The Cooked Seed (38 page)

Although I was sure I’d be wasting my time, I needed an excuse to
let Robin know that I had done everything I could and that it was not meant to be.

I could use the expression “falling out of my chair” to describe the moment I saw Lloyd in a video interview conducted by the dating service. Here was a completely different man from the character I’d seen in his photos. He didn’t have that Halloween-pumpkin grin. This man had thick, curly, and untamed beautiful gray hair. He must have missed his last appointment to get his hair gelled, or he had decided not to bother grooming himself for the videotaping. If he had been an animal, the video caught him in his natural state. Instead of the dark-blue suit, he was in an off-white T-shirt and blue jeans. Behind the glasses his deep-set eyes showed intelligence, honesty, and kindness. He had a long, narrow—what he would later describe critically as “English”—nose and a mouth that smiled affectionately.

Unlike the man in the photos, the man in the video was at ease and self-assured. He was articulate and soft-spoken. In less than five minutes, he accomplished a thoughtful and thorough self-introduction. He was born in Pasadena, California, and served in Vietnam as a US Marine. With the GI Bill, he earned a degree in journalism, and he had been a classroom English teacher ever since. He said he loved teaching, then paused to add, “for the most part, though it can be a challenge from time to time. It’s a consuming job, or I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to a camera …” He lowered his chin as he smiled.

In the future, I’d learn that Lloyd’s family ancestry led to England and Ireland on his father’s side and Scandinavia on his mother’s side. What impressed me about the man in the video was that he was completely comfortable in his own skin. He sought nobody’s approval. As a teen, he had sold door-to-door for the Fuller Brush Company. He’d worked as a grocery boy and a dishwasher. After returning from war, while going to college, he worked part-time as a JCPenney stock man, Sears janitor, a McDonald’s three A.M. cleaner, a landscaping trench digger, and a maintenance clerk at a truck company. “I do my best, although I don’t think of myself as particularly special.” He smiled in the video. In years to come, I would think of Lloyd Lofthouse as a well-trimmed
tree who enjoyed the sun, rain, and all the seasons, and who shared his canopy. I valued the fact that Lloyd was a man who lived an existence equal to mine. I was also pleased that he had strong and broad shoulders, a good-looking head on a fine neck.

Lloyd Lofthouse called and said, “I’ve just returned from a hiking trip and am thrilled that you called. May I invite you out for dinner? When would be a good time for you? Do you have time tonight?”

“I can’t,” I responded. “I need time to arrange a babysitter for Lauryann, my daughter.”

“Why don’t you bring her along?” Lloyd said.

“Are you sure you don’t mind? She’s seven years old.”

“No, I don’t mind at all.”

“But …” I hesitated. I did not want Lauryann to be with me on my first date. I was at a disadvantage as a single mother and didn’t want to emphasize that. I imagined Lauryann becoming bored and disrupting our conversation. I didn’t want to be seen disciplining her.

“I’d rather arrange a babysitter,” I said.

“Please, I really would like you to bring Lauryann,” Lloyd insisted. “I’d like to meet her, and I can assure you that it will not be a bother. I’ve taught kids her age in the past. I know what they’re like.”

Later on, Lloyd confessed that he was not just being nice. It was his dating tactic. He wanted to get as much information as possible about the woman on the first date: “It’s easier to move on when you are barely involved.” Lloyd had learned that the best way to find out about a woman’s true character was through her children.

“Children reflect their mother,” Lloyd said. He once fell for a seemingly perfect woman who had “rotten children.” “They had no manners, because the mother didn’t demand any. She let them raise themselves. They jumped all over me like monkeys in the wild.”

I wasn’t prepared for Lauryann to be on her worst behavior that evening. I had taught her manners. But it turned out to be her worst night.

At 5:30 P.M., the doorbell rang. Lauryann was excited. She rushed to open the door and greet Lloyd. “Hi, I am Lauryann!” she said, offering a handshake.

The towering figure under the eaves pronounced my name in a hesitatant tone. “Anchee, I am Lloyd.”

“Pleased to meet you!” I shook his hand and was a little disappointed. Lloyd was back to his photo look, with his hair pasted to his skull. He was dressed in the same blue suit he wore in the photos.

