Fishing for Tigers (23 page)

When I looked at Cal, perched awkwardly on a chair heaped with clothes and towels, typing faster than any of the girls in my community-college typing class ever did, on a laptop computer open to the Facebook page of his ex-girlfriend who – apart from Hustler-style cleavage and eye make-up – looked twelve, I felt as old and wise as a grand old matriarch on her death bed.

When he stood from the chair and stalked to the bed and the towel dropped from his waist and he took his hardening cock in one hand and told me – calmly, slowly, confidently – what he was going to do with it, I became ageless and mindless. I had no history, no conscience, no maternal-empathy. I was flesh and bone and so was he and that was all and that was everything.

It was odd. I had been in Matthew's apartment so many times that I knew it better than Cal did. I knew how to jiggle the key in the door to the deck when it stuck, how to spin the knob on the hotplate until the gas ignited. I knew which restaurants delivered and how to pronounce the street name so that the food would actually arrive.

Familiarity leads to comfort and nobody who was doing what I was doing that weekend should be anywhere near comfortable. A person in my situation should be anxious enough that she remains alert even when in a post-coital fog. She should be alert to the point of paranoia. When the door bell rings three minutes after her lover has run down the street to get some fresh bread, she should not drift mindlessly down the stairs to answer, wearing a bathrobe belonging to the father of her lover, her hair and face and legs dripping wet, a welcoming smile on her love-chapped lips.

‘Mischa! Oh!' Collins, pink-faced, dressed in running shorts and a Nike t-shirt stood holding a basket of fruit. ‘I was . . .' He craned his neck to see behind me. ‘Is, ah, ­Matthew here?'

‘No. He's away this weekend.'

‘Oh. So you're babysitting are you?' He chuckled.

‘Pardon?'

‘Are you the babysitter? You know, for Cal.'

‘My hot-water system is broken.'

‘Ah.' His gaze flickered over my shoulder. ‘So, ah, did Matthew take the young fella down to Saigon with him?'

‘You knew Matthew was in Saigon then?'

Collins shifted the basket from one hand to the other. ‘I won this fruit at the gym. Some anniversary promotion. My girl just did a big shop yesterday, so thought I'd drop this off here since it's around the corner. Didn't want it to spoil.'

‘Oh.' I reached for the basket. ‘Lovely. I can take it.'

Collins handed it to me, putting a foot inside the house as he did so. ‘Right. Thanks.' He looked up the stairs behind me. ‘Sorry to have interrupted your shower.'

‘You didn't. I'd just stepped out.'

‘Ah, good.'

Behind him, I saw Cal round the corner, freeze, then dart into the crack-in-the-wall barber shop.

‘Listen, I'm dripping everywhere. Is there anything else?'

‘No, sorry. Enjoy the fruit.'

‘Oh, well, I'll be leaving soon as I'm dressed. But I'll leave a note so Cal knows who to thank.'

‘Will he be back soon, because I could wait? Been meaning to chat to him about—'

‘You do know he's not gay, don't you?'

He blinked. ‘Gays are only allowed to associate with other gays, is that what you're saying?'

‘You know it's not. But your dropping in like this when you know Matthew's away. Bringing gifts. It's obvious you're interested in him and so I'm just letting you know, in case you didn't, that he isn't gay.' I cringed inwardly at how high my voice had been, how fast my words had tumbled out.

Collins hesitated, looked up, then back at me. ‘The ­broken hot-water heater. Nice idea. Boy comes home, finds you naked and—'

‘I'll let him know you dropped by.' I slammed the door.

When Cal came in ten minutes later, his hair was army-short. He looked younger, more like a local, but I told him it made his beautiful eyes stand out.

‘Do you think Collins will say anything to Dad?' he asked.

‘No. Why would he?'

‘So what are you so stressed out for?'

‘I'm not.' I peeled the cellophane off the basket, folded it in half and smoothed it with my palms. I forced my hands to move slowly, matched my breath to each stroke.

Cal chose an apple from the basket and lifted it to his mouth. I stopped his hand, took the fruit to the sink and began to remove the potentially choleric skin with the expensive German peeler Matthew had bought in Singapore last year.

‘How do you think Dad would react?'

‘Ugh. Can we not talk about that, please?'

‘Never?'

‘Here.' I handed him the peeled apple. ‘Maybe you should find a girlfriend. Someone you can introduce to your dad. Just in case your mum says something about me calling.'

