by Lillian Li
“He was already in a bad mood,” she said. “I’m sorry. You should stay.”
“I can find a hotel.”
“Stay tonight, since you’re already here.” She grabbed his suitcases and hauled them in. She had to cover her eyes with her hand, the light of her house suddenly too bright to bear.
*
Nan knocked on Pat’s door. When she didn’t hear a reply, she set down the tray of milk and cookies—Oreos, his favorite—and pushed her way through. The door caught on the blankets piled behind it. He’d snuck out again. She didn’t blame him. She started untangling the blankets. Why didn’t he just use the front door? He must know that she wouldn’t have tried to stop him.
“Is there trouble?” Ah-Jack asked from the doorway. Nan hadn’t heard him walk up the creaking stairs.
“Pat’s broken out.” She lay on the bed, her feet lifting off the carpet.
He walked over and sat down by her head. His fingers found their way into her hair. They combed through her scalp, stopping at her bun. He’d never touched her this way before, but his hands felt natural in her hair. She reached up and undid her bun, sighing when Ah-Jack shook out the tight spiral.
“What a troublemaker,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll be fine. He’s a smart boy.”
“Clever, not smart.”
“Even better. Clever boys can always find their way out of trouble.”
“Smart boys don’t find their way into trouble in the first place.” Nan had never been in this position in front of Ah-Jack before. What must she look like to him, to anyone who might peek in on this scene? An old woman having her hair stroked like a child, an even older man doing the stroking. She thought, suddenly, of Michelle walking in on them. Of the look that would be on her face: confused, but not angry, a small smile ready, in case it was her mistake. Nan had seen that look before. The vision was so intense that Nan nearly knocked Ah-Jack’s hand away from her temple.
*
“Nan,” Ah-Jack had said to her one day, in their first month at the Duck House. “I have a favor to ask you.” They were sitting in a booth, folding napkins into fans.
She’d leaned in before drawing back again, when she felt her knees brush his.
“Of course,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
“You haven’t heard the favor.” He laughed and unwrapped a sour candy from his jacket, crunching it between his molars. He threw the plastic onto the carpet, for a busboy to sweep up. “Michelle has been feeling better lately. But now she’s restless, stuck in the house all day. She wanted me to ask you to come over for lunch on your day off. A girls’ lunch. I didn’t know how to say no.”
“You talk about me with your wife?” Nan twisted the napkin in her hand. She wished it were paper.
“Of course,” Ah-Jack said. “Your stories make her laugh.” He looked down at her hands. Nan quickly shook out the napkin. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have asked. My wife can find her own playmates.”
“It’s just lunch,” Nan said. “I’d like to meet your wife.” She grabbed a pen from her pocket and wrote herself a note, digging the point into her hand. “Have her call me.”
Ah-Jack held his napkin up to his face, forming the cloth into a big beige smile.
“You’ve made someone very happy,” he said.
*
Ah-Jack lived in a narrow, three-story townhouse, with stairs so steep that Nan had to pull herself up by the railing, as if she were climbing to temple. Ah-Jack’s wife navigated the same steps with no trouble. She was so translucent she reminded Nan of a tadpole.
“I’m so happy you could come over.” Michelle dipped her head to avoid the potted fern guarding the top of the second floor. “I’m on house arrest.”
“No trouble at all,” Nan said, out of breath. She swatted at the plant, which she’d forgotten to sidestep. “Can I help with lunch?”
“Absolutely not,” Michelle said. “You just wait upstairs in the dining room while I bring everything up from the kitchen. Don’t lift a finger!” She pointed Nan up the last flight of stairs.
Alone, Nan moved slowly. The carpet covering the steps suddenly felt too plush under her feet. The air grew warmer as she climbed, perfumed by the sharp odor of muscle balm. The top floor had an open layout, flanked by two windows and four closed doors. The dining table, in the middle of the room, rested atop a thick Persian rug. Michelle had already set out the plates.
