by Alan Chin
I lay on the bed, overcome by an intense suffusion of frustration and self-pity and anger that Jared had left me alone. Those swirling emotions felt like a candle-flame shivering in its own consuming heat. They grew and grew until I began to cry: deep, breathless sobs beyond my control.
Carrie ran down the hall and flung open the door. Her eyes grew large as she took a few helpless steps toward me. She said nothing, uncharacteristically, and I waved her away. She turned and closed the door on her way out.
A half-hour later, I had recovered myself and finished dressing (including shoes and socks), and I served her coffee. The coffee turned out better than I had expected. Even Carrie smiled.
“What are your plans for today?” she asked.
“I thought I’d sneak past the paparazzi still lurking outside my door, point my chair straight down the hill, and, if no one runs me down as I speed through all those intersections, I’ll fly right off pier thirty-nine and swim out to Treasure Island.”
“Very amusing.”
“Well, don’t ask lame questions. I’m trapped. What plans could I have? Funny, how I used to love this place. Now it’s a prison.”
“The front door is right over there,” she said with a toss of her head.
“This city is built on hills. Everything is either climbing or falling. I might make it down this hill without breaking my neck, but I would need a V8 Hemi on this chair to climb back up.”
“You could hire some handsome muscle-mutt to fight off the paparazzi and wheel you around the city.”
“I’m not ready for that. Shar comes twice a day for my torture sessions, and that’s all I can handle right now. Next week I start working with a therapist, the mental kind. Shar is hooking me up with someone at Stanford.”
“Speaking of Shar, how are you two getting along?”
“We grew closer in Palm Springs, and she’s been marvelous since the shooting. I still feel that she’s using Connor, but when it comes down to it, we all were. I was shocked when she stayed here to handle my therapy. That somehow didn’t ring true with her, but I guess I didn’t give her enough credit.”
“She has a history of using people, me included, but considering her background, you can hardly blame her. You see, she came from the gutter. Her family had nothing but nine mouths to feed. When she turned fourteen, her father married her, which is to say, sold her, to an American whose wife had left him because he beat her half to death. That’s how she came to New Orleans. He put Shar in the hospital six times. She put up with that bastard until she graduated high school, then thumbed her way out west. She found me, and I found….” She smiled tenderly. “Well, I found her. I covered her expenses through her undergraduate degree. An older man put her through Stanford. Like Connor, we were all stepping-stones on her rags-to-riches ascent. She has faults, don’t we all, but you have to admire someone with her kind of determination.”
“No wonder she wants her Up Yours Status.”
“Her what?”
“Nothing. Just something she mentioned.” Carrie persisted, and I parroted what Shar had told me about getting her nest egg.
“That’s all she told you? Well, let me shed a little more light on that topic. She is doing anything she can to support her mother and seven sisters. Eventually she’ll pull them out of that slum and bring them here to live. She’ll do whatever it takes to keep her siblings from being strapped with a pig like her husband. She’ll use her brains and any other body part to save those girls. And to be honest, I’m not sure it stops with her family. I think she intends to save every girl on the planet, one at a time if need be.”
Yes, I thought, you do have to admire her.
“You know, you’re right,” she said, changing the subject. “These hills are too steep. You should move to a wheelchair-friendly city.”
Of course, I thought. I had begun to think of this apartment as a prison, but nothing was keeping us in San Francisco. With Jared playing the pro circuit, he’d be traveling most of the time anyway. We could move somewhere small and flat, where I could be mobile. Palm Springs? It’s flat, has a sizable gay population, and I knew a real estate agent in Palm Desert.
I grabbed the real estate section of the paper and checked property values in Palm Springs. There were only a few listings. I made a mental note to surf the Internet as soon as she left. I could have us moved before Jared came home. I smiled, wanting to kiss her.
The thought of leaving this reminder of my old life and making myself more self-sufficient sent a tingle across my scalp. I glanced at the calendar by the refrigerator, counting the weeks I had before Jared returned. Just eight, but eight was enough.
Chapter 21
THE first day of the Barcelona tournament, the Lin family gathered at my house to cook dinner and watch tennis. They selected my apartment because only I had the Tennis Channel coverage on J.D. Lambert’s television setup. Besides, caravanning food to my house seemed easier than lugging me across town.
Shar arrived earlier that afternoon to supply me with my comfort shot, rubdown, and stretches. Then she busied herself in the kitchen making beignets, a French-Cajun pastry. She sang while she worked, softly serenading me while I prepared for my guests. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, but she also had brought a simple black dress to change into when the guests arrived.
I spent the better part of an hour donning my best casual jeans and polo shirt. I splashed water all over the bathroom floor while pulling myself into and out of the tub. Lesson learned: lower myself into the tub before filling it and drain it before pulling myself out again. That would save me from floundering on the cold tile floor like a beached whale to soak up water with my bath towel.
I heard the party chatter tumbling down the hill long before the doorbell rang. When the front door opened, the pungent odor of Chinese cooking reached through the doorway, saturating the living room all at once. Everybody carried a platter or bowl or pot as they paraded from the front door into the kitchen. Connor’s grandmother commandeered the kitchen, five-star-general-like, and the aunties became her administrative staff. The air became heavy with grease and ginger and sweet spices.
