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“It’s pretty clear what your, uh, friend thinks. And if he has a girlfriend and sent this anyway, that’s a definite no-no. Someone will get hurt. As your brother, I only hope it isn’t you.”
I chalked his reaction up to another vote for “denial.”
I thought again about that final picture, the one Nao Kao sent after I suggested flowers should be the order of the day, the one that included the chocolate lava cake he offered to share. Unlike the other two, which he had planned and sent overnight, that third one, I was certain, was spontaneous. On the table, next to the flowers and the cake, I glimpsed two coffee cups, the little European ones that hold the strong, dark shots of caffeine. When I zoomed in further, I could just make out the fuzzy outline of Nao Kao and his dining companion.
The woman wore a pink and white blouse. Oh my. My mind raced with possibilities. Surely, he wasn’t sharing his dessert with me, however virtual. Not on Valentine’s Day. Only a cad would do that, and Nao Kao was definitely not a cad. Unless he was. But, no, that was a bridge too far. This must have been an old photo from his phone’s memory. Which he had been photoshopping at dinner. Which might still be caddish, but maybe less so. I wasn’t even sure youcouldphotoshop on your phone. But he was a professional photographer. So, he could, by rights even should, possess mad skills I did not. But no. Surely, he hadn’t sent me a picture from dinner with his wife. And yet the evidence said otherwise – I was sure I recognized her from a recent profile picture. His girls all had long hair, while the wife – and I was increasingly certain he was still married – wore a stylish bob.
Next to her, Nao Kao was wearing the Michigan shirt I had sent him.
Suddenly, I could not help but wonder whether this was some high-risk game of hearts to get his adrenaline flowing. Across time and space, Shaggy returned to mock me. Maybe, just maybe, Nao Kao was no more and no less than a player, completely lost. Looking again at the pictures, I had to admit that it wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
“Liss? What isit you want to tell me? What was so impossible?”
“Oh, Nao Kao. It was all so long ago. We were so young.Iwas so young.”
“Just tell me. You don’t need to be so hesitant.”
“I’m not being hesitant for your benefit. You have to understand: I wasn’t going to tell you. I wasn’t ever going to tell anyone. For years, I’ve managed to almost convince myself it didn’t even happen.”
“I see.”
How I would have liked to believe he did see. That it was all falling into place for him without me needing to articulate it. I was the one who began this conversation, though, and I owed it to us both to see it through.
“You were the best friend I had in grad school, Nao Kao. And I repaid you by, well…” I didn’t need to spell it out. We both knew what I had done.
“Until the day I just magically reappeared, poof! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat! So, you would have had every right in the world to be angry with me, but instead you’ve given me so much grace to exist, to share my life, to become part of yours, however peripherally, however inconsequentially.”
I gave him a minute to read all of that, regretting now that I didn’t just write all of this in an email. Surely that would have been more eloquent. On the other hand, maybe this was not the kind of story to be told eloquently. Maybe it was the kind of story you needed to feel as much as read or hear. In which case.
“Go on.”
“Remember when I was giving you so much trouble about the time at my apartment?” I realized belatedly that I was repeating myself.
“I do.”
Recently, I had ribbed Nao Kao mercilessly about his lack of foresight, how we were on a college campus where baskets overflowed with free condoms and placards urged safe sex from every counter and kiosk within a mile of the health center and probably beyond.
On the other hand, maybe it was not as pre-meditated as I had long believed. Maybe he was caught as much by surprise as I was, with consequences neither of us could have foreseen.
As I typed the words I’d held inside of me for so long, the memory I had locked away for nineteen full years – for a lifetime, one could argue – came rushing back, flooding every circuit of my brain. The tears rolled freely and the screen blurred, but I did not need to see the keys to finish typing what I needed to say.
“I was pregnant, Nao Kao.”
PART III: GHOSTS
~
LISS
We bumped ourway south, this Korean Air flight bound parts for as yet unknown to me, the crew, as always, insisting on seatbacks fully upright while they delivered trays of chicken or fish or soggy pasta. That it is virtually impossible to get an upgrade on a Korean flight when flying on a Delta ticket is only half of my complaint with the partnership.
The insult to the injury is the ironclad rule that every passenger must be awakened from their slumber during the meal service, which, whether to or from Jakarta or Ho Chi Minh City or Kuala Lumpur or, further evidence for my rant, Vientiane, is invariably in the small hours of the night. I looked at my watch: a few minutes past midnight. I marveled at the multitudes who never hesitated to fork down airplane fare in the wee small hours.
I thought back to my trip to Senegal, how clarity of action had come when and where I least expected it. After weeks of nightmares capped by the bloodied hands of my turbulence-fueled dream, it was not that I had any doubts. I understood not only that it was time to make a course correction in my life, but that it was also time to stop fighting against the intuition that had told me since I saidI dothat this was not the life for me.
A handful of times in my life – literally, I could count them on one hand – my intuition has spoken to me such that even decades later I can recall every detail of where I was and what I was doing when I heard it. In every instance it has been uncannily correct. What do we know that we don’t know we know? A better question might be why we do not always heed the knowing.
