Triplines (9781936364107)

by Chang, Leonard

  She smiles. “You’ll see.”

  It’s a quiet night for the first time in weeks, and Lenny keeps waiting for a fight to erupt, but it doesn’t. Instead his parents go to sleep together in the bedroom, something that ends up disturbing him because it’s so unusual. He hears them murmuring.

  He has his mother’s copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with him, and reads the first couple of chapters, studying the Korean notes in the margins. When he sees the brief note about the author in the back, he’s amazed that this novel is almost a hundred years old and that his mother still likes it.

  The house becomes quiet. He hears his brother in the kitchen, and walks out to see him. Ed wears sweat pants and a ratty T-shirt and eats a cold burger. He glances at Lenny and grunts.

  Lenny tells him that Sal saw him smoking pot.

  Ed smiles. “That dirtbag sells it. He’s pissed that I didn’t buy any from him. What are you doing hanging out with him?”

  Lenny shrugs his shoulders.

  “Watch out for him. He’ll get you in trouble.”

  “Why?”

  “Just watch out for him.” Ed punches his arm lightly. “Who’s going to look out for you when I go to college?”

  “I can look out for myself.”

  Ed laughs. “Tough guy.” He finishes his burger and goes downstairs. It occurs to Lenny that he barely knows his brother.

  17

  The lump in Umee’s thyroid is a tumor, and she needs to go back in for more tests and a biopsy. She explains this to Lenny on the way to church. Mira stays at home with a cold, and Yul has work to do, something about looking for a new job. So Umee turns to Lenny, who sits in the passenger seat, and tells him that if the tumor is cancerous she might be in trouble.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “It could spread. I need an operation no matter what, but they want to check the tumor first.”

  Lenny stares at her throat. Nothing looks different, but he imagines a pulsing tumor. She says, “I want to have your grandmother visit, to help out. She might come before my surgery.”

  “From Korea?”

  “Yes. She will stay with us,” she says uneasily.

  He asks if Grandma ever visited before.

  “Yes, when I was pregnant with you. She and your father don’t get along.”

  “What happened?”

  She sighs. “He told her to leave.”

  “He kicked her out?”

  His mother says, “They are both very strong people. Very stubborn.”

  “What happened?”

  “Your grandmother saw how your father treated me and couldn’t stand it.”

  “And she’s coming back?”

  “I need help. We have to close the store, and take care of you children. I need your help. You and Mira have to do more chores.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you have to pray for me.”

  Lenny doesn’t know how to respond to this. He has never really prayed. Even when he was supposed to be praying at church he ended up looking around to see what everyone was doing. Although he understands the concept of God and prayer, he never really believed God could hear him.

  His mother drives into the parking lot, and Lenny sees some of the other kids heading up to the children’s service. He doesn’t tell his mother about his plan to skip both the service and the Korean language lessons. He’s here only for the tae kwon do.

  They walk into the church, his mother patting his head and heading up to the main service while Lenny slows his pace, watching her, and then turns around as soon as she disappears into the chapel. He walks past other kids and their parents, and out to the small building by the cemetery.

  There’s no one inside, so he takes off his shoes and socks, and begins stretching out. He hears the music from the church carrying across the cemetery, and looks out the window. The voices of the choir swell and echo. The early afternoon sun lights up the tombstones—glistening black marble and polished white granite glaring back at him. He hears the congregation joining in, and the music fills the graveyard. Only then does Lenny fully absorb the fact that his mother might be sick.

  The tae kwon do teacher singles him out again for his bad form, and humiliates him by making him stand in front of the entire class and practice a side kick a dozen times over. By the time the lesson is almost finished, Lenny’s shirt is soaking in sweat, his thighs burning in his jeans, and he can sense all the other kids watching everything he does, waiting for him to mess up again.

  The teacher has them do warm-down stretches, and finally, when they finish, Lenny runs out of the building and waits by the car. He knows his mother is having lunch with the rest of the congregation, but he doesn’t want to go anywhere near the church. He promises himself that he will never ever come back here again.

