A Wedding Invitation (24 page)

“No, sisters.” I laugh, trying to add some humor to ease Mom of her tenseness.

He smiles. “I should have realized that,” he says.

Mom isn’t smiling.

I’m suddenly ashamed. My mom’s store was robbed and I’m flirting with the policeman.

“Now, did you have a security system?” He looks at me; he really is much too handsome.

Mom says, “Yes, I set it. That’s how you got here.”

“Oh yes, the alarm went off when the door was forced open, and we were called.” He scribbles some more.

“Looks like they struck the walls with a crowbar.” Mom motions toward the wall in front of her. “Knocked the pictures down, too.” She gives a nervous glance toward the officer and then asks, “Who would do something like this?”

“We’ll try our best to find out, ma’am,” he assures as the policewoman checking for fingerprints lets him know her work is done. “Did you get anything?” he asks her as she carries her black bag across the room.

“I was able to lift about three fingerprints,” she tells him before heading outside.

With that, Officer Garner thanks us for answering his questions and, looking at Mom, says, “You might want to call someone to fix the front door.”

We call a locksmith immediately; Mom complains that he is stealing more than the thief by charging such an enormous fee.

I try to appease her by saying she should be glad that someone is available to repair the door and change the lock in the middle of the night.

My mother merely grunts. She walks over to the pictures, now strewn on the carpet, their glass frames shattered. “Uncle Charlie gave me those.”

I join her to examine the damage. “We can get new frames. The prints look like they haven’t been ruined.” The prints are, in my opinion, nothing more than globs of orange and pink paint, the colors of Dunkin’ Donuts. Mom says they are rare pieces of modern art; I guess I have yet to understand why they are called modern and, more important, why they are called art. “Be careful,” I warn. “There is glass everywhere.”

Stepping over a large triangular slab of glass, she says, “I suppose we should get the broom.”

“Tomorrow,” I tell her. “I’ll clean it up first thing in the morning.”

She acts like she hasn’t heard me at all. Surveying the store once more, she murmurs a few unintelligible words. When the locksmith finishes his job, she says to him, “The evil in our world. Just miserable.”

Standing, he runs callused hands over the knees of his dark blue uniform. “I agree with you completely.” He hands Mom two sets of keys. “There’s a new lock and the door is secured again.” Then he picks up his metal toolbox as Mom writes him a check.

We test the key a few times before the man drives off in his company’s truck. Again Mom muses, “The evil that prevails in this world. People have no business invading others’ lives.”

The word
invading
sparks memories. I think of how countries are invaded and lives are damaged. I think of the countless stories I heard from the refugees. I search for something calming to say to ease her but can’t come up with a thing.

I stay at Mom’s house. I add sheets to the guest bed, wondering if I will be able to sleep at all. I know that Mom won’t. I hear her toss and turn until dawn fills the guest room window, peeping through the white blinds. Glad that the night is over, I get out of bed to prepare for another day at the boutique.

Mom greets me in the kitchen, dressed for work in a pair of cotton slacks and a black blouse. “I hope they caught whoever broke in.”

I hope so too, of course. But I also know that only on TV does law enforcement work that quickly. In real life, as in love, the good guy does not always win, nor does the girl always get the guy.

She tells me I can wear some of her clothes today since all I have is what I had on yesterday. “There’s a Ralph Lauren shirt in the left of my closet that should fit you,” she says as she makes her way toward the door, the soles of her shoes heavy on the hardwood. Over her shoulder, she says with resolve, “Sam, we will get through this.”

I give a weak smile. “We will. I’ll see you at the shop soon.”

thirty-two

T
he next night I order takeout from the Chinese restaurant I like and then take a long walk around my neighborhood. Sometimes I find taking a walk a good opportunity to not only get exercise but to pray. Frustration that someone would have the audacity to break into the shop gnaws at my insides.
Calm down
, I tell myself.
You’re going to have a heart attack over it.
The words
heart attack
sear my heart, and I feel tears ready to surface. I walk faster, the tears large and hot against my cheeks. I can’t help but think that if Dad hadn’t had a heart attack, Mom and I would be better off. “God, at least if she’s going to have to be lonely without Dad, please give her cat back to her,” I pray.

Rounding a corner, I see two Asian kids on skateboards, gliding across the pavement. Thinking of Lien, I ask God to change my attitude toward her, ashamed that I’ve been stuck in recalling how she used to be instead of the new woman she is now. She’s still on my mind when I enter my apartment to a ringing phone that interrupts my prayer.

Carson wants to know how I’m doing. At first I want to remind him that I told him not to call me ever again, but instead I tell him that the boutique was robbed.

“Robbed?” He says the word like it’s foreign.

“We’re not sure who did it, but they stole some clothing and money after breaking the lock.”

“Are you all right?” The genuine concern in his voice reminds me of when I sliced my finger with a knife in my dorm’s kitchen and he administered medical attention, wiping away the blood and wrapping the wound in a bandage he rushed to get from our agency’s secretary.

“Yeah, it’s been messy. We feel so violated.”

He insists on driving up here to see me. “I’ll book a hotel room. Let me call Jason and see if he can cover my shift at the station.”

He arrives at the shop at ten forty the next morning and, noting the damaged walls, says he’ll go out and buy plaster and paint.

Mom’s eyes grow wide. She stops chewing the licorice morsel. “Really? You would do that?”

