A Wedding Invitation (9 page)

Beanie says, “This where we need to be?”

I take the key from the ignition and squeeze it till my fingers are numb. “Yeah. This is it.”

Exiting my car, we walk toward the restaurant poised between two others that have Vietnamese lettering on their clear glass doors. The silver and gold shingle—a bulky piece of metal that dangles in front of the row of stores, the left side raised higher—reads
Saigon Bistro
. As we walk by the sign, I have the urge to push up the right side to make it level. Mom always says I like the dress racks to look even.

“Saigon Bistro,” Beanie reads, enunciating each syllable. “Sure hope they have something to wet my whistle.”

I’m conscious of my labored breathing.

Beanie looks at me through narrowed eyes. “You can still run. I’ll never tell.”

I see the stern faces of Huy and Lien’s parents from seven years ago when Lien was accused of stealing in the camp. The rift created from that incident will not leave my mind. Yet that was seven years ago. Perhaps that’s been enough time for forgiveness and a clean slate. After all, we are in America.

“I’ll be okay,” I say.

Seeing her reflection in the bistro’s glass door, Beanie fluffs her dark hair with a quick gesture. “I look a mess.”

Swallowing nervousness, I say, “You look fine.” Then I push on the door. It won’t budge. I give it another attempt, pushing harder.

“Maybe you pull it.”

I pull but still have no luck getting inside.

Just then a man in a white dress shirt approaches and unlocks the door from inside the restaurant. He smiles, exposing a set of uneven teeth. “Welcome. Come in, please.”

Inside the sparsely lit interior, the faint aroma of fried pork greets us.

Immediately, I’m drawn to an object—a Vietnamese dress—a slim blue
ao dai
encased in a glass compartment, displayed on one of the stark walls. A cream-colored scroll with Chinese characters fills another wall, and below it is a metal shelf with five tiny faint-blue teacups. A watercolor of a lone purple iris hangs by a straw hat on the wall farthest from where we stand.

The man who met us at the door has disappeared. Beanie and I stand and look at each other.

Beanie breaks the silence with, “This reminds me of a movie where this family got trapped in a restaurant.”

There’s a rustling sound and a door opens under the metal sign that announces
Employees Only
. A young woman in jeans and a pink shirt saunters toward me. “Miss Bravencourt!” Her voice rings like Dovie’s wind chime.

She is tall and pretty. Her nose, the one they call the American
mi
, is still freckled.

Grasping both of my hands in her slender ones, she giggles. “You the same!”

She’s wearing silver earrings, two gold bracelets, and a chain with a cross around her neck. There is a dusting of gray eye shadow on her lids and a hint of sweet perfume in the air around her. Her hair is brown, wavy, and cut just above her shoulders. Gone is the dull orange color of her refugee camp days.

Huy appears from the same door. He’s changed his clothes and is now wearing a button-down white shirt, with the sleeves folded halfway between his wrists and elbows—the same look he wore at the camp, along with hundreds of other Vietnamese. Behind him follow an older man and woman, their hair streaked with gray. I swallow to hold back the anger that tries to rise, the emotion I felt the last time I saw this couple. I greet them as warmly as I can—Lien and Huy’s parents.

They smile, gold teeth glittering under the blush of the yellow lantern, a globe suspended midair above a large bare table.

“Nice to see you again,” Lien’s mother says, her words halted like Little’s. “Sit, eat.” She coaxes us toward the table.

A flashback zings though my mind to when she said the same thing when we were guests in her billet, scrunched around a coarsely built table as rain gushed down the alleyways and moths huddled for comfort around a single light bulb.

The man pulls out a chair and motions for me to sit. I oblige. Another chair is pulled out for Beanie.

I introduce her. “This is Beanie, my friend.” I then slowly give Huy’s name, pronouncing it as I learned so that it sounds like
Who-ee
. Motioning toward Lien, I say with emphasis, “And this is
Lean
.”

