The Dim Sum of All Things

by Kim Wong Keltner

  Vivien removed her dark, heart-shaped sunglasses with the rhinestone heart in the bottom corner of the left lens.

  “Do you like my eyes?” she asked, batting her lashes coquettishly. She often asked her niece to keep her apprised of the latest trends in clothes, makeup, and slang.

  “Yeah, what about them?” Lindsey asked, gnawing on a stray piece of cartilage.

  “They’re my new look!” Vivien screeched, flashing her green contact lenses. “Aren’t they me?” She lifted her chin and widened her eyes like Gloria Swanson at the end of Sunset Boulevard.

  “Um, yeah, I guess.”

  “You didn’t even notice! What-ever!” Vivien elbowed her with exaggerated dismay. Lindsey winced at her aunt’s painful efforts to sound like a cool kid.

  “You know, with my green lenses, I bet I don’t even look Chinese. Don’t you think I look at least half-white anyway? Some men think I’m Italian or something,” she said.

  Yeah, or something, Lindsey thought. An image popped into her brain, that of the yellow contacts Lou Ferrigno wore as the Incredible Hulk. She also thought about Michael Jackson in the “Thriller” video.

  Her aunt slapped her arm. “You know, you should get them, too. Your eyes aren’t as big as mine, but you could look almost as good.”

  Meanwhile, Auntie Shirley called out to a small cloud drifting overhead. “Oh, the different planes of reality,” she said. “This world is all maya, a web of maya…” From her tie-dyed cloth purse she pulled a strange device that emitted a low humming sound.

  “What is that?” Lindsey asked.

  “It’s my portable negative ion generator. Really clears the energy.” Shirley waved it around, inhaling and exhaling with exaggerated whoops.

  Lindsey took a bite of carrot cake, but it tasted like potting soil. She buried her slice under a wad of napkins.

  After they cleaned up from lunch, Pau Pau opened the car trunk and dragged out a gigantic cannister that had held huge quantities of caramel corn last Christmas.

  They all huddled around the deep container as Pau Pau unwrapped the bundles of fake paper money and set them on fire, letting the cinders drift down into the tin. Some of the papers were newsprint squares with gold leaf characters and designs; others looked like fake Monopoly money in denominations of $500 and $1000 with pictures of Chinese gods and goddesses where Ulysses S. Grant or Alexander Hamilton might be. She lit only several “bills” at a time to make the fire catch properly, but once the flames grew, the papers ignited easily. The idea was that the more money they burned, the more Gung Gung would have in the afterlife.

  Lindsey found a wooden stake from a floral display that had disintegrated nearby, and she stoked the small fire. As she poked down the cinders, she thought of how improbable it was that she might ever find someone to love as much as Pau Pau loved Gung Gung. She tried to imagine burning fake paper money for a future deceased husband, and the possibility seemed pretty far-fetched. Furthermore, she wondered if she’d be the one responsible for enacting this ritual when Pau Pau died. She certainly couldn’t trust Vivien or Shirley to do it properly. Her own mother wasn’t even here today.

  Meanwhile, Pau Pau continued to drop a steady stream of papers into the container as Vivien checked her slender gold watch several times. Shirley resumed her conversation with the headstone.

  They stayed this way for about a half an hour until Pau Pau said, “Gow la, gow, la,” meaning that they had burned enough papers and could leave. As they sidestepped around a newly filled grave, Lindsey noticed a headstone with a familiar face. She halted, transfixed, and her jaw dropped as she studied the colorized, oval-shaped photo of a Chinese husband and wife in sixties garb.

  “Who is that?” she asked Pau Pau.

  A cigarette dangled from her grandmother’s lips. She flicked away some ashes and said nonchalantly, “Oh, that Uncle Bill when he was younger.”

  “But he’s not dead!” Lindsey said, aghast.

  Vivien and Shirley were already over by the car, and they yelled, “Hurry up!”

  Pau Pau shrugged. “He buy plot twenty year ago, big enough for him and wife. He put this picture when she die.” She pointed to the Chinese characters that ran vertically under each of their likenesses. The carvings under Bill’s picture were rubbed with red ink, while his wife’s name was white.

