by Gish Jen
“What would happen,” says Hattie, “if you stopped bringing him cigarettes and alcohol?”
“Whatta you high?” Sarun bugs his eyes.
“It’s just an idea.” Hattie proffers a chopstick.
Sarun takes it—his neck—but Sophy is outraged.
“That would be, like, starving him,” she says.
By day, Chhung mans his station. By night, he heads into the pit. Mum keeps him company, huddling beside him as he lies there, though he refuses to open his eyes or speak to her. He does, however, allow her to help him go to the bathroom, and thanks to his diabetes, Sophy says, he does pee and pee.
“Diabetes?” says Hattie.
It’s the first she’s heard about that—how worrisome. Although, yes. At least it gets him up. At least it gets him to drink. At least it gets him to let Mum stay with him. Mum prays and prays, her white shawl wrapped around her jacket; Sophy brings Mum blankets for the night, too, and warm drinks. Hats for both of them; the temperature at night is in the twenties now. And crates, to make it easier to climb in and out.
In the morning, Sophy brings Sarun and Gift along with her. Hattie watches, moved, as the whole family helps Chhung out of the pit for the day. Mum supports one arm, Sophy the other, as he steps slowly up the shaky crates; they pass him on to Sarun, who, awkward as he is in his collar, manages to help Chhung up onto solid ground. The family works together, too, to settle Chhung in his chair—Mum and Sophy on arm duty again, Sarun supporting his back. Even Gift grabs a leg, trying to help. And there—mission accomplished. Chhung is seated. Never mind that his hat is on funny, or that his jacket has hiked up, affording a bright glimpse of his brace. He’s seated.
Father ’n’ son braces!
Sophy runs off to get breakfast.
“We have to help him because of his back,” she says later. “We don’t want his back to get worse.” Elbows in the air, she gathers her hair at the nape of her neck as if getting ready to put it in a ponytail—having forgotten it’s not long enough, it seems. “I don’t think starving him is going to help,” she adds, letting go.
Greta and Grace stop by the pit with doughnuts.
“Are you all right?” asks Grace, her hair blowing.
Mum looks to Hattie for translation though she should really understand this. Hattie suspects she is just being shy but, after a moment, translates.
“She’s asking, How are you?”
“I’m fiyne,” Mum tells Grace.
“You’re fine?” says Greta.
Mum nods enthusiastically, accepting a jelly roll. Then comes a puff of wind; confectioners’ sugar powders her mouth and jacket. She looks down, horrified, and disappears into the trailer.
Greta and Grace knit their brows. Their hair flies sideways, aviator-style; Grace clamps hers down with a hand to either side of her face. She looks to be holding her head on. Greta, too, her braid notwithstanding, pulls strands out of her mouth.
“This can’t go on,” she says. She gestures at Chhung, asleep in his folding chair at the other end of the pit. “What can we do?”
Hattie tightens her jacket hood and thinks. Would it be too crazy to tell Chhung that Greta and Grace are from the Department of Social Services, and that a complaint has been filed against him? It would seem an unlikely way of helping, except that Sophy seems to think that if no one punishes her father, he’ll punish himself. So maybe it’s worth a try? Of course, the game will be up if Chhung recognizes anyone. But luckily, though Greta and Grace have both dropped food off at the trailer at times, they say it was always Mum who took the deliveries.
They turn now into the wind; Hattie wakes Chhung up.
“You have visitors,” she says.
He opens his eyes.
“We’re from the Department of Social Services,” says Greta sternly. “We’ve come to inform you of a complaint filed against you.”
“Declaring you an unfit parent.” Grace is trying to look stern, too, but it’s like watching Santa Claus trying to play Hitler. “We thought you’d want to know.”
Silence. Chhung’s eyes are sunken and his pupils enlarged, his eyes and face as disconcerting as ever. He’s only half awake; his chin is sprouting wires. And yet his backlit hair, blowing forward, frames his face in an oddly flattering way.
“Someone will be coming to question you,” says Greta.
“You will need to prepare yourself,” says Grace.
A raft of brown leaves suddenly levitates, then just as suddenly settles, like something live. Chhung gives a social smile, as if practicing already for his interview.
“When?” he croaks.
