If You Lived Here (28 page)
Mrs. Huyen translates. The officials huddle together, discussing this new information. My mind races from one lie to the next. “He really wants our son,” I say.
They tell me that I’ll have to wait.
I tell another lie, and this is the one that will break me. “He might be out of town for months.” Even the other Americans gaze at me in disbelief. There’s something in my tone—I hear it, too—that sounds deceitful. The room is silent now. Everybody stares.
The officials confer again. I stand there gripping Hai Au while these six people decide our fate. Mrs. Huyen leans over the central table. Hai Au sticks his nose in my hair and smells me. I hold him so close. At some point, Mai squeezes my hand. She can understand what they’re saying to each other, but I don’t ask for a translation. The details aren’t relevant.
When the vice-director closes my file on the table in front of him, I’m already hopeless, but I make myself sound determined. “Mrs. Huyen,” I ask. I want to say, “Mrs. Huyen, did you fight for me?” but I don’t. “Mrs. Huyen.” That’s all I say.
She turns around and walks over to me and Hai Au. “They’ve begun to feel suspicious,” she says, taking off her glasses. Her voice drops a notch. “Lately, there have been allegations of corruption, even baby buying. The officials want to do everything
aboveboard
. After all, these are documents of international law.” It galls me that she’s defending them.
“Nobody ever told me about power of attorney,” I remind her.
Mrs. Huyen’s eyes close and then she opens them again, searching the ceiling. “This is the first time I’ve had such a problem,” she murmurs, as if I care. Mai, in the quietest voice you can imagine, says something in Vietnamese that makes Mrs. Huyen wince.
“What do I need to do?” I ask again.
Now Mrs. Huyen looks at me. “They want proof of the validity of this adoption.” She puts a hand on my arm, forcing her voice to brighten: “Don’t worry!”
Somehow—I don’t know how—Hai Au ends up in Minh’s arms. “Make sure he eats!” I cry. “Make sure you feed him.” My baby looks back at me and begins to scream. Dr. Thuy hustles the two of them out the door. For so many years, I suffered from wanting a child. Now begins the suffering of losing one.
Once, Martin and I took Theo and Abe to Myrtle Beach for the weekend. They were adolescents then, maybe twelve and thirteen. We spent the day swimming and, after dinner, the boys begged to take a walk alone. I could see the indecision in Martin’s eyes. He knew they needed freedom from his worries, but he couldn’t bear it. Frustrated with his anxieties, I argued for the boys. What could be wrong with a walk on the beach? They promised not to swim.
Two hours later, Abe came back alone, crying. They’d met some high school girls from Raleigh and Theo had disappeared with one of them.
Abe ran up and down the beach and all through the hotel, calling Theo’s name, but he hadn’t found him. Martin put his shoes on, instructing me to wait in the room in case Theo returned. “Call the police if I’m not back in half an hour,” he told me. He did everything right, but the expression on his face, a mixture of terror and resignation, made me realize that Martin believed his son was dead already. I felt guilty for having supported the boys, but I also thought Martin was overreacting. Why couldn’t he relax? Why couldn’t he understand that such things happen, that Theo could be irresponsible and also still be alive? Luckily, Abe, sobbing on the bed, didn’t see how scared his father was.
The sheriff’s deputy arrived about twenty minutes later. He was short, bald, suspicious. He looked at me and Abe. “Did you lose a boy?” he asked.
I nodded, taking Abe’s hand. For that brief moment, I did imagine Theo’s skinny body floating in the water. “Did you find him?”
“Ma’am.” The deputy sighed. “You gotta keep track of your children.” I got angry then. “Do you have to torture us?”
He turned to peer down the hotel hallway. “Okay, boy, come on.” Theo appeared from around the corner, his hair wild, his clothes covered with sand, looking scared and sheepish. “We found him with a girl on the dunes,” the sheriff said. “In a state of ill-repute.”
Abe looked at his brother. “You asshole,” he said.
In our family history, the “Myrtle Beach incident” took on different meanings for each of us. Theo saw it as the night he scored. Abe saw it as the night his little brother surpassed him. Martin saw it as a terrifying reminder—as if he needed it—of the fragility of human life. And I saw it as confirmation that my husband and I perceived our world in different ways. Why couldn’t he be more optimistic?
I’m starting to come around. None of us has any rights here.
Sometime in the night, I lie awake with my eyes closed, wishing for morning. If I open my eyes and see darkness, that’s one more disappointment, so I keep them shut while I wait for the dawn, wait for the phone to ring.
It took hours, and long meetings behind closed doors, before Mrs. Huyen emerged with their decision. Martin has to come. She informed me that she had convinced the officials not to cancel the adoption altogether. She grinned, wanting credit for her victory, for our success. But what do I have to be thankful for? A stay of execution, merely. A newly signed power of attorney will not suffice, even if I could convince Martin to sign it. They don’t want that. They want Martin here, to prove himself a real, live, enthusiastic future father. At stake, Mrs. Huyen explains, is the legitimacy of Vietnamese adoption. Get it? But, she tells me, they will wait, and she will do what she can to get them to change their minds.
Last night, when it was nine
A
.
M
. at home, I phoned Martin at the office. Rita promised that he’d call back as soon as he could.
“What time is it over there?” she yelled.
“I can hear you fine,” I said. “It’s eight
P
.
M
. Eleven hours different.” She chuckled. “Never thought I’d be chatting on the phone to someone in Vietnam.” Veet-Nam. Rhymes with “ham.”
I wouldn’t have called it “chatting” exactly. “Can you have Martin call me?” I asked.
