All That Matters (41 page)

“I want to kill you,” I said. “It was your turn not to tell me anything, goddamn it. You tell me this now, and you’re fuckin’ leaving for the army! And you’ll get fuckin’ killed! Great! What does that solve?”

“Whatever happens to me, wherever I go, I want you to know, you’re the only friend I count on. And I … I …”

He roughly felt his chin. As far as I was concerned, I hadn’t drilled him half as hard as I had wanted to. I wanted him just to piss off and leave me alone, but I couldn’t say anything like that. And I could sense he wanted to leave, too, but hung on. Like a couple of stunned fighters at rest, we both sat down on the porch steps.

We avoided looking at each other and stared across the street at Mrs. Lim’s old shack. She was outside, shaking out a large floor rug. She waved to us. I waved back. Meiying came out and took one end of the heavy rug and shook it with Mrs. Lim.

“Love is funny, isn’t it?” Jack started to say. “Meiying is thrown away by her real mother and someone crazy like Mrs. Lim takes her in. Remember when you told me her story, how I laughed and said that was stupid? I think we were ten years old then, and I thought only her real mother could love Meiying. Then you told me about Jung-Sum coming into your family. ‘We take care of our own kind,’ you said. I think your stepmother told you that. Remember? I thought about that for weeks.”

The April afternoon was warm, and everything was green and blooming and Jack kept talking. “She came to find me down in the morgue that afternoon. I don’t think she planned to take me on like that, believe me. And I was easy. Didn’t mind one bit. She said she was curious about making love with me. Something she had
fantasized about. ‘A white boy,’ she said. Just once. Like that was the only reason. She didn’t want anything else from me.”

“Then I showed up.”

“You showed up, it turns out, and that’s when Jenny pushed me away. That shove jolted me. Then something inside me made me think of you—you were my only and best friend, Kiam. We grew up together. I thought of what I was doing with your girl, and I felt sick.”

“And Jenny?”

“She fixed her dress. Asked me if her hair was messed up, and she left.”

I swallowed. It was a bitter taste, like the tea that Poh-Poh and Mrs. Lim used to share. “Bitter life, bitter tea,” they would say. But something told me Jack was telling me everything as he understood it.

“The thing is, after Jenny left, I wanted her so badly. No, not just the way you’re thinking. All the times we ever met, she was the only girl that got me interested in talking and battling back with her. But I know now that whatever may have started is over. And so here I am, talking to you. Then I go home and tell my mother I’m leaving her. Unfinished business.”

“Wait until graduation. That’s all they want you to do. Just wait.”

“Waste of time. I’ve got to go, Kiam. Everything’s getting to me. I’m going to let the army tell me what to do. When to eat. When to sleep. When to march and when to shit.”

“Look, Jack, I’m— No, I—”

We both smiled at my stumbling. All the talk had been about the truth, and it had mattered.

“Don’t say anything, Kiam. This is just the way things are. Jenny loves you. You’re the only one for her.”

“Does Jenny know you’re leaving?”

“I’m counting on you to give her the news. Will you?”

We hadn’t noticed that Meiying was standing below on the sidewalk, waiting to get our attention.

“Can you help us put a rug down?” she said. “We’re having trouble.”

Jack and I looked at each other. The bastard’s jaw was turning a little purple. We got up, brushed off our pants and went with Meiying into Mrs. Lim’s cramped front room. The few pieces of furniture were outside on the porch. The rug was a heavy one, but she wanted it to lie flat on the floor, even though it was too big. And it had been too big all the years she had it.

She handed Jack a knife. “Cut, please,” she said.

Meiying explained to us what Mrs. Lim wanted done. Jack stabbed the blade into one end of the oversized rug. I held it up at an angle so he could slice as cleanly and as straight as possible. When the job was finished, the rug fell down flat. Perfectly. Mrs. Lim pointed to the boiling pot and a platter of savouries she had been making. Jack made a face, the same face he always made when he smelled Poh-Poh’s garlicky cooking coming through our windows. He suddenly looked like the kid I grew up with, all tousled blond hair and blue eyes. I was waiting for him
to tell me how Chinese people eat all kinds of things that crawl.

“They do, you know,” he once said to me. “I read it in a book. And my mother says so.”

