Things You Should Know

by A M Homes

  “He’s in the water,” the girl would say.

  In the evening I would crawl into my cave and read postcards from my mother—Venice is everything I thought it would be, France is stunning, London theater is so much better than Broadway. Thinking of you, hoping you’re having a fantastic summer. I am imagining you swimming across America. Love Mom.

  “We’re still your parents, we’re just not together,” became the new refrain.

  Later, when I started to date, when I would go to girls’ houses and their mothers and fathers would ask, “What do your parents do?” I’d say, “They’re divorced,” as though it were a full-time job. They’d look at me, instantly dismissive, as though I too was doomed to divorce, as though domestic instability was genetically passed down.

  And then, later still, there were families I fell in love with. I remember sitting at the Segals’ dining room table, happily slurping chicken soup, looking up at Cindy Segal, who stood above me, bread basket in hand, glaring at me in disgust. “You’re just another one of them,” she said, dropping the bread, unceremoniously dumping me. Too stunned to swallow, I felt soup dribble down my chin.

  “Don’t go,” Mrs. Segal said, as Cindy slammed upstairs to her room. After that, the Segals would sometimes call me. “Cindy’s not going to be here,” they’d say, “come visit.” I went a couple of times and then Cindy joined a cult and never spoke to any of us again.

  My mother used to say, marry someone familiar, marry someone you have something in common with. The flatness of Susan, the hollow, the absence of some unnameable something—was familiar. The sensation that she was on the outside, waiting to be invited in, was something we had in common.

  Never did Susan ask for an accounting of my past, never did she pull back and say—“You’re not going to hurt me, are you? You don’t have any weird diseases, do you? You’re not married, right?”

  Susan looked at me once, squarely, evenly, and said, “Nice tie,” and that was it.

  In the morning, after our first night together, she rearranged my furniture. Everything immediately looked better.

  It is late in the afternoon; I have spent the day lost in thought. There are contracts spread across my desk waiting for my review. Outside, it is getting dark. I leave and instinctively walk uptown. All day I have been thinking about the house, about Mrs. Ha, and now I am heading toward our old apartment as though it were all a dream. I am walking, looking forward to seeing the grocer on the corner, to riding up in the elevator with Willy, the elevator man, to smelling the neighbors’ dinner cooking. I am thinking that once these things happen, I will feel better, returned to myself. I go three blocks before I catch myself and realize that I am moving in the wrong direction. I belong in Larchmont—Larchmont like Loch Ness. I hurry toward the station. Stepping onto the train, I have the feeling I am leaving something behind. I check my messages—Susan has left word, something about a client, something about something falling, something about it all being her fault, something about staying late. “I don’t know when,” she says, and then we are in a tunnel and the signal is lost.

  I am going home. I imagine arriving at the house and having Sherika tell me Mrs. Ha is gone again. I picture changing into hunting clothes, a red-and-black wool jacket, an orange vest, a special hat, and going in search of her, carrying some kind of wooden whistle I have carved myself—a mother-in-law call. I imagine Mrs. Ha hearing the rolling rattle of my call Mrs. Haa…Mrs. Haaa Haa…Mrs. Ha Ha Ha…Mrs. Haaaaaahhhh—it ends in an upswing. She is roused from her dream state, her head tilts toward the sound of my whistle, and she is summoned home as mystically as she was called away.

  I phone Sherika and ask—can she stay late, can she keep an extra eye on Mrs. Ha. I take a taxi from the train—there is the odd suburban phenomenon of the shared cab, strangers piling in, stuffing themselves into the back of the sedan, briefcases held on laps like shields, and then each calls out his address and we are off on a madcap ride, the driver tearing down the streets, whipping around corners, depositing us at our doorsteps for seven dollars a head.

  Home. The sky is five minutes from dark, the floodlights are already on in the backyard. Kate and Mrs. Ha are down in the dirt, squatting, elbows resting on thighs, buttocks dropped down, positioned as if about to shit.

  “Mrs. Ha, what are you doing?”

  “I am thinking, Georgie. And I am resting.”

