Good fortune, p.7
Good Fortune, page 7
Kitty rolled her eyes and climbed out. “You don’t need to tell me. In the back. Again. Kitty always sits in the back.”
“Kitty, help your sister, please. She’s injured.”
Kitty sighed. “Yes, poor Jane . . .”
She didn’t move quickly enough. Brendan, industrious and dutiful, took the crutches and propped them against the van, hoisting Jane up into the passenger seat. Elizabeth half expected him to buckle her in.
Jane covered his hand with her own. “I’m so sorry for all the trouble.”
Brendan looked at her nervously. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
She shook her head.
He rested his forehead against hers and sighed, the picture of relief. “Good,” he said. “We’ll be right behind you.”
“You don’t have to worry.”
Brendan hopped back onto the sidewalk, heading down the block in search of a cab.
Caroline watched him go with an annoyed cluck of the tongue. “Let’s go see how the other half lives.”
10
An apartment never seems smaller, messier, or dingier than whenever it has people to impress. At least the entryway hadn’t smelled too strongly of urine, and they’d remembered to take down all their hand-washed underwear from the shower rod that morning. Small blessings. The cab pulled up outside of the industrial-looking building squeezed between two shuttered and gated storefronts, and their guests arrived. Chez Chen.
On the fourth floor, in their apartment, awaited a homecoming feast: steamed snapper drizzled with oil and sauce, topped with scallions; egg rolls from the restaurant; sautéed long beans; and slices of sponge roll from the corner bakery, filled with airy whipped cream. For the price of a little blood and mutilation, they could eat like kings.
Jade waved them in. “We planned this to wish Jane and Elizabeth home,” Jade said. “But please join us.”
In space, as in life, the Chens did the most with less. Caroline took in as much as her system would allow: crumpled grocery bags and half-open backpacks piled carelessly along the wall, towers of plastic storage containers threatening to come down on their heads as they passed, old magazines with missing covers or pages lying on almost everything in sight, plastic toys everywhere. It defied taste. It defied order. It broke every law of interior design and skirted the laws of physics.
No wall had been left untouched. An oversize square calendar, gifted from the local Buddhist temple, was covered with a smaller daily calendar, its edges frayed from the imperfect tears of the days preceding. School award certificates and diplomas hung beside Jade’s wedding photos and the girls’ school photos, five of them looking almost identical in matching mushroom cuts and crocheted sweater vests.
Their new friends moved with the slow deliberation of soldiers on patrol, their eyes scanning for dangers, feet tiptoeing around possible trips and traps. Brendan was the first to the dinner table, sliding onto the kitchen chair with the most intact upholstery. “This is a wonderful home you have.”
Caroline squeaked.
Darcy hunched as if worried to make contact with the air. Some people made themselves at home anywhere they went; he was not one of them.
Lydia thundered past them with a loud snort. “Can we move a little faster, please?” she shouted, forcing her way through against the wall.
“Lydia,” Jade hissed, whacking her lightly with a rolled-up circular. To the others, she added, “She’s just joking, la! Such a funny girl.”
As usually happened when they were all together, the apartment descended into a flurry of noise and complaint: Jade fussing over their guests, Jane rummaging through the packed hallway closet for extra plastic stools, Lydia and Mary fighting over use of the computer. Elizabeth tried to figure the odds on someone making a break for it (low but not zero) or hovering by the doorway all night instead of fixing a plate (medium-high) when Darcy pointed towards a framed certificate on the wall and cleared his throat.
At least he didn’t raise his hand.
Most days, she walked past it without a second glance, all of the awards and the memorabilia, the photos that tracked them from first grade through graduation—a shrine to their work and their achievements, an offering for future blessings of success.
“In recognition of outstanding performance . . .” he read.
She gestured to the ribbon beside it. “Not that outstanding,” she said. “We lost.”
“Vice-captain of the debate team?” he said.
She arched a brow. “You look surprised.”
