Lurkers

by Sandi Tan

  “I didn’t think you were religious.”

  “Religious inspiration isn’t the only kind of inspiration, you know. You should read some Heaney.”

  She waited a while before she tried to bring it up again. “About Arik . . .”

  “I’m warning you. Say that name again and I’ll throw you out of the car.” He turned to watch her reaction, then to shape it. “I’m not his biggest fan. As you know.”

  He stopped the car at the top of Lake, outside a gated pathway that led up to the Angeles National Forest, its entryway littered with energy-bar wrappers and empty green tea bottles. It was the highest point a civilian car could go. From there, one could look back and see all the way across the valley—Pasadena, Alhambra, the skyscrapers of downtown LA and even the sliver of silver that was the Pacific Ocean.

  “Let’s get out of the car for a moment,” said Mr. Z. They stepped into the biting chill. He threw on a green Polartec vest and she braced her arms around her cotton sweater, nodding that she was warm enough.

  “As long as we’re not going for a walk,” she said.

  “We’re not going for a walk.”

  Downhill looked like a steep drop, although she’d hardly noticed the climb while riding in the car. The church steeples that loomed so oppressively were now small, distant, devoid of authority. A bowling ball released from where they stood would gain so much momentum it might actually smash a hole in the wall of that megachurch four miles down.

  Mr. Z opened his arms and with his fingers beckoned to her. “C’mere.”

  She went to him and let his arms fold across her back. Neither of her parents had ever hugged her like this. His hands massaged her spine and warmed her up.

  “I have something for you.”

  For a split second, she panicked. Was he going to push her down the hill like that bowling ball? She grabbed hold of his vest.

  “If you let go of me, I’ll be able to get it for you.” He prized her fingers off his garment, keeping his eyes on her. It struck her that he might be reaching for a knife or a gun. “I can trust you completely, can’t I?”

  She was shivering now. The lid went up and in the trunk was a lonely red backpack sitting on a spare tire. She distinctly remembered seeing him carrying the pack around school a few weeks before.

  “I want you to keep this for me till I come back from my trip.”

  She hugged him tight.

  “Just promise me you’ll keep it safe till I come back.”

  “Why would you need me to guard it?”

  “Because my wife’s never approved of my dreams. She thinks I’m childish—‘self-indulgent’ is the phrase she uses.”

  Rosemary nodded. She hoped he knew that she approved of his dreams. “What’s in there?”

  “Our play.”

  “The script?” she asked.

  “Everything. Kit and caboodle. Deus ex machina.”

  She reached for the backpack, but he delicately moved her hand. “Remember The Sorcerer’s Apprentice? Mickey Mouse setting off spells he couldn’t control?”

  She nodded again. He lifted the bag out of the trunk and from the muscles that bulged on his lower arms, she could tell it was heavy, like a bowling bag. There was a sturdy padlock that kept the zippers locked, and a series of smaller locks, all conjoined with wires. The contents made clinking sounds as he raised the bag. Glass bottles, was her guess. Wine? Liquor? He looped both carrying straps of the backpack gently around her right arm. When he let go, she was shocked by its heft.

  “Careful!” His palms darted back as she let it dip.

  “What’s in there?”

  “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise. Before your mother takes you away, I promise we’ll put on a show. We’ll prove to the non-believers that we’re something.”

  Rosemary beamed at him. She jiggled the backpack a little on purpose. It felt like different items, all jammed together, the taller ones keeping the bag from slouching into itself like an old man.

  “Don’t agitate it. It does neither of us any good if something breaks and causes a big mess inside. And please don’t fiddle with the locks. Remember Pandora?”

  He removed the backpack from her shoulder and returned it to the trunk. Had she already failed him? She wanted to hold it to her chest like a newborn and prove to him that she was worthy.

  “I’ve been keeping this in my cellar for some time. It likes being in a cool, dark place. Think you can handle that? Put it under your bed or in the basement. It’s just too risky leaving it around my house with my wife poking into everything.” He shook his head. “I guess some people will just never understand.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.” She put her hand on his.

