Family Trust

by Kathy Wang

  She waited until after dinner, when there was little chance Kate might still stop by with food but not so late that Stanley had ingested his final dose of painkillers and become sedated for the night. Then, she donned the robe and climbed in bed next to him. His form was hot, and she knew he registered her appearance. “Stanley,” she whispered. After a few seconds, he took her hand.

  “Stanley, I’m so worried about you.” She threw her arm over him; she could reach almost all the way around at this point, as if she were the man, spooning the woman. She freed her hand and began to stroke his legs, starting at the knees, going higher.

  Eventually he asked, “What are you worried about?”

  “I worry that you’re going to go away,” she said. “And that I’ll be alone. And I don’t think I can live without you. I don’t know what every day will look like.” She buried her head into his back and was surprised to feel the sting of real tears. Her hands kept stroking. “I don’t want to be without you.”

  His hand moved back to hers, which had been softly petting what remained soft. He stilled her, and for a moment she froze. Then he turned and faced her. “You’ll never be alone,” he said slowly. “Even when I’m gone, I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”

  “But what am I going to do? I haven’t worked in so many years, I’m afraid of starting over. . . . I won’t know what to do with myself.”

  “You needn’t worry.” He caressed her hair. “I have worked out a plan that will bring you joy and purpose. I keep meaning to tell you, but each time it slips out of my head. And to think, you were the inspiration.” And then he explained about the foundation, which she had vague memories of nodding her support for earlier, even though she didn’t know what a foundation was. “It’s to aid those less fortunate than us,” he said. “To give young people a chance for education.”

  “You’re so thoughtful.” She nuzzled his neck, which felt cool compared to the rest of his body. “You care so much about other people. But Stanley . . .” She paused, as if the thought had just materialized. “How much is left after the foundation? After that, and the house. What is left?”

  “The house is paid off. I wrote the check yesterday.”

  Finally, a bright light. Mary offered a mental thanks to Shirley Chang, whom she had never liked due to how brassy and superior she acted but who’d turned out to be her savior nonetheless, bulldozing in the week before and making a big scene about how Stanley had to take care of his poor, poor wife. Mary didn’t particularly care for how much she’d said poor, but what did it matter when the house no longer had a mortgage?

  “That’s wonderful. You’re so capable. But what about other than the house? The rest of the accounts?”

  “Well.” He’d begun to lightly knead at her palm with his thumb; in response, she tenderly swept back one of the few remaining loose strands from his forehead. “After paying off the mortgage and a little for the foundation—” His voice dissolved to dry air. He motioned for the water. He drank haltingly, and then continued.

  “After that—that’s almost all of it.”

  The words landed with a hallucinatory dullness, and like a bad dream, she first tried to negotiate her way out. “How can that be? It must be the amount you want for the foundation. Are you sure it isn’t too much?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not even sure there’s enough for the foundation. But I want to do it for you. And me. For our names to live on.”

  “But the seven million?” she whispered.

  And he gave a little shake of the shoulders: no. Then he pet her wrist and touched her breasts, fondly, without sexual desire. And she let him, because she had no choice, because her husband was dying, dying but still a liar, a liar who’d promised her an amount beyond her wildest fantasies and made it real, before taking it all away. Such was his power and her powerlessness, where everything she had was itself taken from someone else and for which each crumb she had to be thankful.

  That’s when Mary finally felt the anger, the resentment she had seen in the eyes of Stanley’s ex-wife and children. The impact as it landed, sinking deep in her bones. The mess he was leaving! The promise of the house and money to live out the rest of her life, not to mention what he might have pledged to the rest of his family, all in shambles. And Stanley knew it, had known this entire time yet done nothing, and now still here, quite literally on his deathbed, he chose to be a coward and curl away from her disappointed face and indulge in the elixir of sleep. She understood now that Stanley meant to sap her goodwill little by little until he died, safe in and comforted by her eternal presence by his side. Leaving her to settle and tally up the humiliations only once he was already gone.

