by Lillian Li
“If you’re not going to eat, then leave.” Ah-Jack sprayed flecks of food at the couple. “Who comes to a lunch and just sits there? You son of a bitch, you’re paying but not eating? What’re you trying to make me?”
“This was a bad idea,” Gary said again, but this time he stood and tugged Michelle gently up with him.
“Is there a problem?” Now, of all times, their waitress hurried over.
“We have a doctor’s appointment. I’ll pay at the front.” Gary slipped an over-generous tip into the waitress’s hand.
How did the other man already know Michelle’s schedule? Did her doctor know who Gary was? How many people had known before him? Ah-Jack had not asked any of his questions.
“Are you finished as well?” the waitress asked Ah-Jack.
“Me, finished?” Ah-Jack’s voice was a touch too loud. “When there’s so much food left? I would never waste a beautiful lunch like this.”
“No hurry,” she said, but she took away Michelle and Gary’s table settings. Where their plates had been, there were two dry circles, untouched by the broth.
“I’m sorry,” Michelle said, after the waitress showed Gary to the register. Her body was already drifting in his direction; her world now tipped downhill toward Gary. “Please tell Nan to call me.”
“Why would she call you?” he said.
“She’s my friend too.”
“Because she had to be,” he said. “Because you were my wife. But now you’re nothing to both of us.”
Michelle stepped back and tightened the knot on her headscarf.
“Tell her to call me.” She was already picking up Gary’s bad habit of repeating himself. “Goodbye.”
“Enjoy our home,” Ah-Jack called after her. Gary put an arm around Michelle’s shoulder and steered her out the door. Ah-Jack stretched his neck to see. Outside, their heads were close together, almost touching. They talked without smiling, but their relief was palpable. Their new lives could begin now that they’d ended his.
*
The last time her bowels had seized up and bent her body in half, Nan had just said goodbye to her husband, Ray, who’d promised he’d call when he was settled in San Francisco. Now, hiding in the new restaurant’s wine closet, the same sharp pains had returned. But she had to call her husband, no matter how her body resisted. She didn’t have much time before Pat finished waiter training. Shifting on top of a box of chardonnay, she muscled through the discomfort.
Checking the time—it would be one in San Francisco—she dialed the phone number, rusted in her memory. Ray worked seven days a week, but he owned the small dim sum shop he’d opened ten years ago. He’d take her call even during the lunch rush.
“Yes?” he said, answering on the second ring. He sounded impatient, but Ray could sound impatient soaking in a bathtub. In the background, orders were being shouted in Cantonese. Nan had never set foot in the restaurant, or even in California for that matter, but she could piece together the shape of the room and the movement of the crowd based on pictures Ray had once sent her. She saw the scuffed linoleum tile, the polished glass counter, the paper menus taped against the wall. The line that sometimes snaked out the door and down the block.
“Pat can’t stay with me,” Nan said. The longer she took to get to her news, the worse her husband would react. She’d already delayed news of Pat’s expulsion by months. What could Ray do from across the country? But now she told him the most important details, keeping her voice neutral. Pat, hard to wrangle before, had never, until two nights ago, been physically violent. Who, with goodness in his heart, could throw an old man to the floor? She truly didn’t know her son. Watching him banter with the other waiters today, she feared what the new money would twist him into. One day it might be her, thrown to the ground at the slightest provocation. She was already only one woman. But her husband was a man who could train a dog that had bitten him. Her husband bit back; sometimes he bit first, a predilection that had led to his firing from the Duck House all those years ago. But her husband never did as she expected. So she recited all of Pat’s troubles, and then she waited.
Over the line, Ray’s breathing grew labored. The background din quieted as he moved to a private place, perhaps the bathroom. When he spoke, an echo sounded out.
“You’ve done the best you can,” he said. “He takes after me. He’s a piece of shit.”
“You’ll take him?” she said. “I wouldn’t ask unless I thought he was really in trouble.”
