That bitch!
Despite my fear, I run toward the house, drunk on adrenaline, and the closer I get to the house, the more clearly I can hear the voices coming from the inside. There at least two or three of them, both male and female, shouting at each other and over each other, and I can understand only fragments of a female one—she seems to be the only one speaking English. The one thing that keeps me from ringing the doorbell is the fact that there is no doorbell, so I pull open the screen door with a creak and I knock. Loudly. Then I quickly close the screen door again, getting ready to run for my life, should the necessity arise.
After a few seconds the front door opens, and a seventeen-ish Asian boy—Phil’s brother Ricky, I presume—stares at me. He doesn’t say a word. No ‘Yes’, no ‘Hello’, no ‘What do you want’. He just stares while in the background the English-Laotian shouting match continues.
“Hi,” I say, panting heavily, my right hand nervously scratching my left elbow. “Is Philip there?”
He stares at me a moment longer, then he turns around, and the door falls shut.
Well, nice to meet you too, I’m thinking, fairly embarrassed. Unsure how to proceed, I just stand there for a moment, my hands in my pockets, the noise from inside dying down. Should I just leave? No, that would be stupid. Should I knock again? That seems importunate and rude. Luckily, I’m quickly being put out of my misery when the door opens again. When he sees me, Phil is aghast.
“What are you doing here?” he hisses, keeping the door open just a crack so no one can see me and I can’t look inside. Behind him, people are still arguing, though no longer yelling.
“Well, excuse you,” I say, “but I was worried about you! I’ve been waiting for you, and when you didn’t show up I thought something’s happened to you.”
“I’m sorry. Something came up.”
That excuse is pretty much useless. I wasn’t assuming he simply decided not to come for no reason at all, so obviously something must have come up, but he’s not volunteering any information on what something means. I stretch my neck and try to catch a glimpse of what is happening inside the house as people are still fighting, but Phil is continuing to block my line of sight.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“You could have just called, you know?”
He looks at me with an expression of guilt and … what is it? Embarrassment? Shame?
“I’m sorry. Our phone … it’s …”
“Oh my God, you don’t have a phone, do you?”
He shakes his head. “No, no, we do have a phone. But it got disconnected because we forgot to pay the bill.”
“Oh,” I say, and deep down inside I know he’s not being entirely truthful. They didn’t forget to pay the bill. They simply didn’t have the money.
“Philip,” a strangely familiar sounding voice says behind him, “I need you back here. Who are you talking to?”
“Nobody. I’m coming,” he says over his shoulder. Then he turns back to me. “I have to go.”
Before he manages to shut the door in my face, a hand appears and forces it open. I almost stumble over my own feet as I take a step back in shock.
“Oh my God!” I blurt out when the truth finally dawns on me.
“Oh, it’s you,” Special Agent Nicole Tesla says, reaching out her hand. “I’m Phyllis. I’m Philip’s godmother.”
* * *
“You were not supposed to hit on my underage customers, lady,” Milo says as he places our beverages in front of us, a milkshake for me, green tea for Phil and Phyllis. “That kind of thing can get you into big trouble. You know that, right?”
Phyllis looks at me. “Don’t listen to him. He’s just jealous because he looks twice my age even though he’s younger.”
I chuckle because I know it’s the kind of thing that riles Milo up.
“Excuse me,” he says, putting his hands on his hips, “it’s not my fault I lost my hair at a very young age. It’s genetic. If I still had a full head of hair I’d put you to shame, darling.”
“Yeah, but you don’t, do you, Kojak?”
“That’s Pontius Pilate to you,” Milo says with an indignant smile, “and FYI, sister, Telly Savalas was a very fine man, and very sexy. You, on the other hand, are one of the rudest persons I have ever met, second only to Jennifer Rizzuto whom I had the misfortune of sitting next to in fifth grade. Arrogant and mean, she was. And she had cooties. To this day I refuse to eat risotto, just because of the name.”
I watch Philip as he follows the exchange with big eyes. He’s definitely not feeling comfortable, although I’m not sure if it’s the banter between his long lost godmother and that weirdly peculiar bald man that irritates him, or the fact that I walked in on a situation that he was feeling overwhelmed by. All I can tell is that he’d rather be elsewhere right now.