  He gazed into her eyes. “Guard it with your life. I want to enjoy it with you. We’ll celebrate.”

  They got back into the car. He turned it around slowly and they drove down the hill, not braking, it seemed, all the way down, like a freefall. He turned to look at her instead of watching the road. Four, five blocks he held his eyes on her. The butterflies went berserk in her belly, and she couldn’t tell if it was from the plunge or the placid expression on his face. He began braking when they approached a red light about three miles down, well past the rival churches facing off with their moveable type billboards, payback time vs. jesus wanted us to lose our sins, not our minds.

  Back in her room, Rosemary pushed the red backpack into the deep, dark underneath of her bed. As the mysterious items clinked together, she became convinced that they had to be wine bottles. Based on Mr. Z’s early comments to her and Arik on terroir, based on the glass-bottle, liquid-glug sounds, based on his saying that the bag had to be placed in a “cool, dark place,” and that he wanted to “enjoy it with her later.” She tried to imagine what kind of play it could be that had wine-drinking as the central action. A bacchanal or a communion? With Arik out of the picture, perhaps Mr. Z would play the male lead himself. The only thing now was to hope she wouldn’t have to leave before the curtain rose.

  There was a strange car in the driveway, a Ford Focus that looked like a rental. Kate had to park on the street. The front door would not open far. It struck something and then ceased to budge. She squeezed herself and her belly through the foot-and-a-half wide opening. Suitcases were the culprit, two large zippered ones and a smaller hardcase Samsonite from the seventies.

  “Mom?”

  Mary-Sue poked her head out of the dining room like a delicate brontosaurus, her lower back still sensitive to quick movements.

  “Oh, that Larry!” she sighed. “Poor dumb man. I told him to put those in the den.”

  “Larry?”

  “He just got here. I told him he could come for Christmas but I didn’t think he’d take me seriously.” She looked away. “Anyhow, he’s in the shower as we speak.”

  Kate bristled. “You know, if you wanted to invite your boyfriend, you only had to ask.”

  “Boyfriend?” Mary-Sue gave a high-pitched laugh, like it was the most ridiculous thing. “Let’s not be jumping any guns here, missy. Larry’s a decent man, but he’s more like my valet. He’s never been to California so I thought why not.”

  Kate told herself to calm down—this was still her mother’s house after all. The desire to shriek at her was enormous, however. Here Mary-Sue was, making plans behind her back again. Ever since her return, Mary-Sue had been acting like a restless animal, like she couldn’t stand being alone with her.

  “Oh, Katie, remember that blue sofa bed? He could sleep on that.”

  “You gave that away to the Parks, years ago.”

  “Did I? No wonder. I’ve been looking everywhere for that old thing. Maybe we can go over there and get it back?”

  Kate gave her mother a look. “It’s been more than ten years.”

  “I suppose we’ll improvise.”

 
Moving haphazardly but declining Kate’s help—she’d ditched her crutches for a cane—Mary-Sue dragged one of the large suitcases to an armchair and plopped herself into the seat with a loud grunt. Grunting again, she planted her feet far apart, sumo wrestler style. She rolled up her sleeves and unzipped the suitcase a crack, then lowered an entire arm into the hole, rooting around before emerging like a midwife with a pearly pair of silk panties. Her face prickled with embarrassment when she remembered Kate was standing right there.

  “I had him get some of my stuff that I forgot to take with me.”

  Larry walked out of the bathroom as if on cue, a damp towel wrapped around his thick waist. When he saw Kate, he jumped and covered his flabby chest with his arms. It was then that she realized she’d interrupted their lovers’ rendezvous.

  “Well, howdy, young lady,” he said. “Your momma said you wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours.” He lumbered past the women to fumble with the hardcase Samsonite where his clothes evidently were. “I beg your pardon, madams.”

  “Larry?” said Mary-Sue.

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Kate says it’s all right for you to bunk with me tonight.”

  Larry immediately turned beet red. He looked at Kate and nodded. “Well, in that case I promise to be a gentleman.”