“Nice to meet you,” says Lien, her English sounding better than it ever did in my class.

They bring us each a bowl of hot noodles in a beef broth—
pho
. On a plate placed between us are four dainty fried spring rolls adorned with a few sprigs of mint and basil leaves. Little dishes of a pickled green substance arrive next.

“Thank you,” I say. The little Vietnamese I once knew evades me under these circumstances.

Chopsticks appear, and glasses are filled with ice and Pepsi.

I cringe when Lien and her mother start to argue. Huy brings their raised tones to a halt and then sheepishly offers, “They want to know if you would like iced coffee.”

Lien looks at me and says, “You don’t like, right?”

She glares at her mother until I tactfully say, “Well, I did like it when I drank it at your billet.” Then she frowns at me. I don’t want them to fight here like they often did in the Philippines. So, thinking quickly, I add, “But I prefer this soda.” I wrap my fingers around the frosty glass of Pepsi.

Huy translates, and when both women smile, I am grateful that he’s done his job to smooth over any potential argument.

Beanie guzzles her Pepsi, tries to stifle a burp, and then mutters, “Excuse me.”

I gesture to her to try a spring roll and then pick one up with my set of chopsticks.

Huy disappears into the kitchen and seconds later brings a shallow bowl. The smell tells me that it’s
nuoc mam cham
, the fish sauce my students liked and were always eager to have me try when I was invited to their billets for a meal.

The spring roll is delicious, and to please Huy, I dip the end of mine into the sauce. The aroma of the vermicelli noodles entices my senses and I draw the bowl closer to the edge of the table to take a slurp.

“You like?” Lien is at my elbow.

“Yes.” I pick out a slice of roasted pork with my chopsticks, chew, smile some more.

Huy tells me to add some fish sauce to my broth, so I take the spoon from the bowl and with it add a teaspoon to my broth.

Beanie tries one of the spring rolls, stabbing it with a lone chopstick.

I scan the restaurant. No one is here but us. “Where are your customers?”

Lien says, “We close on Sunday.”

“We’re at church every Sunday,” explains Huy. His English has improved, too.

“I learn about Jesus at church,” says Lien. “Forgiveness, and how do you say, grace?”

“Yes,” I say. “Grace.”

“And Grace is name of one of my friends from school, too,” she tells me with a giggle. “She helped me change my hair.”

Not understanding at first, I question, “You mean she helped you dye your hair.”

Confusion lines Lien’s face.

“Color,” I say. “Change the color of your hair.”

Lien laughs, lightly massaging the tips of her hair. “Yes, I use Clairol.”

“So, how is school?” I ask after a moment.

Huy explains that he’s in seventh grade, a bit behind where others his age are due to his “bad English.”

“Lien, and you?”

“I try but I take long time.”

She has to be twenty or older now. “Have you graduated high school?” The second the question slips from my lips, I want to take it back.

But there is no need for me to worry. Proudly, Lien replies, “Last year.”

“That’s great!” Years ago I never dreamed that this wayward child would ever complete anything but a fistfight.

Lien excuses herself while her parents grin and refill our soda glasses. Lien’s father, Minh, wants to make sure we are not too hot or too cold.

Speaking for both Beanie and me, I say that we’re comfortable. To Huy I say, “I thought you were scheduled to relocate to Chicago.” Lien often told me that she and her family were headed from the camp to Chicago, where a relative was waiting for them.

Huy says, “Chicago was too cold. We have an uncle here, so after one year, we live in North Carolina.”

Chi, whom I recall being rather quiet, boldly uses her English and says, “Chicago too much snow.”

“Yes,” I agree. “Chicago can get bitter in the winter.” Then I wonder why I chose the word
bitter
. Perhaps I am still trying to teach English as a Second Language.

I continue to eat, knowing all eyes are on me. I glance at Beanie to see that she’s fussing with her chopsticks.

Lien returns to us. “He’s not in town,” she says as she flops onto the chair beside me.

