I pushed the carafe away, sloshing wine onto his sleeve. With a good-natured shrug, he refilled his own glass.
“All right, Vladimir,” Honey murmured, ringing the little silver bell. Again, the laborious ritual of the clearing and the serving of plates.
“I think I better go back to my room.” I tried to push my chair away from the table but my legs weren’t working.
“Nonsense,” Honey protested. “Cookie went to great lengths to prepare this welcome luncheon for you. He and I spent a long time planning the menu.”
Goose bumps hardened my skin, my muscles starting to shiver from a chill that swept down my spine and wouldn’t let go. “So, Ji Hoon is North Korean?” I stammered, trying to tease some sense from this latest unfathomable development.
“Ji Hoon? I don’t know any Ji Hoon.” Honey shook her head.
Pressing my palms hard into my face, I said between clenched teeth, “That extraordinarily handsome guy you hired to kidnap me. The one who took me on a long walk off a short pier.”
“You weren’t kidnapped,” Honey said, her voice frothy with laughter. “How can a mother kidnap her own child?”
Gently nudging my elbows off the table, Ting laid in front of me a plate laden with rosy slices of meat, fat coins of glazed carrots, and baby red potatoes glistening with butter.
Honey looked down incredulously at her plate. “What is this?” she muttered. “Cookie!” she screamed. “Cookie, come out here at once!”
Dr. Panzov, who had his utensils at the ready, placed them gently back on the table.
The door swung open and out shuffled a stocky, grizzled man in a soiled chef’s jacket, bowing low as he approached.
“What is the meaning of this?!”
His stubbled jowls trembling, the man groveled in heavily accented English. “So sorry, Madam, so sorry. I try to send message before, but Ting say you not available. Vegetable delivery was not good today. So I take carrots from the garden.” Eyes turned down, he cringed and cowered, back stooped and knees bent practically to the ground.
Shrieking, Honey raised a hand and delivered a resounding smack on the man’s head. “You should have called me before the delivery boy left! I would have cleared up the whole mess! Now you have ruined the entire meal! Don’t you know anything? I would have changed the carrots for the canned peas and saved the carrots for tonight’s dinner with the roasted duck. Now it will have to be the other way around, so then you have ruined two meals for today!” Smack, smack, her hand came down two more times on the man’s head, which looked like he was bowing it the better to be slapped.
Dr. Panzov eyed his wineglass mournfully while Yolanda squirmed with either glee or fear. For a moment, I was distracted from my own anguish by this bizarre scene, but then the primacy of my own situation reasserted itself and a deep, painful lowing welled up from my chest, and all eyes, even Cookie’s, squinting up in anticipation of another blow, turned to me. With one more deliberate thwack of her hand, Honey pushed the chef away from her. He scampered off without a backward glance.
“Let’s eat,” Honey said, picking up her knife and fork. Dr. Panzov and Yolanda quickly followed suit. “Come on, Lisa. You don’t want your food to get cold.”
Clutching my stomach, I swung my head dumbly.
After staring at me with narrowed eyes, Honey ostentatiously turned away and sunnily inquired, “So, Vladimir, any news on the arrival of our guests?”
“Yes,” he answered, straining to swallow an enormous chunk of beef that he’d just troweled into his mouth. “I have been assured that they will arrive tomorrow morning.”
Scrunching up her shoulders, Yolanda clapped her hands together in a dumb show of ecstasy.
“Wonderful,” Honey proclaimed. “You’ll really enjoy meeting the Gang, Lisa. We have such fun together. They will cheer you up.”
Wrapping my arms tightly over my chest, I just shook my head. My teeth were beginning to chatter.
With a small sigh, Honey put down her knife and fork and, blotting at the corners of her lovely mouth, said, “I suppose it’s all been a bit of a shock. I should have given you more time to adjust to your new circumstances.”
“Oh, no, Madam,” Yolanda murmured in protest.
