If You Lived Here (41 page)

t eleven
-
fifteen, I
try to slip in without being noticed, but Tri spots me coming in through the front door. “
Ch
Þ ê
i!
” he calls—

Hey, Older Sister! He’s completely abandoned whatever formality he once reserved for communication between himself and me.

“What?” I support myself against the empty reception desk while he charges toward me. “I need to go to bed,” I tell him.

He moves like Maury Povitch—hearty and sly at the same time— nudging me toward some unexpected drama in the back lobby. “Come see!”

In the back lounge, a Western man gets up from the couch. A game of Monopoly sits half completed on the cushion beside him. “Hi, Mai,” he says, waving almost shyly, “I’m Martin.”

I’ve only seen him twice—once at a long ago funeral, but I don’t remember him at all, and once sitting on the sidewalk in front of my store, when I didn’t see his face. I can’t have expected to recognize him, but I also shouldn’t feel so shocked that he is here. Ever since we lost Hai Au, I have constantly hoped for his arrival. Now that he’s arrived, though, I feel

completely unprepared. For one thing, I never actually expected him to come. But, also, the timing compounds the surprise. My day has been so strange and miraculous that, I realize now, I’ve forgotten Shelley’s predicament completely. Suddenly, I feel as if I have to shake myself awake again.

I run my fingers through my hair, which could stand to be brushed. “You came,” I tell him.

He holds up his hands and stares at them as if he can’t believe it himself. “Apparently so.” He laughs. He looks dazed, but sort of pleased as well, like someone who has just realized that the oddest things can hap-pen. For a moment, we simply stare at each other, sheepishly, but frankly, too. I feel like I’m glimpsing the face of someone I have heard on the radio for months. Now that I actually see what Martin looks like, I realize that I had unconsciously conjured up in my head a particular image of him: the dour face of the farmer in the painting
American Gothic,
which my teachers at Hanoi University showed us as a demonstration of the severity of the American people. Martin doesn’t look like that at all. He’s younger, for one thing, with considerably more hair. He has a round and pleasing face, a wry smile, and eyes that don’t seem to miss a thing.

Tri puts his hand on the Monopoly board, uncertain if the game will continue. “Later,” he asks, “I can whip your butt, sir?”

Martin grins, then looks at me. “Did you teach him that?”

I shake my head. “A lot of Americans come through here,” I explain, then tell Tri in Vietnamese, “Watch it with the slang.”

The young man nods enthusiastically, grateful for another mini les-son, then puts away the game. “Please, Older Sister, take a seat,” he says, returning to his version of textbook English.

I perch on the couch next to Martin, who is the first person I would choose to have come here, of course, but not the first I would choose to converse with right this minute. “We didn’t expect you,” I say.

He shrugs. “How could I
not
come?”

“Still.” Shelley told me the story of his time here. I want him to know that I recognize what it’s cost him to come.

“Still,” he admits.

Tri settles down at the computer and soon the whirs and pops and

zings of some battle for the universe blast through the room. I look at Martin. “Did you see Shelley?” I ask.

He nods. “A few hours ago. She’s happy,” he says, as if it’s as simple as that. I pick up my purse. I’d like to get upstairs to check on her myself, but Martin looks at his watch. “Eleven-thirty. The time has absolutely no meaning for me now. You want to take a walk or something?”

No. “Okay.”

“Maybe we can get something to eat.”

We walk around the corner to No Noodles, a trendy little restaurant that attracts foreigners with its international ambience and cold German beer. Even at this hour, a certain subset of young Hanoians demonstrate their determination to forge some kind of nightlife here. We find a table near the bar and Martin glances through the menu, then orders a tan-doori chicken sandwich and a Heineken for each of us.

“How’s it been for you, being back?” he asks. “Great and terrible,” I tell him.

He nods. “I can understand that.” Around us, groups of well-dressed young people fill the restaurant, Vietnamese and foreigners, many of them in mixed groups, speaking English, French, German, and Vietnamese. “I didn’t expect it to be so convivial here.”

He’s the first person, I realize, who might understand the feeling I’ve had since I came back to Vietnam. I lean across the table toward him. “It’s like a different country,” I explain. “Another country with the same name.”

