The Bigness of the World (20 page)

In keeping with the restaurant’s theme, Martin ordered frog legs, which he had never had before. Several minutes after placing his order, as the two of them sat rolling their bamboo placemats up like
tiny carpets and letting them unfurl, he watched as a boy bent over the little pool and, hands flashing, grabbed two plump, kicking frogs and rushed back to the kitchen with them. Martin was horrified. He thought that if he hurried, he could change his order before the damage was done, but when he looked up, his wife was staring at him with such naked revulsion that he did nothing, nothing, that is, except suck the frog legs clear down to the bone when they arrived.

The trip had gone on like this, the two of them speaking only about small matters such as who would request more toilet paper and what bus seats they had been assigned. They continued to sleep in the same bed, not talking, not touching, not even accidentally, and finally, after a week of this, Martin gathered his courage one morning at breakfast and asked, “Is it because of what happened in the airport?” For even though it was impossible to change things, he felt that he had to know.

His wife had stared at him blankly for a moment. She was eating papaya, which she loved but which they rarely had back home in Ohio.

“Perhaps we should go our separate ways?” he said then because as he watched her eat the papaya and smack her lips, he understood that she was content, perhaps even happy.

“Think about the money,” she scolded. “How can we afford another two weeks if we don’t share expenses?” Then, after a moment, she added, “Besides, what’s so different, Martin, really?” She asked this almost gently, which made it worse, for it meant that she felt secure enough to consider his feelings.

At least here in Yogyakarta they have begun spending their days apart. She has hooked up with four grown siblings, three sisters and a brother, who are staying at their hotel, and though Martin feels that she is intruding upon the siblings’ family reunion, he does not say this to her, knowing that she would scoff at him, would say something like, “Poor Martin. How does it feel to always think you’re in the way?”

In a few days, they are supposed to leave for Jakarta, and from there, they are to fly to Sumatra, and it is not until two weeks from now, an interminable amount of time, that they are scheduled to return to Jakarta and begin their trip back home, but Martin has realized that he can’t continue on like this. He simply cannot. That is what he had been speaking to the front desk man about when Joe wandered by. The front desk man, it turned out, was actually the manager, a helpful fellow with the unfortunate facial features of a toad: darting tongue, lidless eyes, and thin lips that cut far back into his cheeks. Martin felt immediately apologetic when he faced him, which he later understood to be residual guilt over the frog legs.

“I must change my flight,” he told him, forming the story as he went along. He laid out his ticket, Garuda Airlines, Jakarta to Singapore, for the man to see. “I read about the Garuda crash in September, and quite frankly, I’ve become nervous.” He began his request in this way to conceal his real motive, which was to change the flight date from two weeks hence to tomorrow, though why he felt he needed this bit of subterfuge, he could not say. However, as he spoke, he realized that there was truth to what he was saying. He had never been the sort that gave flying any thought, that questioned the ability of planes to stay aloft, but he saw then that things were not as he had always thought them to be.

“Sir, there is nothing to worry about. Garuda is our national airline. It is very safe. That accident, it was caused by the forest fires — the smoke — but that was months ago. I think there is no need to worry.” The man studied the ticket. “Also, sir, your flight is not for two weeks.” He added this quietly.

“I see,” said Martin, quietly also. “Well, I was thinking that as long as I’m making such a big change anyway, perhaps I might change the dates as well. In fact, I would like to take a flight tomorrow afternoon, from Jakarta. Can this be arranged?”

“I am not sure, sir,” the man said, flustered for some reason by the request. “You see, it is rather short notice. And your wife? Mrs.
Stein?” he said, pronouncing Martin’s surname so that it sounded like the mark that dropped food leaves on one’s clothing, but Martin did not bother to correct him because he couldn’t imagine that it made any difference to either of them.

“My wife will be staying. Only I must return early. You understand.” And to be sure that the man did understand, he placed a twenty-dollar bill on the counter, which, he had read in his guidebook, was the way that things got done in Indonesia. The man seemed embarrassed by the bill’s appearance and in no way acknowledged it, but neither did he return it. Instead, it sat on the counter between them as he made his calls, first to Singapore Air, arranging a shuttle flight from Yogyakarta to Jakarta for the next morning, followed by an afternoon flight to Singapore, and then to Garuda Airlines, canceling the original flight. Only after hanging up the telephone for the final time did he place his hand on the counter between them, over the twenty-dollar bill, and, still mispronouncing Martin’s name, he declared, “Everything is arranged, Mr. Stein.”

