16.
I wake up in the dark, waiting with my eyes closed for a few minutes until I realize it’s early morning and not the middle of the night.
There’s light coming through the window gaps.
Faint, with a slight purple tinge to it.
I turn over and roll off the bed, slipping out of the mosquito net.
I smell coffee already and find a fire smoldering in the center of the main room.
The grandmother must have been up before me.
I put the kettle on and squat in front of the stove to wait for it to boil.
Man, if I’d been born in this country I would be a pro at this by now.
But squatting for more than a minute is agony for me, so I’m forced to stand before the water is fully boiled.
At least the squat wakes me up. When the kettle is just about to hiss, I pull it and pour it over the grounds already in the cloth filter.
Then I pour myself a cup. The Tweety Bird mug is waiting on the counter. I take it.
Outside on the front porch, I find Meena.
“Good morning,” I say softly.
She’s wrapped in a blanket, sipping her coffee. The valley below the village is still in shadow, the mist sitting in the lower parts between the hills. From up here you can see it settle.
“Good morning,” she answers even more softly.
I can’t believe we’re saying goodbye today. Even though I know this isn’t the end, it feels cruel, almost inconceivable. I have a seat beside her.
“Sleep good?” she asks.
I nod. I rub my jaw, scratching the two-day-old stubble that I’m going to be happy to get rid of when I get back to Phuket. Running hot water does have its perks.
“I don’t want to leave,” I tell her.
“Understand,” she says. “Me too. I want you stay also.”
“When can I see you again?”
She thinks for a while before answering.
“Maybe next month,” she says. “But let’s see first.”
I understand that she’s got a commitment here that she can’t just walk away from.
I don’t want to push. Her grandmother needs her.
But I need her too. Not in the same way, obviously.
And I know that it’s selfish. But I’m craving this woman in front of me, all bundled up under a blanket decorated with Stitch from the Pixar movie, who is for some reason featured alongside Spiderman.
Kind of a weird crossover, but also an epic duo just like me and Meena.
I can’t stop thinking about the girl underneath that blanket.
After everything we’ve said to each other, the understanding we share, it seems wrong not to be able to consummate our new relationship.
“Yaa kid mak na,” she tells me with a small smile. Which means, “Don’t think too much.”
I answer in Thai, telling her that I don’t think at all. She grins.
“Mike,” she says, taking my hand and squeezing it. “Tee rak.”
Darling, sweetheart, lover.
“I can’t even tell you how good it feels to have told you how I feel,” I say. “I can’t believe I almost didn’t.”
“Really?”
“It was Thalia who told me I had to before we left. She was right.”
“She’s smart,” Meena says. “You very lucky man.”
“Very, very, very lucky man,” I say with a smile.
The sun is coming up, passing over the valley in front of us slowly, leisurely, almost lazily. I sip my coffee and swallow hard. No disrespect to the sock method, but I’m going to be glad to be back somewhere that handles lattes and espressos on demand.
“Can I do anything for you, before I go?”
“What about?”
It’s a delicate thing to offer, especially considering the income disparity that’s based pretty much entirely on our differences in geography.
“Do you need any money?”
If you’ve ever been to Thailand or talked to a man who has spent time here, you know that this can be a perilous question. Many a man has been ruined by a Thai woman he barely knows who is suddenly asking him to finance her life, her family, her village. But Meena doesn’t hesitate.
“No,” she says. “Money for what?”
“Well, for your grandma,” I say. “Or for you, if you need it. Since I know you’re not working as much as before.”
“Okay na,” she says. “Don’t worry about that. Life here not expensive. Easy, slow life. Don’t need money a lot.”
“That’s good,” I say. “If you’re ever in need, just tell me.”
She grins. I lean over and we share a small good morning kiss.
I’m reassured by her declining my offer.
If she needed it, better she have it. I’d feel better knowing she’s taken care of.
But I may have underestimated how independent she is.
In Thailand or anywhere else, a woman who would rather choose a simple life than accept a man’s money is precious indeed.
Meena sighs, says she misses me already.
And not just me but also Thalia, whose name she pronounces like Ta-lee-yaa!
