A Good Fall (4 page)

Suddenly the fierce-eyed Latino pulled a steel bar out of his pant leg and started smashing the windshield. Dan was transfixed, speechless, while the other three thugs all produced short rebars and began hitting the car. In a minute all its windows were shattered, and so were the front lights.

At last Dan regained his speech. “Guys, why do this to me? Give me a reason at least.”

The tall, thin-waisted man stepped over, wagging his forefinger, and said with a lopsided smile, “You wanna know why? ’Cause you’re too nosy.”

“What are you talking about? This is a new car. Hey, please, no more!”

“You really didn’t get it? Let me tell you, quit using a private dick. No cop’s gonna save your ass.”

“You got the wrong man. You can’t destroy my property like this.”

“Oh yeah? Damn you, this will give you a better idea.” The Latino rushed up and hit Dan on the forehead with his steel bar.

Dan fell to the ground and blacked out. They each gave him a few kicks before bolting away.

When Dan came to, he found himself lying on a gurney moving down a hallway in Flushing Hospital. Two paramedics, a man and a woman, were pushing him to the ER. They walked unhurriedly, as if strolling. Dan touched his forehead, which was bandaged; he twisted his head; his neck was stiff, but his mind was clear. He realized that someone must have dialed 911, which dispatched the ambulance. Gina was walking beside him with her narrow hand on the side of the gurney. Her eyes were puffy, still tearful. “How do you feel, sweetie?” she asked.

“I’m okay.” Dan sat up and huffed out a breath.

“No, lie down.”

“I’m really okay.”

In the ER a young woman doctor examined him briefly and found no serious injury—he didn’t need stitches—so she discharged him after giving him a CAT scan and telling Gina to keep applying ice to his bruise. If he felt dizzy, she said, he must come back without delay. He promised to do that. Gina supported him as they walked out of the hospital building and flagged down a cab. Amazingly, despite the injury, he was fully alert, as wired as if he had just downed a few espressos. How odd. He hoped he could sleep well that night.

After a wonton dinner, the couple remained sitting at the table. Gina, shamefaced, held Jasmine to her breast while she listened to Dan. Now and again she sucked in her breath, her nipple bitten by the baby. Having recalled as much as he could of the incident in the parking lot behind his office building, Dan concluded, “It was Fooming Yu who sent the thugs to smash our car and attack me. Thank God my bones are strong, or they could’ve kicked me to pieces.”

“Believe me, I had nothing to do with this. I knew he was mean, but I never thought he’d go that far. What are you going to do?”

“What do you think I should do?”

“Will you press charges?”

“With all the thugs at large, how can I prove that Fooming Yu was behind the attack? Actually, what troubles me most is not him but you.”

“Me? How do you mean?”

“What’s your true relationship with him?”

“He’s just a fellow townsman, no more than that.”

“Stop lying to me. I feel I don’t know you anymore. Tell me who you are. I can no longer live with a wife who’s like a stranger to me. This home is becoming a torture chamber, too much!”

A prolonged silence filled the room. Gina got up, handed him the baby, then went into her bedroom. Dan sighed and put his elbow on the table to rest his head on his hand, but the instant his forehead touched his palm, a jolt of pain forced him to sit up. Gina came back and put a small white envelope before him. She said, “Look at what’s inside; you’ll see the truth.”

Is it a passport or a love letter? Dan wondered. To his surprise, he took out a bunch of photos of an ugly woman with beady eyes, a bulbous nose, and a broad, thick-lipped mouth. Her face was roundish, though her eyebrows curved like a pair of crescents. “Who’s this?” he asked, a bit revolted.

“It was me. After I came to America I went through a series of plastic surgeries over the years. They changed me completely, into this woman.” She pointed her thumb at her chest. “They cost me every penny I made. I used to live in Chicago, and Fooming was there too and saw my gradual transformation.”

For a moment Dan was too flummoxed to speak. He handed her the baby, then asked, “Are you really from Jinhua?”

“Yes. I went to the same middle school as Fooming’s sister. That’s how he got to know me.”

“Is your family all dead?”

“Yes, except a half brother, but he lives in the countryside and we have no contact.”

“You gave me a raw deal, a raw deal! No wonder Jasmine is so homely. Tell me the truth—is she my child?”

