Lives Paris Took

by Rachael Wright

  “Did you tell anyone else, David?” Mai asked eagerly.

  “No, I’m afraid not, perhaps it’s someone from the college.”

  “It doesn’t matter who gave you the money,” Hien Due’s wife said as she rounded the corner, laden with champagne. “It doesn’t matter because they were anonymous, and they wish to remain so. Ask God to bless them, and no more. It would be against their wishes to determine their identity. Now all you have to do is finish school!”

  David breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that Mai was so overjoyed that she could be talked into just focusing on school, and forgetting the mystery. The two women beamed at each other and David raised his glass to toast the donor. It felt odd, but as he thought about it, it was really Mai’s community that had rallied behind her and given the money. They had paid too much for lessons anyway. He didn’t have any residual debts from France, a plus from learning about Gilbert’s betrayal early on. Even after paying the college, he still had thousands of dollars left.

  Mai’s departure roused him from his thoughts. She rebuffed Hien Due as he tried to ply her with more champagne, adamant that she had to get home to her family. They all hugged her goodnight, smiling as she left the house.

  Soon the two men were, once more, alone in the living room, nursing their champagne. Hien Due was quiet, staring at the hundreds of tiny bubbles that lined the inside of the crystal glass. Their dance mesmerized him, like the short lifespan of butterflies.

  “David.”

  Hien Due’s voice was soft and quiet, but he sounded like a parent leveling with a child. A child caught in a lie.

  “Yes.”

  “You are the donor.”

  There was no question in his voice.

  David thought he was being x-rayed. The fatherly gaze broke through layers of armor and secrecy that surrounded his heart.

  “How’d you know?”

  “I think of you as a son, David.”

  “Yes, but how did you know? Do you think she suspects?”

  “No, I’m sure Mai doesn’t suspect. I know because I know your heart. You have dedicated time to all of us. You refuse money from my people who cannot afford lessons. You complain once a week (usually on Mondays) about how high I set the price. You are a man full of love, and full of sorrow. Grief and pain.”

  “She can’t ever know. Not while I’m alive.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want her to feel obligated to me,” David said.

  His mind was finally clear, and he was adamant on this point. He did not want Mai to feel like she owed him anything. The reasons were his own.

  “That’s not her way.”

  “Nevertheless, you mustn’t tell her. You can tell her after I’m gone. I’ll outlive you anyway. Please, promise me.”

  “So I have permission to tell her when you die?”

  “Are you expecting it?”

  “No, my friend, I hope to live a great many more years drinking wine and sharing food,” Hien Due said and toasted David.

  “I hope to as well.”

  “What happened in Paris?” Hien Due asked, without missing a beat.

  “EXCUSE ME?”

  “WHAT HAPPENED in Paris?”

  “We don’t need to do this again.”

  “You’re my friend, David. I want to know why you came back.”

  “It’s personal.”

  “You had a profitable business teaching English in Paris. Now you are back in your hometown. A place you would not be if you had any other choice. Why?”

  David swirled his champagne, and sighed heavily.

  “Hien Due, you are my friend, but there are things that don’t need to be explained.”

  “I worry for you, David. You keep yourself too closed off; there’s no room for anyone to get to know you.”

  “Why are we talking about this?”

  “You just did something that will change Mai’s life forever. You care more than you show; yet you won’t let anyone care about you. You are distanced from most of your family. Why is that?”

  “I left Paris because I was almost bankrupt,” David said, watching Hien Due’s face fall into planes of horror. “My business partner, a man I had known for ten years, cheated me, stole my clients, and stopped payments into our account. I had only a few hundred francs left to my name. It was unexpected to say the least, his betrayal. He laughed in my face, falling over himself drunk, and said that I was an idiot, that I pandered away everything I had. It was something I would not wish on any soul.

  “I left Paris a week later. Twenty years of my life, my career, friends, I lost it all in the blink of an eye. I didn’t want to leave. I would never have left if I had any say in the matter, but there was no money. I couldn’t pay the next month’s rent. Gilbert had blacklisted me. It was impossible to find employment. I contacted my sisters and brothers and told them that I would be coming home, a declaration they were not expecting. And then I came back. And that, Hien Due, is why I left Paris. I left because it all slipped out of my fingers like oil.”

  David swallowed the last of his champagne, and then poured out a new glass. Hien Due continued to stare at him, but behind the pity was something else, a question that remained unanswered.

  “Oh David. Why haven’t you said anything earlier?”

  “To what end? I failed. Everything I worked for disappeared in the space of a moment. Gilbert swindled me. He took everything, and then threw personal failings in my face,” David spit out before immediately shutting his mouth. He had gone too far.

  “What do you mean, ‘personal failings’?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Yes, you do mean something by it.”

  “A woman,” David shouted. “I loved a woman, and I ruined that as well.”

  “A woman?”

  “Yes. A wonderful woman. She deserved more.”

  Hien Due sat frozen in his chair.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “That was the point. No one was supposed to know. I am a part of a family that does not make mistakes and here I am. I sit in total opposition to everything my parents, especially my father, stood for. Who would want to ‘soil their good name’?”

