The Afterlife of Emerson Tang

by Paula Champa

  “Do you know when Webster got it?”

  “Boy, let’s see . . . Must have been 1960? Maybe ’61. It was a gift to his wife, the Chinese woman. He also gave her a white cat. I never met either one of them, but I can tell you I met plenty of that cat’s hair on those red seats and carpets. She must have chauffeured that animal around.”

  I didn’t know what Emerson’s mother was like. All I had was a photograph and a bill with the Websters’ name on it from La Valencia Hotel in La Jolla, California, in December 1962, the time of my mother’s sighting of Mrs. Webster at the airport. Emerson had saved the items in his desk, souvenirs of what might have been his first family vacation, as a baby. After that, she had lived in Connecticut with her husband and son for three more years. Emerson, my parents—they said the woman must have been glad to put her past behind her, to move to a place where so much was open to her. But if she knew she was dying . . . I’d seen it myself with Emerson. Grief can make you pull away. Something fired in my gut.

  “She died in this car, didn’t she?”

  McVane nodded evenly. “Hit a stand of oaks about three miles from here. Trees took it okay. They had a couple hundred years on her.”

  I glanced at Hélène, but she had her eyes squeezed shut behind her glasses.

  “Was she alone?”

  McVane nodded.

  “And you got the car after that.”

  He pulled his lips tight. “Yeah.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “Webster wasn’t interested in trying to save the car. The body wasn’t that much trouble, really, but the engine was going to take a lot of work to rebuild. So I sourced a replacement engine and sold the car to a dealer on Long Island.”

  “What about the engine?”

  “As I say, it was going to take a lot of work to rebuild it, and I was a one-man shop in those days. I sold it as is to a collector in Florida.”

  “Do you know what happened to it after that?”

  “No idea. But that was one of the finest engines of its day. They were practically indestructible. I imagine it went into another body.”

  “It did. From Argentina.”

  “Huh.”

  “His son was trying to put the body and engine back together.”

  McVane smiled. “Was he.”

  Whatever else he made of this, I didn’t care to find out.

  In a kind of funk, I directed Hélène through the maze of country roads to Gray Hill. She piloted calmly along the winding route, brooding on what McVane had told us: “It was crashed. He says the body wasn’t any trouble to rebuild, but the engine was? The engine was put into another car—and the writing is still there? It’s strange.”

  “I’m glad Emerson got the original engine,” I told her. “But apparently it doesn’t matter. I learned—officially, anyway—that the car is defined as the chassis. Not the engine.”

  “Who says this?”

  “Someone at the Heritage Trust. Manfred Zeffler.”

  “I suppose that’s what he would say. Bureaucrats thrive on official pronouncements. But I wonder if there isn’t something more to a car. They tell you this in advertisements all the time, it’s so trite—who considers? There’s an energy to the movement of the wheels. Do you know the Sanskrit word for ‘moving wheel’?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s chakra, a word that is also used to describe the energy centers in the human body. There’s an energy in the composition, the movement, the metal . . .”

  “Metal conducts.”

  “Yes, and we are talking about enormous pieces of metal.”

  “What about the engine?”

  She thought for a moment. “Well, in the human body, the engine is considered to be the stomach.”

  I pulled out the photograph I had taken from Emerson’s desk. Hélène glanced at it before turning her eyes back to the road.

  “This belonged to Emerson,” I said. “I assume it’s his mother. The date is right.”

  The ruffled border of the little square snapshot was stamped with the year 1963. It showed a young Asian woman standing before a placid slice of coastline. She and Emerson shared a strong likeness, in the width of the nose, the curve of the forehead. The emulsion on the photo was cracked and her skin had a greenish cast, as if she were sunken in a pool. She held her mouth open, but no teeth were visible. Her skin was flawless except for a birthmark, like a smudge, on her left cheek. “Do you think she killed herself?”

  “Maybe some flowers can’t be transplanted,” Hélène suggested, glancing at the photo again.

  I tucked it into his backpack along with his other personal effects. It seemed the woman had not died of her illness, as everyone thought. Or had her illness played a part?

  Hélène pursed her lips. “She could have been trying to feel some power over her situation, no? Speed is a false power, but once you feel it, it’s addicting.”

  Did she die triumphant? I wondered. In the open car, the last lemony streaks of winter sun bleached by snow clouds, she would have felt the frigid air rush over her. Then the whir and buzz of the engine, dropping and building to a full-throated roar. With the twilight blooming around her, she pressed her foot down and opened her heart to the sky.

  23

  ALL THE SHADES were drawn at the house on Gray Hill, the long rows of windows neatly covered with buff-colored parchment. There were no people or vehicles in sight, no signs of life. Met with the absolute stillness of the templelike building, I cannot say I was entirely surprised when Laurel greeted us at the door with an apology.

  “He isn’t available,” she said, her voice stiff with embarrassment. But her choice of words had already betrayed her. Webster was home.

  “I don’t have an appointment,” I said, not hiding my unhappiness at the prospect of being turned away. “I was hoping I could be squeezed in.”

