Read Online None of this Ever Really Happened by Peter Ferry - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Peter Ferry
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beside the road in which I could
have slept had I needed to, so almost at once my fear turned
to something else. I knew in an instant that I'd never been so
free, and might never be so free again. I was untethered from
all I'd ever known, and when a car slowed to pick me up,
I was a little disappointed.
Somehow over time I'd forgotten that feeling, but it had
come back to me during the two weeks I'd spent alone in
Thailand over Christmas. Again I'd been frightened at first. I
was tired to begin with and a bit spooked because we'd come
in at night over Vietnam, and the Canadian helicopter pilot
sitting beside me on the plane had pointed out the lights of
Hue and the black winding ribbon of the Mekong River. Then
I'd stepped onto the tarmac at midnight for fourteen days all
by myself on the wrong side of the world with nothing but
a Lonely Planet guidebook and the address of a cheap hotel
I'd found in it. What if my appendix burst, I got run over, or
the drunken shrimp fishermen I'd see a few days later in Hua
Hin fighting with knives at dawn turned on me? But that, of
course, is a part of freedom, and within a day or two, I began
to feel comfortable with it and within a day or two more, to
appreciate it.
You don't realize how often you tell lies until you aren't
around the people you know. Not big lies, necessarily or usually.
Little lies, but lots of them. Lies about where you want to
go to dinner, or when you want to go to bed, or if you want
one more glass of wine. How often you say you don't when
you do, you can't when you can, you won't when you will.
After a while, I began to think about big lies, too.
My only companions were E. M. Forster, a Dutch woman
who helped me fix my camera, and an assortment of fellow
travelers I fell in with, sat down beside or picked up at various
stops along the way. I explored much of Bangkok on foot and
much of Thonburi across the Chao Phya River by boat, slept
in a berth on the night train to Chiang Mai, shared a communal
room in a guesthouse there and played Ping-Pong on
the lawn with some Swedish teenagers.
When I got home from Thailand, the apartment seemed
smaller and hotter. I almost immediately started lying again
and resenting the people I lied to. And I lied to myself. For
a month I told myself I was free of Lisa Kim. And then,
suddenly, I was responsible for doing something about this
damned letter, and after all that freedom, there was a small
part of me that liked it, that felt somehow liberated from irresponsibility
and surprisingly relieved to be so. And so there
I was pulled in two very different directions by a feeling so
old I'd nearly forgotten it, and another so new I'd never experienced
it; by a desire for freedom and a need to finally be
responsible for something in my life. And why all of this was
suddenly happening to me I did not know, except that I was
pretty sure it wouldn't be happening if it were not for Lisa
Kim, so I went looking for her.
I could not find Peter Carey or Peter Cleary in the phone
book, nor Peter Kerry, nor Peter Carray. All the Careys,
Clearys, Kerrys, and Carrays I called said "wrong number"
when I asked for Peter. The doctors Kim were in the book.
Theirs was a large, comfortable, but not ostentatious white
clapboard house on a leafy, brick side street a few blocks from
Lake Michigan. Its only distinctive feature was a bright yellow
front door that I thought instantly must have been Lisa's
idea. Otherwise it was almost nondescript, and I wondered if
the Kims, like so many Asian Americans I had known, simply
wanted to slip into, fold into society. Down the alley there
was a functional two-car garage and in the backyard, a modest
flower garden that did not draw attention to itself.
New Trier High School looked like a high school does in
the movies. The security guard at the front door sent me to
the security office. There a man at a counter looked at my ID.
"I'm a freelancer writing for the Tribune. I'm doing research
for an article on New
have slept had I needed to, so almost at once my fear turned
to something else. I knew in an instant that I'd never been so
free, and might never be so free again. I was untethered from
all I'd ever known, and when a car slowed to pick me up,
I was a little disappointed.
Somehow over time I'd forgotten that feeling, but it had
come back to me during the two weeks I'd spent alone in
Thailand over Christmas. Again I'd been frightened at first. I
was tired to begin with and a bit spooked because we'd come
in at night over Vietnam, and the Canadian helicopter pilot
sitting beside me on the plane had pointed out the lights of
Hue and the black winding ribbon of the Mekong River. Then
I'd stepped onto the tarmac at midnight for fourteen days all
by myself on the wrong side of the world with nothing but
a Lonely Planet guidebook and the address of a cheap hotel
I'd found in it. What if my appendix burst, I got run over, or
the drunken shrimp fishermen I'd see a few days later in Hua
Hin fighting with knives at dawn turned on me? But that, of
course, is a part of freedom, and within a day or two, I began
to feel comfortable with it and within a day or two more, to
appreciate it.
You don't realize how often you tell lies until you aren't
around the people you know. Not big lies, necessarily or usually.
Little lies, but lots of them. Lies about where you want to
go to dinner, or when you want to go to bed, or if you want
one more glass of wine. How often you say you don't when
you do, you can't when you can, you won't when you will.
After a while, I began to think about big lies, too.
My only companions were E. M. Forster, a Dutch woman
who helped me fix my camera, and an assortment of fellow
travelers I fell in with, sat down beside or picked up at various
stops along the way. I explored much of Bangkok on foot and
much of Thonburi across the Chao Phya River by boat, slept
in a berth on the night train to Chiang Mai, shared a communal
room in a guesthouse there and played Ping-Pong on
the lawn with some Swedish teenagers.
When I got home from Thailand, the apartment seemed
smaller and hotter. I almost immediately started lying again
and resenting the people I lied to. And I lied to myself. For
a month I told myself I was free of Lisa Kim. And then,
suddenly, I was responsible for doing something about this
damned letter, and after all that freedom, there was a small
part of me that liked it, that felt somehow liberated from irresponsibility
and surprisingly relieved to be so. And so there
I was pulled in two very different directions by a feeling so
old I'd nearly forgotten it, and another so new I'd never experienced
it; by a desire for freedom and a need to finally be
responsible for something in my life. And why all of this was
suddenly happening to me I did not know, except that I was
pretty sure it wouldn't be happening if it were not for Lisa
Kim, so I went looking for her.
I could not find Peter Carey or Peter Cleary in the phone
book, nor Peter Kerry, nor Peter Carray. All the Careys,
Clearys, Kerrys, and Carrays I called said "wrong number"
when I asked for Peter. The doctors Kim were in the book.
Theirs was a large, comfortable, but not ostentatious white
clapboard house on a leafy, brick side street a few blocks from
Lake Michigan. Its only distinctive feature was a bright yellow
front door that I thought instantly must have been Lisa's
idea. Otherwise it was almost nondescript, and I wondered if
the Kims, like so many Asian Americans I had known, simply
wanted to slip into, fold into society. Down the alley there
was a functional two-car garage and in the backyard, a modest
flower garden that did not draw attention to itself.
New Trier High School looked like a high school does in
the movies. The security guard at the front door sent me to
the security office. There a man at a counter looked at my ID.
"I'm a freelancer writing for the Tribune. I'm doing research
for an article on New
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