The Chinese Groove, page 18
Dear Father,
I send you greetings from excellent Peach Blossom Land. Life is wonderful here. Ye Ye, Uncle, and Auntie see to all my wishes. Ye Ye has decided that I should further my studies. He’s sending me to university and won’t need my assistance any longer at the family department store. I hope to make you proud.
I’m very sorry, but the laptop computer I sent you has gone missing, and I can’t replace it right away. This is only temporary. My business partners and I are working on a new product that will one day bear fruit as plentiful as the Mengzi pomegranates that you and I love to eat. I promise I’ll buy you another laptop, one that’s even better. Then I’ll find a countryman who’s going to Gejiu and I’ll ask him to deliver it straight into your hands. Your loving son, Xue Li, University Man.
I heard back from Cousin Deng. He’d found the money to send Yu to Southern California. She was staying in a house with a pair of women who would see to her needs and comforts. It’s all very proper, he said, which worried me that it wasn’t. In a week or so, the baby would be born a U.S. citizen, and then Deng and Yu would marry. You asked if you could help. Go to see them after the baby is born. Yu is scared and didn’t want to leave me. It would calm her to see an old friend. I’ll be arriving as soon as I gather the funds. I visit your father on a regular basis. He’s quit his job at the bus station. He’s found a new situation better than cleaning buses.
I’d been so occupied with my own concerns that I’d barely given Yu a thought. To be alone and having a baby far from home would be scary, even for someone as capable as Yu. I knew her father to be strict and wondered if he was angry with her for getting pregnant without first marrying Deng.
Send me the information, I wrote to Deng. I’m going to see Lisbet soon in Southern California. I promise to visit Yu and meet your new daughter.
THAT NIGHT, HUNTINGTON ARRIVED later than usual, after Henry was asleep. His shirt was limp, his collar was open, and he looked a little flushed. He held up a fancy-looking bottle.
“How about it?” he said. I took out two glasses. He poured a drink and downed it. “Man, I’ve had a night.” He poured himself a second and offered one to me. We stood in the kitchen sipping a bourbon much smoother than Henry’s.
“I couldn’t take another shot of Maker’s Mark,” he said. “Henry’s as cheap with his liquor as he is with everything else.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had a good night. Sometimes my life gets a little crazy, but I’m not complaining. Thank you, by the way, for covering my tracks.” He lifted his glass to me. “How’s that girlfriend of yours?”
“She’s fine,” I said. I didn’t want to talk to him about Lisbet.
“Crazy,” he said, talking to himself. “Crazy, crazy.” He drained his glass. “You done with that?”
He washed and dried our glasses and put them away. “I keep a clean house,” he winked. “But it’s late. I got to get some sleep.”
“If you don’t want anyone to know you’re here, why do you park out front?” I said.
He didn’t lose the smile. He had that professional touch. “You’re a fast learner, just like Henry said. Don’t worry. Nobody’s going after an old guy like him.” He bid me good night and went downstairs to bed.
I went to my mango bedroom and sat down at Diana’s desk. I had two more poems to write, which I still wanted to do, to keep my word to Lisbet. I wrote a line, scratched it out, and started over. Professor Luo said that I had a talent for writing, but my knack for weighing words produced only scribble.
I must have drifted off. I woke up to shouting, stumbled to the front room, and looked out the window. Henry was outside in the shadows, yelling. I raced down the stairs before the crazy old coot did himself serious damage. The shouting grew louder, other voices joining in. My foot landed on a wobbly Crouder ball. I flew backward with a crash, tweety birds circling round my head. By the time I clambered to my feet, Henry had his fists up.
“Does Supervisor Wong live here?” Two men stood on the sidewalk, one working a camera.
“Get off my property!” Henry shouted. “Get off my property before I call the cops!”
“We’re on a public sidewalk,” the man replied. He was wide-waisted and slump-shouldered and wearing a puffy jacket, more marshmallow than man. The second fellow, who had a camera pressed to his face, wore a purple fanny pack around his gut. They were two white guys who shopped at Trader Joe’s. Hardly Asian gang members here to take out Huntington Wong.
