by Simon Han
The playing drew disparate conversations together, raising the volume of the room and making it harder to hear the music itself. Elsie’s mother wandered over, and talk of Plano Star Care vanished as Jack’s mother and Huáng Āyí switched entirely to English. Just days before the party, Jack’s mother had complained over the phone to his grandparents about Elsie’s mother: Can you believe the things she must have taught her daughter to say? Yet now she seemed to be channeling the real estate agent who’d originally shown them around the house—a former model house, for the developer, his mother was telling Elsie’s mother now.
“So many families once walk through this place, imagine their own house can look something similar. But then we say: why not buy the model house?”
Elsie’s mother peered down, rubbed a crack between the wooden floor slat with her bare toes. “Oh, yes, I see what you mean. It does feel rather lived in.”
Jack’s mother drew Huáng Āyí and Elsie’s mother closer. “Sometimes, I still hear them. All those young parents, with their babies. They come through that door, walk through that hall. Now their babies must be as old as my Annabel.”
But this house had come with a discount, thought Jack. The first and oldest house on the street: the developers had been desperate to sell it. They’d even let them keep most of the furniture. His mother had not cared to mention that.
“Oh?” Elsie’s mother said. “Was your daughter born here?”
Jack’s mother smiled—beamed, even. “She can be president.”
Elsie’s mother exchanged a look with Huáng Āyí, one of curiosity masked by a smile. He wondered if the two knew each other. Huáng Āyí asked Elsie’s mother about Elsie, and Elsie’s mother asked Jack’s mother about Annabel, but no one asked Huáng Āyí about Charlene.
Before long, the chatter reached that register where Jack could comprehend individual words but not sentences, not meaning, a swirl of sound that made him sleepy—for once—so he plotted his escape. Before he could reach the stairs, he ran into a different sound, men laughing, his father laughing, a living room of men laughing, in front of the Cowboys game.
“Holding?” Elsie’s father asked the TV. “Refs!” He took off his horn-rimmed glasses while Jack’s father and his poker group shūshus echoed with something equally incredulous. Elsie’s father raised his glass of red wine, sending a splash over the sheepskin rug. At first only Jack and his father noticed the stain. The two of them stared at his mother’s favorite rug, watching the stain grow, before Elsie’s father got up. Jack’s father shook his head, insisted that he would take care of it, but then Elsie’s father noticed Jack. “Little man,” he called to Jack. “Mayday. Mayday.”
Then they all turned to Jack. It seemed even the referee on TV was motioning at him. Mayday. Mayday. The energy in the house reached a new register. An encore in the piano room, glasses ringing in the playroom turned dining room. Somewhere, someone was singing. And before he knew it, Jack had brought over a roll of paper towels and planted himself in the free spot on the couch beside Elsie’s father.
“Good sir,” the man said, taking the paper towels from him.
Elsie’s father, like her mother, seemed to belong to a different generation—a different time—than Jack’s parents. He sat with his legs crossed, a wrist balanced palm up on the knee, as if an invisible cigarette was smoldering between his fingers. His hair seemed windblown by the years, thick and silvery, with no trace of Elsie’s red. The sight of the man breaking out of his portrait pose and hunched over as he tried to clean up the stain felt incongruous to his nature. He was, as Jack had overheard him saying earlier in the night, retired. You had to have accomplished things in order to be retired.
“What’s that?” Jack pointed to the man’s rusted belt buckle, the faint outline of a skull-and-crossbones design. It seemed not so much old as valuable, or valuable because it was old, like something that could go into a museum.
“This, my buddy, belonged to my grandfather.” Elsie’s father’s eyes twitched—twinkled with excitement, maybe. “He was a member of the local Twenty Tuff Tamales. That’s T-U-F-F, by the way. Ever heard of it?”
There were so many things Jack had not heard of. He could watch CNN until the commercials turned to late-night infomercials, and still he could not hear it all. His father looked on, drinking his beer, as if to hide his roving eyes. “No. My grandpa isn’t from around here.”
