A Long Stay in a Distant Land Page 19

The litmus test for how much he loved someone was how much he missed the person after he'd left. Love was not vague. It was not a generic, all-inclusive term because he missed Will more than Grandpa, Connie more than Will, his mother more than Connie. And he missed his father very much while reading the old man's Post-its on the kitchen table.

  "'Learn some culture,'" Grandma said, looking over his shoulder. "What kind of a good-bye is that?"

  "It's in character."

  "What does that even mean?" she asked.

  He shrugged.

  "Do you want to take a nap?" she asked.

  He shook his head.

  "You want me to make some coffee?"

  "We have coffee?" Louis asked.

  "I went shopping yesterday." She spooned grinds into the coffeemaker and asked about his trip.

  He talked about Fei and her family, Jumbo Machinders, Rose Colored Fist, and The Center. "The building has a needle on top," he said.

  Grandma didn't seem to be paying attention. She seemed to be listening to the coffee drip. Whenever he finished a sentence, she said, "Good for you."

  She'd been chewing gum anxiously since the drive home, and continued chewing throughout his vacation summary.

  When he finished talking, she said, "That's interesting. Good for you." What she was really saying was, Please show me the proof.

  He reached down and pulled the photos from his backpack. "Here."

  She snatched them from his hands. "He's lost hair."

  "Yeah." He looked at his father's Post-its. The old man had a rigid printing style. He wrote firmly, leaving dark square strokes on the paper. His P's were squared flags, and his O's were rectangular boxes. He wrote how a highway patrolman or an FDA official would write.

  "He said he needs to be alone?" she asked.

  "Yes. He's not ill. Not depressed. Just wants to be alone."

  "He's always been like that," she said, not looking up from the pictures. "He hated company. Birthday parties used to scare him."

  "Doesn't surprise me," Louis said.

  "I mean his own birthday parties," she said. "They used to frighten him. He wouldn't be able to sleep the night before, not from excitement, but from the fear of everyone being around him."

  "Then he's better off alone," Louis said.

  "He said he missed me?"

  "Very much."

  "He looked skinny?" she asked.

  "A little thin."

  She nodded to signal that that was acceptable.

  "Don't worry about him," Louis said. He pulled out the necklace from his backpack and handed it to her. He'd wanted to buy a more impressive souvenir, something with a trace of gold or silver, but plain stainless steel seemed appropriate for her. She thanked him and put it on.

  That night Esther said to Louis, "I'll stay up with you."

  He was watching TV in the living room. The sound was low, barely audible. "I'll be sleeping soon," he said.

  "Your father said you don't sleep much."

  "I'm getting ready for bed. Infomercials make me sleepy."

  "Okay. Good night."

  "It wasn't your fault with the Benadryl," Louis said. "He has holes in his mouth. He was probably hiding the pill in one of them."

  "What?"

  "The oral surgeon was a large man," Louis said. "Yanked out his wisdom teeth plus a big chunk of his gums."

  "He never told me."

  "He'll be back," Louis said.

  "How do you know?"

  Louis got up off the sofa and led her to Sonny's room. There he pointed at the records stacked on the floor next to Sonny's bed. "He only took half," Louis said.

  "Maybe he only liked half."

  "He left the standard." Louis searched for a record, found it, and showed it to her. It was made by a group called the Sugarhill Gang.

  He put it on the record player, then sat on the floor, his back resting against the side of Sonny's bed.

  "What are you playing?" she asked.

  " 'Rapper's Delight.'"

  "You like it?" she asked.

  "No."

  "You like any of his music?"

  "Not at all," he said.

  "Then why are you playing it?'"

  "You've never heard this one. It's a standard."

  Louis closed his eyes. By song's end he'd fallen asleep. She turned out the lights, shut the door behind her, and let the music play.

  Grandma woke him, jabbing the cordless phone in his face. Louis was sitting against his father's bed. "Your dad," she said.

  Louis checked his watch. He'd slept a couple of hours. He took the phone from her and she left the room. "Hello?"

  "Louis. Have a good trip?"

  "Sure."

  "I hear Bo's alive."

