Destined (12 page)

“See you,” I replied, opening the door
and stepping inside.

I waved back and shut the door,
resisting the temptation to pop it back open again and see if he was still out
there.

So, my good fortune of recent times
was going to continue. I was really on a roll of good luck. New job, new
friends, and now even my love life was looking up! Or, looking down from up, I
thought, remembering my out-of-body experience in the park. Now I just had to
try not to ruin everything by getting too deeply involved.

If I believed what Henry had taught
me, this wasn’t really good luck at all but rather a predictable series of
logical events. It was the right season for me to find a new life and attract a
new man. The time of endings, loss, devastation and mourning was over and
spring was finally here. The seed of my new life was planted when I picked this
fertile moment to make a change. The instant I turned onto the path that took
me away from my old, unhappy life, a whole new configuration of people and
events had appeared on my future horizon. It was like pushing the first tile in
a line of dominoes, I saw that, the steps were all connected. But, could I work
magic, as Henry had suggested? Could I steer the direction of change and
actually shape my destiny?

My mother always said that if I really
wanted something, all I had to do was concentrate on it. Just visualize what I
wanted to have happen, keep thinking about it, and eventually the path toward
making it come true would appear.

“Thoughts are things,” Henry said.

Fine with me! Perfectly, perfectly
fine.

That afternoon I ventured down into
the cellar while Siri watched the shop. Henry had briefly described his
subterranean storeroom, but this was the first time I had felt brave enough to
tackle the task of dealing with the contents. Ever since the incident of the
ghostly Chinese man floating on the back porch I had been a little afraid to
descend the stairs. It was spooky and dark, and there was a weird energy down
here.

Many years’ accumulation of cobwebs
festooned the shadowy space, hanging down from the asbestos-covered pipes that
traversed the ceiling. An ancient pile of coal occupied the rear next to the
hulking corpse of the old heating system, now defunct. A rusted electric hot
water heater was still in residence as well, though the shiny new system nearby
was obviously what we were now using. It hummed with internal activity.

I gradually made my way around the
room, examining the forest of shipping containers and metal shelves filled with
merchandise. I vacuumed, then dusted, and then vacuumed again. After the first
few minutes, I had to come upstairs and find a dishtowel to tie around my face
like a mask so I could breathe. Right at the foot of the stairs, an open carton
was blocking the way. It was filled with framed photographs. They looked
personal, so I brought the box upstairs when I finished cleaning to give it to
my employer.

I found him in the book room pulling
various volumes off the shelves and packing them into a large Fed Ex box. A
printout in his left hand contained the shipping list. When he saw what I
carried, a bemused expression crossed his face and he sat down on the wooden
chair in the middle of the aisle.

“Oh my,” Henry said, “Haven’t thought
of these in years. I must have forgotten they were down there.” He flipped
through the photos. He pulled one out and showed it to me.

The black and white print showed a man
and a woman standing on the tarmac in front of an airplane with “Pan Am”
written on the tail. They had either just arrived, or were about to take off. A
staircase on wheels was pulled up to the open door of the plane. The man wore a
business suit, overcoat and hat. He was portly, clean-shaven and looked
successful. He carried a large briefcase and wore sunglasses with heavy black
frames. The woman had neatly coiffed short dark hair, and wore a black coat
with large white buttons over a plaid suit. She wore sunglasses with thick,
white rectangular frames. They were both smiling, but in a stiff formal way. It
looked like the shot had been taken in the 1950’s. It reminded me of the old
Doris Day movies I used to watch with my mother on late-night TV.

“There she is,” he said, “My Margaret.”

I realized the man in the picture was
Mr. Paradis, forty or fifty years ago. I looked at the woman again. She was
very chic and looked carefully coordinated with matching shiny patent leather
purse and heels.

“That was in 1959, in Japan,” he
commented, flipping to the next photo.

“Here it is, this is the best one,” he
said.

It was a portrait done in a photographer’s
studio. She was posed against a plain background, turned slightly for a
three-quarters view. Her dark hair was shoulder length in this shot, turned
under on the ends, with bangs across her forehead. She wore a plain white
blouse with pearl buttons, and a gardenia was pinned at her throat. She was
very beautiful, with dramatic arching eyebrows.

“She’s gorgeous!” I said.

“Yes, isn’t she? This was taken when
we first planned to be married.”

“Her engagement picture?”

“Yes, they put it in all the newspapers.
Her mother was big on that kind of thing.”

“She was proud of her daughter.”

“Yes, and rightly so. Margaret was an
amazing woman.”

“Oh?”

“She graduated from Vassar, you know.
One of the few women I knew back then who finished college. Margaret was a true
scholar.”

“Did she like books?” I looked around
the room.

“Oh yes, we shared that passion. And
many others,” he mused. “She was the great love of my life.”

He flipped past a few more photos in
the box and pulled out another one. It was a color shot and showed him,
recognizable now with very long hair, a goatee and mustache, and Margaret, with
two long braids and a Native-American-style leather headband across her
forehead. They both wore Indian print shirts and bell-bottomed blue jeans. They
were standing on a beach in front of a large palm tree. She was holding a green
coconut and he held a machete.

