Pacific Avenue (20 page)

“No special reason. I’m curious about it. Please?”

“But how are you going to find the time? You have
Jamie, and opening is in a few weeks, and you’re still trying to learn to
carve,
and
. . .”—she fished
some papers out of her purse—“I brought even
more
forms for you to fill out, courtesy of our friends
at the National Endowment for the Arts.”

“That won’t take long, now that I’ve figured out how to
adjust the typewriter.”

She put the papers on the table. “Okay, where do you
want to start with Vietnamese? I don’t have any lesson books or anything.”

“You taught me ‘hello.’
Xin chào.
Is that right?” I sat down and waved her to a chair,
too.

“Well, yes, in a general sense. That means
hello,
but it depends who you’re talking to.”

I didn’t feel like this was a good start—I was confused
already. “You say hello differently to different people?”

“It depends on how old the other person is compared to
you, how much respect you want to show, how close you are. . . .
It’s complicated. In a formal situation, you’d say the person’s name. For
casual, you probably wouldn’t.” Thu ticked off points on her fingers.

I felt discouraged, but I still wanted to start
somewhere. “How would you say hello to me?”

“
Chào ban.
That
would be for a friend of your own age. Or, to an intimate,
chào em.
There’s a few different terms.”

“How do you say good-bye?”

“Would you make me a list to study?”

“Sure.” Thu turned as Richard came in. “Hi, Richard. Is
rehearsal over?”

“For now.” He went to the kitchen.

“It’s almost evening—I’d better see about dinner,” Thu
said, putting on her coat. “Bye—
tam biêt.
”
She closed the door quietly behind her. It
was
later than I’d realized—the sun was pulling back from
the window and the room was shadowy. I’d been so wrapped up with Jamie that I
hadn’t even thought about dinner.

Richard opened the refrigerator and stared into it.

“I wish I didn’t run into Thu everywhere,” he blurted.

I was startled. “I thought you liked Thu.”

“I do, but she sure makes me remember stuff I don’t
want to. Especially when I have to hear someone speaking Vietnamese in my own
home.”

“Well, for God’s sake, Richard, Thu wasn’t a soldier!”
I remembered to keep my voice down so I wouldn’t wake Jamie.

“That’s the point. She wasn’t a soldier. Probably most
of the people I killed with my M-101
weren’t
soldiers.” He fished a loaf of bread out of the refrigerator and
tossed it onto the counter. The wrapping opened and bread fanned out over the
cutting board. A couple of slices fell on the floor, but Richard didn’t pick
them up.

I started to do it, but he glared at me, and I stepped
back. “Richard, that’s
morbid.
” I said.
“You don’t know that you killed anyone.”

“True enough, but I sure aimed a howitzer at places
where people lived and fired it. What do
you
think happened at the other end, Kathy?”

“Shhhhh! I think you did what you were ordered to do.
And I think it’s in the past.”

“It’s
never
in
the damn past. I dream about it almost every night—for sure after every time I
see Thu. The only reason she wasn’t in any danger from me is that no one
ordered
me to shell the town where she lived. If they had, I
would’ve.”

His melodrama was getting on my nerves. “I don’t think
so, Richard. By the time you were in the army, Martin and Thu lived in Sydney,
Australia. If someone had ordered you to shell Sydney, I doubt you’d have done
it. We weren’t at war with Australia.”

“Very funny, Kathy. We weren’t at war with Vietnam either.”

“I bet you could have fooled
them.
”

“Probably so.” Richard slapped a sandwich together,
just one for himself, and sat down at the kitchen table. He didn’t ask me if
I’d eaten.

“You could have helped me with Jamie last night instead
of going off to sleep in the car.”
I’m getting tired of you feeling so
guilty about the past that you act like a jackass in the present.

“I couldn’t.” His voice was loud and flat.

“Don’t talk so loud—she’ll wake up.
Someone
has to take care of her. What if I’d walked out too?”

