by Sonya Chung
But it wasn’t. He was young, and his ideas were too simple. There were other ways, could have been. It was Veda who Charles meant to do right by, and he still could have—done right, and done elsewise—if he’d just had more wits about him. He’d begun to see this when the boy came: Alice had stopped using birth control without telling Charles. He’d missed it, wasn’t paying attention. When he realized, it was too late; they never spoke of it.
Veda was growing up now, literally—long-limbed and straight-backed. A dancer’s body. Graceful, light. The other womanly developments were slower, and Rhea (who knew, without a word spoken, that Alice had left) said, Count it a blessing. There were long phone calls and boy-girl parties at the roller rink and tube tops that didn’t look to Charles as innocent as they used to. But Veda was doing fine. She started junior high and made a new set of friends—black girls whose fathers were doctors and lawyers and listened to jazz. She took an interest in Uncle Marvin’s old LPs, and for her twelfth birthday Charles bought her a hi-fi with turntable. She kept on with ballet, and jazz dance, and made the drill team. That year they also took in a yellow kitten that had mewed in the backyard for days, and Veda named her Josephine Baker.
One of the new friends had a single mother, Angela. Her daughter, Nicole, was head of the drill team, and Veda spent a lot of time at their place in Shaw. Angela was an executive assistant, taking night classes toward a business degree, and Nicole was in the ninth grade, two years older than Veda; there was an older brother who’d been in some trouble. Rhea suggested it would be a good idea to meet Angela. One Friday evening, instead of letting Veda take the Metro, Charles drove to pick her up. Angela came to the door in a turquoise sleeveless sheath, sheer black stockings and no shoes, and a stopwatch in her hand. Her eyeglasses were perched on top of her head, and she was cheerfully out of breath. The girls had been practicing; she’d jumped in to help with timing as soon as she came home from work.
Charles and Veda stayed for dinner—they ordered pizza, and Charles paid—and when Nicole’s brother, Malcolm, came home, he grabbed a slice, headphones on, nodded at Charles, then went to his room. “Grounded,” Angela said to Charles, raising her smooth brown eyebrows. “At least he acknowledged you. That’s an improvement.”
“He took a plate and a napkin,” Charles said. “I’d say you’ve got him on the right road.” Angela smiled and held up her wine glass. Nicole rolled her eyes at Veda, who fought back a giggle.
The year Veda turned thirteen, Alice started coming only on the weekends. Charles preferred not to be there. Sometimes he went early to the batting cage or the gym, and then to the movies. Sometimes, when Angela wasn’t studying, she joined for the movie. But Charles mostly preferred his solitude (and Angela preferred light comedies). There were places popping up in the neighborhood where you could sit all day and read a book and drink a strong coffee for three dollars, and no one thought any of that strange. Charles read Gerald Seymour and Chester Himes and Nelson DeMille and Ludlum, devoured them like he used to as a boy. It felt like the recovery of something, a revival. He looked around and saw that he was among complete strangers, hidden in plain sight, and he drew a kind of fortitude from the anonymous human energy around him. Charles felt clearheaded, and he remembered things.
He remembered the toy miner’s lamp Rhea had gotten him so he could stay up reading until dawn. He remembered sitting in church, still high from smoking weed the night before, smiling stupidly and thinking he wasn’t really there, a body in the pew; he was invisible, and invincible. He remembered taking first in night infiltration at boot camp; arguing geopolitics with his friend Kang over a stinky bowl of boodae jigae. He remembered who he was, before. It felt exhilarating, like a hundred tiny resurrections from the dead.
And throughout this time, Charles wrote to Hannah. He wrote about it all. In his way.
One day in the spring of ’88, Bart Sheridan asked Charles to go for a drink after work. Say what? he almost replied. Eight years they’d worked together and never gone for a drink; what was this about. It was mid-season, the team was away that week, so what the hell, they took off early, went to a Holiday Inn in Largo. Leave your car, Bart said, and he drove them in the Coupe de Ville, maroon with cream leather interior. At the bar Charles ordered a beer, Bart had club soda. Bart asked Charles did he ever drink anything stronger, and Charles said not usually. What Bart told him next—what he asked Charles—made Charles laugh out loud, from his belly, as he hadn’t in a long time. You ain’t serious, Charles said. Bart said he was, dead serious, and Charles saw there was no doubting it.