Greta and Grace look discreetly to Hattie.
“In a month or so,” says Grace—the pitch of her voice far lower than Hattie would have believed possible. Removing her gardening gloves, she zips up her parka with authority. “I believe.” She puts her gloves back on.
“After Thanksgiving,” supplies Greta, squaring her chin and throwing her braid back. “You’ll be receiving a, ah, summons in the mail.”
Chhung nods again, and as Grace and Greta leave, half stands to see them off.
“No, no, don’t move!” they insist, abandoning their roles. “Don’t get up! Please! Stay!”
“Tank you.” He gives a jaunty wave but frowns as he sits down and, the next day, begins to refuse food. Though he still smokes and drinks, his meals come and go untouched.
“He can’t wait a month,” says Sophy, leaning on the kitchen counter. “Maybe I’ll tell him the hearing’s been moved up.”
“Good idea.”
“I’ll tell him he has to eat so he’ll be strong enough to talk at the trial. You know, to defend himself and stuff.”
Hattie heats up lunch. “It’s definitely worth trying.”
Sophy looks at her. “You look, like, exhausted,” she says suddenly.
Hattie bangs a cooking spoon on the edge of a pot.
• • •
What can I do?” says Carter. “Tell me what I can do.”
He has at least knocked. Without waiting for Hattie to answer, though, he has marched in, taken off his jacket, hung it up on a peg and, ignoring the dogs’ barking—ordering them, in fact, to sit—seated himself in a chair next to her. It’s the way he used to enter her lab cubicle, only here they are at her kitchen table, his knees jutting out to either side of his elbows—a little male splay display. Hattie even recognizes that old blue-green sweater, or thinks she does. Can it really have lasted this long? Its cuffs and collar are frayed, and there are several out-and-out holes, but the subtlety of its colors is still something. All those heathery hues, every one of them difficult to name; kingfisher blue, she had thought one, when she first saw it. The others were beyond both her Chinese and her English. Not that she has cared much for such things—for things in general—but where did sweaters like that even come from? She had always thought she’d know one day, but realizes now that she never did find out. The dogs gather around him. He pets them, strokes their brows, cradles their heads, then raises his gaze, which, intensified by the sweater, is simply unnerving. She cannot reconcile it with her chock-a-block kitchen—how cluttered her counters! She closes down her computer, straightens up some papers. Is there not something unfair about this visit? This visitation, she wants to say. She feels intruded upon, delighted, stricken; she wants him to leave; she is afraid she is going to cry.
“I want to know what I can do.”
She jams some pencils in a cup.
“Can I make us some coffee?” he says.
“Sure.” She tries to sound offhand, though in fact no one but her has made coffee in her kitchen since Lee died, and that was not even in this house. As the dogs seem to know. They watch intently as he puts the kettle on. Now this is strange, their bodies say—even Annie’s says it’s strange, though maybe she is just picking it up from Reveille. And Hattie’s state; their tails are high. How glad she is, meanwhile, to be presented with Carter’s back, for a moment. This tallish, delib
erate, familiar man. Not huge; and yet the kettle is too small for him. The sink sits too low for him, also, and the windows.
All these things reinforcing what her heart has already guessed: He would never fit here.
“Do you want me to talk to Sophy?” he asks as he fiddles with the gas knob—noticing how the flames lap up yellow and, with a little stoop, looking to get them right.
“You could ask if she’d like to restart guitar lessons.”
“Done.” He turns and roughhouses with the dogs. “What else? What are we going to do about Chhung?”
“I don’t know.”
“Still keep your coffee in the freezer?”
She nods. Really she should stand to help—get some cookies, something—but instead she beholds herself in her blank computer screen: Why does she wear two pairs of glasses on her head? She takes them off and lays them on the desk.
“I’m so sorry about this whole affair, you know.” He takes some mugs from the dish rack.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I won’t claim that. But I contributed. I could have talked to Sophy. I should have talked to Sophy.”
“We all contributed.”
“It was …” He hesitates. “Perverse. Perverse and stupid and confused.” He clears his throat. “Now I would like to contribute to a solution.” He trains his eyes on her, standing close enough that she can see her silhouette in them, tiny but sharp. “How about Everett? Can I talk to Everett?”
