Lori Ostlund - The Bigness of the World

So, of course, after Belize City, they slept inordinately well that first night in the bungalow. The second night, however, as they lay in bed reading, they heard a group of people, Americans also, coming down the path that led to their bungalow. The group paused for a moment, looking for a key, and the women realized that these people were going to be inhabiting the other half of the bungalow, sleeping on the other side of the flimsy dividing wall. It became difficult to read then, for the newcomers — a family they suspected — were celebrating, their voices loud and merry with everyone talking at once, interrupting one another without giving offense and laughing in unison like people who had shared years of finding the same things funny. There were the sounds of bottles being opened, and periodically someone said, “I’m ready for another, Shel,” an announcement that was followed by the clink of glass hitting glass as another drink was poured. They were discussing something that they all seemed to find extremely amusing, something that had happened on the Cayes just a day or two earlier, so the incident was still fresh in their minds. In the middle of the story came the very loud, unmistakable sound of someone passing gas, and two or three voices said at once, with practiced indignation, “Dad!” which confirmed what they had initially suspected, that it was a family on the other side. Neither woman could understand this, a family still taking vacations together as adults, actually finding it restful to be in one another’s company.

The sounds of drinking continued as the story from the Cayes was related again and again so that eventually they were able to piece together the gist of it, which involved this man — Dad — and his inability to climb back into the boat after a morning of snorkeling along the coral reef off the Cayes. The boat had been ladderless, and he had been unable to summon the strength to pull himself up and over the side, so finally the captain and several of their fellow snorkelers had lowered themselves back into the water and hoisted him over the rail and onto the deck. Each time they retold the story, Dad chuckled along good-naturedly, as though it did not bother him to be the butt of the new family joke.

The night went on like this, moving further and further back in time to include past family vacations, stories accompanied by more drinking and gas passing and groaning. The women stopped trying to read and instead just lay there in their twin beds listening, and when they occasionally communicated, they did so in whispers because it would have seemed odd to make their presence known then, so long after the family had arrived. Finally they shut off their light, but the flimsy wall stopped short of the thatched roof, so the light from the family’s room shone into theirs. Both women found this strangely comforting.

Still, they did not sleep, and Sarah, who was in the bed on the right, was reminded suddenly of a moment from her childhood. During her last week of sixth grade, she had come down with the measles, and her parents had confined her to her bedroom for nearly two weeks, where she had lain with the door shut and the lights off in order to protect her eyes from permanent damage. At one point — she did not know how many days it was into her quarantine — she had woken from a deep afternoon sleep to find that her siblings were home from school. She could hear them at the kitchen table discussing their days, and she had mentally taken roll, listening for each sibling’s voice to offer up some anecdote or casual insight regarding a teacher, only to realize that the whole family was present save for her and her father, who was at work. The light from the kitchen had crept in under her door, and it had soothed her at first because she had spent so much time in the dark. But then she had started to think about how rare it was — her family gathering together like this — and she could not help but conclude that it was her absence, her guaranteed absence, that made it possible. She had lain there for quite a while, listening to them laugh, until at some point she slept again. She had slowly become well, the spots had disappeared, but she was never able to shake that feeling that they were happier, more complete, without her. Later, before she became an adult, when she was still a sporadically pensive teenager, she had arrived at a theory that somehow made her feel better, useful even. She had decided that each family has a member whose absence rounds out the family far more than his or her presence ever could. The theory had continued to be a source of pride for her over the years, though, oddly, she had forgotten, until now, the incident that had sparked its formation.

She rolled toward Sara in the dark and whispered, “Sara?” and when Sara turned toward her, she said, “Remember my theory?”

“What theory?” Sara asked, but Sarah didn’t answer.

The family talked far into the night until finally someone said, “My God, it’s nearly three,” and within moments they had cleared the glasses, and a chorus of voices called out, “Good night, Dad. Sleep well.” A male voice, one that had been heard infrequently during the night, said, somewhat awkwardly, “Remember, Dad, we’re just one bungalow over… if you need anything.” Then the door opened and closed.

“Which way?” asked Shel, the evening’s bartender, from outside their window. “I can’t see a thing.”

Another woman said, “Well, he seems fine,” but she lowered her voice to do so. Nobody responded, and finally one of the men said, “Let’s get some sleep.” And then they were gone.

In the other half of the bungalow, there was silence at first, and then they heard the man go into the bathroom. The water ran for a minute or two, followed by the sound of urine streaming ferociously into the toilet bowl. He flushed, left the bathroom, undressed, and fell heavily into bed. When he shut off his lamp, at last, the darkness seemed abrupt to them, final. The three of them lay in the dark bungalow like that for a while, the two women feeling oddly like intruders. Then a low wailing rose up, and the women briefly imagined that an animal had become trapped in the thatch of the roof. After a few seconds, the wailing evened out into a deep, bitter sobbing, and then, of course, they realized that it was not a trapped animal at all, that it was the man, Dad, and they both turned instinctively in their separate beds onto their sides and away from each other.

The next morning they ate rice for breakfast at a Chinese restaurant that was not yet open for the day. When they went in and asked the old woman washing glasses behind the bar whether there was rice to be had, she nodded for them to sit down. Then she continued washing glasses for several more minutes while they sat at a table discussing whether she had misunderstood their request. Just when they were about to leave, the door opened and a young mestiza came in quietly, though she had about her the look of someone who had previously been hurrying. She nodded to the old Chinese woman, and the old Chinese woman nodded back at her and then toward them, placed the glass that she had been drying carefully back on a shelf beneath the bar, and walked, with a slight limp, toward the kitchen.

The young mestiza turned toward them and said in Spanish, without first stopping to inquire whether they spoke Spanish, “I am always late.” She said it with an air of resignation, as though commenting on some unalterable quality like thinning hair. “And la chinita, she rises earlier and earlier each morning.” She sighed and then, switching to wobbly English, asked what they wished to drink. They paused for a moment, for they had not given thought to anything more than food.

“Beer?” she suggested, and they both looked shocked.