  He watches the other tae kwon do students file through the cemetery and back into the church, where they join their parents. Lenny sits on his car’s front bumper, his damp T-shirt now cold. When his mother appears, looking for him, she sees his expression and asks what’s wrong.

  “I want to go home now.”

  “What happened?”

  “I want to go home.”

  She studies him. “Did you get into a fight?”

  “No. I just want to go home now.”

  “What about some lunch—”

  “I want to go home!”

  She sighs and touches his cheek. She says, “Do you know how important you are to me?”

  Lenny looks up at her pale face, her forehead shiny. She gives him a sad smile. He says, “I don’t like it here.”

  “All right, Lenny. Let’s go home. Do you want to see a movie?”

  “Really?”

  “Just us two.”

  She lets him into the car, and as they drive away he sees some of the other kids walking out into the parking lot eating sweet rice cakes, talking and joking with each other.

  That afternoon Lenny torments his sniffling and coughing sister with the news that he saw Meatballs, and that she missed a great movie. Mira complains to their mother that it isn’t fair, and his mother, annoyed, says that Lenny has to take Mira to The Muppet Movie when she feels better.

  “But that’s a little kid’s movie!” Lenny says.

  Mira gives him a satisfied “Ha!” and returns to bed.

  Their father isn’t home, and their mother lies down on the living room sofa and naps. Lenny gets on his bicycle and rides around the neighborhood, heading for the woods near the edge of town.

  Cedar Swamp is a small creek fed by run-off and has streams that lead toward the canals of Newbridge Park and into the many tributaries that eventually empty into the ocean. Everyone calls it the “woods” or the “swamp,” and in summer the neighborhood kids sometimes hang out there. Last summer someone strung a rope swing over the water, though no one went swimming—the creek often looks polluted, with strange foam, garbage, and rusted shopping carts piled near the large concrete drainage tunnels.

  Large houses sit near the edge of the woods, leafy trees hanging over their roofs and shrouding them. Lenny studies them as he rides along the side streets, wondering what it would be like to have as your back yard this expanse.

  There are wide, worn paths leading from the houses into the woods, and he locks his bike to a tree and walks deeper in, where the trees and shrubs grow dense, blocking out the traffic noises on nearby Sunrise Highway.

  He comes across a wide, shallow stream and searches for turtles. Once he saw a small turtle swimming in the large creek, and although he didn’t catch it, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He has been intrigued by turtles ever since watching a science show on TV about tortoises on the Galapagos that lived for hundreds of years. Then he and his sister watched a TV movie about an enormous sea turtle and its connection to a young couple. The couple found the turtle as a baby and drew a heart on its shell. The end of the movie revealed the same heart on the gigantic adult turtle. Both Mira and Lenny had been impressed by th
is.

  Lenny doesn’t find any turtles here, though, and continues walking along the stream. It’s getting dark, and he knows better than to get lost in here at night, so he backtracks slowly, enjoying the quiet and solitude.

  When he returns home he finds his mother on the telephone, speaking in loud and careful Korean. She says “Uhma” to the person on the other line, and he suspects it’s his grandmother from the way his mother keeps repeating herself. He doesn’t remember anything about halmonee, and hasn’t met any of his relatives though he has a faint memory of his father’s brother, Uncle Gil, a stooped, small man who ducked his head shyly. His mother told him that Gil and his father fought often and hardly kept in contact. Gil drives a truck for a grocery somewhere in New York.

  His mother hangs up the phone. She turns to him, smiling. “Your halmonee will be coming next week.”

  “Here?”

  “Your sister will have to sleep in your room. Halmonee will sleep in Mira’s room.”

  “What?”

  “Just for two weeks.”

  “Two weeks!”

  “For me, Lenny. I need her here.”

