The last time I saw my parents was over a year ago, during my spring vacation. They had rented a little house in Wellfleet, a white one-story with navy blue shutters. The interior smelled of seawater and on windy nights a humming sound rose from the tiny holes in the wood planks. On Saturdays we had lobster and corn on the cob, and some evenings my father played Moonlight Sonata on the piano while the rest of us sat on the sofa and listened. When I wanted to remember my father as being graceful and kind, I imagined his hands moving over the piano keys like pale stones skipping across a lake. Everyone loved the house except Denver, who had always been frightened of the sea. But even he was content to sit in the dry sand and arrange silver-grey oyster shells in large and intricate patterns, as though he was signaling a rescue plane.
This wasn’t long after the expedition in Tanzania and my mother had recently published several articles in major academic journals. My father spent most of the daylight hours locked in the spare bedroom, working feverishly on a paper of his own. He would emerge from his office around five o’clock, eyes bloodshot from staring at the computer screen, his skin sallow and droopy. You should get more sun, my mother would say, walking over and placing a hand on his shoulder. He would shrug away her touch and ask Denver if he wanted to play Frisbee on the beach.
One evening, while my father was grilling sausages and Denver was working on his shell patterns and I was setting the table, my mother came into the kitchen and asked me to walk with her on the beach. She was wearing denim shorts and a sleeveless blouse, her hair pulled into a loose ponytail, her feet bare. I nodded and stepped outside, leaving a heap of silverware and paper napkins on the red tablecloth. We chatted for a while about my courses in Renaissance architecture and Middle Eastern woodcarvings and my roommate, who was majoring in discrete mathematics and always leaving formula-covered sticky notes on the bathroom mirror. The house was a white speck in the distance when my mother stopped and said she wanted to tell me a story.
She and my father had traveled with a small group of scientists in central Vietnam, through the province of Quang Nam. They trekked across valleys and green hills, toward the tropical forests, where they studied the endangered Crested Argus. It kind of looks like a peacock, she told me, only lower to the ground, with violet feathers that grow so long they leave drag marks in the soil.
“But the story isn’t about the bird,” she said, pushing her toes into the wet sand. “The story I want to tell happened before we even got to the forest, when we camped at the bottom of a hill, near a temple called My Son.”
My Son, an L-shaped structure with towers and tunnels, was built in the twelfth century, during the reign of the Champas. She had read a little about the Champas and knew some of the temple’s history. The fire that damaged a wall during the sixteenth century and the bombs that toppled one side during the Vietnam War and the symbolism of the towers. They all had three levels: the lowest represented the human world, the middle was for spirits, the top for all things close to humans and spirits.
She hiked up the hill early one morning to see the temple. It was not yet dawn. The rest of the party was still asleep in the tents. There were no villages on the surrounding hills and the rises looked perfectly smooth and dark. She entered My Son and walked down a long tunnel until the path stopped and she saw, through the shadows, an enormous stone face with round eyes and fangs that resembled spears. Sort of like a gargoyle, she said. But different. More frightening. She reached out and touched the mouth. Green moss had grown between the teeth. The stone was cold and rough. She smelled the earth in a way she never had before.
When she came outside, the sun was rising between two hills. She saw a figure walking toward her. The silhouette was dark and wavy, the face obscured. For a moment, she believed it was a stranger coming to tell her something, to show her a secret part of the land. But as the person drew closer, she knew from the height and shape of the head that it was her husband. And that was when she felt it: the flutter in her chest and the voice inside her, unmistakable as the whiteness of the morning sky, telling her to run.
“I almost did,” she said. “I almost turned and ran down the hill, through the valley and into the jungle. I can’t say what stopped me. Common sense, I suppose, although I’ve come to believe that’s an overrated quality.” She bent over and reached into the water. When she stood, a red starfish with two missing tentacles was cupped in her palm. “It’s dead. See how the color has lightened?” She pointed to a spot that had faded to pink, then tossed the starfish back into the sea and continued with her story.
“The rest of the trip passed without incident. We went to the tropical forest and studied the Crested Argus. We went home and wrote our papers. And a few weeks later, I found out I was pregnant with you.” She rested a hand on her stomach. “But I never forgot that moment by the temple and the voice inside me. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.” She touched my chin with the tip of her finger. “You’re getting older, Shelby. And one day, you’re going to have such a moment.”
The sky was colorless, our dusk-washed conversation turning more surreal by the minute. My mother had never talked like this before. I had always known her as a pragmatist.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“You will. It’s a fact of life. Just believe me. And when you do, I want you to run. Even if you’re in a forest or in the middle of the ocean. Even if you don’t know where you’ll spend your next night.” She squeezed my elbow. “Do you understand, Shelby?”
“Yes,” I said, even though I did not. The beach was dark by the time we turned from the water and linked arms and walked back to the house with blue shutters and gaps in the wall, invisible to the unassisted eye.
A woman from Children’s Services met me at the police station. She was dressed in a navy pantsuit that had the sheen of polyester, her gray hair twisted into a bun. When I asked how she got involved, she said a neighbor had called the police and they had called Children’s Services. Your brother is a case now, she told me. She said we had to find a place to talk and led me to a bench in a hallway. After we sat down, she took a legal pad and a pen out of her briefcase. I was still thinking about Jordan, the closing of my own little rabbit hole, when the caseworker asked if I understood what would happen next.
“Not really.”
“I ask questions and you answer them.”
“What exactly did my brother do?”
“He assaulted two city workers repairing a hole in the street. Hit them in the legs with a flashlight. One of them will have to see a doctor. When the police arrived, your brother was very upset about losing his tunnel. Does this make any sense to you?”
“Kind of.”
“He was wearing a red cape and swimming goggles when he came into the station. Does he always roam the neighborhood in costume?” She pushed the dark tip of the pen against the paper.
“Not always.” I was trying to be as truthful as I could without making the situation worse. “But sometimes.”
“We can discuss the incident later,” she said. “First I need to get a family history.” She looked up at me. One of her blue-gray eyes was cloudy. “The only relative you’re in touch with is an Aunt Lucille?”