We got in his car. Although Lauryann sat in the back, she started to take over the conversation. She had a habit of doing this to me in front of strangers. She believed that I needed her help. Often, Lauryann corrected my English in front of others. For example, she would say, “Mom, it’s Chinese
accent
, not accident! Don’t say your bone is brutal, Mom, it’s
brittle
! Mom, our neighbor is a yoga teacher, not a yogurt teacher! Grandpa Ness teaches children astronomy, not astrology!”

As she grew, Lauryann became more confident. “Excuse me,” she would say to a reporter who came to our door looking for an interview, “my mom’s English is not good. Why don’t you ask me questions because I know what she wants to say.”

My awkwardness in asking for help irritated Lauryann. Once, I was lost on a Southern California freeway. It wasn’t until I saw a sign that read “Las Vegas” that I knew I had gone too far. From then on, whenever Lauryann sensed that I was driving in circles, she would roll down her window and ask a driver at a traffic light, “Excuse me, sir, my mom is lost. Can you help?” She would then turn to me. “Mom, come on, talk to the man!”

Lauryann told Lloyd about her favorite subjects at school and her favorite music. Lloyd told Lauryann the places he had lived, about his car and his favorite things to do, like reading and wood carving. I was amazed how quickly and comfortably they connected.

Lloyd took us to a Mexican restaurant he had selected because it had an evening performance by an Elvis Presley impersonator. Lloyd had noted my interest in learning about American culture through my dating profile. I noticed that Lauryann was filling herself up with chips. I whispered to her, “Save some space in your tummy.” But Lauryann got too carried away in her eating. She took advantage of the fact that I was chatting with Lloyd.

When the waiter came to take our order, Lloyd wanted a vegan plate. Lauryann ordered a burrito, and I had fish with vegetables. By the
time the dishes arrived, Lauryann was stuffed with chips. She declared that she was too full to eat anything else.

“You ordered the burrito, you can’t waste it!” I said.

Lauryann shook her head as she pushed the plate away. I gave her a “Don’t you dare rain on my parade” look and her eyes filled with tears. We ate and watched the impersonator’s performance. Although I wasn’t impressed by the fake Elvis Presley, I clapped to show Lloyd my appreciation. Lloyd told me that he grew up with such songs. As he hummed along, I noticed that he sang off-key.

In the middle of one song, Lauryann began to complain about a stomachache. By the look on her face, I knew that she wasn’t faking it. Lauryann begged to go home. When I asked her to wait, she threw a tantrum. It was impossible to calm her. “My daughter is never like this,” I said to Lloyd, embarrassed.

“Well, she seems to be in great discomfort,” Lloyd replied. “Let’s go.”

Lauryann was asleep in the backseat by the time we arrived at my house. I apologized again for her misbehavior.

“If that was her worst behavior, she is an angel,” Lloyd said as he parked on the street.

“I am supposed to say good night,” I said.

“Let your daughter sleep a bit longer,” Lloyd suggested, and then added, “I’d love to just sit and talk.”

It felt strange sitting in front of my home in a car with this man. A sense of peace came over me. I was grateful that Lloyd didn’t seem a bit upset about the interrupted dinner. We sat in the shadows of the streetlight looking at each other, and we both smiled.

“This is better than the restaurant.” Lloyd said what I was thinking.

When I was a Mao’s Little Red Guard in China, he was a US Marine fighting in Vietnam. My dream had been to “liberate the proletarians of the world” so that poor children in America could eat; his mission was to prevent Vietnam from falling into the hands of the Communists and so bring peace to Asia and end starvation in the region.

Inside the car, under the shadowy streetlight, with Lauryann sleeping soundly in the backseat, Lloyd Lofthouse and I talked into the night. I was fascinated and chilled at the same time as he described how the marines were trained to kill instead of trained to fight. In turn, I shared the meaning of “the glorious Communist martyrdom”:
To achieve a meaningful death in the fight for Communism was the ultimate honor.
I described how my generation was afraid of Americans, who had turned Vietnam into a killing field. We believed China would be next, and we had prepared for the American invasion. Our leader, Chairman Mao, described our relationship with Vietnam as “teeth to lips.” He famously asked, “Can the teeth survive without the lips?” Mao also taught us, “A person of humanity will refuse to preserve his life for the benefit of that humanity.”

