Chang-Rae Lee - On Such A Full Sea

He couldn’t help but think, too, that in her own way Trish was tilting with the same dreadful notions. She was totally quiet, which wasn’t like her, not making a sound from the backseat and barely grunting when he asked if she was hungry or had to go; aside from his own fear, his heart was breaking with the inescapable fact that her future was null and that her parents were the sole cause. He had considered suicide but he was sick with the idea of where that would leave his family, which in turn made him think of simply driving off the road at the next drop-off or ravine, delivering them together to a swift, merciful end. But that would be the coward’s path, and he was already angry at himself for the too easy slide he and Glynnis made into their illicit trade, when he should have been putting all his energies into retooling himself, and recalibrating his aspirations, even if it meant descending into the Charter’s service class and perhaps not rising for years, if ever. He should have allowed the linens business more time to grow; he should have been harsher with Glynnis when he first discovered the selling and demanded she cease, but he didn’t blame her, for he knew it was squarely his fault; he should have had more faith in himself rather than give in to his weaker qualities, in particular his overeagerness to please and aversion to conflict and a lifelong infatuation with hope, which had him dreaming more than doing. While his vet partners and Glynnis had been the entrepreneurial ones, he would have been content to welcome the pets and animals into his single office one by one, administering medications and performing surgeries and even brushing their teeth and clipping their nails if needed.

But now here he was, at the wheel of his family car, trekking into the open counties. There were some motels up ahead where you could also get a meal, but they were known at best to be grubby, dingy establishments, and very expensive, being relatively secure, certainly not affordable for more than a few days for any non-Charter. Naturally Charters would never stay there; they traveled by private copter or plane, or on upper-atmosphere globals if they went overseas, and would rarely take a car ride of more than a couple of hours.

Quig passed on the first two motels, one being full and the other so decrepit that it appeared it might imminently collapse, but there was nothing on the nav for a half day’s drive past the third one and he was compelled to stop. The large sign at the place read Who Falls Inn, as it was set beside a stream that ran, if meagerly, over a poured concrete dam, which was what made up the “falls.” What purpose the dam served, either past or present, was not apparent. There were a good number of other cars parked in the fenced-in lot and the two-level building was an aqua blue with roiling cascades of white water painted on the roof and on the walls under the eaves, well rendered in a certain way, if looking more like surf than gushing water. The place was tidy and well cared for, the plantings of flowers and shrubs around the building healthy and attractive, the footpath through the grass that unnecessarily snaked toward the front entrance lined with clean white stones and trimmed out with lengths of red garden hose, such that all in all the impression was of an establishment one might encounter in a folk tale, this colorful, friendly-looking hostelry in the middle of a nether land, which surely could not be as inviting as it seemed.

Which was why Quig and Glynnis had to warn Trish that they might not be staying there, their immediate shared thought being this was too good to be true. They waved to the vid cam and got buzzed in through the rolling section of fence gating. Quig composed himself by taking a series of long, deep breaths — he was not the man he’d soon have to become — and walked to the office window. He tapped on the three-fingers-thick plexiglass and a shade went up, revealing a bespectacled fellow, youngish but already bald, his Afro tightly sheared on the sides and meeting his neatly groomed beard and moustache. He wore a crisply pressed white dress shirt with a diamond-shaped monogram (LWA) stitched into the breast pocket of the shirt. When he saw Quig, who back then was wide-eyed and pale-skinned and looking very newly out of his element, the fellow’s expression hardened, no doubt anticipating the lengthy, pathetic sob story he’d endure and have to ignore once again. But Quig simply asked if there was a vacancy and if his car would be safe overnight, and the fellow — his name, they would soon learn, was Landon Wiggins Anderson — grumpily gestured that he should go retrieve his wife and daughter, and then he had them step through the metal detector.

Landon co-owned the inn with his partner, Dale, a short, tubby, florid-faced older white man who ushered them inside with a butterfly fluttering of hands and comments on how darling Trish looked in her polka-dot sundress and white patent-leather shoes and purse, an ensemble Glynnis had bought on their last day as Charter residents. It was something they could ill afford but Quig was actually happy she had splurged this one last time. Trish hadn’t said much at all about her new outfit but she was now showing off her new clutch to Dale, who disappeared and then returned with a box of costume jewelry pieces guests had left behind, and he said she could choose from and take as many items as she liked. Trish was a good girl so only chose a ring and a necklace, and it was only after Dale goaded her that she selected a ruby-crusted hairpin and a cowrie-shell bracelet.

Then he showed them their suite, one and a half rooms decorated in an English-hunt-country style (at least that’s how Dale described it), the walls painted to look like they were paneled with burled wood and the overstuffed furniture upholstered in faux leather and suede; framed prints of riders on horseback and foxhounds hung in sets of six along with the mounted heads of a horned gazelle and what looked to be a bobcat. There was a baronial carved-post bed in the inner room and the sofa outside was a sleeper and the bathroom, though not large, was beautifully tiled and set with an antique basin and claw-foot tub fitted with nickel-plated fixtures. There were only eight suites total (refitted from twenty rooms when they bought the property) because they never had more than a half-dozen guests and wanted each room done in a distinctive style, Vienna 1900 and Old Plantation and Balinese Treehouse, the work of finding and restoring pieces gradually accomplished over the years. They finally got everything done this spring, and though Dale was clearly pleased and proud to show off the inn, he admitted that without an ongoing project it was much too quiet, though Landon preferred it that way.

That evening at supper they met the other lodgers, two couples who owned their own businesses and a salesman for one of the huge agri-food concerns and a family of four from Denmark, who were touring America and were intentionally spending some time in the open counties. The Danes were exceptionally tall and attractive, and spoke a perfect, grammatical English, which was a stark contrast to the couples and the salesman, who were counties people of clearly decent means but were coarse in their manner and expressions and what they were willing to talk about at the table with strangers. One of the men kept going on about the side-by-side basins in his bathroom (the Aix-en-Provence suite) and how he made the mistake of doing his business in the wrong one and having to transfer it by hand to the other, which his wife and the other couple and the salesman wildly hooted at but that made Glynnis blanch with revulsion and misery. The Danish family was neither delighted nor disgusted, but rather fascinated, taking detailed mental notes about the social character and practices of these endemic creatures.