Henry advanced, dukes up.
“We’re reporters,” the first man called. “We just want to know: does Supervisor Wong live here?” The camera clicked and whined.
“Put that damn thing away!” Henry shouted. He grabbed the camera and flung it to the ground.
“Whoa, whoa,” the first man said, raising his hands. The photographer swore at Henry. When he leaned over to pick up his camera, Henry decked him. Behind me, footsteps clattered. Huntington ran past me and took Henry by the arm.
“Get the hell out of here,” he said to the reporters. “You’re harassing a private citizen.”
“He assaulted me!” the photographer said, camera up and shooting.
“Don’t say anything,” Huntington said to Henry. “Go back inside and let me handle this.”
“Do you live here now?” the reporter said. “Is this your official place of residence? According to county records, your former residence was sold more than six months ago. This address was listed in your last public filing. Is this your current residence, and if it is, where are your wife and children?”
“He doesn’t live here!” Henry shouted. “This is my house!”
The camera kept whining, an animal set upon its prey.
“Shut up now, Henry,” Huntington said.
The reporter smiled. “No comment for the record?”
Huntington shook his head. “No comment.”
The photographer spoke from behind his camera. “You’re busted.”
20.
Uproar
THEY’RE GOING TO FIRE ME!” TED SHOUTED AT Henry. “They’ve put me on leave; they’ve started an investigation. Do you realize what you’ve done? It looks like I was on the take, that I got the job in the mayor’s office in exchange for letting Huntington claim that he lived here, in your house. A house in his district, where he’s required to live. He hasn’t lived in the district for months! We’re talking fraud, corruption, misuse of public funds. I could go to jail over this!”
Henry grabbed my arm as hard as a pinching cousin. Red blotched his sagging face as if Ted had slapped him. I lurched him into his chair, not trusting his legs to work.
“He has a girlfriend,” Ted said grimly. “Delilah found out, took the girls, and moved in with her parents. The house was hers; she sold it months ago. Huntington’s been living at his girlfriend’s place in Sausalito. Fucking idiot. He doesn’t even live in the city. As if no one would find out.”
“It’s a mistake,” Henry protested. “Those goddamned reporters. They were trespassing. They walked right onto my property without my permission. Didn’t leave when I told them to clear off. They think nothing of breaking the law themselves while ruining a good man’s name.”
“A good man?” Ted said. “He lied to voters. He falsified records. That’s called fraud.”
“He’s doing good for the voters! He’s cracking down on the real criminals, the gangs demanding protection money. I bet you one hundred percent that it’s the gangs who are behind this. They want him off their backs.”
“There are no gangs threatening Huntington,” Ted retorted. “There never were. That was a story he told you to give him a reason to stay. It was all a lie. He listed your address as his own on official government records. He had mail sent here; he parked his car out front. The whole thing was a ruse.”
Henry bellowed and charged out of his chair, too fast for me to stop him. He shoved Ted in the chest, which didn’t budge Ted but almost toppled Henry. I grabbed the back of his shirt; he dangled for a second like a thrashing kid or a sack of evicted kittens on their way to a drowning. When I set him on his feet, he fastened himself to the back of the chair and told me to get lost.
“Huntington didn’t lie to me,” Henry insisted. “The gangs are after him, just like he says. They’ve got the cops and politicians in their pockets. They extort money from the honest people, immigrants like us, the hardworking ones just trying to run their businesses, no different than—”
He blinked hard, hearing himself, and faltered. This time, he let me help him into the chair.
“No different than Mom? Is that what you were going to say?” Ted demanded.
Henry shook his head.
“She wouldn’t have been stupid enough, or vain enough, to let Huntington trick her,” Ted spat.
“Don’t talk to me like that!”
Ted closed in, standing right over his father. “Or have I got that wrong? Maybe he didn’t trick you. Maybe you were in on it with him.”
No, no, he lied to us too, I started to answer, but Henry gripped my hand. He wanted to speak for himself.