He almost seemed to smile at that. “I’m not.”
She followed as he continued his way along the wall. Explaining an old report card or school photo would be one thing, baby photos another. If he came after the voluminous bloom of her hair or the look of her CHIP-approved Coke-bottle glasses, she wouldn’t be afraid to hit back.
“This must be your grandmother?” he said, pointing to a Polaroid taped to the back of an index card.
Elizabeth from two years ago grinned at her, sporting a regrettable pixie cut, her arm slung around an older Chinese woman in a neon windbreaker.
She shook her head, reaching for the crumpled clipping beside it. “That’s Mrs. Ng from across the street,” she said. “Her building did everything they could to get her out a few years ago. Turned off her heat, didn’t make any repairs, faked eviction notices, everything.”
He glanced from the photo to her. “What happened?”
She shrugged. “We fought like hell,” she said. “She’d been in the apartment for over twenty years, but you know how it is with new management. They don’t care.”
He frowned, trying to read the clipping.
“What I meant was . . .”
His eyes met hers, cool and neutral. “I know what you meant,” he said. “You think you know what’s best for the neighborhood.”
Her cheeks heated. “No,” she replied. “I just know the people who live in it.”
“Everyone!” Jade called, waving her arms. “Please!”
Caroline took a plate and gamely poked at a piece of scallion. “You didn’t need to go to all this trouble, Aunty.”
“No trouble, no trouble,” Jade cried. “After everything you did for us!”
“You would have gone to the doctor, surely,” Darcy said.
“Surely,” Lydia smirked.
Their kitchen barely had enough seats for all of them on a good day; with guests, they’d brought out the heavy artillery—pastel-colored plastic stools and metal folding chairs to help bolster their numbers—but their guests didn’t seem too eager to sit.
“We’ve been sitting all day,” Caroline said. “It’s good for us to stretch our legs once in a while.”
They fell into the halting silence of eating, exchanging minor remarks on the quality or the value of the food, overly effusive praise on the skill of the preparer, and polite questions about their lives. How were the younger girls finding school? Boring and endless, came the answer. Where did Jade learn how to prepare such delicious long beans? Oh, it was nothing, nothing—very kind of you to say, she insisted.
Elizabeth served herself a portion of rice from the cooker, picking indecisively among the open containers lined up on the counter.
Darcy stepped up beside her.
Elizabeth set down the serving paddle and moved to the next dish. “Look at you, breaking bread with the underprivileged.”
“Instead of torturing Victorian orphans?”
She stopped. She stared. Sauce dripped off the end of her serving spoon. Darcy, learning to joke? Darcy, smiling? Something had gone terribly wrong. It could only be explained as some cosmic disturbance in the Force.
Mary dropped her elbows onto the table, asking what their distinguished guests might be planning for the rest of their trip.
Brendan broke the terrible news. “We’re headed back to Hong Kong tomorrow.”
Jade, in the middle of serving Brendan an extra egg roll, flung it towards him with sudden force. “Waaa, so soon? You’ve only just arrived!”
This was nothing less than a tragedy of the highest order, on the level of the passing of Princess Diana, whose photo crowded their actual relatives on the ancestral altar. They might never recover.
Brendan casually slid his plate out of her reach. “Something urgent’s come up, I’m afraid,” he said. “Some family business I need to attend to.”
“I hope everything’s all right,” Jane said. “Nothing serious?”
Brendan shook his head. “Nothing that should keep me away for long.”
“Yes,” Darcy said. “We should be back in time to get our staff settled.”
Elizabeth dropped a piece of shrimp in the middle of the table. “Staff? For what?”
“Look at that,” Vincent said, plucking up the stray. “It’s so fresh it’s jumping.”
Darcy wiped at his mouth with a napkin. “The center is hardly in good condition, and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done ahead of any reopening.”
“Sure,” Elizabeth said. “But it’s going to stay open to the community, right?”
