A Paper Son (14 page)

Doris was at her usual post. “It's empty in there,” she said. “Everybody else is at home, trying to stay dry.”

“I'll only be a second,” I mumbled. “I think I left something.”

She shrugged. “Take your time,” she said.

I stood beneath the awning on the pool deck, my hands jammed into my pockets, listening to the rain hammer on the canvas above me, watching it drum the pool's surface into a thick layer of opaque movement. Inside me fear and attraction arose simultaneously and jostled each other for my attention, so that I fluctuated between a desire to leave and a desire to leap. I chose neither, continuing instead to stare at the water, trying to see through the froth.

Eventually my phone buzzed. A call had gone straight through to voice mail. My sister's message was brief: “Perry, it's Lucy. Fucking call me.” I hit the call button, grateful for the intercession of something familiar. It would be good to have Lucy back in town. I hadn't seen her in probably a year and a half, not since she'd moved to New York with an aspiring chef named Greg who had a pierced eyebrow. She and I didn't speak too often, not because we didn't get along, or didn't have things to say to one another, but because neither of us really put forth much of an effort. She was busy, I assumed; she probably assumed the same thing about me.

As kids we'd played together while our parents worked. Usually we acted out scenarios she invented, cast, and directed. “Okay,” she'd say. “First you'll be the bank teller and I'll be the robber, and then I'll say ‘switch' and then you'll be the bank robber and I'll be the undercover policeman. Got it?” And I'd nod and then we'd act it out, often running through several takes until she was satisfied. I might be a prince one day, a Dalmatian the next, and then maybe a frog. Often my role was to be frozen or paralyzed or turned to stone. Many of the games included a prolonged scene of me being dead. “No, you're still dead,” she'd say, while performing some complex series of wild gestures above me. “What are you doing?” I'd whisper. “You can't talk, you're dead!” she'd say, with a look that told me I was about to ruin any chance I had of being brought back to life. When I got older she allowed me a little input, so I became a bank teller with x-ray vision, or a prince who drove race cars. Even when she became a teenager and got her driver's license she'd still spend time with me. She'd take me to movies, or on late-night runs for french fries and milkshakes. Later I realized it was our father's death as much as anything that had created this closeness—we had a bond and an understanding that neither of us could replicate among our friends. After graduating from high school she had enrolled at Berkeley, so I was still able to see a lot of her, especially after she procured a fake ID for me. Since then, though, she'd been largely migratory, and spending time with her had taken on a fleeting quality, like seeing trees bloom, like watching the Olympics.

She picked up in the middle of the second ring. “Peregrine, what the hell?” she said. “I've been trying to get a hold of you for days now.”

“You have?”

“You haven't gotten my messages?”

“I got the one today.”

“What about the others?”

“I don't know. Maybe one. Things have been kind of weird here. Sorry—I've been meaning to call.”

“What's weird?”

“What?”

“You said things have been weird. What's weird?”

“Well, there's this storm. More hectic than weird, I guess.”

“You said weird. Weird isn't the same as hectic.”

“So Mom said you're coming home for a bit?”

“Christ, Peregrine, what's with you?”

“Me? What's with you? You sound like you're freaking out a little bit.”

“Shit, Perry, you don't even know the half of it. Things here are weird as can be, believe me. I can't wait to get the hell out of this city.”

“What happened? Mom mentioned something, but I don't . . . .”

“Perry, I got fired again! I got fucking canned! Can you believe that?”

I could indeed believe it. It wasn't the first time, or the second, or even the third. The reported reasons varied, but they all basically amounted to the same thing: apathy. Failing to show up, chronic tardiness, rudeness. And I knew she didn't care much about the job she had held for the last few months, at the front desk of a plastic surgeon's clinic in Manhattan. I couldn't understand it. She was smart, and she could have done anything she wanted to—if there was such a thing. She'd had probably twenty different jobs in the last ten years, in twenty different fields.

“You're kidding,” I said. “How come?”

“I'll tell you later,” she said. “It's a long and sordid tale.” She sounded a little out of breath, like she was walking somewhere, fast. From around her the sounds of the city seeped through the phone line—traffic, car horns, a blaring radio. “So what's been going on in good ol' San Fran?” she asked. “Man, I can't wait to get out there. It's going to be like a vacation in the countryside after this goddamn place.”

“Not much,” I said. “What happened with Greg?”

“We broke up a couple of months ago,” she said. “He revealed himself to be a colossal prick. So listen. Can I stay with you? Mom says she doesn't have any room.”

“Sure,” I said. “It might be a little crowded though.”

“How's that? You got somebody else staying there?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact . . . .”

“What, like a girl?” She sounded excited.

“No. A lady.”

“Oh, well ex-cuse me. A lady? What is she, a goddamn duchess or something?”

“No, she's kind of old. It's a long story.”

“You got an old lady roommate?”

“It's a long story.”

“An old lady fetish?”

“Yes,” I said. “That's it. I guess it's not a long story after all.”

“Whatever,” she said. “All I need is some floor space and occasional access to a shitter. So listen, I'll be there on Thursday. This Thursday. Two days hence. Can you come get me at the airport?”

“I'm a teacher, remember?” I said. “Thursdays are usually school days.”

“I'm aware of your strenuous schedule,” she said. “I get in at six or seven o'clock, I don't remember exactly. I'll let you know later, I gotta run. Sleep tight now.”

She made a kissing sound and hung up. I pocketed my phone, took a final look at the pool, and headed for the door.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Doris asked me on my way out.

“No,” I said.