After a moment’s hesitation, Nan wandered over to the cluster of doors. One was too narrow to lead to anything but a supply closet. A quick peek confirmed this. The second she opened slowly, certain that the hinges would creak and give her away, but the door revealed that she’d wasted her time on a coat room. The third door she opened boldly. She found a guest room, barely furnished. The last door was where she needed to be.
Nan was about to shut the third door when she caught a whiff of something familiar. Why would a guest room smell like Ah-Jack? She stepped inside. She found the clothes he’d worn to work the day before in a small laundry hamper by the door. The hamper was nearly full. Nan walked over to the vanity. She didn’t know what she was looking for. A sign? A hint of how she fit into this place, this life? His mirror was dusty, and without thinking, she wrote her name carefully in the dust. She quickly wiped the characters away. Her palm left a streak of clean glass behind. She remembered herself and looked away to forget.
Ah-Jack’s bed was neatly made, but his pillow held the indent of his head. She went over and picked up the pillow, carefully fluffing out the depression. After a few seconds of stillness, she set the pillow back. A magnet in her gut drew her down with it. Before she knew it, she was on the bed, and in the next moment, her face was on his pillow. The worn cotton felt oily against her cheek. She breathed in and found a spot of sourness where his mouth must have been.
“What are you doing?”
Nan jerked her head off the pillow. Michelle stood by the open door.
“I—” Nan touched her cheek. “I was looking for the bathroom. And I got dizzy.”
“There’s one in the master bedroom,” Michelle said. Her tone was brittle and cautious, like a child deciding whether she’d deserved the slap. “We don’t usually have guests use our private bathroom.”
Nan stood up, holding her head. She didn’t have to pretend to be nauseous.
“I didn’t mean to come in here,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“So why did you?” The serving spoons in Michelle’s hand clicked together.
“I don’t know,” Nan said. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“My husband told me you only came over a few months ago.”
Nan couldn’t look at Michelle. She stared instead at the top of the other woman’s scalp, at the black fuzz that had grown back in. Nan’s own head began to itch as she waited for Michelle’s accusation.
“You must be lonely,” Michelle said instead. Nan’s eyes suddenly filled with tears, as if needles had punctured them. She’d been hiding those words in the pit of her stomach for months. How had this strange woman pulled them out? Where was the timid wife Ah-Jack had described?
“I’m the same,” Michelle said, to Nan’s surprise. “I understand.”
She led Nan out into the dining room. The air now smelled like rice starch and braised pork. They sat at the table, Michelle at the head and Nan at the corner.
“Jack likes you,” Michelle said. She began to polish the spoons with a cloth. “I see why.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” Steam rose from the rice bowl, wispy strands tangling into clouds. “He’s a silly man. But you make him better. He drinks less since you started carpooling. Stays away from the racetracks more. You keep him safe.”
“I didn’t tell him to do any of that.” Michelle’s fingers were long and delicate. They made the spoons she was polishing look expensive. Nan sat on her own hands.
“He likes talking to you at work,” Michelle said. “He doesn’t ne
ed any other distractions.”
Nan clutched the corners of her chair. “We should eat.” She took the polished spoons out of Michelle’s hands and placed them by the dishes she’d brought up. “The food will get cold.”
“I followed him to Taiwan.” Michelle stood up. “I followed him here. But I can’t follow him everywhere. He’s his own person.”
“He’s yours,” Nan insisted.
“How can he be mine when I never see him?” Michelle picked at a loose thread in her brocade tablecloth.
“I’ll take care of him for you.” Nan felt steamrolled by the fierceness of her own promise. “We’ll take care of him together!”
Michelle let out a tinkling laugh, which all the girls from the south seemed to have.
“You’re so young,” she said. “What’re you doing pledging yourself to someone else’s husband?”
“Because it’s the only way.” The words snuck out of Nan without her permission. She’d gotten this far without confessing to Ah-Jack’s wife, but now it was all over. She could have smacked herself. He’d never speak to her again.
