Killed at the Whim of a Hat

“And?”

“He won’t talk to me.”

“Get your police on it.”

“He won’t talk to them, either. I believe he said something like, ‘You bunch are just corrupt, evil bastards.’ Then he hung up.”

I wouldn’t have put my life savings on it but Granddad Jah might just have cracked a smile about then. If only I’d had my camera with me.

“He sounds all right,” he said.

“I thought you’d like him. Do you want his address?”

“All right.”

“Lunch in half an hour.”

“Mair. Have we found the sinner in our midst?” I asked. “He that shall be forgiven?”

“Not yet,” she said.

I was in her cabin and we were hand writing brand-new menus for the restaurant. Our resort was officially empty again following the flight, that afternoon, of our bird lady.

“You will tell me when you do, won’t you?” I said. “I’m really interested to know…who it is we aren’t going to do anything vindictive to.”

“I’ll tell you,” she said, absently.

I watched her stick fish transfers on the corners of the menus. My mother. At high school I’d gone through periods of not liking her. But whereas my classmates were not liking their mothers because they were too much of a presence in their lives, I resented mine because of her absences. When she was home it was as if you were plugged into the world. When she was away you’d sit staring at the empty socket: Granny Noi sitting counting and recounting the banknotes in the shop till, Granddad Jah with his vocabulary of grunts.

It was probably because of Mair’s absences that I studied so hard. I wasn’t trying to impress her. I was trying to earn whatever qualification it took for me to be out there with her, her personal assistant carrying her bag of tricks like a wise caddy. By the time I was sixteen I knew what I wanted to be. What better way of reaching the horizon than as a journalist? I read all the newspapers, Thai and English, that we sold in the shop. It was the perfect start. I didn’t have to pay for any. I saw myself interviewing my mother, exploring the mysterious depths of her life. Mair, a special feature. My mother, exposed. And I broke into a metaphorical trot to get through those cumbersome study years so I could be the person outside that I already was inside. And I was running so fast that I almost missed the middle-aged lady I passed ambling in the other direction.

“Mair, is that you?”

She’d run her race. Done her dash. Her bag of tricks was upended and she had no more passion. Even her stories became gray, as if she could no longer see her life in the Technicolor it once was. I was flying out of the missile hatch just as she was docking. Overnight we changed places and once more we’d become unfamiliar. I missed my exciting mother but I learned to love her as a different person. But then, three years ago, she’d started to put her handbag in the washing machine, to walk into my bedroom thinking it was hers, to give customers four five-hundred-baht notes as change for a five-hundred-baht note. Those cracks were few but through them I saw the light of somebody I recalled. She began to surprise us with stories, blurt them out with no rhyme or reason. And her voice would crackle with joy as she recalled a place or an event. There would be gaps like a dream remembered upon waking but it made the stories even more mysterious.

When they’d first begun I’d thrilled at those moments and urged her on. But slowly, far too slowly, I came to realize that this was my mother traveling backward on a mechanical walkway, passing through time, past huge placards advertising moments from her life. And I began to fear that one day she’d be so far along that escalator she’d no longer recall where it was she climbed on or who was there to see her off. Now, three years on, the condition was no worse, suspended as if the walkway had broken down and a team of men in blue overalls was underneath trying to get it going. So, sometimes, ever so gently, I dared to nudge her along to another placard. There was one I desperately wanted to see.

“We had another bat fly into the bulb on my porch two nights ago,” I said. “Smashed it completely. But that bat just shook off the glass shards, walked around in confusion, then flew on out of there. It didn’t panic at all. It was like a pet. It made me think of…Thanom.”

Mair smiled. I’d pressed the secret code button and was ready to enter that hidden room where she and my father kept a pet bat.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“You told me. You said you and — ”

“No, I mean, how do you know it walked around in confusion? If it smashed the light it would have been dark. It was cloudy two nights ago.”

“I heard its footsteps in the broken glass.”

“Bats never were ones for walking, you know?”

See what I mean? When my mother wasn’t out of it, she was completely in it. Saner than all of us. The pet bat story would have to come in its own sweet time. I stood to leave.

“On your way out can you remember to put water in John’s bowl?” she said, without looking up. “She’ll be thirsty.”

I phoned Sissi later.

“Sis?”

“Nong.”

“How’s Leather?” I always liked to ask how Leather was because, in his own weird, probably nonexistent way, he was a benchmark of stability in Sissi’s life.

“He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“I deleted him.”

“What did he do?”

“He announced he was coming here on holiday.”

“Oh, that’s terrible. Is it terrible?”

“Of course it is. I don’t want to see what they’re really like.”

“He might have been nice.”

“He calls himself Leather and whips women online. He’s either a factory worker or a bus driver.”

I felt sad. Really. I’d like to see her settle down with a bus driver.

“So, who’s next?” I asked.

“I’m giving up on men for a while.”

This sounded a lot like me in Pak Nam. I told her about Ed and my temporary dip into gaiety.

“Have you ever considered…?” I began.

“Women? No, don’t even joke about it,” she said. “Who would stoop so low. No, little sister, I’m going to be an auntie.”

I had to think about that.

“Wouldn’t that involve either Arny or me doing the business?”

“Ha! I should live so long.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“No, I’m going to be an auntie to thousands, perhaps millions. Do the words Cyber Idol mean anything to you?”

“No, of course they don’t. It’s a very Asian thing. Started in Korea. It’s now even bigger in Japan and it’s slipping south.”

“Does it involve singing and being humiliated by impresarios with limited talent of their own?”

“Not even. This is the ultimate self-makeover site. You have young girls who look like, say…you, and you set up your homepage with photos of what you actually look like. And the site has make-up and hair and — get this — Photoshop advice to do whatever it takes to make you look absolutely stunning online. There are no rules. You can