by Kathy Wang
“An acquaintance asked me as his guest,” Fred replied. “Jack Hu.”
Griffin steepled his fingers. “This is a very unusual request. Would you be representing Lion, or were you thinking of attending in more of a . . . personal capacity?”
“Lion. It’s a compelling networking opportunity, and as our parent company is based in Taiwan, it makes sense to attend the year the retreat is in Bali. Jack is also very connected in Asia.” That way the trip could at least be expensed, though Fred would have to pay out of pocket for business class. Erika’s best friend at Saks was getting married in two months; the night she told him the news, she’d surprised him in bed with a firm hold on his crotch and a superbly detailed narrative of all the ways she’d yearned to be fondled as a young schoolgirl in Budapest. In the delirium of the moment, he’d blurted out an invitation to Bali. The fact that Erika’s colleague was a) engaged despite having met her boyfriend just five months prior, b) twenty-seven, and c) flying Lufthansa First to South Africa for her honeymoon, meant there was no way Erika was going to be seated in the back of the plane on the long haul to Hong Kong, sandwiched between elderly Chinese clipping their nails into the aisle—not if she was bartering her continuing silence on the marriage front for the next few quarters.
Griffin gave a weak cough. “Isn’t it unusual for you to be attending on your own?”
Fred knew Griffin was angling to be invited along, a disastrous outcome. Were he to come he would no doubt immediately posture himself at events as the most senior representative from Lion, sucking all the oxygen out of Fred’s personal orbit.
“Why? You went by yourself.”
“Yes, but that was due to strict rules dictated by Motley. Whereas in this instance, it appears as if the invitation is a little more flexible, no? Somewhat more informal. It can be odd in these situations, to turn up solo. One person can give off a bit of a gate-crasher vibe.”
“I’m not technically going alone, as I’ll be attending with Jack, who procured the invite. It could be seen as an aggressive move to push him to secure another—I’m not sure it would portray Lion in the most desirable light—but I’m sure I could find a way to ask.” He let Griffin eye him with an air of wary optimism before he dropped the bomb. “I just hope Jack doesn’t mention anything about it to Leland, of course. Since they both keep a residence at 740 Park. But who knows? Maybe they don’t even know each other.”
Fred left Griffin’s office in a good mood. He fetched his jacket and walked outside to the curb, to wait for Stanley. His father had insisted on picking him up for lunch, even though Fred repeatedly asked if he could get Stanley from the house instead.
“I’m still walking three miles every day,” Stanley had said on the phone that morning. “I take the long route to the park from the house, speed walk over the freeway overpass, and then loop all the way around. When was the last time you exercised that much?”
At the restaurant, some faux-upscale American business pub Stanley selected that accepted his Entertainment 2-for-1 entrée coupon, Fred was better able to take measure of his father’s condition. He was wearing his favorite sweatshirt, a dingy gray crewneck Fred remembered from high school. It looked looser than he recalled, but ever since he’d started seeing his father more often, it’d been harder to track gradual physical changes. “How are you feeling? How’s your weight?”
“Oh. I’m okay.” Stanley looked down at his arms and pushed up the sleeves of his sweatshirt. The ribbed edges barely grazed his skin. “Though you can see, I’m still too skinny.”
“Did you start chemo yet?”
“I will. I’m waiting for Uncle Phillip to see me and give his analysis.” Stanley pronounced the word with distinct reverence.
Uncle Phillip was actually not Stanley’s uncle at all but his second cousin, a son of a distant relative who happened to live in the Bay Area; Stanley called him Uncle because it was what Fred and Kate knew him as. Phillip was the head of oncology at UCSF and a frequent speaker on the medical conference circuit; he commanded the eternal respect of his Asian elders because he had attended Johns Hopkins and lived in a huge mansion in Hillsborough. Fred wondered how many anxious phone calls from relatives of relatives and friends of parents he’d been summoned to deal with over the years.
“Did you get the book I asked you to order?”
