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“Yeah? Why’s it here, then?”

“Last guy who slept here left it.”

He cocked an eyebrow and unscrewed the cap, resumed his position on the couch. “You going to do it?”

“No.” I stretched the word for strength, let it hang in the air for emphasis. “And I’d as soon you didn’t mention any of this
to Mum.”

Henry shrugged. “So in his old age Tommy’s documenting the grand and glorious heritage of Chinatown.”

I stared at him.

“Close your mouth, sis, flies’ll get in. I’m not as brilliant as you think. I just knew him better ’n you did. Always thought
he’d turn into Chinatown’s Malcolm X, but I guess he’s opted for Studs Terkel. No big deal.”

In my brother’s sarcasm I heard the shudder of a well-aged and deeply felt antagonism. He once loved Chinatown—and Tommy—but
he’d turned on both with that cruel finality of his, and now his only way back was through jokes.

“That prophecy have anything to do with the end of your friendship?”

He tipped his head back and balanced the bottle on his forehead. “He didn’t like the way I played pinball.”

“Get off.”

“You ask him.”

“I’ll do that.”

He looked at me sideways. “You seeing him?”

“Hadn’t planned on it till now.”

He set the bottle on the floor and pushed off his shoes. “Be careful.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just don’t trust him too much.”

“Something wrong with social history?”

“Maibelle, you and I are more Chinese than Tommy. Dad was born in Shanghai, grew up there. Tommy’s family’s been here three,
four generations. But look who’s still locked into the ethnic heritage trip. He was doing that when we were in school. It
drove me crazy.”

Henry’s outburst confused me. This was obviously an old debate for him, and he’d firmly staked out his side, but when? And
why this anger?

“When the guys in Anna’s high school class got drafted, they didn’t go off to fight for China, and the ones that died, died
for America, not the Magic Kingdom.”

“Middle Kingdom,” I said, laughing in spite of Henry’s uncharacteristic seriousness. “Magic Kingdom’s Disneyland.”

“Same difference. Disneyland and China are both based on fairy tales. It’s like all these so-called Afro-Americans running
around in dashikis with beads in their hair, expecting everybody to say hallelujah because they’ve suddenly found their roots!
Give me a break. It’s as bad as Anna and her fruity cult.”

He finally smiled.

“As bad as Tommy changing his name to Tai,” I said.

“No shit.”

He closed his eyes and lavishly draped one arm over the back of the couch. In high school Henry used to sit in the kitchen
while Mum was making dinner, and he’d get her steaming on something like the Cuban missile crisis or the real value of pinball
arcades to the American economy. Pretty soon they’d be slamming dishes, screaming at each other, having completely flipped
their original positions but remaining diametrically opposed. While they seemed to think these battles were fun, I fled whenever
I heard one starting. Now, to my surprise, I felt willing and able to take Henry on.

“Aren’t you ignoring one fundamental factor?”

“Hmm?”

“Looks! Skin color. Hair. Eyes. Body type. Far as most whites are concerned, Chinese are Chinese—for that matter, any Oriental
is Chinese—and blacks are black. No difference where they were born or what language they speak.”

“That’s bull. I’ve heard the Movement leaders say if you’ve got one drop of nonwhite blood you got to consider yourself mi-nor-i-ty.
That means you and I should sign on the dotted line as Chinese-Americans. Yah! Life’s too short to waste on an ethnic identity
crisis.”

“But you’re the original chameleon. With Miss Argentina, you’re a Latin lover. With that girl Lina you’re a Slav. In Chinatown,
you were the pinball wizard, and if you’d had green hair and purple eyes it wouldn’t have made a dent in your popularity.
I always felt shut out because I didn’t look Chinese enough to pass.”

“You felt shut out because it’s your nature to feel shut out. Admit it, you didn’t fit in any better in high school or college
than you did in Chinatown. Difference was, you could hide behind your camera, and you got a lot of stroke for your pictures.”

He wasn’t even looking at me. He actually had his eyes closed.

“Since when did you become my psychoanalyst?”

“Since you were born. Comes with being Big Brother. You were so busy feeling shut out, you never knew anybody noticed. No
big deal. But maybe you should realize a lot of people do notice. That wounded-bird quality even turns some guys on.” He opened
his eyes just wide enough to leer at me.

“I’m no wounded bird!”

“I’m generalizing.”

“Well, you’re out of line!”

But after a few minutes sulking on my bed I realized that my reaction merely proved Henry’s point. So I drew myself into a
model of composure and poked my head back into the other room. He lay on the couch with the latest Noble catalog in his hands
and a cryptic expression on his face.

“Good talking to you, Henry. We should do it more often.”

