The Loved Ones

by Sonya Chung

  Last time, four years ago, her useless sons rushed to the bedside—vultures more than babes. The end was near, the health agency people said. She knew this was not true, but the stroke had taken her speech. She would have said, Not yet, not yet. And, Where is that damned woman. If Alice Lee had come, her sons would never have known; that was her wish. Useless, everyone useless.

  When the dust settled—the sons gone back to their wives, back to their lives—she thought: Not yet, not yet. I can still do something. She called her lawyer.

  She herself does not know how much time has passed since then. Months? Years? It seems not at all long ago. She remembers: That woman. Where has she gone to. Her mind had fixated. She was not dead yet. I can still do something. The damned woman’s daughter; poor daughter! The daughter always suffers. Like I suffered.

  How long has she been here? Mrs. Oh wonders. They treat her like an old-timer. The man in charge is familiar, acts as if they are old friends. If they are friends, why can’t he get her more closet space for her things.

  Her sons moved her to this placid, pastel place with its hideous ferns and too much sunlight. She remembers her home, her lovely things. When you reach the end, it’s the colors that matter. Deep purple, wine red, luscious creamy white. The drapes wide open only at dawn and dusk. Too much sunlight bleaches everything. Here, everything watery and thin.

  She regained some words; more than she lets on. She makes weak gestures; let them figure it out. She is tired. A woman spends her lifetime trying to be understood.

  Now. Now it is time. Her body tells her this. She has been lying in bed. Day after day. The lawyer has come. The lawyer says she has been here almost four years. A week ago she had another stroke.

  The lawyer is a man. A Korean man. He does not understand. Like last time, he tries to talk her out of the wishes she put in writing. It’s my job to advise you toward sound decisions, he says. To foresee the long-term repercussions of these documents, their stipulations. To ensure that your loved ones are cared for.

  No, she thinks. Your job is to do what I say. I stayed married fifty years, and now I have money. With money, I employ you. My mind is quite sound. Time is scrambled, but the order of things is not so important anyway. The lawyer should know better than to tell an old woman who her loved ones are, how to care for them. No one knows. No one can tell you. It’s all scrambled in the end, can’t you see?

  With the documents, she can do something. Just a little unscrambling, for a girl who got the short end, like her. The documents stand. You may call my children now. She waves a crooked finger in the air. For the last time she makes herself understood.

  When her sons arrive, she is already gone. At the inquest, one is enraged, one is in shock. Crazy bitch, says one. This is wrong, says the other.

  AUTUMN 1992

  1.

  Her first passport stamp. Her first passport. It would be a year of firsts. Veda turned eighteen in September and actually felt different. She’d often been told how mature and grown up she was. She never liked those comments. Now she’d be free of them. Never again would she “seem” adult. She simply was one.

  The customs officer opened Veda’s blue booklet and held it up. His eyes shifted back and forth—her photo, her face. Veda’s skin and eyes changed tint in varying light. People always told her that, too. “Have a good trip,” he said. A faintly lurid smile. She took her passport back and walked on; it was never her goal to be noticed, but she was used to it. Once, on the Metro platform, a man carrying a leather purse grinned his gold front tooth and handed her a card and said, You should model, call me.

  She would fly first to London. Over the summer she’d run into Nicole, who went to Wesleyan and was wearing her hair natural and carried a Prada bag. She kissed Veda’s cheek and said I miss you, you should visit; she’d be on study abroad. She said, Come to London, then we’ll take the weekend in the country. Nicole had been to London the summer before, with Angela, on one of her business trips.

  Veda felt how big the world was; she’d hardly seen any of it. The idea of travel had made her anxious, in both senses of the word. It still did. But she’d made a plan: a week in England, then on to Paris. She knew no one in Paris. Well, possibly someone.

  On the plane Veda paged through Vogue, then National Geographic. She thought of her interview at Howard. She’d said she wanted to double major in theater arts and biopsychology. It was her best guess. She’d applied to schools in other cities but wanted to stay near home; if she went somewhere else, she might never see her father at all. Howard sent the acceptance letter, then a month later the letter saying they’d over-enrolled. She had the option of starting in January. Veda had jumped at it. She wanted that pause. For what, she wasn’t yet sure.

