Leave It to Me

by Bharati Mukherjee

“Hi!” I announced myself while the maître d’ hovered.

  Frankie scraped his chair back, and half rose to greet me, while the woman made a gesture with her hand that could have meant “Hello” or “Go away, don’t bother us.” The hand she waved was elegant: beautiful skin and delicate bones, set off by two large rings, one a huge black pearl and the other a heart-shaped sapphire. Asians must make the best “hands” models.

  Another Asian woman, shorter and older, and dressed in a Chanel suit, joined us. She held her hand out straight, each finger stiff with rings. “Ah, you must have walked in while I was in the loo!” She had a pale oval face powdered paler, and vigilant eyes under green-shadowed lids. Her scalp showed through her thin hair, but what hair there was was dyed a dead black. “That’s the trouble with middle age,” she rattled on in her loud, good-humored voice. “Bladder ruins welcomes you’ve planned to the last detail. Oh, you wouldn’t know, but you will. Where’s that darn gift? Frankie’s sung your praises, Miss DiMartino, hasn’t he, Ovidia? We have a present for you. But first I have to scoot around Frankie and find it in one of the shopping bags behind my chair. I know you must be in a rush to get away from the boss, Frankie’s such a slave driver, but it won’t take me a mo. Frankie, do they have that first-class champagne I like? Have you asked the waiter?”

  Ovidia stooped to rummage through the shopping bags at her feet. Frankie’s eyes followed. I caught Ovidia’s smile as she became aware of Frankie’s interest.

  “Look in the Harrods sack, dear,” Mrs. Fong encouraged.

  “That’s a pretty necklace,” Frankie muttered, his eyes on the pendant of pearls hanging from a gold chain just above Ovidia’s modest cleavage.

  “I’ll tell you what we brought you, Miss Di. You don’t mind if I shorten your name to Miss Di, names are so difficult. Anyway, if you’re like Cynthia, that wonderful girl Frankie’s got in KL, you probably hate surprises. Am I right?”

  “Frankie?” Let my mean fears be unjustified, I prayed.

  Ovidia straightened up just then. She held a prettily wrapped medium-sized box out to Baby, for Baby to hand in turn to me I guessed, but it was Frankie, and only Frankie, she was looking at.

  “Not that one,” Baby said.

  “Frankie?” I tried again.

  He smiled at Ovidia for a very long moment, then turned away, picked up the wine list. It hit me, like a mugger’s truncheon from behind on prime-time TV police shows: Frankie’d presented me to First Class Fong as a simple Saratoga secretary.

  “A handbag,” Baby stage-whispered, “because nobody doesn’t not have an use for a handbag, am I right?”

  Ovidia pulled out my present from the Harrods shopping sack. It wasn’t gift-wrapped. And it wasn’t a pocket-book. “Here we are,” she announced.

  Ovidia’s pretty hand was still dangling the Singapore Airlines freebie toilet kit as I ran to the entrance, and up Phila Street.

  “Lousy day at the tracks? Something a drink can fix?” someone said in a nothing-to-lose voice. I kept running.

  I had to nuke Frankie from my memory. No such person as Frankie, never had been a Frankie, no supercool superrich Asian lover who opened up a whole continent for me. I’d made him up out of needs I didn’t know I had. It suddenly came to me as I sat in the car why First Class Fong had dropped herself into my life. Oh Baby, thank you. You brought me more than the freebie toilet bag. If Wyatt’s vision for me was right, I’d be able to pay my own first-class Singapore Airlines fare, and buy a Saratoga apartment. One day I’d be tall, pretty, rich, a mover and shaker as long as I knew enough to lie low on bad days and scratch my fleas in private, right? Tomorrow I’ll wake up with a cold nose and bright eyes and the first rich couple with a big yard that comes in will take me home.

  No more rhino horns and tiger balls, think Animal Shelter Wyatt gave me a base to build from. He didn’t realize that a few of us are given chance after chance because we have life after life to get it right. In fact, I wouldn’t mind another couple of chances with Wyatt now that I am not a stubby, punk thirteen. One thing Wyatt got totally wrong: cuteness counts for some, but not for all. You get put down when you finally run out of wrath and a canny sense of timing.

