A Long Stay in a Distant Land Read online

  "Get moving."

  Louis backed out of the parking space.

  "Calling someone a black ghost is not the same as calling him a nigger," his father said. "That's not how I use it."

  "Not what I said," Louis said.

  "That's what you were getting at. Calling someone a black ghost is like calling him a black guy or a black dude. Slang for the same thing."

  "Calling someone a white ghost is like calling him a honky," Louis said.

  "Honky means white person. Check the dictionary."

  Over the past two months Louis and his father had communicated mostly by banging on counters and tables. They spoke only to contradict each other, and he felt they were better off not talking, because each time his father said black ghost, he remembered the old man's desire to turn Hersey Collins into one.

  "When did you start drinking malt liquor?" Louis asked. His father looked out his window, rubbing the neck of his bottle.

  Grandma Esther answered the door in a blue bathrobe. She said hello how are you doing come in. She seemed dazed.

  Louis looked at his father, who shrugged.

  "Thanks for having us over," Louis said.

  "We brought food," his father said, indicating the beef jerky, doughnuts, and malt liquor he held in two plastic grocery bags.

  Grandma looked at the liquor.

  "The drinks aren't for you, Ah-Mah," his father said.

  "This isn't food, Sonny," she said.

  "They're for me and Louis, and Mick."

  "You drink?" Grandma asked Louis.

  "No."

  "Has Mick started drinking?" she asked.

  "No."

  She frowned at his father, who frowned at him.

  "Come in," she said.

  Mick and Aunt Helen hadn't arrived yet.

  "Sit down." They sat at the dining room table and his father set his bags down next to the fried turnip cakes, egg rolls, and sliced watermelons that were already there. Grandma gave the doughnuts and beef jerky a slight nudge to distance them from her food.

  The room was still beige. Beige carpet, beige walls, and the inverted pincushion of a glassy chandelier above.

  The turnip cakes were steaming and the smell of beef and onions made Louis's mouth water. Grandma's turnip cakes usually settled like bricks in his stomach. They gave his father heartburn and Mick the runs. She used a recipe supposedly passed down through many generations of her family, the Hsiehs. The Lums of Orange County had always approached her turnip cakes with a sense of dread, but Louis was hungry now and hunger was an irresistible spice. He picked up his chopsticks and dug in.

  By the time Mick and Aunt Helen arrived, Louis had eaten most of the turnip cakes and egg rolls.

  Mick wore a wife-beater shirt and tan khakis. He worked out four days a week, two hours a day, and looked like an action figure come to life. His biceps and triceps were chiseled and robust. Veins crawled up his thick neck.

  Louis believed Mick lifted as intensely as he did to prove the death curse theory wrong, to prove he would survive to old age through physical strength and endurance. He stood five-eleven, weighed two hundred fifteen pounds, and walked with such authority Louis sometimes believed the only things capable of killing him were his own veiny hands. Louis liked to think of his cousin as indestructible.

  Mick sold real estate and had made enough money from the past five years to buy a 2200-square-foot house in Huntington Beach, which he'd shared with his girlfriend Regan until they broke up. He worked six days a week and kept in touch with old clients. Taped to his cubicle wall were words he'd written for himself: "There is enough time in every day to sell a house. Every day is a potentially good day."

  "What's a bad day?" Louis had asked.

  "Calling an old client and hearing the word foreclosed."

  Mick's home had a pool, a theater system in the living room, and a billiards table. After Regan moved out, Mick bought a doghouse equipped with two rooms and purple carpeting. "What I really need," he said, "is a dog."

  When he wasn't working, lifting weights, or hanging out with old college friends, Mick visited pet stores and played with the dogs kenneled there, rubbing their bellies and shaking their paws, looking for his furry soul mate as any other twenty-eight-year-old might be looking for a human companion in a bar, club, or church. "A golden retriever is a fine beast," Mick often said. "They're quiet and obedient. Not like beagles. A beagle will yap your ears off and piss on your feet."

  He said, and this made sense to Louis, that the only beings capable of giving unconditional love were parents and dogs. "A dog will come back and lick your face even after you've yelled at it or slapped it on the ass for doing something wrong. He'll whimper and stop wagging his tail for a minute or two, but he'll always come back to you."

