The Jade Emperor

by Suzanne Jenkins

  “He’s staying in town until tomorrow night. I’ll meet with him tomorrow morning. I don’t know what else to do.”

  Kelly didn’t trust her mouth, so she kept it shut. He barely made time to see his own kids on the weekend; adding another distraction didn’t seem like a good idea. And then it occurred to her that he was Steve’s child alone, not hers. And he would be seeing his own kid.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Titan. Sort of a cool name.”

  “What’s his last name?” Kelly asked, holding her breath.

  “Baker. His mother married another soldier. Ted Baker. Titan thought he was Baker’s son, but when Ted died, Lee told him the truth. That’s his mother’s name. Lee. I don’t remember what her real Vietnamese name is.”

  Kelly shut her eyes. Lee Baker. She tried to put a face to the name. A current face. Not a face to die for, or worth betraying your wife for, or destroying happiness for, but an older woman’s face, like her own. She thought of the woman who worked at her dentist’s office, Thuy. She was from Thailand, the same age as Kelly. She had short white hair and was short and chubby. Everything about Thuy said love. She was kind to children who screamed in the dentist chair, and never got angry when Kelly was late for an appointment or canceled at the last minute.

  Or another, older Asian woman from Korea who worked at the laundry, Kelly thought she was the owner. She’d had breast cancer and didn’t wear a falsie on her affected side, and it was obvious. She’d confided in Kelly when she discovered Kelly was a nurse, that at her age, it was a relief to dispense with the trappings of her sexuality. Her husband loved her, and having a lopsided chest didn’t diminish that.

  Without warning, Kelly put her head down in her hands and burst into tears. She didn’t expect her husband to comfort her, and he didn’t disappoint her. She imagined Lee Baker discovering she was pregnant after Steve left Vietnam. What had it been like for her to tell her parents she was pregnant? Was she young? She looked up at a stricken Steve.

  “How old is she? Lee. How old was she when she had Titan?”

  “She was ten years older than me. So she was in her early thirties at the time.”

  The fact shocked Kelly. Lee Baker was in her early seventies now. She was widowed with an Amerasian son. Did they still call it that? Was it politically correct?

  “I’m sorry Kelly.” Steve said, clearly mortified.

  Was it because he got caught? She decided to keep it about the facts, her original plan, and leave all emotion out of it for now, not wanting him to make any decisions based on guilt. That would be horrible. He definitely had some work to do. If he was getting involved with this person and his mother, Steve would have to tell their children. It wouldn’t be fair to keep secrets like that from those who loved you, completely and unselfishly, like their children.

  “I’ve had enough for one night,” she said. “I’m afraid if we start with the apologies and the what ifs and where was I when you were doing whatever that we’ll end up in a battle, and I know I’m not up for it.”

  As she got up to go to their bedroom, suddenly the idea that he’d get into bed next to her and avoid touching her as usual made her furious. It was best to keep things as civil as possible.

  “I want to be alone tonight. Could you sleep downstairs?”

  Steve looked shocked, but must have understood because he nodded his head.

  “Okay, no problem.” He was following her with his eyes as she moved to pick up the laundry basket. “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight,” she answered.

  Wanting desperately to turn to him and hurl the laundry basket in his face, the vision of a tall, skinny, young soldier with a bad haircut shimmered in front of her eyes.

  It was Steve. Augustus Boyd, a good old boy whose father moved up north from Tennessee to work at the Rouge plant, Ford Motor Car, iron ore and steel mill, Zug Island and smelt. They grew used to the stench of the steel mill while a man from the hills made a living wage and benefits. He sent for his family shortly after starting work, and they moved into a flat behind a bar.

  Kelly’s family owned their home in a nicer part of town, although there was nothing wrong with Steve’s neighborhood. The only problem was Mr. Jones and his working-man’s bar across the alley from the Boyd residence, the gunfire that occasionally came through the windows of the Boyd apartment from the bar, and the noise at closing when the drunks went to their cars. Kelly’s family was about a mile away in another brick house near the country club. Drunks and gunfire were kept under wraps in that neighborhood.