The title had been some oversize tome on eating to beat cancer, a best seller that Fred had dismissed as utter crock as soon as he clicked the link in Stanley’s email. “Not yet. I will soon.”
“That’s all right.” Stanley picked at his fried chicken, separating the crisped batter from the meat underneath. “Kate already read it and highlighted the pages she thought I should pay attention to.”
“That’s great Kate has so much time.” Fred fought a swell of irritation. He considered mentioning that he had been busy, engaged in important activities like getting invited to the Founders’ Retreat, but Stanley wouldn’t know what that was anyway, leading to an even more frustrating conversation. “And? What did you learn?”
“So much! I’m changing my diet. Trans fats, red meat, sugar—these are all poisons.” Stanley pointed to the right side of his plate, at the pile of discarded chicken skin. “This is what was killing me. Palm oil.”
“Right. Great. I’m glad to hear.”
“I’m also peeing almost thirty times a day. Urine is a toxin that collects in your liver. The more you flush it out, the cleaner your body.”
“Thirty times a day sounds extreme.”
“I’m trying to go three times an hour. Mary agrees. She says it is one of the foundational elements of healing, along with meditation.”
Jesus. A large knot had formed between his shoulders; Fred reached behind his neck and began to knead. “Mary is not a medical practitioner. Does she think she’s a doctor because her sister performs laser facials? It’s reckless for her to be giving you advice and even more irresponsible for you to be listening to it. Please, please review everything she suggests with your actual doctor, or at least Uncle Phillip. Or better yet, ignore it altogether.”
“One of her friends had pancreatic cancer, much worse than mine,” Stanley said. He’d deliberately ignored the dig at Mary, Fred noticed. “Mary’s friend, she was huge, so, so fat. Then, she meditated five hours every day at the temple with the master, and now she is healed. And thin! Mary invited her to lunch just last week. She came all the way to my house, even though she lives in Millbrae. She just climbed Machu Picchu.”
“Meditation, great.” Fred tore the crust from his baguette and used the soft innards to sop up the last remnants of gravy on his plate. He felt Stanley’s eyes on him.
“She also eats many vegetables. Not too much fruit. Fruit has a lot of sugar. As does bread.”
“Mmm.”
“We are going to see the temple master later. If I’m lucky, because I am already thin, I might heal even faster than Mary’s friend. Because she was fat before, very unhealthy. Do you remember I asked to go to Wells Fargo after this? I told you, I have to go today.”
“I remember,” Fred lied. “We’ll go.”
The waitress arrived with the bill. She was college age, with a light sprinkling of acne; Fred had dismissed her as too basic as soon as they’d been seated. “Can I get you gentlemen anything else?”
Fred reached for the check. “No, we’re fine.” His eyes landed at her breasts, which were surprisingly good. The name tag read Dana.
She gestured with her chin toward the chicken skins. “You didn’t like your meal? You want me to get something else for you to eat?”
“He’s fine,” Fred said. “He just wants to live forever.”
“I do!” Stanley exclaimed. “My son is right! Though I wish he would eat more vegetables!”
“Your father is so cute,” Dana said.
When the check was returned Fred saw she’d taken Stanley’s entrée off the bill. “Comped by management” was the note beside it. Strangers were always charmed by Stanl
ey’s surface helplessness, a phenomenon that used to annoy Fred but which over time he had grown to accept, even approve of. He’d learned it was entirely possibly to carry deep resentment toward a person while at the same time experiencing genuine pleasure over their public adulation; it was even considered normal in some circles, especially if the person in question was family. Now that Fred himself was over forty he understood that it was best for a man to keep at least two faces: one for at home, through which he could vent his accumulated interior frustrations, and one for the public, which reflected none of them. Someone like Stanley—who had at one point demanded that an elderly relation who owed him money get down on her hands and knees to bow to him in apology—needed the faces more than most; even now, Fred could still clearly envision his great-aunt, her rough gray hair arranged in a low bun centered on her neck, as she knelt on the floor. Up until then she had been one of his favorite babysitters, a lenient woman who, each time he saw her, had pieces of wrapped moon cakes stashed for him in her pockets; after that day, he never saw her again.