Two months later Dennis’s ex-wife shot him twice in the chest. Dennis survived but didn’t wake up for weeks. By that time, Charles had said to Bart Sheridan, All right, then. Tell me more. Tell me what’s next.
5.
Mrs. Oh was in one of her moods. Eyelids puffy like mushroom caps, the skin of her face sagging like wet leaves. Hair mussed on one side, lips pale and chapped. She wore her old reading glasses, squashed and crooked. The drapes were drawn; the old woman had forgotten to open them, which she always did, just before sunrise.
Alice said, “You were up late again.” She laid out four pills and prepared the insulin. “Were you reading those awful books?” Mrs. Oh had lately taken up blockbuster thrillers.
Eyes flashed. “Why it’s your business what I am reading?”
Three years now as her health aide, and Alice understood Mrs. Oh’s sharp tongue as a kind of trust, and affection. Alice took a breath. “You need your rest.” She’d arrived agitated herself. Yesterday she’d gone to the shipping store in Silver Spring to pick up boxes. You should pack up your things, Charles had said. He seemed resolved about something. Eager. She wasn’t going to ask. Anyway it wasn’t unreasonable, Alice knew. Boxes stacked in the trunk, she’d gone to the post office for airmail envelopes. The line was long. Someone called her name, Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Lee. Then she saw her. Mrs. Lee. The girl’s mother. That girl.
Mrs. Oh rolled up her turtleneck from the waist. Alice saw parchment-like skin, a grotesquely jutting hipbone. Spindly blue veins like a wilderness of waterways. Alice held up the syringe, flicked at the liquid; then fumbled and dropped it.
“What’s the matter? Maybe I am not the one who needs rest.”
Alice bristled. In fact, she did often stay up reading. It helped her to sleep. She’d gone back to classics, pocket paperbacks from the Goodwill. Currently, a tattered As I Lay Dying.
Alice bent down, picked up the syringe. Re-sterilized it. Steadied her hand.
Mrs. Oh said, “How is your daughter these days?” The shots evidently hurt more and more as the old woman’s veins became thinner; she made small talk, for distraction. Or so Alice thought. Why was she always asking about Veda? It irked her.
“She’s fine,” Alice said.
“I was the only daughter,” the old woman said through a grimace. “My mother always loved me best. Secretly, of course. Daughters were worth nothing.”
When Mrs. Oh lay down for her nap, Alice left. She left like someone in a hurry. Really she had time to kill. One o’clock, Charles had said. After the housekeeper leaves.
Alice sped along Canal Road. Fleeing. Repulsed. She saw Mrs. Oh’s yellow, desiccated skin. Frail skeleton beneath. Wrong glasses, mussed hair, no lipstick. Tiny turns toward the end. At eighty-nine, it happened quickly, there were no margins. She would be the one to get the call, Primary Emergency Contact (Mrs. Oh had made the switch on her forms last year). Alice pressed the accelerator with a heavy foot.
A family of deer grazed along a thin strip of grass between the guardrail and the pavement. There were three. They were awfully close to the road. The little one looked up and made eye contact. Then dropped its head—
A hard thump beneath the car. Left side. Alice felt it in her seat, a punch from below. Shit. Her heart punching too. She did not slow down. In the rearview mirror there were no other cars. Alice saw clearly the mess of fur and guts, black and white and red; a fat, fluffy tai
l, comically intact. The odor overwhelming. She drove on, faster. A mile, two. Then pulled over into an unpaved parking area by the canal. Heart slowing, now a hard ache. Drizzling now, but she needed air. She’d never hit anything before. The impact was harder, bonier, than she’d imagined. Alice cut the engine and got out to walk along the horse path.
The path went on for miles, all the way to Ohio. Alice walked, then found herself jogging, chin up. Her feet began to hurt, leather clogs without socks. She’d gone more than a mile from the car. The drizzle turned to warm rain. She turned and jogged back.
Alice drove down K Street, then up New Hampshire Avenue. The agitation had moved to her stomach, which grumbled. She was hungry. She made her turns without signaling, pulled into the short driveway alongside the house on Kenyon. There would be food, she knew; the housekeeper, a Jamaican woman, stocked the refrigerator with stews and skewers and patties. Alice had peeked once, while waiting for Veda to pack her overnight bag. She’d sighed—bitter, relieved—seeing all that food. She herself now survived on yogurt and baked potatoes. Veda was better off with Charles.
