Triplines (9781936364107) (8 page)

Large houses sit near the edge of the woods, leafy trees hanging over their roofs and shrouding them. Lenny studies them as he rides along the side streets, wondering what it would be like to have as your back yard this expanse.

There are wide, worn paths leading from the houses into the woods, and he locks his bike to a tree and walks deeper in, where the trees and shrubs grow dense, blocking out the traffic noises on nearby Sunrise Highway.

He comes across a wide, shallow stream and searches for turtles. Once he saw a small turtle swimming in the large creek, and although he didn't catch it, he couldn't stop thinking about it. He has been intrigued by turtles ever since watching a science show on TV about tortoises on the Galapagos that lived for hundreds of years. Then he and his sister watched a TV movie about an enormous sea turtle and its connection to a young couple. The couple found the turtle as a baby and drew a heart on its shell. The end of the movie revealed the same heart on the gigantic adult turtle. Both Mira and Lenny had been impressed by this.

Lenny doesn't find any turtles here, though, and continues walking along the stream. It's getting dark, and he knows better than to get lost in here at night, so he backtracks slowly, enjoying the quiet and solitude.

When he returns home he finds his mother on the telephone, speaking in loud and careful Korean. She says “Uhma” to the person on the other line, and he suspects it's his grandmother from the way his mother keeps repeating herself. He doesn't remember anything about halmonee, and hasn't met any of his relatives though he has a faint memory of his father's brother, Uncle Gil, a stooped, small man who ducked his head shyly. His mother told him that Gil and his father fought often and hardly kept in contact. Gil drives a truck for a grocery somewhere in New York.

His mother hangs up the phone. She turns to him, smiling. “Your
halmonee
will be coming next week.”

“Here?”

“Your sister will have to sleep in your room.
Halmonee
will sleep in Mira's room.”

“What?”

“Just for two weeks.”

“Two weeks!”

“For me, Lenny. I need her here.”

His mother rests her hand on his head. It's a familiar, comforting gesture that he remembers her doing ever since he was a baby. Less an attempt at soothing him, it's more of a way to connect them. After a moment he nods his head, and she pulls away. “Thank you,” she says. “She speaks very little English, so you will have to try harder to learn Korean.”

“I'm not going back to that church.”

She sighs. “But you won't be able to talk to her.”

“I'll learn it on my own.”

She smiles. “How?”

“The library.”

“Good for you. I am tired again. Will you find something for dinner? Make something for your sister too.”

He heats up two cans of soup, toasts some bread, and calls Mira to the kitchen. Her nose is red, and her eyes watery, so he tells her that he'll bring her dinner to her room. “It's chicken noodle soup.”

“When are we going to see the movie?”

“When you're healthy.”

As he puts the bowl and plate on a platter, he hears his mother easing herself onto the living room sofa. He likes the peacefulness of the house with his father gone, and wonders what will happen with his grandmother here.

The Going Out of Business Sale at Sweets ‘N Gifts is a failure. No one really wants to stock up on chocolates and rock candy. Some of the jewelry sells, but by the time the store officially closes, Yul and Umee have bags and bags of cheap silver earrings, necklaces, and even more bags of bulk candy. They have large glass display cases and shelving with nowhere to store it, so Yul wraps them in plastic and puts them in the back yard. Umee asks if there's any candy that the three kids want, but none of them do. Ed recommends they save it for Halloween. “Dump it then.”

The last day of the store coincides with Umee's biopsy. She says closing the store keeps her mind busy, so she's glad to have many things to take care of. Her iron pills are helping her anemia, and she seems to have more energy. Yul drives her to the hospital while Ed, Lenny and Mira wait around the house, watching TV.

Mira asks what happens if the cancer is bad.

Lenny has no idea, and turns to his brother, who says, “If it spreads, she'll need chemotherapy.”

“What's that?” Mira asks.

“Chemicals to kill the cancer, but it also kills healthy cells. That's why they lose their hair.”

“Mom's going to lose her hair?” Mira asks, his voice rising.