Inside the bank, Stanley made his way to the safety deposit box line. “I want you to come with me,” he said.
“Why?” Fred had planned on settling into one of the lobby’s stuffed chairs to type out emails while Stanley completed whatever business he had. He’d already spotted a message from Griffin, and from the title alone (Industry Engagement: Roles and Responsibilities), he could already predict the content would be marvelously passive aggressive. “You need some help or something?”
“I want you to see my goodies. Find something for yourself.”
“You just told me at lunch, you’re not going anywhere.”
Stanley blinked, unmoving. Fred sighed.
Inside the cramped beige cubicle, they stood over a rectangular metal tube. Stanley slid back the lid and revealed dozens of silk zip pouches in Chinatown patterns. He began to open them, scattering jewelry and the occasional ingot. “You can choose,” he said, as gold and silver slid across his palms. “Anything you like. Maybe something you saw on me before? I can’t wear anything now; the metals upset the balance of elements.”
“I really don’t know about this.” The whole interaction was making Fred uncomfortable. The only jewelry he could recall on Stanley was a series of solid gold rings he’d switched off between on the middle finger of his right hand, but he hadn’t seen his father wear one since the divorce. Fred’s favorite as a child—the one with an onyx inlay—had left a clearly marked oval gash under his right eye for nearly a month when he was a teenager, after Stanley struck him for denting the Ford Windstar. He’d snuck the car out one evening when his parents were away at a wedding, to meet some friends for dinner; unaccustomed to the relatively large size of the minivan, he’d struck a pole backing out of his spot in front of California Pizza Kitchen. He’d thought he’d gotten away with it when a week went by and his parents still hadn’t noticed; then one day he’d returned home from school and encountered Stanley waiting in the garage, his face mottled with rage.
“Please. I don’t want these to sit here forever.”
“All right, all right.” Fred began to sift.
“Oh! Look at this one.” When Stanley was excited, his accent became more pronounced. He slid a watch from a dark velvet sheath, a metallic blue face with a heavy bezel, attached to a chunky bracelet in stainless steel. “You know what this is? A Rolex! I bought it at a very good pawnshop in Las Vegas that I found with Mary. There are very excellent deals in that store, many treasures.”
As a rule Fred didn’t wear watches. In his world they were a marker of status, an arms race in which he occupied the relative space and standing of a minor island nation; only by opting out entirely did he feel there was any chance of saving face. There was always the strategy of donning a cheap model like Lloyd Blankfein—the chairman of Goldman Sachs who infamously wore a Swatch—but only the chairman of Goldman could get away with that since everyone already knew the size of his balls anyway.
Fred took the watch and compared it to the time on his phone. The second hand swept along, a sign of a genuine Rolex. He set it down gently.
“You like it, don’t you?” Stanley asked. He gazed at the watch, his face impassive. Fred looked at him.
“Okay, I’ll take it.” He could always show it to Erika for an assessment, he thought, though he’d be annoyed if she made too much out of it being entry-level.
Stanley patted him on the shoulder. He looked at his phone. “Your mother is here.”
Linda was already in the waiting area, drinking with distaste from a cup of complimentary coffee. She craned her neck until she saw Fred; she generally refused to meet Stanley unless at least one of the children were present.
“You should have joined us for lunch,” Stanley said.
“I was busy.” Linda viciously stirred at the brown liquid. “Did you get your will done yet?”
“Ma,” Fred protested. It was already late afternoon, and the bank’s lobby was busy; he was certain that the people around them were eavesdropping on their conversation, judging him for his strange family.
“Not yet, not yet,” Stanley was still smiling. “I’m having Fred pick pieces from the safe today. Kate will come next week. You should visit too.”
Linda shook her head. “Stanley, listen to me. You need to do your will. Why won’t you just take care of it now, especially with your health? You don’t think at our age any one of us could go, anytime? I just updated my own last year. Living trust, to avoid probate. You should do the same.”
