by Philip Huynh
“Lacquer, of course. Can’t you tell?”
I had seen lacquer paintings before, in Vietnamese restaurants — those glittering seashell landscapes of temples and buffalo-drawn carts set against a background of polished black. Lacquer paintings reduced life to so many stars twinkling in the night.
But these were different. One was as bright as any pastel. Another was a rendering of the coconut trees of Ben Tre, in as much fine detail as an oil painting. Yet another was a willowy abstract figure painting that could have been mistaken for a watercolour.
“You painted all of these?”
“I did them all in Saigon. I was surprised to find them for sale here, to tell you the truth. They arrived in New York before I did.”
“You can find absolutely anything in New York,” I said. I would have to come back to take photos of these paintings for Nga’s affidavit. “And you say you no longer paint?”
“That’s right,” said Nga. “Because of the abuse.”
How could I make this evidence convincing? I would need details of how many times she had tried but failed to paint in New Jersey, and how it was all connected to whatever her husband did to her.
Then I noticed the clock on a wall, a bright-blue installation that I thought was one of the paintings. It was half past eleven. Haejin would soon be having lunch with her parents. My chest seized. I needed fresh air.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” I said.
I stepped out into the sunlight. A young mother with a stroller brushed by. She smiled. How we’d all changed since that day. Strangers made eye contact on the street, on the subway, and smiled. Happy to be alive. It was almost a month later, and still.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Where are you going?” It was Nga. She had a look of utter concern on her face, for me.
“You know what?” I said. “We are having lunch.” Nga nodded her head matter-of-factly.
We walked back up to Union Square. I ducked into a bodega, but again no turkey. We took the N train from Union Square to 32nd Street. We were in Little Korea. I took Nga up a flight of rickety iron stairs to Haejin’s favourite restaurant.
It was a tight space, with little round tables and a small bar at the front. I took a seat against a window, facing the entrance, while Nga faced me. I did not see Haejin. After a while, sipping water, Nga asked me, “Where are the menus?”
“There are no menus here,” I said. “They sell only one thing. Double-fried chicken wings.”
“Okay, then,” said Nga. “But I have to warn you, I am not hungry.”
“You don’t like fried chicken?”
“I do. I am just not in the mood for it.”
“Trust me,” I said. “You will be when it comes.” I felt no conviction for the words that I mouthed. I was not in the mood for double-fried chicken either.
Haejin arrived before our order did. She came in through the entrance ahead of her mother and father, and stared at me from the threshold, the whites of her eyes widening like spilt milk just as on that morning the previous month. I could tell from her expression that it took all of her willpower not to turn around, to proceed normally. They were seated across from us, in my plain view.
Her parents looked kindly, both in baseball caps, a little frumpy from cross-country travel, not the stern ogres that Haejin had made them out to be. They owned a flower store in East Vancouver. I grew up in the same neighbourhood, though my path never crossed Haejin’s, not until I was at UBC studying law and Haejin was studying fine art at Emily Carr.
Our chicken arrived.
“You were right,” said Nga. “I didn’t know how hungry I was.” She dug into the chicken wings.
I could tell that Haejin was straining to ignore me while talking to her parents, while I was distracted by the crackling of Nga’s incisors through crispy skin and into bone.
“You’re not eating,” said Nga. “Still hungry?”
“Not really,” I said. “My fiancée is sitting behind you, with her parents. Well, almost fiancée. Don’t turn around.”
“What do you mean ‘almost fiancée’?”
“I proposed to her last week.”
“She rejected you?”
“Not quite,” I said. “She said she would think about it.”
“What type of ring did you get for her?”
“I didn’t have a ring.”
“How could you propose without a ring?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It was spur-of-the-moment.”
“So why are you not over there?” Nga gave a little nod of her head when she said that, to indicate the table behind her.
“I wanted to meet her parents, but Haejin refused. So here I am. With you.”
Nga nodded. I grabbed a chicken wing and we ate in silence. I paid the cheque when it came.
Nga and I were the first to leave. When I walked by Haejin’s table, she tightened her lips in abject scorn. Outside, I said goodbye to Nga at the entrance of the N line.
“When will I see you again?” she said.
“As soon as you get more evidence,” I said. Tears appeared in her eyes. All I could do was put my hand on her cheek and brush away a tear with my finger.
“My marriage was real.”
“I know that.”
She disappeared down the stairwell, into the subway tunnel. I turned back to the street. Focus, I told myself. Focus on the task at hand. I needed to find a turkey. On this island of four million people, there had to be a turkey.
As I walked towards Sixth Avenue, I felt a hand grip my shoulder. Hard. I turned around.
“What the hell were you doing in there?” said Haejin. She was standing on the street alone. Her face was red.
“Where are your parents?”
“Heading back to their hotel room,” she said. “Who were you with?”
“Why do you care all of a sudden?” I felt foolish as soon as I said it. “Just a client,” I said. “Pro bono.”
“She looked like some slut you picked up from the street.”
“That’s the cruellest thing I have ever heard you say.”