  There is something frightening about it—Kate imitating Mrs. Ha, grotesque in her gestures, rubber-limbed like a circus clown, contorting herself for attention, more alive than I will ever be. Her freedom, her full expression terrifying me—I am torn between interrupting and simply watching her be.

  “We are planting a garden,” Sherika says, straightening up, extending to her full six feet. “After lunch I took them to the nursery. We are putting in bulbs for spring.”

  “Tulips,” Kate says.

  Sherika drops sixty-nine cents of change into my hand and somehow I feel guilty, like I should have left her a hundred dollars or my credit card.

  “What a good idea,” I say.

  “We are just finishing up. Come on, ladies, let’s go inside and wash our hands.”

  I follow them into the kitchen. They wash their hands and then look at me, as though I should have something in mind, a plan for what happens next.

  “Let’s go for a ride,” I say, unable to bear the anxiety of staying home. Not knowing where else to go, I drive them to the supermarket. Sherika takes Mrs. Ha and I have Kate and we go up and down the aisles, filling the cart.

  “Are you the apple of your daddy’s eye?” A clerk in the produce section pulls Kate’s hair and then looks at me. “There’s lots of these Chinese babies now, nobody wants them so they give them away. My wife’s sister adopted one—otherwise they drown ’em like kittens. You don’t want to be drowned, do you, sweetheart,” he says, looking at Kate again.

  “She’s not adopted. She’s mine.”

  “Oh sorry,” the guy says, flustered as though he’d said something even more insulting than what he actually said. “I’m really sorry.” He backs away.

  Sorry about what? I look at Kate. Her head is too big. Her skin is an odd jaundicy yellow and now she’s playing some weird game with the cantaloupes, banging them against the floor. It occurs to me that the guy thought there was something wrong with her.

  “Did you find everything you were looking for?” Sherika asks as we’re wheeling up the frozen foods toward the checkout.

  “I’m finished.”

  In a strip mall across the street, I notice an Asian grocery store. When the light changes, I pull in.

  “Ah,” Sherika says, “look at that.”

  It is small, dingy, and a little otherworldly. There are wire racks for shelves, and things floating in tubs filled with melting ice—none of it incredibly clean. Mrs. Ha scurries around collecting tins of spices, bottles of vinegar. She seems happy, like she has recovered herself, she is chatting with the man behind the counter.

  She shows me fresh vegetables: water chestnuts, shanghai cabbage, “Bau dau gok,” she says,—“snake bean.” Lotus leaves, brown slab sugar, and now she is in the freezer case, handing me a bag that says FROZEN FISH BALLS. She hands me others with writing in Chinese. “Fatt choy?” she asks the man behind the counter, and he points toward it.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Black moss,” she says.

  “What is it really?” I ask.

  She shrugs.

  I want Mrs. Ha to feel comfortable. If pressed seaweed is to her what mashed potatoes are to me, I want her to have ten packages. Why not? I start picking things off the shelf and offering them to her.

  She shakes her head and continues shopping.

  The man behind the counter says something and she laughs; I am sure it is about me. I hear something about three Georges, about water, and then a lot of clucking from Mrs. Ha. He talks quickly, flipping back and forth from Chinese to broken English. She answers—her speech, suddenly
rhythmic, her accent shifting into the pure diphthong, the oo long, an ancient incantation.

  The man takes a small beautiful box out from a shelf below the counter. Mrs. Ha makes a soft cooing sound before he opens it. “Bird’s nest,” he says. “Very good quality.”

  “What is bird’s nest?”

  The man blows spit bubbles at me. He drools intentionally and then sucks his saliva back in. “The spit of a swift,” he says, flapping his arms.

  Mrs. Ha checks her pockets for money, finds nothing, and looks at me as if to ask, Can we get it?

  “Sure, why not?”

  “I have never had so much home in a long time,” she says.

  “Come again soon,” the man says, as we are leaving. “Play bingo.”

  I carry two shopping bags out to the car, imagining Mrs. Ha is going to start dating this man—I picture tracking twin positioning chips, two dots, one on top of the other. I make a mental note to ask Susan—is Mrs. Ha allowed to date?