Teenagers sprawled on the sofas, and grade-school kids sat on the carpet watching a basketball game on J.D.’s television. The men sat around the dining table sipping hot tea or cold beer. The women jammed into my kitchen, where a volcano of cooking erupted. A loud cackle of laughter floated through the doorway as they literally chased Shar into the living room. When I asked her what they were laughing at, she blushed and said they were joking about how nobody could possibly cook in such a bare kitchen.
“They compared it to making love to a man that only has an inch-long penis.” Even she laughed at that, although I failed to see the humor in it.
Grandfather Lin wore a gray Mao jacket buttoned to the neck and dark slacks. He bent close to me and grasped my hand, smiling. It was a genuine smile—not a be-brave smile and not a smile that was forced, but a smile of pure delight at seeing me again.
“Thank you for coming,” I said.
“I wanted to see how you are feeling. I’ve been heartbroken over you.”
“I’m better. Enough morphine and I can tolerate the fires of hell. And how are you feeling? You look well.”
“I am old. I know this because I detect signs of age. For instance, it is easier for me to talk Chinese these days. I discipline myself to speak American, but when I get tired, I speak Chinese.”
“I’m sorry that I don’t speak Chinese. Are you tired now?”
“Not so much. It is a wonderful language, but we will speak American.”
“How old are you?”
“I don’t know. Our family papers were lost in the war. I never expected to live forever, but I very nearly have, long enough to realize that the world is a peculiar place and that I know so very little about it.”
“That sounds very wise.”
“The wisdom of old men is a sad fallacy. Men do not grow wiser, they grow more careful. Tell me,
what do you value most in life?”
“The person I love.”
“Yes, I am so sorry that I did not see him before he left for Spain. I wanted to wish him luck.”
The old man’s eyes sparkled, and I wondered whether he had figured things out himself or Connor had told him.
“I hope you do live forever. We need your kind of careful thinking.”
He laughed and patted my shoulder. He had a beautiful ring in his voice, and I laughed with him from the sound of it. My own laughter surprised me. It was the first time since the shooting.
Connor’s grandmother came out of the kitchen with a scowl. She folded her arms over her chest as she examined every detail of the living room. She began to chatter in bouts of Cantonese, sounding like the quick bursts of a machine gun.
Grandfather Lin nodded in agreement and turned to me. “My wife say, your house is lopsided and everything is pointed in a straight line out the windows. This means all your joss, your luck and worth, pours out the windows and down the hill like a waterfall. This is very bad. When your home flows wrong, your equilibrium wobbles. This house is beautiful, but its symmetry keeps you from becoming balanced. She is surprised you are not dead.”
My mother had taught me about Feng Shui, but I’d never learned enough to know how to apply it. According to her, chi flows though the earth just as it does with people. It links humans to the land and so to the entire cosmos. The chi energy that we take in from our surroundings influences our moods and actions. It is a positive force as long as it is allowed to flow unimpeded. It should meander, like a stream rambling through a valley.
I asked Grandmother Lin what I could change to make it flow better. She rattled off a series of Cantonese sentences while her arms waved at this and that. All at once, the uncles jumped up and began moving the sofa, chairs, end tables, and even the piano. They repositioned the angles of the rugs, took a mirror off the wall and placed it in the hall closet. In the kitchen, the aunties rearranged the things on the counters and even shuffled the contents of the cabinets.
“My wife say, this room has not enough Yin to balance the Yang. You should consider painting the walls green or blue for better harmony.”
Once the furniture had been repositioned and several items swapped or tilted to different angles, Grandmother Lin surveyed the results. She nodded, but she pointed at the television and, shaking her head, spoke again. I noted the distress in her voice. Grandfather Lin said, “This TV constricts the room’s energy, but there is no better place for it. She has done her best.”
I explained that the television was temporary, and as soon as J.D. Lambert returned, he would take it away. She grunted her approval and charged back into the kitchen to oversee the cooking.
I looked around the apartment, thinking that everything looked different and yet the same. I felt suddenly happy, not because the room felt balanced, but simply because it had changed, and I welcomed any change. They could have thrown it all out the windows, and I would have cheered.
“Come and eat,” Grandfather Lin said. He lowered his voice and whispered, “We have shrimp and snow peas. My wife is very proud of this dish. You eat.” He wheeled me across the room to the dining table, which the aunties had crammed with food.
As we wheeled past the children, I said, “I often think about the hardships you faced during the war. In the hospital, I even dreamed about crawling through your cave. Every night I had that same horrifying dream. How did you endure it?”
“The thing that I have learned over my life is that your world is a reflection of your mind. During the war, I lived in darkness, not knowing what lay ahead, seeing nothing, feeling my way through life with my fingertips, always afraid of what I couldn’t see. That is true for you now. You see the world through the hardship of no legs, and you can not see how to move forward.”
“You mean I must sit in the dark while the world passes me by, unable to participate?”
