18.
It’s raining when we come out of Im Smart Language School, because dry season doesn’t mean it never rains.
It just means the rain comes fast and without warning and is usually finished before you’ve had time to react to it.
We hurry across the road and duck into an Indian restaurant that’s been operating out of the same shophouse since at least the nineties, if the faded photographs of the owner standing with various Thai celebrities are any indication.
It smells of cardamom and cumin and something frying in a pan somewhere in the back.
While we’re waiting on our food, I try a video call with Meena. The reception is a little iffy, her face pixelating in and out, but it feels strange not being able to reach her and making contact is its own form of therapy.
“We got Thalia signed up for classes,” I say. “It went just like you said. So easy.”
“Sut yord!” Meena says.
The food arrives fast, which is one of the things Indian restaurants in Thailand do better than anyone. Dal makhani, saag paneer, garlic naan that comes out of the kitchen still bubbling. We say goodbye to Meena and dig in.
“Oh,” Thalia says, pausing as she wipes her fingers on her napkin. “I have to call my parents.”
She checks the time on her phone.
“It’s three hours ahead there. Better do it now before they’re asleep.”
“Do they know that you’re going to stay in Thailand for a year?”
“Nope.”
“Do they know that you’ve got an older boyfriend who you’ve only met recently and are now living with?”
“Nope,” she says, even more cheekily this time.
“How do you think they’ll take it?”
“You remember how I signed up before telling them?” she asks. “If I wanted to give them a chance to talk me out of it, I would have. If it was up to them, I wouldn’t have left Queensland even on holiday.”
I try to see things from their perspective. I don’t have kids myself, but if I did this isn’t the way I’d want to be informed about my daughter’s plans.
“Maybe you shouldn’t call them from a restaurant,” I say. “Let them hear the news where you can tell them properly.”
“This way is better,” she says. “It makes it feel more like a done thing, and they may make more of an effort to be polite about everything.”
“Well, it’s up to you,” I say.
She opens up WhatsApp and places the call and puts it on speaker.
Then she sets the phone on the table between our plates like it’s a bomb she’s chosen to detonate in a restaurant so that everyone has to stay calm.
The call starts out pretty much as you’d expect.
She tells them first about the elephant bathing and the village in the north—giving them the good stuff, banking goodwill.
But then gradually they start asking questions which lead to me.
“Did you meet a boy?” her mom wants to know.
“Well, more of a man, actually,” Thalia says with a smile.
“And how old is this man?” her father asks.
The answer, that I’m more than ten years older than she is, gives them pause, which is to be expected.
They want to know all about me, and at this point Thalia decides to just hand the phone over and let me take over.
She passes it across the table with the expression of someone handing off a live grenade.
“Hi, uh, hello,” I start.
“Hello, Michael,” her dad says. “What’s your living situation over there?”
“I’ve got a villa,” I say.
“It’s overlooking the water!” Thalia chimes in.
“It’s a rental,” I add, hoping to soft-pedal a little because admitting that I live in a villa makes me sound richer than I really am.
“And does this villa have a guest bedroom where my daughter sleeps?” her dad asks.
“Dad!”
“Oh, uh, yeah,” I say. “It’s got two bedrooms.”
“He’s just teasing you, Michael,” her mom says.
“Testing, not teasing,” her dad answers. “That’s what you do with your daughter’s boyfriends.”
“How did you two meet?” her mom wants to know.
“Oh, um, I was picking up garbage on the beach and Thalia came over and asked if she could pitch in,” I say.
Thalia gives me an okay sign across the table. Not bad.
“You sure you didn’t find her sleeping on the beach?” her dad asks.
“Dad!”
“What kind of thing is that to say?” her mom wants to know.
“I didn’t mean she was passed out or something,” her dad says. “But if she was trying to save a bit of money by throwing a hammock up, that would be the way she’d do it.”
“I was volunteering, dad,” Thalia says. “I’m all about that kind of thing.”
“News to me,” he says. “I can’t think of any time you’ve ever picked up anything off the floor unless a coin rolled under the sofa.”
She rolls her eyes, but there’s this little hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. She knows it’s true. I can tell.
“Well, it’s good that you’ve made a friend while you’re there,” her mother says.
“Actually,” Thalia says. “It’s a little more than that.”
“You’re not pregnant, are you?” her dad demands.
“No!”
“You didn’t get married without telling us, right?”
“Are you mad? We’ve only just met each other,” she says. “But—“
“—Oh, boy!” her dad cuts in.
“—I’m coming back and staying for a year.”
After that, the tenor of the conversation shifts dramatically.
I see right away that Thalia’s decision to call when she did was the right one.
We’re in public, so everyone has to be at least civil.
But her parents are not happy with the choice or how sudden it is.
I watch Thalia’s face as the questions start coming—her jaw setting, her spine straightening—the way you brace for something you knew was coming but hoped wouldn’t be this bad.
You’re studying Thai? Why? What are you going to do with that?
Queensland has plenty of Thai migrants. They speak English.
They’d probably love to practice English with you.
Why not come home and talk to them, if you’re so interested?
How will you support yourself? How is this going to look on your CV?
What do you mean you’ve already paid for a year’s worth of courses?
What kind of language program is this? Is it accredited?
