by Sally John
His right arm still in the blue sling, Erik awkwardly wielded a large knife with his left hand, chopping away at a pile of leaves on the island countertop. He grinned. “Not say ‘Mr. Erik.’”
As usual, she giggled at his gentle banter. “Nana say tear lettuces gently. We not want kill vitamins and minerals. Like this.” She picked up a leaf and demonstrated.
“But whacking is so much more fun.” He laid down the knife, tried it her way, and blew out a frustrated sigh. “Especially when you don’t have two good hands. If I’m making the salad, we’ll just have to skip on the vitamins and minerals tonight.” He reached for the knife.
“Ah!” She pulled the cutting board away from him. “I make salad. You set table.”
“Deal. And who, may I ask, has decided to deign us with their presence tonight?”
His words flittered through her mind, searching for a recognizable comparison. Unlike the other family members, Erik never labored over his speech or increased his volume for her. He assumed her hearing was intact and expected she would catch up to his meaning sooner or later.
“Take your time, Tutu.” His eyes sparkled.
She nodded.
This man was a surprise to her. He pretended not to care about anything that happened to himself or to anyone else. He was disrespectful to his elders. He argued with his brother and sisters. But . . . for her he had a nickname. For her he was patient and calm. For her he sat fairly still and watched movies to help her learn English.
Perhaps the pain medication aided his careless behavior. Still, he’d become the single thread to which she could cling, her only source of hope.
Danny meant well, yet he hovered, wanting to make things just so, wanting her to understand right now, wanting her to agree with everything he said. He always had a better idea.
Nana poured her love into Tuyen’s dry heart. And yet there was that haunted expression about her eyes, the one Tuyen caused by just being there.
Aunt Claire was sweet when she was not too busy with her own life. She and Uncle Max seemed very much in love. Her aunt was not helping with dinner because the moment he’d come home from his office just now, they’d embraced for a very long time. After that, Aunt Claire asked her to prepare what she could for the meal, and then she disappeared behind closed doors with him.
Papa, Jenna, and Lexi all but spat at Tuyen.
And Uncle Max . . . aloof and distant did not begin to describe him.
Tuyen thought it was probably wrong, but she was grateful for Erik’s accident.
She smiled at him. “‘Deal’ mean I do your job, you do mine.”
“Bravo.”
“Other words mean who coming tonight.”
He clapped and whistled. “Woo-hoo!”
“Thank you. All right. This is dinner lineup.”
He smiled at the word he’d taught her.
“Papa not come. Mr. Danny not come. Miss Jenna and Miss Lexi, no. Uncle Max, yes.”
“Got it. Small and intimate.” He went to the cabinet where the plates were stored.
“Oh. And Beth Russell not come.”
Erik turned to her. “Nana told you about her?”
“Yes.”
“You know who Beth Russell is?”
“My father’s fiancée before he meet my mother.”
“Right. Maybe she’ll come another time. She lives far away, in Seattle. She has a husband and kids. A busy life.”
Tuyen nodded. The woman was just another person close to her father who did not want to know Tuyen existed.
“I never met her.” He pulled plates from the shelf. “I hear she and BJ were the best of friends, from the time they were very young.” He smiled. “She’ll want to meet his daughter.”
Lowering her eyes, she concentrated on tearing the lettuce leaves into symmetrical, bite-size pieces full of vitamins and minerals.
“For real, Tuyen. Well, for sure she’ll want to meet me anyway. I’m Mr. Hotshot Famous Newscaster.”
She giggled. He often referred to himself in that disparaging tone with silly phrases. “Ex-Mr. Hotshot Famous Newscaster.”
He laughed. “Good one.”
“You say it one time.”
“And you remembered. You are an excellent student.”
She beamed.
“And you have a beautiful smile.”
Shaking her head, she covered her mouth.
“You do. Don’t hide it.”
“Amerasian ugly.”