Brendan tried to look reassuring. “You can count on us.”
Darcy seemed less certain. “We’ll evaluate it as a potential option.”
Jade, sensing danger, slid her plastic stool beside Brendan, shoving Darcy aside as she squeezed between them. “Your mother must be so happy to have such a dutiful son, la, for you to be going back like this.”
Darcy and Caroline snorted.
“I heard that,” Brendan said.
Darcy served Brendan a fish cheek. “Dutiful, maybe. But you’re a little too quick to drop everything you’re doing when somebody says they need you.”
Brendan elbowed him in the side. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Elizabeth moved to the counter and sliced a piece of sponge roll. “Don’t let him talk to you like that,” she said, serving Brendan a slice on a fresh plate. “There’s nothing wrong with loyalty.”
Darcy turned to look at her. “If it doesn’t overrule good sense.”
At the table, the others watched them with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, dread and glee. Nothing could be more entertaining than a family gathering descending into chaos, and nothing guaranteed chaos faster than Elizabeth provoked. If Darcy had looked anywhere else around the room, he might have caught the telltale signs of warning—Vincent’s wry smile, Lydia’s and Brendan’s broad grins, the nervous flutter of Jade’s fingers against the edge of the table—but whatever the reason, he didn’t look away from her.
And that provoked her most of all.
She pushed a slice of cake onto the edge of his plate. “Some people don’t crunch numbers before deciding whether or not to show up.”
“You can’t help very many people if the money runs out.”
“I don’t think it’s as much about the helping as it is about the money for some people.”
Darcy huffed. “Before you can be accountable to other people, you have to be accountable to yourself.”
Caroline sighed loudly, nibbling on the edge of a leafy green. “Well, I think you’re doing a great job. Not everyone would take on such a big project.”
“The rec isn’t just some building,” Elizabeth replied. “It’s a part of people’s lives. It’s a part of our lives. It matters, whatever the numbers are.”
“You can’t know how to change things if you don’t figure out what works and what doesn’t.”
Elizabeth’s jaw tightened. “What works for who? For you and your investors, or for the people who use it?”
Jade hummed nervously. “Now, LB, why don’t you sit down and stop bothering our guests . . .”
Any hopes Jade harbored for brokering a peace ended with the next shot. “It’s not as if their demands are always reasonable,” he replied. “But we’re easy to blame, so we’re blamed.”
Elizabeth slapped a handful of paper napkins onto the table for their guests. “Well, won’t someone think of the developers.”
Darcy shook his head, slicing into his piece of cake and taking a bite.
Caroline groaned with exaggerated relish as she pushed her nearly full plate towards the center of the table. “Thank you for a lovely meal.”
Kitty wordlessly jumped to her feet and served her a piece of cake.
“You’re the ones who are being unreasonable,” Elizabeth said.
Darcy aimed his fork at her. “And you’re not half as clever as you think you are.”
Elizabeth could hear the record scratch as Jade drew back in her seat. Jade may have complained every hour on the hour about her own family—and didn’t she have the right, having suffered and sacrificed for them, day in and day out?—but she considered that a mother’s privilege. From the rest of the city—the world!—she expected nothing less than lavish recognition and praise, envy and awe. Any insult to home, husband, or her daughters was a declaration of war. “My Elizabeth graduated at the top of her class. Tracked for gifted right out of kindergarten, and paid to attend college. Scholarship, you know,” she gushed.
Caroline squealed. “Oh, a scholarship student!”
“And she won some kind of contest with a beautiful poem, which they asked her to perform . . .”
“A poem!” Caroline cried, clapping her hands. “Perhaps you can treat us to a reading?”
“Some things should not be held against us, no matter what,” Elizabeth said. “High school poetry being one of them.”
Brendan tried to be nice. “I’m sure it can’t be that bad.”
“Believe me, the best part of the poem was the money that came with it.”
