Rattawant Lapcharoensap - Sightseeing - Stories

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.”