A Wedding Invitation
Page 17
I see that her eyes look sleepy, like she’s ready to drink a cup of warm milk and slip into bed. If Butterchurn were still with her, she’d be adding milk to his bowl, as well.
Using her hand to push herself up from the table, Mom stands, her eyes on Carson. “Thank you for this evening,” she says in a regal tone.
He pushes his chair back and rises. Touching her arm, he says. “Be careful driving.”
Mom smiles warmly. “I usually am.”
“Is she okay?” Carson whispers after Mom’s slipped out, her purse secured under her arm, the Chinese waiter wishing her a good evening. Carson’s seated next to me again, his right shoulder inches from mine.
“She gets up early, so she’s probably tired by now.”
“She didn’t eat much.” He eyes her half-eaten plate of walnut chicken.
“The robbery has her uptight.”
“I bet it will for a long time. My dad was mugged in New York City a few years before he died. He had nightmares for a while after that.”
Our plates are cleared by a lean waiter with a congenial grin. Carson and I order coffee, and when the waiter brings the cups to our table, we continue our conversation about Lien.
“Huy thinks she might back out.” Carson stirs sugar into his cup.
“From what? Meeting her birth mom?”
“Yeah.”
“No way!” Adamantly, I say, “She’s anxious to meet her again.”
“She refused eight years ago.”
“Refused?” The word tastes bitter on my tongue, a contrast from the sweet sauce I had with my order of Szechuan beef.
“Before Lien and Huy and his parents left Saigon, Lien had the chance to say bye to her mom.”
“But she didn’t?”
“Her mom gave her up, and not saying good-bye was Lien’s way of showing her anger.”
Feeling like I’m the last to know everything, I ask, “How come Lien didn’t tell me this?”
“I think she’s a bit embarrassed that she was so belligerent. You know how she is. She suddenly decided that what she said and did was wrong.”
“Why is it that she tells you everything?”
Avoiding my eyes, he picks up his coffee cup. “She says I remind her . . .”
“Of what?”
“Her father.” The words come out solemnly. He places his cup down without drinking.
“Really? Does she remember him or does she just want to believe he was like you?”
“She has a picture. She showed it to me.”
“And?”
“It was a blurry black-and-white photo. He’s in uniform and about my height.” After a few seconds, he adds, “A mound of curly hair. I guess that’s where Lien gets her mop.”
I focus on drinking my coffee, hoping its strong flavor will soothe the envy that always seems to surface when I come face-to-face with Lien and Carson’s friendship. “I think it’s interesting that she hasn’t tried to search for him.”
“She knows the chances of finding him or that he’d want to be found are slim.”
“But has she tried?”
Carson shakes his head. “I’ve discouraged her.”
“And she always listens to you.” The sarcasm in my voice catches me off guard. I suppose the coffee isn’t strong enough to soothe my tone.
Carson doesn’t let it affect him. “Sam,” he says, “sometimes you have to fight one battle at a time.”
As I let Carson’s words sink in, I take another sip from my cup. My gaze runs over the wall to my left that is crammed with photos. There are more pictures of George Bush Sr. on this wall than anyone else who has eaten here. Apparently, this is one of his favorite restaurants, the Peking duck being the dish he always enjoys. “She’d love seeing this wall,” I say, my mind still on Lien. “ ‘Miss Bravencourt, I know famous people come to my restaurant. Movie stars.’ ” I make an attempt to mimic the young girl’s voice.
With a smile, Carson joins me in observing the pictures. “She does like to claim celebrities have eaten at the Saigon Bistro. If she finds out about this place, she might want you to take pictures of all the patrons that come to her restaurant so that she can display a wall of fame.”
A little after ten, the restaurant prepares to close. Carson pays the bill and then he and I linger in the parking lot. I search for the moon; in the Philippines my fellow teachers teased me because I found comfort in gazing at the moon.
“Do you know how to get back to your hotel?” I locate the moon, obscured behind a tree, glowing like a lantern on the streets of Old Salem.
“I think I can find it.” He was good at driving the agency’s van amid the chaotic traffic of Manila. I suppose the suburbs of D.C. won’t be too much of a challenge for him.
At my car, he hugs me. “Sam, it’s been nice.”
My heart feels like gelato—soft and vulnerable. Quickly, I pull from his embrace. “Thanks for dinner. Mom enjoyed it.”
“Did you?”
“What?”
“Enjoy dinner?” Giving me a boyish smile, he opens my car door for me.
I slip into the seat. “Yes, I did.” Don’t make me say that I always like being with you, Carson. Because I am not going to admit that to you now.
Deciding I need to check in on her, I drive to Mom’s, the moon’s brightness making a trail along the road. Mom’s lights are still on when I park in her driveway.
I call out to her as I enter the ranch house, reprimanding her for leaving the front door unlocked.
I find her in her bedroom, dressed in a matching nightgown and robe the color of holly berries. “I was about to head downstairs to lock the door,” she tells me.
Sprawling out on her double bed, I watch as she sits on a puffy backless chair, brushing her hair by her vanity mirror and dresser.
