by Leslie Glass
thirty-four
“Aeiiiiii!” Sai Woo stood in the doorway of her daughter’s apartment, screaming. The sound was shrill and piercing like the radio signal for disaster.
Startled, April swung around to face her, the dangerous new Glock 9mm automatic that could fire off sixteen rounds without reloading still level in her hand.
Skinny Dragon Mother clapped both hands to her head. “I mother,” she shrieked. “No kirr me.”
Disgusted, April lowered the gun. “Maaa, haven’t you ever heard of knocking? I could have shot you.”
“Go ahead, shoot me. I dead awleady.” Sai’s screams brought Dim Sum scampering up the stairs. When the dog saw her mistress, she crouched like a panther and jumped several feet straight up into Sai’s arms, trembling all over.
“Oh, come on, Ma, give me a break.”
“Rook,” Sai said accusingly, “you scare ying’er.”
“Ma, I hate to tell you this. That thing is not a baby, it’s a dog.”
“Onny baby I eva see,” Sai muttered angrily, hugging the puppy to her chest. “You no have baby. Boo hao, ni.”
“Oh, come on, Ma, don’t start that.” April swung around and put the gun on the table beside the couch in her living room, then hunkered down to unstrap the weights on her ankles.
She’d been exercising with the gun and the weights, trying to keep her forearms strong and develop some perceivable curvature in her butt. The last thing she needed at the moment was Chinese torture. Skinny Dragon Mother seemed to have other ideas.
“What kind dautta prays with gun?” She answered her own question. “Long kind dautta. Boo hao dautta. You hear me, ni? No good dautta.”
Her mother sounded ready for a good long fight. Never mind that they lived in a free country, never mind that her U.S. citizenship papers said she was American now. Skinny Dragon Mother was old, old Chinese to the core. She believed giving birth to April made April hers forever. She also believed the path to heaven was paved with abuse and terror. She had crowded April’s dreams with demons and ghosts and monsters so terrible April had to become a cop to defend herself. Out there she felt relatively safe; it was at home that she couldn’t defend herself against the breaking and entering of her own mother.
This had not been the deal she had struck with her parents when they bought the house. The deal was April had the top floor, it was hers and she was supposed to be able to live as she wanted, come and go as she pleased. That was the deal. But not for a single day had it worked out that way. Although the second floor had a door and a lock, the two apartments shared the downstairs front door and front hallway. Sai not only knew the exact timing of her worm daughter’s coming and going, she also had a key to worm daughter’s apartment and dropped in whenever she felt like it. Now, as she studied April’s living room with an expression of extreme disapproval on her suspicious, Skinny Dragon Mother face, she dangled the keys she had used to get in.
“I thought you had a date,” she said in Chinese. “I came to help you get dressed.”
April was clearly not getting dressed for a date. She was sweating freely in a ratty Police Academy tee shirt and shorts. She did not look her mother in the face as she went into the kitchen for some water.
“It was canceled,” she answered in English.
Her kitchen was decorated with the same pea-green tiles as the bathroom. April had added many open shelves on which her collection of colorful ginger and pickle jars was displayed all the way up to the ceiling. Hung on hooks were two frying pans and two woks, many plastic bags of dried tree ear, dried mushrooms, dried lichees, tiny dried shrimp, gingko nuts, pickled radishes, and a dozen other items, all gifts from her father. Her collection of boning, hacking, carving, and chopping knives (and cleaver) was stuck on a magnet rack by the side of the door. They were the old-fashioned kind that rusted if they were not properly dried after each washing and had to be sharpened endlessly. These staining steel knives, too, were a gift from her father. April had known how to use her father’s set by the time she was seven.
“Cancered? Why cancered?” her mother demanded.
April’s favorite glass was sitting in the sink. It had the characters Good Luck and Long Life painted on the side. They were two of the five blessings the Chinese prayed for most. April filled the glass with tap water and swallowed half of it down. Please give me some good luck, she prayed silently.