  “See,” Pau Pau explained, “there no year here because he still live, and letter is red. When die, is made white. This very hard to carve, so have to do all at once.”

  Lindsey was freaked out. She stared at the photo of the happy-looking couple and shivered. Even she thought it was bad luck to have your picture and name pre-engraved on a gravestone.

  “Jow-la,” Pau Pau said, herself anxious to leave. She said she wanted to make it down to the mahjong parlor by midafternoon.

  A Fortnight in the Life of Our Favorite Receptionist

  The next week at work was fairly terrible. Some girl named Cheryl kept calling for Michael. She called twice on Monday, three times on Tuesday, and then innumerable times on Wednesday. Lindsey noticed the way Cheryl said his name—fast and casually, like she had uttered the two syllables a million times. The nonchalant voice was sleepy in the morning, perky in the afternoon. Lindsey was in pain.

  Making matters worse was the way Michael reacted when Lindsey announced, “Cheryl on line two.” He’d say, “Oh, great,” or “I’ll be right there,” and once, “Can you ask her to hold? I’ll be there in a sec.” Lindsey wanted to weep.

  All Wednesday night Lindsey brooded. Cheryl was definitely not part of the plan. Did Lindsey even have a plan? No, but that didn’t matter. The point was that no girlie named Cheryl was going to derail destiny. Lindsey knew she and Michael were meant to be together. As far as she was concerned, she and Michael had already begun a significant relationship. She’d ordered him a new pair of scissors and he had thanked her for it. Wasn’t that proof of something?

  Of course it meant something. Office supplies could be very intimate. For weeks now she had been going out of her way to make sure Michael’s tape dispenser and stapler were always in tip-top working order, and when he was out she secretly replenished his paper clips and thumbtacks so that his supply never became inconveniently low.

  Thursday morning she got to work early and retrieved a feather duster from the maintenance closet. She walked the deserted floor until she reached Michael’s office, then she turned in and swooped the feathered stick atop his file cabinet and along the bookshelf. As she pretended to clean, she visually scoured his desk.

  Everything was in place. She found no Post-it notes with girls’ phone numbers, and there were no appointments marked on his wall calendar except for work-related meetings. She felt a little guilty for snooping, but not guilty enough to stop. With her arm midair, dusting nothing but empty space, she noticed a corner of the room where Michael had tossed a few of his personal belongings—a scarf, a sweater, and an umbrella. She knew she couldn’t get away with swiping any of those things and couldn’t believe she was actually considering doing it. She started to get nervous about getting caught in his office, and before she knew it she hastily scooped a felt tip marker from his pencil tray. On her way out, she quickly tucked the pen into her sleeve and sped-walked back to her desk.

  Later that morning, Michael was in a meeting and Lindsey watched him through the glass conference room walls as she lightly ran the cap of the stolen marker across her neck. It was just a writing implement, but she treated it like it was a lock of his hair.

  The jangling phone rang her from her stupor. Of course, it was Cheryl. When Lindsey offered her Michael’s voice mail, Cheryl declined and said, “Just tell him I’ll meet him at seven at his place.”

  Lindsey was all ready to hang up and plot the interloper’s death, but right before they said good-bye, Cheryl apologized for calling so often and asked Lindsey how her day was going. She said, “It must be really exhausting to talk to so many people all morning.” Then, “Have a great week, okay?” />
  Lindsey replaced the receiver quietly, then softly said to herself, “Don’t play games with me, Cheryl.” And that was when Lindsey decided that she, too, would be at Michael’s at seven.

  She was staked out in front of Michael’s apartment building at 6:45 with a pair of binoculars just in case. It didn’t occur to her that she had gone over the edge of decency. But it didn’t matter now. Cheryl was walking up the street.

  She had brown hair and a huge backpack. She was plainish but, unfortunately, not ugly. Lindsey slouched down in her car as she watched the young woman climb some stairs and knock on the door. It was one of those open stairways that ran up the center of an Edwardian fourplex, so luckily, Lindsey had a fair view. Michael opened the door and looked happy. He hugged Cheryl tight and said something. As Lindsey watched his strong hands on the other woman’s shoulders, she felt her skin burning and a caving in of her stomach. She felt like someone had simultaneously slapped her face and slugged her in the gut, and as the door above closed, she started her car and drove away. The radio was playing “Tenderness,” which was usually one of her favorite songs, but right now its peppy beat mocked her. There was only one thing left to do. She would have to go home and eat an entire chocolate cake.

