“Ask me again at the end of the year.”
* * *
The following morning brought a heat wave and unexpected optimism. Their hut was on a remote stretch of vanilla beach, the waters beyond an ombré of sapphire to blue topaz to palest jade. A rope swing hung from one leaning palm tree, a hammock strung between two others. It took effort to remain angry in such lovely surroundings. As the days passed and the temperature rose, the sun’s fire served as a warped law of affinity; it quelled her internal inferno to a manageable flame. She still wanted to reveal Edward’s name to Madeleine. But she kept her mouth shut.
They spent a week on the sleepy island, swimming, hiking the fringes of the dense jungle and virgin rain forests, eating fresh fruit and fish, singing along to songs Oona strummed on her guitar while swaying in a hammock.
Next they flew to Hanoi. The city was hectic but small, its commotion palatable and easy to navigate. Their hotel was on the Hoan Kiem Lake, a modest body of water that offered a modicum of tranquility amid the urban bustle. Roosters woke them at sunrise, and they began the day walking around the lake, sometimes joining the clusters of fellow early risers doing tai chi. They perused cramped shop stalls selling everything from fruit to flowers to party decorations. They visited the Presidential Palace and the monument containing Ho Chi Minh’s preserved dead body. Every day they bought gooey pudding made of mung bean paste from a woman mixing it in a large silver pot in the middle of the sidewalk, sitting on low plastic stools as they ate the sugary spoonfuls. They visited the Hoa Lo Prison, better known as the “Hanoi Hilton,” and balanced that somber outing by taking in a surprisingly elaborate puppet show. Distractions and delights abounded, but always Edward Clary’s name was balanced on the edge of Oona’s lips. She kept them sealed, but always her silence felt hard-won, a temporary thing.
The culture shock was a tonic for Oona. She found the machine-gun staccato of the Vietnamese language—and the surprising proliferation of Russian spoken—oddly soothing. She embraced the unknowable and indecipherable. While Madeleine grew nervous when they veered onto an unintended street, Oona was happy to get lost down twisty paths with faded, tattered awnings bearing signs she couldn’t read, signs she mentally rewrote to bear the name of her former husband.
Sometimes Oona felt like she’d traveled back even further in time. There were weathered natives in conical hats carrying yokes across their shoulders balancing heavy straw baskets. There was a prevalence of bicycles and motorbikes over cars and buses, which they dodged daily at treacherous street crossings. There were the peeling facades of French Colonial buildings, crammed together like stale geometric pastries. Oona wanted to lean over their frilly balconies, smoke endless cigarettes, and pretend she was the sad heroine in an old movie, but instead she walked on and sought out more of the unfamiliar to distract herself. Besides, she didn’t smoke.
When they had enough of the city, they took the train down to Ha Long Bay.
“I think I’m ready to get on a boat again,” Oona said.
“Are you sure?” her mother asked.
“Not really. But I already missed the chance to cruise the Nile, and I don’t want this stupid phobia to hold me back from seeing one of the coolest parts of this country. Those islands look hella gorgeous.”
“Hella?”
“Very. Don’t worry about it. Let’s find us a boat.”
So they rented a junk for three days. If it capsized, if she drowned, so be it. On their way to the dock, Oona thought of the incident in the Meatpacking District three leaps ago, mouthing off to a cinder block of a stranger before her neck ended up in the noose of his fist. Part of her then wanted him to crush her. Part of her now wanted the boat to do the job instead. But a bigger part of her wanted to endure and survive, and was certain she would. The knowable future was her safety net. It bolstered her courage.
This courage wavered on the dock. With great hesitation, she made it onto the boat. The first few hours aboard left her with aching fingers from gripping the railing so hard. But then she gave in to the soothing powers of the undulating horizon and the view, which was indeed “hella gorgeous.” The boat took them around hundreds of limestone islands poking out of the water like crooked mossy teeth. At night, when the waves lapped against the boat and rocked Oona to sleep, she whispered Edward’s name into her pillow and hoped the next day it would hurt a little less. And it did.
They took their time making their way through the rest of the country, down to sleepy Hue and picturesque Hoi An, where they rode motorcycles to the beach and had a new wardrobe of clothes made by expert tailors, which they shipped back to New York. They ate savory crepes with shrimp and pork, caramelized fish served in clay pots, salads with sliced banana flowers and pickled carrots, and endless bowls of steaming pho.
After a month of travel, Oona’s fury and resentment simmered down some; it only twinged now and again, like a healed broken bone does when it rains. Vietnam was equally enchanting and humbling. The impoverished conditions of many locals put her in her place. Here were people with real hardships, yet she continued to obsess over life’s injustices against her. How ungrateful, to mope while staying in four-and five-star hotels, how tiresome this sullenness. As she traversed the country, she gave generously to hospitals, orphanages, schools. She prioritized seeing more, giving more, and her mental spotlight shifted away from Edward. She craved crossing more borders, experiencing more unfamiliar environments. And once she’d conquered her boat phobia, a new desire emerged: to escape landlocked areas and spend more time on the water.
While she wanted to provide support and companionship to her daughter, after two months, Madeleine missed the comforts of New York. The novelty of Vietnam had worn off for her, and she was desperate for some good bagels.
“Are you sure you want to continue on by yourself?” Madeleine asked. “It can be dangerous, a woman traveling alone, especially abroad.”
“If it was so dangerous, I probably would’ve said so in a letter instead of leaving this for myself.” She held up her hand with the carved platinum band. “Or I would’ve written something different, like ‘stay home.’”
Oona continued alone to Laos and Cambodia, then to Thailand, which she found most enchanting of all. As her wanderlust and appetite for novelty grew, she became less afraid of solitude. Of everything.
Even Bangkok—with its overwhelming swarm of concrete, color, chaos, its oscillation between holiness and depravity—didn’t intimidate her. Granted, she began with the safer tourist attractions: the floating markets, the teak birdcage of the Jim Thompson House, the countless multi-spired majestic temples with Buddhas (this one made of jade, that one gold-seated, the other one reclining). She couldn’t get enough of the smells: one street infused with jasmine, the next exhaust, the one after that fried pork. And there was the food: plentiful, inexpensive, and delectable. She ate and ate and ate street food—skewers of meat, bowls of noodles, crunchy papaya salad—her taste buds soaking in the key flavors of the native cuisine: sweet, salty, sour, and spicy.
After a couple of weeks in Bangkok, she went island-hopping, beginning in Phuket.
During the day, Oona baked in the sun until her limbs practically sizzled, then cooled off in the turquoise water. Sometimes she’d lie on the beach with her eyes closed and pretend Dale was beside her. Other times she’d join a group of backpackers for games of volleyball or evening gatherings around a bonfire, playing guitar as they sang off-key renditions of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Smashing Pumpkins songs (though when “Zero” got blank stares, she realized it hadn’t been released yet, so she stuck to the band’s earlier hits). The grunge movement was making its mark around the world, and its unkempt thrift-store aesthetic both suited and was popular with many young travelers. They favored torn jeans and baggy band T-shirts, layering on a flannel shirt when the evening temperatures dipped. They also stayed abreast of current events and had heated conversations about the O. J. Simpson trial, the bombing in Oklahoma City, the horrors in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Croatia. The talk of bloodshed was at odds with their paradisiacal environment, but Oona admired their commitment to stay informed when they could easily remain in a bubble of pretty beaches, as she was prone to do.