  "Why don't you just take one home?" Louis asked.

  "Not ready for the commitment. I'd have to bring him with me wherever I go, or find a sitter if I leave on a trip."

  At the previous Lum family meeting, Grandma had said to Mick, "Your father and Uncle Sonny already had children when they were your age. When am I going to see some great-grand­children?"

  "Soon as Louis gets on the ball."

  "Granduncle Phil didn't marry until he was forty-five," Louis had said.

  "He was a scientist who created an important medicine for mankind. He didn't have time to get married." According to Grandma, Granduncle Phil had created diphenhydramine hydrochloride back in the forties and sold it to Parke-Davis, who marketed the formula as Benadryl.

  "I'm a scientist of real estate," Mick had said.

  "You're not creating Benadryl," Grandma had said. It was a saying Mick enjoyed hearing very much. He used it frequently himself. If, for example, Louis was too busy to have lunch with him, Mick would say, "You're not creating Benadryl." Too tired to play tennis at the park? You're not creating Benadryl.

  Complaining about a long day at work? You're not creating Benadryl. Now that everyone had arrived, Grandma sat down at the head of the table. Mick and Aunt Helen sat across from Louis and his father, and surveyed the food.

  Aunt Helen wore her hair short and combed to one side. She had on a plain gray sweater. Mick nodded at Louis. "What's up?" He looked at Louis's father. "Hey Uncle Sonny."

  Louis's father saluted him with his bottle of malt liquor. It was the same bottle he'd been working on in the car.

  "When did you start drinking forties?" Mick asked.

  "Eat," Grandma said. There were five egg rolls and half a turnip cake left. The sliced watermelons were plentiful. The packages of beef jerky and powdered doughnuts were unopened.

  "No, thanks," Mick said. "I'm not hungry." Aunt Helen winced at the spread, like the food was going to eat her.

  "You've been told he's alive," Mick said. "What's the problem?"

  "I need to hear him tell me," Grandma said.

  Nobody responded.

  "None of you is worried something could have happened to him?" she asked.

  "He used to lock his bedroom door and stay inside for hours," Louis's father said. "On weekends."

  "He didn't have many friends when he was young. He didn't have a reason to be outside."

  "Every kid has a reason to be outside," Louis's father said.

  "Not every kid was as disobedient as you," Grandma said.

  "You usually ask us if we've been ill," Aunt Helen said. "You usually ask us if we're happy. How about asking us how we're doing?"

  "Stop giving her a hard time," Mick said to his mother.

  Grandma glared at Aunt Helen. "So none of you cares whether he's dead or alive?"

  "He's alive," Louis's father said. "He wants to be left alone. He's always wanted to be left alone. Since he first developed consciousness and realized he was happier alone than with people."

  "If you were nicer to him, he would have been more comfortable around people," Grandma said.

  Louis's father looked angry, like he was going to shout. Aunt Helen and Mick looked excited by
the prospect of an argument.

  The old man bit his lip.

  "Not one of you gives a shit," Grandma said.

  Louis was shocked, not by Grandma cursing, though that was new. A tear had appeared and trailed down her face. These were two firsts in two days—her trembling voice on the answering machine the previous night and now her tears. "Grandma's

  crying." He hadn't meant to say it out loud.

  "No shit," Mick said. "Go grab her a paper towel from the kitchen."

  Grandma wiped her face quickly with the back of her hand. "Sit down, Louis."

  Her crying made him uncomfortable. He'd always been uncomfortable seeing family members in vulnerable states, like the time his father fell off his mountain bike, tumbled down a hill, and snapped his collarbone. He was nine and haunted by the sight of his old man in a sling, shifting uncomfortably in bed, calling out for his wife to bring him more soup and bread, moaning.

  "It'll heal," his mother had said. "It doesn't even hurt. Your father has no tolerance for pain." Louis avoided his father until the sling came off, going out to the yard if the old man was watching TV, coming in to watch TV if he went out to the yard.