  I drove straight to the pound. It was minutes to closing time, and the dogs mostly lay curled tight in their roomy cages, their backs pressed against the grille.

  “They look so sad,” I remarked to the Animal Shelter officer, a woman in her fifties. She was nursing a sick iguana, which she cradled against her chest as if it were a baby. “Do they sense time is ticking?”

  “Oh, they’ve just had a big supper,” she said, without taking her eyes off the iguana. “And they’re probably worn out from the good run they got today. We have a new volunteer this week, a high school kid who wants to study veterinary medicine. A really sweet kid whose Lab just died of diabetes.” She stroked the iguana. “Sniffles getting you down, Izzy?”

  “Mind if I take a quick look around?” I asked the officer.

  “Sure thing,” she said. “Glad for interest, glad for company. The cats are in the last two stalls, all the way down the hall behind that door and to the left. Be a big boy now, Izzy, don’t fight the medicine. Are you looking for a dog or for a kitty?”

  “I’m not sure,” I lied. “Probably a dog.”

  “Take your time,” the officer advised. “It never works when you choose on impulse. Not for you, and certainly not for the dog. Best to think through all the stuff like what breed’s best for your family, do you have babies, do you live in a big house or a tiny apartment, will your neighbors complain about barking. The big fellow in the first cage to the right as you go through that door was brought back last week. The man said his wife was afraid he’d trample the baby.”

  I walked in through the door marked ANIMALS & OTHERS, past Izzy’s empty case and two glass cases of thin snakes, to where the dogs, cats, rabbits and ferrets were kept. That evening I counted seven dogs, though one of them had a NOT FOR ADOPTION sign above its cage.

  The dog inside had a huge, grim head, and a don’t-mess-with-me-and-mine kind of muscular face; in fact, it looked more like a wild bear than a housebroken pet. But its body was long, slender and elegant, stuck on top of twitchy little legs.

  “See that head?” The officer lowered Izzy into its case, and whistled at the dog. The dog stared and stiffened its ears, but didn’t scurry towards the grille.

  “A dog with dignity,” I commented. No wants, no needs, no expiration date?

  “He’s got a bit of Akita in him,” the officer explained. “You can see it in the massive head.”

  “Akita?” Some fancy breed that nobody I knew owned.

  “Poor fellow, he’s also got some dachshund or poodle. Look at those matchstick legs.”

  “Why the sign?” I asked.

  “He hasn’t had all his shots yet. First we have to gauge if he has what it takes to be adopted.”

  “I’d consider it.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Poor mutt. It was bred like me, with crossed signals and conflicting impulses.

  “Wait till the end of the racing season,” the officer advised. “That’s when we get all the pets the summer folks don’t want to take back home with them. You’d be surprised. Beginning of September’s when I get really desperate for homes.”

  When I got back to my apartment, I found a half dozen gladiola stalks, the gift-wrapped box, which turned out to be a Chanel handbag, and a note from “Mr. Francis” on Elastonomics letterhead. The note was brief and word-processed. It said, “C’est la vie. Thanks for the superb times. I shall have left town on business by the time you get this. The apartment is yours gratis till the end of the month. Good luck and god bless.”

  “Why waste your money?” Mama sighed when I called her the next afternoon and told her that I’d just signed on as a client with Finders/Keepers, a family-reuniting service in Albany. “We’re your family. Aren’t we your family, Debby?”

  “I need to know.” I should’ve stopped there. I heard Mam
a’s dishwasher going. She’d be in pull-on knit pants and a T-shirt, broken-down Wallabees, a bandana tied low over her forehead, cleaning up after making her nectarine relish, which Pappy never dared tell her he hated. Family secrets. “About crossed signals and conflicting impulses. They say there’s a time every adopted kid suddenly has to know.”

  Mama chose innocence. “Didn’t it work out with that nice Oriental man?”

  “I don’t know any nice men. Apart from Pappy, of course.”

  “Pappy’s going fishing this weekend. With Uncle Benny. He needs the break. They both need a break. Benny got hit bad in that malpractice suit. Pappy’s advising bankruptcy. You’d’ve thought chiropractors were safe.”

  “Mama, I need to know what you know.”