Cal bit into the apple, glaring at me while he chewed and swallowed.

‘Don't make that face. You look like a little kid.'

His expression didn't change. ‘You seriously want me to get a fake girlfriend?'

‘Not fake. There must be a hundred girls in Hanoi who'd be thrilled to go out with you.'

‘It'd be fake for me. I'd just be using her to throw Dad off. I don't use people and I don't fake feelings.'

‘Don't be upset.' I sat beside him and tried to take his hand, but he brushed me off. ‘I mean, we never talked about not seeing other people. I sort of assumed you were—'

‘Are you?'

‘Ha, who would I be seeing?' I laughed, stopping short when he hurled his half-eaten apple across the room. ‘Calm down, Cal. Geez. I'm being realistic. I know how it works in this place. You must get fifty offers every time you leave the house. When we're together, God, you know I can't get enough of you! But I don't expect you to sit alone and watch
Vietnamese Idol
the rest of the time.'

He stared at the tabletop. ‘You really thought I was fucking other girls?'

‘I guess I was wrong. I'm sorry. I find it hard to understand why you wouldn't.'

Cal looked at me as though I was another Henry. ‘You're not the tiniest bit worried about losing me.'

‘Should I be?'

‘Yes.'

‘Oh. Well. Now I am. Now I'm very worried about losing you. Happy?'

‘Mish! No. I didn't . . . I didn't mean you had reason to worry. I meant . . .' He looked away from me, the muscles in his cheeks popped as he ground his teeth.

‘You meant that I should be more possessive. More jealous. More insecure.'

Cal smiled unhappily. ‘Yeah. More like me.'

I watched him for a moment. Potential words of comfort ran through my mind. None of them were any good. I hadn't worried about losing him, it was true. It may have been because I didn't love him enough or it may have been that I was out of the habit of fearing the future. I still don't know the answer. But as I watched him suffering, I knew that I couldn't bear to be the cause of it.

‘When I was your age—' I began and he groaned. ‘I'm sorry, but I don't know how else to say it. When I was your age I was already married. I believed it would last forever. I couldn't see any possible way my life could happen without him in it. Now I can barely remember what he looks like. The thing you can't know when you're at the beginning of your life is how long it is and how much you'll change. You can't know—'

‘Fuck you.' Cal's fists slammed into the table. He sat there, snarling, breathing heavily, the transparent cloak of his anger revealing flashes of the raw flesh beneath.

‘Cal . . .'

‘I can't know how I'll feel when I'm your age? So what? I'm supposed to act like nothing I feel now is real? That's . . . How old do I have to be before I'm allowed to make decisions based on my feelings? Twenty-five? Thirty? Older? I mean, shit, Mischa, you're older than that and you're still not doing it, so I don't know what age has to do with it at all.'

I'd made the same arguments to my sisters when they objected to my engagement. Eventually Mel said maybe I was right. Margi said I wasn't, but she guessed she'd just have to let me learn that lesson the hard way.
Just you wait
, I remember thinking at the time. And then, years down the track, on the verge of telling them how bad things had become, remembering their warnings and biting back my words, I'd resolved to work harder at my marriage, to turn things around, to honour my youthful certainty. I wasted years on fulfilling a promise that no one who cared about me wanted to see fulfilled.

‘You're right,' I said.

Cal didn't look up or move. ‘Right about what?'

‘It's stupid not to act on how you feel, just because there's a possibility how you feel will change.'

‘Are you just trying to make peace?'

‘No. After you explained it, it made sense. I'm kind of retarded when it comes to intimacy, you know?'

‘Yeah. I noticed.'

I put my palms to his cheek, turned his face to me. We kissed for a long time without changing positions. When we finally stopped my jaw ached and a nerve in my lower back twanged. Cal blinked his wet eyes, licked his lips and came in for more. I felt as happy as I've ever been.

While he was sleeping, I called Margi. She acted surprised to hear from me and cheerfully brushed off my apologies for not calling again sooner. She told me about the surgery and the follow-up treatment in such a bored, distracted tone that I had to remind myself that the flesh and organs cut and punctured, the bloodstream soon to be flooded with poison, were hers. This woman who had known me my entire life, who had sworn to keep me safe and had wept with rage and threatened murder when she found out she had failed. This woman who was once a girl who had barred me from her bedroom, which was blue and grown-up unlike my babyish pink one, and who would go weeks without speaking to me and then all of a wonderful sudden gather me up in her jasmine-smelling arms and kiss my face all over. This woman who packed her grief away in a box on a very high shelf and told herself she would deal with it later, because right now she had a devastated teenager and a heart-broken, bewildered child to take care of.