  Grandma had been steady through all the deaths in her family. Her crying now was unnatural. "I'm flying to Hong Kong to look for him," she said.

  "Hong Kong's a big mess of a city," Mick said. "You're going to get mugged."

  "That's why I could use some company," she said.

  "This is the busiest time of the year for me," Aunt Helen said. "I can't leave work now."

  Mick said he couldn't just up and go. "I have clients who need me to be here. But I will fund your trip. I'll cover any expenses for you and whoever chooses to go with you, because an old woman shouldn't be walking around Hong Kong by herself." He nodded at Louis to volunteer. "You don't even like your job."

  "Yes I do," Louis said.

  "Do you have any vacation time, Uncle Sonny?"

  "No," Louis's father said. "Give him a few months, Ah-Mah. If you don't hear from him, then let's talk again."

  Louis thanked Grandma for the food.

  "Nobody's worried about him," she said. "Unbelievable. Everybody's more worried about work."

  Louis looked down at the table. He could feel everyone else looking down, too. He glanced at his father. The old man's face was turning a deep red. The bottle he'd been working on since the drive over was only half empty.

  The old man burped.

  Aunt Helen sneezed.

  "Bless you."

  "Thanks, Louis."

  "Do you need a tissue, Mom?" Mick asked.

  "Sit down, Mick," Grandma said. "I'm glad you liked the food, Louis. Take the rest with you."

  The sight of Grandma crying stuck in Louis's mind as he drove home. His old man was snoring, his head pressed against the window. He'd drunk only half of the forty and poured the rest down Grandma's sink. He'd knocked himself out on a twenty and now clung to the rest of the case in his lap.

  Louis wondered why his father wouldn't volunteer to take a couple of weeks off and fly to Hong Kong, if just to make Grandma happy. He was a bank manager, but Louis hadn't known that when he wrote his seventh-grade family history report. The night before it was due, he'd asked his father what he did.

  "I work."

  "What kind of work?"

  "Hard work." The old man was getting ready for bed and Louis didn't want to keep him up with questions.

  He worried that Mrs. Keller might give him a lower grade for writing "hard work," so he assigned his father a profession. He wrote, "Born in 1950, Sonny Lum worked for the IRS," to which Mrs. Keller wrote in her response, "Your father's in a great position of power!" Louis hadn't meant to put his father in a position of power.

  He'd chosen the IRS because the week before, he'd overheard his father saying, "The fucking IRS is stealing from me."

  His father had occupied one line in his report, but one line was enough to convince Mrs. Keller that his father could be used in the same sentence with the words great and power.

  Louis had never thought of his old man in those terms. He'd never thought much of his father outside the context of his own life. He'd never wondered what his father did when they weren't together in the house, eating and watching TV. He'd never wondered what radio station his father listened to on his way to work, what he ate for lunch, or what he thought of his coworkers. These details helped define a man and Louis didn't know a single one, and hadn't cared to know.

  What he knew was that a man was the sum of his actions. His father was now sleeping off a twenty of malt liquor. He reeked of alcohol. When sober, he called people ghosts and threatened to kill Hersey Collins.

  Louis felt like the dog of Mick's dreams, an obedient beast who chauffeured his drunk father and watched him to make sure he stayed away from knives and other potentially lethal objects. He couldn't stand to live with this man anymore. In the wild, old male lions chased the young ones out of their prides. This was the natural way. The old and young should not be cohabiting the same space.

  His father was still snoring when they pulled up the driveway. Louis walked around to the passenger side, looked at the old man's face mashed against the window, and considered leaving him in the car.

  He opened the door slowly and pulled the case of forties off him. He set it on the driveway and shook him awake.

  "What?"

  "We're home," Louis said, helping him out.

  His father leaned against him. "You need to lose twenty pounds," Louis said. His father grunted in response.

  They went inside and Louis led him to his room and into bed. He shut the door behind him and went back out to the driveway, where he emptied the rest of the malt liquor on the front lawn. Then he drove to Grandma's house.

