I struggle to absorb that. Is that really the law? Could he be lying? No. I can feel that he is not.
"Still, I must talk to her," I say.
"I've already sent her away, and you will not find her." He thrusts his chin forward. "Leave!"
I hardly see the streets andpeople around me as I walk the two blocks back to the laundry. All my awareness is inward, on questions of what An must be thinking and of where she might be. I am not willing to accept that I will never see her again.
And I do not know what is best for her. Perhaps, if all her father has said is true, then the thing that is best is this word—annulment.
But I will find her, and together we will decide.
***
At the laundry, Sucheng, who has talked with Li Dewei, is waiting, rage on her face and venom in her voice. "What right have you to a wife? You owe me, me!"
She does not listen when I tell her what An's father has done. She hears only my concern for An.
"Do you think I care?" she demands. She sweeps her hand about, at the cramped, sweat-smelling shop. "You are not going to go off and leave me with this. It is not what I killed a man for!"
"Killed?" I repeat, uncomprehending. Then, "Oh, the man who died when you fought him off." Why is she dragging that up now, when I have so much more on my mind?
She looks at me with contempt. "How do you know his death was an accident?" she demands. "How do you know I did not lie in wait for him, and then for you to come by and find us. His dying did make you bring me here."
Again she sweeps her hand about the shop. "I hate you for not telling me how it would be."
But I hardly hear, because I am being pulled under to someplace where pressure pushes in, squeezing on my chest, distorting all around me...
She is making this up, I tell myself. She is grabbing for a way to hurt.
I try to catch her in her lie. "The money," I say. "How couldyou know he would have enough money for us to come here?"
"Perhaps he did not," she answers. "Perhaps I took the money from our parents' safe earlier in the day and put it in his coat."
Her mouth curves. "Tell me you did not wonder about the money. Perhaps you did not ask these questions then because you also wanted to come to the Gold Mountain."
"No!" I say so loudly that Philip begins crying. "And ... our parents! You must have taken all they had! How could you do that? Even think of doing it?"
She shrugs, but her hand comes up to her face.
And then, with blackness flooding though me, I grab her and shake and shake her until I feel as though there is nothing left inside me except bile going sour.
***
When Li Dewei comes in that evening, I do not have to tell him about Mr. Huang sending An away. "Mr. Huang is going, too," he says. "He is looking for someone to keep open his shop while he is gone."
"I have to find An," I tell him. "Can Sucheng remain here?"
And so that is what happens. I stay long enough to train a boy to work in my place while I am gone, and then I begin my search. At first I look close by, and then farther and fartheraway, to othercities, otherChinatowns, in Oregon and California.
I do not stop looking until I find someone in San Francisco who remembers meeting Mr. Huang. "It was many months ago," he tells me. "It was at the shipping office. He was purchasing passage to China for himself and his daughter."
"For a visit?" I ask.
"No. One way there," he answers. "I remember because I wondered what had made him so bitter that he would not want them to return."
Afler that I go back to Seattle and the laundry, and over time, as Li Dewei and I prosper, and as Philip grows up believing me to be his real brother, I settle into understanding that this is the life I have made.
***
I never do find a way to write my parents that would not mean putting onto paper names like Li Dewei's that are not mine to expose.
Many years later, though, after World War II ends, I travel to China once, along with many other Chinese Americans who also have served in the military. But unlike them, I do not go to bring back a bride. And not to find An, either, for even if it were possible, I would not break into her life again.
No, I go to find my parents and to try to right some of the wrong done them. If there was a wrong, beyond Sucheng and me leaving them with no children to carry on their name and care for them in their old age. For I never again speak to Sucheng of that long-ago death and how it happened. There is no reason to, when I cannot know whether anything she might say would be truth or lie.
And what can I say of my return to where I was born? It is to a country at war with itself, where there has been fighting of one kind or another for many years, and famine and more sickness.
The village where I grew up no longer exists except as the site of a huge factory. I can find no family in the surrounding countryside, and no one I talk with knows me or knows what has become of my parents.
And so, in the end, I walk toward the ocean, where I board another ship for America.
I can see the lonely years stretching out before me, like the endless gray swell of the sea. I can imagine there will be good things; perhaps Philip will have children and grandchildren who will call me Uncle. For their sake and for Li Dewei's, I make a kind of peace with Sucheng.
I am resigned to An's face fading from my memory. Already it has become hazy, like a face seen through oiled parchment.
What I do not foresee is that when I am very old and have lost my sight, hers will be the face I will see most clearly.
CHAPTER 20
The Galinger piece in Saturday's paper was short, saying mainly what I'd already learned from the television: that police wanted to question Galinger, who had disappeared. It also mentioned the reopened investigation into Dad's death, but only briefly. I could tell that Harrison had tried to walk a line between reporting the story honestly and giving Dad all possible benefit. But still...
I'd just read through it for a second time, feeling heartsick, when the phone rang. It was Jillian, who plunged right in.
