The Lotus and the Storm (10 page)

It is a familiar silence. It is the same silence that has slipped into that private space between them with increasing frequency.

I bury my face against my sister's chest and breathe her in. I tell her what I saw. “Mother and Uncle Number Two were upset with each other,” I say.

“He comes too often when Father isn't here,” my sister adds.

“Isn't Uncle Number Two our father's best friend?” I ask.

“Still. Father doesn't like him.”

“He was sad. He had tears in his eyes. He was the one who did most of the talking.”

“What did Mother do while he talked?” my sister asks.

“She sat there and didn't say much. She kept shaking her head,” I answer.

My sister interlocks her fingers with mine. “He must have asked her for something and she said no to it, don't you think?”

I hasten to nod in agreement. “She
should
say no to his question. Whatever it is.”

My sister caresses my hair, runs her fingers down my back, and tells me there is nothing to fear. She reassures me that people can argue without doing damage to their relationship. All I have to do is close my eyes and my fears will evaporate. I obey and, remarkably, in no time at all I fall asleep.

MR. MINH, 2006, 1963

E
ver since my outing to Little Saigon a few weeks back, I have been worried about Mrs. An. I am not sure how to bring up the subject of her son. The very fact that I stumbled upon this knowledge feels intrusive. Is there a newly exhibited nervousness in her? Of course she cannot give up on him. What parent would? His sorrows are also hers. I understand parental compulsion—the need to protect your child.

Mrs. An squeezes past a group of people standing in the doorway of the crazy old woman across the hall from my apartment. I can tell they are medical personnel. White smocks. Plastic badges. Mrs. Amar has been ill. Extended family and other visitors stand in the hall.

“So many people here this morning,” I say to Mrs. An. I glance at her. She pushes the curtains back to let the early morning light filter through my room.

“Old Mrs. Amar had another heart attack,” Mrs. An tells me. The plain gold band on her finger catches the bright sunlight. “She probably should be in a nursing home where she can be watched over all the time.
My
nursing home, in fact. It's only five blocks away. The family could walk there to visit.” I nod. I ask her how she is. “Oh, fine,” she says affably. She runs her fingers through my hair and gives it a quick brush. A pleasing but faint aroma of fried dough emanates from her. I know what it is instantly—
banh cam,
a sweet treat of rice dough wrapped around a soft filling of mung bean paste. The pastry is rolled into a small ball, coated with roasted sesame seeds, then fried to crisp perfection.

“I'll bring some in for you.” She winks at me.

“And some for me?” Mai interjects. As is so often the case, she makes her entrance without a sound and her appearance is a surprise.

Mrs. An smiles. It is not a simple task to make
banh cam
. Mung beans have to be soaked overnight and then steamed and refrigerated. The dough has to be made and rolled into balls to fry. “What is the occasion?” I ask.

“I am practicing. It's been a while so I want to be familiar with the recipe before I make it for the
hui
meal next week.”

“The
hui
?” I ask, feigning ignorance as a way of prompting her. Mai flashes me a dismal look.

“Yes, the
hui,
” Mrs. An says agreeably. “It's at Mrs. Chi's house. She is the organizer. And of course, as you know, we have a potluck feast on the evening of every draw.”

“Your
banh cam
will be perfect for the occasion,” Mai says. She nods her head slowly to emphasize the point. “I'll be bringing a platter of catfish and squid stir-fried in garlic sauce.”

“Is the
hui
pot big?” I venture to ask. Sometimes lives join together, like connective tissue. Mine is knitted with not just Mai's but also Mrs. An's, like tender filaments that form a web.

Mai gives her eyes an exaggerated roll. She knows I am rummaging for information.

“Well, it is a bigger
hui
than I am used to. We're both in it,” she says, pointing to Mai. “You know that, don't you?” She double-checks because my memory has been hazy lately. “The good thing about a big pot is you get to take out more money. The bad thing about a big pot is you have to put in more money,” she says, shrugging.

I hear Mai's heels clattering from the doorway toward my bed. “I should help you start the day,” she says, adding an emphatic nod meant to end my conversation with Mrs. An.

Naturally I comply.

“You have a busy day ahead, Aunt An. I can stay here and help,” Mai volunteers. “I don't have to be at work until much later.”

“Oh?” Mrs. An asks. Neither Mrs. An nor I know much about her other life, the one spent at work.

“I have several half-days this week,” Mai explains. “I won't leave home until two in the afternoon.”