  Mary-Sue looked so excited when they pulled into the parking lot of the Tropicalia shopping mall that Kate nearly wept. She now understood why her mother had decided to put on a silk scarf and an imitation gold brooch, why she had worn actual shoes, and not her usual Scholl’s sandals—Mary-Sue thought this shopping mall was going to be classy. “O Tannenbaum” was being funneled out via speakers camouflaged in hibiscus bushes.

  After Kate turned off the engine, they sat in the parked car, facing the Pottery Barn for a silent minute. Kate thought her mother was mesmerized by the idyll of the home-and-hearth diorama in the store window, but she was mistaken.

  “You have to help me out of the car, kid. My body’s still noncompliant.”

  Kate could have kicked herself. She knew how hard it was for Mary-Sue to ask for help. “Sorry, I completely forgot.”

  The place was all upscale chain stores built over a man-made lagoon and linked by a wooden plank walkway—apparently developers’ shorthand for “resort style.” This was what they called a “destination mall,” a consumerist magnet dropped in the middle of nowhere to further the LA sprawl. Her mother had read all about it in Parade magazine, and had been hinting at a visit for weeks.

  Kate feigned interest in the window displays, while wishing Mary-Sue would hurry the hell up. Not that she moved like a sprite herself, with her belly weighing her down. What a pair—a gimp and a blimp.

  In her bitterer moments, Mary-Sue allowed herself to think that the accident at the Publix had been a lightning bolt sent to her from some joyless Supreme Being, chastising her for darting around with age-inappropriate speed and impatience—a reminder, in other words, that she was an old woman. This was one of her bitterer moments, and she wanted to wallow in it. But the presence of Kate prevented her from throwing the tantrum she would have with Larry. Larry was the ultimate shock absorber; she could say anything to him and he’d still come by with cookies the next day. With Kate, say one wrong thing and she’d go mute for a week.

  They stopped by a Häagen-Dazs ice-cream stand. Mary-Sue caught her breath leaning against a post, pretending to casually hum “The Little Drummer Boy.”

  “We can leave if you like,” she said finally. “I know I’m a pain in the butt to have to chaperone.”

  Kate wondered if she’d done something wrong. “We only just got here. We drove over an hour to get here. I thought you wanted to buy stuff.”

  “I know. But we won’t find any bargains in this place. We’ll have to go to the Walmart for that.”

  “Then why are we even here?” It was amazing how quickly her mother swung from poignant to aggravating. “Let me at least buy you an ice-cream cone before we leave.”

  “Actually, since you’re offering, I’d prefer a strawberry malt from Johnny Rockets—it’s better value.” Kate let Mary-Sue direct her to the kitschy fifties diner, its pink neon and chrome fixtures beckoning from behind a faux waterfall.

  The strawberry malt arrived in a gigantic Styrofoam tumbler. Mary-Sue could barely contain her excitement. She accepted it from the waiter as if it were a holy chalice.

  Later as they drove, Mary-Sue pushed the plastic straw to Kate’s lips. “Here. It’s too much. I can’t possibly drink all of this.”

  “Just leave it, Mom. I’m driving.”

  “It’s going to melt. It won’t taste as good once it’s melted.”

  “Just put it in the holder. Please.”

  Mary-Sue peered at the rearview mirror on her side of the car. The sun was harsh on her papery skin. Some women turned yellow or brown or gray with age like freezer-burnt chicken meat, but she was still the same pale shade from her Iowa days, midway between cherry-blossom pink and cucumber green. Wallflower coloring, her mother had once remarked, “a pallor suited to neither powders nor the palette.” Mary-Sue never wore makeup in her youth, and she was now at an age when she could scarcely dream of beginning—any touch of artificial color on her would look obscene, past due, like a dead woman violated by rouge. Her hair was mostly white. The bristly, unruly colony on her scalp was harder to comb down than her original chestnut hair. And it was thinning. She regretted not enjoying her good hair while she had it; she’d always opted for those mousy, low-maintenance bowl cuts, as if she worked in a lab or a lunchroom and needed to have her hair out of the way. But she never worked in a lab. She never had to impersonate Dorothy Hamill. What had she been so afraid of?