Honey waved away her objection, nodding bravely, her lips thinned into a stoic grimace. “We need to give her time. She doesn’t understand yet what big plans we have for her, what a wonderful life awaits. But she’s smart. After all, she has my brains.” Yolanda and Dr. Panzov chuckled appreciatively. “I think it’s best that we let her rest up for a little bit.” She leaned over to tenderly chuck at my chin with a manicured fingernail. “Vladimir will take you back to your room now. Take a bubble bath, have a good night’s sleep, rest up. Tomorrow we’ll have a big welcome party for you, and you’ll see then how good life is here.”
With a clownish smile, Dr. Panzov pulled my chair back and helped me to stand. “After you,” he said, hand at the small of my back gently propelling me through the door, the hard slap of his flat-footed gait sounding behind me down the hallway. When we arrived at my room, he hustled in front of me to lean his eyeball into the scanner, releasing the door. Just before I stepped through, he crooned, “Just one thing, Lisa…”
I turned toward him, and he had his hand at my throat. I felt a sharp tug at the back of my neck that seemed to cut through to my cervical vertebrae. “Thanks, Lisa,” he said, waving the yin-yang pendant in the air. “Rest well, for tomorrow we party.” Then he pushed me through the door and quickly slammed it shut.
Chapter 7
“I don’t think you can be adopted without being a little bit screwed up.”
–Liz Phair
When Ting came in the following morning, I pleaded with her to bring me a phone, putting my hand with pinkie and thumb extended up to my ear in the universal sign for a phone, even though North Korea wasn’t really a part of the universe and I doubted that most citizens even had a phone. But I had to at least try, after a night of my brain running itself round and round like a tweaked-out hamster on a rust-ruined wheel, trying to find a way out of whatever it was I had stumbled into. Ting sidestepped me and hurried across the room on the balls of her feet, placing a breakfast tray on the small table that sat under the window. As she brushed by me on her way toward the door, I begged, “Won’t you help me, Ting?”
When I said her name, her eyes shifted toward me, the look gliding along the floor like marbles. Then she pleadingly scooped her hand toward her mouth, urging me to eat, before slipping out the door. I was strangely moved that she cared about me at all. I ate the breakfast and the lunch that she brought too. It was, at least, something to do, a way to distract me from the sick vortex of thoughts that whirled in ever tighter circles in my brain.
When next the door opened with a hiss like the unscrewing of a soda bottle cap, Yolanda strode in, bearing a dress on a hanger, a pair of strappy, rhinestone-studded heels dangling from one hand.
“Yolanda! I need to use a phone to get in touch with my parents! Please bring me a phone or at least let me send an email! This is insane!” I had meant to be ingratiating, but the pent-up fear and anger came spewing out in a hot, unstoppable torrent. “My family must be frantic about me. I need to tell them I’m OK.”
“Laat my met rus,” she snapped, flinging the dress on the bed. “Oh, you are funny! It is going to be a joy having you around, livening things up.”
“People are worried about me!” I insisted weakly. “No doubt the authorities are on alert, looking for me. Don’t you have a family, Yolanda? Can’t you understand what I’m feeling?”
A derisive snort erupted from her squashed nostrils. “Shower and then put on this dress. Don’t forget the pantyhose! I’ll be back to do your hair and makeup.” She spun on her stilettos and was out the door.
For a brief moment, I thought about defying her orders, but the promise of an end to the monotony was too much and I dutifully climbed into the shower. The dress was an elegant black silk Prada
sheath with a scoop neck, three-quarter sleeves, a drop waist, and an accordion-pleated skirt. Except for being a little too big at the bust, it fit perfectly.
Yolanda reappeared and carefully assessed me with her crooked green eyes, pinching at the extra material at my bosom with an impatient click of her tongue. Not in her usual business suit, she was wearing a seafoam chiffon number with floaty sleeves and a low back, a sparkly crystal bead necklace triple-stranded around her neck, which was surprisingly smooth and youthful for someone with as much face work as she had. If it was a car crash that had made her face into what it was, it must have been a really bad one. “It needs augmentation,” she muttered.
“I’m already wearing a ridiculously padded bra,” I protested. “Unless you want me to stuff socks in there.”
Her puffy lips stretched a few millimeters into what I now recognized as her smile. “Not socks, dear. I think it is some kind of silicone gel that they put in there.”
I clutched at my breasts or, more accurately, at the foam of the bra cups.