“Yes. I’ve always been faithful to you.”

“Still, you tricked me into this marriage.”

“I don’t feel good about it. That’s why I won’t keep you in the dark anymore. Now you can do to me what you will, but please don’t tell anyone my secret. This is the only favor I ask of you.”

“You can’t go on deceiving others. In fact, you’ve deceived yourself.”

“No, I love my beauty. It’s the best thing America gave me. Finally I have a face that matches my figure and skin.”

A voice shouted in his mind, That’s not beauty, that’s fraudulence!—but he didn’t let that out. He asked instead, “Why can’t you disentangle yourself from Fooming Yu? Because he knows your past?”

“Yes. He often hints at my secret. In fact, he keeps asking me to find him a girlfriend and saying he’s miserable and lonely. Sometimes I feel sorry for him. I guess he’ll let me be once he has a woman. I did introduce him to Sally, but she didn’t like him. For some reason no woman’s interested in him. That’s why he’s still stuck on me.”

“But you’re not his girlfriend!” He got up and started pacing the floor. Now and again he giggled and sighed, shaking his head. Outside the window the sky was scattered with ragged clouds, one of which was drifting across the rusty face of the moon. Below the clouds four or five bats were doing acrobatic stunts.

Dan’s walking and laughter unsettled Gina. She begged, “Stop, please! If you want a divorce, I won’t be opposed to it as long as you let me keep Jasmine.”

“No way. She’s mine and I love her no matter how ugly she is!” He lowered his chin, his eyes flashing. He breathed, “I want to keep these photos.”

“Please don’t show them to others!”

“I’m not that low.”

At those words Gina broke into sobs. “Dan, I love you. I know you’re a true gentleman. I promise not to speak to Fooming again. I will be a good wife and make you proud.”

“No pride of that sort can swell my head again. Tell me, what’s your real name?”

“Lai Hsu.”

“What’s that? It doesn’t even sound like a woman’s name.”

“I was born overdue, so my parents named me Lai. Together with Hsu my name means ‘arrived slowly.’”

“Why did you change your name?”

“I felt I became a new person and wanted to start afresh.”

“So only Fooming Yu knew your past, huh? Does he have something else on you?”

“No. He’s a vampire I can’t shake off of me.”

Gina buried her face in her arms, weeping, while their daughter cried, “Mama, Mama.” The child kept pulling her mother’s ear.

•    •    •

The meeting between Dan and Fooming took place the next afternoon, in the bar of the Sheraton Hotel. After tea was served, Dan said to him calmly, “I want you to leave my wife alone.”

“What if I don’t comply?” Fooming arched an eyebrow as if in surprise.

Unhurriedly Dan took a photo of Gina out of his inside jacket pocket and put it before Fooming, who glanced at it but didn’t say a word. Dan went on, “You have nothing on her now. I know how ugly she was, but I’ve accepted her as my wife.”

“I see. What a benevolent hubby.” Fooming grinned contemptuously. “I always do what I want to and nobody can push me around.”

“Listen,” Dan said, fighting down his temper, “I know everything about you. You worked for five years as a mechanic in Jinhua Railroad Company.”

“So? Why should I be ashamed of my humble origin?”

“More than that, you headed your workshop’s branch of the Communist League. That means you were a Party member.” The last sentence was just a guess, but Dan said it firmly. “You know, a communist is not supposed to set foot in the U.S. unless he’s a state dignitary.”

Fooming swallowed. His face paled and his eyes dropped. For a while he remained mute as if striving to recall something. Sweat beaded on his pointed nose. Then he rasped, “You can’t prove that.”

“But the FBI can. They can also deport you.”

“Don’t play the superior in front of me. You were a Party member too.”

“True, but I renounced my membership publicly in 1989. That made me a clean man in this country. Besides, I’m already naturalized—I’m no longer a deportable foreigner like you.”

Fooming lifted his teacup, but his hand was shaking so much that a few drops fell on his lap. He put the cup down without drinking the tea. He picked up a paper napkin and dabbed the wet spots on his pants. Dan got up and left the bar without another word, knowing the man would have to sit there for a while to let his pants dry.