“Not many folks know about it,” said Elsie’s father. “That’s the thing about this place. No one’s really ‘from around here.’” As if a sudden idea had popped into his mind, he unbuckled his belt, right in front of the other men. He slipped the leather out from the loops on his jeans and handed the belt to Jack.
Jack blinked, slowly. “For me?”
Elsie’s father laughed. “For the next five minutes.”
The buckle was heavier than Jack had expected. He was not sure if it was okay to touch. As he shifted the belt between his hands, Elsie’s father explained that the Twenty Tuff Tamales was from long ago, when there was a club for tough guys from Plano who practiced good deeds. A precursor to the modern fraternity. Jack did not ask him what a fraternity was, let alone a precursor to one. His father was looking at the TV, though Jack knew he didn’t care about football. It occurred to him that his father didn’t know what a fraternity was either. This, he had to admit, disappointed him.
“Can I see?” one of the poker group shūshus asked. The man accepted the belt from Jack with two hands. The rest of the poker group passed the belt down until it reached his father, who held it as if it were a rodent, then handed it off to Jack.
“Me, I don’t have a son,” Elsie’s father said, leaning toward Jack as if confiding in him. “But I could see you joining in league with those fine young men.”
“I wish I could!” Jack said.
“Well, you can. In spirit, that is.” Elsie’s father grinned. “You just got to be tough, and you got to be good. The first part’s easy. I spent thirty-two years keeping kids not that much older than you from going to jail. I’ve lost at least three years of sleep trying to do it. I mean, these kids! You get them to wear a suit to court, then in front of a judge, they hurl a glass of water at their parents. They’re tough, but they’re not good.” He rapped Jack’s arm with his knuckle. “You, Mister Cheng, strike me as both.”
Was it true? thought Jack. Was he both? He had an urge to run from guest to guest, shaking them and proclaiming that he was both tough and good. Then Elsie’s mother spoiled his fantasy, walking—no, marching—over to the living room and asking Jack’s father where the girls were. His father stammered something about them wanting to build a pillow fort upstairs, a private pillow fort, and Elsie’s mother turned to her husband and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “You said you weren’t going to leave Elsie alone. With her.”
Elsie’s father tried to head her off—the girls were fine, fine—while Jack’s father began to apologize. That was when Jack’s mother joined the gathering as well, adding to the noise, muddling it. Sorry, I will get them, his father kept saying. And as the other adults fumbled to find the right words with which to appease one another, Jack remembered again: he was both.
“I’ll do it,” he said, jumping up from the sofa. “I’ll watch them.”
His parents and Elsie’s parents looked at one another. It seemed they were considering his offer. Yes, let him save the party, they were saying with their eyes. With the trusted Jack watching over the girls, the party could go on. A card game was unfolding in the dining room, and didn’t they want to play? And what about another drink?
One day, thought Jack, he’d host his own parties in his own former model house, and he’d make his own son be as helpful to his parents as Jack was going to be now. He swelled with pride, imagining the compliments he’d get. Already Elsie’s father was leaning back in what appeared to be affirmation. Reflexively, Jack brought a hand t
o his forehead and, without a second thought, saluted him and the room.
No one returned the gesture. Elsie’s father turned back to the TV. The poker group shūshus looked equal parts confused and amused. His mother watched his father finish another beer. Only Elsie’s mother smiled back, the way she might to a child Annabel’s age who was pretending to cook the adults a delightful meal.
Why had he saluted them in the first place?
Stupid, he thought, as he left the room. Stupid.
* * *
• • •
Upstairs, he passed three snickering teenage boys huddled around the computer in his father’s office and barreled through Annabel’s door without knocking. In the two weeks since Annabel had moved back downstairs to sleep, there had been little occasion to enter her room. The window blinds by the bed rattled and shook.