She had three hours before Veda came home from ballet. On the porch she put in her key, but it stuck. Swollen metal, needed to be jiggered. Alice wondered if Charles would ask for it back now.
The key turned, Alice stepped inside. The dampness brought out smells—curry, cat litter, sweet strawberry shampoo. A new hall clock ticked loudly. She slipped off her clogs, padded barefoot down the wool runner. At the bottom of the stairs, Alice looked up. A climber gauging elevation. She hadn’t been up in a long time. At the top she paused. Breathed. Remembered how hungry she was. Remembered the boxes in the trunk. She turned and pattered back down. In the kitchen Alice made herself at home: opened the refrigerator and pulled out a Tupperware. Chicken and rice. Took down a plate from the cupboard—the one bearing Veda’s grass-and-flower drawing from kindergarten—and forked out half.
She sat at the table and ate. The hallway ticked. Alice did not hurry. She ate, and enjoyed, the food. She did not think, I am eating Charles’s food. She did not think, In the middle of the night, the phone call will come. She did not think, That woman at the post office, that girl’s mother. Alice ate. She looked into the backyard and saw something, but then it was gone. She blinked hard to see if it would come back. It was yellow. A yellow dump truck, the size of a large cat. No. It was the cat.
Alice finished her food standing up, left her plate and fork in the sink. The rain came down more steadily, pitter-patter drops. She thought of Laila, who’d written about capturing rainwater. Alice had started taking shorter showers.
Her feet were dry now, but she could smell them. She again mounted the stairs; walked quickly past the bedrooms to the bathroom. She sat on the edge of the tub. A washcloth hung on the bar, still damp. Alice drenched the washcloth then rubbed her feet with the cold, wet cloth. Winced as the blistered skin rubbed off. She dropped the soiled cloth into the tub and stepped out onto the mat. Burrowed her toes into the soft fibers until they were dry.
She had not turned on the lights, but now she did. Alice looked at the face in the mirror.
There was a thirty-nine-year-old woman with frizzy hair, thin lips, clear gray eyes. She did not look terrible, this woman. She looked like the woman who attended bereavement meetings every Tuesday, the woman to whom a sad man made love every week. She looked like the woman who wrote letters, read novels, appeared at teacher conferences.
She did not particularly look like a world-changer, or a peace activist. She did not look like a patriotic educator of impressionable minds, or a pioneer of interracial marriage. She did not look like a compassionate caretaker of the elderly. The lights over the mirror were bright, the reflection loud. The rude image wanted to keep telling Alice what she did and did not look like. Alice wanted to walk away, but the woman wouldn’t let her.
You do not look like the mother of a ghost child and a drowned boy.
You do not look like a mother at all.
She walked abruptly out of the lighted bathroom. Paused to notice her own breath, still breathing. Jaw clenched, Alice did not go down to the basement where her abandoned things awaited her. Instead she went straight to the second door and opened it.
The room was now sage green where once it was dark blue with a stenciled train along the top trim. White sheets and a crocheted afghan covered the bed. The boy’s desk was there, now piled with Sports Illustrated magazines, Uncle Marvin’s encyclopedia set, other tattered books, three generations old.
There was nothing else to see. No other traces. Alice exhaled and almost turned to leave; but then she didn’t. She lingered, just a moment. Her feet moved forward then, stepped to the closet. She slid the door open. There were spare pillows, Charles’s two suits and Army uniforms, the Jamaican woman’s cardigan sweater and loafers. Alice looked up. On the top shelf, just one item—a Happy Days lunchbox, metal; Fonzie straddling his motorcycle, thumbs up, Richie and company flanking. He’d wanted a leather jacket, Benny had. Alice had told him, Next year. She’d thought, Maybe when he’s ten, if he still wants it.
She took down the lunchbox, sat on the bed. Her feet were clean and cool, her stomach full. Alice opened the box. Why would she hesitate? Charles had probably saved the box because he thought he should save something. Maybe there were Matchbox cars inside, fortunes from fortune cookies. It would be all right, seeing these things. Take small steps, Callie would say. You can do it. They were just a child’s things, any child.