“I came to help out,” he says, tall and grinning. “Where is the nearest store to get the supplies, ma’am?”

Mom looks like she is going to faint from his kindness. She studies him a moment, sort of like she’s in a trance.

“And I’ll need some new frames for those two pictures.” He winks at me, warming my heart. When he called last night, I told him about how much those two blobs of paint on canvas mean to my mother. Earlier today, I cleaned the glass from the carpet with our store’s broom and vacuum cleaner. Then, carefully, I removed the prints from the broken glass and carried the destroyed frames to the dumpster. I was proud that I didn’t even nick myself at all.

Carson takes our measuring tape from the drawer and writes down the dimensions of the pictures. “What color frames would you like?” he asks Mom.

“Silver,” she says without any hesitation.

An hour later he returns with a large container of plaster and a gallon of creamy rose paint. “The paint should match pretty well,” he says, his voice exuding confidence. When he brings in the picture frames from his car, he hands them to Mom, and I watch her unwrap them with delight.

As customers enter the shop, Mom has me wait on them. She’s in the back storage room, placing the gifts from Uncle Charlie into their new homes. I know that there must be a story behind these so-called works of art, but I have never heard it. When she reenters the main part of the shop, her smile is large. “They fit perfectly,” she whispers to me.

“When did Uncle Charlie give those to you?”

“You don’t know?” She sounds disturbed, like something is wrong with me for not knowing, the same kind of reaction a history teacher might give when a child doesn’t know who George Washington is. “Haven’t you heard the story?”

I confess that I have not but get ready for another Uncle Charlie story.

“He got them for me at the state fair.”

“Legally?” I ask with a smile. I know that my uncle was rarely on the right side of the law.

“Yes, Samantha,” Mom says.

“Well, with Uncle Charlie, you never know.”

“They were being sold at a booth for a quarter apiece. I thought they were beautiful.”

I turn my head to try another angle—perhaps now I’ll be able to find the beauty in the blobs. I can’t seem to, so I think to myself that I now know why the expression
beauty is in the eye of the beholder
was coined.

“I was just a young girl, and he took the time to think about me.”

Suddenly, I get it. Right here in the shop, I now understand. Mom was drawn to her Uncle Charlie—despite his strange antics—because he cared about her. He took her to the fair and bought her something of value. Her own parents didn’t show affection for her, yet this man made her feel cherished.

Morning slips into afternoon, and sunlight shimmers through the front window. We try to act like it’s business as usual as Carson, dressed in a pair of worn jeans and a radio station T-shirt, fills the holes in the walls, sands them when the plaster dries, and adds a coat of paint. As if we’re used to having a man work closely beside us every day.

At seven, Carson rinses his roller and paintbrush in the bathroom sink. I watch the pinkish white water dissolve into the drain. After drying them, he sets the roller and brush on the card table in the back room.

I leave him to walk over to the front door and lock it for the evening.

Mom counts the money in the register’s drawer, writing numbers on a slip of paper. Since the robbery, she no longer leaves any money in the register overnight.

“Let’s all go out to dinner,” Carson calls out to us.

“What?” I make my way to the back room where the bathroom is.

Carson dries his hands on a paper towel from the metal dispenser. “I’d like to take you and your mom out to dinner.”

“You would?”

“Yes, I would.”

Standing in front of my mother, he asks, “Where would you like to eat tonight?”

She’s speechless; again she looks ready to faint. As Beanie would say,
“She’s all kinds of flustered.”

Moistening her lips, she calmly says, “I have stew in my crock pot. I tried a new recipe with chicken and tomatoes. We could go home and eat there.”

Carson smiles demurely. “You can have the stew tomorrow. I’d like to take you out to dinner tonight.”

Before the waiter asks if we want dessert or coffee, Mom says she’s heading home.

Carson sputters, “Now?”

Mom says, “I’ll leave you two alone.”

“I hope we haven’t bored you with our refugee talk.” Carson’s concern is genuine, and I can tell that my mother is enjoying the attention he’s giving her.

Mom and I went to our homes to get ready and arrived at the Peking Gourmet Inn just minutes before Carson’s car entered the parking lot. There was no wait to be seated; it helps that it’s a weeknight and not the weekend when the restaurant is swamped.

Now, Mom places a narrow hand on the linen tablecloth. Her ruby bracelet that Dad gave her glistens under the lanterns that adorn the ceiling of the restaurant. “I’ve enjoyed your refugee conversation,” she says.

I see that her eyes look sleepy, like she’s ready to drink a cup of warm milk and slip into bed. If Butterchurn were still with her, she’d be adding milk to his bowl, as well.

Using her hand to push herself up from the table, Mom stands, her eyes on Carson. “Thank you for this evening,” she says in a regal tone.

He pushes his chair back and rises. Touching her arm, he says. “Be careful driving.”

Mom smiles warmly. “I usually am.”

“Is she okay?” Carson whispers after Mom’s slipped out, her purse secured under her arm, the Chinese waiter wishing her a good evening. Carson’s seated next to me again, his right shoulder inches from mine.

“She gets up early, so she’s probably tired by now.”

“She didn’t eat much.” He eyes her half-eaten plate of walnut chicken.

“The robbery has her uptight.”

“I bet it will for a long time. My dad was mugged in New York City a few years before he died. He had nightmares for a while after that.”