  Kelly thought of the boy who grew up behind Jones’s Bar, the handsome kid with the shock of golden curls, what it was like when he got drafted, taking his teenaged wife across the country to live in a stinking trailer near the army base in Texas. They’d teased each other at the time, and said that if a marriage could survive that horrible place, it could survive anything. Now she was wondering.

  Getting pajamas out of the closet, she took them into the bathroom to get ready for bed. It was almost two in the morning, too late to text her sister, and she didn’t want to tell her bad news about Steve. Pushing the off button on her phone, for the first time in years she was out of communication with her kids and sister. No one would be able to reach her now unless they got into a car and came to the house.

  Going through her nightly ritual, she brushed her teeth for a full two minutes and washed her face. At her age, it didn’t do her skin any favors to leave makeup on all night. The day had been unremarkable until a few hours ago. Working in the same hospital for twenty-five years, nearing retirement, she felt pride in what she did, and it provided moments of self-actualization, but it wasn’t fun anymore.

  In her youth, she and her colleagues had experienced every range of emotion together, from abject sadness to ecstasy. Nursing had provided a lot of what she needed in addition to money. But it couldn’t provide everything. And what her husband was unable or unwilling to give her, she did without.

  So now the time was drawing closer when she no longer would have to be dressed and ready to work by seven in the morning. Able to get up and do what she wanted without getting in the car on a snowy morning, ten degrees, with unplowed roads and below-zero windchill factors, or worse, a July morning that would be perfect for the beach but she had to go to work while a sitter took minimal care of her children.

  Taking a deep breath, she knew she was in for a night of hell if she didn’t reel it in, stop with the guilt talk, the I was such a crappy parent loop she listened to when things went wrong. And things had definitely gone wrong.

  A little voice said, It’s not your problem, Kelly. It really wasn’t. Chanting that, making it her mantra would take discipline. What Steve had done forty years ago didn’t reflect on her, it wasn’t her responsibility; she didn’t have to make any decisions based on it.

  Avoiding looking down her nose at Steve - that was what she really wanted to do - would not be easy, wanting to call him a lowlife, make fun of his childhood, and repeat what her family had said about him, hurtful phrases she kept to herself. When this news got out, she’d never live it down.

  So here was another dilemma. Her pride. What in the hell was she going to say to her friends? Family? Co-workers? It was made for daytime TV. So shallow that when her husband was having what was probably one of the worst nights of his life, she was avoiding him. She imagined what she should be doing, going downstairs and screwing his brains out. But she was too old, and he wouldn’t want her. The rejection would kill her. It didn’t mean the same thing anymore, that passion she once had for Steve. What they’d once had, he’d chiseled away years ago with his indifference. Did he ever really feel passion for her?

  Wanting more wine, she carefully opened the door to her bedroom and crept out into the hall. Sounds from the TV in the basement drifted up the stairs. He’d gone downstairs as she requested. Tiptoeing across the living room into the kitchen so he wouldn’t know she was still up, she carefully opened the refriger
ator door and got the wine out. Taking her dirty glass and the whole bottle with her, she went back to her bedroom. Pouring a glass, she took a sip, imagining that first morning text to Karen she’d have to send.

  “It was something so horrible you can’t even imagine it,” she’d type.

  Karen’s imagined question; “Did someone die? Does he have cancer?”

  That fantasy brought Kelly back to reality. That would be horrible. She didn’t even want to put it into thoughts, how horrible it would be to imagine Steve having cancer or someone dying. So having looked at the problem in that way, it wasn’t horrible. What was it? She closed her eyes for a moment, thinking.

  It was sad. Yes, it was very sad that the young, hillbilly boy got married to a stupid rich girl who got pregnant right away, and then he got drafted and went to Vietnam soon after. And probably the older woman flirted with him unmercifully, offering him a respite from the rigors of war, he took advantage of it, and she got pregnant. The woman could have found him in the States if she’d cared enough to try, but the luckless Ted Baker came along and offered her something better.