  “Why were things so terrible between you and your father?”

  “My father was disappointed in me.”

  “There is more to it than just disappointment,” Hien Due said doggedly.

  “I wasn’t planned, but another boy was welcome for the work he could do. My arm was amputated. I turned out not to be another copy of my siblings,” David said, before rushing on. “Why do you want to know any of this, Hien Due? My father is gone, there’s no reason to dredge up this pain.”

  “There is always reason. If we do not correct our past mistakes, they will continue to haunt us in the present. How could an alcoholic cease his behavior if he does not understand what makes him drink?”

  “You liken me to an alcoholic?”

  Hien Due threw his head back, and laughed. “No, my friend, but I do believe you to be a man who needs to understand his own past.”

  “Why did you come to the United States? After all we did to your country in the war, why are you here?”

  Hien Due stopped laughing. He set down his glass on the wooden coffee table. It clinked melodiously against the hard surface. David wondered for a moment whether there were memories too terrible for Hien Due to relive, and he hated himself for asking the question. Hien Due smiled, but his eyes misted over as though he were looking at photographs instead of a tall, one-armed white man.

  “Leaving Vietnam was not an easy decision. I didn’t believe in the war. Our country had fallen into ruin; I was opposed to everything the Vietcong stood for. I longed for a country of peace and promise. I longed for a place to raise my daughter, where she could walk to school in safety. I longed for her to go to college, and to speak English as well as a native. I did not wish for war and massacres and a third-rate life. My wife worried every day. Our daughter was very young when we came
to the United States. Leaving Vietnam, even with its war, was difficult. We left the only home we ever knew.

  “We witnessed many atrocities, but we were lucky. I see how much God favored us. So many difficulties we came through. We were able to immigrate; we were able to help so many others do the same. He brought you to us. My daughter speaks English like a native. You see, I came to the United States because I had hope. So many young men died during the war, on both sides. I felt sorry for the United States. I thought endlessly about those mothers and young wives getting the yellow envelope to tell them that their son, their husband, was dead.

  “You ask me why I came, why I am here. God put me here, just as he has placed you in my living room this evening.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  6 July 1986

  DAVID WAS TO BE found, one summer Saturday, in the recesses of Hien Due’s community center, rifling through the papers that needed grading. It was a welcome change from the farmhouse, and its stifling sameness. In the closet-sized room, Hien Due had managed to squeeze in a comfortable chair, desk, and a heavily laden bookshelf. David’s papers littered the desk, and he was rapidly coming to an uncomfortable realization.

  “David?”

  Mai stood framed in the doorway, carrying a backpack laden with books, and even more packed in her thin arms.

  “Come in, Mai. How are you?” David said, pushing papers off a rusted folding chair.

  “I’ve been working hard.”

  “How’s your master’s program?”

  “I’m doing well. One day at a time, some days I’m not sure whether I’ll make it through all of the reading.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “I heard the news,” Mai said quietly.

  “The news?”

  “Hien Due told me about Texas. You’re moving away.”

  “Ah. I would have preferred to tell you myself,” David replied.

  “I could tell Hien Due had something on his mind, that he was in pain. I forced it out of him.”

  “He could never keep a secret.”

  “Please don’t be angry with him,” she said, reaching out to him.

  “I’m not. I was planning on making an announcement to everyone, but perhaps the grapevine is better.”

  “Please make your announcement, everyone will want to say their goodbyes.”

  “It seems my life has been just that, a long farewell.” David’s gaze drifted over Mai, out the door and over the center, to settle in the sky.

  “I wish I could explain to you the impact you’ve had on my life,” she said.

  “The feeling is mutual.”

  The awful truth was that he could not face Mai, or Hien Due, or the hundreds of pupils he had come to love and cherish over the past six years. They had become his children, his aunts and uncles, his family. They were all so different, each with their own peculiarities to make them unique. Standing in the front of a classroom, gazing over a sea of expectant faces … that was joy.

  “David?”

  “Sorry, Mai, I didn’t sleep well last night, and here I am dozing off on you.”

  “Are you quite all right?”

  “I’m just getting old. Someday it’ll happen to you,” he said with a wink.

  Mai left soon after, eager to get back to her mountain of homework. David watched as she threw open the center’s glass doors, and smiled as the summer sunlight swallowed her whole.

  THE SUMMER SUN HAD long since risen when David woke, in the same rabbit-ceilinged room. He was exhausted. It was a struggle to put his feet on the floor. He pushed hard against the edge of the bed, and shuffled to the bathroom where he started to run a bath, hopeful that the warm water would loosen the rampant soreness. The phone rang downstairs, reverberating across the house as it bounced off the thin walls and empty rooms. Sighing heavily, David walked as quickly as he could to pick up the line.

  It was a short conversation.

  “Yes. Thank you. Yes, you as well. Good morning,” he said, and set the receiver on its cradle.

