The Price of Silence (6 page)

In Chinatown An-ling would be surrounded by her countrymen. Was she happy? Did she pine for her homeland? Was she thinking of her mother, who wanted her daughter to be remembered?

Or she could have lived in a one-bedroom prewar apartment in Brooklyn, shared by four girls, Caucasian, Black, Hispanic, and Chinese.They would keep each other company in their diversity.They were careless, happy-go-lucky, sex-in-the-city girls. Clothes they discarded on the floor, stacked on chairs, waiting to be fished out when needed. Pizza cartons and Chinese takeout boxes piled up in the kitchen, waiting for someone, anyone, to take them to the garbage chute. The easel lay under the bed, thick with dust motes.The pursuit of boyfriends left no time for painting.

An-ling had found a boyfriend—Doctor Feldman, plastic surgeon, who lived in a soft-carpeted duplex where An-ling had a room to herself, with a view of the trees of Central Park. When he came home, he taught her English words that, with time, became sentences, paragraphs, so many words strung into a long line so that one day she could fly on its end, like a kite in the wind.

I started laughing. I hadn’t had such a silly flight of the imagination since I was in braids! I had no idea how An-ling lived or where.

I wrote a note:

“I want to invite you to my home. Please call me. I’m
not a great cook, but I think you’ll like my family. Be well.”

I included my home and office phone numbers and, after work, I went over to Dodge Hall.This time I took the elevator to the Dean’s office. Even if An-ling had dropped out, the office would have her address.

“A student’s address is confidential,” the young man in the front office informed me.

“I was hoping you could forward it. She was here last semester. Maybe even before that; I’m not sure.” I handed over the stamped envelope, with only An-ling’s name written on the front, my return address on the back.

“Sure.” He answered the telephone, put the caller on hold, waved the envelope at me. “I’ll check on her address and send it.”

“Soon?”

“Sure.” He went back to his phone call. I left. It was late and I still had to shop.Maybe I’d buy steak and make French fries.Tom and Josh loved that.

About a week later,a handwritten envelope from Columbia University arrived in the mail. Inside was my note to An-ling, still in its sealed envelope.In a separate note,someone had typed:

“No An-ling Huang on student list in the last three years.”

Josh has told lies when he’s wanted to simplify his life, get me or Tom off his back. Had An-ling lied about Columbia?

I didn’t know.A small knot of doubt about her settled in the back of my mind, where I soon forgot it.

Anton Lyubarsky arrived in New York from the Ukraine four years ago. His hair, neck, waist, and accent are all thick. He owns a hardware store in Brooklyn with three cousins.

“How far is your store from An-ling Huang’s apartment?”

“Two blocks.”

“Does your store stock these cans of insulation foam?”

Guzman holds up what has been offered in evidence as People’s Exhibit One.

“Yes.” Lyubarsky nods, scratches his hands. “Yes.”

The court officer hands Lyubarsky the can.

“Can you tell whether the can in your hand comes from your store?”

Lyubarsky upends the can, nods. “From my store.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I write price on the bottom. Ten ninety-five. It is good price.”

Guzman quickly glances over some stapled sheets of paper.

“Drawing your attention to April seventeenth of last year, did you see the defendant that day?”

Lyubarsky looks at Mrs. Perotti with regret on his face. “I want to show respect. I want to do right thing. One day I want to be citizen of this country.”

“Please answer the question, Mr. Lyubarsky. On April seventeenth did you see the defendant?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you see her?”

“In my store.”

“Can you describe what she was doing?”

“Buying.”

“Can you tell the jury what exactly Mrs. Perotti bought in your store?”

“She buy can of insulation foam, but she is nice lady. She come often to store. Buy many things. She give me English grammar book. She help me.”

Outside my classroom window, the small park across the street was covered with a pale green net of buds.Two dogs strained at their leashes to sniff each other. Two Hasidic women in wigs and long skirts pushed strollers in step with each other. It was our first real spring day. I opened the window, then went back to my class notes. That morning, my advanced students would work on their writing skills, on patterns of organization. I had only a few minutes before class, but I kept casting my eyes outside, to the net of buds resting on the trees, the dogs now rolling in a tangle of leashes, the Hasidic mothers on the corner, waiting for the light to change, still talking.Above them, a trail of buildings and endless sky disappearing in the distance.