Haejin seemed to break out of her fury. Her eyes, hard this whole time, softened. “I just can’t believe you followed me.”
“I can’t believe you won’t introduce me to your parents.”
“They are traditional,” said Haejin, letting out a sigh that spanned the centuries. “I can’t introduce you just as a boyfriend. Introducing a guy to your parents is serious.”
“I proposed!”
“But we’re not engaged.”
“Whose fault is that?”
She looked at me as if struck by an inspiration, a look she sometimes got when she had an idea for a new painting. As we walked up Sixth Avenue, she kept her eyes level, her face an expression of equanimity.
“Your parents could do a lot worse than me,” I said.
“How’s that?”
“I’m a New York lawyer. I’ve paid off all my student loans. I’m not even thirty.”
“You’re a dream come true.”
“Their dreams, at least,” I said. “If not yours.”
Haejin winced. “Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe your people and mine don’t mix.”
“What, artists and lawyers?” I said. “We’ve been through this already.” I had already explained to Haejin that just because I was a lawyer didn’t mean I lacked an aesthetic sensibility, or that law itself didn’t have creative elements, and anyway, what was wrong with being logical? She could use a bit more logic herself.
“It’s not that,” she said.
“What then, it’s because I’m a Namer?”
“My parents are extremely traditional.”
“I grew up a few blocks away from their shop. I’m practically their homie!”
“Vietnamese people are not really Confucian,” she said.
“What?”
“I researched it.”
“You and your research,” I said. Haejin would get this way. Spend a month reading up on
a topic and start developing ideas.
“Confucianism was only introduced to Vietnam through Chinese rule. At heart, you have a different set of values.”
“And those are?”
She did not answer, though I had become truly curious. I continued walking north.
“You should go back to your parents,” I said. “I need to find a turkey.”
“My parents are going to see the Empire State Building. They don’t need me there. I’ll help you.”
“You’ve suddenly changed your mind about something?”
“No,” she said. “But I feel responsible. I mean, for the turkey.”
She was in fact responsible. This was Thanksgiving weekend, Canadian Thanksgiving, our Thanksgiving. A bunch of us expats had committed ourselves to getting together the next day at a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn for a real home-cooked meal, more than a month earlier than everyone else on this island. Just to forget all the craziness. Haejin had originally volunteered to get the turkey. Then she started flaking out about her parents’ visit, so I said I would get it.
If a turkey was to be found, it would be at a supermarket like Gristedes. We walked up and down the aisles of the poultry section looking for the big bird.
“If I was Japanese,” I said, “maybe I could understand this aversion, since they colonized your Korean asses.”
“That is true.”
“But the Namers were colonized by the Japanese too. For a little while. And you already know about the Chinese. For like a thousand years.”
“We were never colonized by the Chinese.”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
Along the aisles we found duck, we found chicken, but we could find no turkey. I felt incensed. I walked up to one of the clerks.
“Where are the turkeys?”
“You mean the Butterballs? They’re in storage. Off-site.”
“What gives?”
“Saving them for Thanksgiving, next month.”
“It is Thanksgiving,” I said. “Our Thanksgiving.”
“It’s not your Thanksgiving, or anyone’s Thanksgiving,” he said.
Before I could reply, Haejin led me out by the arm.
“We should just get a capon,” she said. “It’s a large chicken. The meat will taste just about the same.”
“A capon is not a turkey,” I said. “We made a commitment.”
I kept walking. We scoured the grocery stores, butcher shops, and bodegas of Midtown, walking the wide avenues and criss-crossing the smaller streets. Haejin came with me. At first she was frustrated by my stubbornness, but as we walked, the frustration turned to a practised indifference, and as the hours passed, she and I both succumbed to the enchantment of the city’s skyline. At times our hands brushed and our fingers lingered together, though they never locked. All this walking reminded me of when we had first come to this city a year earlier, together but for separate reasons, me to the law firm, Haejin to pursue her painting while working at galleries. We would wander the streets for hours, without destination, on the vague premise of familiarizing ourselves with the city, knowing with each turn of a corner that this would be an infinite task.
“Haejin,” I said when we stopped by the tall trees of Bryant Park, “are you still thinking about that email?”
One of Haejin’s friends had died a few months earlier, and Haejin had sent out an email about it. I was in a warehouse in Wisconsin on a document review and didn’t respond. I was one of about two dozen recipients, and might have been on the cc line. I didn’t ask about her friend until I was back in New York a couple of weeks later. I was surprised when Haejin blew up at me. You didn’t even bother to ask how I was doing, she said. You sent a mass email, I said. I didn’t want to clog up your inbox with another “So sorry, boo hoo.” He was one of my best friends, she said. Then why didn’t you tell me if you cared about what I thought? I did tell you. No, like personally.
“No,” she said. “Not anymore.”
Daylight turned to evening, and by the time we backtracked our way to Park Avenue, to the Swissôtel, we had been rejected by every store we had walked into.
“Now what?” I said.
“Take a nap. Things will get clearer with some rest.” Haejin followed me to the hotel lobby, then to the elevator banks.
“You’re not following me up to my room, are you?”