"I saw the paper," she said. "I figured you'd be feeling awful."
"Pretty much."
"How's your mom taking it?"
"Hard. I had to tell her about Dad's—about the stuff I told you."
I paused and then said in a rush, "Jillian, it's such a mess—more than has been reported. And I'm so afraid that if things don't get cleared up, then years from now, whenever Dad's name is mentioned, somebody will say, Steven Chen. Wasn't he involved in some scandal? It's not something you want for your dad."
"Frankly," Jillian said, "my dad should have it so good. But I'm not calling about my absentee parent. I'm calling about yours, not that dead is exactly the same as absentee. But I've got an idea. You told me he'd been trying to find his birth family."
"I said I thought he might have been."
"Well, you're Chinese, right?"
"About a million generations back." I caught myself. "On Mom's side, anyway. I guess I don't know when Dad's people came here."
"My point is," she said, "have you considered that your father might have gone to the International District because he was looking for them there? The area used to be called Chinatown."
I told her it hadn't occurred to me because what I knew involved California. But ... possible search will end here? Was it also because some unconscious part of me hadn't wanted a family search to lead to a place—to people—still foreign? I didn't want to think so.
I concentrated on what she was saying. If Dad had gone there hunting for family, it would be the reason I wanted, a reason that had nothing to do with Landin or the others, or with blackmail or bribes. And if I could find someone he'd talked to, I'd have proof.
"But how would I even start trying to find out?" I said. "I can't just go to hundreds, maybe thousands of doors, asking people if my father had been to see them. That's crazy."
"Hey," she said. "I didn't say I had answers for you. Just an idea. Bu
t if you do figure out what to do and want my help, call."
***
Right after I hung up, Mom came into the kitchen carrying empty canvas shopping bags. She pointedly ignored the newspaper. "I'll mail those bills you paid yesterday," she said. "Any problems with them?"
"No, except we can probably save some money on phone expenses. Dad must have done a lot more calling than we do."
"Part of his job," she said. "The wire service used to reimburse us for the business portion."
I promised to dig out our plan so we'd know what we could change.
Her comment had made something click, though, and once she was gone I got out the prior month's phone bill from among the business papers I'd dried and put away after the basement flood. It included the last couple of weeks that Dad had made calls, and it listed every one—the number, the place, how long.
And just as I'd thought, right there, about a week before he died, was a long stretch of calls to California. Ignoring only the very shortest, I went to work.
***
The first several calls got me nowhere except to unpromising machine messages or people who hung up or swore. The one man who did recognize Dad's name said, "Is this some kind of a scam? I told him I don't talk to strangers!"
And then I got hold of a woman who not only had talked to Dad but who said to me, "Oh, and it was good to hear from him. As though I could forget my little boy!"
My little boy! I almost didn't hear what she said next, I was so busy taking in the idea that I might have reached his mother.My grandmother?
I felt lightheaded for a moment, and dizzy with hope. Excited. In worrying over Dad, I'd almost forgotten this hunt was for me, too.
But then, as the woman kept talking, I realized she wasn't Dad's mom, but a woman who once ran a foster home and had taken care of him when he was in elementary school.
"He was sweet but so sad, and who could blame him?" she said. "All that nonsense about how people pull for underdogs—don't you believe it. Children can be cruel. And as for grownups ... I wanted to shake some of the adults and say it wouldn't hurt you to invite these kids to a birthday party now and then, but they never did. Some of the kids who came here already had shells you couldn't get through, but not Steven. I'd go in to tell him good night and find him staring up at the ceiling, wanting to know why no one had adopted him. I used to call him my lonely heart."
I had to swallow back a lump in my throat before asking the other questions I'd called with.
She said that, yes, when Dad called her, it had been to find out if she could tell him anything about his past.
And no, she hadn't known anything to tell him.
She was glad he'd tracked her down, though, and she was very, very sorry to learn he'd died.
"But you sound like a nice daughter," she said. "I'm glad he finally got a family of his own."
***
I plowed through more California numbers. One got me to a department store and another to a man with a heavy accent—Russian, maybe—who'd never heard of my father. I was getting toward the end of the list when I called a San Francisco number.
A rough-voiced, older-sounding woman answered, "Yes?" In the background a car commercial blared.
She let me get only partway into explaining that I was calling about Steven Chen.
"Look," she said. "I told him I can't remember the doings of all the kids who ran through here. He was lucky I had a picture for him. I wouldn't of, if I'd remembered it when I packed him up."
"A photo?" I asked.
"What else? You hoped for something valuable? Kids like him don't have nothing valuable, and if they do, you can bet some agency worker's gonna make it disappear."
"But you kept the photo all these years?"
"In a drawer. Never got around to throwing it away."
And, I bet, never tried to send it to him, either, I thought, suddenly so angry for my dad's sake I could hardly talk. I willed my voice steady because I had to learn all I could.
"Please," I said, "would you just tell me about the picture? Was it someone's portrait?"
"No. Just a street. Some old Chinatown, it looked like."