Mrs. An touches Mai's shoulder appreciatively. It is only for one moment, but Mai leans her cheek ever so lightly, resting it tenderly against Mrs. An's hand. For a moment, the gesture evokes such a sense of familiarity in me that I have to close my eyes. It is as if we had departed irrevocably into a past when Mai was enclosed in the certainty of her mother's love and motherly tenderness was both lovingly expected and lovingly offered. I hear Mai's sigh, like an exhalation of deep longing. She is side by side with Mrs. An, as she was once side by side with her mother. It gives me a tingling, vertiginous sensation. There is Quy, reading to our daughters, one
Arabian Nights
tale after another. Quickly, I try to come up with a reason to keep Mrs. An in the room, to prolong a moment that contains a strain of something precious, like something we once had but have now misplaced. But I can't. Instead, I stay inside my own retrograde terror, my own quiet hope.

Mrs. An says, “I'll not be long. I'll take a long lunch break today and come back to have a sit-down snack with you before you leave.”

“Wonderful, wonderful. I'll prepare your favorite tea,” Mai says in a firm, amplified voice. “The three of us can share a pot of jasmine.” Something passes over her, like a bright shining light, and I too, for once, feel an accompanying surge of happiness.

After Mrs. An leaves, I want to ask Mai, “How are you managing, my little daughter?” But I stay in the zone of the circumspect. I do not say anything, and neither does she. Mai clears the night table to make room for the teapot and cups. She folds paper napkins into halves and arranges them in a neat stack. Watermelon seeds stored in the credenza are placed in a little dish. “There,” she says, admiring their red-dye sheen.

“The
hui
is a delicate subject,” she tells me in a hushed voice.

“She didn't seem uncomfortable,” I say.

Mai turns palpably inward. She suggests we take a walk to the community center a few blocks away and so we do, I with my walker and she by my side as we slowly make our way through the long hallway, down the elevator to the ground floor, and then across several blocks of cement sidewalks.

The place is officially known as a community center but it essentially functions as a senior center. It is an L-shaped space with a desultory dab of color on the walls and a sprawl of plump leather couches and tables arranged in a cozy configuration meant to convey amiability. There is a low-hanging chandelier with lightbulbs shaped like candle flames. A large Rajasthani painting of a lord on an elephant and several black lacquered hangings adorn the walls. I pity this room, its low-ceilinged sadness, its dimpled walls. The shag rug is plaid and dark, presumably to better hide spills and stains. Pool tables gather dust on their red felt tops. A solitary piano stands in the corner, and sometimes on the weekends, the sound of piano notes, thin and tinny, can be heard like sulky ripples of an incoming tide.

Mai points me to an oversized armchair by the aluminum casement window, in what functions as a makeshift periodicals nook. I go straight for the many Vietnamese language newspapers published in northern Virginia and Orange County, California. Mai bunches her coat and wedges it behind my back for support.

I catch myself in the mirrored surface of the window, reflecting back the image, blanched by the sunlight, of an old man with hollow cheeks and inky black eyes. I stare, feeling a growing affinity with the reflection that is strangely mine and not mine, like an injured aura that I faintly recognize but cannot place. Silhouettes of bare maples and pines glow against the filmy surface. A solitary bird taps at the window. In this tranquilized quietness, the space between the present and the past narrows to nothing. I recall old, tropical smells of lavender petals. I recall the susurration of crickets in the evening hours in Cholon. Lights float. Sound floats. Time slips from me, and passes through the recess and protrusion of old memories.

I remember a time when windows opened to sad Saigon evenings the color of purple. “Purple Evening” was the name of a famous song. The radio was on. A singer extended her arms, clasped her breasts, and yearned for her lover. My wife hummed along. The murmur of prayers from the streets could be heard and almost felt, like a vibration. Monks passed by as the blue of day made its slow metamorphosis into the purple of night.

I remember the evening's dark aubergine cast that hung in the gloaming of a departing day. I remember it; I ask for it now, to see, to smell, to be enveloped in its painterly moodiness.

We are forewarned that love might not last. We go through life trying to prepare ourselves for this possibility. But the deeper tragedy, I think now, might be when love refuses to fade.

What is it about that day that makes my bones ache even now when I remember it?

