Dim Sum Dead (21 page)

“Well?” asked Catherine Hill.

“No, ladies. I did not read Dickey’s diary,” I said.

Would they believe me? I looked at each old face. There were smiles and sighs, and even a tear. It’s what each of them desperately wanted to believe, so indeed, they would. How powerful it must be to want to believe a thing so badly that no matter how farfetched, you do.

“I am more concerned, really, about finding out why Quita McBride died. Quita had wanted the red book, so I tracked it down. But as soon as I realized its sensitive nature, I thought I had better return it to you.”

“Bless you,” Catherine Hill said.

“And you,” I asked, “still have the old mah-jongg set?”

“Yes, of course. Here it is.” Catherine picked it up from a spot next to the sofa where I hadn’t seen it. “Is there some particular reason you want it back, dear?”

“Let’s say I’ve gotten attached to it,” I said.

“Cath?” a small, reedy voice called out. Catherine Hill’s little mama came teetering into the room. She was dressed, as I had now come to expect, head to toe in a duplicate copy of her daughter’s silver lamé housecoat outfit. The marabou feathers came up so high on her neckline that they reached her small chin. There are no words to describe the wig.

“We’re right in here, minimom!” Catherine called to her.

By the smile on the lips of the ninety-year-old Hill matriarch, I suspected she had once again forgotten her teeth in a glass.

“Are we having a party?” Mama Hill asked.

“Yes, Mama,” Catherine Hill said, her voice sounding positively festive.

And then she took the red-leather book out of my hand and flung it directly into the center of the fireplace.

I
only have one television set in my house. It sits atop a pine dresser in the tiny third upstairs bedroom. My bedroom.

“How old is your VCR?” Holly asked, scooching over to make more room for Wesley and me. The three of us were crowded on top of my quilted bed, the only comfortable spot in the small room from which to view the set.

I passed the bowl of freshly popped popcorn. “Hush.”

On the screen, a young and dashing Dickey McBride was singing about his affection for a beautiful maiden named Lotus Flower. The setting was a Technicolor-bright view of old-fashioned Hong Kong harbor. I had rented
Flower of Love
on my way home. Something about those days in Hong Kong still worried me. Too many coincidences pointed to
Flower of Love.

“Didn’t anyone mind that Catherine Hill played a Chinese girl?” Holly asked. With one swipe of the bowl, she grabbed a large handful of popcorn.

“That was the forties for you,” Wes said. “A little slanted eyeliner, a black wig, dark makeup—that’s all it took to turn Catherine Hill into Tip Tang.” He pointed to the screen.

“Is that even a Chinese name?” Holly wondered.

“Well…” Wes began, holding up one hand.

Wes had studied Mandarin. Naturally. I felt a minilecture coming on.

Holly was currently in control of the remote, so she muted the soundtrack on the movie. On screen, Dickey McBride, in
the midst of warbling, “…my Lost Lotus Flow…” went suddenly silent.

“First off,” Wesley said, “Chinese is not one language, it’s more like a language family. Think of Mandarin, Wu, Min, Kejia, Yue, Huizhou, Xiang and Gan, to give them their Mandarin names. Kejia is also known as Hakka, Min is also called Hokkien, and Yue is commonly known as Cantonese.”

“Whoa,” she said.

I peeked around and made eye contact with Holly. “You did ask.”

“Well, I just thought the name of Catherine Hill’s character sounded too cutesy. Tip Tang, whazzat?”

Wesley, on a roll, took on that question. “Transcription of Chinese into Latin letters has been a very tricky issue. Chinese languages have sounds that don’t have easy equivalents in European languages. Also, Chinese languages are all tone-based, and how do you write that? Over the years, we’ve written their words using different phonetic spellings, but none of them sound exactly right.”

“It confuses me,” Holly said. “It seems like all the words have changed, too. Like do we still call it Peking Duck if the city is called Beijing now?”

Wes grabbed the popcorn bowl and helped himself. “We probably should. Most of the world has adopted a system of transliteration called Hanyu Pinyin, which is the official system of the People’s Republic of China. That’s why we now see words like Beijing, and Daoism and Mao Zedong.”

“Hey, I want to watch the movie.” I grabbed the remote from Holly when she wasn’t paying strict attention and unmuted
Flower of Love.

“I don’t think I ever saw this one,” Holly said, shifting her focus back to the screen. “It’s pretty funky.”