“Only if it's spread,” Lenny says.

“Is she going to die?”

Ed shrugs his shoulders.

Lenny says, “No.”

“How do you know?” Mira asks.

“He doesn't,” Ed says. “No one knows.”

“God knows,” Mira says.

“There is no God,” Lenny says.

Both Ed and Mira turn to him. Mira says, “You're going to get in trouble for that.”

“The Devil told me there's no God.”

“Don't say that!” Mira cries.

Ed laughs. He tells them he's going out. Lenny asks him about Sal, if he really is a pot dealer.

Ed says, “Small time, but yeah. I'm telling you—watch out for him.”

After he leaves, Lenny pulls out his marked deck of playing cards he ordered from a magician's catalog. He teaches his sister how to play Go Fish. The corners of every card has a tiny circular design similar to a clock, and Lenny can tell the card from the position of the dots. Lenny knows not only the next card in the deck, but most of the cards Mira has.

Because of the mail order catalogs for martial arts books and supplies, Lenny ends up on mailings lists for other catalog companies, and slowly he learns about the wealth of information out there. He has to buy money orders from the local post office, because he can't send cash, but other than that his age doesn't seem to matter. He recently ordered catalogs from a publisher of military manuals and espionage books.

He lets his sister win a few rounds, and then asks if she wants to bet money. She says she doesn't have much, and Lenny tells her they can use I.O.U.'s. He lets her win twenty-five
dollars, and then asks if she wants to double the stakes. She does. Then he wins easily, and makes her sign an I.O.U. for fifty dollars. He tells her she has to pay him within a week.

“But I don't have it!”

“Well, I'll have to charge interest.”

She looks mildly panicked, so he tells her he's kidding. He won because of his magic powers. She laughs it off, but he shows her how he can read her mind. All she has to do is think of the card she sees, and he can tell her what it is. After a few demonstrations she becomes suspicious. She studies the cards carefully. Then she says, “Hey, wait! Something is different about these.”

He's surprised she notices the marks, and asks her what she sees.

“The dots are different. Are these…cheating cards?”

“It's called a ‘marked deck'.”

“Where did you get it? How does it work?”

He explains the clock code system and how he bought this from a mail-order catalog. She examines the cards again, and a gleam of amazement sparkles her eyes. She asks, “People actually make these?”

“They make all kinds of things.”

“Like what?”

“Top secret. I can't tell you.”

“You have to!”

Lenny leaves her throwing a tantrum. He walks out into the front yard and climbs the tall maple. He sits up on one of the highest branches, the telephone wires near his head. He rests there, wondering how his mother's biopsy is going.

Lenny jerks awake at the sound of Sal's minibike in the distance. He grabs a branch, startled that it's almost dark out. Climbing down, he runs toward the sound of the bike, onto Frankel Boulevard, and sees him racing up the street. He waves him over.

“What's up, Lenny?” he lisps, his feet dragging the bike to a stop.

“My brother said you're a small-time dealer.”

He shrugs one shoulder. “I was. I'm expanding.”

“How?”

“You don't want to know.”

“I do. I won't tell anyone.”

Sal stares at him for a while. “I don't think you would. But the less you know, the better off you are.”

“Do you make good money?” Lenny asks.

“Why?”

“I need to start saving for college.”

He laughs. “Already? Shit.”

“My mom said it can cost twenty thousand a year.”

Sal nods his head slowly. After a moment, he asks, “How are you with gardening?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you like messing around in the dirt?”

Lenny looks down at his hands, which are dirty from climbing the tree.

Sal says, “Okay, you want to see something?

Lenny says he does.

“It's secret. You tell anyone anything, and I'll make your life hell.”

“I can keep a secret.”

“Hop on.”

Lenny climbs onto the back of his bike, and Sal yanks the engine on. Lenny notices Sal attached a bicycle handbrake as a makeshift throttle—the tighter he squeezes the handbrake, the faster they go. Sal rides them to the woods, to the entrance along Sunrise Highway, and locks his minibike to the guardrail.