Darcy nibbled at another few crumbs of cake, and Elizabeth marveled at his commitment to finish something he hated purely for the virtue of finishing it. It’d be admirable if it weren’t so stupid.
“You can’t please everyone, and you shouldn’t try,” Darcy added. “Apart from being poor strategy, it’s rather irresponsible.”
Elizabeth huffed. “So now you think it’s irresponsible for people to help each other?”
“Ai ya, LB, why don’t you ask our friends if they’d like some more tea?” Jade said, chewing on the edge of a nail. “Stop causing trouble, la.”
Reaching for the teapot, Elizabeth began to top up all of the half-empty cups on the table and sprinkled a little more into Brendan’s near-full one. After an evening of picking fights, a single turn of good manners would hardly erase all of her earlier faults, but she hoped it might endear Jade to forgiveness in the morning.
With great maturity, she behaved herself—even as she felt Darcy’s eyes watching her as she poured.
He deigned to push his teacup towards her, fingers tapping the table as she obliged him in topping it up. She could feel his focus on her fingers, on the way she held the teapot, nitpicking her technique, as usual. Now he could add unsophisticated and clumsy to his growing list of complaints.
But no matter how much he found fault with her—and the feeling most definitely was mutual—nothing would keep them out of each other’s lives until the Lees finished their work on the center. He was the best punishment her mother could have crafted. He was her personal purgatory.
And now he was reaching for the teapot.
Mary drained her tea. “All support is about showing up. For yourself, but also for others, whenever needed, and however appropriate.”
“Mary,” Lydia said, blinking at her. “Thank you.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “You shouldn’t make people jump through hoops to get you to care.”
Darcy’s mouth quirked with the hint of a smile as he refilled her tea. Unprompted. “We have different ideas of care.”
Elizabeth helped herself to the last word. “Or maybe one of us is a better person.”
11
Their impromptu visit threatened to mutate into an extended stay. Beg, plead, and pray as their guests might, Jade insisted, Jade wouldn’t hear of their leaving so soon after dinner. Besides, aaaaa, any exertion before proper digestion would make them sick—and what kind of host would she be then? So there came dessert and drip coffee, polite conversation, and a quick tour.
Their guests couldn’t help but marvel at how they all lived. Nothing could be too small to escape notice or amazement. How well they fit all of their earthly belongings into such a tiny space! How quaint! How incredible! How could anyone live like this! Indeed, the Chens manipulated space like the best of illusionists—storage bins dangling from makeshift hooks on coat hangers, on top of boxes, items nested within items and packed into crevices. Surely they’d seen smaller spaces in Hong Kong, but Caroline assured them she’d never and she couldn’t imagine how she could get by without her necessities. Life without a walk-in closet or king-size bed couldn’t be considered living at all. How brave they all were to suffer like this. How noble.
In their apartment was a New York their visitors hadn’t seen—and hoped to never see again: dust-covered glue traps in the kitchen from their last extermination visit, appliances on the last of their last legs, an old corded telephone perched on five years’ worth of phone books. They oohed and aahhed and oh my goded their way through, shocked that anyone still used those old things anymore. (“Well,” Elizabeth said, tightly, “we do.”) They clucked with amazement at the idea of women Jane’s and Elizabeth’s age still sleeping in bunk beds, and jeered at the sight they must make with their legs dangling off the edge.
“Very cozy, aa,” Caroline said, walking into the narrow aisle of their bedroom.
Lingerie and handbags dangled from the corner posts of the bunk beds, dirty laundry scattered across the floor. Twin-size bunks anchored each side wall, leaving a gangway of walkable space in the center of the room leading to the window. A squat fourteen-inch TV/VCR set perched on top of the cast-iron radiator in the corner, its power cord stretched taut from the opposite wall like a trip wire.
Lydia rushed past them towards the window, rummaging for a nearly empty tube of lip gloss and swiping a thick coat onto her mouth. “We don’t entertain much,” she said, smacking her lips. “We prefer to go out.”
