A Good Fall (3 page)

As Mr. Kwan got up to see him to the door, Dan was amazed to find him so short, barely five foot one. Isn’t his small physique too eye-catching? he wondered. At most Mr. Kwan could be a featherweight sleuth. He should have been an accountant or a software specialist—a sedentary job would suit him better.

For days Jasmine had a fever. She would cry at night, which disturbed Dan and kept him awake even in his separate room. Gina had taken her to the doctor, who prescribed some drugs, but she wouldn’t give them to the baby. Instead, she fed her warm water frequently, saying this was Jasmine’s grandmother’s remedy. Since birth, the child had run a temperature every month or two, but every time Gina had managed to make her well without using any medicine.

Jasmine had begun to walk. According to folklore, a baby’s tongue follows its legs, meaning when it can walk it will start to talk. But Jasmine, already able to toddle from one end of the room to the other, could speak only one word: “Baba” (Daddy), which thrilled Dan whenever he heard her say it. He would coax her into saying it again and again. He loved her, especially when she was happy and lively, wanting to sit on his belly or ride on his back. Even so, at times he couldn’t help but wonder about her paternity. In addition to her frequent fevers, Jasmine seldom slept at night and always cried or played until the small hours. Dan had once accompanied his wife to Dr. Cohen, the pediatrician, a middle-aged woman with a gaunt face. The doctor advised that they leave their daughter alone whenever she hollered and just let her bawl. Once exhausted, she would learn it was no use crying for attention and would mend her ways. This would also train her to be independent. But Gina wouldn’t follow Dr. Cohen’s instructions, and the moment Jasmine started crying, she’d croon, “Mummy’s coming, just a second.” She’d pick her up and cradle her, walking up and down the room. Sometimes she’d pace the floor for three or four hours. Her maternal patience amazed Dan, who would replace her on some nights so that she could sleep a little before daybreak. Whenever he urged her to leave the bawling baby alone, she would say, “It’s too early to build her sense of independence.” She was afraid their child might feel neglected and unloved.

Tonight Jasmine simply wouldn’t quit crying. Neither would she let her mother sit down or stop singing nursery rhymes. In a sleepy voice Gina was humming a song Dan vaguely remembered—“Come on, Little Bunny, / Open the door to your mummy …” He pulled the comforter over his face, but still heard the baby bawling. Try as he might, he couldn’t go to sleep.

He got up, went to the other bedroom, and said to his wife, “Can’t you give her a sleeping pill or something? Just to make her stop.”

“No. That might damage her brain.”

“The little bitch. She wants to torture us. I have a meeting tomorrow morning, actually in a couple hours.”

“I’m sorry, I have to work too.”

“Damn her! She does nothing but sleep at the day care, Mrs. Espada told me. She’s like a model baby there.”

“She has just reversed her sense of day and night.”

“Put her down! Let her cry as much as she wants.”

“Honey, don’t be so nasty. She’ll quiet down soon.”

Her gentle voice checked his temper. He closed the door and returned to his room. He used to dream of having an angelic child whose beauty would spread over everything in their home. It wouldn’t matter whether the baby was a boy or girl as long as it took after Gina or himself. Now slitty-eyed Jasmine had marred his picture of the ideal family.

He kept yawning at the meeting the next morning. One of his colleagues teased him, “You must’ve exerted yourself too hard last night.”

“Be careful, Dan,” another chimed in. “You shouldn’t act like a newlywed.”

People at the conference table cracked up while Dan shook his head. “My daughter’s ill and cried most of the night,” he muttered.

Everybody turned silent at the mention of the baby. They had all seen Jasmine and some had raised the question of whom she looked like. Their silence sent a wave of resentment over Dan, but he restrained himself because they were discussing how to acquire an old warehouse in Forest Hills and convert it into condominiums. He was eager to move out of Flushing. It’s public school system wasn’t too bad, but the whole area was isolated culturally—it didn’t even have an English bookstore. Galleries appeared and then disappeared, and there was only one small theater, managed by his friend Elbert Chang. Most immigrants here didn’t bother to use English in everyday life. Anywhere you turned, you saw restaurants, beauty parlors, retail stores, travel agencies, law offices—nothing but businesses. New arrivals had made little effort to protect the environment, or perhaps they were too desperate for survival to worry about that. Dan feared that his neighborhood would deteriorate into a slum, so he was determined to see the plan for converting the warehouse succeed. He was sure that some of his colleagues also hoped to buy the condos the company wanted to build in Forest Hills.

