Tom Rachman - The Rise & Fall of Great Powers

“But you did manage, amazingly well,” she said.

“I found it tough.” Partly, it was the risk of discovery — that she’d say something imprudent. He came to rely on his own daughter. She was his sole companion. “But never a moan from you. You settled in wherever we were. New kids, new friends, never complaining.”

“You didn’t complain, either — and never one mean word about my mother. I remember you saying she couldn’t be around, and we kept things private in our family. But nothing nasty ever. You were protecting me.” She watched his hand, wanting to touch it, but couldn’t somehow. “You were brave to do this, you know.”

“Brave? I lived in constant dread.” Then his worst fear was realized: she failed to come home. Something had happened, but what recourse did he have? The Thai police? They were notoriously corrupt. She’d never mentioned any friends in Bangkok; he didn’t know where to start looking. Her school called the next day, asking where she was. He claimed Tooly was at home, ill. He was in a panic. Couldn’t report her absence to the embassy — or should he? What if some bad person had her? What if she’d run away, or had an accident? Then Sarah got in touch.

“How did she even know we were in Bangkok?”

“That trick you had of counting out a minute?”

“What about it?”

“You remember a guy named Bob Burdett, from the U.S. Embassy? You might not recall this, but he was over for dinner once. You came out of your room and showed how you could make your eyes vibrate and did your one-minute trick.”

“He was getting violent with you. I came out to try to help.”

Bob Burdett — a wannabe spy always trying to impress the station chief by finding “subversives”—had invited himself for dinner because he hadn’t liked the look of Paul. During the meal, Bob Burdett tried to provoke his host into saying something anti-American. Toward the end of the evening, a small girl stepped from a bedroom. How odd to conceal her like that. And no mother in evidence. Bob Burdett checked with contacts at other U.S. embassies Paul had passed through, and heard versions of the same story: a systems specialist, barely remembered, no wife or daughter anyone knew of. Further burrowing turned up the name of a Kenyan national, Sarah Pastore, who had entered the United States with Paul several years earlier. A contact in military intelligence located her, still in the United States, though with an expired visa. She’d been arrested for shoplifting and awaited deportation. Bob Burdett reached her, posing as a State Department official. What was her relationship to a man named Paul Zylberberg? Had he ever voiced any socialist tendencies? Was she aware of a little girl? If the child was Sarah’s, why was she not there in Bangkok? Had she filed a missing-persons report? Didn’t she want her daughter back?

Soon thereafter, Sarah arrived in Bangkok.

“I was in a bad state after you went. I hoped you were fine, but there was nothing I could do. Legally speaking, I’d kidnapped you. I had no rights. Sarah needed only turn me in. We came to an arrangement, but I had no right to expect you’d contact me,” he concluded. “You were angry at what I’d done. You had every reason to be.”

“I wasn’t. And I’m not.”

“You found a good school in the end? With friends you liked?”

Her childhood after Bangkok would have appalled him — never another day in a classroom, tramps for babysitters. She gave a sanitized summary, inventing an adolescence that was varied and carefree. As she rolled out this fantasy, she recalled the truth and found herself sorrowful, though unsure why.

Paul had always worried, he said, about whether the money for Tooly was sufficient. Sarah demanded that four thousand dollars be paid monthly in exchange for never reporting what he’d done. “I’d have sent child support anyway — all I could possibly afford. I often sent more than what was expected. She really didn’t need to threaten me. And I’m sorry, Tooly, about cutting it off when you turned twenty-one. I was hurt that you never contacted me. Suppose I hoped you might write or something. Which was unfair.”

Her insides tightened, yet she could say nothing — needed Paul to think all had been fine. But she’d known nothing of any payments, let alone a cutoff at age twenty-one. She had turned that age in New York, in 1999. Sarah had shown up then, just before her birthday, promising to tell her something. What?

“Sorry to be going on about this,” Paul said. “I’m sure you and your mother are close. As you should be. I really had no right trying to raise a little girl. Never was good with children.”

“You were good with me.” She looked directly at him, needing to impress this upon him. “And, Paul, you’re happy in your life now,” she said, to reassure herself as much as to inquire.

“Shelly’s been a godsend. Didn’t think I had space in my life for someone, but she’s been, yes, a godsend.” But they’d become friends only after Tooly left, he added decorously.

“Just think, if I’d been there, that would never have happened.”

“Well …” Paul didn’t welcome hypothesizing — he’d settled on a past, knew which elements hurt him, which provided comfort, and wasn’t prepared to reconsider.

He inquired about this young fellow, Mac, whom she had arrived with.

“No, he’s not mine. I stole him.”

Paul looked up pointedly. “That’s a joke.”

“It better be — it is,” she said. “Actually, we should be going. Long trip back to his house.” She stood. “Look — I want us to meet up again. Can we?”

He rose as if unprepared, as if he hadn’t considered this outcome. “I’ll get bottles of water for your drive,” he said hastily. “You need to stay hydrated on the road.”

As he fetched them, Tooly stared hard at the floor, trying to compose herself.

He returned with a gift he’d been keeping for years: her old sketchbook of noses. “And this photo — thought it’d give you a kick. Us on the plane to Thailand. Remember that Australian girl, the teenager sitting beside me who took our picture? The one who kept smoking the whole time?”

It was a Polaroid, showing more of the overhead bins than of its subjects: Paul in the middle seat, earnest, young, fatigued; Tooly by the window, far more smiley than she’d believed herself to be then. “I’m always available for you,” he said, as they hesitated by the front door. “Always have been; always will be.” He extended his hand.

“You used to wake me every morning with a handshake,” she said, talking fast in order not to cry.

“Did I?” he said, self-conscious now, lowering his hand.

But she took it, holding it between both of hers. “Can I just say something quickly?” she asked. “I felt — actually, still feel — so terrible about everything that happened, about what I did. I left you there alone.”

“You were a little girl, Tooly.”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “I was still me.”

Seated in the minivan with Mac, she took a moment to calm herself. A sedan was parked down the street, she noticed, a middle-aged Asian woman in the driver’s seat, waiting for her to leave. Tooly started the engine, pulled out, and watched in her rearview mirror as Shelly exited the car and returned to her home.

As Tooly negotiated the unfamiliar streets of Lodge Haven, she wondered what it was like to live in a suburb like this, to have been from here. She switched on the car radio, using an NPR interview to orient herself again in the present:

Host : Uhm, before we get to why you think this is a result of climate change, which is I think what you’re saying, what are some of the records that this month’s heat wave has set so far? And I’ll say we’re recording this on Friday, July 22, so—