That night Fooming called and promised he wouldn’t bother Gina anymore. He insisted that he wanted to renounce his Party membership too, but couldn’t do that publicly for fear of ruining his siblings' lives in China. He begged Dan not to inform on him, which Dan agreed to.

Fooming kept his word and never turned up at the jewelry store again. Life finally became normal for Dan and Gina. However, Dan took to frequenting the bathhouse, and whenever he went there he would make an appointment with one of the pretty masseuses beforehand. Sometimes he stayed late in his office on purpose, reluctant to go home.

Choice

THE FLYER SAID
, “The applicant must be able to teach various subjects, including the preparation for the SAT. Payment is most generous.” I answered the ad in the morning and was told to come for an interview that evening. The woman on the phone, Eileen Min, said her daughter needed a tutor right away. At the same time, she admitted she had seen seven or eight applicants, but none of them was suitable. She would pay forty dollars an hour, which was very attractive given my other prospects.

I was being paid to do research for the professor directing my master’s thesis, but I needed another job for the summer to make enough for my tuition and living expenses in the fall. Without my parents’ support, I had managed to complete one year’s graduate study. There was still another year to go. I had started working on my thesis, about Jacob Riis and his effort to eradicate urban slums. My mother had called a week before and said it was not too late for me to go to a professional school, for which my parents would happily pay. I had again rejected the offer, saying I intended to apply to a PhD program in American history. My father, a successful plastic surgeon in Seattle, had always opposed my plan. He urged me to go into medicine or law or even politics—clerking for a congressman—because to him history wasn’t a real profession. “Anyone can be a historian if he has read enough books,” he’d say. “What do you want to be, a professor? Anyone can make more than a professor.” I would remain silent while he spoke, understanding that as long as I was in the humanities I would be on my own. In my heart I despised my father as a typical philistine. He was ashamed of me, and his friends talked about me as a loser. I knew he might cut me out of his will. That didn’t bother me; I wouldn’t mind becoming a poor scholar.

I set out at around six thirty p.m. Eileen Min lived at 48 Folk Avenue, not far from my place, about fifteen minutes’ walk. There were more pedestrians in downtown Flushing since the summer started, many of them foreign tourists or visitors from the suburban towns who came to shop or to dine in the small restaurants offering the foods of their left-behind homes. The store signs, most bearing Chinese characters, reminded me of a bustling shopping district in Shenyang. So many immigrants live and work here that you needn’t speak English to get around. I stopped at the newsstand manned by a Pakistani, picked up the day’s
World Journal
, and then turned onto Forty-first Avenue. A scrawny teenage girl strode toward me, dragged by a Doberman. The dog stopped at a maple sapling and urinated fitfully on the box encasing the base of the tree. The girl stood by, waiting for her dog to finish. Along the sidewalk every young tree was protected by the same tall red box.

Folk Avenue was easy to find, just a few blocks from College Point Boulevard. Number 48 was a two-story brick bungalow with a glassed-in porch. Beside a two-car garage grew a large oak tree, and behind a small tool shed in the backyard stretched a high fence of wooden boards. Despite the close proximity of the downtown and the houses crowded together in the neighborhood, this property stood out idyllically. I rang the doorbell, and a slender woman of medium height in a shirtwaist dress answered. I was amazed when she introduced herself as Eileen Min and said we had spoken that morning. To my mind, it was unlikely that such a young-looking woman could have a daughter attending high school.

She led me into her house. I was impressed by the furniture in the spacious living room, all redwood, elegant and delicate in design, like antiques. A vase of stargazer lilies sat on a credenza on the far side. On the wall above it hung a photo of a lean-faced man, middle-aged with mild eyes and a jutting forehead, his hairline receded to his crown. I sat on a leather sofa, and Eileen Min told me, “That’s my late husband. He died three months ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Sami, pour some tea for Mr. Hong.” She said this to a teenage girl who was in a corner using a computer.

“No need to trouble yourself,” I said to Sami, who rose without looking our way.

The girl headed for the kitchen. She was wearing orange slippers, and her calf-length skirt showed her thin ankles. Like her mother, she was slim, but one or two inches shorter, and she too had a fine figure. She quickly returned with a cup of tea and put it beside me. “Thanks a lot,” I said.