They walk down to the swamp and he leads Lenny around to the second swamp farther in. Then he says, “It's deep in. You ready?”

“Wait. What is it?”

“I might need some help.”

“Do you have a flashlight?”

“Don't need one.”

“It's okay,” Lenny says, looking up at the dark sky. “I don't have to see it. I can't see anything anyway.”

Sal replies, “All right. One reason why I wanted to show you is ‘cause I'm looking for an assistant, someone I can trust.”

“To do what?”

“Check on my plants,” he says.

“What kind of plants?”

“What kind do you think?”

“Check on them how?”

“Make sure they stay hidden. If they're dry you water them from the nearby stream. I'd pay you.”

“How much?”

He thinks about this. “You'd have to check on it once a day, like after school or something. Just until the crop is ready, so maybe another couple months, until mid summer. So… how about five bucks?”

“For all that work? Just five bucks?”

Sal tilts his head. “You would just check on it. That's easy work for five bucks a day.”

“Five bucks a day?” Lenny says, shocked. He thought Sal had meant five dollars for the entire job. Lenny usually gets paid five dollars to rake a yard, maybe ten to shovel snow. He can't quite believe this, because it would be more money than he'd ever seen before. He quickly calculates thirty-five dollars a week.

“Think about it. Come by my house tomorrow and let me know. Thing is, it's secret. I mean really secret. You can't tell anyone—not your friends or your brother or anyone. I'd seriously fuck you up if you did. Can you keep a secret?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean it, Lenny. This is serious shit.”

“I know. I can keep a secret. I really can.”

Sal studies him. “You know where I live? The house with the wooden shingles.”

Lenny nods his head.

“Come by tomorrow after school.” He looks down at Lenny's sneakers. “Do you have high tops or hiking boots?”

“Hiking boots,” Lenny says.

“Wear those. And long pants. Let's go. I'll give you a ride back your house.”

They trudge back to his minibike, and Sal speeds him home. Lenny has visions of the money he will be making, and completely forgets about his mother until he sees the Cadillac in the driveway.

Umee and Yul are annoyed that they won't get the test results for another two or three days. Lenny is fixated on the bandage over his mother's throat. She tells him that they
used a needle to get samples from her thyroid, and the laboratory is now checking to see if there is any cancer. She will be getting an operation no matter what the results are, but the doctor wants a better idea of what the tumor is.

Lenny's father is already drinking. Lenny guesses that they were fighting in the car, because they move in separate orbits, ignoring each other, with none of the strange solicitousness he witnessed the other night.

Ed stomps through the back door, and their father yells at him to come to the living room. Lenny hears his father calling Ed a lazy bum. Ed is silent. The berating continues for a while, with their father listing all the things that are wrong with Ed, and finally Ed says, “I'm not the one who's probably going to lose his job because of incompetence.”

It seems the entire house goes still. Lenny waits in his bedroom, and hears his mother getting out of her bed, listening. Lenny moves to his door and opens it a crack.

Ed yelps in pain, and both Lenny and his mother move into the hallway. She stops Lenny, and walks ahead. Ed runs outside. Lenny's mother yells at his father. When Lenny peers around the corner he sees his father's whiskey glass on the carpet, a large stain pooling near the coffee table. The strong odor of alcohol blows down the hall. Lenny sees his mother hold the bandage on her throat as she continues yelling, but she loses her voice.

Yul curses her in Korean, and in the barrage of deepvoiced yelling a few English words pop up: “deductible”, “insurance.” Lenny withdraws into his room, knowing what this fight is about—money, as usual. He looks out his window, which has a view of the backyard, and sees Ed pacing in his socks. Lenny realizes his brother left the house
without his shoes, and doesn't want to come back in. Lenny opens his window and motions to Ed. This bedroom used to be Ed's, and there's a large closet with some of his old clothes and shoes in it.

Lenny searches his closet, grabs an old pair of sneakers and one of his torn jean jackets, and throws them out the window.