Disappearing Moon Cafe

by Sky Lee

  How unfair to make Fong Mei reflect on her infidelity twenty years after such a simple fact! If one were to argue her case at the gates of heaven, one could say that she had not been at all disloyal to her husband and lord. Three beautifully behaved children who had brought nothing but delight and distinction to their parents and grandparents certainly could not be used to condemn their mother. And how shameless a hussy was she, with this unwholesome fate soon to be hoisted upon her? She being a young woman in perfect health, and as such no doubt vulnerable to the droplets of male potency found teeming in the air from the sneezes of so many overanxious bachelors around her.

  She might not be innocent of infidelity, but Fong Mei’s kind of infidelity had come about innocently enough. At any rate, at the time she had had very little time to consider her deed—or misdeed, depending on one’s point of view.

  Fong Mei’s pregnancy saved her from unnecessary travel (or should I say travesty) in the nick of time. It also saved baby Keeman from what probably would have turned out to be an unhappy and bewildering childhood. It supported his mother’s decision to keep him. Imagine the battle the waitress would have had with Mui Lan otherwise. And it definitely enhanced Choy Fuk’s mangy—oops, sorry, manly—reputation. He surely must have guessed, but he didn’t say anything. Last but not least, it left Mui Lan in a bit of a dilemma—in fact, hanging by the skin of her teeth, one might say, for many, many years—but everyone had invested too heavily in their own little secrets to ever have mercy on her!

  After Keeman was born, Mui Lan tried again and again to stake her claim over him as her rightful grandson, bearing gifts and toys and promises of an inheritance. Time and time again, the waitress-woman rejected her. Mui Lan threatened and cajoled and tried to pay, until finally her efforts culminated in an ear-splitting fight right after the waitress married the gambler. Keeman was the most beautiful, robust four-year-old boy by then. Ever since then, the two women hadn’t even looked at each other. Not even when their little ones graduated from the one and only Chinatown kindergarten; at their high-school graduation, they ignored each other with a livid passion.

  WHEN BEATRICE came flying home with Keeman and news of her engagement, she had no way of knowing about the family’s twisted past, nor about her mother who was intent on forgetting. She crowded Keeman and Sue together on the chesterfield and eagerly ran about the house looking for her elders—her dad missing for some reason. When she reached her mother and found her sitting alone, outlined in the darkness of her room, Bea had a fleeting thought that her mother might object. She always had objected to Keeman before, probably because he was poor. But the war was over, for goodness’ sake! He was alive! Her time was now! And she loved him to the ends of the earth!

  “Mother,” Beatrice was quite breathless, “come down quickly. I have something wonderful to tell everyone.”

  Even before her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Beatrice felt the chill. An unfamiliar snarl froze her as she stepped up to the dark form of her mother.

  “You get that bastard out of my house right now. I won’t have him here. Dead girl-bag, how dare you bring him into my home!”

  KEEMAN

  1946

  My father is a gentle man. He’s kind and honourable; on many matters, he’s also a bit dim-witted. No imagination whatsoever! I suspect that it was this quality in particular which saved my parents’ love for each other, led them through the rank sewers which threatened to flood their lives. With his steadfast strength, they endured until they were able to climb out, quite unsullied.

  When Beatrice left him in the parlour, he very patiently submitted himself to Suzie’s, and her grandmother’s, scrutiny. Suzie’s giggles were easy to read, but the old woman stared at him so hard that he got quite unnerved. He found he couldn’t look at her; the most he could manage was a couple of glances in her direction to make sure she wasn’t actually stone.

  Being a hometown boy, Keeman had never left home before except to go die in the war. There, he had learned to always expect the unexpected. So when Fong Mei came screaming down the stairs, with Beatrice totally distraught trying to hold her back, Keeman stood up and put his cap neatly down on his seat. Maybe this was the way that mothers acted when their daughters got engaged. Having survived the war, he thought that he had seen the worst—until he looked deep into Fong Mei’s eyes and saw the deadliest fury and hate there. That he was apparently the source of all this distress shocked him.