•    •    •

Jasmine got well within a week, but Gina was still unhappy about Dan’s suspicion. She wouldn’t reproach him but avoided speaking to him. Her reticence angered him more. He thought to himself, You think you’re a good woman? I know what you’ve been doing on the sly. Wait and see—I’m going to find out about you.

One evening Gina came home with a flushed face. At the sight of Dan with their daughter sitting on his lap, she stopped at the door for a moment, then stepped in. She hung up her navy blue coat in the closet and sat down on the sofa opposite him. “You’re ridiculous,” she said.

“What’s that about?” he asked.

“You hired a midget to follow Fooming and me.”

Abashed, Dan didn’t know how to respond, but instantly he recovered his presence of mind. “If there’s no monkey business between you two, why should you mind?”

“Let me tell you, your detective botched his mission. Fooming roughed him up and gave him a bloody nose.”

“Damn it, it’s against the law to beat a professional agent!”

“Give me a break. The man was eavesdropping on us. He violated our privacy first.”

“Your privacy? What is it that’s so private between Fooming Yu and you?”

“You’re insane. You hired that man to make a scene in public.”

“You just said it was Fooming Yu who made a display of himself. Where did this happen?”

“In Red Chopstick.”

“You’re a married woman, but you dined with a bachelor in a restaurant on a busy street. Who’s insane?”

“How many times have I told you he and I are just friends?”

“Then neither of you should’ve been upset by Mr. Kwan’s inquiry.”

“It was foolish of you to use that man. He’s too attractive—I mean he attracts too much attention.”

Dan cackled. “But as your husband, I cannot hold back my curiosity.”

“All right, your detective is out. Fooming threatened to strangle him if Kwan came near him again.” She got up and went into the kitchen despite Jasmine’s reaching out for her and crying “Mama.” In no time pots, pans, and bowls began clattering in there, mixed with Gina’s sobs. “I’m cursed, cursed!” she kept saying.

The baby had started to call her “Mama” two days before. When she said that for the first time, Gina couldn’t help her joyous tears, but now in the kitchen, her weeping was punctuated with sniffles.

A sharp tingle ran over Dan’s scalp. If only he hadn’t moved in with her before he’d had to propose to her, thanks to the child she claimed was his. Marriage seemed to have trapped both of them.

Two days later Dan went to see Mr. Kwan. A pair of Band-Aids crossed each other on the agent’s cheek, but he was all smiles and very effusive. Dan apologized for the trouble Mr. Kwan had run into at Red Chopstick, but the man assured him, “It’s not unusual to encounter violence in my profession. No big deal.”

Outside, a vehicle honked, and a policeman barked through a megaphone, “Stop! Stop right there!” Then a fire engine surged by. A toilet flushed upstairs, a pipe hissed.

Mr. Kwan resumed speaking as if thinking aloud to himself. “I’m puzzled in a way. I’m pretty sure I knew your wife—she used to be my client.”

“You mean she knew you too?”

“Correct. She recognized me in the restaurant. That’s how Fooming Yu figured out I was working for you. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but I thought you might want to know—before you two married, your bride asked me to do a background check on you.”

“Did you find any dirt in my past?”

“Not really. You’re a clean man. You joined the Communist Party in the mid-eighties, but when the Tiananmen Massacre happened, you renounced your Party membership publicly, in
World Journal
. That wiped your slate clean.”

Dan was impressed by the accuracy of the information. He was amazed too that his renouncement fifteen years ago was still shaping his life. He felt lucky that he had washed his hands of the Communist Party, even though he still couldn’t fully grasp the significance of his act. He had renounced the Party membership mainly out of indignation at the carnage of civilians. Then everything seemed to work out to his advantage—he encountered no difficulty in getting a green card, and the FBI didn’t have him under surveillance. “I see,” he said to the agent. “Are you still going to keep your eye on Gina and Fooming Yu for me?”

