by Sandi Tan
He slipped on rubber clogs and unleashed a hose on the thirsty patches the sprinklers missed. The sound of flowing water relaxed him. The sky was darkening, and there was a loamy fragrance from where the moisture loosened the soil. Earthworms were probably farting without a care. If it weren’t for the mosquitoes, Raymond would be sipping Bandol in the shade of his oak, making believe he was in an abnormally prosaic aerie in the south of France.
A cool breeze kissed his arm, as if a fugitive blast of igloo air had slipped out the back door and found its way out to him. He looked up at the house, dark and still. The back door and windows were shut. Maybe a cold front was moving in. One could dream.
He tugged the hose to the far end of the yard and drenched the base of his oak. Watching the water unleashed the ancient urge—as it often did. He undid the crotch of his pants, and looked around. With only the Parks’ ravaged blue couch as a potential witness, he peed freely.
A myopic hawk flew overhead, grazing the treetop and sending leaves cascading. Then a flock of smaller birds, all cawing madly in pursuit.
“For fuck’s sake!” Raymond zipped up his pants.
Could these actually be the elusive, possibly fictional, feral green parrots of Alta Vista the realtor had yapped so excitedly about? In the evening light, these birds looked more charcoal than chartreuse. Raymond turned off the hose, painstakingly coiling it around the tap so it wouldn’t flatten the grass in the shape of a comatose snake.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught something through his study windows. He rushed closer, trying to recall if he’d locked the front door.
“Who’s there?” he bellowed, more a statement than a question. Looking around the yard for a possible weapon, he freed a rusty, cobwebbed tomato stake.
Glancing back at the window, he saw the pale orb again. This time, a human form, made gaunt and vague by bug screens and privacy tinting. Then the specter seemed to register that it’d been spotted, and retreated in a flash.
Raymond ran to the back door wielding the rusty stake. It was locked, from the inside. He kicked at the door in a rage, then power-walked to the front of the house.
“I’m going to kill you!”
The front door was wide open. The sprinklers on the lawn soaked the legs of his pants as he passed.
Through the doorway, his home looked like one black hole. He gripped the stake and neared the threshold. Then he removed his wet, grass-stained clogs and left them on the porch. He entered the house, closing the front door behind him.
Once inside, he darted from light switch to light switch, flicking on every one he could find. The lights did nothing. All he had were dim, wimpy accent lamps with their stupid copper shades—mood, not security lighting. Worthless, effete set dressing. He cursed himself.
He sluiced through the hallway, past the oxblood dining room, toward his study in the back. He peeked around every dark doorway before taking the next step, the way he’d seen detectives enter strange rooms in movies.
“Don’t even think you can escape now.”
Behind him, the front door of the house slammed shut.
Hadn’t he already closed it? He turned, ran briskly to the front of the house, and opened the door.
The sprinklers were on full blast. In the half-light, he saw watery prints of bare feet on the dry stone pathway. He followed the footprints as they led off his property, to the center of the street, where they . . . vanished.
It appeared that the intruder had made a beeline for Kate Ireland’s house across the street. He thought of ringing Kate’s doorbell to warn her, then decided against it. He didn’t want to sound like a crazy old coot, showing up at her door, sweat rings under his arms. Not that she seemed completely sound herself. He’d run into her several times at the liquor store, hunching along the whisky aisle with her many bottles, as if anyone in a liquor store would judge. No, as long as the housebreaker was gone, he wouldn’t bother. It didn’t look like anything was missing. Of course, the next time they showed up, he’d teach the punk a lesson with his knives—plural.
The phone was ringing when Raymond got to his porch and set down the stake.
“I can’t talk now, Dad,” Raymond said to the master of impeccable timing.
“Why not?”
“I’m really tired. I’ll call you Sunday.”
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” the old man said.
“You wanted to hear my voice?”
“Yes, son. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“Remember that DVD I sent you of the movie they made out of my book Black Grave?”
“Black Grape, did you say?”
“Black. Grave.” His dad had never read any of his books, citing moral objections.
“Oh, yes.”
“If you put on the DVD, and anyone working at Dartmoor would be able to do that for you, you can hear my voice on the commentary track.”
“I’m not so sure. They aren’t so bright, the girls who work here.”
“What’re you talking about? Students from Yale intern there.” Raymond sighed. “Look, I really have to go now. Somebody just broke into my house.”
“Good Lord! Are they still there? Have you called the police?”
“I can’t, can I, Dad? Not when you’re keeping me on the phone with you.”
“Raymond, why are you being so mean?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! What do you want from me?”
“I’m your father.”
“Yes, and as my father, I’d expect you to have the maturity and decency to realize that I, your son, am a fully grown, fully realized adult and that I have my own life. And with that, my own problems that I need to solve.” Raymond took another deep breath. “I have to call the police now.”
“Please call sometime, won’t you?” That plaintive voice again. It was the kind of thing that led to patricide. “You won’t forget, will you?”
“I’ll call you, I’ll call you. Goodbye, Dad.”
It seemed unimaginable that this old scarecrow could have ever been a meat packer, a taciturn man’s man who spent his days alone in an icy locker hanging carcasses. Now, one minute left to himself and he was nervous as a cat.