  Here was Beatrice’s mother, who, as far back as he could remember, had never acknowledged his presence, screaming at him to get out. He looked to Beatrice, who kept pleading with her, asking over and over, “What is it, Mother? Tell me what’s wrong!”

  Then Fong Mei came up to him and tried to shove him out of the room. But he just stood there clumsily and waited to see what Beatrice would do. He was aware of the roomful of addled women, quite beside themselves, multiplied, bumping into each other. There was confusion; he knew he was under attack, but he couldn’t pinpoint the enemy.

  Before he could sum it all up, Beatrice took his arm and told him that he had better leave.

  “No,” he said. He wouldn’t leave her.

  “But you’re only making things worse here.”

  He had to agree, so he said he would wait for her outside.

  “No, please go home,” she begged. He could see that she was ashamed, crying so hard his heart felt torn. She pushed him out into the pouring rain.

  Keeman would always regret that he had hung around long enough to get soaked but not quite long enough to see Beatrice flee from her home.

  Early next morning, Chi sent word to Keeman, and he went to get Beatrice, then he escorted her all the way up to the front gate of her house. It was a hard thing to do, even for a WW II veteran, he being just as confused as she was. He ignored Fong Mei, who stood and wept on the big front porch, aching to have her daughter home with her again. While she waited, shivering from the cold, or trembling with remorse, he held Beatrice back for a moment longer.

  He said, “You don’t ever have to go back in there. I can take you away right now.”

  Bea said, “It’s O.K. I’ll be all right. My mother and I have to talk. I’ll see you later!” She smiled nervously.

  Still reluctant to let her go, he added, “I’ll wait out here a little while longer, just in case.” For a split second, his eyes met Fong Mei’s. Even with the sun in his eyes and she far away in the shadows, he could spot the eyes of an adversary. They had a certain glint to them that stirred dangerous reflexes in him.

  “No,” replied Beatrice, “you really don’t have to.” Behind her, as she spoke, he spotted the curtains in not one but two of the second-floor windows move deliberately. Instead of a weapon in his hands, he had Beatrice, and he had no other choice than to place his trust in her.

  After patrolling the Wong premises for much longer than was necessary, Keeman decided to go straight to the horse’s mouth.

  “Mother,” he said, “Beatrice and I seem to have a problem.” “Beatrice?” questioned his mother, raising the hoe beside her like a question mark. She had been weeding the snow peas beside her house. He still stood on the sidewalk, in his uniform. He looked very handsome and troubled. She gazed upon him, as she had always gazed upon him, ever since he could remember. Now back from the war, more than ever a look of infinite adoration and eternal gratitude that he still is—that he exists!

  To Keeman, his mother looked much older, worn out. He knew his going to war had taken another huge chunk of flesh out of her. When chinese sent their sons off to war, they did not expect them back.

  “Wong Li Ying,” he rephrased himself.

  “Oh,” she sighed, “her.” Suddenly, she felt very tired. Her story was also a long, trying one. Before she would begin it, she had to ask one more time.

  “Son, are you very sure that it has to be her?”

  Then she began. His mother was like that. She never wasted anything. She wasn’t going to waste her breath until it proved
to be absolutely necessary. And she wouldn’t, he was certain, waste any self-pity in the telling of it.

  Yet, in the end, she had to say, “Who knows for sure? It could have been him, but I’m inclined to think your real father is the right one. You look like me, you see. I haven’t thought about it in years. But I remember when I used to, there was always this doubt in the back of my mind too. I used to think that it wasn’t important, but now I guess it’s suddenly gotten very important.”

  She turned her face away. In one fell swoop, she had lost all of it in front of her son. It was as if she never should have dared to hope for any bit of his love. When he was born, she had nothing to offer him. The least she could do for him was to not hinder his prospects. Left to himself, she knew Keeman would triumph. That was why she had dared keep him. She would not have let anything interfere with that promise, not even herself. However, now it seemed that she would not even be allowed that one pure wish.

  She wouldn’t apologize. So what if she was dismally sorry! There was nothing that she could do or say to help him.