“They’re trying to damage his reputation,” Henry said. “People will look into it; they’ll find out it was nothing. They’ll call out those reporters, and Huntington can sue for libel, slander, the works. I’ll get my lawyer on it.”
“His reputation is more important to you than mine is,” Ted said bitterly. “Tell me. Did you know, or didn’t you?”
Henry shut his eyes, his expression clotted by shame. Father had used to look like that after he asked me to beg an extra month from the landlord or make a plea to an auntie for a loan he couldn’t pay back.
“Yeah, I thought so,” Ted said. “You let him fake his address. Then you persuaded him to get me a job, which you pushed me and pushed me to take. He was your golden boy. Mr. All-American, the athlete-scholar. A neighborhood nobody immigrant’s kid who became a big success. Now you have two failures on your account: me and Huntington. Shelley, you better watch out. You stay here long enough, you’ll turn rotten too.”
Henry’s eyes flew open. “Leave Shelley out of this.”
“I tried to. You dragged him in.”
“He’s family,” Henry said.
“Yes he is, poor bastard.”
“Henry didn’t know! Huntington lied to us too,” I said, desperate to get them to listen, or at least to quit. This wreck of a reunion was worse than their impenetrable silence.
But they kept on shouting, unable to give in, a brace of the vulnerable speared by the lies of that dastard, Huntington Wong. They would’ve fought all night if fuming, phlegmy Henry hadn’t caved to a coughing fit. Ted answered his father’s hacking with a final attack of his own: “I’m in trouble. You are too. You put us there,” he said.
HENRY TRIED SO MANY times to reach Huntington that the extra-large buttons on his extra-large phone got extra-large stuck, as if yesterday’s rice porridge had gummed up the works. Huntington didn’t call back. He’d gone into hiding. His lawyer made the television rounds to answer the hue and cry, saying it was all a big misunderstanding, to which Henry yelled at the screen, What did I tell you?, until he heard the lawyer add that Mr. Henry Cheng, an occupant of the house in question, was “a muddleheaded old man, completely unreliable and categorically confused.” That started Henry savagely stabbing again at the phone. Still Huntington didn’t answer.
Then things got worse. The longtime owner of a Vietnamese sub shop way to the west on Lawton Street whose banh mi sandwiches were rhapsodized over by the hipsters invading the Sunset claimed that he’d paid Huntington fifteen thousand dollars to facilitate the expansion of his business, but his banh mi bonanza never came to pass. The money was paid but the permit never issued, leaving the cilantro-and-pâté-on-French-roll market wide open for a parvenu—white, inked, bearded, young—to swoop in and capture. The Vietnamese guy was out for revenge.
“Why can’t you tell Ted the truth: that Huntington tricked you?” I said. I hadn’t forgotten that look on Henry’s face. Like Father bearing up under mortifying shame, Henry couldn’t bring himself to say: I screwed up. Forgive me.
“He made up his mind about me a long time ago. He always thinks the worst of me. Maybe I deserve it.”
“Or maybe Ted thinks you think the worst of him.”
“You’re speaking nonsense,” Henry said.
They were a pair too proud to parley, too boxed-in to bend. They couldn’t detect or even imagine how alike they were, both of them unmoored and bewildered by their grief. Bonded by anger, the life force of mourning. And why, after all, was Ted so sore at Huntington? Because he’d lied, or because he’d stolen Henry’s affections? How would I feel if a mischief-making monkey-wrencher turned Father away from me?
“What happens now? Is there any way to fix it?” I asked.
Henry pounded his fist on the chair. “Call Huntington again. Unblock my number. If he sees it’s me, he’ll pick up.”
He didn’t.
HENRY SENT ME TO summon Ted. Aviva stood guard at the door.
“I wanted them talking but not like this. Henry’s gone too far,” she said.
“It was Ted who blew up at Henry. He was shouting down the house.”
“He had every right. This whole debacle is Henry’s fault. I’m really worried for Ted.”