“I vaguely remember it,” Wes said, “but I didn’t remember how good old Dickey McBride was. He had a great voice.”

The scene shifted to a palace garden, and we all made comments on the silk costume Catherine Hill wore.

“I can’t believe how thin Catherine Hill was,” I said.
“And pretty.”

“So,” Holly said, “when they were making this movie, everyone on the set was learning to play mah-jongg and gambling like crazy. I love knowing all that behind-the-scenes stuff. Read another entry from the book.”

I had, of course, made a photocopy of the pages from the red-leather diary. The copy was on my lap, and I picked it up again. I had been reading out some of the brief entries from the months McBride and Hill were in Hong Kong. We could not make sense out of every entry. Some were cryptic. But some were romantic. There were many notes that referred to McBride’s affair with his beautiful young lover “Jade.” Nothing scandalous by today’s standards. Just notes like: “met Beautiful Jade for the weekend,” and “Beautiful Jade makes me sing to her in bath.” But many of the others referred to names we couldn’t immediately recognize.

“Here’s one,” I said, reading from the binder. “Millie was fired for cold hands. Trina is much warmer.”

“What was that about? Sounds kinky.” Holly giggled. “Who was Millie? Who was Trina?”

“That note was made over fifty years ago,” I said. “We’ll probably never know.”

Wesley was seized with an idea. He took the remote control from me and fast-forwarded to the credits.

“Hey, we’re gonna miss the movie, Wes.” I was the only one, apparently, who cared for an orderly narrative.

“Just wait,” Wes said.

We watched the movie jerkily speed through its closing scene and then zip past the words The End. Immediately after, the credits began rolling by. The song was a warbling duet between McBride and the woman who sang for the lipsyncing Hill. It was pretty awful. Wes hit the slow-motion button. The crawl of names slowed as they floated up and off the screen. And then, yelling, “Look!” Wesley hit “pause.” Frozen on the screen was the name: Trina Van Hertbruggen.

“Trina’s hand
is much warmer,”
Wes quoted from the diary.

Trina Van Hertbruggen was listed as the makeup artist, and
we surmised that she probably replaced the cool-fingered Millie. Such a small item as the chill factor of hands could make or break you in Hollywood. Another mystery solved.

I gently reached over and plucked the remote out of Wesley’s grip, intent on rewinding to the point earlier in the movie at which we had stopped.

“Wait,” Holly commanded.

I paused the tape.

“Go in slow motion, Mad. Maybe we’ll see someone listed in the credits named
Jade.
”

Well. Duh.

The three of us stared at the tiny names as they crawled slowly up and off the TV screen. Many of the names of the crew and bit players were Chinese.

“No,” Holly said. “No one named Jade.”

“Hey, go through them again,” Wes said, getting excited. “The Mandarin word for Jade is Ling. Look for Ling.”

We were instantly alert. I quickly rewound the tape. Holly, on the left, sat cross-legged on the bed, rubbing her eyes. I rewound a bit too far. Wesley, in the middle, sat with a hand absently over his mouth in concentration. I hit play, and the terrible closing song began. I, sitting on the right, held my ears until we came to the names. I hit the slow-motion button and we stared again at the credit crawl.

“There.” I stopped the tape. “That’s not Ling, but it’s close. What does that name mean, Wes?”

“Chen Liling,” he read. “The name Chen is one of the most common Chinese surnames, and the two first names are Li and Ling, which mean ‘beautiful jade.’”

Beautiful Jade…
met Beautiful Jade for the weekend
…

“That’s it! That’s it!” Holly crowed.

“Liling was an actress,” I said, reading her small screen credit, wedged between dozens of Asian named bit players. I quickly rewound the videotape back to the movie. “It said she played a handmaiden called Wing Wong.”

“This is awesome,” Holly said, munching popcorn again. “We rock. I want to see what Dickey McBride’s Chinese
girlfriend looked like.”

“Yes,” Wes said, equally keen. “It was this girlfriend, Beautiful Jade. who taught McBride to play mah-jongg. And McBride taught Catherine Hill and Quita and the rest.”

“Right. I’ll bet she’s the one who gave McBride the old mah-jongg set,” I said, scanning the backward-moving images as the tape rewound.

“This is ultracool, Mad.” Holly’s mouth was full of popcorn, so she might have actually said, “Wes’s outer ghoul, Mad.” Either way.