  Friday morning when she saw Michael she would have liked to say that he didn’t look cute at all. She wanted him to have a big pimple or look miserable like he had been crying all night, perhaps from a horrible romantic breakup. When he said hello to her, she almost scowled. He seemed taken aback by this sudden shot of unfriendliness, which was chillier than anything he had ever gotten from her. He stood by the front desk looking unsure of what to do next, and Lindsey just wished he would go away. When he wouldn’t leave, she looked up suddenly, and said, “What?”

  Cautiously, Michael said, “Um, I know you’re really busy…but will you let me know…if my sister calls?”

  Lindsey’s eyes rolled in her head, then came to a joyous halt like a row of sevens in a jackpot slot machine.

  “You mean…Cheryl?” she said, jumping up like a jack-in-the-box.

  She had forgotten her cool, and her excitement now showed more than she would have liked. Michael smiled and said, “Well, yeah.”

  “Oh,” Lindsey said, sitting back down and composing herself. She quickly reverted back to her persona as a slightly aloof receptionist. “That’s nice,” she said.

  Michael rubbed his chin and said, “Yeah, she goes back to Chicago this weekend, but I haven’t seen her in, like, a year. She’s in town for a conference, so I’m showing her around.”

  Lindsey promised to find him if his sister called, and when he walked away, she felt relief wash over her.

  She had it real bad and she knew it.

  After work the following Monday, Lindsey and Stephanie met at the Williams-Sonoma flagship store. It was warm, and, feeling chronically frumpy in her cousin’s presence, Lindsey was taking an enormous risk today. She had left her knee-highs at home and was wearing short, ped-like hosiery called not-socks. They were cut low, meant to be undetectable under the uppers of the shoes, but her flesh-colored ones were a bit thick and visible around the ankle. This was the first time Lindsey had ventured into this new stocking territory, hoping to prove that she was willing to infuse a modern fashion sense into her footwear repertoire, despite the dangers of possibly exposing the Midget.

  She was checking out the crème brûlée mini-blowtorch when Stephanie noticed the unacceptable sock situation.

  “Oh my God, look at your socks?” Her cousin spoke in that way, where statements sounded like questions.

  “They’re Donna Karan,” Lindsey said, hoping for approval.

  “Dang, how fobbish is that? You look like a tourist in Hong Kong!”

  In Stephanie’s world, Lindsey’s blatant disregard for sock perfection made her look like a fob—a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant.

  Lindsey leaned over and adjusted the offensive not-socks that she had misguidedly hoped would inspire accolades instead of derision. For the rest of their shopping excursion she felt self-conscious and longed for the protection and familiarity of increased ankle coverage.

  Meandering toward the baking stuff, Stephanie, despite her protruding belly, walked with a graceful gait toward the springform pans. A short distance away, an elegantly dressed Asian woman with shellacked hair and a Louis Vuitton purse tapped Lindsey on the shoulder and asked her a question in something that sounded like Mandarin.

  Lindsey was more accustomed to hearing Cantonese because that’s what most San Francisco Chinese spoke, the majority of immigration having been from southern China. There were hundreds of Chinese dialects that sounded completely different, and they all confused Lindsey. She knew Shanghainese had a few of the “sh” sounds of Mandarin, and Toisanese sounded slightly spitty in the back of the throat, but still she wasn’t absolutely sure which dialect the woman was speaking. Just then, Stephanie stepped up and replied to the woman, exchanging pleasantries as Lindsey watched mutely, feeling like a child among adults.

  When the woman walked away, Stephanie said, “She was looking for Gumps.”

  “Was that Mandarin?” Lindsey asked, stopping to adjust her footwear again. “How do you know how to speak it?”

  “Oh, my dad used to speak it to me at home when I was younger,” Stephanie explained, moving on to inspect the muffin trays.

  “Hey, how did you get out of going to Chinese school?” Lindsey asked.

  “I dunno. My mom finagled it with my dad somehow. Said she didn’t want me growing up to be too Chinafied. She thought Brandon needed the discipline, though. It’s funny, I think I actually learned more from my dad talking to me than Brandon ever got from St. Mary’s.