Mrs. Lim could see that Jack would not be touching any of her wonderful cooking. The black-bean sauce and the fermented soybean cakes were already causing him to wrinkle up his nose. He clearly just wanted to get out of there. We both laughed.

“Tea,” Mrs. Lim said to Jack. “Drink goot tea.”

And we were gone.

That night, in Third Uncle’s warehouse office, I phoned Jenny.

“Jack’s leaving in a few days. He’s quit school and he’s going to Winnipeg to join up. He wants to do his share.”

“I know. Moira told me in the store tonight. She’d just seen Jack and her eyes were red.”

I looked at the piles of account books on the desk, and then out the huge windows overlooking False Creek. The trains were pulling in long lines of freight cars, and they seemed like those fabled creatures Poh-Poh used to tell me about.

“Jack told me everything, Jenny.” I let that sink in a moment. I needed time to reflect. Yet I wanted desperately to know that something was sure, beyond illusion. After a long pause, I could hear Jenny crying.

“I want to be with you, Kiam. Only you. Please understand.”

I did. But it wasn’t in me to let her know that I understood.

“Look,” I said, “someone wants to use the phone. I’ll see you on the weekend.”

I hung up.

I thought of a story I’d read, a Greek myth about a warrior who raised his knife in the air to kill this woman for revenge, and the woman, whom he had never met, looked up at him, and their eyes met, and in that second, the murderer fell in love. When the two were in the library, who was the murderer, and who the victim? I could not guess, but I felt as if I were the knife plunging down, and they looked at each other, and love happened.

I wanted things to be as they had been. What truths were being told between us, what I could understand of them, I did not think should take away everything that I found impossible to surrender. No, I did not want to surrender what was still good and decent among us. However unfair and unjustified things might appear to a stranger who was only skimming the surface of our lives, even the lives of strangers, I felt, should never be quickly judged. And not one of us were strangers.

When I got home, Liang handed me a note from Jack.

“Did you hit him?” she asked. “He looked like somebody really socked him one.”

The note was brief and was headlined with a sombre title: “
LAST REQUEST.”

He said was leaving on the weekend, but just this once, he wondered if I would ask him over for dinner with my family.

“My mother’s fed you plenty of hot dogs at my place, pal,” he wrote. “Let me know. Just me and your family. Okay? I want to make sure I have the guts to swallow anything thrown at me before I go off to wrestle some Nazis with my bare hands in a shit-hole trench. Like my father did in the last war.”

“But he hates Chinese food,” Stepmother said, her Chinese words snapping to life. “Poh-Poh used to say, ‘The brat make pig noise, puking and farting noise.’ ”

“Are you kidding?” Jung said. He laughed at the idea that O’Connor would even sit near our everyday food.

“Will he really puke?” Sekky asked, excitement in his eyes.

I explained that he was only a boy then. And Jack didn’t think he would be coming back to Vancouver after the war was over. Plus, he was my friend.

Stepmother sat back in her chair. She had been studying me. “I make something only for Jack to eat,” she said. “I know what he like.”

Father objected. “He eat what we eat.”

“Yes,” said Stepmother. “But I make for him special dish.”

The next day, Jack knocked at the door, right on time. And with a bunch of his mother’s flowers in his hand.

For the first time in the almost fifteen years we had lived as neighbours, he walked into our front hall. I noticed all our coats were neatly hung up. I led Jack
through the parlour, which Liang and Jung had swept and tidied up. Stepmother arranged the long-stemmed flowers in one of Poh-Poh’s favourite vases, the one with the dragon crest. I put the vase on a corner of Father’s desk.

The table was set. A red tablecloth, for luck, covered the round oak surface. Two dishes were set out already, steaming. But others were waiting to arrive.

Stepmother said, “Sit here.”

Jung pulled out Jack’s chair. His place at the table was obvious. A metal soup spoon, a metal knife, and a metal fork surrounded a large empty plate, just like in a western-style restaurant. Finally, one after another, the dishes arrived. But the special dish that Stepmother had promised to make for Jack would, of course, come last.

Sekky grabbed his chopsticks, and Jack asked if he could try them. He did, expertly. He had obviously been practising.

“Kiam, would you ask if I could have some chopsticks, too?”

I translated the request. Stepmother looked disconcerted, but Father said, “Of course, of course,” and quickly the metal “weapons” were removed and a set of chopsticks was laid across Jack’s plate. They were Poh-Poh’s special ones, carved from ivory.

