“Oooh,” the kids all said, an apparently universal sound meaning “Do, please, continue.”
So he told them the beginnings of the adventures of Grumwald, beginnings he himself had gotten only by deduction, osmosis, the plot filling in slowly like holes in the sand when the tide is out. The beginning of the Grumwald story way predated him. He knew his father invented Grumwald so his mother would go out with him. That was as much a part of the fairy tale as the fairy tale itself. Grumwald was a decade older than Claude, so he had to make some parts up, fill in what he could, guess at what he couldn’t. It was tiring to make stuff up. He had no idea all these years how hard his father was working when he wished he would just read them a book like everyone else’s dad.
The clinic children had questions. What “Grumwald” mean? What Grumwald was last life to come back as prince? Why he never look inside armor before? Why he no wanna be prince since he earn prince? Claude had no idea. He would have to ask his father and get back to them.
“In the meantime, you tell me a story,” he said to them. Storytelling was hard. He needed a break. Telling him a story was a good way to practice speaking English anyway, he thought.
“A new story?” said Dao.
“An old story,” said Claude. “A classic story. A fairy tale.”
That was how they started trading stories. Every day, Claude would tell his students an American fairy tale, and every day, his students would tell him a Thai or Burmese fairy tale. He told them about Beauty and the Beast, and they told him about two birds who were reincarnated as a princess and a farmer. He told them about the Little Mermaid, and they told him about a rabbit whose squirrel tail got bitten off by a crocodile with a long tongue. He told them Cinderella, and they had that one too, which he could not even believe, except in theirs the dead mom sent a fish instead of a fairy godmother, and the prince fell in love with her because of her trees instead of her shoes.
“Why he love her shoes?” they wondered.
“It’s not that he loved her shoes. He loved her whole outfit, and that’s why she really didn’t want him to see her in her dirty old clothes.”
“Why she forget her shoe?”
“She didn’t forget. It fell off, and she didn’t have time to go back and get it.”
“How long it take to stop and pick up drop shoe?”
This seemed a fair point to Claude. It made about as much sense, as far as he could figure, as their explanation, which involved a talking fish who got eaten then reincarnated as an eggplant and then as a matchmaking tree.
*
His father called early in the mornings, but sometimes his mother had already left for the clinic anyway. It wasn’t just that it was night in Seattle when it was day in Thailand, it’s that it was still yesterday in Seattle when it was today in Thailand. Sometimes they had cell service and sometimes they did not, so mostly they kept in touch over Wi-Fi. Claude could chat with his brothers easily enough because they were up all night, but his parents were having trouble connecting. He was glad, though, to have his father all to himself sometimes, an occurrence rare enough in his life it wasn’t surprising he had to go halfway around the world to find it.
Penn was sorry those mornings to have missed Rosie but also happy to have some time alone with his youngest. “How are you, baby?”
“Fine, Dad.”
“Really?”
“Really.” This was only sometimes true. Sometimes Claude considered that probably they were not going to stay in Thailand forever, and probably his parents were not going to think a fourth-and-a-half-grade education was sufficient, and probably he was going to have to go back to his old life except his old life was gone. Poppy had friends, but Claude had none. Poppy had talents, but Claude sucked at everything. Poppy was normal, but Claude would never, ever, ever, ever stop being a freak. He had been able to picture Poppy’s life next year in middle school and then high school after that and how Poppy and Aggie would go off to college together and how someday Poppy would have a job and be a mom and eventually an old lady like Carmy, smoking and swimming in lakes and drinking gin and tonics and making her grandchildren laugh. Poppy had futures, but Claude had nothing. He couldn’t even picture Claude’s life now, even while he was looking at it in the tiny picture in the corner of his computer screen.
But sometimes he really was fine because none of it was possible, and this was a comfort. Claude was impossible but so was Poppy, so was Aggie, so was fifth grade, so was Seattle, so was last month when her biggest worry was those stupid, embarrassing movies they showed in health class. Sometimes all there was in the world was the jungle and a school that was barely a building and little kids whose parents had been killed by bugs and the small, scant, desperate possibility that somehow maybe he could help them a little bit, and in that case, who he was didn’t matter, not even to him. “Really,” he told his father. “I’m okay.”