I stopped the movie at a scene we’d previously viewed. It was a large set of the palace ballroom. Catherine Hall, playing Princess Tip Tang, was singing to three handmaidens.

Wes and Holly and I now studied all the court bit players with a scrutiny one rarely would. Each frame that held Catherine in its focus usually had one or two of the handmaidens in the background. None of us looked at Catherine Hill. We were intent on viewing the lovely Asian faces that belonged to the background players.

On the soundtrack, the unseen woman who dubbed the singing voice of Catherine Hill hit a high note, as on-screen, Catherine’s mouth opened wide to match. The courtesans and handmaidens swayed behind her.

Wait. Oh my God.

Automatically, my finger hit the pause button. Frozen on the screen was a clear close-up of one of the handmaidens. I was positive this young lady played the tiny part of Wing Wong. And I was positive, although that film was made so many years ago, that I knew the woman to whom that pretty face belonged.

I
sat in the little side garden of the small house in Westwood that belonged to my old cooking teacher, Lee Chen. Liling Chen, I should say. Or should I say Chen Liling, handmaiden to movie queen Catherine Hill in Chen’s one and only American film.

I sipped a cup of tea as we sat together on white-iron chairs. Lee Chen had professed herself happy to receive a late-night visitor. She had not been sleeping well, she told me.

The evening was cool, and we sat under a little electric patio heater. As we talked, Lee Chen offered to read mah-jongg tiles and tell me my fortune. They lay out on the patio table before us, with the twelve tiles divided between East, West, North, and South, and the one tile in the center. She had been turning them over one by one and telling me stories about their meanings.

“You see here,” she said, turning over Two Circles. “This is the Chinese character:
Sung.
It is the pine tree and symbolizes the qualities of the tree, that is, firmness and strength…”

As Lee talked I wondered what I was going to do. It would be kinder to leave everything as it was. It would be kinder to walk away, leave questions unasked, let things lie. Lee Chen was not a young woman. What right did I have to poke around in her past, dredging up long-buried memories? Was it honorable to disturb a woman I had been so fond of
only to pay back my debt of guilt to a woman I never liked? I would think about it before I went too far.

Lee had more to say about Two Circles. “…and therefore is often linked to a young man. Perhaps a lover—”

“No,” I interrupted with firmness, “not true. No young man lover.”

“Okay, Madeline.” Lee smiled. “Then, perhaps a younger brother or son.”

“My brother Reggie,” I said, picking the only possibility mentioned I could handle at the moment.

Lee said, “Two Circles is also linked with writing and drawing, but not painting. This is because the wood of the pine makes the finest charcoal and its soot the finest ink. It can therefore indicate a resolute person who chooses diplomacy rather than violence.”

Lee sat very quietly as I pondered how diplomatic my inquiry could be.

“When did you come to America, Lee?” I asked. “I don’t remember hearing that story.”

“A long time ago, Madeline. It was in 1948, just one year before the Communists took over the government on the mainland.”

Lee wore a blue jacket over her simple dress. She cocked her head, her straight hair brushing against her cheek. This mannerism I knew well from long ago when I was her student.

“You were born in Canton?” I asked.

She held her hands still in her lap. “No, Madeline, I was born in Hong Kong. Before the Communists, I had been able to visit my family who lived on the mainland, in what used to be called Canton Province. But the world was changing very quickly. I could see that the time would come when my freedom to travel might no longer be tolerated. I decided to move West.”

Lee turned over another mah-jongg tile. “Ah,” she said, “Two Wan. You see? This is the Chinese character called
Chien.
It is symbolized by the sword.”

“Oh dear,” I said.

“No, no,” Lee said. “It is not necessarily a bad sign.
Chien
is a double-edged sword that denotes a balance or a decision…”

I knew I had to make a decision. How long could I allow this woman to sit here in friendship, with all the questions I was dreading to ask? I waited for some sign of what I should do with my terrible doubts.

Lee seemed oblivious to my turmoil and continued telling my fortune. “The sword can therefore represent the joining together or the severance of something. For example, in relation to people. Either way it indicates that something is held in balance and that no progress can be made until a decision is made.”

“Did you move to America because of a man?” I asked, flat and direct.

Lee Chen looked up. “What do you mean?”

“I find it remarkable that you never mentioned you had been an actress once, long ago.”

