Red Beans and Vice (15 page)

Heaven spotted a yellow sign on a storefront that advertised
FAMILY MEDICAL PRACTICE AND DENTISTRY
in both English and Vietnamese. She pulled into the parking lot, which was still about half full of cars. The restaurants and offices all seemed to be open, families going in and out, and young Vietnamese men were standing in front of a pool hall laughing and exchanging a version of high fives. It was a typical American Sunday evening, except all the faces were Asian.

Heaven put her head on the steering wheel and tried to breathe deeply. She was nervous about meeting Hank’s cousins. She was tired from the day at Mary’s. She took her hands and pulled the skin of her face tight, hoping she didn’t look as old and beat-up as she felt. Hank’s favorite cousin was very polite on the phone, but Heaven had been a little hurt that he had suggested meeting at the office, instead of at home. Now she understood. Mothers with small children and men with their older mothers in tow were going in and out of the doctor’s office. The cousins obviously had Sunday office hours. Heaven shook out her hands, put on some lipstick and got out of the car. Before she could get four steps, a boy of about ten came running out of the office to her.

“Are you Uncle Hank’s girlfriend?” he asked cheerfully.

“I’m your man. I mean, I’m your woman,” Heaven said with a smile, trying to ignore her own shaky start. She’d forgotten all the packages, so she went back to the car and opened the trunk. “I’ve brought some things from your Uncle Hank.”

The boy, eyes snapping with intelligence and interest in the loot, politely held out his hands. “Do you want me to carry something?” he asked.

“Yes, will you take this shopping bag, please?” Heaven said as they walked toward the offices. “I know your uncle found that new Game Boy game you’ve been wanting.”

“Uncle Hank’s the best. I miss him. He never comes to visit anymore.”

She felt a pang of guilt. Hank was a busy doctor. She knew she wasn’t the only reason he couldn’t go on family visits too often. But she also knew any spare time he’d had lately had been spent with her instead of his family. “Hank told me to tell you he’s bringing his mother and they’re coming to visit when you’re off for summer vacation this year and can take him around.”

The boy’s eyes lit up with pleasure. “I’m George.”

“I’m Heaven, George. Nice to meet you.”

A man older than Hank but with his same striking good looks came out of the back of the office and extended his hand quickly to Heaven. There were still a few people in the waiting room. “I’m so glad to meet you, Heaven. Hank has told us so much about you. I’m Tran Wing, and I guess you’ve already met my son, George.”

“For some reason, George picked me right out of the crowd and has been my escort,” Heaven said, deciding this was no time to stop using irony.

“Uncle Hank told me to look for the brightest red
hair,” George explained solemnly, as if he’d had several shades of redheaded women to choose from.

“My wife, who is a pediatrician, and my brother, who’s a dentist, still have patients, but I’ve finished up. Let’s go next door so you can meet our mother and George’s little sister.”

They stepped into another part of the offices, a big comfortable room with a small kitchen and sofas and toys. A television was humming in the background with
60 Minutes
tuned in. There must have been ten people in the room; the matriarch, the spouses and the children of this branch of Hank’s family. Heaven hoped she had gifts for them all. They fell silent when Heaven walked in. Very formally, Tran took Heaven up to each person and introduced her, explaining the relationship they held to Hank.

Then Heaven quickly opened up the shopping bags full of remembrances from Kansas City. There was something for everyone plus three or four gifts for relatives that hadn’t been able to make it to this viewing of the girlfriend. It was a mini version of Christmas and Hank had written each person a note. From what Heaven could tell from the bits and pieces that the cousins read aloud, each note was personal and elegant, just like Hank himself. By the time this gift giving was completed, the other two doctors had joined the rest of the family in this adjunct rec room.

Tran, as the spokesperson for the family, rose and started putting the gifts back in the shopping bags to be taken home. “I’m sorry we couldn’t invite you to our house. It isn’t far from here but since Sunday is a very busy day in our practice, we thought we could all go next door and have some supper together and it would be more convenient.”