The lights were off. At first glance it looked as if no one was around. But there were pillows splayed over the floor, a mound rising and falling on the bed. He tore off the comforter, revealing a coiled-up little girl: Annabel’s friend. Elsie did not move. He leaned closer; she became more still. He tried poking her.
Finally, her body uncoiled. She turned her head toward Jack and screamed.
He screamed, too. Immediately, Annabel burst into the room behind him, gesticulating wildly and stomping her feet. “EL. SEEEE. You’re supposed to be quiet.”
“But—but who is he?”
Annabel thrust a finger at Jack, with an intensity that dented the air. “Can’t you tell he’s my brother? Are you blind?”
By this point, Jack had turned on the lights. The two girls squinted at him, protesting that it was too bright. He wondered how long they’d been playing in the dark.
“What’s going on? What is this?”
“Annabel wanted me to pretend sleep so she could come inside like a kidnapper and steal me and I’m not supposed to scream because kidnappers always say shut-up-or-I’ll-kill-you but then you came and and and also I don’t like this game.”
Annabel charged toward Elsie, but Jack held her back. Something was wrong, that much he knew, though he would be able to put his finger on it only after it was too late. He was here to watch the children, he thought. That was what he would do.
“No more games,” he said to Annabel, tightening his grip on her arm.
“But Daddy always—”
“No more.”
Annabel kicked and glared at Elsie. “It’s all your fault!”
“Your games aren’t fun!” Elsie said.
“Take it back!”
It took every ounce of strength to keep his grip on his sister, whose rage sent her airborne in his arms. Elsie backed away until she bumped into the dresser by the bed, knocking down a vase with fuzzy fake flowers his mother had set up.
“Fine,” Elsie said, wiping her nose. “I’m sorry.”
After that, the tension in Annabel’s body quickly began to dissipate. Before long it was gone. Jack tentatively let go of her. Was it that easy? Was she pretending?
“Okay,” Annabel said.
“That’s it?” he said.
“I forgive you. I mean her.”
Fifteen seconds ago, the girls had been ready to tear out each other’s throats. In half that time, the energy in the room had shifted, the simmering explosion congealing into something like boredom. Another fifteen seconds later, and the girls were rolling around on the bed, restless, asking him to chase them.
“Catch us!” Elsie said.
“Abduct us!” Annabel said.
“I’m not abducting anyone,” Jack said.
Now the girls were united in their protests. If they whined any louder, the parents downstairs might hear. Or worse, the teenagers in his father’s office might wander in and laugh at them—at him. He suggested hide-and-seek.
“Boring,” Annabel said.
“Bet you can’t find me,” he said.
“I can too.”
“Okay. If you can’t find me, you got to sleep by yourself. Upstairs.”
The mention of Annabel’s sleeping arrangements shut her up at once. Her eyes darted between Jack and Elsie. “But I do sleep by myself,” she said.
“You do?”
“Gēge. Bié shuō.”
“Then turn around and count to thirty.”
Humbled, Annabel tugged Elsie to the corner of the room, where they faced the wall and counted. Jack slipped inside the open closet in the same room and watched through the gap as the girls flew out to the hall yelling Ready or not, here we come!
Then he was alone again. Alone in his sister’s closet. He grew bored himself. There were baby clothes stacked atop an already full storage container. Why hadn’t his parents given them away? Were they saving the clothes for another baby? No, no. They were keeping them, like how Lǎolao and Lǎoye kept his mother’s school acceptances, or that letter from Nankai University’s president congratulating her for placing at the top of her class. In America everything was an accomplishment, even growing out of baby clothes.
Before long, the girls’ footsteps tumbled down the stairs, followed a few minutes later by the teenagers’. A stillness spread through the room, though it was different from the stillness of most nights, when Jack tried to stay up while everyone slept. Downstairs at the party, there were many noises to choose from, and the trick was to find the important one, the meaningful one. Jack stepped out of the closet and inched over to the bedroom door. He could make out the girls’ voices, pleading with the parents to help them look. Jack was too old for such games, but he felt a thrill, knowing people could be so desperate to find him. He could hear his sister accusing the parents of lying, her indignation rising with each I don’t know or That brother of yours is clever, isn’t he?