I watched Lee’s eyes and saw in them the look of sudden sadness. “Oh, Madeline. Is this what brings you here to talk this evening? Please, my dear, do not dig and dig at what is better left buried.”

“Should we bury the past?”

“Yes,” Lee said forcefully. “What is to be served by bringing up such pain? What?”

I looked at Lee, so small, so worried. I hated myself for continuing to hurt her, but would hate myself, too, if I let it all go now.

“You remember the woman named Quita McBride? You met her at Buster Dubin’s house.”

Lee Chen looked at me and didn’t answer.

“She was married to Dickey McBride, the big movie star from long ago. You met her the other night at the Sweet and Sour Club party. And then, later that night, I think you went back to see her. You had something in common with Quita, didn’t you? You had both been in love with the same man.”

“I do not wish to talk of these things. I know you might mean well, because you are one of the sweetest souls I know. But you must let all this be. It is private business, which has nothing to do with you.”

I stood up, worried that I shouldn’t have said a word, worried that I couldn’t stop myself from saying more.

“Lee, please. That night at Buster’s house, you learned then about Quita and Dickey McBride. And we talked about an antique mah-jongg set, do you remember that? And you learned that night that Dickey’s set had been found. And that it would belong to Quita.”

She looked at me. I felt her eyes beg me to stop.

“Here,” I said softly. “Here’s the old set. I recovered it, and now it is yours.” I pulled it out of a canvas bag that I’d left near my chair.

“Ahh.” Lee Chen said, dropping to the wood of her deck, opening the lid and the small drawers, removing first this one, then another tile. “You brought it home to me,” she said in a dazed voice.

“This set was yours, of course,” I said, wanting to know for sure. I always wanted that. Like I had this right to find out. I felt slightly sick, but still pressed on. “Did it belong to your family?”

“You have found out many things, my dear,” she said, more sadly than with anger. “Many things perhaps you would like still to learn.” The old woman stood up slowly and settled down on the iron chair, holding her old game set in her lap like a toddler. “If you wish, we will talk.”

I sat down, too, and picked up my teacup, waiting as she gathered her thoughts.

“I was a foolish young woman.” Lee said. “I wanted to see the American movie people who had come to Hong Kong to film. My cousin took me to the set. He was working on construction and had ways to get me a pass. In those days, the men would play mah-jongg on their break times, during their lunchtime, and after work ended, often past midnight.

“I remember one day, Richard McBride, the big American film star came to watch the workmen play. He stood by the side of the mah-jongg table, very respectful, and watched. He was a big man, Richard, and a beautiful man. I was just a girl. When he asked me if I knew how to play the game, I was too shy to speak. But when he asked me if I would teach
him, I found in myself a sudden boldness. I nodded at him yes, I would.

“That’s how we began, my Richard and I. The film company had leased for Richard a beautiful house in Hong Kong, and there I cooked for him and I taught him to play mah-jongg. And soon, I was asked to be in the movie. It was just a very small part. Richard wanted me to be near him, and this was a good way. My parents were very unhappy. But I was eighteen. At that time, the politics in China were very dangerous. My father was busy on the mainland. My cousin was supposed to be watching me closely, but he was too busy gambling.”

“And you and Dickey McBride fell in love.”

Chen smiled a very sad smile. “I fell in love with him. He told me he, too, was in love. He was an American movie star. He had already been married two times. But he told me I must trust him.” Lee’s smile vanished. “And I did.”

“Did you want to marry him?” I asked.

“With Chinese women, marriage is a very serious thing. In the old traditional values, a wife had four responsibilities. The first is faithfulness: A wife should never consider another marriage even after her husband has died. The second is beauty: A wife should always try to make herself beautiful to attract her husband and make him happy. The third is submissiveness: A wife should understand how to talk with her husband and how to act accordingly and to make him always feel comfortable and never challenged. And last, a wife must be hardworking: She should enjoy cooking, sewing, child rearing and keeping a good, clean and orderly household.”

“How terrifying,” I said in a small voice, thinking of the millions of women to whom this set of values represented a life of virtual slavery.

“You can see, Madeline, why we traditional Chinese girls were taught to choose a husband with the greatest care. There was no divorce for us. We were bound by honor to only one man, even if he turned out to be a villain. That is different from the modern notions of the West, and even today
in China there are many modern girls. But for a girl like me, in those days, I knew no other way.”

