by Aimee Liu
“All right. I can’t pay. But I thought you might be interested, anyway.”
My teeth chattered. Strange noises jerked and rolled up my throat. The shivering grew into something akin to a seizure. He didn’t seem to notice.
“I have a publisher, but the advance is nothing. I can pay expenses, that’s it. Of course, you’d share in any royalties…”
I turned away from him and the field of gray beyond him, and gripped the back of the bench. Still I felt myself moving backward, leaping off as I did in my dream, gliding outward, arms spread and steady, just long enough for the illusion of flight to take hold, then suddenly plunging headlong down through the gray to the white, blinding heat of the city below.
Laughter poured from my mouth like shattered glass. The wind snatched at it.
“I’m sorry.” He was behind me coming closer. Leaving the edge. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Maybe—” He was turning me, both hands firm on my shoulders as if to keep me from running away, as if there were somewhere to go besides space.
“You don’t want me,” I warned him.
The old lady next door has a bird. She sits outside admiring the brilliant blue and green and yellow feathers. She sips her afternoon sherry with her photo album at her elbow, the bird’s bill thrusting between the bars of the large domed cage. The macaw is as big as a cat.
“Pretty boy.” Her voice rises an octave and quavers. “Can you talk, pretty boy?” She takes her glass with both hands and sips contemplatively. The bird pecks at the bars. I can’t see its expression from where I perch, but I read it as sullen.
Suddenly my neighbor lets out a raucous, shocking wolf whistle devoid of the slightest quaver. The parrot answers with a predictable flapping of wings. One feather flies free of the cage, and she grabs it, smooths it on her lap.
“Pretty boy!” She opens her album and slides the feather into a plastic sleeve, then slams the book shut. “I know! I’ll call you Euripides!”
But before the bird can reply, the old lady’s nurse appears, briskly gathers up the glass and book, mutters about the mess this creature is going to make, and wheels her patient inside.
Alone, the macaw squawks ferocious, unintelligible gibberish. The noise spills over the fence to the schoolyard, where the kids pause periodically in their games to imitate the bird’s sounds. That only ups the ante, and he screeches louder. Finally the old lady’s nurse storms out with a black cloth in her hands.
“Hush your damn squalling!” she yells over the din.
“Awwk! Fuck you, bitch!”
“All right, bird!” the kids cheer.
The nurse yanks the cloth over the top of the cage.
“Go on, bird. You tell her,” cry the children.
But the darkness has forced the bird’s silence.
The phone rang eleven times. I counted, willing it to stop, let me finish this glorious, frigid shower and go to bed. Maybe a dreamless sleep. But no amount of wishing can stop my brother when he’s on the prowl.
“Hey, sis. What’s up?”
“Henry. It’s nearly midnight. I’m dripping wet—”
“What’s this? I’m trying to make a brotherly connection and you act like it’s an obscene phone call.”
I waited. The background roared with the street where my brother was calling from.
“I’m losing my sublet, and I figured—” A siren at close range cut him off.
“Have Mum and Dad rented out your room?”
“Maibelle. They’re convinced I’m a deadbeat as it is.” His next sentence dissolved in a confusion of angry male voices.
“Where are you?”
“Pay phone down the block.”
“Christ, Henry. Come on up. You can crash on the couch tonight. Just tonight.”
Henry is the one member of my family with whom I stayed in touch—albeit erratically—during my odyssey years. He never left New York. In fact, he lived at home most of the time, designing software on a contract basis for Atari. My mother said, after all his hands-on practice, he should be producing the crème de la crème of video games, and Henry claimed he was. Just a misunderstood artist who wasn’t paid his due. Nevertheless, his last Christmas present to my parents was to move into an apartment of his own. Apparently it wasn’t exactly his own.
“You weren’t staying with another Miss Argentina, were you?” I asked when he’d hauled the last of his bags upstairs. For a period of time Henry had lost his heart to a call girl from Buenos Aires with an apartment the size of the Ritz and an exceedingly jealous john who killed for Baby Doc Duvalier.
“Nothing like that. This place belonged to a bond trader friend of mine. Until his SEC violations caught up with him.”
I gave my brother a soda, which he downed in one long draught before looking around. He took in the tripod and lights, the compact stereo that kept me sane when setting up my shots, the rolls of backdrop paper, and display stands. The overflowing crates of ideas awaiting my father’s plagiarism.
“Nice to see one of us inherited Mum’s knack for interior space.”
I opened the window as far as it would go and stuck my head out into the still, damp heat. “It’s like being smothered in velvet.”
“How poetic.” My brother turned on the radio, located an oldies station playing nonstop Motown greats, and started doing the mashed potato in the middle of my set. He jumped down, bending his legs like Sammy Davis, Jr., backed into a Michael Jackson moonwalk, then segued into a complex hip-hop routine. He reached out, begging, aping an agony of desire for me to join him in the dance. I laughed and threatened to charge him for the paper he was destroying.
Then Fontella Bass began belting out “Rescue Me,” and the phone rang. Harriet. The noise was giving her mother panic attacks. I did realize she was serious about Bellevue—I didn’t have a man up there, did I?
“No, Harriet. There’s no man up here.”
Henry pantomimed horror and tiptoed across the room with his hand clapped over his mouth.
“I’ll remind you once, just once. It’s against the law to disturb the peace.”
I silenced Ms. Franklin, and my brother collapsed on Marge’s sofa.
Same old Henry. He still flung his limbs around as if they were made of rubber. Still combed his hand through his hair like a bad boy. He still watched the world through half-closed eyes, and I still wondered whether he was avoiding the view out or restricting the world’s view in. Maybe that’s what Tommy meant.
Why you don’t understand about face is because you have no face to lose.
“I saw an old friend of yours the other day.” I tossed him a sheet and blanket and pulled up a folding chair. “Tommy Wah.”
“No shit! Tommy? Where?”
“Emperor State Building.” I smiled.
“No shit,” he said again, carefully.
“Mum didn’t tell you he called?”
“No, when?”
“Last fall.” I fingered my locket. “He’s changed his name to Tai.”
“Not him, too.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“So? What’s he want?”
“So he writes books. Calls himself a social historian. He wants me to take some pictures for his next project.”
Henry snorted and got up to investigate the contents of my refrigerator—several cans of tuna fish, a basket of peaches, some moldy cheese, three cans of soda, a bottle of Schlitz.
“Mind if I have this?”
“Go ahead. I hate beer.”
“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 glori
ous 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.
Part II
A Kingfisher’s Wings
4
Throughout 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.