“The schools are good here,” Ray said. He was probably holding his body in his thinking pose: elbows cupped in his palms, legs also crossed, teetering slightly as he stood. This was the one time her husband looked vulnerable. “He can work for me until the school year starts, then finish high school.”
“Thank you.” She rocked through another elongated stomach pain. Far from relief, she felt so nauseous that sweat sprang out from her hairline, tickling her scalp. She almost didn’t hear what Ray said next.
“You could come too,” he was offering, softly. Nan pressed her hand hard against her aching stomach. Her husband hadn’t brought up a move in years. He barreled on while she wiped the sweat from her forehead. “There’d be no problem if you both lived with me.”
Nan caught her breath in the back of her throat. She wanted to remind him that he was the one who’d broken up the family. But while her husband had mellowed out over the years, he was still the kind of man who could easily take back a favor just granted.
“Think about it,” he said, exasperated by her brief silence. “Call me when you decide. I can take Pat in, but he’ll never forgive you if you abandon him.” The line clicked. He had hung up.
Ray, or Ah-Ray as she’d called him for far too long, disrupted everything he touched. He’d hounded her for years at the restaurant until she agreed to go out with him, talked her into marrying him four months after that, and knocked her up right after they’d decided not to have kids. Not even Ah-Jack could keep up. “Your husband knows how to wear me out,” he’d liked to say.
When Pat was five, Ray got himself fired for throwing change at a customer who’d left pennies for a tip. He’d chased the woman outside, pelting handfuls of coins at her car. The only explanation he gave was that something in him had finally snapped. He packed his bags weeks later in a delusional journey west to find his fortune. But thousands of miles of country hadn’t dampened the ripple effects of his impulse and will.
If Nan did go to San Francisco with her son, both of them forced to start over, would they know better than to repeat their old mistakes? She believed as much as she dared that once the momentum of his youth passed, Pat would regret how he’d hurt her. She could practically see, ten years into the future, Pat visiting with her first grandbaby, fat-legged and gurgling, all of them browner from the sun. Maybe she might get more than one day off a week. She and Ray could even scrape together a weekend every now and then. Nan couldn’t remember the last Saturday she’d had at home or a single Sunday afternoon she’d spent sipping hot soy milk at a dim sum joint. She cared for Ray; he excited her, and age should have made him less temperamental. Or, if not age, then owning his own establishment, being his own boss. He’d never brought up divorcing her, though they’d been separated for twelve years. She was his wife. Divorce wouldn’t change this.
But here she had Ah-Jack.
Her fear of the unknown and her dislike of change were merely passive knots, waiting to be undone. Ah-Jack, however, was a tugging grip on her wrist. She would have to cut a piece of herself off to loose his pull.
Too soon, she heard a knock at the wine-closet door.
“Come in,” she said, her throat clogged. The door opened only after she repeated herself.
She scooted onto a crate of merlot. Her son picked his way through the cramped storage hold.
“What do you want?” He shouldered his backpack. “I’m about to grab a ride.”
“I spoke to your father,” she said. She’d wanted to use Engli
sh, to make sure Pat understood what she was saying, but the language had scrambled to nonsense in her head.
“That asshole?” Pat said.
“Don’t be vulgar.” She stalled. “This was a very hard decision, but as parents, we have to do what’s best for you, our son.”
“What’s he want? To yell at me? Screw him.”
“He wants you to live with him,” Nan blurted out. “You’ll like San Francisco. You’ve always loved the outdoors.”
Pat took a step back and nearly tripped over a box. He looked so ludicrous in the small space. Her chest ached.
“You already decided.” He moved his hands around his collar like he was overheating. “You’re shipping me off. I knew it.”
“I might join you, in a few months.” Nan wished her words could be stronger or at least make better promises. “When I make sure I’ve settled everything here. I’ll come to California. We can be a family.” She told herself she wasn’t lying. Ah-Jack needed her now more than ever.