When she opened it, Alice was calm; then she wasn’t. Her eyes became blurred and hot; her stomach turned.
She saw first the matching thermos: Howard’s double chin, Joanie’s scarf, Marion’s sly smile. The images had faded to disembodied fragments.
Nestled beside the thermos were two little bundles, each the size of a thumb, tied around the middle with black string. They were the same but different: locks of hair, one light brown, the other black. One was fluffy and light; the other shiny like lacquer, pin-straight. The bundles lay side by side, like an arranged couple on their wedding night—decidedly, astonishingly, together.
Alice’s trembling hand reached in, took the fluffy brown bundle in her palm. It looked like steel wool but felt soft like a rabbit’s foot. The black string was a piece of thin shoelace, from a pair of dress shoes Benny had abhorred. The string was tied in a square knot: he’d been learning Boy Scout knots at school.
Alice dropped the bundle back into the box. It was as if it had ignited and singed her. Benny’s hair landed on, then rolled off the girl’s. There was a glimmer, like a winking, the light reflecting off glossy black; mocking her.
Alice shut the box, flipped the latch. Fought the urge to retch. With great concentration and without breathing, Alice placed it back onto the high shelf. Slid the closet door closed. Left the room, pulled the door shut, descended the stairs. At the bottom, Alice’s feet found her clogs, and she exited the house. Locked the door behind her.
And then she sped off—for the second time that day.
Alice knew and did not know what she had seen. It had to do with them—the three of them—Benny, Charles, and that girl. (That girl, who was still alive, while her son was dead.)
Alice knew and did not know. And she understood somehow that an opening, an escape, was presenting itself. She understood that knowing or not knowing was something she could decide.
She drove away. Fumbled with the keys hanging from the ignition, removed the metal ring that held the house key; rolled down the window and tossed it.
In the morning Alice sent a telegram to Laila. I’m coming. She called a home healthcare agency and told the person on the phone to send someone to 44 MacArthur Boulevard, 7 AM sharp, experience with the elderly and type 1 diabetes. Tell Mrs. Oh that Alice Lee had a family emergency. Send someone experienced, but let them know it won’t be … it won’t be a long assignment, she said.
Adelante, adelante. Two days later Alice was going, going. She had a new mantra now. L’
oscuridad, l’oscuridad. It was hers, all hers. The darkness. Alice reclined her aisle seat, closed her eyes, nestled into her precious darkness.
6.
Soon-mi returned home agitated; Chong-ho could see that. First, he heard it: the tires squeaking as she nearly knocked over the wheelbarrow. En route to the front door, she stepped in a mud puddle. Chong-ho watched her pay no mind. Why was she using the front door anyway. The garage door was wide open.
He’d finished turning over the beds just before the downpour. While the rain pounded he looked out from the greenhouse and envisioned planting schemes. He’d rotate the tomatoes and beans; plant more lettuces around the squashes; try a new eggplant variety. You always wanted to make more with less.
Chong-ho had been retrieving a trowel from one of the beds when Soon-mi drove up. After he watched her go inside, he turned back toward the greenhouse. Something made him stop: a tickle on his skin. A slug on the backside of the trowel tip raised its antennaed head, stretched toward Chong-ho’s index finger. Chong-ho flipped the trowel over and shook the slug onto his palm. It fell on its side then righted itself. Fat and slick, it stretched nearly all the way across. The sky brightened as a heavy gray cloud passed and a wispy white one replaced it. The complex colors of the slug’s shiny skin came into relief. Chong-ho watched the slug. The slug did nothing. Then, he felt an emission of moist warmth between the slug and his skin. With the trowel point, he lifted the slug off his palm by its middle. A trail of goo smeared across his lifeline.
Chong-ho walked toward the patio, palm upturned, slug and trowel pointing forward. The rain had filled Soon-mi’s rain boots, set out to dry and forgotten after the last storm. Chong-ho bent over and tipped the trowel into the boot; gave it one hard shake. The slug fell into the boot. The surface of the water parted like a mouth. The slug sank a little then slowly floated back up. He left it there, then—to float, sink, breathe its last breaths. He set the boot aside so he would remember to empty it later.