“What a character,” Phylis says when Milo has left us alone to serve other customers, “I love him. But don’t tell him that, it’ll only go to his head.”
“Right,” I say and suck on my milkshake because, in Phil’s defense, I’m overwhelmed too and I have no idea what the heck is going on.
Phyllis looks at me. “So you’re Philip’s boyfriend, huh?”
As Phil looks down at the table, mildly embarrassed, I nod. There’s no point in denying it, because it was a rhetorical question. When we walked in, Milo blurted out, “Oh, there’s your sweetheart!” before he started bantering with Phyllis, and by now she must have figured out that his customers are predominantly gay. She also must have overheard Sandy encouraging me to ask Phil out to the Sadie Hawkins Dance the other day. I wonder if at that point she realized that the Phil in question was no other than her own godson. After all, she has been following him around for weeks now, and she’s seen us together more than just a few times.
“That’s sweet.” She turns to Phil. “I had no idea you two were an item.”
Staring at his tea, Phil says, “You had no idea about a lot of things.”
Phyllis winces. “Ouch! I guess I walked right into that one. It’s true, I haven’t been in touch a lot, have I? And I clearly misjudged the reaction my surprise visit would provoke. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” Phil says, shaking his head. “I’ve been walking around with that face for fourteen years, I’m used to embarrassment. Mom and Dad and Ricky are not.”
“They have no reason to be embarrassed, though. Not in front of me.”
“Really? Are you telling me you weren’t shocked to see how we live in the dirt, in a place other people would be embarrassed to call their garden shed?”
Her silence is telling. She obviously was shocked, in spite of herself. She takes a sip of tea and asks, “What happened, Philip?”
He looks at her as earnest as I’ve ever seen him. “Life happened. The economy happened. Medical bills happened. Dad is moonlighting at five dollars an hour. Ricky dropped out of high school and hauls crates of vegetables at the warehouse at four a.m. to help my parents put food on the table. America is what happened to us. Nothing more, but it’s quite enough for us to deal with.”
Amazed at how he delivers the ugly truth with blunt honesty but no discernible sign of bitterness in his voice, I look at Phyllis. She stares at her cup of tea, takes a sip, then stares at it again. Then she leans back, rubs her eyes, and says, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I shouldn’t have come.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have left.”
A bitter smile creeps across Phyllis’s face, her blue eyes a sea of pain. She stares at the table for a long time. Then she takes a deep breath and says, “When you guys moved to America, I decided to keep my distance. Back in Laos I’d almost become part of your family, and I think your mother didn’t like it much. She never said anything, of course, but I felt she thought your dad and I were growing too close. So when you left, it was time for me to carry on with my own lif
e. But then I went from one extreme to the next. The sad truth is I’m terrible at maintaining friendships, especially at a distance. I’ll never understand how people make long distance relationships work. I need to see, touch, feel.” She looks at Phil. “Whenever I called and I had your dad on the line, I could tell he was feeling awkward. He always kept telling me things were fine, but I knew he wasn’t being honest. I could tell from the tone in his voice and his awkward laughs. But I never pried. I figured if there was something he wanted to tell me, he’d tell me.”
“He didn’t tell you because he was ashamed,” Phil says. “Ashamed he couldn’t make the American Dream work for us. He feels he let everyone down.”
“That is such nonsense, although I can see why he would think that. But to be fair, Philip, you never mentioned any problems either. Not on the phone and not in your letters. Your letters were always so wonderful, cheerful, full of spirit the way you talked about your hopes and dreams and plans for the future. How was I supposed to know things weren’t going so well? And then, like you said, life happens. I was busy chasing my own demons, or getting chased by them or whatever, and before I even knew it, ten years had passed and suddenly I realizes that all this time I’ve just been running away. I know it’s not an excuse, but … well, I guess it’s an explanation. I’m sorry, Philip. I’m a terrible godmother.”
Phil shakes his head. “No, you’re not.”
“I haven’t been there for you. Or for your family. Not the way I should have.”
“Well, you’re here now.”