  Laurel was dressed in what I now understood to be her customary uniform of white tennis shoes, a pair of khaki pants and a clean white shirt. She stood before me with arms crossed, like a bouncer, her hands devoid of a wedding ring or other jewelry, her squat form obstructing the entryway as a breeze from an open window somewhere in the house sneaked past her, carrying with it the scent of furniture polish. As the odor filled my head, I felt a kinship with Laurel, who had evidently been cleaning and polishing things by herself, and who could no more answer for her employer’s ways than I had ever been able to for his son’s.

  Her eyes dashed from me to the silver backpack cradled in my arms to Hélène’s face, fixed with apprehension. With a sympathetic nod, she disappeared down one of the hallways, returning not long afterward to say that Mr. Webster would join us in a few minutes. She ushered us into the study off the main hallway, where I’d waited in vain for him to appear on my previous visit with Emerson.

  I rested the backpack on the desk. Laurel was regarding it with curiosity—or perhaps she thought I was taking liberties, placing my own bag there.

  “These are just a few things that belonged to Emerson,” I explained.

  “Oh?”

  “I wanted to ask his fa—”

  To my distress, she began pulling Emerson’s belongings out of the bag, then impatiently picked it up and slid the rest of the contents onto the desk.

  “These are very personal things. I . . .”

  She was opening the acid-free envelope I had sandwiched protectively between two pieces of cardboard.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said when she’d extracted the stiff sheet of paper inside. A smile of recognition spread over her lips as she inspected the little watercolor painting I had found in Emerson’s desk.

  “Do you know anything about it? It’s not documented in Emerson’s collections.”

  “His collections, yes,” she said with evident amusement.

  “Do you know who painted it?”

  I tried to imagine Emerson in his office, working to master Hélène’s stolen paintbrush, but the vision dissolved with her next comment. />
  “Someone in China.” She propped the painting up against the backpack. “It belonged to his father, who asked me to remove it from this room we’re standing in, oh, at least twenty-five years ago. I wondered where it went.”

  Embarrassed by Emerson’s petty thievery, I attempted a joke. “He obviously started collecting very early.”

  Laurel was studying the drawing. “This is his mother.”

  “I thought so. I wasn’t sure. He mentioned a painting once, but he made it sound like his father had it. I’m sure he’ll be happy to have it back.”

  Laurel was shaking her head. “Nope. Not his style.”

  “You mean, the style of painting?” asked Hélène.

  “No, no,” Laurel answered, unhelpfully, as Webster himself appeared in the doorway.

  I hadn’t expected him to be elderly. I had never advanced his age beyond the newspaper photos of him I had seen when I was a teenager. Facing him there in his study, I felt much older myself. His hair had turned gray-white, like dried concrete, though the long, unruly sideburns remained a stylishly contrasting black—dyed, perhaps, to match his eyeglasses. Behind the thick, round lenses, his eyes drooped at the corners like gigantic commas. His face was framed by the same large ears as his son’s, the pendulous lobes sagging nearly to the top of his collar. He was probably younger than Hélène, but his general condition of drooping and flopping made him appear much less solid. Only his perennial slim-cut suit provided him with some much-needed structure.

  “I met your son very briefly,” said Hélène as she introduced herself. “I could see he was a fine man.”

  He nodded and turned to me with a cheerful expression. “What brings you here this afternoon, Bethany?”

  “Beth.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I brought Emerson’s things.” I gestured to the watches and cufflinks that Laurel had left strewn on the desk.

  “I haven’t heard from you since that summer,” he said. He picked up a remote control from the desk, waved it in the direction of a darkened stereo console, then, at the sight of the watercolor propped against the backpack, seemed to reconsider. He placed the remote back down softly on the polished wooden surface.

  “I was surprised you sent a telegram when he died.”

  He looked at me curiously. “What would you have had me do?”

  I didn’t have an answer. It was an unplanned salvo. Before I could say any more, he spoke again, his voice deflated of its original cheer. “I have another question for you. Why do you think my son didn’t want to see me, at the end?”

  “What do you mean, didn’t want to see you?”

  “Just what I said. When he came here that summer, he asked for my advice on some matters relating to his estate and trusts. He no doubt told you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He looked at me skeptically. “At any rate—” He paused, seeming to reorganize his thoughts. “He said goodbye to me that day.”

  “He said you were traveling.”

  Webster shook his head. “Not that much.”

  Could what he was saying be true? I considered Emerson’s habits of privacy—his systematic withdrawal from people in those final months, his self-declared difficulty with saying goodbye—and came to the dismaying conclusion that what Webster was saying might be true. It was hard to comprehend, the truth being so complete a reversal of my own fears that day, when I’d worried that I would be elbowed aside and Webster would take over. But Emerson had not allowed it.

  Webster stared at me, his face sunken with misery. “Why did he shut me out?”

  I recalled what Hélène had suggested to me at the hotel on the morning he died. “Maybe . . . he was trying to protect you.”

  “From what? What could he protect me from?”

  “His pain.”

  Webster considered this, then stood from the desk and began to pace. “That day when he came here—you were with him, weren’t you?”

  “Of course. I brought him.”

  “And you didn’t want to meet me.”