He nods, then smiles. “I guess I’m a little relieved.” He sets his elbows on the table, massages his chin with a hand. “You get a picture in your head, you know? Some weird mix of memory and nightmare.” His eyes settle on a boisterous table of Vietnamese yuppies. He stares as if there’s something supernatural about it. “I was just playing Monopoly with a boy whose parents might have tried to blow me up.”

“That true.”

He shakes his head. “It’s a little hard to absorb.” “You look pretty satisfied,” I point out.

He shrugs. “It’s not what I expected. I guess it’s kind of invigorating, actually.”

“Shelley told me what happened to you here.”

He doesn’t take his eyes off the Vietnamese. “A lot of people went through bad stuff.”

“That don’t change it,” I tell him. “Maybe not,” he says and shrugs.

The waitress brings his sandwich and sets a beer in front of each of us. Martin takes a bite of the sandwich and then begins to devour it. “I’m starving,” he says. “I had no idea.”

I laugh. He motions to the waitress to bring him another sandwich. “It’s jet lag,” I tell him. “You a mess.” He looks at me, smiles, keeps eat-ing. I feel a wave of joy pass through me. One part of me relaxes in this chair. Another part hangs back, cowering in the corner, amazed that I could sit at this table with some American I don’t even know, chatting as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. This is the kind of life that you see on TV: busy, complicated, painful, stressful, happy, too. It bears no relation whatsoever to the life of the woman who runs the Good Luck Asian Grocery in a town in North Carolina on the other side of the world. I take a sip of the cool, bitter beer. “You done a wonderful thing for Shelley,” I tell him. “I know she so happy now.”

He settles back in his chair, his plate empty, waiting for the next sandwich to arrive. He looks at me. “You understand her pretty well, don’t you?” he says.

“Maybe. I like her. I learn from her.”

He nods, his fingers idly playing with his can of beer. “I’ve learned from her, too. I’ve always loved her determination. That’s how she got this baby, you know. It’s not because I came here. It’s because she never gives up. I remember how, when we first got married, she decided she’d go into the business with me. It seemed crazy. A history major going to mortuary school—she hadn’t planned that for her life, and I didn’t need her to do it. But she insisted. The first time she came with me on a removal—an old man had died alone in Pender County—the decomposition was severe and she had to run out into the woods to throw up. Later, in those first few years, she often came home from funerals in tears. She wasn’t depressed—actually, we were really happy then—but she got sad

a lot. She acted like a person who spent her days watching tragic movies. I made some shifts in scheduling, gave her the easier cases, but, I don’t know, basically she just got used to it. She became really good—efficient, compassionate, sincere. We were all so surprised. I mean, I grew up in this business, so everything about it seemed normal to me. But Shelley had never even seen a dead body before.”

He glances at me, stressing the last sentence for emphasis, as if Shelley had never seen an airplane, a monkey, the sea. Then he seems to recognize the assumption he’s made—that I, a Vietnamese,
have
seen dead bodies. “I mean, I don’t know your history, of course.”

“I have,” I tell him.

He nods. A look passes between us, an acknowledgment that we share something. “She got along fine,” he said, the slightest trace of bitterness in his voice, as if he believes that death shouldn’t be so easy. “I guess it’s possible to work in our industry without really understanding what it means to lose someone you love. But I’ve been through it myself, and lately I’ve started to feel like every day in this business scrapes off a little more of me. I mean, I had to bury a bride a few months back. A bride. She had a heart attack a month after her honeymoon. Shelley thinks that’s sad and all, but when we were driving back from the memorial service, she pulled out this big sheaf of papers and started reading me documents explaining immigration regulations.”

“Is that a bad thing?” I ask. “That she can do the job and want a baby, too?”

He shakes his head. “I’ve got two boys myself. But I was young when I had them. I wasn’t so worn out, I guess.”

“You promised her.”

“I know,” he admits. He lifts his hands and rubs his eyes.

His second sandwich comes. We talk about the war in Vietnam. Little of it pertains to Shelley, but, then again, it all does. We don’t tell each other secrets, or even stories, really. I already know what happened to him here, but he doesn’t mention it. At one point, he says, “Our guys were so young. We sent them back in pieces.”

I say, “My father’s brother died.” He ended up in pieces, too.