“I just don’t know,” she says as the bristles from her hairbrush make their way down the shafts of her hair. After this, she’ll apply Pond’s cold cream to her face and throat and then remove the white film with a damp washcloth. I think the first recollection I have of my mother is in a lavender nightgown, smelling of cold cream and sleep.
“What?” I rest my head against a satin pillow.
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t understand what?”
She turns to face me. “Why you haven’t snatched Carson up and made him your own.”
“Mom!”
“Yes?” She draws out the word so it almost sounds Southern.
“That sounds so . . . so possessive!”
“And your point, darling?” That sounds very Southern.
“People don’t snatch people and make them their own.”
“Why not?”
“Sounds like slavery.”
“Love.” She breathes the word.
“Well, I know you think I got your good looks, but that doesn’t mean I can just decide who I want to like me and make him fall at my feet.”
Placing the brush in a drawer, she takes out a large jar of Pond’s. “He’s charming and genuine.”
Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I frown. “You just met him!”
“I know what I see.”
I change the subject. “Are you okay here alone?”
“He’s got a nice smile. Very charming.”
I leave after that, locking her front door with my key.
thirty-three
February 1986
When Carson left the camp, I was clueless. True, I knew that his sister was sick with something the doctors were still trying to figure out and that his mother had asked him to come home. But he loved teaching and being with the refugees, and his one-year contract still had six weeks left.
I wanted him to confide in me like he did whenever we talked of our fathers. I liked it when he would single us out—“We know what it’s like, Sam, to miss our dads.” Instead of asking me what he should do, he spent time in Dr. Rogers’s office.
The day he left PRPC, I was inside the admin building p
lanning a lesson on the expectations of being a student in an American school. I planned to tell my new class the rules they’d be expected to follow in their new schools.
I looked up from my notebook at Brice, who stood in front of me. “Gonna be lonely here without him,” he said.
My stomach cramped. “Without who?”
“Dr. Rogers drove Carson to Manila today.”
I didn’t want to ask why, yet even so, the word came out unbridled. “Why?”
“Carson’s flying back to the U.S.”
I just sat there and felt my heart turn to mush. The room was stuffy, the air thick with sadness. I left the building and longingly looked over at the dormitory where he had lived. He was gone. I would not see him entering or leaving that rustic building’s door ever again. Blinded by tears, I rushed into my dorm and went straight to my bedroom. The tropical air dried my tears, causing my cheeks to stiffen. I knew more would come; I could feel them building up behind my eyes. But they didn’t find their way to my cheeks. Instead, I pounded my pillow and sobbed, “I will never ever think about you ever again.”
Which was a promise I knew I could never keep. I thought of him the rest of the day, remembering all the places we’d talked and walked together.
I was surprised later when I got a letter from him, postmarked Raleigh, North Carolina.
His sentences were filled with how much he’d missed sweet tea, fried chicken, and hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains. How nice it was, he said, to be back in air-conditioning and experience the blooming of the azalea bushes in the spring.
I replied, a lengthy tome about all the happenings at the camp, answering his many questions about refugees he was friends with who were still in Bataan. I gently reprimanded him for not telling me good-bye, a reprimand he never commented on. He wrote a few more times, and when he didn’t mention Mindy, I hoped that she was no longer a large part of his life. I imagined him as he visited his sister in the hospital, wishing I was with him to comfort him as his sister went through tests, wanting to feel my arms around him as they had been when we were together in his classroom.
With Carson gone from camp, things were not the same for me. The anticipation of running into him at the mess hall or riding with him to our classrooms was gone. Each time I went to the marketplace to buy bean sprouts, onions, and cabbage for the stir-fry dinners I cooked in my dorm, I wished Carson were with me to share the meal.
After his fourth letter to me, I waited for another. One night I realized that anticipating his letters was consuming me. I was here to teach the refugees. I was supposed to be praying for my students and their families. Instead, I scanned my mailbox for a letter postmarked from Raleigh.
The letters stopped. The fourth one was the last one I received from him, and I reread it many times, saving it along with the others in the back of my closet.
It didn’t take much time until I was counting the days before my contract ended and I was scheduled to leave the refugee camp. When my sun-starched calendar on the wall of my bedroom showed that there were only forty-two days left, I began to prepare my good-byes. The heat was getting to me, as well as the torrents of rain that came during the rainy season. I was tired of living in a fishbowl with either fellow teachers or students constantly at my side. Even the thrill of being in Manila on weekends lost its luster.
Brice’s year in the camp was nearly over too, but he decided he’d extend his contract for another. “I like it here,” he said one evening as “Borderline” blasted from someone’s tape player. “I’m feeling more at home.”
I nodded, because I did understand. But I looked forward to not having to boil drinking water on the stove, and being able to drink soda with real ice cubes, enjoy Hershey’s chocolate, and even my mother’s crock-pot meals. Although I would miss aspects of the camp, especially the laughter of the children, I was ready to leave.
thirty-four
Carson’s eyes are shining and warm, a look I haven’t seen since our days at PRPC. After greeting each other in the parking lot with a hug, we step inside Sanjay’s bakery. The air-conditioning is working today, and within minutes I feel chilly.