  The ravines running straight down the ends of her mouth curdled her smiles into grimaces. She also hated the wrinkles radiating from the sides of her eyes like tributaries ready to ferry her tears; they made her weariness so absolutely apparent. If left alone, these unkind fissures would spread across her entire body like albino kudzu and turn her into a gnarled lump of elbow-skin. This drying out even happened in Florida, where the air was moist; California would turn her into an alligator purse in no time. But, she had to be here: Katie was going to give her a second go at motherhood. She’d be ready this time around. Until then, be good, make nice, get along.

  “Where did you go, Mom?”

  “I’m right here.”

  – 14 –

  LET IT SNOW

  It was Christmas Eve and Kate staggered to the kitchen in her robe, sleep-webbed. Mary-Sue was there with Larry.

  Kate walked straight toward the coffee pot and poured herself a mugful. She almost spat out her first gulp.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Mary-Sue. “Coffee’s too weak, am I right? Well, you’re not supposed to have any caffeine in your condition.”

  “Your mother knows this coffee’s as strong as I can take,” Larry said. “Half a can of pop and I’m a Mexican jumping bean.”

  “It’s all right. I’m leaving.” Kate tucked the newspaper under her arm and headed to the porch.

  “Speaking of which,” Mary-Sue said, “I’ve invited three other people to dinner tonight. I hope you won’t mind.”

  Kate froze. Mrs. Park and the girls? “It’s your house, Mother. Invite whomever and however many people you want.”

  “I figured the three of us couldn’t possibly finish the turkey by ourselves. And these are holiday orphans. Good people. They have nowhere else to go.”

  “Mom, you don’t have to explain. Invite those people.”

  “They’re not whoever you think they are.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “We’re all going to behave ourselves and have a fine time.”

  “If you say so.”

  When Kate was little, Mary-Sue would reserve a table at a local hotel every Christmas and take her
there for ham, turkey, and pumpkin pie, not because Mary-Sue enjoyed that type of food—she hated tradition—but just so Kate could partake in the cultural norm. Afterwards, they’d go home to watch figure skating and drink mugs of hot Swiss Miss cocoa. There were a handful of exceptions, as when they got dressed up and joined the family table at the home of one of Mary-Sue’s co-workers, but these invitations were always one-offs. Tradition for them consisted of three constants—Kate, Mary-Sue and anonymous strangers. After they began living apart, Kate would accept holiday invitations at the homes of friends where the spreads were vast and the mood convivial, but she’d always feel nostalgia for those bland hotel dinners with Mary-Sue, especially the way Mary-Sue would shrug with clockwork predictability and comic exaggeration as she paid the check: “The good news is—no dishes!”

  The doorbell rang at four. They were here, the mysterious dear others that populated her mother’s world, yet whom she’d consistently failed to bring up in conversation. Her home now ran on old people time—dinner at five, bed at nine, rise at four to write letters to their councilman. Mary-Sue clopped down the stairs in dress shoes and red Amway lipstick a little caked with age. Kate winced—she’d never seen her wear makeup, ever. And there was perfume. Her mother seemed embalmed.

  “My Lord! That’s one fine-smelling turkey,” one of the two men at the door exclaimed. “And you, my pretty, are one fine-smelling gal!” Mary-Sue hugged her guests warmly—more warmly, Kate thought, than she hugged her—and introduced them, snickering, as the “two Bills,” B. S. and B. M. The men cackled in naughty glee. They were Bill Spragg and Bill Matthiessen, orchid growers from Homestead, both in their early sixties and evidently good-natured folk. B. S. was the sloppy one with the paunch while B. M. was tall, sinewy and Scandinavian in look, though it was he who was the more garrulous. Were they life partners or just business partners? Kate had no idea and didn’t dare ask; Mary-Sue made no effort to clarify.