  Even from their earliest moments together, Mary had known that her love for Stanley would never be pure. The differences between them were too vast, and their collective baggage too heavy, to have the sort of relationship she’d dreamed of as a young woman, the kind she’d hoped for with Ed. Yet there had been a cleanliness to her beliefs, that she would do her best to love Stanley in the manner he desired most, and in turn he would take care of her in the ways he best knew how. She would be his wife, and he her husband, just as he had been a husband before, and a father, and a son. Until now, she hadn’t understood that he had no interest in any of those roles—that for Stanley, there was only himself.

  At that moment Mary felt closer than she’d ever been to Kate and Linda and Fred, yet she knew at the same time that they were as far away as they ever could be. And that it would stay that way now, because their interests were so opposed.

  * * *

  The next morning, Mary called Jeylin and Grace. She humbled herself with a mea culpa straightaway, divulging the mortifying details of her betrayal so thoroughly that it was quickly clear to all parties there was no more left to tell. As a result, they were almost gracious. They came over that evening after Stanley was asleep, coordinating their arrival without their husbands, and sat on both sides of her on the couch in the living room, the plaid one she’d always secretly hated. It took mere minutes for her to break down and cry.

  “What’s important now is that you make sure you really have the house,” Jeylin said, not bothering to mask the triumph in her voice. “Are you sure it’s actually paid off? Because now you know you can’t trust what he says. And what about Stanley’s children? Maybe they will fight for the house, once they know he has nothing more.”

  Mary nodded. “I saw the statement. Stanley’s friend, Shirley Chang, she said she would make sure it goes to me. She’s the one who helped with the mortgage.”

  “Then we figure out what you do next,” Jeylin said. “The house—can you pay for it alone? Do you know about property tax, all those costs? Otherwise you’ll have to sell it, move somewhere smaller. An apartment. Many women in your situation do this.”

  “Remember Fang Wu, our old manager at China Garden?” Grace chimed in. “He is part owner now. I’m sure he would hire you back.”

  “I don’t know. What would I do? Hostess again, or serve food? Stanley used to go there; his friends would see me. . . .”

  “Is that so bad?” Jeylin cut in sharply. “Nine years ago you were there. What have you done since that makes you think you are too good?”

  Slept each night in a million-dollar house that would soon be hers; gone on six cruises, three trips to China, and two to Europe. Stood next to Stanley as he paid $5,000 for a jade amulet in Beijing, $7,000 for a rug in Istanbul, and another $10,000 for a custom-designed furniture suite in Guangzhou. Gone to dinner with multimillionaires who lived in the most expensive cities in one of the most expensive states of the richest country in the world. Played mah jong with them, laughing with their wives as their husbands secretly eyed her. Had the wealthiest of them all, Shirley Chang, who lived in a vast mansion filled with golden objects, call her a friend.

  Her sisters meant well, Mary decided. But they no longer played on the same level; she had evolved past them. She knew now the truth that at first had bee
n so frightening, that success in America was less about what you earned than your particular luck on the day you decided to take it for yourself.

  She would manage things on her own.

  Stanley had to have something left over, after the house. The documents upstairs seemed to indicate as much—Stanley had been like a squirrel, hoarding morsels of cash and treasure in many different pockets. There had to be accounts left over, safety deposit boxes. Money he had stashed for a rainy day. After he was gone, why shouldn’t it all be hers?

  The morning Mary launched her charm offensive, Stanley responded to her homemade custard bun by slowly eating two bites and then, a few hours later, defecating his pants. They’d started to use diapers overnight, because she could no longer stand waking up to the sound of his electronic bell—navigating downstairs numb with sleep, helping him squat, all while the ding ding ding continued incessantly—but during the day, she had still been assisting him with the toilet. He’d generally been able to hold his bowel movements until she arrived, though he never waited more than a few minutes. Mary didn’t like diapers—one of the many benefits of childlessness was never having performed all the degrading tasks, the casual intimacy of changing someone’s shit daily over a period of years. So she left Stanley in his regular underwear, except on the days the palliative care nurses were due to visit.