“Everyone does it nowadays,” she informed me as she led me into the bathroom. “From what I hear, plastic surgery is normal in America.”
“Is that what happened to your face, Yolanda?” I asked, wincing as she dragged a comb ruthlessly through my hair. “Plastic surgery?”
The hair dryer began to roar. After styling my hair into an artfully mussed mop, she set to work on my face. “Pay attention now,” she instructed. “Soon you’re going to have to do this yourself. I’ve got better things to do than make you look presentable.”
When she was done, I inspected my new face in the mirror, skin freakishly smooth, blemishes almost, but not quite, invisible. Eyes somehow larger, false eyelashes scratchy against the sliver of my inner lid. Lips thinner but with a more exaggerated dip to the Cupid’s bow. Cheekbones shadowed with blush so I looked lean and hungry like a model. She encircled my neck with cool, smooth pearls and handed me matching double-dropped earrings.
“Nice to see you finally agreed to ditch the tacky necklace,” she taunted, fluffing my hair with her fingers. “Now Madam needs to decide what to do with this rat’s nest. Maybe a pixie cut?” She glanced at her tiny wristwatch. “Right on schedule. Let’s put your shoes on, yeah? Then we’ll go have some fun. You are lucky to have a party so early in your stay here. Sometimes we go ages without one.”
The shoes were stilettos adorned with four different glittery buckles. As I laboriously notched each buckle into place, I warned her, “I’m not going to be able to walk in these.”
“Nonsense. Just takes a little practice.”
“Heels kill my feet. See how high my arches are?”
“Lisa,” she said sternly, “you cannot be stylish in flats. You just cannot.”
As I wobbled to my feet, I said doubtfully, “Well, as long as I don’t have to stand up very much. Or walk very far.” I took a tentative step and then another.
“You’ll get used to it. We all do.” She flitted over to the mirror to double-check her makeup. “All ready then?”
Teetering forward, I asked, “How did you guys know what size shoe I wear?”
“Oh, Lisa.” Yolanda’s eye shuttered in a slow wink. “We know everything about you.”
As I followed her out the door, I sputtered, “How is that possible? Have you been watching me all these years? How did you even find me in the first place?”
“I have no knowledge of how you came here,” Yolanda declared loudly, marching ahead, the distance between us growing as I hobbled carefully down the hallway, the smooth soles of my new shoes slipping precariously on the slick surface of the marble floor.
A current of air ran through the hallway, like the hot whoosh of wind that announces the arrival of a train in a subway tunnel, whistling eerily past my ears. “Where’s that wind coming from?” I called ahead to Yolanda, but she didn’t answer, perhaps because I was downwind from her and my words were blown in the wrong direction.
I heard the chatter as we approached the blaze of light flooding from an open door into the shadowed corridor. Yolanda indicated I should wait just outside as she announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great privilege to introduce Miss Lisa LeBaron.”
I stepped into the room to a soft smattering of applause. To my surprise, it was not the tiger-skin room, nor was it the dining room, but a Versailles-style salon, replete with marble columns crowned with gilt capitals, stone-inlaid walls, wedding-cake chandeliers, a ceiling frescoed with Bacchanalian scenes, and a parquet floor inset with an elaborate geometric pattern. Besides Honey and Dr. Panzov, there were four others, devouring me with hungry stares as they gently tapped their hands together. Not sure what to do, I lowered my head and shrugged my shoulders with a stupid, apologetic smile. Yolanda took my hand and led me with a fashion-runway strut to Honey, who was standing alone, resplendent in a clingy floor-length aqua dress with a long slit up the middle, hair sculpted into a towering bouffant, sparkling blue gems dripping from her ears and neck and flashing from her fingers.
“Lisa, dear,” she said, taking my hand in hers and turning a dazzling smile on the little group clustered around us. “It is my pleasure to introduce you to the Gang, starting with Harvey Cockburn.”
She passed my hand to a large man with a bloated face and the empurpled, engorged, and pitted nose of a chronic drinker, and he pressed his flabby lips to it before passing it on to a woman with a kind smile that revealed a sweet little gap between two front teeth, her hair braided into an elaborate crown. “His wife, Patience,” Honey explained as the woman brushed her lips against my skin before very gently lowering my hand and bowing as she stepped away from me. Filling the void that Patience left was a very tall, very thin man with gangling insect-like limbs, who grabbed my hand with extreme enthusiasm and rushed it up to his lips, damp with spittle.