“You have got to stop saying that! Promise me you will not say it again. Never ever, from this point on.”
“But it is true.”
“It is not true! Now promise me. Or else I won’t take you driving.”
“Driving?”
“You want to drive?”
“Me?” She stared at him and gestured as if steering a car. “Drive?”
“Yeah. One-armed as I am and drugged half out of my gourd, insane with boredom out of the other half, I need a driver. I need to go to Santa Reina. Just a quick errand. One stop. We’ll be back before the chicken goes into the oven. What do you say?”
“Oh, yes! I dream of driving! I dream I drive truck.”
“Truck? You like Papa’s big honkin’ mean machine?”
She nodded. “We come in it to see you at hospital. Max and Claire take own car.” Despite their fearful destination, the ride had been cozy. The cab smelled of her grandfather’s pipe, a sweet scent like oranges. He helped her climb up into it and back down again. For a short while, she felt a member of the Beaumont family.
“Um, we better start with something a bit smaller. We’ll take my mom’s car. Okay?”
“Okay. I put food away. Nana not want it left out.” She gathered the salad ingredients and quickly put them in the refrigerator. “Bacteria grow. Mr. Erik?”
He frowned and shook a finger.
“Erik.”
“Yes?”
“I not know what I do without you.” She blinked so the stinging tears would not fall.
His smile disappeared and he studied her face for a long moment. “I did not hang the moon, Tutu.”
“What mean ‘hang the moon’?”
“It means you give me too much credit. I’m an unemployed drunk. As soon as I can live through half a day without a pill and a nap, it’s so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu. To you and you and everybody.”
“Where you go?”
“To my condominium.”
Her chest felt like the time Ben galloped by on his horse, so fast and hard and oblivious to her. “What you do?”
“Think about a job.” Erik shrugged. “Or not.”
“You come back.” Her anxious voice rose. “You come back, visit! You come back for blessing on wedding! Aunt Claire want you here.”
“Sh. Sh.” He stepped around the island and placed his free hand on her shoulder, lowering his face toward her. “Yes, I will come for blessing on wedding. It’ll be all right, Tutu. I promise to say goodbye to you before I leave. You know I don’t normally live here.”
Her heart boomed more loudly, pounding against her chest and echoing in her head. “You not go tonight?”
“No, not tonight. Tonight you drive, I buy self-medication treats, and then we have a cozy family dinner. Okay? Take a deep breath now.”
She tried to do what he said, tried to keep at bay the old terror of abandonment. “You good friend. You bring me to my grandmother.”
“Hey, what’s a cousin for if not to facilitate homecomings?” He smiled and straightened. “Just remember, though, I did not hang the moon. I am not God.”
She followed him into the mudroom located off the kitchen, where coats and boots and keys were kept. Erik thought too little of himself. If he had a fault, that was it.
Tuyen slipped her jacket from a hook. “I beg to differ.”
He laughed at the phrase he’d taught her that afternoon. “What do you beg to differ about?”
“Nana say God strong and kind and He love me ver
y much. He take good care of me. He watch over me all the time. He make me feel safe. You much like God.”
He paused, his hand on the doorknob, and stared down at her. It was a rare moment when his features relaxed and his eyes lost their guarded expression. “Well, I can declare without hesitation that I have never, ever been accused of that before.”
“It good thing.”
His burst of laughter warmed Tuyen. Fears retreated into the shadows of her mind, thwarted if only for a while.
Thirty-Eight
What, no flowers?” Claire’s sarcastic tone grated, painful to her own ears as fingernails scraping across a chalkboard. “No jewelry?”
From his own corner of the love seat, a pokerfaced Max cracked his knuckles. “Thought I’d try something different.”
“By hiding away at the office all day?”
“By not using gifts to earn your forgiveness. That never really worked, did it?”
Struck with the enormity of what he was saying, she swallowed a sarcastic retort. Max’s behavior was a direct answer to prayers: she’d asked for a transformed husband, one who understood that all the diamonds and roses in the world did not make up for the pain his absence caused.