“Find out if he’s planning to press charges?” Hattie’s mouth is talking without her. “That would be a help, yes. And it would be nice to verify that the state won’t investigate. People assume there was a problem with the wiring, but the electricians might contest that, and then what.”
“I’ll look into it. Talk to Lukens, maybe.”
“Also, Sophy would like to apologize to Everett.”
Carter nods his subtle nod. “I’ll see to that, too, when I see him. There’s only one thing.”
The dogs lie down at his feet.
“You have to come with me.”
“Why?”
“Why?” He pours. “Because I didn’t move to this damned town to teach yoga and make boats, I’ve realized. Slow as I can be and possessed of apparently formidable powers of repression. Two-percent, no sugar?”
“I’m drinking Lactaid now.”
“Of course. Your paternal ancestors not having raised cows.”
“Exactly.”
“So that they did not evolve to keep the lactase gene turned on after infancy, as did some other populations. A classic case of a cultural trait becoming a genetic characteristic.” He stops, his hand on the fridge handle. “Hattie?”
“Yes.”
“Do I see tears?”
“No.”
“Hattie.” He sits back down. “Hattie. Come on.” He squeegees the lower edge of her left eye with his thumb. “Hattie.” He does the right eye. “Hattie.” He cradles her face in his rough hands, the way he had the dogs’ a moment earlier, and suddenly it leaves the rest of her body; all her being is in her jaw, her cheeks, her eyes, her lips. “Hattie. Hattie. Come on. Can lactose intolerance really be that bad?”
She laughs, crying. The palms of his hands are strafed and wrinkled now, but his fingers are as supple and intelligent as ever; he inhabits them still. And when he pulls her up out of her seat toward him, she finds that she remembers their touch and tease. She remembers his shoulders and ears and smell, too; she remembers his mouth and press and—goodness—his incorrigible stealth.
“Don’t you have any damned tissue?” he says.
“No,” she says; but of course she does.
“Hattie,” he says. “Miss Confucius.”
She blows her nose.
“I’ve missed you.”
“Well, I haven’t missed you.”
He laughs and kisses her again—his tongue, like his hands, full of sly provocation. “That is completely bú duì.”
Of course, even now, if she thinks about it, she is not sure she can forgive him that I don’t see what more I could have done. And what about Jill Jenkins? And why would she want to be involved with a man who seems to fight with every woman he’s with?
But that would be, like, rational.
She is standing between his legs; he is nuzzling her neck; she is exploring some of the new territory that is his great smooth scalp. Her fleece is riding up. He has found her soft place. And whatever she remembers or doesn’t or wants to say or can’t, her every afferent nerve is on fire—her every Meissner’s corpuscle. They’re leaking neurotransmitters by the bucket, and not one synapse cares what she thinks anyway.
• • •
Grace and Greta come to visit again, bringing—surprise!—Beth and Candy, who got the report from, who else, Judy Tell-All. They’ve brought casseroles mummified in tin foil—Candy’s enchiladas, as well as a miso orzo thing.
“Kind of an experiment,” says Beth. “To tell you the truth, I have no real idea what miso even is.”
“I’m sure they’ll love it,” says Hattie.
Everyone’s cheeks are pink; and how is it that they all wear hats with pompoms? In any case, they are still exchanging cushiony hugs—all that winterwear—when an enormous piece of machinery starts slowly down the drive. Its link belts leave tracks in the hoarfrost.
“Is that a backhoe?” asks Grace.
Sophy is already out on the driveway, with Gift—Sarun, too. Mum is on the crate steps with no jacket on.
“It’s an excavator,” says Candy. “A backhoe’s got the bucket in the back.”
And so it is—an excavator, with Carter at its controls. He sits forward in the seat, his green jacket tenting behind him, and manages to steer the thing around the end of the trailer. He stops opposite Chhung’s station and slowly raises the bucket; the thing looks like a Tyrannosaurus rex missing its upper jaw. Just as people start to smile, though, the bucket comes slamming down; Chhung, brace or no brace, jumps clean out of his chair. Carter swears. He raises the bucket once more, but down it comes slamming again, hitting the ground with a clank—rock.
“Damn!” he says.