  “He never suggested it.”

  “Did you ask to meet me?”

  “I didn’t think to ask.”

  “I certainly did, but he put me off. He told me he’d legally designated you as his caretaker, his trustee. And you were in charge.”

  “Excuse me,” Hélène said. “You understand theirs was a business arrangement?”

  “Yes. He hired me to help him,” I said, silently thanking her. “What, did you think . . . we were together?”

  He sank back into his chair. “I don’t know what I thought,” he said. “I only knew he was saying goodbye. It was earlier than your goodbye, maybe, but that doesn’t make it easier.”

  His candor took me by surprise.

  “He didn’t say goodbye to me,” I said. “You thought he didn’t need you?”

  “He hired you as his caretaker. Do you see—nothing was obvious with him.”

  “I think he felt alone.”

  “He told you his feelings?”

  “No. Well, rarely.”

  Webster eyed me more closely. “He told you why he bought the Beacon? Or why he was looking for the engine?”

  “No.”

  “Even though, if we can be honest with one another, this meant more to him than all the other trouble you took on his behalf.”

  It was the most searing blow he could have delivered, intended or not. Emerson had deceived me, even made me think he wasn’t interested in the car after the engine was restored. He’d left me worrying about him when he disappeared. He hadn’t said goodbye. The thought of it burned behind my eyes. But Webster had brought up the search for the engine himself, and that took some of the sting out of the burn.

  “You knew he was looking for it?” I asked. “Do you know why?”

  He shook his head unconvincingly.

  “I think he was looking for her.” I moved to reach for the little painting behind him, but Hélène was regarding me sternly.

  “What if he was?” asked Webster.

  “Maybe he was looking for you, too.”

  He frowned. “The heart releases too slowly.”

  “What?”

  “Something I’ve felt for a long time.”

  He hunted through the bookshelves around his desk for a few minutes, bunching his shoulders tighter the more intently he searched. As I watched him scan the low shelves, I recalled doing the same as a child in the new library he had funded in Burring Port, inhaling the sweet scent of adventure glued into the bindings. Finally he gave up on the book and turned to me.

  “Rilke writes that it’s the poet’s duty to praise deserted women: the great lovers. What about the deserted men?” Softly, to himself, he went on: “I’m the one who’s alone.” He circled the desk in front of me. “I found out by chance that you were looking for the engine.”

  “From Miguel?”

  I had not said his name in a long time; it almost hurt to pronounce it.

  Webster nodded. “I was speaking with him about something else and he mentioned his affection for your cause.”

  “Emerson’s cause.”

  “Yes. I came to that conclusion.”

  I spoke hesitantly: “The restorer, Martin McVane—we just came from seeing him. He said she . . . died in that car.”

  Webster shook his head. “Beth, if someone was going to put back together what I had taken apart, it should have been me. And I didn’t want it put back together.”

  “That was all Emerson wanted.”

  He stared past me, remembering something or weighing something. “His mother didn’t die in that car. That’s the truth. She did not.”

  “McVane told us—”

  “He was trying to help me save face. He called here as soon as you left.”

  Webster hovered over me like a shade. I wondered if he might be preparing to confess some transgression, but he only seemed to grow more mournful as he spoke.

  “I
gave her that car as a wedding present. It was spirited, like her. You could say it was Emerson’s first car as well. He was still in diapers when we took him for drives on this hill. I sat with him on my lap and put his hands on the wheel. We showed him the ocean down the road, the woods. Everything I hoped he would inherit—”

  His voice faltered.

  I glanced at Hélène. She was studying his face.

  “I used to have to clean the baby powder streaks off the seats afterward,” he said, smiling sadly. “He was still a toddler when my wife’s health . . . She was weakened by what she went through before she came here: anemia, blood disorders, jaundice—you cannot imagine the number of medical problems caused by starvation.”

  Emerson’s imaginary scene of his mother having her portrait painted—a lighthearted picnic on the river with her girlfriends—flared up in my mind and burned away to nothing as he went on.

  “At the time, where she came from, there were degradations, moral compromises . . . She had friends, teenage girls like her, who killed themselves. She was fortunate, I think—she believed in what she was working for. She wanted what they were promised: a modern society without want, high-rise buildings with electricity and television . . .”

  He turned to the watercolor resting against Emerson’s backpack. “The boy she loved painted this.” Webster picked it up and placed it carefully back in the envelope. “There was a legal age for marriage, even in the villages. They were sixteen—too young. They didn’t marry, and it didn’t last. Not because their feelings changed.” He shook his head. “The boy was pulled into a group of other farmers to carve a slogan into the hillside, to greet Party members arriving for a conference. My wife, along with some other girls, was paid a week’s salary to welcome the committee members. She still wore her hair in braids then. She counted the different dishes on the banquet table that night—more than fifteen of them.” He tapped his fingers on the envelope. “The boy didn’t come back from the hillside alive. When she found out, she managed to leave with one of the committee members who had given her a steamed bun from his plate.

  “I suppose she still loved the other boy when I met her in Hong Kong. But I took her here, and for a few years she had . . . well, for all she had been through—” His face brightened. “She believed in progress.”