His brows rose slightly. “If the counselor were here, she’d suggest we try that exercise. Remember how—Sweetheart, you’re doing the Jenna eye-roll thing.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Okay, okay. I remember how.”
“I just think we should slow down here and have a productive dialogue.”
“I don’t want to.” She looked at him. “I want my pound of flesh.”
He smiled. “All right, let me have it. You be the extractor of flesh and I’ll be the listener.”
“A heart-to-heart instead of flowers?”
“Yep.”
“My mind has nowhere to place that scenario. This is the first time you blatantly let me down since . . . since . . .” She waved a hand, not knowing what to call that time during which she’d left him, moved out, looked for comfort from another man, filed for—
“Since our mending.”
The tension fizzled. Her muscles relaxed. “We’ve come a long way.”
“An incredibly long way.”
She sighed. A short while before, when Max walked in the door after being gone all day, she’d received his bear hug. She’d felt great comfort in his return, but it also reignited anger.
So they withdrew to the master suite for privacy. Three hundred acres and it was the only place available to them on a cold winter’s night. Claire knew she had to get used to that idea. The presence of Erik, Tuyen, and her in-laws was nothing compared to a dozen guests inhabiting the place. Maybe it was all a pipe dream, thinking she could grow into the role of matriarch and keeper of the safe harbor.
“Claire, what is it?”
“I wonder if I’ve bitten off too much. I know God is my safe harbor, but most of the time I still can’t grasp that as a reality. How can I run a retreat center? I’m at my wit’s end with the four people who are here right now, and they’re family!”
“What I heard you say was . . .” He smiled crookedly as he echoed the prescribed phrase that was supposed to help them communicate better. “I heard you say you’re scared. I heard you say we are a team and I let you down today. Did I get that right?”
Claire replayed his words. They wove themselves in and around her agitated emotions. Like gold embroidery floss they stitched and designed. Finally a pattern emerged. He understood.
She nodded.
“I am so sorry,” he said.
Again she nodded.
“Can I talk now?”
“Sure.”
“I had an awful day. Nothing went right. I wasn’t a help to anybody. I just got in their way, but I kept at it, not wanting to admit what a gutless wonder I was to leave here this morning.”
“Hm. Hm. This is when I have to keep my opinion to myself, right?”
“Yes, for now. For this exercise. I suspect you see things the same way.”
She smiled, but kept herself from bouncing up and down in ecstatic agreement that yes, indeed, he had behaved in a cowardly fashion. “Okay. What I heard you say was that you’re scared too.”
“How’s that?”
“You’re afraid to live in this emotional space where you can’t fix a thing. Where your dad is falling apart, your niece is crying for help, your son is a wreck, and house reconstruction moves at a snail’s pace.”
“I guess so, considering the mere mention of all that makes me shudder.”
“So, we’re both afraid. Fear is sin. It means we’re not trusting God. We should both confess it and move on.”
“Move on together.”
“Yes.”
He scooted across the love seat and took her hand. “You’re okay with a gutless wonder on your team?”
“Oh, Max. It beats a fool all puffed up with machismo.”
He tilted his head and peered at her through squinched eyes. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
She laughed until tears ran down her face. “Yes, Max. I love you just the way you are.”
Thirty-Nine
The Saturday afternoon following the incident at the bar, Lexi grasped the fence-like guardrail that encased the back end of a pickup truck. With about a dozen other people she bounced along as the vehicle rumbled across rough terrain on its way toward a herd of giraffes at the Wild Animal Park.
Eyes shut, she leaned out from under the canopy, catching the warm winter sunshine full on her face, glad to have gotten a spot due to a last-minute cancellation.
Funny, she thought. Zak had never gone on the Photo Caravan Tour with her. It was her most favorite thing to do, but he always declined. Why was that? She would watch a stupid helicopter circle around a lake with him, yet he would not visit a zoo or an art gallery with her.