  “Hold on a minute. I need to sit, and the cord doesn’t stretch far enough. Let me pull up a stool.”

  “I know what to get you for Christmas,” I joked. “A cordless.” I heard Mama’s heavy tread on the kitchen’s old wooden floor, and Patsy Cline on tape. Then the dragging sound of the stool.

  When she came back on the phone, she asked, “How much will you have to shell out, Debby?”

  In blood or cash, Mama?

  “They might be dead, hon. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come out that way.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Mama.” For all I knew, Finders/Keepers was a scam, the kind that’s exposed on Dateline or 60 Minutes. “We have a name at least.”

  Mama sobbed. “Why, Debby? What didn’t we do?”

  “It’s not about us.” I loved this woman, but love wasn’t enough in the face of need; it would never be. Need teased out the part of me that the orphanage had whited-out in my best interest. “It’s about me and them.”

  “We don’t have a name, hon, we have a confused kid turned hippie. What kind of a real last name is Iris-Daughter?”

  “I’ll find out soon enough.”

  “There’s not much to find, Deb. The nuns weren’t great at paperwork.”

  “I don’t have a choice, Mama.”

  “Some of the documents were sealed. I’m pretty sure that’s what our lawyer and the orphanage’s lawyers said. Because of the lawsuit.”

  “What lawsuit?”

  “Oh, nothing to do with us, dear. Indians were pressing those charges. The Indian government.”

  “What charges?”

  “I’m not sure what exactly. But serious charges.”

  “That’s a break for me, Mama. If they had a police record, that’s something to go on.”

  “Being a criminal is a break? What kind of talk is that?”

  “Just kidding, Mama. You brought me up to be decent.”

  “Do you want to come to dinner Friday night? Sleep over? Pappy’ll be gone. I have a nice pork roast in the freezer.”

  “Can’t. Sorry. Something I have to do this Friday.” I made my mind up what that something was the moment I finished lying to Mama.

  “Well, there wouldn’t have been much more to tell you in person, I guess. Our lawyer said the one thing we had in our favor was that the woman was an American citizen. That made you a citizen too. The woman told the nuns she’d sign the adoption papers if they got us to pay her airfare back to the States.”

  “So you saw her?”

  “No, she had us buy a Delhi-San Francisco ticket. We didn’t want to see her. We wanted to give you a clean start, that’s why we changed the name the nuns gave …”

  “Faustine?”

  “It sounded so foreign. Fossteen. Why’re you doing this now, Debby? You didn’t show the least curiosity before, you never asked questions …”

  “It’s not because I miss them, Mama. It’s about medical history.” And psychic legacies.

  I hadn’t yet met Madame Kezarina, the pay-per-prediction prophet with unusual props. I hadn’t yet stuck voodoo pins into her Hate-Me Hand nor rubbed the big toe of her bronze Vishnu Foot for good luck. I hadn’t sat under Madame K’s Mariposa Mystic, a wooden doll bought on sale at a Taxco boutique, and meditated on genetic mysteries. The mariposa is a butterfly-woman with horns and wings in dramatic reds, blues and greens, with big-nippled breasts and larva legs and feet. She hangs on the wall of Madame K’s “office,” a bug evolving into deity, a deity dissolving into bug. I see myself in the mariposa doll. Just as I had in the freakish dog in the pound.

  Finders/Keepers took my fee and told me to get in touch with its San Francisco office, which would be in a better position than the Albany office to help. My file had been electronically transferred. I wouldn’t have to pay new start-up charges, though the hourly rates might be a little higher out west. The California bug in my head, I followed my file; I fulfilled my fate.

  But before I got in my car to track down Clear Water Iris-Daughter, whatever her current name, on the other side of the continent, I made sure the bad times I’d pledged did indeed roll Francis Albert Fong’s way. One late-August night, I stood with gawkers across from the turreted and gargoyled Fong house on Union Avenue and watched rivers of flame lick at vintage velvet drapes, then split off and multiply, and crawl like amoebas across massive oak doors and curved-glass windows. A spectacular extravaganza of light, sound, heat. I was an auteur, too. Frankie had no right to be angry. He had a duty to take pride in my accomplishment.