I plunged my hand into my pocket, felt the scrap of paper with the number I had copied from the phonebook on it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to make the call. It seemed inappropriate, invasive, dumb.

I gave up the idea when my students scattered across the classroom like diligent ants.As they found their seats I wrote on the blackboard:“When to Use Cause and Effect Order.”

The students told me what they had learned from the lesson plan and I wrote:

Use to explain why an event happened.

Use to explain the results.

Use to explain what will happen because of a specific event.

I asked them to write a short essay about something that had happened to them recently, using cause and effect.

“I have a cold and I go to the doctor,” offered Janna from St. Petersburg.Writing English still frightened her.

“Write it out,”I told her.“Write what happened before the cold, too. One effect can have many causes.You had a cold because you were tired from studying hard and because you were tired, you overslept, making you late for class, which then made you take the subway when you normally walk.On the subway you stood in front of a sick person who sneezed in your face.

“The reverse is also true,” I told the class. “One cause can have many effects. I’ll let you work that one out by yourselves.”

I handed out paper to the usual students who said they had forgotten to bring their notebooks. Most were sincere. A few, the ones who didn’t have pencils either, I suspected needed to save their money.

I watched them write. Periodically, I sneaked glances at the window. Janna sneaked glances at her neighbor’s paper and copied. She had repeated this class for three years now. She wouldn’t be able to pass her GEDs this year either, but to demote her to the intermediate level would break her heart.

“Write about yourself,” I whispered to her. “Don’t take someone else’s story.You have your own.Tell it.Two, three sentences, that’s all.”

What was An-ling’s story?

“I’ll be right back,” I told the class. In my cubicle, I punched in the phone number, gave my name to the receptionist and asked to speak to Doctor Feldman.

“A consultation will cost two hundred dollars, which will be deducted from the cost of the procedure you decide upon, if you decide to proceed.”

I explained that mine was a personal call, that all I wanted was a minute of his time.The doctor and I had a mutual friend, and I needed to find that friend.

“Doctor Feldman is with a patient. He has a very busy schedule.”The receptionist’s tone was now snippy.

“Her name is An-ling Huang.” I spelled it for her.“Could you ask Doctor Feldman how I can get in touch with her, please? It’s important.”I spelled my name too,and left my phone number.“Remind him we met at Lenny Gershon’s poetry reading at KGB.”

The next morning there was a message on my voice mail from Doctor Feldman’s receptionist. “Doctor Feldman knows no one by the name of An-ling Huang.”

Another lie. A mixture of irritation and disappointment prompted me to make an appointment for a consultation. This time I used Tom’s last name, hoping the receptionist wouldn’t recognize my voice. The earliest Doctor Feldman could see me was in ten days.

Fishkin stands up, but stays behind his desk. “Mr. Lyubarsky, are there many hardware stores near you?”

“No. Good location. Next store is twenty blocks away.”

“How many cans of insulation foam, on average, would you say you sell a week?”

Lyubarsky looks at Fishkin for a moment, then his eyebrows shoot up and his round face breaks into a smile. “Yes.” He has understood where Fishkin is going.

“How many?” Fishkin has to repeat.

“It depends. Maybe none, maybe five.” Lyubarsky’s voice is loud. “Ten, if construction going on. Last year much construction. Two buildings near store. At Tercer Street and Lowry, too.” Lyubarsky rocks in his chair. “My cousins and me make very good business last year.”

“How many cans of insulation foam did you sell in those two months?”

“I need to look in book for number, but I know Tercer building buy one case, but in March or April I don’t know. If you want, I go look and come back.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lyubarsky. That won’t be necessary.”

FIVE

DOCTOR ROBERT FELDMAN, regarded as one of the top ten cosmetic surgeons in New York City, sits in the witness box. He is a handsome, grey-haired man, with a gym-enhanced body underneath an impeccably tailored grey suit.

“Did you know An-ling Huang?” Guzman asks.

“I did.”