She didn’t say a word but looked me in the face, her eyebrows tilting a little toward her temples as if she were being naughty. Then she turned and entered a bedroom off the hall, her slippers squeaking on the glossy wood floor. She left her door ajar, apparently to listen in on our conversation. I produced my student ID card and my GRE scores. “These are my credentials,” I told Eileen.

She examined the card. “So you’re a graduate student at Queens College. What’s this?”

“The results of the test for graduate studies; every applicant must take it. See, I got 720 in English and 780 in math.”

“What’s the perfect score?”

“Eight hundred in each subject.”

“That’s impressive. Forgive me for asking, but if you’re so strong in math, why didn’t you study science?”

“Actually I was torn between history and biology during my freshman year at NYU.” I told her the truth. “Then I decided on history because I wouldn’t want to depend on a lab for my work. If you do history, all you need is time and a good library.”

“Also brains. Is history what you’re studying now?”

“Yes, American urban history.” I lifted the tea and took a sip. Then I caught Sami observing us from her room, through the gap at the door. She saw me noticing her and withdrew immediately.

Eileen beamed, her face shiny with a pinkish sheen and her almond-shaped eyes glowing. She said, “I promised Sami’s father that I’d help her get into a good college. Tell me, can you help my daughter score high on the SAT?”

“Sure. I tutored my cousin two years ago, and he’s a freshman at Caltech now.”

“That’s marvelous.”

She decided to hire me. I would start the next day. Since I was still taking summer courses, I could come only in the evenings. Before I left, Eileen called Sami out to greet me as her teacher. The girl came over and said with a nod of her head, “Thank you for helping me, Mr. Hong.”

“Just call me Dave,” I told her.

“Okay, see you tomorrow, Dave,” she said pleasantly, and grinned. Her button nose crinkled.

Coming out of the Mins’ house, I felt relieved. I would teach Sami five times a week, including Saturday evenings. I no longer needed to worry about my summer income.

Sami was seventeen, and not as slow as I had expected. She was bright, but her grasp of math was shaky owing to some missed classes during her sophomore year, which had left holes in her knowledge. Those holes had expanded. She had been depressed in recent months about her father’s death and unable to pay attention in class. To help her better understand basic algebra and trigonometry, we reviewed the first two years of high school math. As for English, I focused on enlarging her vocabulary and teaching her how to write clearly and expressively. This was easy, since I had taught grammar and composition before. In addition, I assigned her a list of books to read, mainly novels and plays.

Sometimes Sami was quite mischievous. She’d sniff at my arm or hair, then joke, “You smell so strange, like an animal, but that’s what I like about you.” At first her words embarrassed me, but gradually I got used to her playfulness. She’d wink at me, her eyes rolling and her lashes fluttering, and she talked a lot about recent movies and TV shows. I treated her strictly as a pupil; to me she was a child.

When we worked, the door of her room was always open, and I occasionally noticed Eileen eavesdropping on us. I tried to act professionally. Whenever Sami was occupied with an assignment, I would go into the living room to chat a little with her mother, who was always pleased when I did. Eileen would treat me to tea, cookies, nuts, candied fruits. Sometimes I felt she was waiting for me.

I enjoyed spending time with the Mins in their warm and comforting home. My own small studio apartment was lonely. I’d sit by myself, reading or working on my thesis, wondering what sort of life this was. If I fell ill tomorrow, what would happen to me? If I died, where would I be buried? Unless my parents came to claim my body, I might be cremated and my ashes discarded God-knows-where. I had once known a young Filipino who was killed in a traffic accident. He had signed the back of his driver’s license, agreeing to be an organ donor, so his body was shipped to a hospital to have the organs and tissues harvested and then it was burned and his ashes mailed to his parents in Mindanao. At least that’s what I heard. I still don’t know with certainty what happened.

It was difficult to date someone in Flushing, especially if you wanted a long-term, serious relationship, because most people would work here in the daytime and then return home. Those living here didn’t plan to stay for long. It was as if their current residences were merely a transitory step to someplace else. I’d had two girlfriends before, but each had left me. The memories of those breakups stung me whenever I attempted to get close to another woman.

One evening I arrived at the Mins’ a little early. They were just sitting down to dinner. Eileen asked me if I’d eaten. I said, “I’m fine.”

My tone must have been hesitant, for she sensed my stomach was empty and beckoned to me: “Come and eat with us.”