Pat crouched and rolled onto the balls of his feet. He cradled his head in his arms.
“You’re never coming,” he said. His nose made snuffling sounds.
She got down onto her knees and grabbed his wrists.
“Of course I’ll move to California with you and your dad,” she said. “You’ll see. You’ll be happier out there. You can start over. We both can.”
Pat shot his arms out suddenly. Nan stumbled back to avoid being shoved. Instead, he gripped her tightly around her waist. His grasp was painful, accidentally digging into her ribs, but she would’ve rather broken them than shift her body in any way. She’d expected her son to be relieved, or indifferent, or angry, but not frightened, inconsolable. He was still a boy. She couldn’t forget this. But as much as she cherished the contact, the fierceness of his embrace forced her to understand how her son could be both—a boy and a man—or, rather, something in between: a grown boy. Wasn’t this the reason she was sending him away? She could not help him in this in-between time, when he was young enough to want his mother but big enough to break her too.
“What’s keeping you here?” he asked, his head buried in her side.
“Jimmy is going through a rough time with this new restaurant and he’s depending on me,” she had to say. “I can’t leave him now. Once I’ve made sure he’s settled, I’ll come to you and your dad. I promise.”
Pat began to relax his grasp. It pained Nan to admit this, but he shouldn’t have bent under her hollow reassurances. She should’ve taught her son how to ask for more. The fact that he didn’t was what made him hers; they were genetic mirrors, with identical weak spots in their bones. She loosened her grip in perfect tandem with him. By the time they had their arms back at their sides, it was as if they had decided together when the embrace must end.
*
Ah-Jack packed his bags and left them piled in front of the door for Gary to trip over, in case the man dared enter his home before he’d properly left. He drove back to the Glory to finish the workday. He wondered how he would tell Nan.
At first, he couldn’t locate her whereabouts. The new, young American waiters had no idea who Nan was, even after Ah-Jack described her. Useless, all of them. He was growing worried, a departure from his nature, when he remembered Nan’s odd quirk of hiding in moments of panic. He checked the remote corners of the restaurant, looking in the walk-in fridge, the freezer, the pantry, and the bathrooms. Following a hunch, he finally found her sitting in the Glory’s wine closet, her body rigid, rooted in place. She didn’t seem to notice he was there, and he couldn’t help but announce: “I have some news.”
He always felt a spark of pleasure when he looked at his old friend, who had aged yet not aged in the thirty years they’d known each other. Overlaid on top of her current face were the faces she’d worn each time she’d rescued him from his life, until the current wrinkles and age spots faded out, leaving the exact same expression to shine through. One of worry, affection, frustration, and grudging patience.
“What did you do?” Nan said.
Bewitched by that beautiful expression, Ah-Jack let the account of the hotpot lunch roll out of his mouth. He was ashamed of his selfishness. But when he finished his story, a change came over Nan’s face. She regained her sureness. She demanded he stay with her for as long as he needed, radiant with certainty. Overcome by relief, Ah-Jack grabbed one of her hands and kissed the middle knuckle, which was as large and speckled as a river pebble. All day he’d been stalked by a terror so large he had not dared to name it. But he invoked it now. She was not going to leave him. He would not grow sick alone and die forgotten. Nan would always be by his side.
