Family Trust

by Kathy Wang

  “I’m going to kill her.”

  “Take a piece of advice from me.” Reagan’s voice turned serious. “Do not speak to her again. Someone like that, you end all communication, immediately. Witches feed off attention. Take away the broom, they can’t fly. All right?”

  When Kate finally arrived, his aunt took her leave.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Deborah promised. Then, speaking directly to Kate, “You must not let your father out of your sight.” She’d already made Fred swear to the same earlier, but now she seemed doubtful of his ability to execute. “This is very important. If he wakes, get him food and water. If he’s grouchy, massage his feet and legs. Though if he needs to use the bathroom, have Fred do it. It’s better for his self-esteem not to have you see him.”

  “We promise, Auntie,” Kate said, widening her eyes at Fred. As soon as Deborah left, she added, “She’s a bit paranoid, isn’t she?”

  “It worked for her all these years,” he said. “Maybe we all need a little more paranoia in our lives.” If he’d been more proactive, better at being suspicious, maybe he wouldn’t be in this situation now. He used to think Erika collecting those business cards was cute, a compliment of sorts, like a dog laying unburied trash at your feet. He should have remembered his lesson from Charlene, that in a woman’s hands, any information could be weaponized.

  “So . . . ,” Kate said, as she dropped eye contact. “I got the email.”

  “I know. I figured.” This was something else he’d have to do, Fred saw: reassure those Erika’s missive had targeted, comfort them as they briefly inhabited the pit of his shame. “We can talk about it, don’t worry.”

  She exhaled. “I only read it once I was in the car heading home from the airport. Sorry it took me so long to get here. I had to stop by the house, see the kids and Mom, and one thing led to another. . . . But how are you doing? Are you miserable? Of course you are. But do you want to talk about it?”

  Kate was always best in a crisis; Fred suddenly felt acutely grateful that she was here. He couldn’t remember the last time it had been only the two of them, just hanging out. “Maybe later, if Dad still has some alcohol. You think it all got thrown out in the Great Health Purge?”

  “I’ll go look,” Kate said, rising. “I’ve become very acquainted with the kitchen.”

  “How are you?” he called after her. “Hearing some bad news from others would cheer me up. Any catastrophes befalling mutual friends? What’s the deal now with Denny?”

  “What do you mean, what’s the deal? It’s a disaster. Everything’s a disaster.”

  “You know that Dad’s got way less than we thought, right? How are you going to fund Denny’s harem?” By the way her shoulders slumped, he knew he’d gone too far. “Whoa.” His sister, as far as he knew, wasn’t a crier. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that, I’m just a dick. You know I have a bad habit of saying thoughtless shit. What you’re going through right now must be scary.”

  “It’s not that,” Kate said in a strangled voice. She returned with two glasses of red wine on a black leather tray, along with the rest of the bottle and a bowl of cashews. She sat, not looking at him, while she blew her nose and composed her face, before continuing. “I’m not that scared. Just disappointed. You think you’re so special, so exceptional, and then your marriage ends up collapsing for the same stupid generic reasons as everyone else’s.”

  “Hey, I’m divorced, too, remember? Now we can match.”

  “Mine is way worse. Do you remember how when we were younger we thought people who were divorced with young kids had totally fucked up their lives? Well, now that’s going to be me. Of course I love Ethan and Ella, but when I think back to how flippant we were about the decision to have them. . . .” She groaned. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Yeah, you’re a thoughtless dick.”

  Fred picked up the bottle of Cabernet. “You know, I think this is from when Charlene and I got married.”

  “I totally forgot! You mean when you had to do that Chinese banquet for all of Mom and Dad’s friends who couldn’t make it to Hawaii?”

  “Exactly. As soon as dessert was served, a bunch of old Asian people started grabbing up all the unopened wine bottles. I guess Dad was one of them. All the flowers got cleaned out too.” Including the fairly expensive vases they’d been arranged in, purchased on sale at Pottery Barn, because Charlene had wanted their wedding to be a cut above the normal Chinese banquet. She’d been furious about the missing vases, which she’d meant to save and insisted was evidence of his parents’ tacky friends. “Mom made me do the banquet. Charlene and I had this huge fight, because she didn’t want to have one, and Mom won because she claimed that since they’d gone to all their friends’ kids’ weddings, they would lose face if they didn’t reciprocate. And now she doesn’t even talk to most of those people. Isn’t that crazy?”