“I am your most humble servant, Wendell Squibbly.” Just as I began to fear that he would take out his tongue and start licking my hand, he placed it in the waiting embrace of a woman with wide-set cinnamon eyes, doe-like in their innocence. “And this is my wife, Lahela, whose greatest honor it is to greet you.”
She did not kiss my hand, but I felt the hot moistness of her breath upon it. Her grip dissolved like sugar in hot water and my hand slipped away. Ting, outfitted like a manor maid in mobcap and white frilly apron, glided up with a tray of champagne flutes. Honey took one and then so did I. The rest of the guests swarmed around, grabbing up glasses. Honey cleared her throat, and they reverently lowered their heads.
“All of you know what trouble we’ve had to bring Lisa home. I thank you all for your support and comfort. Now that she is finally here, I beseech you to take her into your hearts and to be patient with her. Think back to your first days here and the challenges that had to be overcome. In the meantime, please join me in a warm welcome.”
The others raised their glasses and responded heartily. “Hear, hear!”
“Welcome, Lisa!”
“Dobro pozhalovat!”
“Nyinditonhab!”
“Welkom!”
And then the champagne was sipped, or gulped, or, in Dr. Panzov’s and Harvey Cockburn’s cases, entirely polished off. I too automatically lifted the glass to my lips and drank. And then I remembered that I was on the wagon because I needed to keep my wits about me. But that first sip had felt so good going down, so I took another. And then, because everyone was looking expectantly at me, another. It was too late then; I could already feel the happy effects of the alcohol, tingling down my gullet, making me less tense and more willing to be embraced by this motley group of strangers. “Do I make a speech?” I asked Honey.
Placing a reassuring hand, each finger laden with a cocktail ring blazing with a different type of blue gemstone, on my arm, she said, “No, no, you’ll get to know them one-on-one.”
Harvey Cockburn waddled up to us, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief.
“Harvey is one of my oldest and most stalwart friends,” Hone
y purred.
“Oh, ma’am, you do me too much honor,” he brayed, shoving the handkerchief in the pocket of his dingy safari jacket, a telltale shadow of grime on the pocket flaps indicating years of hard use.
“Were you kidnapped as well?” I asked, bringing my glass up to my lips.
His head snapped back, the hammock of flesh that hung from his lower jaw quivering. “Who’s been kidnapped?”
Honey attempted to pinch my arm but scratched me instead.
“And what’s with introducing me as Lisa LeBaron? My last name is Pearl.”
“It is a great privilege to be a LeBaron. It’s a surname of the highest distinction. Pearl is so very… not you,” Honey cooed, indicating to Harvey with a flick of the fingers that he should wander off.
“It’s Jewish.” I’d always had trouble with my last name. Strangers expected me to be called Lee, Chung, or Park. On the first day of class, teachers would scan the classroom for a clean-cut white girl, perhaps with curly hair and a Semitic nose. Sometimes, upon introduction, people would come right out and challenge me, as if I did not correctly remember my own name.
Honey’s eyes flew open in alarm. Either the dress matched her eyes, or her eyes changed color, like a mood ring. “I can assure you that there is not a drop of Jewish blood in you.”
“Judaism is a religion, not an ethnicity,” I corrected her primly. I did not feel the need to let her know that I had been raised secularly, or that Judaism was matrilineal and some rabbis thought that adopted children didn’t qualify.
“Well, you should forget all that.” Honey patted unnecessarily at the lacquered spire of her hair. “LeBaron is your rightful last name, and with it, you join a very elite family. We’re American aristocracy, if you will. Haven’t you heard of the New York LeBarons?”
“I’ve heard of the Chrysler LeBaron,” I snickered.
She bathed me in the cold glow of her aqua eyes for a second before whinnying with laughter. “Oh, Lisa, your wit is so refreshing. Usually I must suffer the fawning truckle of this lot.” She wafted her hand toward the others, who were working very hard to pretend like they weren’t following every word of our conversation.
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