“Sure, sweetie. He’s got two gravesides, then a viewing at five. I’ll get him to call before the viewing.” But she’s only a receptionist. She could give me Martin’s schedule, but she can’t make him call.
At this point, I could lose my mind completely. I tell myself that it’s too early for that. Or too late. Someday, when Hai Au is ten or twelve, I will tell him the story of how they almost didn’t let me have him. No. That might scare him. I’ll wait until he grows up. I’ll wait until he’s visiting me in the nursing home. My grandchildren, cheeks sticky from lollipops, will have dashed into the hallway to marvel at the Christmas tree, and I will pull Hai Au toward me and whisper in his ear. I will tell him about the close call, about how I would have slung him across my back and escaped with him over the mountains into Laos, about how, thank God, it never came to that. That’s what I’ll tell him. It never came to that.
The phone rings. Mai stirs. I hurry to the phone and sit on the chair beside it. “Hello?”
“Shelley?”
The sound of his voice gives me the sharpest pang of joy. “Hi!” Then, remembering the state of things, I shift to something sober. “Thanks for calling.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. I mean, I’m fine. But no. It’s not really fine.” Mai turns to look at me in the darkness, rubbing her eyes. “I don’t even know how to put this. I found out yesterday that I’ve got a problem with my documentation.”
“What is it?”
“I need your help.”
“What is it?” I imagine him staring out the window, on to Market Street, his eyes guarded.
“They won’t let me adopt the baby unless you come and sign the papers.”
I wish that I could hear him breathing. Something. But I hear nothing.
Finally, he says, “I can’t do it, Shelley. You know that.”
Between us lies the failure of our marriage. But doesn’t he remember all the happiness we brought each other, too? Don’t we have any goodwill left between us? “Yeah. I know. But I need your help. It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you. Just adopt him from Vietnam. You won’t have to readopt in the U.S. Just for the Vietnam part. It means nothing. Please.” I’m trying to sound reasonable, but he knows that I’m desperate.
“No.” One single syllable. A steel wall. Not a single speck of light shines through.
“Can you think about it for a few days?”
“No. I’ve got to go now, Shelley.” Sometime later, I will recall a sound of pain—raspy and broken, like someone choking—but nothing registers now.
“Okay,” I tell him, and because I don’t want to hear the phone click off on his end, I rush to hang it up on mine.
n the first
night after the debacle of the G and R, I threatened Mrs. Huyen. Shelley lay in bed upstairs. The other Americans
with other children were finalizing their adoptions at the U.S. embassy and getting ready to fly home. I cornered Mrs. Huyen in the lobby. At first, she tried to wiggle out of any responsibility for Shelley’s problems. She argued that Shelley’s agency had made the mistake and that Shelley’s agency should fix it. I told her that she was responsible for supplying Vietnamese bureaucratic information to the agencies in the States, so she shared responsibility. In case that didn’t convince her, I mentioned that I know an official at the Vietnamese embassy in Washington, D.C. If she didn’t help Shelley, I told her, I would put her out of business. Of course, I’m not actually so well-connected. But she doesn’t have to know the truth.
As time passes, I know that Mrs. Huyen would rather be rid of us, but my threat has made her eager to help.
The possibility of Martin flying over quickly receded into hopeless fantasy and, since then, it’s all I can do to get Shelley out of bed. She
moves slowly, like someone old or sick. I squint at myself in the mirror, put on lipstick, brush my hair. I look hopeful, chipper. I am firm as well. I say, “If you gonna give up, then go home right now. I’ll change your ticket myself.”
She stares at me, one hand on a sandal she hasn’t managed to get on her foot. She’s never seen me angry before, and so she listens.
“You ready to leave that child in Vietnam?” I ask.
She looks at me, her eyes wide and sorrowful. “I don’t have any choice.”
I laugh. “Sure you have a choice,” I tell her. I put my hands on my hips. I say, “Fight.”
Downstairs, Tri hands us a note from Mrs. Huyen: Dear Shelley,
I have been awake all night worrying about your predicament. Today, I will make appointments with three officials whom, I believe, can advance our cause. We will meet with them tomorrow. This morning, Mr. Lap will pick you up at nine
A.M.
and take you to spend the day at the orphanage with Hai Au. The officials have given you open access to the boy and Dr. Thuy is anxious to make sure that you two continue to see each other.
With especially warm regards, Nguyen Thi Huyen
Executive Director International Family Vietnam
Shelley seems pleased to know that Mrs. Huyen has not given up, but nothing cheers her like the fact that she can see Hai Au. Her face comes alive again. “Let’s go eat!” she says, grabbing my hand and pulling me out the door. She seems relieved, too, to have an excuse to feel better. Shelley can live with anxiety, but not with despair.
We head toward the same café where we ate breakfast our first morning. It’s hot, hotter than Wilmington even. We pass an open door and I catch the scent of bamboo shoots stewing in broth. I have no logical rea-son to feel happy, but I do.
“Since when did you use lipstick?” Shelley asks.
“Since I saw Hanoi ladies my age looking younger and prettier than I do.”
“Since you saw all the cute guys over here.”
I’m surprised that she’s noticed. “Since I live in the States and I’m supposed to look beautiful.”
Shelley pauses at a shop and leans over to examine a pair of child’s shoes with a mouse face on the toe. The shop owner picks one up and presses the heel, demonstrating for Shelley how, when the child walks, the slippers will squeal. Shelley laughs. She squeezes the heel herself, then buys two pairs. “One for Hai Au now,” she explains, “and one for when he’s bigger.” Fake hope is better than no hope at all.