“Not at all! How you experience that chair depends on your nature. You see, when a creature is threatened, it reacts in one of three ways—tiger, deer, or tortoise. Tiger fights, deer runs, and tortoise pulls its head in its shell until the problem goes away. Jared is tiger. That’s why he goes to Europe. They threaten his family, so he fights, maybe to the death. He is like the bird who leads the fox away from the nest before turning to fight. I think you are a tortoise.” He made a fist and rapped his knuckles against my skull. “You see, very hard shell.” He chuckled. “That is why you worked at the Windsor Club instead of being a tennis pro.”
I opened my mouth to object but stopped. Yes, I had to admit, I spent four safe years wrapped in that shell.
“If your chi is the tortoise, you will sit in that chair, like you say, watching the world pass you by. But if your chi is tiger, you have created the most formidable obstacles for yourself.”
I sat for a moment, staring into his eyes, which seemed to glow from deep within his black pupils. I said, “That sounds more like wisdom than being careful.”
“No, that is simple. Wisdom is knowing that you can choose. If your chi is one way, you can make it go the other way. It is all up to you.” Grandfather Lin smiled a wide, toothy smile and slapped me on the shoulder. “That is my only wisdom. We all choose our nature.”
I sat at the table, flanked by Grandfather Lin and Shar. I remembered from the first Lin gathering that Shar disliked Chinese food, but she filled her plate without complaining.
I took a polite spoonful of each dish until everybody had filled their plate. I added small portions of seconds, even thirds, saying that I was already full, but I couldn’t resist another bite. My mother had said that you don’t feast at Chinese dinners, you graze. That ensures everyone has a chance to taste everything.
When Aunt Kitty brought out a curry dish, Grandfather Lin explained that this Thai delicacy—pork cooked in coconut-chili paste with peanuts, potatoes, onions, and chilies—stimulates blood circulation and improves digestion.
Kitty said, “It turned out too hot. It’s so hard to gauge when you use fresh chili peppers. Have something else instead.”
I assumed she was being modest—my mother would hide her pride in the same way—so I took a heaping spoonful. My mouth instantly turned into a blast furnace, a burn that grew progressively hotter. My first instinct was to lunge for my water glass, but I held back, smiled, and through teary eyes, declared it the best I’d ever eaten. I spooned more onto my plate.
As my mouth cooled, Grandmother Lin brought out the roasted crab, cut in sections and coated in a black bean sauce. I picked out two legs.
“No!” Grandfather Lin scolded. “Take a claw and a body.”
I smiled and politely refused, saying I had already eaten too much. The black bean sauce tasted delightful. I was a little surprised that I still had taste buds after the curry.
All talking stopped, replaced by the sounds of cracking shells and the sucking of crabmeat.
The men and children finished their meals and migrated to the sofa and chairs facing the television. The ladies gossiped and picked the last few crab morsels from the spongy brain, the part I’ve never been able to stomach.
The delayed broadcast meant I could have checked the results online, but I didn’t. Knowing the result ahead of time ruins the thrill.
When the first match started, everybody became very excited. We watched Felix Costa thrash a Spanish qualifier, which turned into a boring match to watch. Still, the Lin family stayed glued to the screen. After the match, they all smiled and nodded as if they had predicted the result from the onset.
A few minutes later, Connor’s match against Fernando Salvedra began. Salvedra was a talented Spanish player and a crowd favorite. The fans screamed every time Salvedra won a point. The Lin family cheered Connor on but went stone silent every time he lost a point, which happened more often than not. I couldn’t tell whether the crowd had gotten under his skin or he simply had jittery nerves, but Connor struggled. His body was as tense as his racket stri
ngs, and that tension killed his footwork. His feet stuck to the court like Velcro, making his normally fluid steps look like slow lunges. Because he got to the ball late, his contact was poor.
I saw his confidence evaporate during the first four games. After he lost the first set, the Lin family stopped cheering the few times he won a point. They saw the outcome as clearly as I did.
Watching Connor made envy rear its ugly head for the second time in my life, only a hundred times more powerful than that time on the beach. I felt acid surging through my capillaries, burning every muscle, organ, and hair follicle. It consumed me. I knew that if I had Connor’s legs, I could crush Salvedra’s assault. I saw his weaknesses as plainly as white clouds against a cobalt sky, and I knew exactly how to exploit those shortcomings. I could have made mincemeat of him, if I had had legs.
Connor should have recognized those weaknesses—should have known to pull him in with a short slice and pass him cross court, to chip and charge that weak second serve, to play the ball out wide to the forehand wing to bait him into going for a huge low-percentage shot—but Connor was experiencing a brain cramp.
And I knew exactly why. Winning in Indian Wells had raised his expectations. High expectations create pressure, and pressure cramps the brain. A causes B causes C—simple. He needed to put his achievements and expectations aside and focus on executing his game plan, but that was clearly not happening.
As he was about to drop another game, down 1-4 in the second set, a miracle happened: Salvedra rolled his ankle. The room went utterly still while we waited for the trainer. Long minutes crawled by as the trainer hustled onto the court and taped Salvedra’s foot. Salvedra stood to put weight on the leg, gingerly testing it. When Salvedra called Connor over to shake hands, giving Connor the match, a sea surge of relief swept through my living room. Everybody but Shar and I was elated.