Lloyd remembered a day when the Vietcong launched rockets at his camp and killed his fellow marines. He said death was on his mind every day.

I had always wondered what it must have been like to be on the “other side.” At the age of eleven, I was trained to throw grenades. We practiced throwing fake grenades made of wood and iron. I earned high scores because I threw farther than any girl in my school. During class, we were shown documentary films featuring our Vietcong comrades and their children fighting and dying as they engaged the enemy.

“You have a high nose,” I said to Lloyd. “An enemy nose to a Chinese child.”

“I have an ugly nose.”

I told Lloyd that my biggest wish as a teenager was to be drafted to Vietnam. “My misfortune was that I was a female. I was so envious of my male classmates who got to go. They came to say good-bye wearing brand-new green army uniforms with two mini red flags on their collars. I waited for my turn to serve my country, but the call never came.”

I told Lloyd how I fell in love with a propaganda movie titled
The Heroes
, in which a soldier named Wang Cheng demonstrated martyrdom. “Fire in my direction, now!” he shouted through his radio to his command center before pulling the fuse to the explosive. From a high rock he jumped into a group of US soldiers, blowing himself up and taking the enemy with him.

“In reality, your hero would never have had a chance to strike a pose like the actor in the movie,” Lloyd said quietly. “Our defensive fire would have turned his body into a pockmarked measles patient before he had a chance to climb onto a rock.”

Lloyd recalled hearing a noise one dark night in the rice paddy outside the concertina wire. “We didn’t want to take any chances, so we fired hundreds of rounds into the darkness. Then in the morning we discovered that the noise had been a water buffalo.” He paused before continuing, “We never knew who would be out there coming to hit us. We were unable to tell an ordinary peasant from a Vietcong sniper. One minute you saw individuals bent over planting rice, and the next moment someone was shooting and taking down our men. There was no one in sight but the peasants working in the rice paddies, and none of them seemed to have weapons.”

“Soldiers disguised as peasants was the only way to fight the Americans,” I said. “Ho Chi Minh learned guerrilla tactics from Mao.”

“Our hands were tied,” Lloyd went on. “We worried about accidentally harming the civilians. It was always too late by the time we identified the enemy.”

“There was no such thing as ‘civilians’ in Vietnam, or in China, if you would have dared to set foot on our soil,” I echoed. “No child didn’t want to be part of the force defending the homeland. Mao once said that if China didn’t have supplies, it had an endless supply of bodies.”

“There is no way America could have won,” Lloyd said.

“Are you six feet tall?” I asked.

“Six foot four.”

I remembered being yelled at by a drill instructor. “This is no dancing lesson, Comrade Min!” I was taught to thrust with a wooden bayonet at a dummy made of straw wearing a US soldier’s helmet. “The enemy will be six feet tall and strong like a lion! If you don’t take him down in a split second, he will kill you!” the drill instructor threatened.

I said to Lloyd, “I don’t think I’d be able to take you down the way I was taught.”

He smiled. “We could have met in battle. We could have killed each other.”

I told Lloyd that I loved the Broadway musical
Miss Saigon
and asked his opinion. “Was it really like that?” I asked. “The last days in Saigon?”

“The truth is uglier,” Lloyd said. “All we could afford to care about was our own escape and survival. We had to push people off the helicopters, abandoning our friends, the locals who had risked their lives to help us. We left them behind, threw them away to be tortured and killed. It was war. We had no options. I understand. But being called a baby killer back home really hurt. I could never forget the burned smell of my own flesh in Vietnam after a bullet nicked my ear.”

I looked at Lloyd. He paused and stared at the darkness outside the car.

“I was an innocent and naïve eighteen-year-old when I joined the marines,” he said quietly. “Four years later, I returned a different man. I drank heavily and had an explosive temper. I slept with guns and knives. The war taught me to trust no one. Although I wasn’t violent, I carried a knife with me to work. I didn’t feel safe otherwise. I had to be ready to defend myself at all times.”

Watching Lloyd’s eyes glitter in the dark, I pictured myself throwing a grenade at his bunker.

“Lucky that you didn’t get killed in Vietnam,” I said.

“I prayed to God to let me come home in one piece,” Lloyd said. “I promised the Lord that I’d do good with my life. I have kept that promise, earned a university degree and went into teaching.”