  His mother rests her hand on his head. It’s a familiar, comforting gesture that he remembers her doing ever since he was a baby. Less an attempt at soothing him, it’s more of a way to connect them. After a moment he nods his head, and she pulls away. “Thank you,” she says. “She speaks very little English, so you will have to try harder to learn Korean.”

  “I’m not going back to that church.”

  She sighs. “But you won’t be able to talk to her.”

  “I’ll learn it on my own.”

  She smiles. “How?”

  “The library.”

  “Good for you. I am tired again. Will you find something for dinner? Make something for your sister too.”

  He heats up two cans of soup, toasts some bread, and calls Mira to the kitchen. Her nose is red, and her eyes watery, so he tells her that he’ll bring her dinner to her room. “It’s chicken noodle soup.”

  “When are we going to see the movie?”

  “When you’re healthy.”

  As he puts the bowl and plate on a platter, he hears his mother easing herself onto the living room sofa. He likes the peacefulness of the house with his father gone, and wonders what will happen with his grandmother here.

  18

  The Going Out of Business Sale at Sweets ‘N Gifts is a failure. No one really wants to stock up on chocolates and rock candy. Some of the jewelry sells, but by the time the store officially closes, Yul and Umee have bags and bags of cheap silver earrings, necklaces, and even more bags of bulk candy. They have large glass display cases and shelving with nowhere to store it, so Yul wraps them in plastic and puts them in the back yard. Umee asks if there’s any candy that the three kids want, but none of them do. Ed recommends they save it for Halloween. “Dump it then.”

  The last day of the store coincides with Umee’s biopsy. She says closing the store keeps her mind busy, so she’s glad to have many things to take care of. Her iron pills are helping her anemia, and she seems to have more energy. Yul drives her to the hospital while Ed, Lenny and Mira wait around the house, watching TV.

  Mira asks what happens if the cancer is bad.

  Lenny has no idea, and turns to his brother, who says, “If it spreads, she’ll need chemotherapy.”

  “What’s that?” Mira asks.

  “Chemicals to kill the cancer, but it also kills healthy cells. That’s why they lose their hair.”

  “Mom’s going to lose her hair?” Mira asks, his voice rising.

  “Only if it’s spread,” Lenny says.

  “Is she going to die?”

  Ed shrugs his shoulders.

  Lenny says, “No.”

  “How do you know?” Mira asks.

  “He doesn’t,” Ed says. “No one knows.”

  “God knows,” Mira says.

  “There is no God,” Lenny says.

  Both Ed and Mira turn to him. Mira says, “You’re going to get in trouble for that.”

  “The Devil told me there’s no God.”

  “Don’t say that!” Mira cries.

  Ed laughs. He tells them he’s going out. Lenny asks him about Sal, if he really is a pot dealer.

  Ed says, “Small time, but yeah. I’m telling you—watch out for him.”

  After he leaves, Lenny pulls out his marked deck of playing cards he ordered from a magician’s catalog. He teaches his sister how to play Go Fish. The corners of every card has a tiny circular design similar to a clock, and Lenny can tell the card from the position of the dots. Lenny knows not only the next card in the deck, but most of the cards Mira has.

  Because of the mail order catalogs for martial arts books and supplies, Lenny ends up on mailings lists for other catalog companies, and slowly he learns about the wealth of information out there. He has to buy money orders from the local post office, because he can’t send cash, but other than that his age doesn’t seem to matter. He recently ordered catalogs from a publisher of military manuals and espionage books.

  He lets his sister win a few rounds, and then asks if she wants to bet money. She says she doesn’t have much, and Lenny tells her they can use I.O.U.’s. He lets her win twenty-five dollars, and then asks if she wants to double the stakes. She does. Then he wins easily, and makes her sign an I.O.U. for fifty dollars. He tells her she has to pay him within a week.

  “But I don’t have it!”

  “Well, I’ll have to charge interest.”