I felt bad for both Ted and Henry, wronged as they were by that feather-hatted shyster, but I had to stand up for Henry. I knew what it was like to fall under Huntington’s spell. When you’re young and broke and striving, or maybe just old and lonely, it’s easy to believe the person who pretends to believe in you.
“What now?” Ted said, coming to the door.
“Please come,” I begged. “Give your dad a chance to make this right.”
“It’s too late for that,” Ted said, but he followed me just the same. Henry was standing, holding onto the bookcase, miles from his chair. Stubborn old coot. I could see by both their expressions that there’d be no truce today.
“Huntington’s been forced to resign as a city supervisor,” Henry said.
“I read the papers,” Ted said shortly.
“I can’t believe it,” Henry said. “The feds are investigating him on this business of unusual payments. He may have done . . . bad things.”
“I’d call accepting bribes a bad thing.”
Henry struggled with the next. “I want you to talk to my lawyer. You need to be prepared in case they start asking you questions.”
Ted stared at his father. “Is that all you have to say?”
“I’ll pay for the lawyer.” A big concession, exactly wrong.
Ted spoke in slow measure. “I hired my own lawyer. I’ve been placed on administrative leave. I’m barred from going into the office.”
“They can’t do that!” Henry protested.
“They want my computer, phone records, files of every kind. They’re interviewing my boss and coworkers. Everyone’s avoiding me. It’s thorough, dirty, and public. Worst of all, Aviva has to deal with it too. It’s humiliating.”
“Let me help—”
“I want nothing from you. And when this is over, I’m leaving.”
“Of course! Change jobs, good idea. They have no respect. They’re terrible, those bosses.”
“You didn’t hear me. I’m getting out. We’re selling the house. As soon as this is over, I’m gone.”
HENRY SAID LITTLE THE rest of the day and evening. In the morning, I helped him shave and made him an extra-good breakfast. I told him not to worry; he would explain to the authorities how Huntington had lied, and Ted would be cleared of suspicion.
“I’ll do that. I’ll get my lawyer on it,” Henry said reflexively, all fighting spirit drained.
“They won’t sell the house. Ted was just talking. It’s their home,” I said. And Eli’s home too. As long as they lived in that house, they kept Eli close.
“You go on to school. Don’t worry about me,” Henry said.
After class I went to Eddie’s, returning to the saltbox at six. Crouder met me at the door with a strange whine. The lights were off. There was no sign of Henry. His chair was abandoned. His cap and jacket were missing from their hook in the hallway.
“Henry?” I walked through the house, worry rising. The door to his bedroom was shut. I opened it, heart thumping; he wasn’t there. A clean shirt lay on the floor, its sleeves disturbingly empty. Drawers were open with long tongues of clothing hanging out. I dashed down to the garage, still calling. His car was gone. He never stayed out this late, even on the rare day when he drove the car himself. I ran back upstairs and went once more wildly through the house. In Henry’s bedroom, Crouder bumped me twice behind the knee.
“Crouder!” I commanded. He came around and sat at my feet. “Where is he? Where’s Henry?”
Crouder stretched and showed me his gums. In a family full of closed mouths, the dog was about to speak.
“Where, Crouder?”
He jumped onto Henry’s bed. There, on the pillow, was a note: Heading south. Keep an eye on the house and study hard. Good luck.
The coot had flown the coop! Henry had run away.
21.
Heading South
AI YA!” TED CRIED, A TRUE COUNTRYMAN’S EXPRESSION.They hurried to the saltbox and scoured the house, calling Henry’s name. In their rush, they left the front door open, and Crouder dashed out. I raced after him, but he zigzagged across the street, dodging between cars and neatly avoiding a vigorous chap who was pedaling pell-mell. Safe on the other side, he slowed and looked back at me, laughing. Then he turned and trotted onward toward Golden Gate Park into a life of grand adventure. I watched him go in admiration. That sneaky little fur ball had survival instincts as well-honed as my own.
“Henry’s suitcase is missing,” Aviva reported.
“His car is gone,” Ted said.
“He’s too old to drive. He doesn’t have a cell phone. Should we call the police?” Aviva said.