“Thank you,” Martin replied, but looking at the kindly, toad-like features, he felt suddenly ill. He walked quickly away from the desk, and as he passed the nearby pool area, which doubled as a bar, a woman called out to him from one of the tables, asking where he was from.

He turned and stared at the woman and her companions for a long moment, thinking to himself, “Where
am
I from?” and finally, he took a deep breath and said, “Cleveland,” and then, as though these people might not know where that was, he added, “Cleveland, Ohio,” and they all nodded and smiled.

“Of course we know Cleveland. We’re Americans,” they said, and they invited him to sit down.

They are playing a game, the fame game. Martin hates games, and when it is his turn, he tells them about his parents’ paperboy, Ted Bundy, though hesitantly, for he is still not sure that he understands
the point of the game. The two lesbians go next, relating a very long and increasingly convoluted story about a woman with big thighs and an Australian who might or might not have been Olivia Newton-John. The thigh woman was raised by Satan worshippers in Minot, North Dakota, but had escaped when she was seventeen. Now, she raises horses and lifts weights and is a lesbian also.

Suddenly, or so it seems to him, Sylvie, the lesbian who is doing most of the talking, pushes her hands against her own throat as she explains that the thigh woman had threatened to kill the Australian woman with a pool cue, claiming that the Australian had been sent by the Satan worshippers to retrieve her. Martin is sure that he has missed something, some crucial detail, and he studies the others, hoping for a clue, but the waiter approaches their table with another round of drinks, and Sylvie pauses while everyone pays, a chaotic undertaking because they are all distracted by trying to convert rupiahs into dollars in their heads.

Joe, seeing an opportunity to get the conversation away from this god-awful story that, as far as he can tell, has nothing remotely to do with a brush with fame, turns to Martin and asks, “Did I hear you discussing flights with the desk guy?”

Martin considers explaining that the “desk guy” is actually the manager, but he is tired, so he simply says yes, he is leaving the next day. He does not mention that he moved his flight up two weeks, only that he has made the change to Singapore Air. “I’m feeling a little nervous about this Garuda Air,” he says. “They had a crash in September. Now, Singapore Airlines — you
know
how things are in that country. They cane pilots for crashing.” They all laugh because it is the only thing they do know about Singapore — that it’s that little country that’s always caning people.

Amanda, the sixth and youngest member of the group, says softly, “I think you’re very wise, Martin.” She is the sort of woman that men describe as
sweet
, which simply means that she listens far more than she talks and that she is prone to comments like this, comments that
reinforce their opinions of themselves in very uncomplicated ways. She is the only one who has not yet described a brush with fame and who is actually interested in Sylvie’s story, partly because she has a cousin in Minot, North Dakota.

There is another thing to know about Amanda, a secret that she has maintained successfully over the last two days, largely by keeping track of her vowels. Amanda is not American. She is Canadian, though her mother is American, a Minnesotan who fell in love with Amanda’s father years ago over the course of a weekend getaway to Winnipeg with a group of friends. “With my girlfriends,” her mother says when she tells the story, though Amanda has told her mother repeatedly, and at times petulantly, to stop using
girlfriends
like that — to talk about the women with whom she bowls and shops.

“Only lesbians call other women
girlfriends
these days,” she explains, “and they
don’t
mean friends.” But her mother disregards everything she says, every attempt she makes to offer advice that might save her mother from future embarrassment.

Once, for example, during their annual visit to Minnesota, she overheard her mother telling a group of relatives that Warren — Warren was Amanda’s father — had to “really Jew down” the used car salesman from whom they had just purchased a car. Amanda was sitting on the sofa nearby reading a book about lighthouses. She always read books about strange topics when she visited her relatives because she secretly liked promoting the notion that they already had of her — as
different. Different
was not meant as a compliment, but because she considered her relatives backward, she clamored after the label as though it were. She lowered the lighthouse book and said, “Mother, I cannot believe you said that.”

“What?” said her mother.