“My feet hurt,” she said. “I want to take my shoes off for a bit.”
Haejin took off more than her shoes. Afterwards, we sat in the dark on my bed, and I again asked her to marry me. She said, again, that she would think about it.
Haejin got up and looked out the window. She wouldn’t let me turn on any of the lights, so as not to dilute the skyline. The view faced south.
“I used to look for the Towers,” she said. “Just to get my bearings.”
“So did everyone,” I said. “Just like I did the ski slopes at Grouse Mountain at night.”
“Me too.”
I stood up next to her. I had no idea what time in the night it was when the phone rang. It was the hotel lobby again.
“It’s your wife’s husband,” said the concierge.
“That makes absolutely no sense,” I said. Before I could finish my thought, the phone hung up. I turned on the lights and told Haejin to put on her clothes quick.
Someone was knocking on the door, although there was a buzzer. When I opened it, there was a man my height, but about a third skinnier. He was wearing a red shirt that matched his bloodshot eyes, with an Amoco badge over his heart. He carried on him a strong smell of gasoline.
“Where is my wife?” he said in Vietnamese. I cocked my head, pretending that I did not understand him. Then he said Nga’s name.
“I don’t know where she is,” I said.
“You are her lawyer?” he said, this time in English. “She told me that she hired a lawyer.”
I nodded my head. “Hire is a bit of an overstatement,” I said. “I’m helping her for free.”
He stepped into the room. Then he grabbed me by the arms, lifted me, and pinned me against the wall as though I were a mirror to be hung.
“Where is she?” he said. “You have to let me know where she is.”
“I have no idea,” I said, stunned by being lifted off my feet by a man who was slighter than I was.
“Let him go,” said Haejin, standing behind this man. He ignored her.
“Where are you hiding her?” he said to me. Then he screwed up his eyes and said in Vietnamese: “You’re a Northerner, aren’t you? You have that high nose.”
“Yes,” I said in Vietnamese.
The man bared his teeth and curled his nostrils as if he had just smelled the gasoline off his own skin.
“No,” I said. “I mean, I am Canadian — not that type of Northerner.” Then I switched to English: “I can assure you, I’m not hiding her anywhere. Now please put me down.”
His arms eased and I drifted to the floor. I straightened the collar of the dress shirt I was wearing. He took a deep breath. His eyes were moistening. “Did she tell you she no longer loves me?” I resisted the urge to put my hand on his shoulder to comfort him.
“She didn’t say that,” I said. “I’m sure she still loves you.”
“Then what did she tell you?”
“What she tells me is privileged,” I said. “Most of it, anyway. Well, I can say that she thinks that you’ve been abusive, and that she needs to leave you.”
“Not true!” he said. “Absolutely not true!” He wiped his eyes, then looked at me as if he was suffering some sort of revelation. Then he balled his hand into a fist, took a step back, cocked his fist. I had just enough time to raise my hands to my face.
Then I heard a yell, a low, guttural sound, but it didn’t come from Nga’s husband. Before he did anything to me, Haejin jumped on his back, knocking him forward. He tripped over my shoe and hit his head against the wall. Hard. He lay on the ground motionless, his hands over his head.
&nbs
p; “I have no idea what I just did,” said Haejin. There was blood on the carpet. Nga’s husband had hit his head on a nail in the wall, for a painting that was no longer there.
“Get some ice from the hallway,” I said. “There’s a bucket on the table.”
While Haejin went out to the hallway, Nga’s husband pulled himself up from the floor, a hand on his forehead. Blood was dripping down the side of his face to his shirt.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m okay,” he said. “No problem.”
Haejin came back with the ice and found a first aid kit. Nga’s husband cleaned himself up, and I gave him one of my laundered shirts. The fit was perfect. Then he sat on my bed, put his hands on his knees, and closed his eyes.
“Please, tell me where my wife is,” he said. “I am so worried.”
“He’s not going anywhere until you tell him,” said Haejin.
“I should call security.”
“I think he’s been roughed up enough. Do you have any idea where she is?”
“Even if I did, I’m her lawyer.”
“This has nothing to do with the law,” said Haejin. “It’s his wife. He looks worried sick.”
Haejin at least had one point: if I was to get this man out of my hotel room peaceably, I would have to give him what he wanted.
“I have only one idea,” I told him. I put on my jacket, Haejin put on hers, and we walked out.
The man followed us down to the number 6 train. I took him to the only place that I could think of. By now it was the middle of the night, and New York was a netherworld. We got out at Astor Place to an empty scene, then headed again towards Broadway. You could actually hear the rustle of fallen leaves. Manhattan had disappeared, replaced by a ghost town.
We walked down the same flight of stairs I had walked down earlier that day (or was it the day before?). I was going to tell Nga’s husband that this was where Nga had taken me earlier in the day, that I had no idea where else she would be, and that he could wait here until she returned, whenever that might be. I had expected a metal grate to be drawn over the gallery’s window, like so many shops in New York. The last thing I expected was a light to be on inside.
“Someone’s there,” said Haejin. The glow from the window illuminated her breath.