  “My mom hardly knows any Chinese herself, not like your mom. I guess because your mom’s a little older and was the only sister actually born in China. That’s how it works, I guess. The younger kids always learn less. Look at Cammie. Jeez, forget it, she doesn’t know anything. Here, hold this.”

  Stephanie handed her a few stainless steel cooling trays, and they headed toward the cash register.

  “What do you want to do now?” Lindsey asked.

  “I should really go to the gym,” Stephanie said, patting her abdomen.

  “Even now?” Lindsey asked, pointing at her pregnancy bulge.

  “Yeah, I do water aerobics. I don’t want to be one of those moms who gets all fat and never loses it.”

  They exited the store, and Stephanie put on a pair of very large Gucci sunglasses that made her look like a glamorous fly. Lindsey looked forward to getting home and removing her not-socks immediately.

  That evening, Lindsey watched Antiques Roadshow. Something about those appraisers, the Keno brothers, just made her happy. Maybe it was their snappy clothes, their polite demeanor, or just their nerdy, nifty magnetism. She appreciated a well-informed man, and as twins, they were just double-delightful in the most unoffensive way.

  As she sank into the sofa, she watched the brothers appraise a piece of furniture called a “highboy.” She listened intently as the owner proudly explained how years ago his father, knowing splendor when he saw it, traded a two-bedroom house for the chest of drawers. Leigh Keno was most gentle when he explained that the item’s cracked veneer and its replaced dovetails significantly lowered the market price. In a matter of seconds, the owner’s face distorted into blotchy, crestfallen agitation. He barked that he would never sell the piece because of its priceless sentimental value. Lindsey smiled. It relaxed her to watch people get wrecked on the Roadshow.

  She had made it through half a bag of cheese puffs when the second segment of the show began. By now she had a bright ring of orange cheese dust around her mouth, but she couldn’t stop eating until she emptied the bag. She chomped on the crusty, airy puffs as she watched the show’s host, Hugh Scully, visit a museum in Salem, Massachusetts, where he inspected an intricate ivory bureau carved with the scenes of a Chinese tiger hunt.

  “This is a most important p
iece of furniture. A true rarity from the Chinese imperial Summer Palace,” he said, marveling at a miniature figure of the emperor.

  Lindsey stopped crunching and scrutinized a misshapen cheese puff that looked remarkably like her midget toe, and the horrible resemblance made her immediately lose her appetite. She threw the puff at the television screen.

  “If it’s a Chinese national treasure, then why’s it in Massachusetts?” she yelled out.

  Hearing Lindsey, Pau Pau shuffled into the living room.

  “Wha?” she said, thinking her granddaughter wanted something.

  “Nothing,” Lindsey replied and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “See that white chest? They say it came from China.”

  Pau Pau spit into the palm of her hand and rubbed the saliva into her arthritic elbow. She listened to Mr. Scully for a few seconds, then made a dour face. “All stolen!” she said. “Loot Summer Palace long time ago!” She squinted at the screen as the camera focused on the detailed relief of the ivory. Pau Pau raised her hand and swatted at the air as if trying to shoo away an annoying insect. “No matter,” she said. “If foreign devil don’t take, communist smash later.”

  Pau Pau hiked up the back of her stovepipe pants and sauntered down the hall. Lindsey returned her gaze to the television, and as the assessments of collectibles continued, she made a couple of her own appraisals. Ruminating on the vanilla complexions and side-parted, Mr.-Rogers-Neighborhood hair of those tidy blond Keno brothers, it suddenly occurred to her that their physical attributes landed them squarely in Hoarder territory. “Curiouser and curiouser,” she wondered aloud like Alice in Hoarderland. Spontaneously, she decided to nominate “Leigh” and “Leslie” to her mental list of felonious names, then she quietly drifted into a cheese-puff-induced coma.

  A couple of days later, Lindsey went to Pho House to meet her brother for dinner.

  She spotted Kevin talking on his minuscule phone in front of the Vietnamese noodle soup restaurant. She was used to him acting like his time was more important than hers, so she parked and waited as he continued to talk in esoteric computer lingo.