Their mother said, “Maybe, the General had political ambitions for himself. But we’d never know, because they all got caught. I’m sure planning started soon after they met.”
Rudy and Leilani’s interest in their mother’s story deepened when it seemed she was about to go into more detail about the assassination plot. But she stopped, rose from her chair, and started to clear the table of dishes and utensils.
Their mother was stalling, and if she could help it, she would rather not continue. She was clenching hard on her jaw and the muscles on her face were tight from tension. What she was about to reveal was going to be devastating.
Seeing the turmoil on her mother’s face, Leilani began to have doubts. Did she really have to know the events that ensued after her father met the General? Would the information help them find their father? Was it not enough to accept, as truth, that he was involved in the assassination plot?
Leilani paused in her musings as she confronted the feelings that hit at her core: Was she afraid to hear the rest of what her mother had to reveal? Afraid of a much more painful truth?
Rudy said, “Leave it for now, Mamá. Leilani and I will do the dishes later.”
“Let me, at least, get the dessert. Lani, go get the dessert plates and spoons.”
Leilani got up to comply with her mother’s request. Rudy snapped at them.
“Not now, you two. Let’s get on with this. I promised to be home before ten o’clock.”
The two women sat down again. Mrs. Torres said nothing for a long time, until Rudy said, “I’m sorry I shouted at you, Mamá. Please continue. I know this must be very hard on you, but you owe us the truth.”
“It’s not because you shouted. I’ve worked so hard to forget that awful past and I would have given a lot to keep it a secret. But you’re right, I owe you.”
She picked up the can of beer Rudy had been drinking, and raised it to her lips. She took a few swallows, and handed the can back to him.
“There’s one thing I’m most sorry about in this whole affair. It is that your father had access to the president’s medicine chest. Only the doctors had keys to it. The plan General Huang and the group came up with involved that medicine cabinet, and your father was supposed to carry it out. No one else could do it.”
Leilani’s mouth fell open. She could feel the hair on her skin stand on end. She would rather have kept silent and yet she needed to put her suspicion into words. “Mamá, are you saying Papá was going to poison the president?”
Their mother stared at her and Rudy in anguish. She was trembling. “He … suggested the method—a lethal dose of a pain killer you can find in many medicine chests. When enough is injected into the bloodstream, it’s usually fatal. By the time autopsy is done, much of it has metabolized and only traces are left. Your Papá said heart attack or stroke would be listed as the cause of death.”
Rudy said slowly, as if he could not understand the words he just heard, “You’re saying Papá came up with the specific plan of how to kill the president.”
Their mother did not answer.
He continued, “I learned when you and I went back that the plot to depose the president was supposed to be carried out the day we fled the country. I heard rumors that Papá was among the conspirators. Now, you’re telling us his role was much worse, that he was going to be a murderer on that very day.”
“Don’t call him that.” She frowned and stared into her son’s eyes.
Rudy said, his voice like a plaintive cry, “Mamá, face it. He was prepared to be one. He was going to flee the country after a heinous crime.”
She protested vehemently. “But that so-called president was responsible for killing hundreds, maybe thousands. If your father had succeeded, he might have prevented the bloodshed from the uprisings that came later.”
“Things apparently went awry, didn’t they? The plot was foiled,” Rudy said, his voice cold.
“That’s one of my regrets. If it had succeeded, we’d still be where we belong. With Papá in our native land.”
Rudy said, “Oh, Mamá.” He seemed exasperated.
Their mother ignored him and said, “About a month after we left the country, reports of the assassination plot were all over international media. Sixteen people had been involved in the conspiracy, five of them identified as brains of the plot—your father, General Huang, and three others whose names I never heard of. All I knew was they were also officers. The media was never clear about the fate of the sixteen. There were rumors they were executed without the benefit of trial.”
Rudy said, “So you already knew some of the things General Huang told us.”
“I heard the reports on the radio in Hawaii. It’s true. I kept them from you.”
“Is there anything more you should be telling us?” Rudy said, scowling.
“Your father always thought of you. He planned our flight from the country about the time they were plotting the assassination. If the plot failed or any kind of trouble occurred that put us in danger, we would leave the country as soon as we could. He invested in foreign ventures and opened accounts in foreign banks to prepare us for a future in another country.”
“I suppose we should be grateful for all that. Did it ever occur to you to think of how we, your children, would have felt if Papá had succeeded in killing the president?”
“Oh, Rudy, why are you bent on thinking your father’s evil? He loved you all so much.”
“I loved him a lot, too, and I don’t think that, as a person, he’s evil. But killing is evil.”
Leilani had been quiet as Rudy and her mother talked. She said, now, in a voice filled with sorrow, “If he had killed the president, could Papá have lived with his conscience, or the fact that he violated the oath he had taken as a doctor?”
Rudy said, “It’s only right that he should agonize for the rest of his life if their plan had succeeded.”
Their mother covered her face with her hands. Rudy watched her detachedly.