Michelle only rubbed the patchy velvet on her skull. She seemed not to have heard. “Life is long,” she said. “We should be friends. But first”—her dry lips cracked into a smile—“let’s eat.”
*
Life was long. She and Michelle were friends. And Nan had done nothing wrong, not a single indiscretion since her cheek had touched Ah-Jack’s pillow. Michelle couldn’t blame her for indulging, just this once, not when Michelle had indulged in so much more. She had lost her rights to Ah-Jack. Let her see them on the bed. The comfort was unparalleled.
“Getting Pat that job was smart,” Ah-Jack said. “Or clever, whichever you prefer.”
“I don’t know.” She pressed the top of her head into his leg. “All that loose cash. What’s he going to do with a hundred dollars flopping around his pocket? It’s dangerous.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But we turned out all right.”
“I was always going to turn out all right.” She turned her face up to smile at him. “But you were saved from a life of sin.”
“I could’ve been a small-town gangster,” he mused.
“Instead, we’re civil servants.” They both laughed, jostling the mattress.
“Not much longer for me,” Ah-Jack said. “Now that Michelle’s bills are on some other fellow’s back.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“What’ve you got to be sorry for?” He tugged on the top of her ear. “What if I got a job at one of those carryout joints? I could sit in front of a fan all day and play with the owner’s granddaughters. I’m a bachelor again. I don’t need much.”
“You’ll go back to the horses in a heartbeat!” Nan sat up suddenly. “Haven’t you learned anything about yourself, old man?”
Their eyes met. Nan felt her blood jump against her neck. She willed herself to keep her chin lifted. She would not look away first. If she did, California waited, yawning and sunny and hopeless.
Ah-Jack didn’t look away either. Unexpectedly, his eyes grew teary.
“What will my life be now?” he said. He grabbed her hands off the mattress, which nearly sent her tumbling back onto the bed.
“Whatever you want it to be.” She leaned her weight into him, to show him his own strength.
“It’s not polite to tell lies,” he said. “I hear you laughing at my limitations.”
“How am I laughing at you?” The air conditioner’s breeze blew Nan’s hair into her mouth. “You’re not dead yet.”
“I can’t even cut my own toenails!” He pinched his lips together. His breath grew quaky. “What can I do?”
“Anything.” She readjusted her hands until they grasped his fingers back with equal strength. Without thinking, she brushed the hair out of her mouth with his hand. “I’ll help you. I promise. You are my family.”
“I can’t ask you—”
“I don’t give a shit!” She pulled him off the bed. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
Nan stopped at the threshold of the bedroom. She hoped Ah-Jack couldn’t read her expression. He’d always said she was at her most transparent when she worried, and she didn’t want him to know that right now she was worrying about him. She wanted to calm him, to ground him with practicalities.
“The bathroom,” she said. “I’m going to take a look at those toes of yours.”
“They’ll stink you out of your own house.” Ah-Jack rubbed his big toes together.
“I’ll hold my nose.”
Nothing he said could dissuade her. She refused to be discouraged. She wished she could just tell him that she wouldn’t find his feet too ugly to bear. But that would only make him feel more exposed. In the bathroom, to ease his self-consciousness, she groused while she hitched up the knees of her slacks, acting as if her joints were greatly inconvenienced. Crouching down before him, she slipped off his tight, shin-high socks.
“You’re still breathing!” Ah-Jack couldn’t help teasing her when the first sock fell. He pretended to fall into the toilet she had him perch on, and they both laughed at the absurdity of their situation.
Squatting on her heels, examining Ah-Jack’s feet, Nan now remembered her son. Her stomach retightened as the guilt hit her. She hadn’t been worried about his whereabouts or his safety. But looking up at this beloved man’s face, brightened by the fluorescent lights, Nan could not blame herself for forgetting. She could only allow herself to forget again.