He looks at me, but doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing, really, to say about a thing like that. We lapse into silence. At one end of the room, a raucous group of young people starts to dance between two tables. They’re about the age I was when I left this place, but they live in a different world. I look at Martin. “Could you be glad you came?” I ask.

He stares at his beer. “I’ll get a lot of satisfaction from helping Shelley,” he says. “It’s the least I could do, I guess.”

“You make her very happy,” I tell him.

He looks up at me, puzzled. For once, I like the ambiguity of my English. Make her happy? Made her happy? It isn’t clear.

He doesn’t take his eyes off me. “What does ‘forgiveness’ mean, any-way?”

He looks at me as if he believes I have an answer. “Giving up anger?” I ask.

“Maybe. I can imagine spending the rest of my life mad at her. After all, when she had to choose between me and a child, she chose the child. But what will that get me? I’m still angry with my first wife. I don’t want to feel that way about Shelley forever.”

“That bad for the heart,” I tell him.

“But what’s left after you forgive someone? People say love is strong, but it’s not that strong, to be honest.”

When I don’t respond, he laughs. “I know I sound like a cynic.”

I tell him, “I’m a cynic, too,” but I say it more out of habit than from any real conviction. In fact, I’m suddenly distracted. At the table across from us, a blond European man tucks a strand of hair behind the ear of a lovely Vietnamese woman. The sight of people touching used to offend me, but I find the gesture completely charming now.

I suppose that my perspective on a lot of things has shifted. I spent a single afternoon with my father and, despite two decades of powerful evidence to the contrary, I left his house convinced that the world is beautiful, and merciful, and full of love. I assume that I’m unlikely to feel this way forever, but it breaks the monotony after twenty-three years.

My father didn’t want me to leave at all, but I became anxious, knowing that Lan could return at any moment. Once I’d washed the dishes and made sure that Bo was comfortable, I picked up my purse to go. He reached out to take my hand. “If you leave, I’ll think it was a dream,” he said.

I squatted down beside him, grinning. “Then you’ll dream it again tomorrow, Bo.”

He kept his grip on my hand. “I don’t want one daughter hiding from the other.”

I had told him about my meeting with Lan. “She hates me,” I reminded him.

He sighed. “Maybe. But you ran away once. What good did that do for any of us? Try something different now.”

I looked at him, contemplating the possibilities. My father stroked my cheek. “You need to take your place in this family again,” he said.

I left him listening to the World Cup, the radio against his ear, his eyes closed to conjure up the speed of the players, the green of the field, or, maybe, the face of his daughter, returned after so many years. As I walked to the door, I kept looking back, not quite ready to take my eyes off him. My place in this family, I thought. My role in this world.

Out on the street, I paused with my bicycle to consider what to do. The late afternoon remained hot and sultry, but I didn’t mind. I had responsibilities now and news to relate. Shelley wouldn’t return from the orphanage for an hour, at least. I got on my bike and began to peddle in the direction of Giang Vo. I would make an appointment, finally, for Dario to examine Bo. I had the telephone number somewhere on his card, maybe in the room, maybe in my purse. But the clinic itself was not so very far away. I’d go tell him. And I wanted him to know, too, that I had seen my father.

There is no easy route between my father’s house and the doctor’s clinic on Giang Vo Street. Afternoon commuters clogged the roads. The air was hot and sticky, stinking of diesel, loud with the roar and honk of traffic. But still, my arms and legs felt strong and impatient—not nineteen, but something like it. The energy in my body was almost more

than the bike could absorb, and I whipped through the traffic. I fairly flew.

The clinic faces a small frontage road that runs parallel to Giang Vo. It occupies the first floor of a modern apartment building, just up the road from the Swedish embassy and a few doors down from the World Food Program. On balconies above, I could see the barbecues and plastic pool toys of foreigners. And racing bikes. Funny, when I was young, only foreigners and high-level officials rode in cars or on motorbikes. Now, most Vietnamese in Hanoi drive motorbikes and the foreigners—the health nuts—ride through the city on bicycles. So, what am I—Vietnamese or American? Vietnamese American can mean you’re a little bit of both. Or, as Dario said, I’m sort of Vietnamese, sort of not.