“Ma, these things happen,” she told Sai.
Grimacing at the decadent plushness of it, Sai sank into the soft pink satin sofa April had bought for even less than half price in Little Italy. The sofa was opposite two windows that looked out over the backyard, where the garden, invisible in the dark, was already mulched for the winter. It was around six in the evening.
“What happened? He no rike no more?”
April swigged down the rest of the water. In front of the sofa were two good-size Chinese stools that also served as tables. She sat on one. Her mother was talking about George Dong, her great Chinese Doctor hope for a son-in-law. And the probrem wasn’t he no rike her. Probrem was she no rike him. April shrugged guiltily. It wasn’t something she could easily explain.
“Ma. He wanted me to meet him in Chinatown.”
“So?”
“So, it makes me lose face. He should pick me up. He should come here.” She put the glass down on the other table.
Sai thought it over. Since when was her daughter so correct, her face said. “Na bú shi gùyi de,” she said finally.
“Well, I’m not so sure it’s not an intentional thing,” April said slowly. “You stick up for him without even knowing whether it’s intentional or not. If he likes me, he should want to meet my parents.” Touché.
Dead silence for a long time.
Ha, got her. April suppressed a smile. There was nothing her mother could say to that. She had drawn blood on the first parry and her mother was stopped cold. Should have been a Japanese samurai.
Finally, Skinny Dragon Mother’s eyes narrowed to nothingness, and a clicking sound began at the back of her throat. This was a sound of pure rage that indicated soon Sai would spit out her true reason for being there.
“Why go to Mei Mei Chen?” Her voice got so cold and angry, the dog growled.
“Huh?” April was taken aback.
“You hear me, ni.”
“Oh, that, that’s nothing.”
“No nothing. Sunsing.”
April sighed.
“Terr.”
April sighed again. She couldn’t get out of it, had to tell. Damn Judy. “It’s nothing, Ma. You know Sergeant Sanchez who was here yesterday.”
“I know.”
“He said you are very beautiful, Ma. He wants to take your advice.”
Sai made another noise, something like a grunt that said “So?”
“So, he’s looking for a better place to live. He couldn’t find what he wanted, so I put him in touch with Judy.”
“Hmmmmph. I cousin with Judy mother.”
“I know that, Ma.”
“Judy terr mother. Judy mother call me.”
April shrugged. “So?”
“So she say mebbe you no mellee George. Mellee Spanish.”
Furious, April scooped up the glass and headed for the kitchen for a refill. “Ma, Judy is a real estate agent. She finds places for people. I gave her some business. That’s the beginning and end of the story.”
“No berieve. Yestidday, no rook for monkey business with Spanish, have date with docta. Today monkey business with Spanish, no date with docta. Boo hao ni.”
April thought she was pretty no good herself. She came back to the living room, the blood hot in her face. “Don’t call him Spanish. His name is Mike.”
“He no Spanish?”
“He’s American, like me.”
“You Chinese.”
“We’re both American, Ma. Both our fathers cooked in restaurants for a living. We’re both cops. Just the same.”
“Cook Chinese?”
/> “Mike’s father? No, Ma.”
“Cook what?”
“Mexican,” April admitted reluctantly.
“Ha,” Sai said.
“Ha, what?” April demanded. She was furious at the way her mother sat on the beautiful pink sofa in her black pants and padded black jacket just like a mean old peasant woman about to deliver a curse. She wasn’t going to choose a man to please her mother. It wasn’t love. And it wasn’t the American way.
“Ha Spanish,” Sai said, triumphant. “He Spanish.”
“Ethnically, Ma, he may be Spanish. He may even have some Indian in him.”
“Aeiiiii. Indian?” Now Sai was really upset.
“Mayan Indian. They lived in Mexico thousands of years ago, intermarried with the Spanish. I think they drank the blood of their enemies.”
“Aeiiiiiii.” Worse and worse.