  A system that worked until the day he pooped himself.

  The smell was overwhelming. The putrid odor assaulted her as soon as she walked into the kitchen, and she’d had to drop the special vegetarian rolls she was preparing to bring to temple later to rush and clean both Stanley and the sheets. She propped an arm under his torso, lifting him slowly from the mattress; even though Stanley was lighter every day, he still weighed more than her, and Mary struggled to keep his rear away from her clothes, as she could see the stain spreading on the back of his soft pajama pants. Eventually she got him upright and motioned for him to grip his walker, a request he refused.

  “Stanley,” she hissed. “You need to hold on! I can’t wipe well enough otherwise.” He didn’t respond but eventually put his hands on the walker for support while she cleaned up. His pants had been beyond repair—she’d tied them in a plastic grocery bag and thrown them in the garbage—but she’d gone and soaked the sheets in the sink, before returning to soap Stanley and make sure he was clean, moisturizing him in the same manner she imagined you would a little baby. He’d been temperamental during the ordeal, impatiently asking when she’d be finished, but she had tenderly ministered to him as she bit back the urge to cry.

  Then, five hours later, it happened again. And twice more the next day.

  Stanley was going to die very soon, Mary saw. If not in a week, then several. And now she realized it was too late for him to sign anything else over or fix his past financial mistakes, too late for her to strategize a path to keep the house without working for the next thirty years. That is, if she lived that long, because she was convinced the exhaustion of managing Stanley was aging her exponentially. She had always known that he might deteriorate to this, but she thought the American healthcare system, with its seeming panacea of medications and Medicare, would adjust accordingly. But when she asked the nurses when they would begin daily visits, she was met with frigid silence.

  “It’s up to his doctors to determine that,” Paolo, the one who had complimented her earlier, said eventually. “But usually people in pain like this, they want their spouses involved as much as possible. Someone that they love and trust.” And given her a long look, as if reassessing everything he’d previously thought.

  So when Deborah, Stanley’s sister, called to announce her imminent arrival, Mary was flooded with relief and thankfulness. It was the afternoon, and she’d been running on five hours’ sleep from the night before as she ran emergency loads of laundry and attempted to fix the TV (Stanley still wanted his programs on all the time, in the background). Deborah had always been friendly with her and vocal in her opinions on Stanley’s children, whom she found to be weak and rude. And so Mary had sobbed upon hearing that familiar sympathetic voice, crying out all her fright and frustrations: Stanley’s health and her fatigue; the will; what would happen to her, after it was all over.

  “It will be okay.” Deborah’s voice poured through the phone like a smooth tonic. “I’ll talk to Stanley. Believe me, everyone thinks these things. I’m thinking them all the time. About my own husband and definitely his mother. And they aren’t even sick!”

  And that had made her laugh so much that in a moment of weakness Mary confided to Deborah her deepest, ugliest truth: that she had brought Stanley home so he could die in peace, but that now she wished for nothing more than to move him out, away to a nursing home. Which she knew was a possibility, because she’d studied the hospice materials carefully, painstakingly translating every unfamiliar word, and she also knew that by moving Stanley she might be able to preserve more capital in the house, because she herself wouldn’t want to buy a home in which someone had died. Because she might have to sell the house, she said, to make ends meet when Stanley was gone. And Deborah had murmured some more and told her not to feel bad, it was perfectly understandable, she was being so brave. And Mary had fallen asleep that night for the first time in weeks with calm in her heart.