"Was anything written on it?"
"Maybe. On the back. A little. I gotta go."
"Wait," I said. "Just tell me, did you mail it to him?"
"When he sent me an envelope with a stamp. I'm not a charity."
"And the words on the back. Do you remember any of them? It's really important."
"There was a name.LO, LE,"she spelled. "Something foreign. I'm missing my show," she said, and she hung up.
CHAPTER 21
A picture of an old-time Chinatown, I thought. I hadn't seen anything like that when I was sorting though the things from Dad's office. I had no faith that the woman had even sent it, stamped envelope or not.
Maybe it was a picture of San Francisco's Chinatown, since that's where she lived. But if it was, it wouldn't do me any good. I needed it to be Seattle. Or rather, I needed the name on the back to be a Seattle person Dad might have gone to see.
I wished I'd thought to ask the woman if there'd been a date.
I looked up both names in the phone book, locating the addresses on a map. There was only one Lo and no Le listings at all for within a few miles of where Dad got killed. Then I realized I might be spelling Le wrong, and checked Li and Lee. That gave me three possibilities.
I left a note for Mom in case she got home before I did: "Have some things to do in town. Will be back in time to start dinner." And then I got into my car and headed south.
Exiting I-5, I made my way through the International District and into an area of irregular blocks and construction detours. Becoming more and more confused as I drove, I pulled over twice to study the map I'd brought with me.
Finally, though, I got to the first place, only to find scattered bricks and debris where an old building had stood.
Mr. Lo, at the second address, thought I was a Meals on Wheels lady and threatened to report me if I didn't hand over his food. I escaped when the real one arrived, apologizing for being late.
An exchange student lived alone at the third place I drove to.
I got back in my car and went hunting for the last address, backtracking several times before finding the street.
Small older houses lined it, some with plastic toys spilling onto sidewalks. At a couple of places, added-on ramps provided wheelchair access.
The one I wanted was three blocks down, a neat brick home set apart from its neighbors by a garden that took up almost the whole yard. An old man was running a hose at the base of a rosebush laden with white blossoms. A boy on a ladder painted window trim.
Neither person turned around when I parked behind a pickup and got out, probably because the racket of a neighbor's power mower kept them from hearing me. Going up the short walkway, I called, "Hi!" and again, more loudly, "Hello!"
It startled the old man, who turned abruptly. A jet of water hit the cardigan I'd thrown over my shoulders, soaking one sleeve before my startled exclamation made him turn the hose away.
I started to protest and then saw his unfocused gaze searching for me. A long white cane lay by the edge of the garden. "I hope I did not hit you with the water," he said.
"I'm fine," I said, draping the wet sweater over a low fence. "Are you Mr. Li?"
"I am Fai-yi Li. And you? You sound like a young person."
He was even older than I'd first thought—perhaps in his nineties—and I could hear the trace of another language in his carefully enunciated words.
"I'm Maggie Chen. I'm still in high school," I said.
I hesitated, trying to frame the least awkward way to ask what I'd come to find out.
"I would like to know if my father, Steven Chen, visited you recently. He died in an accident near here a few weeks ago, and questions have come up that make it important to know why he was in this part of Seattle."
"Please accept my sympathy for your loss," Mr. Li said. "But I have
had no visitors in quite some time. Certainly I did not know Mr. Chen."
Just then the painter, who appeared to be about my age, joined us. Glancing at the Herald parking decal on my car window, he said, "If you're selling newspaper subscriptions, my uncle doesn't want one."
"Ian," Mr. Li said, "this young lady's father died recently, and she came to ask if he had been here."
"Oh! Sorry! But why would he?"
"He was searching for information about his birth family," I said. "Or at least I think he was. He didn't have a lot to go on, but I think that just before his death he'd gotten a name. I'm not sure, but it might have been Li."
"As I have told you, that is my name," the old man said. "But I think your father must have been looking for someone else. I have no family except for a sister who never married and my great-nephew, Ian, here, and his parents."
"But perhaps you might know of someone who..."
Mr. Li shook his head. "I know few people outside my own family, which, as I said, is very small."
"But years ago?" I persisted. "My dad was in his late forties, so he'd have been born—"
"Years ago, I was a laundryman. From the time we came here in 1932, that is what I was. A laundryman and the owner of laundries. Almost the only people I saw were customers, and all I knew of them was how they liked their shirts to be finished."
A slow scritch sounded behind us. A frail, tiny woman dressed in black had turned in, pushing a wheeled walker. I could see a few vegetables in a net bag that hung from one handle. She moved carefully, watching the path, her head bent.
"Ah!" Mr. Li tilted his head toward the sound. "Here is my sister now. Sucheng," he said, "this young woman would like to know if her father, Mr. Steven Chen, came to see us."
The woman looked up then, and I saw her face, pitted and bitterly lined. An emotion that I couldn't read shone briefly in her eyes.
"No," she told me, "there has been no one here. And we do not like to be bothered by strangers."
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