It was all true and yet unreal. I hadn't seen her in over six years and that visit was a blur during which I did little but sob. Before that visit it had been, I don't know how long, nine years? Maybe ten? The woman on the other end of the crackling, probably-listened-into line was a stranger and if she died – the thought stabbed at me even as I began to ask about my nephews in order to banish it – my life would not change at all.

atthew called my mobile while I was checking his home for evidence of my presence. As he told me about his accident and asked for what he described as ‘an enormous, totally unreasonably large favour', I picked eight strands of my hair from his shower drain and dropped them, one by one, into his toilet. After assuring him I would take care of everything, I hung up and flushed the toilet.

Cal was vacuuming. I touched his arm and he shut the machine off with his toe, turned to me with a hungry smile.

‘Your dad just called.'

‘Shit. Is he at the airport already? His flight wasn't until—'

‘No. He's still in Saigon. Silly bugger fell off a moto and—he'll be fine. No head injuries. Nothing internal. But his legs are busted up pretty badly and so he's stuck down there for a while.'

Cal kicked the vacuum cleaner out of the way, sat on the couch. ‘How come he didn't call me?'

‘He wanted to talk to me first.' I sat beside him. ‘He asked if I could come and see you, tell you the news in person and talk to you about your options.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘He thinks you'll want to go home. Now that he can't hang out with you, he thinks you won't want to hang around in Hanoi.'

‘But I do want to do that. That's exactly what I want to do.'

‘The other option, he thought, is that you might want to go down to Saigon to hang with him there.'

‘But I—'

‘I'm going to go down. He asked me to. He's in a bad way, lots of medication. He needs someone to talk to the doctors, sort out his insurance and accommodation, his travel back when the time comes. And from the sound of him, I think he needs a friend. Someone to bring him newspapers and noodles.'

Cal smiled. ‘So we'll go together.'

‘That's what he hoped.'

‘I'll ring him now.'

‘Wait a little while,' I said. ‘Enough time for me to have gotten over here to tell you.'

I was seventeen the first time I boarded an airplane and twenty-nine before I boarded another one. I flew to California to marry Glen and then I flew away from there to escape him. I have never been in an airport and not been nauseated, had never fastened my seatbelt without a hot flush of terror at the enormity of what I'd done. Since I'd been in Vietnam, these feelings were easy to talk myself out of. All my flights had been pleasure trips: to
and Hoi An, to Saigon, to Luang Prabang and Kuala Lumpur. When the inevitable anxiety hit, I gave myself a gentle talking to and all was well.

On the flight to Ho Chi Minh City – which was still Saigon to the travel agents, the airline and everyone except the Party and politically-correct foreigners – the nausea and hot flush were accompanied by breathlessness and all-over pins and needles.
It's fine
, I told myself,
two hours in the air, a few days somewhere different and you'll be home again. No big life-changing move, nothing irreversible. Breathe, breathe, you're on vacation, breathe.

Cal's seat was back, his eyes closed, headphones clamped to his ears. What would I do if something happened to him here? If he stopped breathing or had an allergic reaction or if he was kept for questioning at the airport or our cab got in an accident? Why had I agreed to accompany someone's child to an unfamiliar city and what would I do when we got there?

I got in the brace position and concentrated very hard on breathing in and out.

Why was I here, on my way to there? I knew nothing about insurance or health care, could not speak the language, did not know my way around town. I had never been close to a person suffering from anything worse than a head cold, although I had spent several dawns in emergency rooms having my ribs or nose X-rayed, having my wrist set, my forehead stitched. I would vomit if I had to dress ­Matthew's wounds. I could not cope if he needed me to bathe him, help him with the toilet, listen to his drug-induced rantings. I can't do this I can't do this I can't do this.

‘Mish?' His hand on my back, rubbing, firm and real. ‘You sick?'

I sat up, breathing hard. ‘Flying freaks me out. I'll be fine.'

‘You don't look fine. Are you going to chuck?'

I sucked in air that smelt like fish sauce and instant coffee. ‘Probably not.'

