donation to the temple and never returned.

Heather had her wonderful friends, who swooped in and gathered her up, took her away. They fed her and walked with her in slow loops around Fresh Pond; they held her and cried with her. There were so many good women that there was no room for Gabe in the middle of it all. “Thank you,” he kept saying to them all. “Thank you for taking such good care of her.”

Six months later she was gone, swept away by the power of sisterhood. “You can’t give me anything,” she said to him the last night she spent in their house. “You can’t even give me your grief to hold.”

He couldn’t argue. She went to live with one of her friends, and he heard through another friend that the two women had become lovers. He was surprised at first and then comforted by the fact that she was happy. She deserved love, Gabe thought. She deserved someone else.

He walked the city for a year. He sold the house and moved to a small apartment in the Back Bay. He quit his job. He had enough money to get by for a little while. “I’m okay,” he told anyone who asked, and after a while they stopped asking. He woke up in the morning, put on his hiking boots, and walked the streets of Boston, stopping only to buy food when he was hungry. He walked in the rain and in the snow, and at the end of the year he had lost twenty pounds and all of his friends. He bought a one-way ticket to Bali because someone told him it was cheap and warm. He was tired of walking.