“They cut out their hearts, and they have ghosts, just as old as Chinese ghosts. You don’t want to mess with these ghosts, you hear me? They’re a mean set of ghosts. And you know what else? These people may still drink the blood of their enemies. So call him Mike, Ma, and treat him with the respect he deserves.”
Sai glared at the gun, then away. April could see that her mother was fighting the urge to say something truly terrible, but for once she didn’t dare. Watching the wrinkles in Sai’s face close in around her rage, April realized that Skinny Dragon Mother was actually afraid of Mike Sanchez. She was afraid to say anything bad about him and push April into liking him even more. The thought that her mother was afraid of a friend of hers cheered April up quite a bit. “Come on, Ma. I’ll get you some dinner,” she offered. “You want to try some take-out chicken mole?”
thirty-five
Jason sat on the bed in his shorts and tee shirt, the Raymond Cowles file open on his knees. It was thick and quite detailed, and he wasn’t much further along in it than he’d been when he set it aside to make love to Emma seven hours earlier. Since then they’d done a lot of talking. They’d had dinner, talked some more. Then she’d gone for a run on her treadmill in the tiny room behind the kitchen. Now he felt her eyes on him as she padded into the bedroom.
He looked up from the page he’d read four times. “Hi.”
“Hi yourself.” Her shorts and the white cropped shirt that showed half her abdomen were wet.
Emma had a beautiful body that Jason had never been able to resist, no matter how hurt or angry he was with her. Her hair was blonder now, short. She had real movie-star hair and a real movie-star body—not too thin. Her face could be anything. Now it was a little tense. She shook her hair out as he watched her. She’d had all day to rim and finally gotten to it after dinner and half a bottle of wine. He didn’t know how she could do it.
She spread out the towel on the floor, sat on it, and starting doing sit-ups. He figured she’d throw up soon, must be scared to death.
“What time is your audition?” he asked, watching her crunch and grimace.
“Really early,” she grunted.
“How early is really?”
Grunt “Eleven-thirty.”
He laughed. For him, by eleven-thirty half the day was over. She had twelve hours to prepare. “Nervous?”
Grunt. “Always.”
“You really want to do a play, the same thing over and over every night—and twice on Wednesday and Saturday?”
“You do the same thing over and over, with the same people year after year. Don’t you get tired of it?”
“Mmmm, no.”
“So, it’s a night job instead of a day job. Might be fun for six months. Then I’ll do another film.”
Jason felt a chill and shivered. Six months. His wife planned on being around only six months. Thanks for letting me know, he didn’t say. What did she think, that she could just come and go in the marriage without consulting him? What was he, a piece of furniture? His brows came together in a single angry line. Passivity wasn’t exactly easy for him. A part of him wanted to throw the baggage out, let her have her brilliant career on her own. Fine.
Emma stopped midcrunch, staring at the fringe on the bedspread.
Fine. He could live without her. There were lots of women in the sea. He’d find another. His jaw set.
“What?” she murmured.
“What yourself?”
“You know, I’ve been thinking. How would you like a different look in here?”
He looked around at the cream-colored walls and tasteful prints, the teal bedspread and chair, the many coordinating pillows. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s time for a change.”
“Humph.” Jason went back to the file. He’d never really liked the strange blue-green bedspread and drapes she’d chosen when they married. But he didn’t like change. He liked his life the way it had been before. He didn’t want a new bedspread or a new and different wife. If Emma got the part in this Broadway play, she’d be an even bigger star. If she didn’t get the part, she’d go back to California to her pretty rented house on the beach and make stupid movies, leaving him alone in limbo. The whole thing pissed him off.
Jason understood his ambivalence and conflicts about connection, but after all his training and two wives, at almost forty he still wasn’t sure what made love sometimes conquer all. Was it a sensory thing that could be regenerated over and over by sight or touch or smell, or was love driven by fantasy, the secret things that happened in a person’s head?
“Well, what do you think?” Emma said.
“About what?”