*
Ah-Jack watched his friend squatting in front of him, his ragged feet in her hands. Perhaps this was love. What he had with his wife had been perfunctory. Even the way Nan held his feet was different. Michelle cut his nails quickly, leaving sharp corners that grew back to prick his toes. Nan made many small snips, rounding out the nail until it looked manicured. He’d never questioned his love for his wife, but maybe this was because he rarely associated what he had with Michelle as love. She was a comfort and at times a crutch, and he could be sure that she saw him in this same light. Their relationship was symbiotic but detached, like separate animals in the wild. And while Michelle was his wife, wasn’t Nan his companion? She was slathering Vaseline on his feet, the gentle pressure of her fingers tangible through his nerve-damaged soles. When she thought he wasn’t looking, she took quick peeks at his face, gauging his comfort. Michelle was his cane, her help inanimate and impersonal, but Nan was his little thermometer. She moved as he moved, a constant measurement to the heat he gave off. Who could blame an old man for pulling her up and giving her a hard kiss on the mouth?
He was already apologizing when she stood and backed away, a sleepy look on her face.
“We need to get our rest,” she whispered, and he accepted the rejection as coolly as he could. He let go of her hands, the disappearance of her touch a shock to his heart.
He was about to heft his body off the seat, when her hand came back down to help him up. Wordlessly, he took it. He followed her out of the bathroom and down the hall. He let her pull him into her bedroom.
16
Annie tried her best to get out of working at the Glory. She claimed she was busy preparing for her sophomore year, and she was possibly anemic, and she was having boy troubles, but her parents were adamant. Her uncle, opening his restaurant a month ahead of schedule, needed hostesses. Annie would have to grow up and help out.
“Do you think I want to handle insurance investigators?” her father asked, crossing his legs so that the openings of his Bermuda shorts flared wide. “Do you think your mother wants to go through all her accounting files? Do you think your grandmother wants to sell her house?”
Annie tried her mother next. “You don’t even like Uncle Jimmy,” she said. “Why are you helping him?”
But her mother only said, in her dreamy way, “Family is family.” Annie pinched her around the waist, where a soft layer of fat had formed over the years. Her mother never spoke against her husband’s side o
f the family. She was a daughter-in-law, and it was as if these hyphens closed her mouth like stitches.
“We never help out with your family,” Annie said.
“My family is in China.” Her mother swayed her midsection away from Annie’s hands. “And they send us money.”
“So can’t you just send him money and let me enjoy the rest of my summer?” Annie heard herself begin to whine, which meant she’d all but forfeited. Even while she continued to argue, a part of her was already accepting that she would have to work at the Glory, with Pat.
Two and a half weeks after the fire, the Thursday the Beijing Glory opened for friends-and-family service, Annie was back at work. Her heart thumped as she parked in a garage and walked toward the entrance. She usually changed into her hostess uniform at the restaurant, but today she was already wearing her qipao. She didn’t want Pat seeing her in normal clothes. She wanted to appear hardened, a waxy professional, even though underneath her uniform she hadn’t showered since the night of the fire. She’d barely left her bed, sleeping sixteen fitful hours a day. She smelled bad, muddy. A bit like dirty ketchup. Her hair, slicked back in a bun, clung to her scalp. She was treading a dangerous line, but no one in her family had noticed.
She entered the Glory with her head down and walked quickly to her hostess stand. She barely looked up from the seating chart for the next few hours. She expected every passing body to be Pat’s. Her paranoia grew until she stopped pretending to guide diners to their table altogether. She directed each party from the safety of her stand.
At the top of the lunch hour, her uncle came out of his office and looked her over. He told her to fix her makeup but pretended not to see her point an elderly couple to their table. She could’ve laughed in his face. Who would have thought that she would prove to be more volatile than her uncle? She was deeply tempted, right then, to tell him about the fire. If he knew that she’d held that flaming bottle before it was pitched into the dumpster, what would he do? Would he throw her out of the restaurant? Would he have her arrested? Would he spit in her face? The same cycle of thoughts had rolled through her mind a hundred times, applied to every member of her family, down to her grandfather. And with every turn of the cycle, she hated Pat a little more. He’d taken away her family. When he had no family of his own, not a real one, to suffer for.