  During the fall of Saigon, he was able to get Lee and little Titan airlifted out of the country. They had to wait in Laos that year, but then their visas were approved. They came to the United States and settled in Chicago, a great town, a racially mixed town where a foreigner could come from an unpopular country and make a success of her life.

  Kelly wondered what Mr. Baker did for a living. The name sounded so American. Baker. Did Lee try to remake herself? Or did her new family know she’d been a mamasan? Kelly vaguely remembered stories Steve had told her, now obviously heavily edited stories, of the women who worked on the base, doing laundry and cleaning the barracks. He’d taught her the word - mamasan. Was that what Lee had done?

  Suddenly hatred from an unknown place flowed through her for people from a country she’d never been to, all because her husband was a liar. She’d allow a little anger toward Lee Baker to occupy space in her heart, but not for long, mostly compassion for her, someone desperate, an opportunist probably, not wanting to accept that this young, naïve man/boy could possibly have a wife and child.

  Her son Augie’s face passed through her mind again. He was proof of how deserving she was. Why else would she be blessed with such a wonderful child? And now he was a wonderful father and husband. How was Augie going to take the news? Because no matter what Steve did, whether he tried to meld Lee and Titan with his existing family, or turned his back on them and pretended they didn’t exist, Augie and the other children would still have to be told. Titan was

  their flesh and blood, too.

  By six that morning, the wine was gone and Kelly was out cold. She’d locked the door to the bedroom because she wanted to know when he was coming in, not because she was trying to keep him out. At eight, there was a soft tap on the door and it woke her up. She unlocked it for him and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. Steve saw the bottle and frowned. His wife was not a drinker, at least not usually.

  She put lipstick on and ran a comb through her hair, still jet-black with a few strands of silver, but just enough to catch the light. He was on the edge of the bed in his jeans and undershirt.

  “Are you going to run this morning?” he asked.

  “I haven’t even thought about it. I guess I should.”

  A weekend athlete, usually the first thing she did was pound out miles on the pavement before Saturday errands began.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  Almost afraid to hear the answer, she went to the bedside table and got out a bottle of aspirin.

  “I’m going to pick up Titan and take him to breakfast. Then I thought I’d improvise the rest of the day. You and I need to talk, that’s a given, but I guess I’d better have something to tell you, first.”

  He stood up and started to pace. “Look, Kelly, I know this is awful. And I’m grateful you’re keeping cool, for now. I know we’re going to have to go through something. But thank you for giving me time. I feel obligated to spend time with him. I feel a connection, but I’m still going to ask him to submit to DNA testing. It’s only fair.”

  He had doubts after all.

  “I want to see our kids this weekend,” she said, interested to see what his response was going to be.

  “I already talked to Augie this morning,” he said, surprising her. “I’m not going to say anything about Titan until you and I have had a chance to really talk. And also to make sure Titan’s really mine. There’s no point in exposing our business unless we need to.” She nodded her head.

  “I’m going to run.”

  Deciding she’d stick to routine in spite of only two hours of sleep and a hangover, she went to her dresser to get running clothes and went into the bathroom to put them on. When she came out, he was still sitting on the bed.

  “You might not want to hear this right now, but I do love you, Kelly.”

  Looking at him she thought, These are the words I long to hear, and you’re using them now? What a putz. But she remembered her decision to stick to the facts.

  “Thank you, Steve.”

  She force a small smile, and then a bigger one when she saw how desperate he seemed and how handsome he was. Really seeing him, just him, for the first time in days, she noticed he looked thin and drawn and his eyes were glassy like he might not have had much sleep, either.

  “I’ll see you later, okay?”

  “I’m going to shower and then I’ll head out,” he said, ignoring her statement. “Be careful.”

  Grabbing her water bottle, she hooked it on her belt and left the house. It was a beautiful fall day, crisp air and blue skies, the trees at the peak of color yet holding on to their leaves with just a few crunching underfoot. She walked the first mile, looking at the houses in her neighborhood, several decorated for the fall, Halloween and then Thanksgiving just around the corner. When she got to the main street that cut through their subdivision, she picked up her pace.