“At least one person who seems to appreciate it,” she says with a wry smile. “Your parents didn’t seem too thrilled.”
“Mom and Dad adore you, and so does Ricky. But when you showed up on our doorstep unannounced, they felt ambushed. You should have called ahead and at least given them a chance to clean and tidy the place. Instead you just walked in on the mess we’re living in. Of course they were upset, because you made them feel embarrassed and ashamed. We’re Asians, you know? To us, embarrassment feels worse than physical pain.”
Phyllis shakes her head, wringing her hands. “I was so naïve. I thought I could just barge in on you guys and you’d be just as excited as I was. But when I stood in front of your house and saw how you lived, I had second thoughts. This was a stupid idea, I thought, and I just wanted to run and never come back. But that was a stupid idea too. To come here all this way and after all these years and then just run away without even coming to see you. I didn’t know what to do, so I took a step back and tried to figure things out.”
“And that’s when you started spying on Phil,” I say. “All this time I thought you were spying on me, but you were just following Phil around, weren’t you?”
Phyllis nods. Looking at Phil, she says, “I was going back and forth, back and forth, wondering if I should come and see you guys or not, until I finally thought, I’m not running away! Not again, not this time. So I finally plucked up all my courage and showed up on your doorstep. Now I almost wish I hadn’t because of the way the whole situation blew up in my face. I’m so sorry, Philip.”
“It’s okay. I’m glad you’re here. The others will come around. Just give them a little time.”
“You think I could redeem myself by taking you guys out to dinner? I mean, the whole family?”
Philip sighs, his shoulders slumping forward. “And remind us that we haven’t eaten out in ages because we’re poor?”
Phyllis winces. “Urgh, I’m such an idiot.”
“You could cook dinner for us, though. I’m sure Mom and Dad would love that. I know I would.”
Phyllis slams her hand on the table. “That’s a great idea! Let’s do it.”
“Maybe not today though.”
“No, I was thinking tomorrow because of your—”
“Yeah,” Phil interrupts. “Give Mom and Dad a night to get used to the idea.”
“Right.” She looks at me. “You should come, too.”
“Who, me?” I say. “Oh no. No, no no. Thanks, but … no. The last time I wanted to meet Phil’s parents, he didn’t seem to like the idea all that much.”
“What? Why not?” Phyllis says with a frown. Meanwhile, Phil glares at me, clearly not very happy I brought this up, and Phyllis is too attentive not to pick up on it. “What’s going on?”
I look at Phil. He stares back at me, silently pleading to shut the hell up. There’s a fear in his eyes, the fear that I might go where he doesn’t want me to go, because despite his best efforts to pretend it didn’t bother and embarrass him to be demoted to special ed classes, he hasn’t been able to convince me, and he knows he won’t be able to convince Phyllis. Suddenly I feel drunk with the power I’m wielding over Phil, and maybe that power rush is clouding my judgment when I turn to Phyllis and tell her the truth. When I’m finished she looks at Phil.
“Please tell me this is a bad joke.”
Phil shakes his head.
“And your father is okay with this?”
“I guess?”
“Are you okay with it?”
Phil shrugs. “What am I supposed to do?”
Phyllis has no immediate answer to that question. She finishes her tea, and after a long silence she finally says, “Let me make a few calls.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“You must be Matthew,” Mrs. Thongrivong says with a heavy but charming Laotian accent as she shakes my hand. “Welcome to our house. Please come.”
“Thank you.” I step inside and offer her the flowers I brought.
“For me?”
“Yes,” I say, slightly flummoxed by her question. I hope she didn’t think I brought them for Phil. “Of course.”
“Thank you. Very pretty flower.”
“Oh, there you are,” Phyllis says, coming out of the kitchen and wiping her hands on her apron before she shakes my hand. “Come on through.”
