Triplines (9781936364107)

by Chang, Leonard

  “No. I’ll go back to bed.”

  “Give me a kiss goodnight.”

  He kisses her cheek and she touches his arm. “Are you sure you’re okay? About Sal?”

  “I think so.”

  “I can’t imagine what Sal’s mother is going through. If there’s a funeral service, do you want to go?”

  He wonders if Tommy and Sal’s other friends would be there. He replies, “No.”

  “Okay. Go to bed.”

  Lenny stays up late and watches a horror movie on cable TV, a creepy story about little creatures that come out only in the dark. By the time the movie is over, it’s almost two in the morning, and he can’t bring himself to turn off the lights. He studies the marijuana pamphlets, the jar of seeds in his line of vision, and he wonders about cultivating a small crop. He has no idea what he would do with the harvest, but he has all these seeds. It seems like a waste not to try them.

  While leafing through a catalog that lists books about lockpicking and safecracking, he wonders if Sal would appreciate a book on lockpicking. Then he remembers that Sal is dead. Slowly it dawns on him that anyone, even he, can die randomly and suddenly. He has trouble grappling with the implications. He makes a mental note to look up more information about this at the library. It seems he can find all the answers there.

  38

  Lenny feels the full repercussions later, when he sees Sal’s sister walking home one afternoon. She is always quiet, and whenever he sees her around the neighborhood she nods to him, but they never talk. One afternoon, just a week or so before the first day of school, Lenny wanders home from Radio Shack and sees Terry by herself, staring down at the sidewalk as she turns the corner. She’s avoiding the cracks, Lenny can tell, from the way she steps awkwardly forward, almost jumping ahead.

  He follows her, though he doesn’t know why. She isn’t heading back to her house, and Lenny is curious.

  Compared to her late brother, Terry is short and muscular—she plays softball and volleyball—and doesn’t look very much like Sal except for a longish face. She walks toward Robinhood’s, a sporting goods store on Sunrise Highway, but doesn’t enter. Instead, she stares through the display windows, her hands shoved into her pockets, her shoulders hunched.

  She continues window shopping. Lenny thinks about Mira, and how she would feel if he died, and then knows how lonely he’d be if something happened to his sister.

  Terry just stands there. She stares into the window for a long time, and then Lenny sees that she isn’t focusing on anything in particular. Her gaze is unfocused and distant. He can’t bear to watch her any longer. He slips away and returns home.

  The countdown to the new school year preoccupies Lenny, and he draws big red x’s on his calendar as the first day approaches. He knows he’ll lose his free time, and steps up his martial arts training and library research, including learning more about marijuana cultivation. He also begins taking trips into Manhattan, finding the bookstores and newsstands that carry esoteric magazines. It’s so easy to get into the city, the train heading directly into Penn Station, and then all he has to do is walk up the steps from the station and there are half a dozen magazine stores within a block.

  Years later, when he will look back on this pivotal period in his life he sees that it helped define him: he became independent, and he discovered a sense of his self that could only emerge from solitude. His desire to become a writer wouldn’t take hold for another few years, but the discipline required of that job had its origins during this time, when he understood that the key to finishing anything isn’t the initial enthusiastic rush but the slow and steady daily effort.

  He is also getting physically stronger and more flexible. By the end of the summer he can do full splits and graceful kicks over his head. He has no idea if his form is textbook, but he emulates with ease the kicks and hand strikes he sees on the kung-fu movies. Soon he’ll buy a VCR after researching the differences between VHS and Betamax, and he will teach himself tae kwon do from instructional videos. That, and taking lessons from a local studio, will eventually get him good enough so that he’ll join his college tae kwon do team, and he’ll even perform on stage in Seoul.

  But it starts with punching and kicking a tree in his back yard and listening to kung-fu movies as he falls asleep.

  One afternoon he wants to see the sunset from the bell tower. The ideal location would’ve been the train station, but he doesn’t want to deal with the late afternoon commuters who crowd the platform during rush hour. So he jimmies the back door of the church and climbs up to the tower. He sits on the west-facing banister, and looks out over the neighborhood. From this vantage point he can see the library and Narwood Avenue, where Sal died. The sun is setting.

  He read in a kung-fu book how Shaolin monks would meditate at sunrise and sunset, and although he has tried meditating at sunrise, he has trouble focusing, his mind spinning with everything he has to do. Reading and exercising seem to be better for him in the morning. But now, in the early evenings as he begins to wind down, it’s easier for him to calm his thoughts.