He looked up, breaking into a grin that lifted his cheeks and narrowed his black eyes into their Chinese mode. “You always
used to be too busy feeling shut out to have a serious chat. Maybe you’re at some kind of turning point.”

Maybe. It infuriates me when Henry’s snap judgments are right. He’ll trot way out to the end of a cracking limb and somehow
land unscathed. Meanwhile, everyone else is a mess. I expected a full-blown panic attack as a result of our conversation.
Instead I had one of my
rare and cherished dreams about Johnny. My only sure antidote to nightmare.

He’s a man now, big and blond, but with the sun-swept hair and blue eyes of childhood, and a kiss as soft as a whisper. We
travel impossible wide, empty streets in the middle of a rainstorm, let the drops slide onto our eyelids and tongues, and
roll in wet grass in Washington Square.

“Can you taste it?” His voice is a soft and rumpled blanket.

“Taste the grass?”

“No, the season. Summer. The flavor’s beginning to fade, but it’s still full of light and warmth.”

He takes my hand and we swing arms like children. Alone in this deserted city, we cross Houston to West Broadway and a shop
window filled with legless mannequins. Small objects adorn the models’ bodies—carrot peelers dangling from ears, pet-food
bowls on shoulders, high-tech office supplies marching across plastic breasts. A bamboo cricket cage adorns every lap.

Johnny says, “You feel the magic taking pictures of those?”

An anticrime streetlight tinges his skin an unearthly pink. I try to walk on, but he pulls me back. “Don’t move.” He reaches
both hands beyond my shoulders. Close enough to hug, he encircles me without touching, except to briefly lick the tip of my
nose.

I feel a slight stirring of air behind me, nothing more. Then he steps back and back and back, until he fades into shadow.
But his hands remain, illuminated, each one offering a silver-gray mourning dove.

The birds don’t struggle. They don’t peck. They are soft and warm like summer, he says, stepping forward into the light. When
I hold the doves, as he insists, I feel his pulse right through them, beating light and fast and sure. Their clear circle
eyes shine.

I hold these two doves as long as I can, but I cannot hold them forever. I return them to the man of my dreams. He gives them
back to the sky.

I couldn’t admit it, but I enjoyed having Henry around, lounging on my couch like the caterpillar in
Alice in Wonderland
as I arranged my shots. I didn’t need the radio; he’d sing songs from the sixties in perfect pitch, all the lyrics down cold.
I can generally carry a tune, but the words of songs come back to me only in snatches. There are things about Henry that impress
me.

But three days after he’d arrived Harriet caught us by the front door.

“Harriet Ratner. My brother Henry.”

Henry bowed. “How d’you do?”

“You didn’t tell me about any brother.”

“He’s just visiting.”

“No men. I made that clear.”

“It’s against the law to discriminate, Harriet.”

“Bullshit. I rented to you. Must have been out of my mind, but I did. Just you. Single occupancy is the law according to your
lease, miss.”

“I’ll leave.” Henry steered me out the door. “I’m leaving now. See me go?

It took him twenty-four hours to find a new woman willing to take him in.

As I watched him packing all the clothes and papers and the paraphernalia that went with his laptop computer, I asked, “How
many little Henry Chungs you think are marching around Manhattan?”

He plucked an undershirt from the floor where he’d dropped it the first night. “I know there aren’t any.”

“With your track record?” I remembered his crack about my pregnancy being wishful thinking. “Statistically it doesn’t add
up.”

He sat on his suitcase and snapped the locks. “I had myself fixed, Maibelle. I’m not your kind of gambler.”

He thanked me and hugged me and returned my key. But all I could think as he took his leave was, I’m not the only wounded
bird.

A Kingfisher’s Wings

T
hroughout my childhood in August, when her gallery was closed, my mother would fetch the old Rambler wagon from its slot at
the East End Garage, pile the three of us kids in the back, and drive to her parents’ farm. The trip took three days. The
address was Rural Route something. The closest neighbors were the Madisons, three miles down the road, the closest “town”
a gathering of feed stores some fifteen miles away. The one landmark that distinguished this particular corner of the Midwest
was the dark Gothic cathedral that rose on a hill due east of the farm like a citadel shadowing the countryside: Mount Assumption.

The farm itself was standard Wisconsin issue—a white clapboard house with plain green trim, red barn with silo and rooster
weather vane, and one hundred acres of rolling fields spanned by endless sundrenched sky. Grampa Henry grew wheat and alfalfa,
kept a few chickens and sheep, and spent most of his days astride an enormous John Deere tractor. Gramma Lou grew the biggest
zinnias and snapdragons in the county and would reliably have a tin of freshly baked oatmeal
raisin cookies awaiting our arrival. It all made me feel like a Fresh Air Fund kid, a refugee from the city.