“I can’t do that anymore, but someone will step into my shoes. This new guy is an ex-cop and has a black belt in karate. Even if Fooming Yu loses his head again, he won’t dare to touch our man.”

“Excellent. Have you found anything unusual between him and Gina?”

“Not yet. Except for the lunch date when they squabbled over something I couldn’t figure out, they haven’t done anything. Here’s a copy of the information on your man, but for some reason our connections in China could find nothing about your wife and her family. Her personal history is a blank. This really boggles the mind. Gina is a beautiful woman. Usually such a beauty cannot live in a place without being noticed. I wonder if she’s really from Jinhua. Anyhow, we’ve made little headway in her case, but we’re still at it. I’d guess her original name was not Gina Liu.”

“Why would she change her name?”

“Usually it’s a way to get rid of something infamous in one’s past. But your wife’s case doesn’t look like that. Although she must hate me, I won’t say she’s a bad woman. By the way, here’s my report on the expenses. Believe me, I don’t feel good about the lunch and the beer, but I had to hang around in Red Chopstick. Also, I bought a copy of
Forbes
while following them at a newsstand.”

“Don’t worry about that.” Dan glanced through the figures and wrote a check for $429.58.

He picked up the brown envelope containing the report on Fooming and took his leave. Back in his office, he went through the sheets of information and was pleased by the thoroughness of the investigation. Fooming’s parents were still living in a suburban village outside Jinhua, growing vegetables and raising crabs. No wonder Fooming had such a bumpkin name. The man had two sisters and a brother, who all had their own families and lived in Jinhua. Before coming to the United States seven years ago, he had worked as a mechanic at a railroad company and also headed his workshop’s branch of the Communist League. Apparently he had overstayed his tourist visa but managed to become a legal resident; his status must have been established through purchasing some fake papers, though that was too complicated to prove. At the moment he was in the process of applying for a green card. This was a natural step, since the police station in Jinhua had revoked his urban residency and he couldn’t go back anymore. Nothing was extraordinary in the report, yet Dan grew more curious about Fooming’s political record back in China. He called Mr. Kwan, praised the quality of the information, saying it was “a CIA job,” and asked him if Fooming had been a Party member. The agent said that couldn’t be verified and would depend on the size of his former workshop. If the work unit was large, Fooming, as the head of its branch of the Communist League, must have been a Party member; if it was small, he didn’t have to be. But his workshop had been merged with other units long ago, so it would be hard to find out its original size.

Dan leaned back in his chair and lapsed into thought. Why did Gina’s past remain blank? Where was she really from? What was her true name? She might indeed have been from Jinhua if Fooming Yu was her townsman, as she had told Dan he was. She spoke Mandarin with a susurrant accent, which meant she was a southerner originally. Dan had asked her about her family before they married, but she said they had all been killed in a derailed train accident and she was left alone in this world. “Don’t you feel lucky to have a wife without any family baggage?” she countered, smiling sadly. “You don’t need to buy any gifts for your parents-in-law.”

The more Dan brooded about Gina, the more baffled he became. He could not believe she didn’t have even one relative in China or America.

Dan’s business had picked up after the Spring Festival. He was busy, and every week he clinched at least one sale. The immigrants loved buying real estate, and many would pay cash since they were unable to get a mortgage from the bank; at times several people, usually family members and relatives, would pool their money to buy a place so that they could all have shelter. The spring’s good start at Dan’s agency might signify another banner year. Some days he couldn’t leave his office until eight or nine p.m. As the head of the company, he ought to make more sales than most of the agents to justify his leadership, so he always worked hard.

One evening, at the beginning of April, he finished a little early. As he was heading toward his Buick parked under a flowering laurel magnolia behind the office building, he saw four young men, three Asians and one Latino, standing by his car. They all wore flattops, black T-shirts, olive-drab pants, and work boots. At the sight of Dan, one of them kicked the driver’s-side door.

“Hey, don’t damage my property!” Dan yelled.

“Is this your car?” the tallest of them asked, a half-smoked cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

“Yes. Guys, don’t do this to me.”

The shortest of them, whose crown showed a “landing strip” cut, booted the Buick again. Dan got furious and shouted, “Hey, hey, stop it!”