I shudder at this thought and I lean forward into the flow of the dark street beneath the pedicab. I went back to America alone and I married Mattie and I realized I was still alone and then I found my truck and the road, and on a run sometimes, I’d lean over my wheel and I’d watch the thin black track of exhaust burn on the highway as it rushed under me, and I felt it was leading me, sometimes I felt I was following this dark line into a future that held some big thing, like running after your fate instead of just driving another goddamn thousand miles one way to turn around and drive another thousand back again. There was more to me that I just hadn’t reached yet. Much more.
Then I am lying in a bed on this night, in the dark, in my hotel in Saigon, and I wait for sleep and I wait for tomorrow. I know the road to Nha Trang, know it welclass="underline" Highway One, where I watched the driver ahead of me, standing by the side of the road, part of him ripped away, and he was calm, very calm, wondering where that part might be. And there is the same stunned calm in me now, I think. I watch the paddle fan spinning above me and for the first time in my life, alone is not just the place I live in, sometimes with no one around, sometimes with a truck stop restaurant full of truckers, sometimes with a woman sleeping nearby in the bed. For the first time, alone means the absence of someone else: the crook of my arm, the point of my shoulder, the skin along my hip and thigh, all feel the prickle of her absent body, the shadow of her body still pressing there softly. I know the answer to the question that I share with the guy in the scrub grass by the side of Highway One. I know where the missing part of me is. She’s in her own bed right now, in this very city. I was there tonight. And I walked out her door. Is she naked again? I am not. From fear of all this I am still in my clothes, afraid of my body now. But I can still feel her body on my skin. I’m sweating and the fan moves in the dark and I am alone.
When the door is shut, I cannot hold back my tears. For a few moments. But I stop them. I will not lose Ben. The room is dark. I go to the stand beside my bed and I turn on a lamp. The shade is thin and from the top comes light that is like the bulb in the bathroom. Is she here? Is she just out of my sight, keeping quiet? Someone knows the answer to that and I will talk to him now, as I have done every day of my adult life.
I cross to the shrine and I kneel and my hands go through the motions they know so well. I draw the box of matches from beneath the skirt of the little table. I take a match from the box and I strike it and the flame hisses itself alive and I touch the tip of the first stalk of incense, angling the match, putting the hot yellow point of the flame on the blunt edge and it begins to glow and then the incense seems to go dark, but smoke begins to rise and it is burning, I know. I do this for the second stalk and the third and I put the match flame before my lips and I blow the flame away. I drop the match beside me. I press my palms around the three sticks of incense and I pull them from the sand. I bow my head.
Father, I say inside me. Father, I am here.
I lift the incense, help the smoke go up and into the spirit world. I think of him turning his head. He smells the scent of my prayers, carried from this fire with no flame, and he moves from wherever it is that he goes in that other world — I try to see the place but there is nothing, only darkness — and he comes to me now.
I say that I think of him turning my way, coming to me, but I cannot picture his face. I have tried, often, in my prayers, but whenever I see a face, I know very clearly that it is only me, only my own construction from the faces of other men: an Italian tourist, a Russian official, Paul Newman. But though I cannot see him, he does come to me here, my father. That much I do know, also very clearly, and he is not a figment of my own mind, he is real.
Father, I say, I offer your spirit the peace that comes from the love and prayers and devotion of your child and I ask you for the harmony and the peace that a father can give to his family.
These are the words I always say, following the custom of the Vietnamese people. I am told that even some of our government officials pray to their ancestors. We are a communist country, caring for the masses according to the truths of Karl Marx, but we are also Vietnamese. I think perhaps the spirit of Karl Marx is wandering lonely and afraid in the afterlife because he and his children did not understand certain other truths. They were from Germany.
I place the stalks of incense in the sand once more and let the smoke rise on its own to carry the rest of my prayers.
Father, I say. You do not have to fear this man who loves me. I will not forget you. I say this to you, thinking again that it is you who has taken offense. Forgive me if I accuse you falsely, if it is my mother who is the jealous one. I ask you to let me know the truth. Is she there with you in the spirit world, causing this trouble between Ben and me?
I stop my own words and try to hear my father. He has spoken to me before, though not with the voice of a man. He puts his words into me whole and they grow there, from inside me. I wait for this to happen. My eyes are shut tight. There is only darkness. And the smell of incense. I am very still inside. And then I know he has told me. She is alive.
I open my eyes. I lift my face. Behind the three ribbons of smoke is the empty space where his face should be. I want to look him in the eyes so he can see my anger at him. But I have only words.
Father, I say, you must not try to make me choose. I am a living woman. Are you jealous of that, as well? You died a young man. Perhaps younger than I am now. But I have waited, Father. Until Ben touched me, no man had seen me naked in this room. Except you.
I pray these words and I stop. My face grows warm. I bow my head again but not in reverence. I am glad now not to look into his eyes. This thing that I had not thought of until today is very real inside me now, my being naked before him. And I have not told him of the two others, who saw me naked in other rooms.
I say to him, Why couldn’t you be alive? Why couldn’t you be alive and I could put the door between you and me and you could not see? And then I could dress myself and I could open the door and we could touch. You could take me in your arms. You could kiss my head. I could hold you close. I want that, too, Father. I ache for that too. But this man holds me in a different way. What we cannot have between us, you and me, is not replaced by what there is between Ben and me. I still yearn for you, Father. No less than before. See these tears streaming now from my eyes. They are for you. Not for the fear of losing Ben. For sadness at never touching you. Please take these doubts from Ben’s mind now. Take them away. Call him your son and give him the peace that a spirit owes to the family he leaves behind.
I fall silent. I wait for his answer to this. But I sense nothing inside me. He is gone. He is in some other place, far away from me.