  She clicked off the overhead light, put away the magazines. Closed her eyes and thought of the money sitting in the bank. How could she not think of it. Mysterious money, come from nowhere. Then Veda tried hard not to think about it. It was tiring her out. As an abstract idea, it unsettled her. Like a brown paper package with no addressee. Like a face with no features.

  She wouldn’t have thought to go to Europe. It was a fluke, running into Nicole, who’d been in town visiting Malcolm. He still lived in Shaw, paid rent to Angela, had been in and out of juvy, and was now holding down a UPS delivery job. Angela lived in New York, worked in finance; it was her boss’s sister who would host Nicole, and Veda, in Dorset. Veda got the sense that the boss was more than just a boss.

  Rhea thought travel was a wonderful idea: she was the one to bring up Paris. Autumn in Paris, she’d said dreamily. You can see where Josephine Baker got her first standing ovation. Veda had sat at the kitchen table and stroked the cat, who was fat as ever. Paris, she thought. She bent her mind four years back and saw words on an envelope—her father’s handwriting, and the name that was both surprising and familiar. She strained her memory a little harder and saw Rue Pascal, PARIS FRANCE. Rhea said, Happy Graduation, honey, and bought Veda a plane ticket.

  The money in the bank stayed untouched. Charles was looking into the source—the certified documents that came in July. The documents looked real, did not appear to be a prank. There was a serious intention to remain anonymous. What had turned up so far was the name of the lawyer. It was a Korean name. An extremely common name. The PO Box address in Bowie didn’t help. Maybe, probably it had to do with Alice.

  Alice was long gone. She lived in Chile, almost four years now. It was Veda’s grandpa Nick who’d hired a private investigator back then. He found Alice, “living like a goddamn lesbian bohemian.” Veda didn’t want to think of her mother right now. It was possible she was dead, the money an inheritance. Doubtful, though. Why the anonymity. There would have been a death notice. (And lesbian Peace Corps bohemians did not accumulate wealth.)

  “You can check,” Veda told her father. “I don’t want to.” She had a different idea.

  She’d begun to understand why she wanted a pause. She was eighteen. When she was nine, her little brother died. After that, everything started to spin; everyone flung outward and away. Centrifugal force (the only useful idea Veda had retained from junior-year physics). Veda wasn’t spinning, it was everything else. Veda still lived on Kenyon Street. She went to school. Did her chores. She was a good girl; that was what Rhea always told Charles. Veda had watched and seen things, and sometimes grew dizzy. Dance and drill team helped her settle the dizziness. Biopsychology, Veda had told the interviewer.

  Four years ago she’d seen an envelope in the mailbox. She came home from school, and she and the mailman had arrived at the same time. He handed her the mail, and as she was walking up the steps, she noticed it—the white corner of an envelope peeking out from the letterbox by the front door. Wait, she’d called. She ran up and reached into the box, pulled out the envelope. She scurried back down the steps and handed the letter to the mailman. As he took it from her, she saw to whom it was addressed.

  It had surprised her—like the sharpening of a sound sh
e hadn’t realized was staticky.

  The envelope, the sharpness, went away from them; it went at first to Virginia. But then it came back. NO FORWARDING ADDRESS. Charles had put the envelope in his briefcase. In those days, Veda snooped in her father’s briefcase.

  She didn’t open it. At the time, it made her queasy to think of reading it. Then Charles spun away again, to another training, somewhere in Canada. When he came home, Veda watched him, watched the mail. Soon after she saw another letter. It was an airmail envelope, going to Paris. Rue Pascal.

  Then there was the lunchbox.

  It was August, the following year, and Veda had awakened one morning with a lonely thought in her mind: five years. Five years since she watched her brother drown. She wanted to go to the grave. She would ask Aunt Rhea to take her. They rarely went into his room, but Veda did that day, to see if there was something she could bring. That’s when she found it, in the closet. It was the only thing on the shelf.