“No, I’m not hungry.”

“Listen to my mom, Dave,” Sami urged. “She’s your boss.”

Eileen went on, “Please. If you don’t mind.”

I stopped resisting, sat down beside Sami, and picked up the chopsticks Eileen had placed before me. Dinner was simple: chicken curry, tomato salad sprinkled with sugar, baked anchovies, and plain rice. I liked the food, though. It was the first time I’d eaten baked anchovies, which were crispy and quite salty. Eileen explained, “It’s healthier to eat small fish nowadays. Big fish have too much mercury in them.”

“This is really tasty,” I said.

“Wait until you have it every day,” Sami piped up. “It’ll make you sick just to look at it.”

As we ate, Eileen kept spooning chicken cubes into my bowl, which seemed to annoy Sami. “Mom,” she said, “Dave’s not a baby.”

“Sure. I’m just happy to have someone eating with us finally.” Eileen turned to me and added, “Actually, you’re the first person to sit with us at this table since March.”

We were quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Tell me, Dave, which one of you cooks, you or your girlfriend?”

“At the moment I don’t have a girlfriend, Aunt.” I called her that out of politeness, though she was just half a generation older. I felt my face burning and saw Sami’s eyes suddenly gleaming. Then she gave me a smile that displayed her tiny canines.

“Don’t call me ‘Aunt,’” her mother said. “Just ‘Eileen’ is fine.”

“All right.”

“Then why don’t you eat with us when you come to teach Sami in the evenings? That’ll save you some time.”

I didn’t know how to respond. Sami stepped in and said, “My mom’s a wonderful cook. Accept the offer, Dave.”

“Thank you,” I said to Eileen. “In that case, you can pay me less for teaching Sami.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s very kind of you to agree to keep us company. I appreciate that. But don’t grumble if I cook something you don’t like.”

Before I could answer, Sami put in, “My mom’s rich, you know.”

“Sami, don’t start that again,” pleaded Eileen.

“Okay, okay.” The girl made a face and speared a wedge of tomato with her fork. She wouldn’t use chopsticks.

The next evening Eileen made taro soup with shredded pork and coriander. It was delicious; Sami said it was her mother’s specialty. She ate two bowls of the soup and asked Eileen whether we could have it more often. “You used to make this every week.”

Eileen soon learned I liked seafood, and she would pick up shrimp or scallops or squid. On occasion she bought fish—yellow croaker, flounder, red snapper, perch. During the day I found myself looking forward to going to the Mins’, even when I was busy with other things. To distract myself from these thoughts and keep myself from gaining much weight, I often played tennis with my friend Avtar Babu, a fellow graduate student, in art history.

Sometimes I arrived early at the Mins’ to give Eileen a hand in the kitchen—peeling a bulb of garlic, opening a can or bottle, crushing peppercorns in a stone mortar, replacing a trash bag. I just enjoyed hanging around. If something went wrong in the house, Eileen would tell me, and most times I could fix it. She’d be so grateful that she would insist on paying me for the work in addition to the parts, but I refused the money. The Mins treated me almost like a family member, and I was equally attached to them.

Sami made good progress in math, but her English improved slowly. She usually followed my instructions, and even tried memorizing all the words listed at the back of her English textbook, yet there were many gaps in her mastery of the subjects. Before her father died, he’d often said he hoped she could enter an Ivy League college. I never expressed my misgivings about that and always encouraged her.

As I was explaining a trigonometric function to Sami one evening, Eileen came in panting and said, “My car won’t start.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

“I’ve no clue. I drove it this morning and it ran fine.”

I told Sami to do a few problems in the textbook and went out with Eileen. Her blue Volvo was parked in the driveway, under the oak tree. A few caterpillars wiggled around on the pavement nearby, and Eileen avoided stepping on them as if in fear. I got into her car and turned the key in the ignition. The starter ground lazily, but the engine wouldn’t catch.

“The battery must be gone,” I told her. “When was the last time you had it replaced?”

“This is a new car, just three years old.”

“The battery must be lousy, then.”

“What should I do?” She kept rubbing her little hands together as if washing them. “I’m supposed to deliver the books to the reading.” She had inherited her husband’s small publishing business, and the company was holding an event that evening.