—three distinct syllables, each one getting its fair share of attention, with her voice rising on the last one in that way that Thais often do.
It’s not going to be easy for her to say goodbye to us both.
“Good person, I think so,” Meena says. “Smart and good heart, loving and hard-working.”
“Thanks to you, now I can keep her,” I say. “When we get back to Phuket, she can sign up for school and stay in Thailand for a year.”
“Yes, good for her,” Meena says. “She can enjoy life in Thailand.”
“I’ve only been here a year and I never want to leave.”
Behind us the door swings open.
“Morning!” Thalia says, wrapping her arm around Meena and hugging her from behind. She comes around to my side and I set the coffee on the arm rest of my big old wooden chair and pull her into my lap.
“Good morning, beautiful,” I say. “How’d you sleep?”
“Easy,” she says.
It may have been the weed, or the exhaustion from fruit picking, but she fell asleep almost immediately after sundown.
Grandma calls from inside and Meena gets up to tend to her.
She offers Thalia the Stitch-Spiderman blanket, which she accepts gratefully and wraps around her shoulders.
The sun is properly up now and there are small cooking fires sending thin threads of smoke up from the little huts all down the line.
“I’m going to walk down to the end of the line of houses and smoke a little,” Thalia says. “Don’t want to get queasy on that drive back.”
I give her an okay sign. A few minutes later, Meena emerges arm in arm with the grandmother and helps her get down to the communal bathroom, moving slowly and carefully on the path.
While everyone’s gone, I poke around the house a little.
I figure that Meena’s grandmother must have a coin jar or a rainy day fund somewhere, and I want to make a contribution.
I find some wrinkled bills inside a tin box that looks like it once held powdered milk, faded blue with a picture of a smiling cow on the lid.
I put a 1,000 baht note inside. Don’t get too excited.
That’s only around thirty US dollars, but it’s probably as much as Meena’s grandmother spends in a week.
For me it’s a sum so small that I can feel fine about it even though Meena insisted she didn’t need my money. Better just to have it.
After putting the tin back in its place, I start packing our clothes. Thalia comes in and hugs me from behind.
“Do I smell like weed?” she asks.
“Kinda,” I say.
She leans close to whisper in my ear.
“I can’t wait to get back to your villa where we have toilets and showers.”
“Same.”
“And your bed,” she says. “That bed that smells like you.”
She grabs her towel, ready to trudge down to the restroom. I gather our underwear that we left to dry outside after our swim and then, satisfied that everything’s packed, take a walk around the village while I wait for the girls to be done in the bathroom.
The trees are alive with the sounds of gibbons chattering somewhere above the treeline and I try to take in everything around me.
I know that I won’t miss this place after I’m gone.
Not because it’s not lovely but because that’s just how I am.
I miss people but not places. I do know that I’ll return here in my mind from time to time, and probably in reality too, because Meena is here. I’ll be back.
The bathing situation is handled and by the time I get back, Meena is cooking a big farewell meal. Sorn has reappeared as if he’d been there the whole time. A neighbor family I haven’t met files in without much ceremony and takes up a spot near the door.
The mangos we picked yesterday aren’t ripe yet, but a neighbor gave us some of hers.
We eat them with rice. Here it is, breakfast. And look.
Even with my “no rice for breakfast rule” here I am eating it.
In the north, they eat sticky rice that you pull apart with your hands.
I’ve had this combination before since it’s one of the most popular Thai desserts, with a little coconut milk and sugar.
Grandma seems especially to like it, not bothering with the Thai omelet or the vegetables Meena also prepared.
Well, she’s old enough to choose what she eats.
She grins at me as she gobbles up chunks of carrot-orange mango with a little plastic spoon.
Thalia eats more than her share and I give her some of my omelet.
“So good,” she says sheepishly when Meena remarks upon it.
We help clean up after breakfast and Meena tells Sorn she can take us down to Pai and bring the truck back herself.
We say our goodbyes to the grandmother and she wishes us well, Meena translates.
Some neighbors turn out as we’re leaving, little kids running around their parents’ legs to get a look at us.
One small boy, maybe four, stares at me with his mouth open the whole time I’m walking past. I wave. He runs behind his mother.