  Time to pause now. Veda had questions. She was eighteen and tired of the spinning and flinging. Suddenly, this money. A Korean lawyer. Maybe it had to do with her mother. But Veda had a different idea. Maybe it was something, someone else.

  2.

  September 1992

  Sometimes I’ve wondered what you might say or think about this, or that. Sometimes I think I know—what you think, who you’re becoming, year after year. You have a birthday coming up soon. I don’t think of you as becoming older; just becoming.

  I used to worry that it was selfish—to keep writing. To express one-way thoughts without two-way conversation. But I also figured it was right that you didn’t respond. Right meaning it made sense. I was writing, and you were reading, and somehow it mattered.

  And right because there was nothing false in it. That was the important thing. It’s too easy to get stuck on selfish, or wrong, and not care enough about false.

  I had a thought the other day, though—sudden, like a bell in my ear. It surprised me, but then not really.

  This thing happened, and I want to tell you about it. But not just tell you: ask you. I was wondering your opinion on something important. For the first time, a voice inside me said: Well, why not ask …

  For her twentieth birthday, Hannah had gone traveling in the south. The year before seemed like so long ago. The year she turned eighteen was the year Hannah arrived in Paris, but she herself forgot her birthday until the day after. There was one year when James sent a card. Hannah couldn’t recall which year. Probably the second. It was odd, piecing together time in this way. Connecting the years with the day of your birth.

  She couldn’t remember how Monique knew it was her birthday. Probably when she helped with the visa renewal, she saw the DOB on the form. (Hannah did remember how her friend Raj used to tease her on her birthday: 10/4, good buddy, he’d say.) Anyway, it was a surprise. A beautiful gâteau, her favorite cream filling.

  “Twenty-one. I know it’s an important one in America,” Monique said, smiling with her sad eyes. She’d become more sad and more content at the same time since returning to Paris.

  Their neighbors on the third floor had come by, with their twin daughters whom Hannah tutored; Monique’s editor, Chantal; Antoine, the bartender-tattoo artist from downstairs; Monique’s mother, who lived on the second floor and had made the gâteau. By the time everyone left it was after eleven.

  “Thank you,” Hannah said to Monique. “You didn’t have to.”

  “Well, obviously I just wanted to have a party.” Monique winked. When she was not writing, she hosted and gathered. A mother hen. Hannah the first chick.

  Antoine told them to come down and have drinks. Monique said, “You go ahead. I want to get these pages to Chantal tomorrow.” It was a précis and first chapter for her second novel. The first had been published, to good reviews.

  Before Hannah left, Monique handed her a rectangular package wrapped in brown paper. A book, obviously. “Open it later,” she said.

  “You are ‘legal’,” Antoine said in English, chuckling and pouring champagne from behind the bar. Hannah sipped and ate olives with her right hand, and with her left she fingered the letter she’d folded into a small square and tucked into her coat pocket. It was the only time she’d folded or carried one of them with her: the rest remained in their original crisp trifolds, stacked together and held by a thick rubber band in her drawer.

  Hannah did not respond to Antoine; she was staring at something over his shoulder: a group of students sat at a long table, drinking and laughing. Attention suddenly turned on one boy, at the far end. The other boys clapped and hooted; the girls giggled and leaned into one another. All eyes followed as the boy, lanky with dirty blond locks tickling his eyes, loped to the other end of the table. He grabbed the hand of one of the girls, pulled her to her feet. She was short and shapely with black pixie hair; pale cleavage burst from her scoopneck top. The boy leaned down and planted a long kiss on her lips. She resisted, only a little; her face and entire chest now cherry red. Hooting, louder hooting. Hanging jaws, giggling. Everyone else in the bar glanced over, then ignored them. Americans.

  The girl pushed the boy in the chest, both of them now looking away, laughing nervously. The girl stumbled, evidently drunk. Hannah noticed the boy had closed his eyes when he kissed her; the girl’s eyes were wide open. The kiss was electric; perhaps long in coming. It was meant to happen, for sure, though it may not have, if not for the public element and the wine.

  “You should join them,” Antoine said. He chortled, yet seemed earnest. Hannah watched as the drama dissipated.