Whenever Raymond suggested he make friends with the other residents, he’d say he didn’t feel at ease with the retired surgeons and accountants, implying that Raymond had thrown him into an elite facility as an act of perversity. He’d never sat in a real leather recliner until he moved there, or even tasted a martini—and all that was just fine; it was the looks he thought he got from the ones who marched down the halls in golf clothes as if they owned the place.
Raymond’s mother, on the other hand, would have thoroughly enjoyed Dartmoor. She would have Jazzercised with the other whitehairs every morning and played bridge every night, with nary a thought as to anyone’s background, not least of all her own. She would have loved the party buses into Manhattan to see Les Miz.
It was probably the biggest regret of Raymond’s life that he hadn’t placed them both in Dartmoor while she was still alive. His mother died an undignified death in their ramshackle Wichita duplex, choking on a piece of meatloaf during Jeopardy. His Dad had been in the other room, sleeping off a Blue Nun bender.
Raymond opened his front door. The sprinklers had stopped. The intruder’s footprints had evaporated, leaving absolutely no trace. What would be the point of calling the cops now?
He went back inside, locking himself in for the night. With a thimble of Lagavulin in his hand, he sauntered to his study to locate the damage, if any. He found himself humming, then singing a fortifying tune that his mother had sung to him as a boy:
Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer
Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer
Lead us lest too far we wander
Love’s sweet voice is calling yonder . . .
He moved to where the intruder might have been when they appeared in the window. It was a sliver of space between the desk and the pane—and the desk was too heavy to be moved. Nobody could fit in there. He peered under the desk to where his or her feet might have been—there he saw dark, red-black droplets of blood. He jumped in terror.
His teak floor!
He dashed to the kitchen for a sponge and wood-cleaning soap, his head pounding. It was only after he’d finished scrubbing and rinsing the blood off the floor that he realized he’d wiped away all evidence of the intrusion.
Bah! He took a Xanax, then a Klonopin, and chased them down with whisky for good luck.
The Camry sat on the driveway under the blazing sun.
“You have to get in there!” Mira screamed at her mother.
“Trust me, Ma, it’s not going to explode.” Rosemary spoke calmly. Someone had to be the voice of reason.
Mrs. Park stared at the car, the key ring in her hand. She squeezed the button—cheep-cheep!—and unlocked the doors.
“Get in there, Mother!” Mira opened the driver’s door and pushed her mother to it. “Now!”
“Wait, wait . . .” Mrs. Park gripped the edge of the door, panting. “. . . Slowly!”
“Take your time, Ma,” Rosemary said.
“Take her time? It’s been, like, three months.” Mira rolled her eyes at her painfully diplomatic sister. “Tell her. Tell. Her.”
Mrs. Park looked to her older daughter for kinder words.
“Ma, we . . . bought a book,” Rosemary said. “On driving.”
“We’re going to study it ourselves,” Mira cut in, “since you’re incapable of it.”
Tears welled up in Mrs. Park’s eyes. The girls couldn’t tell if she was moved or insulted. When her brow furrowed, they had their answer. She slammed the car door shut and hit the button on the key ring, locking it. Cheep! Avoiding their eyes, she stalked back into the house.
“You see? We shouldn’t have told her,” Rosemary said, pulling a spiderweb off the car’s wiper. She wound it around her finger like a loom.
“How else will we get through to her? She’s not Amish, you know.”
“I know, but she’s, like, super bueno mucho upset now.”
“I can’t tell you how sick I am of eating that ramen she buys from the am/pm. I’m anticipating bone loss from the MSG.”
They turned to the house as the screen door opened. Mrs. Park popped out.
“I make a plan.” She met their eyes. “We go back to Korea.”
The Mystery Boom Box had not boomed in more than two weeks. The last time the girls heard it was the Fourth of July, when it blasted patriotic songs by country-singer types.
Mira thought, If only Dad had waited another few weeks. If only I hadn’t used the music as an excuse for not doing my homework. If only Ma hadn’t pushed Dad to the brink with her incessant sea-hag nattering. It wasn’t even that she liked her father much, but she liked the idea of moving to Korea even less. There, she imagined, all the men wore fake Air Jordans, burped kimchi and spent their spare time beating up their wives.
She and Rosie were in a race against time. After giving away all of their Dad’s belongings to the Salvation Army, their mother had begun packing their things into old cardboard boxes. She’d already thrown ten years’ worth of National Geographic into the recycle bin and said she’d deal with the crockery the following week.
Nights, Mrs. Park made phone calls to friends and relatives in Korea, always beginning friendly and ending desperate, her eyes rimmed with red and her arms entangled in telephone wire.
“Do you even know anyone there anymore?” Mira would ask her. “You left twenty years ago. That’s, like, a really long time ago!”
Mrs. Park wouldn’t answer; she’d keep her eyes tilted away from the questions, defiant. Mira was only a child, and a spoiled, mean-spirited one—what did she know about obligation? The girl’s histrionics always ended the same way anyhow, with her screaming “I hate you!” and storming out of the kitchen, then returning two minutes later in tears, pleading, “Please, Ma, please don’t make us go!”
