Robert Butler - The Deep Green Sea

When the door is shut, I cannot hold back my tears. For a few moments. But I stop them. I will not lose Ben. The room is dark. I go to the stand beside my bed and I turn on a lamp. The shade is thin and from the top comes light that is like the bulb in the bathroom. Is she here? Is she just out of my sight, keeping quiet? Someone knows the answer to that and I will talk to him now, as I have done every day of my adult life.

I cross to the shrine and I kneel and my hands go through the motions they know so well. I draw the box of matches from beneath the skirt of the little table. I take a match from the box and I strike it and the flame hisses itself alive and I touch the tip of the first stalk of incense, angling the match, putting the hot yellow point of the flame on the blunt edge and it begins to glow and then the incense seems to go dark, but smoke begins to rise and it is burning, I know. I do this for the second stalk and the third and I put the match flame before my lips and I blow the flame away. I drop the match beside me. I press my palms around the three sticks of incense and I pull them from the sand. I bow my head.

Father, I say inside me. Father, I am here.

I lift the incense, help the smoke go up and into the spirit world. I think of him turning his head. He smells the scent of my prayers, carried from this fire with no flame, and he moves from wherever it is that he goes in that other world — I try to see the place but there is nothing, only darkness — and he comes to me now.

I say that I think of him turning my way, coming to me, but I cannot picture his face. I have tried, often, in my prayers, but whenever I see a face, I know very clearly that it is only me, only my own construction from the faces of other men: an Italian tourist, a Russian official, Paul Newman. But though I cannot see him, he does come to me here, my father. That much I do know, also very clearly, and he is not a figment of my own mind, he is real.

Father, I say, I offer your spirit the peace that comes from the love and prayers and devotion of your child and I ask you for the harmony and the peace that a father can give to his family.

These are the words I always say, following the custom of the Vietnamese people. I am told that even some of our government officials pray to their ancestors. We are a communist country, caring for the masses according to the truths of Karl Marx, but we are also Vietnamese. I think perhaps the spirit of Karl Marx is wandering lonely and afraid in the afterlife because he and his children did not understand certain other truths. They were from Germany.

I place the stalks of incense in the sand once more and let the smoke rise on its own to carry the rest of my prayers.

Father, I say. You do not have to fear this man who loves me. I will not forget you. I say this to you, thinking again that it is you who has taken offense. Forgive me if I accuse you falsely, if it is my mother who is the jealous one. I ask you to let me know the truth. Is she there with you in the spirit world, causing this trouble between Ben and me?

I stop my own words and try to hear my father. He has spoken to me before, though not with the voice of a man. He puts his words into me whole and they grow there, from inside me. I wait for this to happen. My eyes are shut tight. There is only darkness. And the smell of incense. I am very still inside. And then I know he has told me. She is alive.

I open my eyes. I lift my face. Behind the three ribbons of smoke is the empty space where his face should be. I want to look him in the eyes so he can see my anger at him. But I have only words.

Father, I say, you must not try to make me choose. I am a living woman. Are you jealous of that, as well? You died a young man. Perhaps younger than I am now. But I have waited, Father. Until Ben touched me, no man had seen me naked in this room. Except you.

I pray these words and I stop. My face grows warm. I bow my head again but not in reverence. I am glad now not to look into his eyes. This thing that I had not thought of until today is very real inside me now, my being naked before him. And I have not told him of the two others, who saw me naked in other rooms.

I say to him, Why couldn’t you be alive? Why couldn’t you be alive and I could put the door between you and me and you could not see? And then I could dress myself and I could open the door and we could touch. You could take me in your arms. You could kiss my head. I could hold you close. I want that, too, Father. I ache for that too. But this man holds me in a different way. What we cannot have between us, you and me, is not replaced by what there is between Ben and me. I still yearn for you, Father. No less than before. See these tears streaming now from my eyes. They are for you. Not for the fear of losing Ben. For sadness at never touching you. Please take these doubts from Ben’s mind now. Take them away. Call him your son and give him the peace that a spirit owes to the family he leaves behind.

I fall silent. I wait for his answer to this. But I sense nothing inside me. He is gone. He is in some other place, far away from me.

Ho Chi Minh’s hand is on the head of the little girl. He’s in black stone, and from seeing him the other day I remember his one arm outstretched on the tree stump where he sits and I remember his arm around the girl, who holds a flower. But I’m seeing this left hand now for the first time as I wait for Tien. His hand touches the little girl’s hair and at first glance, it’s a tender gesture, a paternal gesture. But I stare at this hand as I stand here waiting for Tien, with a rush of people around me and out in the street, and the hand is bothering me. It touches lightly, open-palmed, at the back and slightly to the side of her head, as if it is stroking her there, stroking her hair. A paternal gesture, too, I tell myself. But the girl seems so deeply absorbed by the flower in her hand, unaware of this touch, vulnerable in her ignorance, and Ho is not looking at her, his face is forward and there is a darkly adult look in his fixed eyes, his faintly ironic mouth. The sculptor wanted it both ways. Ho the gentle father figure and Ho the tough, focused leader of a revolution. But this look informs his hand and I fear for the little girl and I can’t see this anymore and I find my own hands clenching, hard.

I turn away. A little girl slides past and she catches my eye and stops and she holds up a book of lottery tickets.

“You buy,” she says.

“No,” I say. “Sorry.”

“You buy,” she says, coming close. “Good luck win money.”

“No,” I say.

Her hand is on me, on my wrist. I yank the arm away.

“Go away. Please,” I say.

“Fuck you,” she says and she moves off and I rub at the place she touched, hard. Rub her touch away.

I jitter around. Move off from the statue. A man has a case opened up by a bench and it’s full of packs of cigarettes. I draw near. I haven’t smoked in years. I coughed my way one spring run from St. Louis to Denver and I stopped cold. But I want a cigarette now.

“You buy,” he says.

I look at the brands, all Chinese or Vietnamese but all of them with names in English: Lord Filter. Ruby Queen. Park Lane. White Horse. Sunny. Hero. And there’s a brand in a white pack called Memory. My hand goes out and it’s trembling. I think Park Lane was the brand name that masked the marijuana when I was here. I pass it over, though I’m sure it’s just tobacco now anyway. I take a pack of Ruby Queen and a pack of matches and I pay the man and walk away.

I open the pack and tap out a cigarette and put it in my mouth. I stuff the pack in my pants pocket and strike a match. I touch the end of the cigarette and pull the smoke in and it tastes like truck exhaust and I wait for the nicotine to kick in, to smooth out the rough spots, to steady my hand, but it only grates in me and all I’m getting is a shitload of blurry nights with a shitload of interstate exit signs drifting past in my headlights, and I flip the cigarette away.