Sightseeing Read online

  Truth be told, I also didn’t enjoy the trips because they made me feel self-conscious. Back home in America, a man in my condition may leave his house and encounter the smug, pitying stares of his fellow human beings. It took me a while to learn to ignore that, but here in Thailand the same problem’s compounded by the fact that these people like to talk about me. I complained to Jack once and he called me paranoid and narcissistic, but I just said, “Try getting paraded around in a wheelchair, Jack. Try that and see if you don’t feel like they’re talking about you.”

  So for the rest of the week we went to the local mall. Jack and I would go into the Cineplex and watch American action movies while the children accompanied Tida on her jaunts through the mall’s various department stores. That wasn’t so bad. It actually made me pretty happy. As the lights dimmed and the film started rolling, it felt like being back home for a few hours, especially once I learned to ignore the gaudy yellow subtitles. And it felt like old times between Jack and me. We were just father and son catching a flick together, and it was easy enough then to forget my troubles for a little while. It even seemed on occasion that when we emerged from the theater the world out there might be one we both knew well.

  The children are still outside batting around the shuttlecock when Jack gets home. I tell him about kicking the boy. He laughs. He says, “Give it some time, Father. He’s just a kid. He’s probably already forgotten about it.”

  “You should’ve seen his face,” I say. “He looked at me like I was a monster.”

  “Wait,” Jack teases. “You’re not a monster?”

  “Very funny,” I say. “I’m serious, Jack. I feel awful.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jack says. “You can kick him in the face a hundred times and he’d still be your grandson.”

  Tida’s sitting at the dining room table doing the bills. Jack walks over and bends down to kiss her on the head. They speak to each other in Thai for a little while. It’s strange and perplexing to hear Jack speak Thai. You grow old thinking you know your kid and then he suddenly starts speaking a foreign language and you never knew him at all.

  I maneuver the wheelchair toward them, the electric engine wheezing beneath me.

  “At least talk to him for me,” I say, interrupting their conversation. “Tell him I’m sorry. Tell him I didn’t mean to kick him in the face.”

  “All right,” Jack says, smiling. “I’ll have a little chat with him if it makes you feel better.”

  “No worry, Mister Perry,” the wife intones. She puts a hand on my dead right arm. “Sornram okay. He just little boy.”

  I blink at the wife. She and Jack start talking again. Jack’s telling her some story, maybe something funny about his day, because she laughs every so often at what he’s saying. They seem happy with their own company, so I wheel myself over to my room.

  It’s a small gray room with concrete walls that they’d used as storage space before I got here. Jack said it’s temporary. He said I’d have a room on the second floor once they retrofitted the stairs with some fancy contraption that’s supposed to take me up there like a skier in a chairlift. I remember Mac installing one of those things so Carmen could get to the basement, but she’d died without ever getting to use it. Once, before my stroke—a little bored and a little drunk on sherry—Mac and I rode the thing and timed each other to see who could do it the fastest.

  I think about writing Mac a letter but when I go to the computer they’ve set up for me I can’t figure out how to turn it on. I also don’t really know what to write; I can’t see how he’d be interested in hearing about my grandson getting kicked in the face. Besides, I’ve already written Mac three letters and I’ve yet to receive a reply. So I close my eyes, thinking I might take a nap before dinner. I feel exhausted. I didn’t get much sleep last night. But when I try to rest I keep seeing the boy’s little face looking at me like I’d tried to destroy one of his beloved stuffed animals.

  I hear the children come in the house at last. They’re talking to their father. The girl laughs hysterically at something Jack’s doing and the boy’s voice sounds like he wants to participate too. The wife is laughing along with them, calling Jack’s name in a teasing manner. I don’t know what they’re saying, I don’t know what the hell they’re doing out there, but they sound pretty much like a normal family from where I’m sitting and suddenly I’m smiling like some loony alone in his padded room.