  In the car on the way home Mrs. Ha asks, “Do you like Sony? Mr. Sony make the tape recorder and Mr. Nixon make friends with the Chinese. Then Mr. Nixon erase and now Mr. Sony die, I read in your New York Times.” She laughs. “Stupid old men.”

  Kate is on the floor in front of the television. Mrs. Ha is in the kitchen making soup. Sherika takes the car to the train station; she will drop it off and go home to Queens, Susan will pick it up and come home to us.

  “What’s that smell?” Susan says when she comes in the door.

  “Your mother is making soup.”

  “It’s so weirdly familiar, I thought I was hallucinating.”

  “Everything OK?” I am looking at her, trying to tell if she is lying, if there’s more to the story or not.

  “It’s fine,” she says. “It’s fine. He got hysterical, a little piece of the wall came down—it wasn’t my fault. I was so upset. I thought I had done something wrong.”

  I don’t tell Susan that I was worried she might not come back. I don’t tell her that I took everyone to the supermarket because the idea of staying alone in the house with the three of them inexplicably terrified me.

  “Dinner is ready,” Mrs. Ha says.

  “It looks delicious.” I stare into my bowl. There are white things and black things floating in the soup—nothing recognizable. I am starving. I assume it is mushrooms.

  “Hot,” Kate says, her face over the bowl, blowing steam like a dragon.

  Susan stares speechless at her bowl.

  The broth is rich, succulent. I slurp. It is skin, skin and bones, small bones, soft, like little fingers, melting in the mouth.

  I look at Susan. “Feet?” I ask in Latin. Susan nods.

  I don’t want to say anything more. I don’t want to throw Kate off—she is eating, not noticing. And Mrs. Ha is clearly enjoying herself.

  “Georgie took me shopping,” Mrs. Ha says.

  “I had a late lunch.” Susan carries her bowl into the kitchen.

  Later, I overhear her on the phone with her brother, whispering. “She tried to poison me, she made chicken-feet soup.”

  I pick up the extension in the kitchen and hope neither of them notices the click.

  “Where did she get the feet?”

  “I think he’s helping her.”

  “Who?”

  “Geordie.”

  “Why?”

  “He hates me.”

  I hang up.

  When I was young my mother made cupcakes for my birthday and brought them to school. The teacher had us all write her thank-you notes in thick pencil on wide-lined paper. Dear Mrs. Harris, thank you for the delicious cupcakes. We enjoyed them very much. Sincerely, Geordie.

  “Dear Mrs. Harris, Sincerely Geordie, what kind of letter is that to send a mother?” She still talks about how funny it was. When she telephones and I answer she says, “It’s Mrs. Harris, your mother.”

  We are in bed. Susan is reading. I look over her shoulder, page 297 of In Cold Blood, a description of Perry Smith, one of the murderers. “He seems to have grown up without direction, without love.”

  “I’m lonely,” I tell her.

  “Read something,” she says, turning the page.

  I go downstairs and fix a bowl of ice cream for Susan.

  “I’m not your enemy,” I tell her when the ice cream is gone, when I have helped her finish it, when I am licking the bowl.

  “I don’t know that,” she says, taking the bowl away from me and putting it on the floor. “You act like you’re on her side.”

  “And what side is that?”

  “The side of the dead, of things past.”

  “Oh, please,” I say, and yet there is something in what Susan is saying; I am on the side of things lost, I am in the past, remembering. “You’re scaring me,” I say. “You’re turning into some weird minimalist monster from hell.”

  “This is me,” Susan says. “This is my life. You’re intruding.”

  “This is our family,” I say, horrified.

  “I can’t be Chinese,” Susan tells me. “I’ve spent my whole life trying not to be Chinese.”

  “Kate is half Chinese and she likes it,” I say, trying to make Susan feel better.

  “I don’t like that half of Kate,” Susan says.

  Something summons me from my sleep. I listen—on alert, heart racing. The extreme silence of night is blasting full volume. Moon pours into the room like a gigantic night light. Outside, the trees are still—it is haunting, romantic, deeply autumnal. Night.