  “What did you do on your twenty-first birthday?” she asked.

  He poured her another glass, smiled knowingly. “Ha, well, you really want to know?” Did she? Antoine came from the banlieus, had wild stories to tell. But Hannah’s mind was wandering. The party, the champagne. The kiss. It was after midnight. Her mind loosened and roved. Twenty-one. She knew it didn’t mean anything, but it reminded her that there was a way of thinking about things. Adulthood, childhood. Time. Thresholds and labels.

  A waiter brought more bottles of wine to the students.

  She could join them. Part of Hannah wanted to. But she wouldn’t have giggled. It was meant to happen. A warm voice told her, There was nothing false in it.

  Antoine wiped down the bar while Hannah watched the students. She said, finally, “I guess not really.”

  Antoine looked at Hannah curiously. He was not offended but amused. “You are a funny one, Ah-nah.” He poured her another glass. “Bon anniversaire, ma chérie. All grown up. Une vraie femme.”

  Hannah awoke late the next morning, head throbbing. No, not her head: fat pellets of rain against the window. The phone had rung earlier. James’s muffled voice on the machine. Belated birthday call probably. He still made an effort, even when she didn’t.

  By the time she dressed, the clouds had parted; the sky was peach and bright. From her petit balcon Hannah watched the dome of Val-de-Grâce rise and darken against the midday light. The market would be open another hour. She went out.

  Hannah took her time. Browsed produce and fish. Bought bread and eggs and pears. Stopped at the pharmacie. Decided to walk around Parc Montsouris, since it was almost three in the afternoon, her favorite time of day in autumn. Hannah ordered a coffee and sat at an orange metal table and now wished she had let Antoine tell his story. It would have been a good one, an adventure, and mostly true. Maybe he didn’t get to tell it that often, from his side of the bar. But did French bartenders spend as much time listening to patrons’ stories, their histories and woes, as American ones did? Hannah guessed not. No one in Paris ever asked, So what’s your story? She came to Paris and immediately she was Ah-nah. Silent H. Monique’s Ah-nah. No one ever questioned who she was before. It didn’t matter. Anyway, if someone had asked, what would she have answered? Maybe she would have said, It’s Haa-nah.

  She walked home under a rust sky, fast-sinking sun. Autumn chill nipping at her ears and fingertip
s. Hannah stood outside and looked up at her little window. She waited. Sometimes she did this—fixed her eyes at her own life, from the outside. Tried to see it—or hear, taste, feel it—anew. Sometimes she waited for loneliness to come—not just seule, but solitaire—and it did. But tonight, Hannah felt grateful and alert. Shy senses, normal senses … slow to rouse but slow to quench—in short, healthy senses. The warm voice came into her ear again, its vibrations, then settled behind her heart.

  I was wondering your opinion on something important.

  Hannah looked up to see a pale dusk moon. It was the sort of moon that appeared in silent movies she’d seen at Le Champo, and under it, a reel of memories flashed through her mind. She remembered marching up to Madame Glissant at the mall. She remembered seeing the ocean for the first time and riding the waves that summer. She remembered handing a ticket to a bus driver, and cleaning toilets, and searching for Claudine’s velvety green in the woods. She remembered packing her boxes for Paris.

  Her window was darkened now, but the moonlight glowed and Hannah could see the silhouette of the lamp she would switch on when she came in from outside. It was an antique oil lamp that had belonged to Monique’s grandmother. Hannah fixed her sight and saw herself turning the switch. The flare of light. The light was small but bright, and in the vision Hannah perceived something definite: the oil and the radiance were one thing, coupled and continuous. L’essence c’est l’essence. The two meanings, fuel and spirit, were distinct but inextricable.

  She had come this far. From the street, under nightfall in Paris, Hannah sharpened her gaze—all her senses—and fathomed her own life. She was twenty-one—une vraie femme, or une femme qui a mal tourné, all grown up or badly turned out, and it didn’t matter.

  It was he, Charles Lee, who had always known. That it didn’t matter. That what mattered was l’essence. He was the one. In knowing, he had both fueled and lit her spirit.