The Loved Ones

by Sonya Chung

  Hannah missed seeing Charles’s licorice-bean eyes, as he always wore aviator sunglasses now, even inside as he unpacked food or handed Hannah her wages. When she left, Charles said, “Have a good evening,” and he said it in an adult voice, as if Hannah were not a young girl but a restaurant hostess, or one of the grocery checkout ladies. When she looked into Charles’s aviator lenses, Hannah tried to pretend she was looking straight into his left eye again, but all she saw was her own warped reflection, in which her forehead appeared huge, and her eyeglasses too round.

  On the one hand, Hannah was glad about not having to make conversation. She was glad, for instance, that she did not have to be driven home by Charles Lee. She’d seen a movie once on TV where the husband pulled over on the side of the road, strangled the babysitter, and dumped her in the river. The scariest part, she thought, was that they didn’t show the actual strangling, only the man (who looked like a teacher) reaching toward the girl with both hands; then the camera shifted to the outside of the silver Jeep with tinted windows, which sat still and silent in the dark night.

  But then again, if Charles Lee drove her home, maybe he’d take off the sunglasses and not be scary at all. Maybe she’d find a way to surprise him again, to make his shiny black eyes go wide and a little confused. Maybe that voice—that strange, familiar, inside-her-head voice—would come back, and Hannah would say things she’d never said out loud before; wonderful, interesting things she only half-knew she’d thought. Maybe, too, she’d hear that sad woodwind warmth again in Charles’s replies.

  Before leaving, Hannah would tell Charles briefly what they’d done that afternoon, what they’d had for a snack; usually too some report on Benny’s troublesome behavior. On that front, Hannah had found she had no trouble administering effective punishment: the boy hated two things above all else—silence and wearing shoes. And so Time Out meant putting on his sneakers and sitting in the Silence Chair. For his sixth birthday, Alice Lee’s brother had given the boy a plastic digital watch, which he loved and wore every day; and so to keep him busy, Hannah would set the stopwatch for two minutes. The countdown, with its racing milliseconds, at least partially absorbed him; so while he whined and pouted all throughout the lace-up of the sneakers, he kept quiet for the two-minute period. Once, Hannah had offered Veda the chance to set the watch. The girl considered seriously for a moment, brow furrowed; then she raised her eyes and shook her head. I’ll have no part of it, she seemed to be saying, and then went back to beading a bracelet.

  One evening, Hannah described the shoes-and-Silence-Chair procedure to Charles. The children were off washing their hands. “You’re a pro at this,” Charles said. “You’ve figured it out pretty quickly.” He’d raised his sunglasses off his nose to rub his eye, then dropped them back down.

  Hannah had gone home that evening wondering what he’d meant by “it.” She felt she knew even as she tried to understand. “It” had something to do with the girl’s superiority, and the boy’s stupidity. “It” was something she and Charles now shared, this understanding, and was something Hannah felt quite sure Alice Lee did not share, did not understand.

  On the Metro ride home now, Hannah sometimes replayed the father-and-babysitter scene from the movie. She imagined herself as the babysitter, and Charles as the murderer, only in her version, when he pulled over to the side of the road, Charles reached for her with his hands and pulled her to him in an embrace. Once, while she was swimming backstroke at the pool, Charles’s clarinet voice came into her ear, complimenting her on her long, smooth strokes and speed.

  In early July, Hannah had a day off for the Fourth. She went to the mall with Teresa and Raj. After browsing rugby shirts at Britches Great Outdoors, they headed for the food court, in search of softserve. Suddenly Raj halted and grabbed Hannah’s and Teresa’s shirtsleeves. “Crap. Look.” In a far corner, sitting alone, eating from a tray and reading a paperback, they saw Madame Glissant, their French teacher. Raj was in summer school with her—he’d gotten a C in French and his parents threatened to pull him out of chess club if he didn’t improve. Teresa put her hand over her mouth. “That’s so sad,” she said. It was sad, Hannah thought. But maybe not in the same way Teresa meant. Raj had already turned to head back to the stores. Teresa was backing away with an uneasy smirk on her face.