  Instead of responding, Kate knocked back an enormous gulp of wine. She bent forward, elbows on knees, kneading the stem between her hands.

  “There’s something I’m considering sharing with you,” she said. “I’ve been debating with myself ever since I arrived. I think I want to, but you’ve got to promise not to overreact. It might freak you out.”

  “As opposed to everything else going on right now?”

  “I’m serious. If I tell you, you have to swear to stay calm.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Swear!”

  “I swear. Jesus. I forgot what a hardass you are.”

  “And another thing. You have to promise not to ask about how I came across what I’m about to show you. It wasn’t something I meant to capture intentionally.”

  God, she was being dramatic. “I can’t take the suspense any longer. My body might give out. It’s been through enough in the last few hours.”

  “Fine.” Kate went to her bag and retrieved her laptop. She opened the screen. A clear video feed: Full color, very impressive quality. Fred made a note to ask if she knew the brand of cameras. If it was a hardware start-up, he should keep them in mind for Opus. “Just watch,” she said.

  To his surprise, Linda appeared. Fred squinted. “Wait. Is that your attic?”

  “Yup.” Kate skipped forward.

  His mother held a tablet in her hands. “Hello? Is this working? Aiyah, I always have problems with the internet here.” She stretched out her arms so that the device faced her directly. On her screen an app was open; in a bold, modern typeface, Fred read Tigerlily. A man’s face materialized in its window. He looked to be Chinese, roughly their father’s age, though this clearly wasn’t Stanley.

  “Who is that?” Fred asked, alarmed. “What’s going on? Is this recent?”

  “Shut up and listen.”

  “I miss you too,” Linda was saying. “I wish you were here. I hope your work is better.”

  “I can’t wait until we see each other again,” the man replied. “A few days was not enough. The time we spend, I never feel such passion.”

  “Why would Mom and this guy be talking like this . . . oh my God, gross!”

  “What did I say about shutting up?” Kate jabbed him. “Focus!” She returned to the video. On the screen Linda was looking about nervously, as if she suspected that at some point in the near future her children would be assessing this very interaction. “I told you before, Winston, I don’t like such very romantic talk. If you have to say it, you can write to me.”

  “Sweetheart, you know sometimes I just can’t help myself. Where are you, anyway? I don’t recognize this room.”

  “I’m at my daughter’s house. I am helping her babysit for the week. I’m worried, you know her husband is gone, and now there is this blond woman she talks to, she thinks I don’t notice—”

  “You get the idea,” Kate interrupted, quickly shutting the screen. “But if you don’t, there are several other segments I can play. I thought that given the day you’ve had, I would save you the exposure.”

  “Who is that dude? Where did he com
e from? Does Mom have a boyfriend?”

  “From what I’ve been able to gather—from several painful extended viewings—his name is Winston Chu and he lives somewhere abroad, though I’m not sure where. And yes, if you couldn’t already tell, they’re in some sort of romantic relationship. I know I said I’d spare details, but I will share that he uses the word lovers several times.”

  “Ew.” Fred immediately worked to banish this disturbing knowledge from his consciousness. Though it was plausible that Linda didn’t believe sexual relations were even possible without marriage; perhaps she and Winston were just eating consecutive meals together and sitting side by side on the couch while watching black-and-white movies at night. “How long have you known about this?”

  “I just found out. I checked the recording, almost on a whim, right after I finished some work emails when I got home. As soon as I saw what it was, I went to my car to watch. Obviously Mom didn’t see.”

  Fred wondered why his sister had a video feed in her attic. What kind of perverted games had she and Denny been into?

  “There’s more,” Kate said. “He asks her for money.”

  “What?”

  “Well, not exactly, but he mentions a condo development in San Jose, which he claims would be the perfect investment property. Although from what the proposed arrangement sounds like, it’d be her buying it and him living in it.”

