By Lisa VanderVeen
Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Bad Trip category
We reunite in Bangkok. It’s more of a hand-off than a reunion. We are not reuniting. This is my first time handing my teenage daughter off to spend four weeks with her father, my soon-to-be ex-husband. She and I spent the last month backpacking through Vietnam and Cambodia while he was working in Southeast Asia, so Bangkok felt like a logical place to meet up.
We are slated to spend a day together as a trio. It will be good for Sophie to see that we are cordial; still a family unit, strained and unorthodox though we may be as we navigate this new normal. My goal for the day is to remain graceful. It has been a painful six months and he and I are not in a good place with one another, as our cherished morning coffee talks are now between lawyers who determine our separate futures.
Sophie and I check into Le Meridien Bangkok thanks to Stephen’s Marriott points. He will meet us here (in a different hotel room, of course) in a few hours. We have never slept in separate rooms in the same hotel and this new arrangement is both easier and much more difficult. The hotel is a welcome upgrade from the backpacker hotels we lived in for the past four weeks.
I drop my pack in our room and leave Sophie in her Snapchat bliss, beelining it for the posh bar upstairs. I order a fancy $18 cocktail which, according to the menu, features companionable notes of lemongrass and basil. It is July 3rd, the day after our 18th wedding anniversary, the first since our separation. I watched the sunrise over Angkor Wat yesterday, celebrating our anniversary alone and lonely, with a searing ache that manifests in my body.
I want my life back. I told him as much last month, in a weak moment, but his response was “Your life has been a lie.”
These words, tattooed on my brain for an eternity that outlast the one we promised to each other twenty years ago, sent me to my knees. I’d been driving carpool and baking cupcakes while, unbeknownst to me, he’d been living a different life.
My parents divorced when I was in first grade, and I swore I would never do that to my child. I was so hellbent on not getting divorced that I had a notebook with job descriptions listing the qualifications I was looking for in a husband. I then dated with intention, interviewing candidates who fulfilled the job description. Imagine my surprise when, after all of that diligence, my marriage failed spectacularly.
Sipping my exorbitantly expensive cocktail, I reflect on what it felt like to be handed off as a child. In short, it sucked. I love my parents and I remember vividly the things I cherished about spending time with each of them after their divorce.
My mom’s love language was taking me on micro-adventures, to apple orchards, craft fairs, antique stores and parades. My dad’s love language was quiet nights at home, drinking coffee together, helping me with my chemistry homework and talking about my goals. While I loved spending time with both of them, the transitions were hard. The hand-offs in gas station parking lots, closing one car door and opening another, halfway between their two homes. Sleeping in different beds. Not sharing holidays. Losing the privilege of saying “my parents,” when it became “my mom” or “my dad”. To this day, I cherish photos of me with both of them because I don’t have many. I am sad and unspeakably pissed that my daughter is living a reality I swore I wouldn’t give her.
My phone pings. He has arrived and wants to know what the plan is for dinner. I invite him to take Sophie out, just the two of them. They can catch up and I crave my own company. My dinner is almonds and M&Ms from the mini-bar and I go to sleep before she returns to our room, selfishly not wanting to hear his updates about his new life without me.
This morning, I wake to a stormy sky. From the 22nd floor, I have a clouds-eye view of the lightning. It’s supposed to pass within the hour but right now it’s angry. I’m comfortable here, with my French press and an oh-so-fluffy duvet. The pillows are plump, bursting out of their cases. I hadn’t noticed the flatness of the ones I’d laid my head on for the past month, on trains and in guesthouses.
Looking down, I see a mass of buildings from skyscrapers to low-rise apartment buildings and offices. There’s a temple down there, too. It’s ornate and seems to have a sports field on property. Incongruous. I’m struck by the quiet. There are no roosters, no dogs, no horns. I feel isolated from humanity here, in the cocoon of luxury. The Bangkok guesthouse we’d stayed in the night before was in a local neighborhood. Quaint, windy streets with shops and street food. This is the business district, from what I can tell. Bland. Nondescript. Could be anywhere. It feels sterile but also undeniably comfortable.
He’s across the hall, in a room with a round bed that he jokingly monikered “The Honeymoon Suite”. It wasn’t funny. I haven’t heard from him this morning, but I know he’s in there, drinking his coffee with a slurpy inhale. I know because I drank coffee with him for twenty years. How I wish I could go sit with him, share coffee, laugh. I miss him so deeply, I can feel the hole in my sternum where he used to live.
We are spending today together. The anticipation feels nice, in that “normal” way that my life has failed to feel for the past six months. The normal worsens the ache. We discuss our itinerary for the day over texts, speaking to one another awkwardly like the strangers we have become. Truthfully, I don’t care what we do. I just want to survive the day.
The amulet market sounds interesting, so we head there first. I read that there were thousands of good luck trinkets from Buddhas to wooden statues to bone relics to charms blessed by monks to jewels and onward. I could use a talisman to help me get through the day and the rest of my life. A local market requiring perseverance to find, it’s tucked away in hidden streets near the Palace. Entering the rabbit warren of narrow alleys, I can feel the energy change. It pulses with an indescribable verve. The jumbled stalls are filled with bronze, brass and silver, items adorned with faces and words I can’t read. The Brady Bunch “Hawaii Bound” episodes flash to mind, as I select indecipherable items that I hope won’t put a hex on me. I buy a huge bronze ring that can better be described as a small statue, depicting a monk. It costs $3. I hope it brings me luck. I hope it brings me peace. I hope it helps me heal.