Leilani suspected Rudy’s opinions and feelings were quite clear to him: He condemned the assassination plot and their father’s role in it. The conditions in the country did not justify them.
She understood his feelings and wished she could be as certain. Her initial reaction was to deny that her father—the gentle one who told them stories and brought them treats, who was kind to all the servants and provided free medical treatment to people who could not afford to pay—would ever consider killing anyone. And yet, her mother told them that he did.
Rudy and Leilani remained motionless on their chairs for some very long minutes. She wanted to blot out all she had heard. The “whole truth” with all its disturbing details was too much to add to the roiling mix of chaotic emotions already plaguing her. A plot? A plot to kill a man, a very important man. She thought, It’s too fantastic. Don’t such things happen only in movies?
But the most fantastic part was the role her father was supposed to have played in it. No! How could he have? And yet, in her heart, she knew her father was capable of it, if the lives of so many people were at stake. He probably decided that killing one man would save the life of Costa Mora, a nation at the point of collapsing, a nation he loved and where his children would have been forging a future.
How was she—the ordinary daughter of such a man—to cope with the weight of such knowledge? A young woman, living among people troubled by compulsions to chew pencils, check locks on doors countless times before they left home, or say some nonsense word at least five times before doing anything. Those problems seemed so harmless pitted against the crime her father had been ready to commit. It would have been murder, regardless of how much it was rationalized as a noble act to save that small part of the universe to which he belonged. Should she be proud or ashamed?
Their mother had finished her story. With occasional glances at her children, she waited quietly for them to say something. She needed reassurance that her children did not judge th
eir father harshly for what he had done.
But Leilani was stunned. The chaos in her mind and her heart needed time and reflection to be understood before she could accept the truth.
She rose from her chair in a daze and said, “I’m going home. I’m extremely tired.”
Rudy said, “Me, too.”
Their mother cast mournful eyes downward and nodded.
Leilani kissed her cheek and muttered, “Please don’t worry, Mamá. We just need time.”
Rudy kissed his mother and said nothing. With her hands on the table, she pushed her body up and followed her children to the door. They both walked out without looking back at her.
*****
Leilani felt numb as she drove home. She did not want to think about that evening. She didn’t want to go home to her apartment.
On impulse, she turned on a street that led toward San Francisco and headed for Justin’s apartment. Why his place, she wondered. Because in my pathetic lonely life, he’s the one I feel most connected with, outside my family. For the moment, she needed some respite from that family.
Justin opened the door a minute after she rang his doorbell.
“Leilani,” he said with barely a smile.
“Justin, I know it’s late, but I need to be with someone just now.”
Justin peered at her face. “You do look like you’re in a daze. Come in. Can I get you something?”
From inside his apartment, a feminine voice called out, “Justin, who is it?”
Leilani had taken a step forward into the apartment, but when she heard the voice, she stopped and said, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you had company.”
Without waiting for him to answer, she turned around and ran down the hallway toward the elevator. She heard Justin calling her back, but she did not stop.
“Leilani, please don’t go. Wait.”
The female voice said, “What’s going on, Justin? You shouldn’t be shouting out here. You’ll bother your snooty neighbors.”
Leilani pressed the button for the elevator. She rushed into it and pumped the button for the lobby with her fist.
“Stupid, stupid,” she muttered to herself all the way down to the lobby.
She was shaking when she drove away. She gripped the steering wheel and stared out into the darkness.
I should know better than to do anything on impulse. It always leads to something I regret. What’s wrong with me? Why, oh why did I go there?
Her cellphone rang and she knew without looking at its screen it was Justin. Ignore it. Just ignore it. But the melodious ringing, that now sounded shrill to her, kept going. And going until, out of a sheer need to silence it, she picked up her phone.
“Yes?”
“Leilani, are you on your way home?”
“Yes.” What choice did she have? So many things about which she had no choice.
“You’re upset, very upset. You need someone to talk to right now.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“Okay, but please don’t hang up. How about if I come to your place?”
Leilani didn’t answer. She pursed her lips, as a knot that had formed in her chest threatened to rise and burst out.
“Leilani?”
She remained silent. Her vision was getting blurry. She swiped her eyes with the back of the hand which held the phone and stared ahead more intently.
“Leilani, listen … .” Justin’s voice seemed to come through a tunnel. He continued to say something that she vaguely understood.
She put the phone back to her ear. “What?”
“I’m on my way.”
“Why?” Her mind was being swallowed in a fog.
“Because you need me.”
“I don’t need anybody,” she said, her voice weak. The words barely came out of her mouth. I’ve never needed anybody. A tear rolled down one cheek.
“Yes, you do. Give me the entry code to your building.”