“Never mind.” She pointed at the Cowles file he’d been lugging from one room to another all day. “What’s the case?”
Jason was still on Intake’s descriptive assessment of Raymond Cowles’s analyzability. He’d noted in the part on family history that Ray’s mother’s father had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for most of his life and had died under suspicious circumstances when Ray was two. Out of a lot of routine information, in the middle of his annoyance with his wife, that piece jumped out at him. It was important because it meant there was a possible history of suicide in Cowles’s family. It also meant that his mother might well have experienced a profound depression herself when her father died. The grandfather’s cause of death was unclear and was stated in the most perfunctory way in the assessment. No further questions about that seemed to have been asked because there was no elaboration.
The chart read:
Diagnosis deferred in 20-year-old man with what appears to be a character neurosis and identity confusion. In addition, the patient has repetitive and recurrent ego dystonic homosexual fantasies that he has never acted on. Masturbation fantasies have been homosexual. Patient is likable, highly intelligent, responsible, and intends to stay in the area since he has a job waiting for him, and his fiancée is getting a doctoral degree at the same university. He has limited financial resources.
“Jason?”
“Huh?” Jason looked up. He realized Emma was waiting for an answer to something or other. He dropped the report guiltily.
“Plus ça change.” She laughed.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing, darling. I know. I know. If I want you, I have to take you the way you are.”
“And it appears I have to do the same. Is that fair?”
She nodded. “You have your life. I have to have mine.”
Is that fair? he wanted to whine. Was that the deal? Damn, she was gorgeous. “What’d you ask?” he muttered.
“Nothing. I just asked about the case. I can’t know, right?”
“Wrong. I can tell you about this case. A former patient of Clara Treadwell committed suicide last week, and Clara asked me to review the file.”
“Oh, my. The Clara Treadwell?” Emma pulled off the cropped shirt and the bicycle shorts, rolled them up in the towel for the laundry.
Her nudity was a conversation-stopper in more ways than one. The body was lovely, but around Emma’s navel were the broken images of the tattoo starte
d by her abductor. They were just bits of black now, more than half removed by the laser surgery she was having in California. It was no longer possible to decipher what the tattooed picture had been, but Jason had already seen it. The thing that really startled him was how his formerly modest and reserved wife—who used to hang back never wanting to annoy him with too much of herself—was now a bold temptress. He wanted to maintain his equilibrium and not be bowled over by it, but the balance was gone. A renewed surge of enthusiasm for the woman driving him crazy jolted through Jason.
“Very nice,” he muttered. “Show off.” He cleared his throat, wondering if she wanted more love—just at this moment. And if he was up to it. Yep, his body indicated he was up to it.
But Emma was just kidding. She grabbed a shirt, tugged it over her head, and perched on her side of the bed. No panties. She crossed her legs. Now he was sweating.
“Is this the Clara Treadwell, the one who once leaped upon you in Seattle—”
“Ah, it was L.A.,” Jason said modestly.
“Wants you to review her case? After all the trouble she’s made for you at the Centre? Why?”
Jason beamed. “You know. You remember. Darling, you’re still jealous.”
“And you’re still mine,” Emma said loftily. “Even with the beard.”
He scratched the beard, pleased she was taking it seriously. “Hey, nobody owns anybody, you know that.”
“So why did she come to you?”
“Clara? I have asked myself that question.” He did not think it wise to say Clara wanted to be his mentor and improve the quality of his life. He smiled at the thought of anyone but Emma succeeding at that.
“What’s the story? Is she responsible for this patient’s death?”
“This is the question his wife and insurance company might ask a jury to consider.”
“Malpractice.” She shivered and was silent for a moment, then asked, “Why?”
Jason shrugged. “Money.”
“What do you think?” Emma lay back against the pillows and considered the ceiling.
Jason shrugged again. “I have no idea. When Clara asked me to look at the file Wednesday, there was some doubt as to the cause of death—they thought it might be a homicide—and because of my ties to the police—”