  “So this guy is some kind of gold digger? We have to do something! Should we confront her?”

  “Let’s not act impulsively.” Kate reached for the Cabernet and looked surprised to find it empty. “I wanted the two of us to discuss this first. That app they were using, Tigerlily? It’s a dating site. I looked it up, and it seems like some sort of start-up. I wanted to ask if you’d heard of it.”

  Fred thought he had, vaguely, but couldn’t place the name. Dating was hot—he probably saw ten proposals a month. “I’ll look into it. But I still don’t understand what you’re suggesting. What do you actually want to do about this guy right now?”

  Kate was quiet. “I think we should leave it alone.” She hesitated. “At least for now. Mom seems happy. Maybe she already understands the trade-offs.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Fred didn’t understand why his sister was so calm. “From what I’m hearing, our mother is in a romantic relationship with a stranger we know nothing about, who might be trying to exploit her. Sound familiar? This guy is a male version of Mary, have you considered that? He could bankrupt her!”

  She laughed. “I think the term bankrupt is a bit of an exaggeration.”

  “Really? How is Mom going to afford a condo in San Jose? It’s not exactly small change, you know. She’s retired! There’s no more income coming in. She’ll have to sell the house or cash out her retirement savings.” Both of his inheritances were slipping down the drain, Fred thought, into the clutches of Asian temptresses, male and female. “And let’s not forget, the Palo Alto house is probably already mortgaged to the hilt. Like Dad’s was, before this whole Mary fiasco. That’s why there’s no money left in that honeypot.”

  He felt a vague satisfaction in seeing her flinch. Then she leaned back, cradling her hands behind her head. “You’re wrong, Fred. Mom has a lot. More than enough for a condo in San Jose. Probably more than enough for a few. I doubt the Palo Alto house still has a mortgage, and if it does, it’s purely for tax purposes. You know she just bought a Porsche?”

  “A Porsche?” Fred flashed back to all the times Linda had mentioned her investments over the years, musings he’d dismissed as the ramblings of a casual retail investor. The sort who waded in at market peaks to buy overhyped technology stocks, only to stand helplessly by as they cratered to the floor. “What kind?”

  “I don’t know. It had four doors.”

  “Did the model say anything at the end? Turbo, maybe, or S?”

  “Maybe a number and a letter, but I don’t remember what they were.”

  “A 4S.” That alone was a $40,000 premium. “So Mom is the rich one?”

  “Well, by Bay Area standards maybe not so much, but compared to Dad, certainly. She’s a really good investor, I guess, very level-headed. She keeps her cool when the market is going crazy, doesn’t get nervous—that’s what that gossipy advisor at Schwab is always yapping, anyway. You know I buy all the stocks she tells me to now? I wanted to sell my vested X shares after that last big dip, which freaked me out, but she convinced me not to. So I held, and now it’s all gone back up along with Google and Amazon. She told me once that she has more now alone than she and Dad ever had together. I wonder whether that’s why he told Mary he had all that money. Because you know how he liked everyone to think he was the financial genius. And she let him save face on that, with all their friends, even after the divorce. Even though she obviously kind of hates him.”

  For a while they sat in companionable silence, pondering Linda and her mysteries. “Remember when Dad killed my bird?” Fred said at last.

  “The parakeet?” Kate stuck out her lip. “I hate thinking about that. I think I blocked out the memory all these years. The poor thing; that should definitely go down as one of the top five crazy Stanley moments. On par with when he said my jeans were too tight, and he went to my closet and cut all the pants in half with gardening shears.” She cocked her head. “What made you bring that up?”

  “I don’t know. Just thinking about Mom and how much she loathes Dad. Why do you think she didn’t leave him earlier? Would you have let Denny get away with even half the stuff Dad pulled when we were growing up?”

  “I’d like to say no, but it’s probably best for me karma-wise not to armchair quarterback our parents right now. God knows what Ethan and Ella are going to say about me when they get older.”

  She looked depressed. “You’ll be fine,” Fred said quickly. “The Huang lunacy gene is limited to the males.” When she failed to respond, he tried again. “Didn’t you get your own bird at some point?”

  Kate nodded slowly. “A green parakeet. I named him Sprite, because yours was Coke.”