15
After ah-jack dropped her off at home, nan ventured into Pat’s bedroom. The room was neat, which gave her a superficial surge of pleasure. Her son, at least, picked up after himself. How many mothers could say the same? But soon she found the item she’d been looking for, the dirty ripped T-shirt from two nights before. She lifted the shirt to her nose and inhaled. The smell of smoke was impossible to mistake, and after years of washing her chain-smoking husband’s clothes, Nan knew the smell didn’t come from cigarettes. The unspoken thing, wedged in the back of her throat all day, uncurled itself. She swallowed hard to keep it from wriggling out. With her hands, she tore the shirt into shreds and went downstairs to throw the fabric into the trash. She took the trash outside, put it in her garbage, then hauled the bag back out and crossed the street to shove it down her neighbor’s can. She could still smell the smoke somehow. It had rubbed onto her hands, and with her palms lifted to her face, she nearly screamed into them. But already she was spreading doubt, like cooling lotion, over her wild thoughts. Perhaps the smoke—she sniffed her fingers again—was from cigarettes. She hadn’t washed Ray’s laundry in over a decade. How did she know what cigarette smoke did or didn’t smell like? What made more sense? That her son had gone to a party, smoked, and torn his shirt in a fight, or the alternative? She scolded her mind for hearing zebras instead of horses.
In the house, she scrubbed her hands until the skin burned. The front door opened, then slammed. Her son was home. Guilt scalded her; she hid her hands behind her back.
“How was the rest of training?” she asked, when he came into the kitchen. He went to the freezer and pulled out one of the microwave dinners he ate between meals.
“Fine,” he said. “Tiring.” They were both acting bashful, their way of acknowledging the conversation they’d had in the wine closet.
“Restaurant work wears you down,” she said. “How’re your feet?”
“Throbbing,” he said.
“When I started waiting tables my fingers ached so badly from lifting all those plates that I couldn’t untie my shoes. How’re yours?”
“All right,” he said. “I still can’t balance a tray.”
“You’ll get there,” she said. “The first time I carried a tray, I spilled a beer down a customer’s back. Luckily he was already drunk.”
Pat flicked his eyes from the microwave timer to her face. “Funny,” he said.
Nan didn’t push the conversation. They were out of practice with each other. With every prodding question, her son would slip further beneath his ill-fitting skin. She wanted to preserve the tentative sense of family between them. If she could keep this lukewarm feeling alive, they might be able to have an honest conversation. She might ask him about two nights before.
Carefully, as she would with a difficult customer, she made suggestions.
“Maybe you can stay home tonight,” she said. “Rest.”
Pat sniffed loudly, eyes back on the microwave. He was making macaroni and cheese. He’d forgotten to cut a slit in the plastic wrap.
“If you have too many late nights, you’ll get sick. This new job will be hard on the body. You’ve seen me.” She was joking, but her back strained when she tried to straighten it.
“You look fine.” He turned toward her, holding the steaming tray of macaroni betwe
en his fingertips. “I was already going to stay in. Tomorrow’s training starts at six.”
“I’m glad,” she said, but she could have sung. She was breathing something better than air. She walked toward him, about to inspect the orange noodles he’d pulled from the microwave. A series of knocks sounded out from the front hall.
“Who could that be?” she asked, irritated at the disruption. Then she saw, through the window, Ah-Jack’s car in the driveway. She hadn’t meant for him to come tonight. How could she have forgotten that for Ah-Jack, an offer began as soon as it was spoken? To her horror, Pat was already down the hall, striding to the front door. Ah-Jack pushed the door open with a bang.
“Are you here to welcome me home?” He reached up to put his hands on Pat’s shoulders.
“Uncle Jack,” he said. “Are you visiting?”
“You could call it that!” Ah-Jack looked over at Nan as she hurried down the hall. His face registered her panic. “Your Uncle Jack has run into some family problems. I was going to ask your mom if I could stay a few nights.”
Pat saw, at Ah-Jack’s feet, the pile of suitcases.
“Looks like you’ve already asked.” Turning to his mother, he said, “Is that what you meant by settling things?”
Before Nan could think of an answer, Pat had pushed past Ah-Jack and thudded up the stairs. His broad back disappeared behind his bedroom door. Nan’s tongue was heavy in her mouth. She wanted to whip around and slap Ah-Jack across the face. How dare he interrupt her life like this? But by the next breath, she was sorry for her reaction.
“I can leave,” Ah-Jack said. “It won’t be a problem.”