“I do remember suggesting that having a baby wasn’t going
to be easy. Although, I must say, I hadn’t counted on your family being so
damned racist and hypocritical. Isn’t it the grandmother who’s supposed to help
out? Shame our baby’s too
brown
for
that. Besides, why would Jamie need anyone but you? All you think about is
Jamie, Jamie, Jamie. I’m not sure I live here anymore.”

Richard jumped up out of his chair.
Is he going to
hit me? Is he going to leave?
He stood
glaring at me for a minute like he didn’t know himself which to do. Then he sat
down again and huddled over his solo sandwich without another whisper.

* * *

“What in the world is this all over the clothes?” asked
Richard, dragging in a basket from the Laundromat.

He pulled out a pair of jockey shorts, now
glitter-bedizened. They looked like a costume for one of the male strippers at
the My-Oh-My Club in the Quarter. Or might have, except that these shorts
weren’t exactly new.

“Uh-oh. I must have left one of the bags of puppet snow
in a pocket,” I said.

We looked at each other for a minute.
Is he going to
explode again?
He shook the shorts
provocatively. Flecks of glitter drifted down in exactly the effect I had
perfected for the
Snow Queen
production. We both cracked up.

We laughed all the harder because it was such a relief
after a week of politeness, going to rehearsal and pretending the fight hadn’t
happened. Putting on an act for the couple of days left in Sharon’s visit, then
for Thu and Martin. A giggle emerged from Jamie’s direction too, and we both
stopped and looked at her enjoying our laugh together. She was growing fast,
now, watching us, learning how to be a person.

Thinking I might not have given her too good an example
lately, I hugged Richard and kissed the end of his nose. Then I scooped Jamie
up and made a raspberry sound on her neck. She squealed and reached for him,
and we sat down hard together on the edge of the bed, all three wiggling like
puppies.

“Want me to wash the clothes again?” I offered.

“No, let’s be spangled for a while. It’ll be festive.
About time, too.” He pulled me to him in a long hug.

“Richard . . . about this week
. . . .”

“Let’s not start in again. I’m sorry.”
Is anything
going to change, or does “sorry” just mean you don’t want to discuss it?
I tried to hold onto some hope. Maybe he’d think
things over. Maybe some of Sam’s ideas would sink in. Sam, sweet redheaded Sam,
who had to watch kids die of cancer. I hugged Jamie tightly to me.

“Don’t squish her,” Richard said.

I came back to the present, with Jamie wiggling and
starting to whine. I picked her stuffed dog off the bed and handed it to her.
“Doggie!” I said in my best mama voice. “Woof woof!” I tickled her, and she
waved her arms and giggled. She chewed the toy, drooling a little.

“Dad’s coming to New Orleans soon,” I told Richard.
“Sharon thinks we should encourage him to get to know Jamie.”

I set Jamie in her crib and started folding the sparkly
clothes—underwear and shirts and jeans. I even knotted the socks into pairs,
studying them as if they were important, so I wouldn’t have to look Richard in
the eye. As I crossed the room to put the clothes away, he took one of the
shirts off the pile and put it on. It had a lot of glitter on it.

I remembered a Dylan Thomas poem from English class:
“They shall have stars at elbow and foot.” It looked like we would too for a
while.

Richard watched me fiddle for a minute. “I hope it
works out.”

To change the subject, I asked, “What do you think I
should take to Thanksgiving dinner?”

“Pumpkin pie.”

“Francine’s already bringing bread pudding.”

“Could we bring a main dish?”

“Only if you help cook.”

“Okay.”

Richard cooked fairly well. No worse than I did,
anyway. Neither of us had cooked much lately, though, between Jamie and
rehearsals. We were living on sandwiches at the moment, but the production was
going to be ready. The costumes and props were all perfect, the lines and all
the moves. I didn’t like having to be the evil character, so I just pretended I
was Mom while I did the Snow Queen. It was convincing and made me feel a little
better, too.

Richard broke into my reverie. “What about your mom?”

“What about her?”

“When is
she
coming to see Jamie?”