“I don’t cook on Sundays,” Iran’s wife said, not apologetic, just matter-of-fact. She was stretching her back, like someone who had been on their feet a long time.

“I think it’s great that you have office hours on Sunday. It must help your patients a great deal.”

Tran nodded. “There’s still a great many shrimp boat owners in our community, that and people working in the hospitality industry of course. The shrimpers aren’t home much during the week and hospitality workers have irregular hours. And many of our children go to parochial schools and don’t get back here until evening. There’s no time for them to go to the doctor or the dentist until the weekend.”

“Yes, but that’s true of most busy families all around America. Not too many professionals adjust their hours to meet the needs of their constituents,” Heaven said as they all trooped out of the offices and headed for a Pho restaurant just a couple doors away.

Soon the long table at which they were seated was loaded with dishes: summer and spring rolls, crispy shrimp and sweet-potato fritters, chicken wings that had been braised in caramel sauce. Everyone had ordered a version of pho noodles in broth, some with chicken, some with duck or pork or dumplings. There were big platters of the condiments traditional with pho: basil, cilantro and mint leaves, lime wedges, bean sprouts, slices of raw jalapeno. Tran sat Heaven in the middle of one side of the table so she could interact with as many people as possible. Everyone was kind, interested in Heaven, curious about the already televised news of murder at the convent and her involvement, and generally great about making her feel comfortable. The exception to this was Tran’s mother, the sister of Hank’s
mother. Heaven could see she absolutely couldn’t bring herself to even generic politeness to Heaven out of respect for her sister. She grunted when Heaven tried to engage her in conversation and soon Heaven gave up trying. It was a lost cause.

The dining room was beginning to clear of the other diners, most of them families like this one. She glanced at her watch and saw it was after 8:30. How could she pay for dinner? Say Hank had insisted? Maybe she should just be a gracious guest. She turned to Tran. “I have to go soon. I promised my friend Mary I’d be back around nine. She is in distress, as you can imagine.”

Tran nodded. “Of course, and please don’t even think about paying for this—Hank said you would try. But I have a trade out with this family. We eat. They get checkups.”

“Thank you. It was delicious and so was the company,” Heaven said and made a general good-bye to the table, and a special one to George. “George, I expect you to come visit in Kansas City as soon as your parents think you can fly on an airplane by yourself.”

“When I’m twelve,” George said firmly. This obviously had already been discussed in the family.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Tran said softly, taking Heaven by the elbow in a courtly gesture. “I’m sorry about my mother’s unfriendliness.”

“Don’t think a thing of it. If I didn’t know what a nice older woman I am, I wouldn’t like me either.”

“Well, you understand that even if she thought you were terrific, which the rest of us did, by the way, she couldn’t act like it because of her sister’s feeling about your relationship.”

“I do understand,” Heaven said, wanting to explain.
“I keep telling Hank to go find someone his own age. When I see your family, your wonderful children, I think that’s what Hank should have and that’s something I can’t give him.”

“Hank understands that planning for a perfect life is worth nothing. If you love someone, you must act like that love is going to disappear tomorrow. And it can.”

Heaven thought of Hank’s father being shot at the end of the Vietnam War for helping the Americans. She wondered how many others in this family were victims of that time. “Hank is the wisest person I know. I really do love him,” she said as she got in the car.

“And he loves you. Enjoy it,” Tran said with a smile, and gently closed the car door.

Heaven gave a little wave and quickly pulled away. The tears were welling up and she certainly didn’t want to start blubbering in front of Tran. She turned out on the highway choking back sobs. Meeting Hank’s family had been a big drain and, even though it had gone well, Heaven felt like she’d been through the wringer.

She drove deep in thought for a few minutes, the impulse to cry dissipated, just letting the evening catch up with her, remembering as many details as she could to relate to Hank when she got home.