When I enter the kitchen in her wake it’s like I stepped through a magic portal that led me right into the middle of a bustling alley in Bangkok—or rather Vientiane, I suppose, because that’s the capital of Laos, and I only know that because I googled it. The small kitchen is hot and cramped, the air ripe with exotic smells. And it’s loud. Mr. Thongrivong, who is stooping over the kitchen sink and rinsing a whole chicken, is shouting at Ricky, who is standing by the stove, caramelizing sugar in a large pot and shouting back. Mrs. Thongrivong is adding to the noise, shouting, like the others, in Laotian. For all I know, she might be telling them, ‘Look, that gay American kid is here, and he smells funny.’ Then again, maybe she’s just saying, ‘Guys, please be polite and say hi to Phil’s friend, and where the hell do I find a vase in this mess?’ I like to think it’s the latter, because she opens one of the cupboards and gets out a vase while Mr. Thongrivong turns his head, and when he sees me he drops the chicken in the sink and starts looking for a towel to dry his hands. When he doesn’t immediately find one, he shakes the water off his hands, wipes them on his pants and walks up to me to greet me.
“Ah! Welcome, welcome!” he says. His hand is still wet as he shakes mine with a nervous grin, and his awkwardness immediately makes me feel … if not more comfortable then at least less uncomfortable, if that makes any sense. Ricky, on the other hand, makes no attempts to make me feel welcome. He briefly looks at me with no discernible expression on his face, then he turns back to his pot and continues stirring his sugar while adding chopped garlic and ginger. Meanwhile Mrs. Thongrivong puts her flowers in the vase and proudly shows them off to her husband. He raises his eyebrows and smiles as if they’re the prettiest flowers he’s ever seen, which puts me even more at ease.
“Hello,” a familiar voice twangs behind me, and when I turn around, Phil is standing in front of me, holding a bowl with two coconuts—or rather four half coconuts—and a meat cleaver in it, and another, smaller bowl with coconut milk.
“Oh, there you are,” I say. “I thought you were hiding away in your room or something.”
“No, I
had to crack these coconuts open. They don’t want me messing about with the meat cleaver here in the kitchen with so many people around, so I had to do it in the backyard.”
“Probably a good idea. So what are we having?”
Stepping between Phil and me, Phyllis says, “We’re having Tom Khem with sticky rice, and Khao Pahd for dessert.”
I have no idea what any of that means, so I say, “Mmmmh, rice,” prompting Phyllis to laugh.
“Tom Khem is caramelized chicken stew. It’s usually pork belly, but that’s pretty fatty and not everyone likes that, so we’re making it with chicken today. And Khao Pahd is made of rice flour flavored with pandan leaves and shredded coconuts on top.”
“Sounds yummy.”
“It is, you’ll see. Anyway, as you can probably tell, in Laos cooking is pretty much a family affair. No loitering in the kitchen!” She passes me a bowl full of hardboiled eggs. “You wanna peel these for me?”
“Sure,” I say, happy to make myself useful instead of just standing in everyone’s way.
As I peel the eggs and Phil scrapes his coconuts at the opposite end of the table, Mr. Thongrivong is standing between us, chopping up the chicken with the meat cleaver he grabbed off of Phil. Mrs. Thongrivong is brewing green tea, and Phyllis is cutting the Khao Pahd she’s taken out of the fridge into bite-sized pieces that looks like opaque, pale green Jell-o. Among all the shouting, partly in Laotian, partly in English, Phil and I keep exchanging furtive smiles. Eventually, the chopped up chicken goes into the pot with the caramelized sugar and added water. The shredded coconuts are mixed with the Khao Pahd, and before I know it, we’re almost done.
“So what do I do with the eggs?” I ask.
“Just leave them there,” Phyllis says. “They go into the chicken stew later, but first we let it simmer for an hour or so.”
We retreat to the small living room, and over green tea Phyllis and Phil’s parents exchange fond memories of their time together back in Laos, a time both Ricky and Phil are too young to remember, so most of these stories are just as new to them as they are to me. Phyllis is a gifted storyteller, the kind of person you could listen to for hours on end, and she is clearly in charge of her audience, which becomes most notable whenever she leaves the room for a minute to check on the Tom Khem, leaving us behind in awkward silence. While Phil’s brother continues to ignore me to the best of his abilities, his parents treat me with reserved politeness, and I’m hoping it’s their limited English skills that holds them back rather than the fact that I’m a stranger, and a gay one at that.
Cupid Painted Blind Page 31