“Good friend,” Stepmother said with a smile. “Get best.”

Then she went out to the kitchen and we all waited for the special dish for Jack. We listened to the quick chopping rhythm of the cleaver. Finally, Stepmother
proudly carried in the special dish and set it down before Jack.

The whites of his eyes widened.

A complete whole-wheat peanut butter sandwich sat majestically in front of him. It was perfectly sliced into bite-sized cubes, for the use of chopsticks. Two hot dogs tucked in bread rolls had also been chopped into two-inch segments, each part held together with toothpicks. The thick pieces rolled against each other.

“No, no,” said Stepmother. “One wait!”

She came back. A new bottle of Heinz ketchup was presented to our guest of honour.

“Oh,” Jack said. “You really shouldn’t have.”

“Eat,” Father said.

“Father.” I smiled. “Perhaps Jack wants to say a prayer first. That’s what he does at his house.”

Jack gave me a look. “No, that’s okay.”

“Pray! Pray!” Sekky said. “That’s good luck!”

Everyone stared at the guest. The cornered look that those blue eyes gave me began to melt away. He bowed his head, but the words he spoke for those few seconds we could not hear. Then we heard, “Amen.”

Liang and Jung said, “All Men,” as they did at morning prayer at Strathcona.

Jack picked up his chopsticks and offered Liang the first piece of hot dog. He saw my look of surprise.

“Moira,” he said. “She knows about Chinese etiquette.”

I lifted up the best piece of steamed chicken and offered it to Jack. Stepmother began spooning the golden chicken broth into his soup bowl. Father told
me to bring Jack his own rice bowl and a porcelain Chinese spoon.

“You come back safe,” Father said to Jack, carefully enunciating his best English.

Jung-Sum handed me the note that Mr. O’Connor had left for me.

The Grenadiers came into Vancouver to board the reinforced freighter
Awateau
, and Jack managed to slip away from the station and taxi home to say goodbye to his mother and father.

There was a loud rap on our front door. Liang got there first. She waited for Jenny and me to stand behind her before she would open it. Jung and Sekky came halfway down the stairs and stopped for their bird’s-eye view. Sekky had one of his tanks in his hand, ready to storm down the wooden rail and attack. I nodded for Liang to open the door.

It was noon, there were clouds in the October sky, but the light was bright enough to silhouette the tall, gallant figure standing on our porch.

“The Chen family, I presume, and the lovely Miss Jenny Chong,” said Jack, and gave a heel-snapping salute.

“You look,” I said, “like you belong in that outfit, Jack.”

Sekky raced down the stairs with his tank. “Jack, do you get to drive one of these?”

“Not yet,” said Jack. He raised his fists at Jung. “But I get to box a round or two, how about that?”

“Show me!” Sekky said. Jack kept his dukes up. Sekky attacked with his metal tank.

“Hey,” I called, “how about you all leaving Jenny and Jack and me by ourselves for a few minutes?”

The three resisted for a moment, wanting to take in the shiny boots, the thick lapels, the brass buttons … and the man that was now the Winnipeg Grenadier Jack. Then one by one, they left us alone.

We sat ourselves down in the parlour.

“So how are things?” I asked. “The training go well?”

“Fast and furious, Kiam. But there’s been more damn marching than shooting.”

Jenny asked him how he was, and I watched him answer her as if nothing had ever gone on between them. With his blond hair shorn, he looked older than his eighteen years. I had just turned eighteen myself, was attending Western Commerce, preparing for my future. But unlike the soldier in front of me, I still wondered where my duty lay.

“Should I be there too, Jack?”

“No, don’t even bother signing up,” he said. “I’ll be back by Christmas. You won’t even get your turn.”

But Jack had been too ready with his answers. He looked at his watch. “The taxi’s waiting outside.”

Jenny said, “What aren’t you telling us, Jack?”

He sat up, pushed back his shoulders. “Not enough training for the most recent ones of us that joined up.” His jocular manner had disappeared. “We’re being pushed into this fight without enough thinking from the top. At stops during the night, some of the guys just hop off the train and disappear.” He slammed his fist into his palm.
“Gone!
Just like that. I counted at least a dozen of them. But I believe in defending King and Country. And I haven’t got any excuse not to be in this uniform.”