  Hannah didn’t move. Monique Glissant hadn’t looked up; she was deeply absorbed in whatever she was reading. She reached for her sandwich or her coffee every so often but never lifted her eyes. At the sight of her, something bloomed in Hannah’s chest. Madame was a pretty woman with a full, hourglass figure; pale and dark-haired with black eyes and very pink lips. Hannah liked to see what she wore to class every day, because it was always similar to the day before but definitely different. For example, one day she would wear a charcoal sweater dress that hugged her hips, with zigzag tan tights, and the next day she would wear a two-piece charcoal sweater set, low-cut, with caramel-brown pumps. She had the same sheer silk blouse with a big-bow collar in black, red, and pink. Sometimes she wore miniskirts—stone-washed denim—with tall boots, which no other teacher ever did. It was hard to know how old she was: everyone knew Madame was divorced, yet she radiated a girlishness. Sometimes they saw her standing in the hallway with her head cocked, talking softly with Mr. Stevens, the history teacher.

  “Hannah?” Teresa hissed. She was waving Hannah over with a sharp hand.

  “Just a sec.” Hannah crossed the seating area to the far corner and paid no mind to Teresa’s bugging eyes.

  “Bonjour, Madame,” Hannah said.

  Monique Glissant raised her eyes, slowly, and looked at Hannah over the top of her big cat-eye reading glasses. She set her book down on the table, spine up, then exhaled gently and sat back. Her pink lips smiled and showed just the top of her two front teeth, which were slightly yellowed, and her hair—usually tied back—flowed over her bare shoulders, bluish black and feathery light. She lowered her glasses, which hung from a colorful beaded chain, down to the low edge of her scoop-neck tank, against the skin of lightly tanned cleavage. “Well, hello there.” She spoke English very prettily. Her students didn’t get to hear her speak much English.

  “How … are you?” Hannah asked. Her teacher said nothing and looked at her with bemused eyes. “Comment … allez-vous?”

  “Ah, bon. Maintenant, je comprends!”

  Hannah smiled. She liked being teased by Madame.

  “Je vais très bien, merci. Et toi, qu’est-ce que tu fais aujourd’hui? Tu vas faire du shopping?”

  Hannah was glad she used a word that was identical in both languages. She didn’t know if she could think fast on her feet. “Oui. Je vais faire du shopping. Avec … mes amis.” Hannah turned and pointed at no one in particular.

  “C’est amusant, faire du shopping avec des amis!” Hannah could tell that her teacher was turning the conversation into a French lesson. Her heart dropped; she wanted somehow to take advantage of being outside the classroom. She was sure there were … autres choses to talk about avec jolie Monique Glissant.

  “Oui,” Hannah said, nodding. She bit her lower lip and was about to give up and say au revoir, when she noticed the book on the table. The cover was faded, the spine tattered; but the letters were curly and big and black: Claudine à l’ecole. “Qu’est-ce que … vous lisez?” Hannah asked.

  Their eyes were now on the table, and Monique Glissant moved quickly to flip the book over. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, switching to English. She raked the fingers of her left hand through her hair, and Hannah thought she smelled lilac. “An old favorite. I like to reread things sometimes, just to relax. Have you been reading Le Petit Prince?”

  Hannah nodded. “I’ve only just started.” In fact she was finding it slow going. It was hard to grasp what was actually going on, what they were talking about—which was supposed to be, she knew, deep. “If you have something else to recommend … I want to practice as much as I can,” Hannah said.

  Monique Glissant took t
he book from the table with both hands and placed it in her lap. She smiled her charming two-toothed smile all the while. “Let me … think about that,” she said.

  Hannah felt she’d spoken meaningfully, but she wasn’t sure. Her teacher said nothing more, just replaced her pearly cat eyes, which seemed to cover most of her face. They said their au revoirs, and when Hannah peeked back over her shoulder from the tray station, she saw that Madame’s nose was already between pages.

  Once Hannah caught up with Teresa and Raj, they walked by a wall of movie posters at the Cineplex—Phoebe Cates in Gremlins; Kevin Bacon in Footloose; Revenge of the Nerds—and Hannah suddenly knew what she’d been saving up for: an appointment at Tease, the hair salon where Jessica Taft and Jami Eisenberg, two of the popular girls at school, got their hair done with their mothers. Also, a new pair of eyeglass frames.

