A son should do more, but you do not stop talking about the one time I took you and dad on a vacation. You could have asked to visit anywhere, New York, Paris, Beijing. You chose the cheap old glamour of Penang. When you were a child, your great uncle told you of the night bazaars, blazing with kerosene lanterns, which sold everything from leather luggage bags to a bowl of laksa. Your cousins returned from another visit to the island, complaining that they didn't go anywhere special, but loaded with postcards, sweetmeats and trinkets. You kept for years the pearl earrings in their tiny bag of clear plastic. You didn't have them any more when we stood on the highest point of Penang, the cloudy city below our feet, the caged birds in our ears. With a laugh, you asked me to take a photograph of you holding a tendril of a vine drooping from a wooden trellis. You posed demurely, like some film star in the fifties. Your eyes halfclosed, you looked into my camera.

            Stirring the goldfish bowl with her finger, she lights the small hurricane lamps.