  "Yeah," Louis said.

  "How's he doing?"

  "He's fine."

  "Great," his father said.

  "Where are you?" Louis asked.

  "On the 1-15 to Vegas. I'm going to drive cross-country."

  "What happened with Hersey Collins?" Louis asked.

  "We talked. No fighting. I gave him Straight Outta Compton. He was listening to Linda Ronstadt."

  "Linda Ronstadt?" Louis asked.

  "Similar kind of music. Somebody named Indian Girls. Aimee Mann."

  "I listen to Aimee Mann," Louis said.

  "Great."

  "Nice of you to give him the album."

  "Yes, it was," his father said.

  "How are you going to listen to your records?" Louis asked.

  "I bought another player for the trip. I can listen in the motels."

  "Does the bank know you're gone?"

  "I took a leave of absence," his father said. "Are you done vacationing? You're welcome to stay in the house."

  "I'll stay until you get back," Louis said.

  "You can save on rent while you're there. Don't forget to pay the utilities. Cancel the cable if you want."

  "Good luck in Vegas," Louis said.

  "What I said about learning culture. Put down the Aimee Mann and start listening to what I gave you."

  "Sure," Louis said. "Have a good trip."

  There was a pause.

  "I don't want you to worry about me," Louis's father said.

  "Okay. I won't."

  "I just want you to know that I fully intend to come home. I'm not going to drive off a cliff or cut my wrist. I don't want you to lose any sleep over me, and it just occurred to me that telling you I'm not going to kill myself probably makes you think I'm going to kill myself. But I won't. I promise."

  Louis hadn't expected this. He didn't believe his father would kill himself, and he didn't want to say anything that might encourage him to. He searched for an appropriate response. "Ngoh seun neih." he said.

  Louis rarely used Cantonese with his father, but this was a simple, basic phrase he remembered from those How Are You, Willy Lau? Cantonese instructional tapes. It was a response Joseph often gave after his father provided some interesting fact about the woolly mammoth or Komodo dragon. It translated into I believe you, but the word for believe, seun, could also mean trust.

  "That's good," his father said. "Good to hear."

  Larry Redux

  (2002)

  Grandma Esther moved out after Louis arrived, and he returned to work at the hot rod magazine, to his life in Orange County, to fact checking, to wide streets, empty sidewalks, ample parking, and Target shopping centers, their red rings lighting up the nights.

  Finding Uncle Bo alive had been a relief, but it hadn't convinced him that Death no longer stalked his family. Uncle Bo's presumed drowning and his appearance at McDonald's had been Death's way of saying, "Made you look." It'd been His sick joke, and Louis stayed wary. He kept on his toes. He continued to wait seven seconds before crossing a street on a green. Continued to order cheeseburgers from fast food chains without the patty. Continued to worry about his father crashing his car on a highway.

  In his father's room were two framed black-and-white photographs. T
he first was of Grandpa Melvin. Wide face, small eyes, sharp nose, a row of teeth. Narrow black tie against a white shirt and black jacket. He was smiling like he'd been forced to at gunpoint.

  The second photo showed Tupac being wheeled out on a gurney after being shot five times in the building that housed the studio of rival rapper Biggie Smalls. His head, neck, and chest wrapped in white gauze, Tupac had managed to raise his middle finger high up in the air, saluting not just the photographer, but Death itself.

  A week after arriving in Vegas, Louis's father sent him a letter. Attached to it was a five-dollar bill. "I'm up five," his father had written. "Least I'm not down."

  That night, Louis dreamed of Jesus in the corporeal form of Max von Sydow standing in one corner of a boxing ring. He stripped off his white robes to reveal a chiseled torso. He smiled at the audience: Louis's mother and father, Grandma Esther, Uncle Bo, Aunt Julie, Uncle Larry, Aunt Helen, Mick, Will, and Connie. They were hooting and shouting, "Kick his ass, Jesus!"

  A puff of smoke appeared in the other corner and from it emerged Death in the corporeal form of Grandpa Melvin, holding a machine gun and grimacing in his black jacket and tie.

  Death threw the gun out of the ring and roared at Louis's family. They booed him.