  6.

  The boy was eating lo mein with his fingers and letting the noodles hang down from his mouth. “Raaahhhrrr!” he was saying, “I am the swamp monster!” Benny rolled his eyes up almost to complete whites. Charles sighed into the refrigerator, reached in for a Pabst, then closed the door extra slowly. He had had a long day at work; the East Gate cameras at the stadium were malfunctioning again. The boy was waiting for someone, his father or Veda, to react.

  Charles turned to his son and beheld him: swamp monster, indeed. Hair like a tumbleweed on top of a cactus. “We’re taking you to the barber shop on Saturday,” he said.

  The boy had told his mother that he liked his hair this way, and she’d said fine. Later, Charles and Alice had argued over—discussed—it, and Alice told Charles that children need freedom and a sense of self-determination. They also, Charles had said, need to learn how to sit still; this was the real reason, he knew, that the boy didn’t like to have his hair cut. He was six years old, what did he know or care about liking his hair one way or another? You’d be surprised, Alice had said, how early it starts now. How early what starts? The importance of appearances, and self-image. Good god, Charles had said, though later on he couldn’t remember if he’d said it out loud or only in his head. Regardless, he’d certainly expressed it one way or another, which was made clear by Alice’s hard silence.

  As a child, Charles had always himself had short hair. His grandmother made sure of it. By the time Afros were getting taller and fuller, he’d enlisted. Only once—when Benny was a toddler, just starting to walk on his own (and learning to make fists and throw tantrums), and life had become a constant chaos of noise and mess—during that time Charles went two months without a haircut. “You look like Bill Withers,” Alice had said to him, and she sounded pleased about it. Charles remembered her saying that, because he remembered that they’d had sex that night—a rare occurrence in those days—and Alice had shocked him by giving fellatio. Charles always sensed Alice’s semi-unwillingness to use her mouth in any sensual way—she never ate tomatoes because of the sliminess of the seeds, and she bit off bananas with her lips pulled back, teeth bared. That night, though, Charles hadn’t cared. He’d pushed Alice to her knees. Had he pushed hard? What was “hard”? Where were his hands while she did it? Where were hers? Charles couldn’t remember.

  “Stop it, Benny. That’s gross.” Veda had spread pork and cabbage in a thin layer and was rolling her moo shu pancake into a narrow tube.

  “Here,” Charles said, reaching over from behind and gently unrolling it. He scooped another large spoonful into the pancake and re-rolled it. “You need to eat more, V. Skin and bones.” He pinched Veda’s upper arm playfully. She squirmed and giggled, then picked up her pancake with both hands. A strand of hair fell forward into her mouth as she got ready to take a bite; Charles hooked it with his finger and tucked it behind her ear.

  On Saturday, Charles took Benny to the barber. He’d been going to the same barbershop on the corner of Georgia and Keefer Place since he was a boy. He’d known Vernon Mills for twenty-five years. In the end, this was how Charles had gotten Alice to agree: it would be a tradition, a father-son outing. Alice liked the historical notion of it, and she liked anything “special” that Charles did with the boy. As for Benny, just like Daddy was something to which he was generally responsive; it was how they’d potty-trained him (well, almost) at five and a half.

  Vernon was not much of a talker. He let his customers do all the talking. Charles had always liked this about Vernon—not only was he comfortable in his silence, but also generous. After Nona had dropped him off, Charles would sit quietly in the chair, while Vernon clipped and sometimes hummed. Usually he had a cigarette going, the ashtray within reach of the chair. Charles would will himself not to cough, and he stared into the corners of the mirror, where he could see everyone else in the shop. The other men, most of whom were not there for haircuts or shaves, would talk and talk and talk. Charles didn’t understand most of it, but what he perceived in the talk was a feeling that what they were saying, and what it really meant, were different things. For instance, the tone of the talk was often of complaint—taxes, mayors, wives, landlords—and yet the collective feeling among the men was one of joy, and pleasure. It was something that would come back to him, and ring familiar, in small moments, years later in the Army.