Cal reached up and turned the air nozzle. Stale, cold air hit my face. I closed my eyes and let it cool me. He rubbed my arm, long, hard strokes, and I became aware of the clammy plastic of the arm rest, the coolness of his palm, the crick in my neck, the cry of a baby, the chatter of Vietnamese.

‘Sorry, sorry. I'm okay now. Thanks.'

‘Just rest.' He kept stroking my arm and I let my mind drift.

‘Oh!' I jerked forward, my heart pounding hard.

‘Hey, it's okay, you're doing fine.' Cal tried to press me back.

‘No, I know, I'm fine. I just—' Today was Margi's first chemo session. I had planned to set my alarm for 3 am so I could call and wish her luck before she left.

‘I just remembered something I was supposed to do.'

Cal patted my hand. ‘Try to relax. You'll feel better when we hit the ground.'

If I'd known Saigon better, then the address Matthew gave me would have rung alarm bells.
, the heart of the backpacker district. An unlikely place for the annual conference of an international news corporation. As it was, when the cab stopped across from the Crazy Buffalo I began protesting and checking the tourist map I'd grabbed on the way out of the airport.

‘Yeah, this is it,' Cal said, pointing to a white-tiled lobby behind us. The sign over the door said
Best Saigon Hotel, You are Welcome!
To the right, a construction site spewed concrete dust on to the path; to the left was a convenience store, its window plastered with offers for cheap inter­national calling cards.

When I told the receptionist my name, her tight, polite smile widened into a genuine one. ‘Oh, Miss ­Mischa. I am very pleased to see you today. Your friend is much hurt. Everyday comes nurse, but I think your friend has more need.' She turned to Cal. ‘You are Mr Calvin, yes? I am happy to see you today, also. There is a bed in your father's room for you. Miss Mischa, I am sorry your room is not ready. Maybe you like to visit Mr Matthew while you wait?'

A grinning teenager in a shiny red suit led us into the elevator and then through a winding corridor to room 254 where he knocked and waited for Matthew's feeble ‘come in' before opening the door.

‘Hello, sir. Here are your friends,' he called and then handed the key to Cal. ‘Please, you need something you call reception.' He bowed and backed down the hallway.

The room was dark and blissfully cool. For a moment, I could see only a jagged crack of light where the curtains almost met, then the rest of the room: an office desk covered in pill packets and water bottles, a wall-mounted television, a neatly made single bed and, beside it, another single bed on which Matthew lay, his plastered legs raised on what appeared to be the inverted backseat of a car.

I pushed one of the curtains open and was assaulted by the shimmering light of midday in Saigon. I blinked my vision clear and then turned to Matthew who was looking up at Cal with pale wonder.

‘Shit, Dad.' Cal squatted beside his father's bed. ­Matthew started to cry.

I pulled a tissue from a box on the desk. ‘You're either very unhappy to see us or you're in terrible pain.' I bent and kissed his cheek, which was splotched with black and grey bristles. His right eyelid was pale yellow and swollen and a line of black stitches ran down his chin. To my relief, the wounds appeared clean and the smell of antiseptic was fresh and sharp.

‘I can't tell you how grateful I am, Mischa.' His words were slurred, but came fast. ‘I don't think I'll ever be able to repay you for this. It's just the greatest kindness.'

‘Forget it. I was way overdue for a holiday and I haven't been to Saigon for years. I'm thrilled to be here.'

‘And Cal, my boy, my Cal. Thank you for coming, mate. I'm sure it's the last thing you wanted to do.'

‘Wrong. I've been hanging to check this place out. You should've brought me with you in the first place.'

Matthew's eyes continued to leak. ‘No, seriously, son. It means so much to me that you're here. I never should have left you in Hanoi. Listen, when I felt myself come off that bike, all I could think about was that I wouldn't see my son again and how stupid I've been in not spending every possible—'

‘Dad, it's okay.' Cal patted Matthew's shoulder. ‘Don't get yourself all worked up.' He was almost as pale as his father.

‘They've got you on some heavy-duty drugs, hey, Matty?'

‘Yeah.' He swiped at his cheeks. ‘Can't feel a bloody thing. Hospitals may be shit here, but the drugs are magnificent. But, Cally, really, I need you to know this, because you never know when you could be gone from the world, and I've never made it clear—'

‘I'm going to check if my room's ready,' I said. ‘I'll be back soon.'

I ignored Cal's plaintive look and left him to his father's over-medicated love.