Do they know that you’re fresh out of uni—which we paid for?
What happens if you and your new boyfriend break up?
Are you just going to burn through all your savings? What about your future plans?
None of these questions is unfair. I see their side of things easily enough.
They’re right to be concerned. But all of them coming rapid-fire is just too much, and I can see Thalia struggling to hold it together as she tries to answer.
Her eyes land on me, crying out for a lifeline.
I take the phone from her and hold it close to my mouth.
“Hey, uh, listen I understand how you both feel, and I agree with your concerns,” I say. “I think you’re really upset with me, and you have a right to be. Because the truth is, I’m the reason that your daughter wants to spend a year in Thailand. It’s not really about the language. It’s about me.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. The restaurant carries on around us—cutlery, a low conversation at the next table, the distant clatter of the kitchen.
“Are you going to support her?” her dad asks. “Financially? Not just emotionally.”
“Well, yeah,” I say. “She won’t have to worry about money as long as she’s with me.”
“And what about when she’s not with you?”
I struggle for an answer, because I can’t honestly tell him that won’t ever happen.
I can’t imagine it now, but no one ever can when they’re newly in love.
And the only way I can reassure him that it definitely won’t happen is if I tell them that we’re getting married, and that’s not about to happen, at least not now.
“You can’t put all your hopes on a rich boyfriend, Kookaburra,” her mom says.
Kookaburra must be a pet name from when Thalia was a kid. She squirms in her seat at the mention of it, which makes her feel childish precisely when she’s trying to show how grown up she is.
“I know that!” she says. “That’s why I paid for the courses myself. He offered to pay for them, and I told him no.”
“So how much of your savings do you have left?”
“Enough to stay away for a very long time,” she says.
I can see that she’s wavering. Our food, spicy as it is, is rapidly getting cold.
Our waiter comes around and I ask him using gestures if we can wrap everything up.
He takes Thalia’s half-full plate along with the rest without comment, the practiced diplomacy of a man who has witnessed a hundred difficult conversations over his tables.
Finally, everyone resolves to discuss it further when she returns home, which really just means they’ll try their best to wear her down and talk her out of it.
She looks deflated when she finally hangs up, on the verge of tears.
She was expecting this but she still wasn’t prepared for the emotional weight of it.
“They’re concerned for you,” I say gently. “They’re scared that you’re making decisions they aren’t a part of.”
“Do you think I made a mistake?” she asks.
“No,” I say.
But the truth is, even if it wasn’t the wrong choice, I worry that she made the decision more for my sake than for hers. We saw this opportunity for the two of us to be together and dove in. Now comes the messier side of that choice.
“I’m afraid they’ll talk me out of it,” she says. “You heard how they are. They’ll start in on something and just push and push and push. God, they’re impossible!”
“I know it’s hard. But if you’re firm with them, I think they’ll respect that even if they never agree with the decision.”
“You’re lucky,” she says. “You didn’t have anyone holding you back or telling you not to move here. You just did what you wanted. No strings, no commitments.”
That lands for me in an unexpected place. She’s right, in a sense. But the reason I didn’t have anyone holding me back is because I lost the two most important people to me at the same time. Just like that, I found myself adrift. Moving to Thailand was the path of least resistance.
“It wasn’t easy for me either,” I say quietly. “Coming here was supposed to be a trip the three of us took together. After I got dumped, I started looking for a way to make my short-term trip a permanent solution to my loneliness problem.”
“I’m sorry, Michael,” she says. “I forgot about Olavia.”
“So had I,” I say. “Thanks to you. You’re the reason that I was finally able to move on from them.
I think that’s part of why I’m so excited to be falling in love again.
It’s not just the newness of this relationship.
It’s the fact that I’m not still carrying them around anymore.
Anyway, the thing about relationships is that they cut both ways.
You want to be free, and that’s natural.
It’s the right stage in your life for that.
Your parents understand that, even if they don’t agree with what you want to do with your freedom.
But if you really had no one holding you back, nobody who cares whether you come home at all, you might find that you miss it. Without people, you’re just adrift.”
“I’m not adrift,” she says. “And you’re not adrift. We’ve got each other to hold onto.”
“That’s true,” I say.
The waiter comes by with the to-go bags and I pay the bill. The rain stopped long ago. In fact, the road outside hardly shows any sign that it rained at all, which is either a feature of tropical storms or a comment on how long we’ve been sitting in here.
“What do you want to do?” I ask. “We can do anything.”
Bangla Road is just a few streets away, not that I really want to go out drinking. The sun has set but there are still people on the beach at this hour.
“I need a massage,” she says.
“You want me to give you one?”
“That sounds really nice, actually. But since we’re in Thailand…”
“You’re right,” I say. “I know a place near here where we can get a couple’s massage.”
“Then when I’m feeling relaxed and limber, you can fuck me.”
“Now that can work.”
I don’t actually love massages to be honest, but I’m learning to like them.
There’s no better place to acquire a taste for people pressing their elbows into the fleshy parts of your back.
I can sense that Thalia feels better after we’re finished, and so they clearly have therapeutic value.
Maybe the whole experience has therapeutic value.
We’ve been through challenges, been tested.
That’s good for a relationship. That’s how you prepare yourself for the challenges that are still ahead of you.