“For how long did you know her?”

“Five months, approximately.”

“Do you know the defendant?”

“I met her twice.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“The first time was at the KGB Bar during a poetry reading.”

“What happened at that reading?”

“She walked off with my date.”

“And who was your date?”

“An-ling Huang.”

“What was your impression of their relationship that night?”

“Objection!”

“Withdrawn. When was the second time you saw the defendant.”

“In my office, three weeks later.”

Emma

I sat in a deep leather armchair under a canopy of spiky leaves.Two women on the other side of the waiting room flipped through magazines. Another talked on her cell phone, ordering food for a dinner party. Elegant and thin in their designer clothes, they seemed perfectly relaxed, entitled, expecting the impossible to be made possible: to be young again. Maybe I could ask Doctor Feldman to snip at my soul, tug at the grooves of my memory, smooth them out so that I could face the sunshine of the day blameless as a newborn baby, with life still ahead of me, yet to be lived.

The reason for my visit was much simpler. Possible.

Finding An-ling.

The woman on the cell phone was called into the doctor’s office by the receptionist.Through the opening of the door, I glimpsed a female hip, a shoulder, covered in nurse’s white, a thick streak of yellow hair. Minutes passed. I read the book I had brought with me—a slim volume of prose poems by Charles Simic I had started re-reading.Years ago, the title had attracted me:
The World Does Not End
.

“Time for you,” a voice said. It took me a minute to recognize her.An-ling had dyed her hair banana yellow.

“How nice!” was all I could think to say.The surprise of her being there, of her changed appearance, made me uncomfortable. I felt I’d barged in on a complete stranger. “You’re working for him! I never thought of that.”

“Lady Teacher.” An-ling extended her arm toward the door that opened before me. I couldn’t tell whether my showing up suddenly annoyed her or pleased her.

Doctor Feldman’s diplomas, recognitions, and prints of bucolic scenes covered the walls of the small office. Plants rested on corner tables. The large mahogany desk was empty except for a couple of photo albums, filled with what I assumed were the before-and-after pictures of his patients.

“Sit down, please. Doctor Feldman will be with you in a few minutes,” An-ling recited, then added, “Feldy,” with a complicit grin.

I laughed. “I came here only because I wanted to know how to find you. Over the phone,Doctor Feldman claimed he didn’t know you.”

“Here I use American name. Easy to say name.”

“An-ling Huang is a beautiful name and not hard to pronounce at all.”

An-ling repeated her name, letting me know I’d forgotten the correct intonation.

“I’m sorry. Point well taken. I’m afraid I’m tone deaf.” I held out the letter the Dean’s office at Columbia had sent back.“I’ve been looking for you because I wanted to invite you to dinner to meet my family.”

An-ling pushed the letter into the pocket of her uniform, unread.

“You must have used your American name at Columbia too,” I said, relieved she hadn’t lied. “What is it?”

“For you I will be An-ling.” She promised to call me.

“One last question, Doctor Feldman. Where were you on April nineteenth of last year?”

“I was in St. Petersburg, delivering a lecture. Cosmetic surgery is a burgeoning business in Russia these days.”

Ruffling waves of pink tied in eight, ten bundles—peonies— hiding a face. I recognized the green-flowered paper of my local Korean grocer,also the blue-quilted jacket and the paint-stained slacks.

“Welcome to my home, An-ling.”

She had come without warning. More than three weeks had passed since I’d gone to Doctor Feldman’s office.We were in the middle of dinner, and I asked her if she’d eaten. She lowered herself onto the chair I held out for her without answering, holding the flowers tight to her chest. The pink tips brushed her chin as her eyes scanned the kitchen, studying every detail as if she were preparing for a memory test. I was pleased to see her, moved by all those expensive peonies, and embarrassed by the paper napkins, and the food on the table, a takeout dinner that I hadn’t bothered to remove from its aluminum containers.

Tom remained seated, his expression puzzled.An-ling had interrupted a sacred family routine, his daily bonding time with Josh, during which I played the role of listener. Josh hunched over his plate, continuing to shovel food down his throat. I touched his shoulder.He stopped, straightened up.