It had been Rosie’s idea that she lose herself in some fun pastime. The overnight in the little guesthouse had not been all that restful. Comfortable as the tidy home was, and secure as Lexi felt with an alarm system and a cop not twenty yards away, she wrestled with thoughts of that ugly man chasing her.
He wasn’t ugly, not literally. The guy she had seen talking with Erik reminded her of her brother: Armani suit model material. Erik had him beat, though. Dumbo ears disrupted a perfect flow of tall, dark, and handsome in the man.
She now recalled Erik’s phone call a short while before. He’d reached her as she drove into the park’s lot.
“Are you home?” she asked in surprise. Cellular signals weren’t available at the hacienda.
“No.” His breathing was labored. “Just hiked up the north hill a ways until my phone worked.”
“You’re feeling stronger then.”
“Well, yes and no. It’s the best place to stash my stash, if you get my drift.”
“Erik.”
“Don’t feel bad, Lex. I’ve been dry for one entire week. A record. I foresaw an emergency last evening and offered to give Tuyen a driving lesson. We ran up to Santa Reina. She’s not bad behind the wheel.”
Pursuing the topic of alcohol abstinence would be like suggesting she fast for a month. No reason to go there. “What was the emergency?”
“Dinner with Max. Now, moving right along. Nana talked with Beth Russell, the fiancée. She took the news rather well, but didn’t commit to coming down from Seattle to meet the young ’un. I can’t imagine why she’d want to.”
Beth Russell and Uncle BJ and Tuyen were the furthest thing from Lexi’s mind. “I had an emergency of my own.”
She filled him in on the previous evening at the bar with Rosie and her partner. He didn’t comment and remained quiet for so long, she figured the signal was lost.
“Erik?”
“Brett came up here yesterday. He told me he and Felicia are in love. Deeply, truly, madly. Isn’t that a laugh? She hates baseball. He never wanted to hang around if she was anywhere in the vicinity.” He sighed. “Who knows? Maybe it’
s true. In some bizarre way it stands to reason. I mean they’re both my best friends. Were. Oh, I don’t even care anymore. They deserve each other.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, I know you are, Lex. And I’m sorry you’re in the middle of this. My opinion is that Rosie’s job is to be overly cautious. She had to warn you. End of story. There’s no reason why that imbecile would cause more trouble. He got his jollies by making a fool out of me. I don’t think that’s against the law. They couldn’t charge him with anything.”
“But to expose him would validate you.”
“You’re sounding like Jenna.”
“That’s not nice.”
He chuckled. “I’m not a nice person. There is no validation for me. Back to you. Are you scared?”
“N-no.”
“Alexis.”
She wrinkled her nose. “A little, maybe.”
“Come up here.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not. Nana and Papa move into their new house today. As of tonight, they won’t need the RV. You could sleep in it.”
“Still too close. How long are you staying?”
“Until that worried look on Mom’s face goes away or I get plastered enough not to be able to see it. I could leave today and you could stay with me.”
“I . . .” She hesitated. The time she’d spent with Rosie stood out in such a sharp contrast to her other relationships. There were no words to describe it, only a sense that she felt different with Rosie. She behaved differently with Rosie.
“Talk to me.” His voice went soft.
“I-I don’t think we’re good for each other.”
“Youch!” He shouted, flippant tone back in full force. “That hurt!”
She bit her lip.
Erik laughed. “And bravo for saying it. You are absolutely right. Besides keeping each other company in our addictive behaviors, you’d trash my condo with your slew of paints and canvases.”
“Like it’s possible to trash your place?”
“Pot calling the kettle black.” He blew out a noisy breath. “Seriously, Lexi, that guy is long gone. Your family is toxic to you. We love you, but you don’t have to take care of us. Get on with your life. You’re cute and intelligent and incredibly talented. I’m here if you need me. All right?”