  Lenny sits cross-legged and practices his breathing. He watches the sun fall slowly behind the trees as the sky turns orange. He empties his mind and tries to focus on steadying his breath. As he inhales and exhales, the sun drops below the horizon and the sky turns purple, and he feels a momentary and immense welling of emotion, of happiness and serenity and centeredness that startles him. Then the feeling disappears. He slows his breathing even further, trying to recapture the feeling, but he can’t. It will be almost twenty-five years until he can find again that one moment of peace, when he will be rock climbing in the Sierras, and one morning he will scale a huge boulder at sunrise, sharing the top with a lizard, watching the sun warm the mountains.

  Lenny remembers a time when the family was together, shortly after their move to Long Island when their father still had a good job. Because of the tumult of settling into a new house and new neighborhood they were all bound by the unfamiliarity of their surroundings. One night they went to a local restaurant, Beefsteak Charlie’s, which his father wanted to try because of their All You Can Eat shrimp.

  They sat in a large booth, the lights dim and the noises muted by thick curtains hanging along the walls. After they filled their plates with shrimp and salad from the buffet bar, their father told them a story about when he first came to the United States. He had been through the Korean War, with all kinds of food shortages, especially beef, so when he started graduate school in Florida and saw steak and seafood houses everywhere, he couldn’t believe it.

  “I ate steak every night for a week until I got sick,” he told them. He pointed to the menu in front of him. “Look at all the different kinds of steak! This is America, the land of steak.”

  Their mother laughed and said something to him in Korean. He smiled. Ed announced that he wanted a big rare steak, and Mira said she wanted ice cream.

  “Steak and ice cream together?” their father said.

  Mira made a face, making him laugh. Lenny wouldn’t know this until later, but this was one of the only times they ever had a normal, fun family dinner.

  He has searched his memory for more good family times like these, but none surface. No, the good memories occur later when, as adults, he and his siblings reconnect with each other and their mother, when he talks to them about this time, although, curiously, he seems to recall small, esoteric details that no one else does.

  Lenny, as a child, has glimmers of understanding that every moment, good or bad, joyful or frightening, means something. Perhaps this is, ultimately, what draws him to become a writer, for it’s the details and their significance that stay with him without his even trying.

  He knows, for example, even as a kid, that the last time he and Mira break into the church, at the end of that summer, is important, somehow. He suspects this because, first, it’s morning. Mira wants to play her viola on stage, but when they enter the main sanctuary area and stand on the pulpit, they�
��re surprised by the bright sun shining through the stained glass windows. They had always come here in the late afternoon or evening, so the eastern-facing windows have never been illuminated. But now, this morning, the pews are brilliant with greens and blues, and the shafts of dusty sunlight beam down onto the worn red carpeting.

  Mira and Lenny stand there for a moment, awed, registering the beauty. Mira then pulls out her viola, tunes it, and begins playing scales. She sits on the dais leading up to the pulpit, and warms up her fingers. Lenny sits in the front pew and listens while staring up at the stained glass images of circles and suns and glowing crosses highlighted with rays of light. Mira then plays what Lenny later learns is a simplified version of a Bach sonata, and although she’s tentative at first, the notes squeaky, she soon repeats it with more confidence, and Lenny sits back, feeling that this moment is special. He knows that the end of this summer marks the end of a tumultuous time in their family. He knows that a new school, new friends, the beginning of a new life, await all of them. And when he watches his sister playing a sonata in the brilliant sunlight, her face beaming with delight, and he stares up at the stained glass windows colorful and radiant, he knows he has to remember this moment, remember this image, because it makes him truly and deeply happy.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to my first readers: Frances Sackett, Linda Davis, Claudette Groenendaal and Jillian Lauren; to my editor of eighteen years, Jerry Gold; to the Merrick Library; to the many Los Angeles friends who helped me get situated, including the Chehaks, the Erspamers, and Carole Kirschner; to my friends at Awake and Justified; to my mother Umee Chang Pepe, my brother Ed Chang, my sister-in-law Raafia Mazhar Chang, my sister Mira Chang; and a special thanks to Toni Ann Johnson for everything.

  Many names have been changed to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent. Although my mother and siblings checked and verified this account with their recollections, any errors and misremembrances are entirely mine.

  Leonard Chang was born in New York City and studied philosophy at Dartmouth College and Harvard University. He received his MFA from the University of California at Irvine, and is the author of seven novels. His books have been translated into Japanese, French and Korean, and are taught at universities around the world. His short stories have been published in journals such as Prairie Schooner and The Literary Review. He lives in Los Angeles, and writes for the TV drama Justified. For more information, visit his web site at www.LeonardChang.com.