Another tear rolled down her other cheek. She reeled off the numbers and pushed the “off” button on her phone as Justin began to speak again
X. Opening Up
At her apartment, Leilani slid her shoes off by the door, put on the pair of slippers she always left there, and walked straight into her bedroom. She tossed her purse on the armchair at the corner of the room, sat on the bed, and absentmindedly rolled her hose off her legs. She wished she could lie down and relax, stop the quivering in her muscles. But Justin would be arriving shortly.
She glanced at her watch. A few minutes past eleven. She sprang up from the bed, walked back and forth in the room, but plopped her bottom down on the bed again.
If only she could will her mind to go blank.
She clasped her hands on her lap and, with eyes closed, she stared at an imaginary point above her nose, a trick that always helped her in the past when she wanted to empty her mind.
But her mother’s revelations were too new, too strong, and they pushed her back into her mother’s living room. She saw her again telling them that her father plotted and was ready to kill the president of their old country on the day they fled. An anguished cry erupted from her chest.
She bounced up from the bed and dashed out into the living room. She paced briskly around it and back into her bedroom.
Slow down, concentrate on every step.
She stopped, took a deep breath, and focused on moving one foot forward and then the other. She continued her slower, measured pace, and it seemed to calm her down. As long as she took one mindful step at a time, she could keep away the turmoil plaguing the moments she stayed still.
Leilani paced around her apartment until her doorbell rang minutes later. She walked slowly to the door, anxious to present Justin as calm an exterior as she could. She opened the door wide.
Without glancing at him, she said in a tone she was aware bordered on formal, “Come in, please. Thank you for coming.” She closed the door.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Justin said, peering at her face.
She gave him a faint smile and led him to her living area. “Please sit down. Can I get you something to drink?”
He remained standing. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get you something to drink. You look like you’re the one who needs taking care of. I’m here and I’m more than willing.”
Leilani felt a tug in her chest, one she knew often preceded a flow of tears. Justin stood a few feet facing her and she could feel his gaze on her. He was watching her closely. He took a few steps toward her and gathered her in his arms.
She took a long breath and let it out slowly. Her whole body trembled as she laid her head on his shoulder and let her tears go. She cried quietly on his shoulders for some minutes.
After a while, she stopped shaking and began to calm down. Justin led her to the sofa and guided her tense, rigid figure down on it. She wiped the moisture on her eyes and cheeks with her fingers.
They sat for a long time, his arms around her, her face nestled at the crook of his neck, and her body draped against his. Within the reassuring warmth of his embrace, Leilani wished she could tell Justin everything her mother disclosed. But she was not ready to be flooded again so soon with anguish.
She wanted to remain in Justin’s arms, on that couch, the whole night. There, it seemed she could hold the truth at bay for a while and be at peace. But that could not last.
After a few minutes, she broke free of Justin’s embrace and smiled. She looked into his eyes and said, “Thank you, Justin. You’re a true friend.”
Justin nodded and returned her smile. “I’m glad I can help. I’ll keep you company the whole night, if you wish. I can sleep on your couch. I’m sure you’ll feel better tomorrow, and if you want to tell me, then, what’s going on, I’ll be here.”
Leilani was touched. His manner was gentle, almost careful, and she sensed deep caring in it. She needed his company that night. His presence kept unwanted images of the past from pester
ing her. But the memory of their last strained parting gave her pause.
Although he had tried to hide it, she could tell he was hurt by the way she had reacted to his kiss. He probably took it as a rejection, a rejection that might have stung more because it came so soon after he had broken up with his girlfriend of many years.
She said, “I’ll be all right. I don’t want you to feel you have to do anything for me. I’m sure I’ll feel better in the morning, and when I’m ready, I want to tell you what’s happened. But I can’t yet. So, please feel free to go.”
She bit her upper lip and thought, What am I saying? I want you, I need you to stay.
“I don’t mind staying.”
“My couch isn’t comfortable.”
“I see.” A frown crossed Justin’s brow for a fleeting second. “I understand. In that case, I’d better go.”
Leilani was consternated. No, you don’t understand. Her remark about the couch—did he think that she meant to discourage him from staying with her?
As sweetly as she could, she said, “Can I make one little request before you go?”
“Of course.”
“Would you think it strange if I asked you to stay until I fall asleep? I’ll take a sleeping pill. I think that’s the only way I can sleep tonight.”
He smiled, a little mollified. “I can do that.”
“I’ll go and change. I have some diet soda and sparkling water in the refrigerator. Please help yourself.”
Ten minutes later, Leilani came out of her bedroom, dressed down to pajamas and a French terry robe. Justin sat on the couch, waiting with a pot of tea and two Japanese teacups on the coffee table.
He said, smiling broadly, “I found your teabags. My mom uses some of the same ones in your cupboard. She swears by this one, an herbal concoction labelled ‘sleepy-something.’”
She sat next to him. “How sweet of you to do this. I do often sip this before I go to bed, after soaking in the tub. It’s wonderfully relaxing.”
“Careful, it’s hot,” Justin said as he handed her a cup.
She cradled the cup between her palms, took a couple of sips and said, “And I like your mom already.”
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