“Hawaii, 1971,” he identified the
scene. He flipped again. “Aha, you’ll be interested in this one,” he said,
showing it to me. “1999, Hong Kong.”

This one was an unframed color
snapshot, faded to a greenish hue with the edges curling. It showed three
people standing in front of a giant statue of Buddha. I recognized Henry and
Margaret, but not the younger man, who had long dark hair pulled back in a
ponytail and a very full beard.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“That’s our friend Mr. Novak, don’t
you recognize him?”

“Ohmigosh.”

“Pretty scruffy, eh?”

“He looks so…different.”

“Well, it was a long time ago.”

“Was this taken when you first met?”

“Yes, I think it was from that trip.
He was still in college then, studying languages.”

“You’ve been friends a long time,
haven’t you?”

“Oh yes. Margaret adored him. Most
women do, you know.” He looked at me over the top of his reading glasses. “That
was taken after we opened the shop here. Business was booming, of course.
Margaret had a real flair for that kind of thing! We were on a tour of Asia
looking for unusual merchandise. She fell ill soon after we returned.”

“I’m surprised you never had children.
Was it because of all the traveling?”

“No, not because of that. Margaret
wanted children very much. I was more ambivalent, though willing to do whatever
would make her happy.”

“What was it then?”

“Ironically, we could not conceive,”
he stated the fact as though still it still amazed him. “We tried everything
within reason, to no avail. She miscarried a dozen times. It was very
difficult, physically and emotionally.

“That must have been so hard for her.”

“Margaret was a trooper,” he corrected
me proudly, shaking his head. “She was stalwart through even the darkest
moments. She never complained. She always wanted to
seize the day.
And she was great fun. Fun to be
with. Fun just to have her around.”

“She sounds like a wonderful woman. I
wish I had met her.”

“She would have liked you, Emily.”

“Oh, I hope so.”

“You and she are a lot alike, in many
ways.”

“Really? I think I’m flattered. How
are we alike?”

“Your passion for business, for one
thing. Your flair for marketing,” he said. “She was like that too, always
dreaming up some new promotion. We did very well, financially. It was all
Margaret’s doing!”

“Well, I’m sure you had
something
to do with it. At least, I certainly
hope so!” I said, raising one eyebrow. He just smiled and shook his head.

“You and Margaret also share an
interest in our friend Mr. Novak, “ he said with a grin, teasing me. “She
always said he had great depth of character.”

“And how do you know that I have any
interest in him whatsoever?”

He looked over his glasses at me
again.

“My dear, one does have one’s ways of
knowing things,” he said. “You women aren’t the only people with intuition!”

“Oh I see. So you have intuited this?”

He simply smiled.

He flipped through the photos again
and stopped at a very old black and white print, brown with age and quite
blurry. “Ah ha. You’ll be interested in this one, Emily. Do you recognize this
fellow?”

He handed me the print and I squinted
to see the young version of Henry I had glimpsed in my vision of him at the
docks in Asia. He stood in a warehouse with two Chinese gentlemen, one quite
old and white haired, the other younger and with a mischievous expression. The
memory of his giggle echoed in my ears.

“It’s him! It’s the floating man!”

Henry nodded. “I thought so. You’re
sure?”

“Absolutely. He’s even wearing the
same clothes. Who is he?”

“His name was Wo Tan Chung, but he
changed it to Walter when he studied at UCLA. That is his father standing with
him. His family owned a famous pottery based in Hong Kong in the last century.
I believe it still exists, run by current generations of the same clan. Many of
them were educated in Great Britain and the U.S., and they shipped merchandise
all over the world. The high quality blue and white porcelain, you know. We
still have a few unbroken cartons from that era in the cellar, I believe. Probably
worth quite a bit more than we paid for it by now, I should think.”

“What happened to Walter?” I was more
interested in the man than his merchandise, even though one of his rice bowls
had levitated and flown across the hallway in front of my eyes.

“They said he was a spy, and then he
disappeared. Never seen again.”

“The Communists took him?”

“Yes. That’s what we heard. Margaret
and I had left for home by then. Times were very tense in that part of the
world in those days. Korea was happening, the Dalai Lama was chased out of
Tibet. We were lucky to get out when we did.”

“How sad for his family. Was he
married?”

“Yes, yes. Passel of kids, too.
Several strong sons to carry on the business.”

“Why do you think he was here? I mean,
when I saw him?”

“Perhaps he wanted to tell you to sell
a lot of his tea sets and order more from his grandsons!”

“I suppose! Guess I’ll see what I can
do about that!”

“Thank you for bringing me my
photographs, Emily. I’ve enjoyed remembering.”

Mr. Paradis stood up and moved the
carton of photos aside, preparing to return to his work.

“Thank you for telling me your
stories,” I said, turning to go.

“Just remember what Margaret would
have said,” he said.

I stopped in the doorway and waited.

“
Carpe Diem
, my dear. ‘Seize the day!’”

“I’ll remember that,” I replied.

And I always
have, from that day forward.