  And then that fucking double-talking witch had gone and called Shirley Chang, and the two had conspired and called Stanley’s children, and all the times Mary had sat next to Shirley at dinner, the volumes of Chinese DVD sets she’d searched for and tracked down for her, the massage therapy she’d provided her wrinkly old back on that one cruise to Mexico when she’d had spasms—all of that meant nothing. Because Deborah and Shirley were of one world and Mary another, and she understood then that even if she had it all, everything that had been promised, she would still never be one of them.

  Still, she almost succeeded. The hospice care worker had already been at the house, literally handing over the paperwork to begin the move, which they called transitions. Cindy Ziegler, a white woman in her fifties with orange lipstick on her teeth, who, unlike Paolo, had been wholly understanding, assuring Mary that a nursing home was the choice many loving but ultimately struggling families opted for.

  “We had someone move his wife into one of our properties just this Tuesday,” Cindy said. “The doctors said only weeks left, but the husband couldn’t take it anymore. Been married for more than forty years, that one.”

  Mary had bristled when she heard the part about forty years. Cindy had seemingly sussed her out as a second wife as soon as she’d arrived, inquiring if she and Stanley had been married long; when she answered nine years, Cindy had nodded satisfactorily to herself, as if confirming a theory. “Probably married to the first a long time, huh?” she said. “At this age, I’d guess maybe around thirty years? And then he met you and got to have some real fun. Sorry if I sound flippant, just like to inject some levity into these situations. Most families appreciate it.”

  Mary had just laughed, ha-ha, I’m not so good at English and don’t understand. Inside, she had fumed. As if her years with Stanley and Linda’s had been the same. As if Linda could have ever served nine years of this tenure—cooking, cleaning, massaging, flattering, pleasing without end. Didn’t anyone ever think of that? The variable difficulty of time spent in a marriage? But she’d kept silent and smiled, and Cindy dimpled back in understanding response, her expression saying that she sympathized with it all. That she understood that Mary, too, was deserving of relief.

  Mary had been that close, dreaming of the respite to come, when Fred heaved open the door with Deborah and her husband and her ancient mother-in-law close behind. And then the shouting had begun.

  Chapter 18

  Fred

  Men’s feet were almost always ugly, and as they aged, they only grew more hideous. Fred had a thing about feet—not a fetish, because beautiful feet on a woman never served to attract him on their own—but misshapen toes and cracked nail beds and dinged polish were all
immediate disqualifiers, no matter how alluring the rest of the package. Fred tried to keep his own neat and hygienic, clipping his nails once a week and moisturizing regularly, with an expensive Aesop balm he slathered on without restraint. Still, there was only so much that could be done.

  If Fred’s feet were unattractive, however, then his father’s were outright disgusting. Fred had been massaging them for nearly an hour so far that morning, working up from the heels. Subtly averting his gaze each time he reached the toes, which were yellow and fungused, with outrageously long nails. Interesting how the body kept chugging along at certain tasks, he thought, long after it had shut down other more arguably crucial functions. Would Mary ever help clip them again? It didn’t seem likely.

  The massage had been Auntie Deborah’s suggestion, an asinine proposal he’d been unable to wriggle out of without seeming like an ass. Fred couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched his father—he thought it must have been when he was a toddler, before permanent memories could be formed—and he didn’t know why it had to be now, more than forty years later, that he had to once again take up those gnarled claws, kneading them awkwardly between his palms. Deborah, however, was insistent. She was the commanding officer in the war now openly raging in the house between Mary and the rest of the family, and according to her, rubbing Stanley’s feet was a nonnegotiable.

  “It’s what his wife does,” she said, barking into Fred’s ear. “How else do you think she got where she is? You think it’s so easy to go from whatever village she came from in China to marrying a rich man in California? You know how many restaurant waitresses are just dying for the same opportunity? Your father loves massage; he has since he was a little boy. Our mom used to do it for him every night. Maybe it’s how he became so spoiled.” She turned away, toward the direction of Stanley. “Big brother!” she called. “Your son wants to make sure you are comfortable!” And unceremoniously shoved Fred to the end of the bed.