  I keep a picture of Alice by my bed. I pick it up. It’s not a remarkable photo, just my Alice standing at the sink washing dishes, but there’s something nice about the late evening light cascading through the vanilla drapes in front of her. Alice never liked having her picture taken. She couldn’t see why we needed them. Perry, she’d said that day, laughing, when in my boredom I’d brought out the old Leica, what am I going to do with a picture of myself? And I remember telling her then that the picture wasn’t for her, it was for me, so just shut up and give me your best smile, Alice, look beautiful for me, because when my mind goes I’m gonna need something to remember you by.

  I put the picture back on the stand. It’s a sauna in here. I feel like fainting. I feel like crying. When I look up, the little boy is standing in the doorway, peering in shyly at me.

  “Hello,” he says sheepishly. “How do you do?”

  He’s always asking me this. He learned a little English in the first grade, but that’s the only phrase he seems to remember. He still has wads of toilet paper flaring from both his nostrils.

  “How do you do?” he says again, like I hadn’t heard him the first time.

  “Hey,” I say, turning the chair around. I wave him over. “Come here. Let me take a look at that nose.”

  He eyes me curiously, takes slow, cautious steps into my room. I reach out and hold his small chin up to the light with my good left hand. He looks confused, a little frightened by the gesture.

  “You’ll be all right,” I say, inspecting his face. “Sorry about that.”

  When I let go the kid reaches out and hugs me so hard I almost fall out of the chair. He squeezes me tight around the neck and I can barely breathe. When he’s done, he waves at me with both hands, says “Bye-bye,” and then runs out of the room like he can’t get away from me fast enough. I sit there listening to his footsteps pattering back to the dining room. A little later Jack pokes his head in the door and says, “Everything all right with the kid? Why are you sitting in the dark, Father?” and I say, “Yeah, Jack. The kid’s all right. I think we have an understanding now.”

  After dinner, Jack tells me we’re going to a temple tonight. When I give him a look, he tells me there’s a fair. A carnival. The kids want to go, he says. They’ve been talking about it all month. The girl’s starting to catch some of the conversations between Jack and me. She looks at us while we talk and says, “We have fun, Grandfather. We have good time,” and I say, “All right, girl. Let’s go. I suppose I wouldn’t mind whupping you at Skee-Ball.”

  “Skee-Ball?” the girl asks.

  “They don’t have Skee-Ball here,” Jack informs me.

  “Too bad for you,” I say to the girl. “Your life’s diminished.”

  She gives her father a confused look. Jack puts a hand on her head, says something to her in Thai, and she bounds up the stairs to get dressed.

  “Hey,” Jack says to me as I’m watching the girl. “You’re smiling, old man. Don’t tell me you’re in a good mood.”

  “Jack,” I say. “You’re pissing me off.”

  The temple isn’t far; it takes only fifteen minutes. The wife helps me out of the car. After she straps me in, she takes a finger from my dead hand and scratches her own face with it. Everybody thinks it’s a gas. The kids laugh, Jack laughs, and the wife’s so happy with herself tears stream down her face. She’s still holding my dead hand and I can almost feel it shaking with her hilarity.

  “Ha ha,” I say. “Very funny. Now give me my damn hand back.”

  There’s bright lights and loud music
and people all over the temple grounds. The boy’s beside himself with excitement. He races ahead with his sister, runs back to report on what he’s seen. Jack and his wife nod absentmindedly and the kid sprints to join his sister at the gates once more.

  “Somebody give that kid a tranquilizer,” I say. “He’s gonna poop his pants if he doesn’t calm down.”