  The two combatants touched gloves in the center of the ring. There was no referee. Jesus had on boxing trunks and Death kept his suit on. After the bell rang, the two men circled each other while Louis's family hollered, "Go Jesus!"

  The Son of Man unleashed a spin kick that landed square on the left side of Death's face, and followed with a punch to the Adam's apple.

  This wasn't boxing. It was kickboxing.

  Jesus kneed Death in the midsection and threw an uppercut that sent Death crashing to the mat. The bell rang again to signal the end of the bout.

  Jesus spit out his mouthpiece, raised his arms, and said to the Lums, "Love one another!"

  "This is a dream!" Louis shouted. He began laughing. He couldn't stop. Jesus noticed him laughing and said, "Are you laughing at me?"

  Louis couldn't stop laughing even as his family began shouting at him to shut up and Jesus began floating toward him, shaking a gloved fist.

  Louis ran for the building's exit, pushed open the double doors, and woke.

  His pillow was soaked through with sweat and the back of his neck was hot. He went to the kitchen. He poured a glass of water, tossed in two ice cubes, and pressed the glass against his neck before drinking out of it.

  On his way back to bed, he stopped by his father's room. Grandpa's photo made him nervous. He stared Death in the eyes and said, "I don't believe in you." He said it again—"I don't believe in you"—then hurried out of the room.

  Two weeks after arriving home, Louis received a call from Mick, who spoke with excitement in his voice. "Come over. Yeah, right now. You aren't creating Benadryl."

  When Louis arrived, Mick invited him in and said, "Meet the latest addition to our family."

  The new Lum was a Pembroke Welsh corgi, a small creature with long foxlike ears and the stubby legs of a footstool.

  "This is Larry," Mick said.

  "After your father?"

  "It's a good name."

  "I don't mean it's a bad one," Louis said.

  Larry barked and raised a hind leg.

  "No!" Mick bent down and shouted in Larry's face. "Pee outside! Pee outside!" The dog whimpered and Mick chased him into the backyard.

  Louis followed.

  "I'm making lunch," Mick said, nodding at his grill. He put two steaks on and slathered them with barbecue sauce while Larry peed. The dog began barking at a bird singing from the top of a fence post.

  "I've cut down my workout schedule," Mick said. He said he'd also been seeing less of his old college buddies because he wanted to spend quality time with Larry.

  "What do you do?" Louis asked.

  "Play catch. Eat dinner together." Mick had found a day care center for Larry during the afternoons, complete with a two-hour exercise program at a local park, vitamin-supplemented meals, and weekly massages.

  "You eat together?" Louis asked.

  "Every night at seven-thirty."

  "You don't start without him, or let him start first?" Louis asked.

  "It'd be rude to start without waiting for the other." Larry lost interest in the bird and settled down at Mick's feet, whining for food. Mick pulled a doggie treat from his shirt pocket. The snack was reddish brown and shaped like a small bone. He bit off half and tossed the other half into Larry's waiting jaws. Mick chewed happily.

  At the end of January, four months after arriving home, Louis received a postcard from Montreal. He'd been receiving postcards from places including Portland, Houston, Des Moines, Brooklyn, and Providence. The old man had driven east across the country and then headed north into Canada, where he'd spent Christmas and New Year's Eve at ABC Seafood in Montreal's Chinatown. "Good thing about Chinese joints— they're always open," his father wrote. "I'm going to Vancouver next. Be back in April."

  Vancouver was in British Columbia. It was north of Orange County. It wasn't directly north. If one drew a straight line from Orange County up through Canada, it wouldn't intersect Vancouver, but it'd come close, much closer than to Ottawa, Toronto, or some other city on the other side of the continent.

  Louis knew which direction the old man was going. He hoped he got there safely.

  The Dance of Goad Fortune

  (2002)

  Every Chinese New Year Grandma Esther brought flowers to Rose Hills Memorial Park, where the Orange County Lums rested. The last time Louis had been there was for his mother's burial, and the time before was in '94 for Connie's. This year Grandma asked him if he wanted to go with her.