“‘Jew him down.’ I cannot believe you would use an expression like that.”

The conversation had stopped as they all turned to look at her,
seventeen-year-old Amanda, their flesh and blood, who was being raised in Canada. No wonder she had such odd ideas. No wonder she read books about lighthouses. But her mother just laughed. “Honestly, Amanda,” she said. “Sometimes you have the most peculiar ideas. Next you’re going to tell me that the Dutch are up in arms about ‘going Dutch.’” The relatives laughed then also, laughed because even though Amanda’s mother had moved to Canada, she still had her sense of humor.

Amanda hopes to sleep with Calvin, though Calvin is not yet aware of her interest, a state of affairs that would normally suggest that nothing is going to happen between them. Calvin, however, does not work that way, does not allow himself the luxury of choosing friends or sexual partners. Calvin waits to be chosen. Today is Calvin’s birthday, but he has not yet decided whether he will tell the others, afraid that they might find him weird, even pathetic, if they learn that he is here celebrating alone. Back home in Michigan, the story of his trip to Indonesia will play differently. His friends and coworkers will say, “That’s Calvin for you, trotting off just like that to celebrate his birthday in Java — wherever the hell that is.” Back home, he is funny, risk-taking Calvin, spontaneous Calvin who runs off to places like Java and Florida and Belize, warm places, at the drop of a hat. Calvin has worked hard to create his own myth.

By the time the group begins to break up for the night, Calvin has finally noticed the way that Amanda’s hand creeps across the table when she addresses him, the way it sits demurely in her lap when she speaks to everyone else. Then, too, there is the way that she laughs at his jokes, heartily, with a whispered, breathy “Oh, Calvin” at the end. He thinks that all they need is one more good session of drinking and chatting as a group, one more chance for him to showcase his humor for her, and so, as they stand to go off to bed, he says, “Tomorrow, folks? Same table? Four-ish?”

Everyone nods except Martin, of course, who will be in Singapore
by then. Even Noreen nods, though she is tired of everyone, but she is most tired of Sylvie — Sylvie, who never knows when to stop talking. Even when they are finally in bed, lying side by side with books in their hands, Sylvie cannot stop talking. “Do you see these books in our hands? That means we’re reading,” she said to Sylvie a few nights earlier, her voice straining to make it sound lighthearted, like a joke. And tonight will surely be worse because tonight, frustrated by having her story cut short, Sylvie will feel compelled to finish it again and again as they lie in bed.

Sylvie, she suspects, did not notice that the others were alternately puzzled and amused by the story, not to mention annoyed by the pace at which it was told. Noreen tries to imagine the story from their point of view, a story heard over drinks around a pool in a hot, bright country, and though she had sympathized with their impatience, she still cannot make sense of their reactions, for she cannot find amusement in anything about that night, certainly not in the fear she felt as Deb pressed the Australian woman against the bar, pool cue twitching in her red, meaty hands, and announced, “In two minutes, if you are still here, I am going to kill you,” not screaming the words as an exaggerated expression of anger but stating them clearly and matter-of-factly, attaching a time frame, making them a promise.

Is it possible, Noreen wonders, to locate the exact moment that fear (or hate or love) takes shape? And is there ever a way to convey that feeling to another person, to describe the memory of it so perfectly that it is like performing a transplant, your heart beating frantically in the body of that other person? That night, after the Australian fled, Deb turned to Noreen and Sylvie and remarked nonchalantly, “She knew,” and Noreen, looking fully into Deb’s eyes for the first time, saw in them something distant and unmoored, like a small boat far out at sea.

When it was Noreen’s turn at the pool table, her hands shook as they held the cue, which felt different to her now — like something capable of smashing open a head or boring through a heart. As Deb racked the balls for the next game, her back turned to them, Noreen grabbed Sylvie’s hand, and they fled the bar also, sprinting across the vast, dark parking lot, glancing around nervously as they fumbled to open the doors of Noreen’s car. Once inside, they locked the doors and flung themselves on each other for just a moment, their hearts thudding crazily against the other’s groping hands, before Noreen started the car and sped out of the parking lot, not turning on the headlights until they reached the street. Halfway home, they pulled over on a dark street and finished each other off quickly right there in the car, not even bothering to silence the engine.