“I will, I will.”
“Remember our children. Our children are what will live on of us, of you. ”
“Of course,” Stanley demurred. “Should we look at the box now? You can have whatever you like.”
“I don’t want anything,” Linda said shortly.
“Please?” he wheedled. “You don’t have to take, just spend time.”
“I don’t think your wife would be very happy to know you are sharing the contents of your safety deposit box with me.”
“Is that what you’re worried about?” His face relaxed. “Mary is such an openhearted person. She would never mind if you took something. She is very generous.”
Linda snorted. “Generous with what?” She paused. “Your money?”
“Linda. You are too suspicious. But I know it’s only because you care about me.” A strangled noise emerged from Linda’s throat; Stanley either didn’t hear or ignored it. “Mary is very frugal with herself, but with other people so kind, so giving,” he continued. “She even used her own money to buy me Chinese herbs, because she wants so much for me to heal. Very expensive medicine too; I saw the prices! And she meditates for the cancer to go away, every morning and night.”
Linda shook her head. “You two go. That way when your wife asks, you can say I never went anywhere near the safe.”
Stanley sighed, defeated. He shuffled toward the back and waited in line for assistance. Since they had left the vault, he had to go through the entire sign-in process again. From behind, his pants looked even baggier, and Fred was reminded of how ill he was. He wondered if Stanley had done an internet search on pancreatic cancer as he had, at least a dozen times, and seen the sobering survival rates: fewer than 20 percent still standing after just one year, only 10 percent remaining after five. At the very least, Fred thought, Stanley should last until five—he’d always been very lucky. Fred saw Linda look in the same direction. She bit her lip, the same way she had when she visited Stanley in the hospital. The diagnosis had just been confirmed then; he’d been kept in the room for observation overnight, a concern over low blood pressure.
“Is he starting chemotherapy?” she asked.
“I think he’s talking with Uncle Phillip first, for advice.” Linda nodded. She found Phillip’s qualifications comforting. “Why are you pressing him so hard on the will?”
She looked surprised. “I thought you would be interested. You’re the one who asked me about it. If I
had a copy.”
Fred flushed. He had been browsing Woodside real estate listings, dreamily cobbling together the enormous down payments necessary in his head, when his mother happened to call. “I was emotional.”
Linda remained tight-lipped. She didn’t care for emotional responses.
The words came out in a rush. “I mean, he might have said something before. That me and Kate, we’d get something like $2 or $3 million. Each.” An excellent sum, especially given that he’d always assumed Stanley to be a mediocre money manager. Fred had advised him years back to place the majority of his retirement savings into an age-targeted index fund, but he had no idea if Stanley had heeded the advice. Still, he must have made some smart choices, if there was $5 million in liquid assets . . . maybe closer to $6 or $7 million, if Stanley meant to leave Mary something. The old man had done well for himself after all, in the end—had proven his mettle, when it most mattered. If Fred did buy a house, it was going to be one he could live in for the rest of his life (meaning a fantastically prestigious address). He would teach his children about how their grandfather had worked to give them this home, the ultimate legacy.
He began to explain these lofty thoughts to Linda, but abruptly ceased when he saw her expression. He cleared his throat. “So . . . yeah. What do you think?”
She took a deep gulp of coffee. “I do not comment on your father’s financial fitness. My information is not up-to-date. And of course, you are the one who was saying not to ask him any more about the will.”
“I just don’t want to stress him,” Fred said quickly. He could feel his cheeks burning. “Of course,” he then added, as he recalled what he was supposed to say in situations like these, “ideally he’d spend everything he has. Have fun, indulge himself. Buy a fancy car, go on vacation, enjoy some luxuries. That would be for the best.”
Linda’s eyes widened. “Oh? And who do you think gets to go on all the vacations with him? And drive the cars and keep all the nice things, after? Good to hear you have so many ideas for how Mary can enjoy your inheritance!”