  "Probably not," he said. He avoided that place unless a Lum was being buried, in which case he had no choice but to go. This year, Mick also wanted to go and encouraged Louis to come along. "I bought a dog, you found Uncle Bo," Mick said. "Good signs. Time to unburden your soul. Confront your fears. Visit Rose Hills."

  "I don't know," Louis said.

  "We can have lunch after," Mick said.

  "I don't want to go."

  "I'll treat."

  "I really don't want to go," Louis said.

  "I'll pick you up at eleven." Mick suggested Seafood Cove in Westminster for lunch, and Grandma approved. Lion dancers were going to assemble in front of the restaurant, as they did every February to usher in the new year.

  Rose Hills occupied fourteen hundred acres, much of which consisted of rolling green hills. The place had always seemed like a slice of Pastor Elkin's Heaven, even back when Uncle Larry was buried.

  Then Louis was ten, holding Connie's hand. She was seven, young enough not to understand the obligation to grieve like her two older brothers, who were busy walking their mother up and down the hills of the memorial park.

  Louis had been charged by his parents with watching Connie for the afternoon. She was polite and a good conversationalist.

  The two of them had been impressed by the tall stone archways that formed what Connie called "the ribs" of El Portal de la Paz, one of several mausoleums at Rose Hills. Outside was an enclosed garden with bright daisies and tulips. In the center of the garden was a gushing fountain.

  "This architecture's patterned after the Spanish missions," Louis had explained, to which she said, "Cool."

  He showed her a casket catalog he'd grabbed from the front office and they talked about what they wanted to be buried in.

  "I want a bright yellow mahogany one," she said, "so when I'm dead I can shine like the sun."

  He wanted to say nobody would know or care what color the casket was after it'd been buried, but the prospect of a yellow one made her so happy he didn't want to dampen her mood.

  "What kind do you want?" she asked.

  "Something traditional. Brown all around. Oak with a grained light finish. Square corners. Crepe interior."

  "Cool," she said, looking at the garden. She ran outs
ide and picked some flowers. After she died from that poisonous cheeseburger bought at that fast food restaurant, Louis did two things. He vowed to never again patronize any of the restaurant's seven thousand worldwide locations, and he resolved to get for Connie the casket of her dreams. He explained to Aunt Helen that Connie had wanted a bright yellow casket. Aunt Helen made him swear he was telling the truth. He swore.

  At the service Louis approached Connie's open casket thinking, I got you what you wanted.

  His father led him up the steps.

  In the movies the dead looked exactly as they had in life, and Louis had expected the same with Connie.

  Her cheeks were sunken, her jaws bony protrusions. Her closed eyes bulged from their sockets and her skin was unnaturally white, bright as copier paper. "I want to go," Louis said. He began shaking, not from fear or grief, but from anger because he knew this was how he'd always remember her. This was the last and lasting image Death had given him of his cousin, and he was furious. "I want to go now," he said. "Now." His father grabbed his wrist and half sprinted with him out of the church.

  He'd always regretted running away and felt a pang of shame now as he planted the bouquet of chrysanthemums in the receptacle above her plaque. He stood, ready to leave. He'd already visited his mother's plaque, Uncle Larry's, Will's, and Grandpa's. The process included walking, searching ("I'm sure it's right over that hill," Grandma had said a couple dozen times), and moments of observation (a minute of silence followed by the planting of the flowers followed by another minute of silence), and had taken two and a half hours. The Lums were buried in different locations across Rose Hills' fourteen hundred acres, and finding them all had been tiring. Now that they'd finished their visitations, the day was almost over and Louis couldn't wait to have lunch, go home, and shower.

  Off in the distance, Mick tossed a yellow Frisbee to Larry, who leaped over a headstone to catch it. Mick barked his praise, pulled the Frisbee from Larry's jaws, and tossed it again. Standing behind Louis, Grandma said, "No sense of dignity, that one. Acts more like a dog than the dog."

  Louis drove to the restaurant, Grandma sitting next to him and examining the photos of Uncle Bo under the sunlight.

  "Dude could use some Rogaine," Mick said from the backseat.