  Running the miles around the perimeter of their town, she tried not to picture Steve as she’d seen him in photos, in army green fatigues, sitting around a long table with other soldiers, an attractive woman standing holding a beer pitcher in their midst. Stopping in her tracks, she thought about that particular photo. Where was it? It was in an album of photos she’d assembled from pictures he sent her.

  There were others too, albums full of photos that she wasn’t interested in seeing at the time, photos that he’d compiled from his year overseas that now took on a new significance. Turning around, she ran back home, hoping he was gone. When she turned the corner, she saw his truck pulling out of the garage. Quickly, she backed up behind a tree while he was pulling away from the house, going toward the side of town where the hotel was located. When his truck turned the corner and was out of sight, she ran to the house and let herself in through the garage door.

  Throwing her water bottle in the sink, she pulled her shoes off. All his photo albums were in the downstairs cave with his other personal items, things he chose to keep separate from their shared things. Going down the stairs, she felt a little secretive. He wouldn’t mind if she looked through his albums; they were out in the open. There was nothing for him to hide because he didn’t know about Titan until last night.

  Flipping the light switch on, she went to the bookcase and pulled an album out, the first of about ten, the album she’d put together of photos he’d sent her in the letters he wrote. The albums were the old-fashioned kind called magnetic, made of horrible adhesive-covered sheets that ultimately ruined photographs, but no one knew it back in the 70s. Sitting on the end of the couch, she started turning the rigid pages of photographs.

  The first few pages were solitary poses he’d taken for her, innocent and revealing. He was just a kid. As time passed, his photos became more complicated, groups of men at work and play, his room, friends he made, scenic pictures of shrines and ruins and piles of blue-glazed pottery someone had destr
oyed.

  Finally, she came to the photo she’d remembered during her short run. There it was, a smiling group of men, posed around a pool table, with a very attractive Vietnamese woman in their midst. She pulled up the plastic sheet that covered the page and picked at the corner of the photo. With a little effort, she was able to pull the photo off without destroying the writing on the back. Me, Jim Tobin, Alec Smith, Paul Cram, Lee Nguyen.

  Kelly’s heart started drumming away. Everyone in the photo smiled for the camera, but Steve was looking at Lee. Kelly didn’t return the picture. She put the album back on the shelf, certain there might be more photos for her to see to help drive the pain of what he’d done a little deeper, but she couldn’t take any more right then.

  Later, she’d Google Lee Nguyen Baker and see if she could come up with anything else. Running up the stairs, she wanted to see the photo in bright light. Sliding the patio door open, she stepped out onto the enclosed porch off the back of the house. It was a wasted space, too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. But for a few days in the autumn it would be handy for viewing photos, or for drinking wine at night while alone.

  The picture was a little grainy, but she could see that Lee was once a beauty. If she knew Steve like Kelly thought she did, she could tell he’d loved Lee by the way he had looked at her. It made her physically sick, and later she’d get angry to think that she’d wasted years of her life trying to help him recover, not wholly from the horror of Vietnam, but because he had left someone he loved behind. If she’d only known.

  In a drawer in her craft room was a picture she’d separated from the rest of their family photos, of Steve and Kelly and the kids of two close friends, in front of the Lion House at the Detroit Zoo. She went back into the house to find it, not yet releasing the photo of Lee and Steve. It had become a talisman; it would guide her, hopefully. The photo was right where she’d kept it for the past thirty years. In it, Kelly was not looking her best. It was taken in the middle of a rough stretch of marriage, and the stress showed in her body and her face, in spite of her youth. Steve was standing next to her, but his head was swiveled as far from her as he could get it, looking off into the distance. Kelly stood with her hands clasped in front of her, and Steve was in a pose. Back then, she thought he might have been trying to look cool, almost like a model, but now she knew the truth. His body language spoke volumes. He had been trying to distance himself from her.