  Keeman saw things differently. She needn’t apologize. She had nothing to be sorry about. That was the way things had turned out. So what if he found out about it a little late! He couldn’t see humility in his mother any more than he could see humility in himself. But he did see the sadness wash softly over her features. She withdrew from him by closing her eyes as if she had a headache.

  “Mother,” he said quietly to draw her back to him, “don’t worry! Bea and I will sort things out.”

  Keeman was being optimistic, of course. Beatrice and he never did sort things out; they merely married out of desperation. You see, when Keeman was finally told his mother’s story, he couldn’t have known that it was nowhere near the whole story.

  V

  IDENTITY CRISIS

  MORGAN

  1968

  “Why don’t you give up, sweetheart?” Morgan mocked a festive mood. “All talk, big deal! Why talk? What the heck, nobody’s listening anyway!” He was drunk. “A story full of holes . . . no, wait! A family full of assholes . . .” he giggled, “assholes plugged with little secrets!”

  We were both drinking in a New York eastside bar. We had been there a long time. Even after more drinks than I’d ever had, Morgan was still looking pretty disgusting to me, his face askew, wrapped around his own inner misery, sentimental tears drying on his thin lashes. Clinging onto the bar for dear life, he couldn’t see me.

  I’d driven three thousand miles, six days of speedometer fatigue, to sit on barstools with him, filthy cavelike arches over us. Dejected, I sipped out of fear. The way he fell on that bottle terrified me. Like the ancients who fell on their swords, he aimed the booze straight for his heart. A day later, we fought. Then I left him for dead in that dead city-arena. Sped out of that scene in my little red Mustang time capsule, but not until he wounded me, sabotaged me for life, because I loved him. Wore my little old heart on my sleeve for him to burn cigarette holes into. After I’d told him my most precious secret.

  “So you wanna be a writer,” his lips smeared with venom. “What for? That’s not very pristine chinese! Remember, if nobody speaks of it, then it never existed. Damn clever, those chinese. Like I don’t exist. Never have, have I? Damn clever, our sly little Beatrice mommy!”

  Not long after our car accident, Morgan had told me he was going to San Francisco, but maybe even that proved too close to home. From there, he headed back to Columbia University, which was where he had come from when I met him. How easy to say that once he got away from home he lost what little sense of identity he had and went downhill! But if the truth be known, he worked hard at getting lost. He wrote me twice. The first time was a long, dramatic apology; the second a postcard with handwriting sprawled downward.

  My father had bought me a car as a graduation present. He wanted to buy me a new, ’68 Mustang, but I chose the red ’64 and a half on the car lot instead. Even as early as then, I was able to recognize a good investment. It was a beautiful little machine, and I knew my father would take good care of it. I wrote my heart out to Morgan. I didn’t know that he wouldn’t take care of it. His to have and to hold, and to shred. Suzie had been seventeen, same age as me.

  That was how I landed up in New York. One day, I was looking at my one ninety-four horsepowered pumpkin, gleaming and waxed, its bath water still steaming off the driveway, thinking about the long, hot, empty summer. Thinking about university in the fall. Thinking about going out to find a summer job that would look good on my resumé. I got in and backed it out of the driveway.

  Driving it out on the open highway was such a pleasure, I discovered sheer ecstasy in the car’s hypnotic rhythm of freedom. It was like something unthrottled in my head, and the vehicle flew through space that wasn’t distance and didn’t matter any more. The TransCanada a satin ribbon trance. It beckoned me on and on.

  Wait a minute! I went back to my bank, then I went home, left Chi (my parents were in H.K.) a daring note that said I would phone from wherever I was going to be that evening, sneaked some things out, and then started on my journey to find the elusive Morgan.

  I don’t know how much of Morgan I found left in the stewed carcass I met, but at the end of my quest I found somebody else in my place. Somebody who was more enduring than I, more inquisitive, even when the truth stung. Somebody who could log the thoughts I didn’t even know I had in me. Somebody powerful, who had stood alone on the edge of a great expansive wheat field, with the morning sun at her back, watching a new rising, a new life roll hill upon hill in from infinity. Weeping as wave after wave of sweet-scented wind blew crisp and clean through my soul.