  Charles vaguely dreaded bringing Benny to Vernon’s shop. He considered taking him to a different barber, where no one knew him. His friend Dennis, who he came up with (and who’d talked him into enlisting when they were seventeen and no-count), had always gone to Van’s on 11th and Kenyon. But Charles had already told the boy about Vernon, and whatever lie he might concoct to fool him now would need to be elaborate. Anyway, even if the boy believed it, his mother wouldn’t.

  “Well, well, what have we here?” Vernon spoke in almost a whisper now, his lungs and throat worn to reeds. He’d always slouched, but the slouch had curled into a stoop. He seemed ancient, though in fact he couldn’t have been much older than sixty.

  “Vern,” Charles said, nodding. “My son. Bennett.”

  “Bennett Lee, Charlie’s boy. And how are you, young man?”

  “Fine.” Benny was pulling at the hem of his long T-shirt with both hands, twisting back and forth.

  “Fine, what, Benny.” Charles put his hand on the boy’s neck and pressed with two fingers.

  “Fine … thank you,” Benny mumbled.

  “Fine, thank you, sir,” Charles said. Benny looked up at his father with eyes that made Charles shudder. If the boy had the words, Charles thought, if he were smart, he’d be saying, You fraudulent fuck, the word “sir” has never once been uttered in our household, and you know it.

  Vernon’s nephew Mike interjected then, slapping his chair, which was opposite Vernon’s. “Come right here, little man. I’ll take care o’ you today.” Mike was a fat man, gregarious and cheeky, everything Vernon was not. Mike’s cousin Lester was the serious one; he’d died in Vietnam.

  Benny plopped into Mike’s chair, staring up at him with a child’s wonder. It took a moment for Charles to understand what exactly had captivated the boy. Charles saw it happening in slow motion. “I want those,” Benny said, pointing at Mike’s braids.

  They were tight against his big skull, skinny rows, hanging down the back of his neck and beaded at the ends. On Fat Mike the Barber, pushing forty, they were fine, they said Cool Cat; he was an exuberant born-again, he led Bible studies for prison inmates, the braids were like plainclothes. On a young boy wearing too-big T-shirts, it was a different story.

  “Something tells me your pops might have something to say about that,” Mike said, eyeing Charles.

  Benny was quiet. His face was radiant, excited. The boy, Charles saw, had a vision of himself—one that he was too young to fully understand, and yet, maybe, there was also a child’s wisdom to it, something essential. The importance of self-image, Alice had said. Charles smiled and shook his head—not at Mike, nor at Benny, but somewhere inwardly.

  “You know, why not?”

  Vernon’s eyes grew wide. Mike’s narrowed. Charles shrugged
his shoulders, which, for a blessed moment, felt looser, unburdened. Vernon shook his head too, but in his case it meant, Boy, you better know what you’re doin. Vernon had had the occasion to meet Alice once, at a wedding.

  Benny watched all of this, eyes big and waiting.

  “The boy knows what he wants,” Charles said.

  Benny pumped his fist into his hip. “Yessss!”

  Mike called in his cousin Yvonne from the back, where sometimes her girlfriends came in for manicures and extensions. “We need reinforcements; small, strong hands,” he said to Charles. Then to Yvonne, “What’s your sister doing today?”

  “Maureen? Nothin.”

  “Get her over here. So these gentlemen don’t have to be here all day.”

  It did take some time, and while the girls prepped for Benny, Charles sat back in Vernon’s chair. “While we’re at it, let’s shave mine, all the way down. Gimme that baby’s bottom special.”

  Vernon shook his head again, this time laughing from the gut. “You want a shave, too?”

  “Nah. Let’s grow that.”

  Everyone set to work. There was industrious joy in the shop, all around. Mike stood back and let the girls, and his uncle, work. If he wasn’t already, Mike would be the new boss soon. They needed to bring in more young men to stay in business, maybe this was A New Day, fathers and their young sons coming in together, before they started losing the boys to the corners and all the rest. Mike didn’t know that Benny would never again be back in the shop. Charles would not return for many years.