We were lounging on a sandstone terrace, my wife and I. It was before our life faltered, before the tipping point that sent her on that long descent into her own deep and unreachable self. Sparrows tipped their wings, black flourishes arcing in unison and taking flight. Mai, so little then, asked if the birds were returning home from school and if they were carrying their school bags as they spilled from closed doors into the open courtyard. Her older sister laughed at her question. My wife also laughed, and then reached up to sweep a few wayward strands of hair from her high, curved forehead. I moved closer to her and held her slippered feet in my hand. I was constitutionally bound to her and her alone. Breathing deeply, I smelled it, this exquisite, riveting scent of a purple evening. It could not be more thick, more distinct, than it was.

I am jolted out of my reminiscence by the sound of bickering in front of the television. A voice says, “Stop. Maybe you can keep it here?” I recognize the Puerto Rican accent of a frequent visitor to the center, an elderly man. “Shhh. Shut
up
.” Clutching the remote control, a heavyset, plump-cheeked woman stares down her challenger. “I am in charge,” she says with pugilistic satisfaction.

I want to avoid the sad parade of aggression and victory, of submission and defeat. I tell Mai I want to go home. Back at the apartment, Mai asks if I want a shave. Yes. My daughter coddles her father. I love most the luxurious shave she gives me when she has time. She lays out the accoutrements elaborately, as if they were decorative ornaments. There is the bottle of shaving cream, the razor, the gel. She places my head on the pillow, which she has covered with a towel. She moistens my cheeks and jowls and squirts the cream. I puff my cheeks. I feel short, slow strokes that start on the sides of my face. After it is all finished, I feel her hand lathering a moisturizing cream on my skin.

She turns the television on.

“Do we have any doughnuts left?” I ask.

“Yes, you can have one
banh tieu
and longans,” she says. “Just one
banh tieu,
please. It's deep-fried.”

The
banh tieu
is tightly wrapped in tinfoil and served to me on a plate.

She rifles through her handbag as I use the remote control to surf the channels. After a few minutes, she dumps the contents of the bag onto the floor. “Where can it be?” she asks herself. She is crouched down, searching.

“Your cell phone?” I omit the “again.”

“No, my appointment book,” she says, all the while continuing a frantic search around the room. “Where did I put it?” She frowns. She is flustered. She is silent for a moment but resumes her monologue. “Where
is
it?” She moves about the room—an elongated blur of agitated motion, opening drawers and lifting cushions.

Turning toward me, she says, as if to explain, “Aunt An should be coming back any minute. But I'm not sure if I have an appointment that will require me to leave soon.”

The rummaging continues. It is an obsession. Maintaining order is a priority and disorder creates hand-wringing anxiety. One slip and the whole constellation of fabricated order collapses. She looks at her watch. “It's been more than an hour,” she says, ruffled. “Where is Aunt An?”

“She will be here soon, Mai,” I say. I watch her face for a cue, an admonitory look, perhaps. I remember the partially concealed purple bruise on her neck. I have seen this before, the spinning exhaustion, the convolution and repetition that continue until the misplaced item, however inconsequential, can be found. And when it is not, there is no release. I know there is a name for her condition in this country. Something about compulsions and obsessions.

“When did I see it last?” Mai mutters, her brows knit in concentration. “I have a feeling I've got an appointment in D.C., so if she isn't here soon, I'll have to leave.” I can almost see, right there before my eyes, the little four-year-old girl who sulked when sent to bed against her will.

I know I am unable to reach her. I have no choice but to keep out of it. Even a suggestion meant to be helpful can exacerbate the situation and contribute to further slippage. I will myself into therapeutic stillness. Mai's tireless energy, not yet slapping or hissing, can be a precursor to something scarier. I cannot always tell what will provoke. Sometimes I suspect she has the ability to read my mind.

A sound at the door tips her into eagerness. She looks up brightly, expecting Mrs. An. Instead it is someone slipping a pizza delivery advertisement under the door. A few minutes later, the phone rings. I tell Mai it is Mrs. An. “She is running late. Only a few minutes, though. They're short-staffed and she's been called over to help out in another building.”

Suddenly, there is a crash. My heart leaps inside my chest. A calamitous look flashes across Mai's face. She has departed irrevocably into a new, inaccessible realm. There is the rage, like a snapped-off end that bleeds after its vital part has been severed.
Boom, boom.
The sound of a broom whacked against the walls. I freeze. She has turned stormy. She is an exclamation mark that screams out at you. I am unsure. Is she reachable, is she not?

“Child, what are you upset about?”