  She looks mildly panicked, so he tells her he’s kidding. He won because of his magic powers. She laughs it off, but he shows her how he can read her mind. All she has to do is think of the card she sees, and he can tell her what it is. After a few demonstrations she becomes suspicious. She studies the cards carefully. Then she says, “Hey, wait! Something is different about these.”

  He’s surprised she notices the marks, and asks her what she sees.

  “The dots are different. Are these…cheating cards?”

  “It’s called a ‘marked deck’.”

  “Where did you get it? How does it work?”

  He explains the clock code system and how he bought this from a mail-order catalog. She examines the cards again, and a gleam of amazement sparkles her eyes. She asks, “People actually make these?”

  “They make all kinds of things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Top secret. I can’t tell you.”

  “You have to!”

  Lenny leaves her throwing a tantrum. He walks out into the front yard and climbs the tall maple. He sits up on one of the highest branches, the telephone wires near his head. He rests there, wondering how his mother’s biopsy is going.

  Lenny jerks awake at the sound of Sal’s minibike in the distance. He grabs a branch, startled that it’s almost dark out. Climbing down, he runs toward the sound of the bike, onto Frankel Boulevard, and sees him racing up the street. He waves him over.

  “What’s up, Lenny?” he lisps, his feet dragging the bike to a stop.

  “My brother said you’re a small-time dealer.”

  He shrugs one shoulder. “I was. I’m expanding.”

  “How?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I do. I won’t tell anyone.”

  Sal stares at him for a while. “I don’t think you would. But the less you know, the better off you are.”

  “Do you make good money?” Lenny asks.

  “Why?”

  “I need to start saving for college.”

  He laughs. “Already? Shit.”

  “My mom said it can cost twenty thousand a year.”

  Sal nods his head slowly. After a moment, he asks, “How are you with gardening?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you like messing around in the dirt?”

  Lenny looks down at his hands, which are dirty from climbing the tree.

  Sal says, “Okay, you want to see somethi
ng?

  Lenny says he does.

  “It’s secret. You tell anyone anything, and I’ll make your life hell.”

  “I can keep a secret.”

  “Hop on.”

  Lenny climbs onto the back of his bike, and Sal yanks the engine on. Lenny notices Sal attached a bicycle handbrake as a makeshift throttle—the tighter he squeezes the handbrake, the faster they go. Sal rides them to the woods, to the entrance along Sunrise Highway, and locks his minibike to the guardrail.

  They walk down to the swamp and he leads Lenny around to the second swamp farther in. Then he says, “It’s deep in. You ready?”

  “Wait. What is it?”

  “I might need some help.”

  “Do you have a flashlight?”

  “Don’t need one.”

  “It’s okay,” Lenny says, looking up at the dark sky. “I don’t have to see it. I can’t see anything anyway.”

  Sal replies, “All right. One reason why I wanted to show you is ‘cause I’m looking for an assistant, someone I can trust.”

  “To do what?”

  “Check on my plants,” he says.

  “What kind of plants?”

  “What kind do you think?”

  “Check on them how?”

  “Make sure they stay hidden. If they’re dry you water them from the nearby stream. I’d pay you.”

  “How much?”

  He thinks about this. “You’d have to check on it once a day, like after school or something. Just until the crop is ready, so maybe another couple months, until mid summer. So… how about five bucks?”

  “For all that work? Just five bucks?”

  Sal tilts his head. “You would just check on it. That’s easy work for five bucks a day.”

  “Five bucks a day?” Lenny says, shocked. He thought Sal had meant five dollars for the entire job. Lenny usually gets paid five dollars to rake a yard, maybe ten to shovel snow. He can’t quite believe this, because it would be more money than he’d ever seen before. He quickly calculates thirty-five dollars a week.

  “Think about it. Come by my house tomorrow and let me know. Thing is, it’s secret. I mean really secret. You can’t tell anyone—not your friends or your brother or anyone. I’d seriously fuck you up if you did. Can you keep a secret?”