Mira found a way to distract her mother. After dinner, she read to her from When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Though it was a hideous task having to explain each line to her mother in language she could understand, it prevented Mrs. Park from disappearing to make those calls to Korea and it kept her from noticing that Rosemary was outside, trying to figure out the Camry’s controls with Driving for Idiots in her lap.
Mira read aloud from a chapter entitled “Why Do the Righteous Suffer?” She couldn’t wait to get to the chapter called “Sometimes There Is No Reason” just to watch her mother lose her mind.
“The misfortunes of good people are not only a problem to the people who suffer and their families . . .”
Her mother interrupted her, tapping at the words on the back cover.
“What is this say?” Mrs. Park asked.
Mira flipped the book over.
“For anyone who has ever been hurt by life . . . It means that this book was written for people who feel cheated and eff-ed over by their circumstances. Like you.”
Her mother nodded.
“You also, yes?” she said, hopefully.
“This book was written by a rabbi. I’m probably not ‘hurt by life’ in the way that he’s talking about.”
“You not feel missing your Dad?”
“I guess . . .” Mira gazed at the hairy mole on her mother’s neck. “But this is not about me. It’s about you.”
Mrs. Park looked wounded.
“You pray to Jesus?”
“Ma, that’s too many questions. Can we just continue reading this thing?”
Mrs. Park pushed the book away and tried to get her daughter to look at her.
“You asset Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?”
“Ma . . .”
Mrs. Park grabbed Mira’s wrists and forced her palms together in prayer.
“You asset Jesus as Lord and Savior. Yes?”
“Stop it. You’re creeping me out.” Mira snatched her hands away and stood up. “Can I ask you something, Ma? Do you feel persecuted?”
Mrs. Park stared back blankly.
“When we were studying the legacy of slavery, a boy in my class asked a really interesting question. He said, ‘Why aren’t there great Asian American chroniclers of suffering?’ He meant that the Jews have their Holocaust museums, and African Americans have Frederick Douglass and Hurricane Katrina, but Asians don’t really have anyone. Like, George Takei’s kind of upbeat. And I got to thinking maybe you could be our spokesperson, Ma. Because you’re so gifted at grievance.”
Mrs. Park covered her mouth with her hand. “You say garbage, Mira!” She buried her face in her hands, and began sobbing.
Mira was startled by the power of her words. She was only funning.
Rosemary crept into the house just then, Driving for Idiots tucked under her shirt.
“Ma? What’s wrong?” Rosemary glowered at her sister. “What did you do? What did you say to her?”
“Nothing.” Mira backed away from the couch. “I asked her a rhetorical question and she misunderstood me. You know how it is.”
Rosemary followed Mira into her room, plunging her nails into Mira’s arm.
“Ow! Quit that! You’re hurting me!”
“What did you say to her?”
“I asked if she felt persecuted. I know it sounds totally cruel out of context but . . .”
Rosemary closed the door behind Mira.
“Listen to me,” she hissed. “We’re
in a really, really delicate situation here. I’m not sure you realize how serious this is. That woman, a.k.a. our mother, wants to take us to Korea, where we will both suffer grievously and, like, never meet our fullest potential. Now, can you get that into your thick skull?”
“I have that inside my head every second of every day!” Mira wriggled to get out of her sister’s iron grip. Rosemary released her, and Mira fell against the bed. “I’m going to get bruises from this, I swear. People at school will think I have an uncle who rapes me. And I’ll say I do.”
“Can you be serious for one minute? I know you’re going stir crazy here but we have to keep Ma calm or she might actually go through with this.”
“I’ll probably just kill myself.” Mira grinned, her braces gleaming. “Seriously.”
“Don’t talk like that. The last thing we need is another irrational freak-out in this house. Right now, from what I can tell, it looks like she’s having no luck getting someone to, I don’t know, take us in.”
“Why am I not surprised? That woman has no people skills whatsoever. Couldn’t we put ourselves up for adoption? Couldn’t some rich gay couple in New York adopt us? Couldn’t we say we’re poor girl babies from China?”
“Miracle Park, you don’t even know what real poverty is.”
“Yeah, like you’re Miss Rwanda Baglady.”
Rosemary pulled the driving book out of her shirt and threw it at her sister.
“Your turn.”
“Any luck tonight?”
“I figured out high beams, low beams. Which means we can make a getaway, in the dead of night.”
Rosemary rode the bus to school twice a week for summer drama. The kids unfortunate enough not to be attending camp or loitering around piazzas in Italy sometimes signed up for the class, just to have something to do apart from PlayStation, or porn.
But Rosemary was actually serious about the class. There was nothing to keep her at home—the Brittany Ann Yamasato saga had run its course. Two months before, sightings of her were reported as far north as Vancouver, where she’d been seen riding in a wood-paneled van with an older man, and as far south as Corpus Christi, Texas, where witnesses said they saw her stick her tongue through a glazed donut. But those leads tapered off. A cuter, younger kid—a missing Boy Scout from Utah—was now the hot item; all the cameras were trained on his blindingly blond family as they prayed.