Stephen wants to visit the Jim Thompson House Museum, so that’s our next stop. We take a tuk-tuk through the chaotic Bangkok traffic to the museum. Jim Thompson was an American-born, Princeton-educated architect who moved to Thailand after WWII. He loved Bangkok so much that he decided to stay, building a silk company that became very successful and outfitted the entire “The King and I” Broadway theater company. In 1967, he traveled to Malaysia with friends, went into the jungle alone and never came out. Our tour guide speculates that he was eaten by a tiger.
His house was beautifully decorated with ancient Buddhist art. Dark wood, colorful silks. We stop into the store, which was filled with lovely silk pieces. It reminds Sophie and I of a Thai silk version of Vera Bradley. The prices are American and American-expensive at that. We don’t buy anything.
After our tour, we eat lunch together at the restaurant inside the museum. I order green papaya salad with shrimp. Spicy, tangy, crunchy with tomato, cucumber, green beans, peanut and green onion for $5. Sitting across the table from him is difficult. How do you make small talk with your partner of twenty years, who left with no explanation?
I want to ask “What the hell happened? Who are you dating? Do you miss me? How did I not know?” I can’t and I won’t. That doesn’t make it any easier. I’m glad the salad is so delicious that I can lose myself in its flavors.
The tuk-tuk driver has waited for us outside the museum and we ask him to take us to a longtail boat so that we can cruise the Chayo Phraya, the river running through Bangkok.
“I know just where to go!” He says with suspicious benevolence.
Arriving at the dock, we are met by a dodgy-looking boat with dirty dishes piled in back. An elderly couple sits at the wheel. We are rushed onto the boat signing a waiver that we can’t read (we are both lawyers) and, when I inquire about life jackets, we are met with a chorus of voices protesting “Safety boat! Safety boat!”
“Safety boat my ass,” I mutter under my breath. But hey, I am trying not to be fearful as I negotiate this new life. He told me, in the leaving, that I’d become fearful. Ironically, I’ve lost my fear of death, having quietly asked God to take me for months now as I suffered through the cleaving of two souls who promised to support one another in sickness and health. So, safety boat it is. We sit down, exchanging side-eye glances. We see other boats, newer boats, and inhabitants wearing bright orange life jackets.
“I didn’t know any better,” said Stephen, apologetically.
I feel bad for him for the first time since January, when he ended our marriage over a dinner of Costco salad, telling me that his soul was unhappy and the prostitutes he’d chosen to spend the past five years with filled a need in him that I hadn’t.
“We don’t seem to be in danger,” I concede.
“It’s how they make a living,” he says, gesturing toward the elderly couple driving the boat. They remind me of my grandparents, who helped my mom to raise me after her divorce.
Cruising down the river, it is fascinating to see how people live and make money in this chaotic city. Ramshackle structures line the khlongs (canals), most have laundry hanging off their decks. I notice a lot of flowers – orchids, hanging in pots. Satellite dishes sprout from rooftops and I see a child, laying in a window, playing on a phone. Technology has extended its reach here too, of course. There are dogs. Always dogs. Dogs are ubiquitous. So are temples, here. We pass beautiful temples, gold spires reaching up to poke the dark sky as rain threatens.
Garbage lines the edges of the canals. Plastic. So much plastic. Suddenly, we saw a creature moving through the murky water. Its head comes up first and I think it’s an otter. Then I see its legs. Its claws. It resembles an alligator, but its huge head is too round. I posit that it’s a Komodo Dragon and I must be right because the old woman at the front of the boat beckons me, pointing to another in the water.
A quick Google search shows that they are Monitor Lizards, a relative to the Komodo Dragon. All in all, we count twenty two of them in the hour and a half that we are on the safety boat, mostly along the sides of the klong but we also see them sunning themselves on docks. One swims across the vast expanse of river and is nearly hit by a boat. We see small lizards and an incredibly huge one, swimming along the pilings underneath a house. They are fascinating and gruesome, all at once. It’s a great family memory – if we were still a family. Instead, it feels sad to me. This memory will not be interwoven into our joint tapestry. We will take it with us separately, into our disconnected futures.
A breeze comes and I smell my Grandpa Ross. He’s been dead since 1998, his funeral the month Stephen and I began dating. The elderly man driving the boat smells just like him, in his grimy long-sleeved red plaid shirt. They smell of hard work mixed with gasoline. Of clean sweat, with a hint of peanuts and cheap beer. My nostrils haven’t smelled this scent since my childhood summers at my grandparents’ cottage and its familiarity hits me hard. Tears fill my eyes.
It’s been a year of tears, but these hit differently. They signal a realization that, though unrecognizable, my life is still my home. The scent holds me tenderly and tells me that it’s going to be okay. We are going to be okay, even as I hand my daughter off to her dad in a divorce that wasn’t my choice. I look at Stephen and smile. He smiles back. I am glad the tuk-tuk driver scammed us into the safety boat where I found my Grandpa and myself.
It’s not easy, saying goodbye to Sophie. I hug her tightly. She will be safe with him and I support their time together, knowing how important their relationship is to both of them. But childhood trauma is bone-deep and I relive my own buried grief, packing underwear and homework into a duffel bag tossed into a hatchback of a Buckskin 1976 Chevy Vega.
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Lisa VanderVeen is a school administrator by day and a travel writer by night. She enjoys stretching outside her comfort zone, adventuring in over 45 countries (often solo) and pursuing her many hobbies, which include photography, running, memory keeping, and hiking. Her recent work has been published in Saturday Evening Post, River Teeth Journal, Travelers Tales and Panorama and she has won four Solas travel writing awards.