  Clarity. That’s what I prize more than knowledge. In the hot, harsh light of clarity I saw for myself the difference between justice and vengeance.

  Frankie would file an inflated insurance claim. That was okay with me; the Flash’s losses deserved some extra compensation from corporate thugs. The costs I extracted—loss of past and loss of pride—were unreimbursable, and permanent. Frankie wouldn’t pursue any case of arson. He couldn’t afford to invite too much investigation, not with the undocumented Chinese aliens in his basement, the ones who did the cooking and cleaning for First Class Fong. The Fong Home Products frontman would hire new waifs and run them through mock interviews in other motels. And maybe get lucky next time.

  Inner peace. That’s what I gained that smoky summer night as a wide, gracious porch smoldered and Frankie wept. Nirvana is finding the tiger balls within you. I ambled to the used Corolla Pappy and Mama bought me for graduation, and I made my sputtery getaway while the firefighters were still hacking away at Frankie’s dream house with their axes.

  Part Two

  Eastern, Central, Mountain, I ate the zones a day at a time, Chicago to Cheyenne to Salt Lake and Reno. For twenty years I’d set my watch back and forward twice a year, now I was turning it back every day. It seemed like a gift from God, that extra hour, then two, then three—no wonder Californians were different; they had more daylight to do things, longer nights to sleep through. That went a long way to explain the difference between Serena DiMartino and Clear Water Iris-Daughter.

  Like Columbus, I was on the Pacific glidepath looking for the westward passage. Out west, prime time must start in the afternoon. Letterman was already back home in Connecticut when he was just starting in California. Weirdness.

  Before that week I’d never been west of Niagara Falls; now I was driving through places that were only rumors. States no DiMartino had ever been in or talked about kept taking me by surprise: Ohio? Indiana? So that’s where they put it! I’d never thought there could be so much emptiness, and so many places just like Schenectady with their own evening news, with their own traffic jams and freeways. I didn’t get it. Why would people choose to live there?

  My first antelope. My first Indian. First real mountains, with August snow. Radio signals from every state west of the Rockies, south of Alaska and north of the Canal filled my ears with strange music and revival and call-in complaints. At night, all Spanish. I didn’t see a tree for two days, and then came the downscale sublime Utah! The state had an exclamation point on its license plates like it was its own musical. Seven brides for one horny brother? Salt flats, miles in every direction, which I walked on, fell down on and stuck my tongue on, Hey, where’s the ketchup? You shoulda seen that French
fry! I bet myself the next state had to be California because my money was thin by then, but it turned out to be Nevada, even drier and emptier, where gas stations and 7-Elevens had slot machines and “ranch” meant “whorehouse,” which I discovered when I drove into one looking for cowboys. Probably lots of those cowgirls working the ranches had more than arson in their pasts. I made forty dollars on the slots crossing the state.

  California sure knew how to make an entrance, knew how to keep you waiting. Forget and forgive the stuff they taught in school about the Donner Pass.

  After all the dust and emptiness, I was primed.

  You are a twenty-three-year-old SWF, I tested myself. You are attractive, and you are street-smart in a Schenectady/Albany sort of way. You have a sense of humor, which gets you dates and jobs. You also have your pride, which, when it gets out of hand, burns down an ex-boyfriend’s house. Given such assets of your looks and character and the liability of your situation, do you:

  A. hide out on a Nevada ranch and save your neck until Flash calls off his goon squad?

  B. become a Mormon and save your soul?

  C. enlist in the Peace Corps and save the world?

  D. confront your deadbeat mom?

  Luv ya, California! Greetings from Debby Clearwater-Daughter!

  I owed it to my family to share my happiness. On an impulse I got off the highway, and from the pay phone of the gas station closest to the exit ramp, I dialed Mama. The phone rang and rang. Pappy didn’t believe in answering machines. So I dialed Angie next. Some jazz group I didn’t recognize came on first, then a man with a whispery voice and an accent I couldn’t place. “You have reached the pad of Egberto and the bella Angela. When two people are in love, answering your call is not a top priority. Leave a message or get a life. Whatever you decide, you have thirty seconds. Oh, and Beth, Ingrid and Manju have moved on to Alberta and couldn’t care less about messages.”