Then his father’s voice entered the fray. It was not one to cut through a crowd, the way it did now. It jostled the other voices for position, insisted on being heard, swinging from highs to lows as if he were singing. He was talking to Jack’s mother. He kept saying I told you I told you I told you. I told you the girls were fine, he said. Look at how much fun they are having! Look! Then Annabel butted in. She was not having fun, everyone was tricking her, she was upset—no, disappointed. And when someone laughed, she yelled, “Tell me where he is! Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! Tell—”
“Xiǎo Qiàn,” Jack’s mother snapped, a rare use of Annabel’s Chinese name. It had little effect. Annabel went on, demanding that the adults give Jack up, until their father agreed to assist in the search. Another voice—Elsie’s mother’s?—asked Jack’s father if something was wrong, but he only grunted. His grunts trailed behind the voices of Annabel and Elsie. The three voices grew closer, louder.
They were coming up the stairs! In the hallway by then, Jack ducked into his father’s now-empty office, behind an artificial tree. Some of the leaves had been stained black with permanent marker. He spotted the girls tromping up the stairs with his father lumbering unevenly behind them, a fresh beer in hand. He had gotten used to his father coming home drunk this past year, and tonight he could smell him even from across a room. Unlike his mother, Jack did not mind the smell of the beer that made his father more expressive, his movements clumsier and more childish. It made his father smaller. If his father was smaller, then Jack did not have to be in such a hurry to become bigger.
He watched the three turn the corner down the hallway, away from him. Their voices faded in and out of the bathroom, then his room. His father spoke to the girls in exaggerated whispers, as if he didn’t want to give himself away. For once, his attempt at secrecy was blatantly obvious. Even Elsie was telling him to be quiet.
Eventually, the three turned back in Jack’s direction. He tensed, thinking they were going into the office, but his father raised his beer in the air, halting the girls.
“Have you checked, have you checked . . .”
“Talk faster, Daddy!”
“Have you checked your room?”
Annabel giggled. “We came from there.”
Jack couldn’t get a good look at his father in the hallway, could only imagine the man’s face, the realization settling into it. His father sometimes had that face—that distant, measuring look. As if he knew something about Jack that Jack didn’t know himself. Maybe that was what it meant to be a father, to know your son better than he knew himself.
“Yes, yes . . .” his father said. “Follow me.”
There was a thunk against the wall.
“Daddy! Be careful!”
The three made their way to Annabel’s room. Once he was in the clear, Jack left the office and crept closer. The door was angled in such a way that he could see what was transpiring in half the room. His father set down his beer on the dresser before peering under the bed and nearly falling on his face. Annabel snorted with laughter as she watched him, then bounced in and out of view. Elsie peeked into the closet, where Jack had been, then entered it herself.
That was when he heard Annabel whisper to his father—a conspiring whisper. And though Jack could not grasp her exact words, he knew what she would do.
His sister walked into Jack’s line of sight, though she did not notice him. She stood in front of the open closet door, swaying in place the same way he’d found her the night she’d sleepwalked outside. He had begun to doubt that the Annabel he’d rescued a few weeks ago had been in need of rescue in the first place. Had she really been sleepwalking? Could she be that scary, that she’d pretend to do so? Here she was now, plotting her next move. She covered her tittering mouth with one hand. She shut the closet door with the other.
Without delay, Elsie yelled and tried to get out, but Annabel, from the other side, kept a firm grip on the knob. While Elsie banged on the door, Annabel swallowed her laughter and pushed her back against it, digging her heels into the carpet. She flipped the closet light switch on and off to add an extra dose of misery. Of course Jack would be blamed if this went on. It was just like him to come up with the inane idea of hiding, after he’d volunteered to watch over the girls. Of course, his father would be the one to save the day.