“Who?”

“Carson.”

“What?” My stomach flutters like the wings of Aunt Dovie’s butterflies.

“I leave him message.” Her face transports me back to seven years ago when she told me that she’d skipped class to hang out with a twenty-year-old Vietnamese boy her father forbade her to see. “He not home so I talk on his answering machine.”

“You called Carson?” Every pore feels warm.

“Yes.”

I stop eating, my pair of chopsticks suspended over my bowl. “But . . . why?”

“He wants to see you. He your friend, right?”

Was
. I feel the word in my mouth, tasting metallic.
We used to be good friends, but things change. You certainly know about change, Lien, so let’s just leave it at that.

But Lien continues, her hazel eyes bright. “Miss Bravencourt, I never thought I see you in America! We get Carson here and we can have party.”

I fake a smile. It stretches across my face like putty, but it’s still not genuine.

“Mr. Carson want to see you, I’m sure.”

“Isn’t he married?” Certainly by now he has made his vows to Mindy from Raleigh.

“No, not married!” She giggles. “He single. Like you.”

Single. The word stings. When the refugees used it back in the camp, it was suited for me. Now, at age thirty-one, the word feels wrong for me. I should be married by now, my days busy with mopping the floors, making crock-pot dinners, changing junior’s diapers and reading to him from the pages of
The Pokey Little Puppy
and
Goodnight Moon
.

I ask Huy to get a fork for Beanie. She has struggled with her set of chopsticks long enough. But once the fork is in her hand, I decide she’s not too fond of her Vietnamese meal by the way she only rearranges the pieces of pork and vegetables in her bowl. I suppose she’s saving room for her sausage potato pie.

“Miss Bravencourt,” Lien says after she and her parents have exchanged a few strident words in their native tongue. “You live here now?”

“No. My friend and aunt live here. I live near D.C.”

“Washington, D.C.?”

“Yes.”

Beanie twists a lock of her black hair so tightly that I see her finger turn blue. She sips from her glass and then plays with her straw paper. Seeing that she’s not going to eat any more and that my bowl is empty, I say that we must leave now.

Beanie nods and a softness returns to her face. Quickly, she stands.

Lien says, “Thank you for coming.” Then she asks Huy to take a picture of the two of us together. She wraps her arm around my waist and laughs as Huy uses the Kodak camera. “One more,” she tells him, and this time she presses her cheek against mine. The flash goes off again, causing dots to float across my vision.

Their parents thank us for coming in the best English they can muster. Even the man who opened the door for us enters the restaurant to thank us.

As I drive back to Dovie’s, my mind is crammed with memories. I want to talk about my days in the camp, the meals similar to tonight’s that I enjoyed in the billets, the tales of anguish I heard from many of the refugees, the excruciating heat, the respite at the beach in Morong, the walks in the neighborhoods, and the thrill of hearing a student pronounce a word correctly in English. My memories take me to the administration building, where we teachers often sat at tables under a fan that never provided enough cool air.

As Beanie studies her fingernails, I say, “We used to have staff meetings each Tuesday afternoon. They went on for hours because our director, Dr. Rogers, loved to tell us how we needed to be extra careful about the New People’s Army hiding in the brush.” Nearing Dovie’s neighborhood, I continue, “Once a group of us wanted to go to Mindanao for a vacation, but he stopped our plans, saying that area of the country was no place for Americans because of the NPA’s activity being heavy in that region.” Shuddering, I wonder why I’m thinking of this military wing of the Communist Party on a night like this. As Dovie has been known to say, our minds can be strange places.

Beanie is still thinking about the meal served to us at Saigon Bistro. She says, “My ancestors are Chinese, but I don’t care much for their food.”

The next day I set out to leave early. I told Mom I’d be back at the shop by noon. Natasha will need to go to her office, unable to cover for me. When the clock radio alarm goes off, I feel it is one of those mornings that I could literally sleep until noon.