  I grew up suddenly, and I was only gone for just over a week and a weekend. Driven, mostly. But that little venture, which Chi still refers to as the time I ran away, changed my life. I had managed one small glimpse into what it was like to release one’s being, to let it slip into the other realm where all the senses explode. And that was enough to set me off on a lifetime quest for more of the same.

  The rising heat of the pavement during a NYC hot spell dried up the odour of mildew in Morgan’s apartment. I was afraid of cockroaches, so he propped up the boxspring on four folding chairs. Precarious for making love, especially the way Morgan made love to me, in desperation, grinding against me as though he wanted to punish himself. Then again and again, as if he couldn’t be satisfied. I fell asleep, exhausted by his turbulence. I woke up, my energy drained by the mere grasp of his hands around my midriff. Those weary eyes, staring relentlessly at me, haunted by Sue.

  I wanted to put my hands over them and gently close them like a dead man’s. I wanted to tell him that I recognized him in spite of his camouflage. We were looking for the same answers. Given half a chance, I could communicate with him and his ghosts, but he’d only be offended. And with the tension already built up, we would both end up screaming at each other, neither one listening.

  “I know what you are,” I hissed. “We all have our little demons! You’re no different from every other egotistical mama’s boy whose big wish is for people to weep for him!” I was too young, but Morgan was also too young.

  “Go die!” he would mimic the chinese hatefully.

  For the moment though, I let him prop his head against the outer wall of my heart and listened to yet another version of another story.

  IN 1949, Sue was barely fifteen, and Morgan was sixteen. And the way they met, pure destiny. At a bus stop, waiting for the Oak Street bus that never came.

  “I’m going to get me a car!” Morgan declared. Lean and tough, like the black leather jacket he was wearing. He didn’t exactly say this to her, but since there was no one else around she felt it would be impolite not to make some kind of reply. She was curious as well.

  “What kind of car?” Her words, the beginning of the end!

  And by the time her mother looked up from the entanglement that was the older daughter, it was too late to save her younger one, or herself for tha
t matter. Their insular little world—an ivory sphere, protected by layer upon layer of filigreed lies, all revolving independently of each other, finally collapsed like a decomposing melon. Those who could cling onto the wreckage clung; those who didn’t spun away into oblivion.

  To her son, the waitress had finally revealed her part in the twenty-two-year-old scheme with Choy Fuk. Keeman told Beatrice, who naturally went to her mother. Fong Mei was amazed because it had never occurred to her that Keeman might not be Choy Fuk’s son, but she still held Beatrice back, holding her hostage with a tenacity which could not be justified by maternal motives alone. She continued to maintain that if there were any doubts at all, then Beatrice could not marry Keeman. So Beatrice, still gangly and naive, was kept torn between Keeman’s protests and her mother’s hardness of heart.

  Beatrice got thin—she became too weak to move, too confused to think, cried out all the time. Any other mother would have relented, but Fong Mei was immutable. She simply could not admit that Keeman might not be Choy Fuk’s son without casting suspicion on her own children’s patrilineage. And on that she would not give an inch! Keeman and Beatrice must absolutely never marry.

  Besides, Fong Mei thought, if she could just interrupt their marriage plans long enough to get Beatrice back to the flourish and glitter of Hong Kong, that toady Keeman would soon be forgotten.

  One generation between mother and daughter, and already how far apart their goals and sentiments. They shared a common experience, but while Fong Mei hated this country, which had done nothing except disqualify her, Beatrice had grown up thoroughly small-town canadian. While Beatrice hardly knew anywhere beyond the quiet streets of Vancouver, Beatrice’s mother hated this pious town, which kept her bored and labouring like a poor woman. After Ting An had finally ejected her from the last bleeding shreds of his heart, she hated him too. She hated her marriage, and her mother-in-law especially. She longed to leave them all and go back home. Beatrice was once her one-way ticket out of this backhog wash, and still could be if managed correctly. What was the use of all her money if she couldn’t get back to civilization? And she certainly wasn’t going to leave any one of her darlings behind either. Suzie would be no problem at all, and John, who was in medical school, would have a brilliant and heroic medical career in China, of course.