“You got it fixed,” I say to Sanjay as Carson stands at the glass counter filled with tasty treats, looking over the menu. A few days ago, Sanjay asked Mom and me for the name of a trusty HVAC repairman, saying the air-conditioning in his shop was not cooling no matter how low he set the thermostat.
Sanjay gives me one of his wide-eyed grins. “Venya said she must have it cooler or she would stay her entire pregnancy at home.”
“Venya’s pregnant?”
“Oh yes, very much so. The baby is all she talks about now, all she talks of every day.”
I congratulate him and then Carson orders a breakfast bagel with egg and bacon. I choose a gooey pastry topped with raspberries and cream cheese—one of those baked goods that leaves your mouth and fingers sticky.
“Something to drink?” Sanjay asks.
“Coffee,” I say, hoping it will warm me, and Carson says he’ll take some, too.
We sit side by side in wicker chairs, away from customers entering the shop to pick up styrofoam cups of coffee and bagels to go.
I take mini bites, making sure to wipe my mouth frequently. The coffee is stronger than usual, and hot.
“Do you think your mom’s at the boutique yet?” Carson asks after chewing some bacon.
“If it’s nine, she is. She always gets there early before the store opens.”
He turns his wrist to view his watch. “It’s nine thirty.”
“She’s there, looking at the paintings and grateful for your help with making the walls look restored.”
“You think she’ll be okay?”
“My mother?” I let out a low laugh. “She always seems to land on her feet.”
“Glad I could help.”
“Me too.” I meet his eyes and am happy to see that they are still shining. “Thank you.”
“I meant to hang the paintings back on the walls.”
“Don’t worry about them. I can do it.”
He nods, then suddenly says he needs to get on the road.
My reaction is the same as it was years ago in the refugee camp, a need to protest. I start to say that I wish he could stay longer, that I’d like a refill of coffee, that I’ll miss him when he leaves, but I simply drain my coffee cup.
“I’ve got to work at the station at four this afternoon.” With a hand on the small of my back, he leans in and kisses my forehead. Then he stands, clears the table of napkins and cups, and waits for me to get up.
My knees wobble, but I manage to make my way out of the shop with him.
He hugs me before getting into his car. Without another word, he drives away.
I listen to the songbirds in the nearby oak trees, feel the joy and sorrow in my own heart, and eventually go to work.
“Ahh, Sam,” says Sanjay when he enters the boutique later in the day. “I see you have a man.”
I’m dusting while Mom attends to a tall woman with lots of tattoos on her legs. Dusting and thinking that Carson will lose interest in me. Why shouldn’t he? What does a forehead kiss signify? Was it a kiss of friendship? Was it a promise of something more?
“Sam, he is good man, no?” Sanjay lets his eyes lock with mine. His lashes are long; I bet he was teased as a child in Bombay.
Swallowing, I say, “He’s a good man.”
Sanjay’s smile captures the light from the front window. “You need a good man. What the world needs now is love sweet love.”
Sanjay then tells a story about a customer who complained that the muffin had too much chocolate in it and wanted a refund.
“How can anything have too much chocolate?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you give him a refund?”
“No, Venya would have been angry with me.” I cannot imagine an angry Venya. His wife is a tiny soft-spoken woman who wears marigold silk saris. And now with her pregnancy sh
e might actually gain a few maternal curves.
“So what did you do?” I ask, dusting the freshly painted wall where the two pictures used to hang, my thoughts feeling affection toward Carson.
“I gave him a blueberry muffin and wished him a good day.”
Amused, I laugh.
“That is the American way, is it not?” Sanjay’s face is solemn. “Have a nice day.”
“Did you smile when you said it?”
“Yes, that is also the American way.” With a hand on the doorknob, he says, “I need to get back to the bakery. A bride and groom want a carrot cake.” Turning back to look at me, his eyes narrow. “Is this normal?”
“You mean, is it American?”
“Yes. That’s what I want to know.”
“I think that as far as weddings and cakes go, in America couples do whatever they want.”
“It does seem that way.”
“And in India?”
“We follow whatever our parents want.”
“And your parents wanted you to come to America?”
He finds the humor. “No, they protested, but Venya and I were stubborn. I better go back to the shop. The cake is going to take many hours to decorate. They want martini glasses and green olives on the top layer.”
Not sure I’ve heard Sanjay correctly, I say, “Martini glasses and olives?”
“Yes. That’s what they ordered.”
“That’s plain strange.”
“Only in America, no?”
When he exits, I hang the pictures for Mom. Just like they were before, the heavier blob of orange and pink on the left, and the lighter one with a twirl that looks like a pig’s tail on the right. Stepping back and squinting, I search for beauty in these prints. Perhaps, as I concluded earlier, the splendor is in the giver.
Mom joins me to view the paintings. “The frames are perfect.” Her face brightens. “What a nice man,” she says with emotion in her voice. I’m not sure if she’s talking about Uncle Charlie or Carson.