  A Great Time to Be Alive

  (1990-2002)

  In the summer of the year 1281, Lum Sung Sung was conscripted off a Chinese fishing junk and sent with the invading Mongol fleet to Japan. After landing in Hakata Bay, he deserted his army in the night and hid in the nearby woods. The Mongols engaged the defending samurais in a series of skirmishes before a typhoon wiped out the anchored invading fleet, plunging men and horses into the bottom of the sea. Without a ride home, Sung Sung, or Sung2 as Uncle Bo called him in his report, wandered Japan looking for a ship to take him back to China.

  Everything Louis knew about Sung2 he discovered from Uncle Bo. And everything he knew was only half the story because Uncle Bo had composed just fifty-five handwritten pages before he stopped writing. He never found out how Sung2 had successfully returned home.

  In the fifth grade, Louis wrote his uncle as part of a pen pal assignment. "Pick someone who lives far from you," his teacher had said.

  Louis figured that the farther the person lived, the better grade he'd receive, so he picked as far as possible.

  Uncle Bo wrote, "Dear Nephew, I'm flattered you're asking me to be part of your project. It's a great time to be alive!" He wished Louis and his family well, said he was healthy and happy in Hong Kong, said he'd met a beautiful woman named Julie with whom he watched Disney cartoons, and included a brief account of Sung2's life, which began by proclaiming him a brave hero in their family line.

  Uncle Bo described Sung2 as "one who ran from a battle the way a starving man runs toward food."

  Louis could relate. He supported pacifism, which he understood as running away from all potential harm whenever possible. Harm in the fifth grade took the form of Gary Gonzalez, who possessed the thick, hairy body of a well-built, thirty-year-old man, and who enjoyed tying Louis and his friends to the chin-up bars with rope. Harm also took the shape of Miranda Gonzalez, Gary's sister, who also possessed the body of a well-built, thirty-year-old man, and who enjoyed pulling Louis into the girl's bathroom so she could smother him with kisses and call him her Little Muchacho, the black hairs on her forearms chafing his cheeks as she pulled him close.

  Uncle Bo began sending Louis addenda to the original account of Sung2, foll
owups and corrections he'd gathered from research at various libraries and museums in Hong Kong. He asked Louis for feedback, whether he found the story moving, interesting, or boring. Louis admired his ancestor for running and hiding from conflict, and believed he'd been descended from this man. He wrote Uncle Bo about school:

  "I finally beat Jason Hahn. He missed methamphetamine. Such an easy word. I represented my school in the county spelling bee and finished third. I believe spelling is my calling."

  Uncle Bo sent responses:

  "Good on finishing third. Looks like your plan to memorize nine thousand new words over summer vacation paid off. I drank a toast to your success. Julie sends her congratulations. Here are a few more pages on Sung2."

  Uncle Bo provided answers, counseling, and advice on everything Louis presented before him:

  "She punches you because she's attracted to you. When you say she looks like a man, does that include broad shoulders? Does she have a deep voice?

  "A C in geography is meaningless. Unless you become a cartographer, you don't need to know where the United Arab Emirates is. Julie says don't worry about it, and she works in a museum.

  "Don't hide the dirty pictures under your mattress. Keep them folded inside one of your encyclopedias. The H-I or I-L edition; anywhere in the middle of the alphabet is a safe spot.

  "Just because she likes Tuan now doesn't mean you did anything wrong. This was a girl who used to force you to make out with her in the bathroom, and a girl with broad, mannish shoulders as well. Best you let that sort go."

  They talked on the phone a handful of times, and the only images Louis had of his uncle were from old pictures in which he was a thin man with a head full of wavy black hair. From their conversations and from his letters, Uncle Bo came across as a perpetually cheery person. He offered agreeable advice and support from a distant land. He never gave the stares of rebuke, exasperated sighs, or winces Louis's parents would make when he brought home C's in geography.

  And what Uncle Bo gave in support Louis returned. Whenever Uncle Bo wrote, "Are you sure you like this section about Sung2?" he responded with an enthusiastic yes and a request for more, even though intricate descriptions of straw tatamis, wooden shojis, and leather samurai armor were slow and uninteresting. What he found most interesting were Uncle Bo's descriptions of his own life in Hong Kong.