  And there it is, far away, catching me, a kind of bleating, a baleful wail.

  I go down the hall, each step amplified, the quieter I try to go the louder I become.

  I check Kate—she is fast asleep.

  It becomes more of a moan—deep, inconsolable, hollow. There is no echo, each beatified bellow is here and then gone, evaporating into the night.

  Downstairs, Mrs. Ha is crouched in the corner of the living room, like a new end table. She is next to the sofa, squatting, her hands at her ears, crying. She is naked.

  “Mrs. Ha?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  Her cry, heartbreaking, definitive, filled with horror, with grief, with fear, comes from someplace far away, from somewhere long ago.

  I touch her shoulder. “It’s Geordie. Is there something I can do? Are you all right?”

  I step on the foot switch for the lamp; the halogen torch floods the room. Susan’s Corbusier chairs sit bolt upright—tight black leather boxes, a Prouve table from France lies flat, waiting, the modernist edge, dissonant, vibrating against the Tudor, the stone, the old casement windows, and Mrs. Ha, my Chinese mother-in-law, sobbing at my feet. I turn the light off.

  “Mrs. Ha?” I lift her up, I put my hands under her arms and pull. She is compact like a panda, she is made of heavy metal. Her skin is at once papery thin and thick like hide. She clings to me, digging in.

  I carry her back to her bed. She cries. I find her nightgown and slip it over her head. When she cries, her mouth drops open, her lips roll back, her chin tilts up and her teeth and jaws flash, like a horse’s head. It is as though someone has just told her the most horrible thing; her face contorts. Her expression is like an anthropological find—at eighty-nine she is a living skeleton.

  I touch her hair.

  “I want to go home,” she wails.

  “You are home.”

  “I want to go home,” she repeats.

  I sit on the edge of her bed, I put my arms around her. “Maybe it was the soup, maybe the dinner didn’t agree with you.”

  “No,” she says, “I always have the soup. It is not the soup that does not agree with me, it is me that does not agree with me.” She stops crying. “They are going to flood my home, I read it in the New York Times, they build the three gorges, the dam, and everything goes underwater.”

  “I don’t know who they are,” I say.

  “You are who they are,” she says. I don’t know what she is talking about.

 
; Mrs. Ha reaches to scratch her back, between her shoulder blades. “There is something there,” she says. “I just can’t reach it.”

  I imagine the little green blip on the tracking device, wobbling. “It’s OK. Everything is all right now.”

  “You have no idea,” she tells me as she is drifting off. “I am an old woman but I am not stupid.”

  And when she is asleep, I go back to bed. I am drenched in sweat. Susan turns toward me. “Everything all right?”

  “Mrs. Ha was crying.”

  “Don’t call her Mrs. Ha.”

  I take off my shirt, thinking I must smell like Mrs. Ha. I smell like Mrs. Ha and sweat and fear. “What would you like me to call her—Ma Ha?”

  “She has a name,” Susan says angrily. “Call her Lillian.”

  I cannot sleep. I am thinking we have to take Mrs. Ha home. I am imagining a family trip reuniting Mrs. Ha with her country, Susan with her roots, Kate with her ancestry. I am thinking that I need to know more. I once read a story in a travel magazine about a man who went on a bike ride in China. I pictured a long open road, a rural landscape. In the story the man falls off his bike, breaks his hip, and lies on the side of the road until he realizes no help is going to come, and then he fashions his broken bike into a cane, raises himself up, and hobbles back to town.

  RAFT IN WATER, FLOATING

  She is lying on a raft in water. Floating. Every day when she comes home from school, she puts on her bikini and lies in the pool—it stops her from snacking.

  “Appearances are everything,” she tells him when he comes crashing through the foliage, arriving at the edge of the yard in his combat pants, thorns stuck to his shirt.

  “Next time they change the code to the service gate, remember to tell me,” he says. “I had to come in through the Eisenstadts’ and under the wire.”

  He blots his face with the sleeve of his shirt. “There’s some sort of warning—I can’t remember if it’s heat or air.”

  “I might evaporate,” she says, then pauses. “I might spontaneously combust. Do you ever worry about things like that?”