Then roadside signs began to catch her eye, signs that she didn’t remember from the trip out. There were houses on stilts that she didn’t recall either, just barely visible back from the road as her headlights hit their outlines. It was dark out here. Each house had apparently been named something that appeared on a sign by the mailbox. Heaven slowed down and read some of the signs,
TA-TA
was followed by
GREEN ACRES
, then
PAWPAW’S DREAM THEN THE OTHER WOMAN
. Cute. Heaven saw
the blackness of water on each side and boats overturned in the yards. These were possibly weekend houses, fishing camps as she’d heard Truely and Will call them.

She must have gone the wrong way when she left Versailles, heading into the lake country instead of back toward New Orleans proper.

Just as Heaven started to look for a place to turn around, bright lights in her rearview mirror blinded her and she felt the back of her car bumped. She realized she’d been driving slowly but this was ridiculous. Bang, another bump. It was a two-lane highway and it seemed deserted. Why didn’t the asshole just pass her if he was in such a hurry? Heaven slowed down further to force a pass. She could tell it was a big pickup truck. She was in a smallish four-door car of some kind; she hadn’t paid any attention to the make when she picked it up at Enterprise Rentals. The front of the truck loomed over the rear of Heaven’s car. It was rather like a German Shepherd mounting a Cocker Spaniel. Bang. This time the two vehicles were locked together temporarily, then the truck backed off enough to disentangle itself from Heaven’s car.

Heaven saw a driveway ahead with a steep slope on each side. She’d just turn into the driveway and hope that someone was home, although the chances of that didn’t look good. All along the road, the houses were silent and dark, another reason she figured them for weekend places. It was Sunday night. Everyone with any sense had gone back to New Orleans, unlike Heaven, who had headed for the middle of Lake Pontchartrain or wherever she was.

She had to get away from this maniac behind her, and she turned sharply into a drive just as the truck gave her
another hard bump. It was enough to send the little car straight down the side of the drive into the ditch. Heaven heard and felt the front tires sink into water. She jerked the car into reverse but it was no use. She was at an awkward angle in swampy land with her front end in a drainage ditch. The car whined and shimmied, but didn’t move. Heaven turned off the ignition but left the headlights on. What difference would it make if the battery ran down?

The lights of the truck were bright behind her and it was then that Heaven realized her biggest problem might not be finding a tow truck. But she did have her cell phone with her and she reached into the backseat, grabbing for her purse. At the same time she locked her driver’s side car door and made sure the other doors were locked as well. As she fished frantically through her purse for the phone, someone with something, a tire iron or a baseball bat, smashed the back windshield of the car. Glass flew in Heaven’s direction because of the angle the vehicle was tilting. She ducked under the steering wheel and held her breath, waiting for the next blow. Any minute now, the window next to me is going to be smashed and some hand will come in and strangle me, she thought. Or worse, maybe that was a shotgun blast. Now they’re going to finish me off.

Instead, Heaven heard the squealing of tires and the sound of the truck pulling away. It was dark suddenly, except for her car’s lights pointing down the ravine. She took a while to come out of the duck-and-cover position. While she cowered, she thought over all the different scenarios. Maybe they’d left one of their crew there, out in the darkness, to finish her off and they would be back to pick him up later. No reason for that. They could have finished her off now and not have to make a second
trip. Maybe someone was coming down the highway so they took off but were coming right back.

Heaven didn’t hear the sound of another car speeding to her rescue. It was very quiet, dark and quiet. She finally decided not to stay huddled under the steering wheel of the car, no matter what was waiting for her. She peeked up. A pile of safety glass slid off her shoulders. She felt around her face and neck and didn’t find any blood, just a couple of nicks and what would be a bump on her forehead in a few minutes where she’d banged into the steering wheel. The car wasn’t as lucky. She was glad her car insurance covered rentals. Heaven resumed her rummaging for the phone, found it and dialed 911. She knew how to identify her location to the police. The signpost for this fishing camp was right in front of her car. It said,
DO OR DIE
.