  Fred had forgotten that the birds had names. “Whatever happened to Sprite? I can’t remember. Did Dad kill him too?”

  She groaned. “Please, let’s stick to only attributing animal deaths to our father that can be substantiated.”

  There was a foreign creaking noise and they looked toward Stanley, who was still in the deep sleep of morphine. Fred craned his neck to survey the room. Mary stood at the foot of the stairs, wearing a gaudy pink robe. She had clearly been expecting to find them gone. “You’re not leaving?” she asked. “Deborah, she already go.”

  “We’re staying here tonight,” Kate said in a pleasant voice. “Remember how you complained we weren’t spending enough time with Dad?”

  Fred returned Mary’s cold glare. He could hit this woman, he thought. All day he’d been resisting the urge to indulge his anger, the sheer wrath Stanley himself had never held back. He understood for the first time how good it must have felt, each time Stanley fed his weakness. Would his father approve of what he was thinking, if he knew how much his wife had yearned for him to die alone, surrounded by strangers, in an unfamiliar place? But then there was no use in telling Stanley, it was too pointless and cruel; yet another responsibility skirted in his passing.

  Mary considered Fred as if she could read his thoughts perfectly. Then she walked over to Stanley—carefully avoiding the items strewn across the ground, the rolled-up sleeping bags and pillows and laptops—and climbed into bed, pulling over the blankets to cover both their bodies. Fred could see her rubbing Stanley’s limp shoulders as he snored, his back to them all.

  Sometime after midnight, after Kate had crept to the bathroom to take a late shower, Fred fell into a deep sleep. When he woke, it was to Stanley pressing the electronic bell, sounding the alert that he had to urinate. Kate’s eyes were closed, and Mary had gone back upstairs, to the comfort and sleep of her own bed. Fred went to his father and slid an arm under his back, slowly m
oving him upright.

  Chapter 19

  Linda

  In person, Winston looked smaller than he appeared on-screen. And older.

  When Linda saw her paramour for the first time in the flesh—framed in the doorway of his hotel, some soulless scummy property in Santa Clara—she’d been surprised to discover missing on her boyfriend’s physical person a good chunk of hair and several inches of height. She’d meant to wear her favorite shoes that morning, a pair of patent Ferragamos with a two-inch heel, but she had swapped them out last minute for loafers. It was the right decision, because even in flats she was slightly taller than Winston. Her height allowed just enough of a vantage to see across the entirety of his head, an angle he’d carefully avoided during their video chats, she realized, presumably to hide his overwhelming baldness. The few strands that remained were obviously dyed, and Winston had made the mistake of selecting the jet-black hue of his youth, which created the unfortunate effect of a large spider tenuously clutching the top of a beige spotted egg. He was clad in an austere navy woolen vest and trousers, a nod to her strict advance guidance on wardrobe, though she noticed his shirt had ostentatious buttons, shiny black faux mother of pearl.

  She was instantly awash in regret, that she’d pushed so aggressively to meet in person. Over the screen and phone Winston had at least been a blank tapestry, a partially revealed canvas upon which she’d been able to imprint on its hidden remainders her most optimistic of desires. His in-person absence endearing him all the further, as it allowed her to ascribe the noblest of motives, while sweeping aside any lingering disappointments. His problems with financial management were isolated and remote; a tendency to drone easily sustained with an issue of Forbes placed discreetly on a stand just behind the tablet. In real life, however, there was no escaping the entirety of the person, this man to whom she had recently begun to refer (given his significant prodding) as her soul mate. Why had she been in such a hurry?

  The accommodations, too, were unexpected. Winston’s stay at the Diamond Palace had been prompted last minute, after Winston claimed the hotel’s owner, a prior acquaintance, would be greatly insulted were he to lodge elsewhere. As soon as Linda saw the property, however, it was obvious its name exaggerated its charms, almost to the point of recklessness. The room was small and drab, the sort with clear plastic cups wrapped for hygiene, which served as an inadvertent reminder as to the relative sterility of the overall space; during her brief interlude inside she’d maintained a firm grip on her handbag, unwilling to set it on any surfaces.