  It’s the usual carny fare. A Ferris wheel, a carousel, giant teacups, a Tilt-A-Whirl, a mini-roller coaster speeding through some poorly conceived jungle scene. All sorts of games and stuffed animals. The temple’s monks sit in booths collecting tickets, ruffling their saffron robes every so often like orange birds preening themselves. Thai music blares from the temple’s staticky speakers. There’s some clown walking around on stilts. He’s poking people with a giant foam noodle, laughing and guffawing loudly, his stilts clopping on the pavement like hooves. He’s walking toward us now and I’m thinking that if he so much as grazes me with that noodle I’m gonna kick the goddamn stilts from under him. The children are excited. They approach the clown, peer stupidly up at his face. He whacks my grandson on the head a few times. The boy’s practically epileptic with delight. When the clown approaches me I give him my best snarl. He seems to get the point. I can almost see the man’s smile disappearing beneath that coat of ridiculous clown paint. He quickly diverts his attention to a group of teenage girls nearby.

  For a while, we just let the kids lead us through the fair. We stand by the rails and watch them take a few rides. At the Ferris wheel, I can hear my mongrel grandchildren yelling down at us from the sky. The boy waves every time their car dips to its lowest point. One time, the boy screams “ass” over and over again as he’s coming down. I laugh. Jack gives me a look. “Nice, Father,” he says.

  “I didn’t teach him that,” I say. “Why would I teach him that?”

  The girl sees a group of her girlfriends from school. I can tell that she wants to wander the fair with them. She asks Jack and he looks over at his wife. Tida shrugs like she can’t see any harm in it. The little boy wants to go with his sister. Jack and Tida are talking to them both now. They have stern, parental looks on their faces. They’re telling the girl to take care of her brother. Jack takes off his watch and gives it to my granddaughter. We’re to meet back at the Ferris wheel in an hour. Before we can even say good-bye they’ve joined the crowd snaking their way through the temple grounds.

  The three of us wander over to a tent outside the temple gates. Most of the adults have congregated there. There’s an empty dance floor with a mirror ball. They’re serving beer. I ask Jack to get me one. “I don’t know if a man in your condition should be drinking,” Jack says, and I say, “Don’t be stupid, Jack. My condition’s the reason a man like me should be drinking.” I tell Jack I want a Budweiser and he looks at me like I have horns.

  He comes back with a beer for each of us. I’m concentrating hard, trying not to spill it on myself, the liquid dancing against the lip of the plastic cup. Jack asks me if I need help, but I tell him I still know how to drink a beer, thank you very much. Then I spill a little on my lap.

  “Dammit,” I say.

  The wife laughs. Jack smiles and takes the cup from my shaking left hand. “I’ll get you a straw,” he says. “Dammit,” I say again. “Don’t get me a straw, Jack. Nobody drinks beer with a straw.”

  “You need a straw,” he says.

  A little later Jack tells me his wife wants to dance.

  “Go,” I say. “Dance. You’re a grown man, Jack. You don’t need my permission. I’ll just sit here and play with my sippee cup.”

  Jack leads Tida to the dance floor. They’re the only people out there. It seems the whole place is watching them. Everybody looks up to watch my son—this tall, foreign man—dancing with his Thai wife. It’s a slow Thai song and another couple, both Thai, join them on the floor, the lights from the mirror ball sweeping back and forth. Jack’s holding his wife close. They’re smiling at each other like there’s so much love between them they don’t know what to do with it. I’m a little embarrassed; I don’t really want to look, though I also can’t take my eyes off them. I’m sucking on my beer, thinking how you never get used to seeing your child’s romantic side, when I look around and see some of the men under the tent snickering in Jack’s direction. I notice, too, that the women are talking to one another sternly, peering at Jack and his wife. I can tell by the way they look at her that they think Tida’s some kind of prostitute and suddenly I’m proud of them both for being out there dancing, proud of my boy Jack for holding his wife so close, because their love suddenly seems for the first time like something courageous and worthwhile, and I’m thinking: There he is, Alice. There’s your boy. There’s our little man.