“I don’t know.”
I don’t even like Mom. Why are you
looking at me?

“
Shit,
Kathy.
This is getting old.”

“Yes, but at least Dad is coming. I don’t want Jamie to
grow up not knowing any of her grandparents. I thought you believed in
forgiving people.”

His faced closed into sullen mulishness. “They have to
be sorry first.”

“Look, Dad’s never even seen her. Let him come once and
see her big brown eyes and the way she reaches out for hugs and kisses. If he
can reject her then, I’ll give up. Just once, okay?”

Richard shrugged, shoulders sparkling with puppet snow.

“Why don’t we go for a walk?” I asked. “We haven’t gotten
out in a long time.” I took a glittery sweater from the drawer.

I put Jamie in her stroller and wrapped her up, though
it wasn’t cold. November in New Orleans was unpredictable—some days wet and
chilly, others warm as Indian summer.

Today it was easy to see the year was packing up to go.
Leaves from the hackberry trees along the sidewalk were like soggy black tissue
wadded up where last week’s rain had dropped it. A few late roses still dotted
the yards.

I wished Richard could learn from Thu, learn from the
way she said, “I
thought
you’d been a
soldier.” But Thu just made him feel guilty all over again.
He
doesn’t want to see Thu, because she’s Vietnamese. My parents don’t want to see
Jamie, because she’s brown. Even Black Elk couldn’t bring peace to his people.
But why not?

The sparkle on Richard’s sleeve was like bright
confetti.
What if the puppets were here too, walking all around us, a parade
of characters from Denmark and India, Africa and China?

A whimper from Jamie brought me back to reality, and I
covered her more tightly in her stroller. I put my dreams away and thought over
the things I needed to do. The next few months would be busy, full of projects.
Thanksgiving with the Motleys, and Jamie’s first Christmas, the opening of the
puppet theater. Thu was already talking about plans for Tet, January 23 next
year. Nineteen seventy-four, the Year of the Tiger.

Eddie pulled up in the driveway of an old wood house trimmed
with the kind of gingerbread a Californian would swoon over. Here, it was
ordinary. A plain building in the backyard turned out to be our “hotel.” An
elderly lady came out to meet us.

“I’m Francine Boudreaux,” she told us. “I’m so pleased
you could come. That’s Kathy’s place, you know. I’ve left everything pretty
much like she had it. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind you using it, since you’re
friends.”

“Why, thank you,” I said. “It’s very good to meet you.”

She smiled and handed me a key. “I put a few snacks in
the refrigerator for you, so help yourselves. And after you unpack and freshen
up, I hope you’ll come to dinner. Maybe around six? I’ve invited a few of
Kathy’s old friends, and her sister too. It will be so good to hear about her!”

She looked like she meant it. I felt touched, almost
upset about whatever had happened to make things go so wrong for all of them.

That’s why Willis got in the first word when we got
inside the guesthouse.

“Lacey, what in the world were you up to, the way you
were talking to Eddie back there? I thought you were gonna quit all that
sneaking around.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, checking the
place out for traces of Kathy. I hoped Willis would back off if I didn’t pay
him any mind.

No such luck. “You know good and well what I mean.” He
put his finger to his chin in a silly pose that was supposed to look like me.
“My goodness, isn’t the weather nice? And what do you know about Kathy
Woodbridge?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“Close to it. Look, Lacey, either improve your interrogation
technique, or give the man credit for enough intelligence to answer an honest
question. Why don’t you level with him?”

“Tell him Kathy hasn’t told me anything? Tell him I’m
just rubbernecking?”

“That’s not leveling, honey.” His voice became sweet
again. “You’re trying to help a kid who’s in trouble. You don’t have to pull
the wool over anyone’s eyes.”

“Willis, do you think you can talk this one out with
them better than I’m doing?”

“Frankly, yes.”

“Then I’ll let you do it.”

Willis looked pleased—he’d won. I’d let him be in
charge. It wouldn’t take long for him to regret it.