Li-Yu and Henry grow accustomed to the walk to Jianghai. At first, Rose accompanies them each day, but the following week she asks to remain at home, and by the end of the next month she is a rare companion on their trips. Li-Yu misses her company but reminds herself how important it is for Rose to find ways to sustain herself. She turns her attention to the walk with Henry. The hill that once left them short of breath seems to shorten, and they devise games to play along the way. They find faces in the bark of the trees along the ridge, and give them names, and devise stories to explain why one looks upset, and another happy, another frightened. They watch tiny wildflowers emerge from the grass and they notice when leaves appear on the branches. They begin to recognize the habits and patterns of the people of Jianghai—an old man who is always walking down the same alley, a woman with three missing teeth who always watches the street through her front window. Li-Yu drops Henry off, hurries back to Xinhui for the middle of the day, and then hurries back to pick him up, snacks hidden in her pockets. They walk slowly on their return to Xinhui. Henry tells her about his day in class, and Li-Yu tells him about her day at home with Rose.

The days grow longer and warmer and the hills flush bright green with grasses, which release their fragrance as the sun's heat steams the dew away. The rice seedlings in the planting beds reach knee height and the men of the house begin to talk about the task of sowing. A new sense of purpose falls over the village of Xinhui. The men unhook their plows from the water buffaloes and replace them with logs, which they drag sideways across the fields, smoothing out the bumps and filling the depressions.

“You have no idea how your back will hurt,” Mae says to Rose one afternoon. Li-Yu hears this from around the hallway corner, just as she is about to enter. “Everybody with big feet like yours has to work all day long, and then it is all you can do to make it home to bed, only to rise and do it all again the next day.” Li-Yu flushes with anger, and has to take a moment to compose herself before she can continue into the room.

“Do you know why Mae said you have big feet?” Li-Yu asks her daughter that night, when they are in their room, in bed. Beyond their whispers and Henry's soft breathing, all is quiet.

“Yes,” Rose says.

“So you know you don't have big feet?” Li-Yu says.

“Yes,” Rose says. There is a silence, and then Rose asks, “Why does she hate me?”

“She doesn't,” Li-Yu says. “Some people are just unhappy.”

“Well, I hate her,” Rose says.

“Enough,” Li-Yu says. “Come with me to take Henry to school tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“I'll tell you later, after we drop Henry off.”

The next morning, when her children are eating in the kitchen, Li-Yu darts back into their room and stretches across her bed. She reaches down beneath the bed frame and back up into a small hollow in the structure, where her fingers find a piece of fabric. She listens for sounds in the house, and then pulls the sock free. The coins hidden inside it rattle together but she closes the bundle in her hand and squeezes it, and listens again. She quickly pulls two coins from the sock, and then a third, and then returns the stash to its hiding place. She hides the coins in separate places inside her clothing, tight against her waist, and returns to the kitchen.

“Okay,” Rose says, once she and Li-Yu have kissed Henry and watched him walk through the school's gates. “Why did you want me to come?”

“Close your eyes,” Li-Yu says, “and turn around. No peeking.”

Rose complies, and Li-Yu extracts the coins. “Now, keeping your eyes closed, turn back around and open your hand.” Rose's eyes snap open when she feels the metal in her palm, and Li-Yu has to stifle a laugh.

“Where . . .” Rose begins, but Li-Yu holds a finger to her lips, and then she takes her daughter's hand and leads her into the center of Jianghai. All night she struggled with the question of what she should tell Rose about the coins. Back home in California she never imagined that she might have to steal, but she feels no shame about it. The growing sock beneath her bed is the result of her patience and vigilance, and she is proud of it. She would love to tell Rose the true origin of the coins—dropped by one of the men during a drunken mahjong game, perhaps, or left on the table for just a few minutes by one of the maids after a shopping trip—and she promises herself that on the day they sail from China she will announce to both her children that their escape was financed by her willingness to lie, to cheat, to steal, to do anything that might bring them back home. But Rose can't know this yet. It will give her a glimmer of hope, and a glimmer would be too much. And while Li-Yu does not allow herself to fear the possibility of failure, she understands that this endeavor might take a very long time.

She doesn't know how much the passage back to California will cost for the three of them, but she knows where the money is kept in the house. When the maids are sent out to buy things, or when they return with change, Mae presides over their transactions with a red silk purse, which ties closed with a braided gold cord. The purse she keeps locked in a heavy lacquered cabinet of open woodwork in her bedroom. Mae doesn't know how much is in the purse. Li-Yu has seen her drop handfuls of coins into it without counting, and she has seen her hand money to the maids without keeping track of how much change she is due. There must be a good amount in the purse, Li-Yu figures. When Mae shifts the purse in her hands the coins make a sound like a small rainstorm.

Mae almost never leaves the house, but one day Li-Yu returned from taking Henry to school and found Mae had gone to visit a sick cousin. The men were in the fields, the maids in town. She sent Rose out on an invented errand and walked quietly into the front room, where she sat down and listened. When she was sure the house was empty she waited another ten minutes, and then another five, and then, with her heart thudding, she slipped into the back of the house and into Mae's room. She went straight to the cabinet and stood before it. It was taller than she, its wood dark and heavy. Through the open spaces of the cabinet's woodwork she could see the red purse, in the middle of the center shelf, red and round like a heart. She tugged at the cabinet door but it barely shook in its frame, and the lock made no sound. She orbited the cabinet, testing joints with her hands, feeling for weaknesses. There were none. She leaned into it and it seemed to push back. With a running start, she figured she might be able to move it a few inches. She sat down on the floor, crossed her legs, and frowned at it for several minutes before rising and slipping from the room.