“Yes. I see.”

“When Richard left Hong Kong, he promised to send for me in one month. But two months went by, and then three months, and I never got a letter. By then, I knew I would have to leave Hong Kong. I was afraid if I stayed any longer, I would bring shame to my family. My cousin gave me money.”

“Were you going to have a baby?” I asked.

“How do you know all this, Madeline?”

“I read Dickey’s diary. Not all of it. But he wrote of you, Lee. He wrote that in you he found his soul mate. He called you Beautiful Jade.”

Lee’s eyes turned glassy. Tears. “But he did not want to be with me when I came to America. The war was over, but all women with Asian features were treated like we were the enemy, it seemed to me. Richard was afraid of what people would say in the newspapers. He was afraid of his movie-studio boss. He was afraid of his fans, you see? I understood. He tried to give me money, but I did not want it. Instead, I found a job in the kitchen of a restaurant. I scrubbed the pots and I survived. And then, I showed them I could cook. Soon enough, I opened my own restaurant. In time, I became a teacher as well. And it has been a decent life, Madeline. I cannot regret a lifetime that brought me such a daughter and such beautiful granddaughters.

“This is why I do not want to dig in the past, you see? I had some pain in those days, yes. And I did not know what the future would bring me. That was a terrible time, but it is past.”

“Yes,” I said slowly, setting down my empty teacup, “But I’m sure you weren’t expecting to hear the name Dickey McBride the other night. You weren’t prepared to hear us talking about your own mah-jongg set, which meant so much to you. You went to see Quita later that night. You wanted to ask her for the mah-jongg set. Isn’t that so?”

“It belonged to my grandmother, you see,” Lee Chen said
softly, tears again making her eyes shine. “I never should have given away my family’s old set. I was a foolish child so many years ago, and I was in love. Richard wanted the tiles, and I had been taught all my life to be submissive, so of course I gave them to him. But what do we know of the passing of time when we are children? I had never imagined that Richard would someday give away my family’s heirloom. When I heard that this treasure had been passed to a silly young American girl, I knew I was getting another chance to make amends to my ancestors. That is fate, Madeline. That is why I was meant to be at that party and meet that girl. I went to her right after the party. Just after you drove away to your meeting with your young man, I turned my car around and drove back up to the house. I walked up the steps and heard fighting inside the house. Buster Dubin was fighting with his girlfriend. I kept quiet because I did not want to disturb them. But later, she came outside. I knew it was my chance. I told the girl I wanted to buy the mah-jongg set.”

This was my worst fear. Lee Chen had just admitted to being on the stairs with Quita on the night Quita fell to her death. I could imagine a hatred growing in Lee Chen’s heart. She had been poorly treated by Dickey McBride, years ago, used and abandoned. She had borne him a child that he ignored. In her pride, she had chosen to take no money from McBride, but how well did that proud decision sit all those long years? As a single mother in a foreign country, how had she managed when her child needed medicine and school-books and clothes? How had Chen felt as years went by and she read about McBride, who continued taking lovers and wives, living a rich man’s life?

Is that how her years went? If so, what a bitter time that must have been. And if Chen Liling had kept all this secret pain hidden away for decades, what action would she take when fate brought her to the Sweet and Sour Club party on Chinese New Year? How dizzying was the blow of meeting up with her past ghosts so unexpectedly? The brutal coincidence of running into Dickey’s pretty young wife. His blond wife. That certainly might have unhinged quiet Lee Chen.

These thoughts made my stomach twist as I looked at her. Lee sat with her back rod-straight on her garden chair. I couldn’t believe she could kill. She couldn’t. And that night after the Sweet and Sour party, Lee hadn’t been raging. I had detected no seething hatred.

“Tell me, Lee, please tell me…” I heard myself whispering. “Tell me you did not go back to hurt Quita.”

I felt sick to my stomach. What had I started? Why had I come?

“Hurt her? I could not hurt anyone, Madeline. What do you think of me? I was only interested in recovering an object that was precious to my family. I wanted to give this mah-jongg set to my granddaughters. That is all. And now you have brought it here, and what was wrong has been set right.”

“It has,” I said.

“Why do you look so unhappy? Do you imagine I could kill someone, Madeline?” She stared at me, hurt and angry. “I think you must have more faith in yourself. You have considered me your friend and teacher for many years, have you not?”

I nodded, thoughts and memories blurring.