Anyway, no one is hurt and the engine is off now, and by the time people gather at the pit, Carter and Chhung are chatting so amiably, they hardly seem of different heights.
“We’re going to get this ditch of yours dug,” Carter’s saying.
Chhung looks ready to pass out with weakness and shock. His eyes ricochet as Carter, leaning down, puts a hand out to steady him. Then, another. Chhung rests his gloved hands on Carter’s sleeves for a moment; his blue knit hat matches, oddly, Carter’s eyes.
“Eq-sca-vay?” says Chhung, regaining his balance. “How you say again?”
“Ex-ca-va-tor,” says Carter.
“Eq-sca-va-ter,” says Chhung.
He sways, his eyes going; Carter extends an arm again, but Chhung doesn’t take it. Instead, he suddenly rallies and says, “We have that in Cambodia, too.” Everyone stares, stunned, as he proceeds to take off his gloves, stash them in a jacket pocket, and nonchalantly produce a pack of cigarettes. He offers one to Carter, who doesn’t smoke but gamely takes the thing and puts it to his lips nonetheless. Chhung lights it with a lighter, then lights his own. Both men coolly puff, the picture of camaraderie; their motions sing a kind of song. Chhung’s eyes are steady. Then Carter starts to hack and cough; Chhung, reaching up, pounds him on the back with a fist.
“Too srong?” He grins.
Carter hands back the cigarette, lit end high. “For me, yes,” he says, his face scrunched up. “Way too strong. How do you smoke those things?” He waves at the air.
Chhung, amused, pounds Carter on the back some more. “Easy,” he says. Then with bravado he places both cigarettes in his mouth and, a cigarette dangling from either corner, smokes them at the same time.
“Most impressive,” says Carter.
Chhung emits an enormous cloud of smoke. He does not seem to intend this for Ca
rter’s face; still, Carter has to step back.
“Sor-ry!” laughs Chhung. “O.K.” He pats Carter on the shoulder and looks around—belatedly registering the crowd, it seems. Then he removes the cigarettes from his mouth—a two-handed operation—taps the ashes from their ends, exhales another mighty cloud of smoke, replaces them, and, to everyone’s surprise, gives a clap. No one reacts. He looks around again and raises his hands a little higher; the tips of his cigarettes flare as he claps a second time, loudly, looking around.
That’s when people realize it’s a cue. A third cloud of smoke emanates from Chhung as he takes Carter’s arm; they raise their hands up high, like the Cinderella doubles champions of a most fantastic tennis tournament. And finally, with a small amazed roar, people start to clap and hoot and cheer.
Success! The whole town is giddy. Not that Chhung won’t need support; already people are talking about an anger management course that addresses substance abuse, too—kind of a twofer. It’s in the city, but people are organizing rides for him via a sign-up at Millie’s. As for the holidays, Grace volunteers for Thanksgiving, Hattie for Christmas; other people plan to teach them to make wreaths and gingerbread houses, and to take them caroling. Sledding, too, if the snow ever comes.
“Only in America,” crows Greta.
“People have always been reborn here, but not people who’ve been reborn before,” says Hattie. “I mean, generally.”
The walking group laughs. Beth hangs two toothpicks in her mouth, one in each corner, like Chhung.
“Though it’s always been a question, hasn’t it,” says Greta. “Whom America can be America for. And who keeps America, America.”
Hattie would love to hear more about what she means. But other people want to talk about whether Carter can be made mayor. Riverlake’s never had a mayor before, but maybe it’s time to change the town charter, they say. Greta shakes her head: Would they be talking this way if Carter were a woman? Well, never mind. In the meanwhile, he has a new nickname—Professor Excavator.
Hattie laughs.
Sarun’s still in his brace, but when Hattie goes to drop off some food, he starts talking about what he’s going to do when he’s out of it—get a job, maybe. And Sophy’s making plans, too. She asks, in a mysterious voice, to borrow a turkey roaster; Hattie diplomatically doesn’t ask why. Another few days, and it’ll be time to raise the subject of school. In the meanwhile, Sophy’s tuning up her guitar in the living room, so that Hattie hears, as she leaves, not only Sophy playing and singing, but Sarun laughing and crooning, too. He sounds pretty wack.