  * * *

  When we meet the kids back at the Ferris wheel, the temple’s starting to empty. Some of the monks are sweeping the grounds. My grandkids are talking a mile a minute to Jack and Tida, telling them about all the things they’ve done. The boy shows me a ratty stuffed giraffe he’s won at some game. “How do you do?” he says. He holds the thing proudly above his head. “Geeraahf!” he says, and I say, “Yeah, kid. Giraffe.”

  “Grandfather okay?” the girl asks. There’s a purple rose painted on each of her cheeks. “Grandfather have fun at temple?”

  “Sure,” I tell her. “Grandfather had fun. Grandfather drank some beer. Grandfather got a little drunk.” The girl looks at me perplexed. Jack and his wife laugh. My son translates for the girl and she grins mischievously at me. “I see,” she says, nodding earnestly. “Drunk.”

  We’re halfway out of the temple when I see four teenage boys in bumper cars ramming into each other, giggling like hyenas. My grandson runs up to the rails and watches the boys in there for a while, hugging the giraffe close to his chest.

  “Look at that, Jack,” I say. “He’s just like you. Remember how you used to love bumper cars?”

  “Yeah,” Jack says. “Sure.”

  The boy wants to ride the bumper cars. He wants to get in there with the older boys. Jack and his wife both shake their heads no. “C’mon,” I say. “Don’t be such a curmudgeon.”

  Jack peers down at me like I amuse him. He says something to the wife, who shrugs, and then he calls his son over. The boy skips excitedly back to his father. The girl’s excited now too. She wants to get in there as well.

  The bumper cars come to a sudden stop; time’s up for the teenage boys. They all get out, walk over to the monk manning the lever, hand him more money, and return to their cars again, broad smiles on their faces. The monk looks over at Jack and the kids. Jack fishes out his wallet, gives the boy and girl some money.

  “We should all go,” I say suddenly.

  Jack looks at me like I just farted.

  “Very funny,” he says, watching the kids run over to the monk.

  “C’mon, Jack,” I say. “It’ll be a blast.”

  “You can’t get in there, Father.”

  “Sure I can.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Let me get in there with them,” I say. “Let me have a little fun with my grandkids.”

  Before Jack can respond, I’m already waving my good left arm for the monk to hold on, wheeling myself toward the bumper cars. Jack’s saying “Father,” but I’ve got the chair on Fastest, the wheels skipping quickly over the dirt. He and his wife are both walking briskly beside me now, trying to keep up. “Mister Perry,” Tida says.

  When I get to him, the monk looks down at me, looks up at Jack, looks back at me once more, a wry smile on his face. He pulls his orange robes tighter around him. I wonder for a moment if he’s wearing anything under there.

  “Give me some money,” I say to Jack, holding out my good left hand.

  “No,” Jack says. “You can’t go in there, Father.”

  “Who says?”

  “He says.” Jack nods in the monk’s direction. I peer up at the guy.

  “You really say that?” I ask the monk, but the guy just
looks at Jack and Tida for help. He says something in Thai and Tida responds, laughing awkwardly. The monk’s smiling some more at me now. I look over and see my grandson pretending to drive the bumper car even though it can’t go anywhere yet.

  “Let me get in there,” I say to the monk, nodding in the direction of the cars. “I’ll be all right, Mister Monk.”

  “Father—”

  “Jack,” I say, turning to my son. “Please.” But Jack just frowns at me, blinking. “You really want me to be happy here?” I say. “Well, Jack, this is it. This’ll make me happy. I swear. You let me in there and I’ll be as happy as you want me to be.”

  Jack licks his lips. I can tell he’s thinking about it. I can tell I’ve almost got him. All the kids stare at us impatiently from their bumper cars. Jack sighs and says something to the monk. The monk just shrugs his shoulders, retrieves a pack of cigarettes from his robes.

  “This isn’t happening,” Jack says, reaching for his wallet.

  When Jack gets me out of the wheelchair and carries me across the tarmac, all the kids fall silent. He helps me into an old red car, slides me into the passenger seat. He moves to get in beside me. I tell him to get his own car.