  David made the painful journey back upstairs, stripped off his old cotton pajamas, and lowered himself into the bath. The heat crept up through his legs, and into his back as he lay in the porcelain tub. Even as the warmth loosened tension across his body, deep in his right shoulder an ache throbbed. David rubbed the scar tissue, probing for the problem. He had many memories of sitting just like this as a boy, crying into the bathwater because of the residual pain. Even as he dug, pressing his fingers harder and harder into the concave wound, the ache deepened.

  He slunk beneath the water, ready to cry. The room shimmered above him. The lights were a shifting mass of yellow. He lay beneath the water, counting the seconds, and wondering how long it might be until his lungs gave out. But even as the idea was formed, his head broke the surface, water running in rivers from his hair. He stared at the wall, ashamed of his weakness, ashamed because he could feel them staring at him–selfish, selfish, they whispered.

  The bath went cold long before he heaved his weakened body out. Though the silence was deplorable, he was thankful that there were only ghosts in the house, so he could be weak without anyone seeing. He walked down the hall, each step shorter and more labored than the next.

  After what felt like an age, he made it downstairs, and fell onto the living room sofa, breathing heavily. Just as sleep overcame him, a knock broke the stillness.

  “Hien Due,” David said, hope breaking his weak spirit.

  The older man stood framed in the door, clutching an envelope. His smile slid from his face.

  “David, you look terrible.”

  “I slept poorly, come in.”

  David sat, and motioned for Hien Due to do likewise.

  “You are certain of your decision to leave?”

  “Yes. I received the call this morning. I have been offered the job.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “If you had your way, I wouldn’t ever leave.”

  “I am selfish. This much is known.”

  “I’d like to talk to you about something,” David said. “I have a few thousand dollars in savings and I want put it into a fund. I’ve talked to the bank, and have set the account up with you as a co-owner.”

  “What are your plans for this fund?” Hien Due leaned across the table, frowning.

  “I want it to be for people like Mai. I don’t mean only those who are enrolled in college, but those that need a little assistance to get ahead. Promise me that you’ll take charge of the money. Ask those who can to give into the fund so that it doesn’t run out. I want to know that you all are taken care of. I have taught all the English I could possibly teach, but I want to continue helping.”

  “You have done more than anyone could ask of you. But this money, you do too much, David. What should you do if you need funds in an emergency, if you give all of your savings to us?”

  “Hien Due, I don’t need this money. What would I do? Take it. Do good with it.”

  In the years that they had known each other, David had never known Hien Due to fix him with such a stare.

  “You are unwell.”

  “What?”

  “You are unwell.”

  “I didn’t sleep well, I told you.”

  “You are unwell.”

  “Are you going to keep repeating that until I make something up?” David asked, cocking his eyebrow.

  “I might. I’d like you to tell me the truth.”

  “I think I might have the flu.”

  “The flu?” Hien Due said dubiously.

  “Body aches, tiredness, nausea; these are all common enough symptoms.”

  “I don’t like being lied to.”

  David looked up, and absentmindedly scratched the back of his head.

  “What is it you suspect that I am lying about?”

  “Your health.”

  “I haven’t been to a doctor.”

  “Perhaps you should.”

  “What would they tell me?”<
br />
  “The truth,” Hien Due shot back.

  The two men looked at each other for a long moment, trying to outdo the other’s stubbornness.

  “Fine. It’s most likely more than the flu.”

  “What then?”

  “It’s painful where the amputation took place.”

  “That is worrisome.”

  “It may be nothing.”

  “I doubt very much that it is nothing.”

  “What if it were more than ‘nothing?’ I am fifty-two years old. What would I lose next? A leg? Perhaps it’s something that cannot be cut off? What then?”

  “You would know. You could warn your family.”

  “I couldn’t possibly trouble them. Let’s talk about something else.” David raised his hand to ward off Hien Due’s remonstrance.

  They sat in an uncomfortable silence. The silence that exists between two good friends when one is hurting and refuses to be comforted or taken care of.

  “When do you leave?”

  “Another week.”

  “We shall miss you. Myself especially. You have become like a son to me.”

  “You are too kind.”

  “I came with something,” Hien Due said, putting the envelope on the coffee table between them. “It’s only a small amount to show our love and appreciation. I have included a letter.”

  “This is what they call circular giving,” David said with a laugh.

  Hien Due did not smile but surveyed David thoughtfully.

  “You give your money for the community. I will never touch a dime. My wife and I have lived long and full lives, and we are prosperous. This small sum is a token of our gratitude for all that you have done. I love each and every one of these people.”

  Hien Due reached for the manila envelope, opened it, and pulled out a check and two sheets of paper, stapled together. Hien Due looked at them for a long while. Tears welled behind his dark eyes, his mouth opened and shut as he tried in vain to speak. David reached out for the papers. Tears fell from the older man’s eyes, but he did not wipe them away. They lay on his cheeks like sentinels, witnesses to his pain.

  “‘Herein is set forth, the names of those which, in their hour of need, received aid from one, David Golike, a good and godly man, who gave of his time and love to those less fortunate. These herein bear testament to this’,” David read.