Larry's Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant--and Save His Life

by Daniel Asa Rose

  “I take your point,” Larry says. “Bottom line, I may die of general decrepitude, or I may decide to off myself, but odds are good I’m not going to die of kiddie failure. Say, any way I can get the recipe for this eggplant? It’s ever so much better than at home.”

  It’s a joyful scene, with Cherry looking on fondly and Mary looking lovely, all decked out with pink sweater and blue plastic necklace she bought herself in celebration, nothing too expensive on Larry’s dime, resting her head on Larry’s shoulder and saying, “I very like Larry. I tell my son, every day he nice to me. Every day.” There’s even a birthday party tune from the softspeakers: How old are you now, how old are you now…?

  But something odd’s going on with me. As warmed as I am by all that’s happening, too much is at stake here for me to surrender to fuzzy feelings. Instead of getting all throat-lumpy at the proceedings, I find myself clearing my throat. I have work to do—now.

  “So by the way, Larry,” I say almost airily, “if you do elect to ‘off’ yourself after all this?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’ll be doing what Judy did after you cured her of epilepsy and her newfound health was too much for her to handle. It’ll be a similar thing.”

  “Not identical.”

  “But similar enough for me to kill you a second time, Larry—so don’t even think about it,” I say. “Don’t drink the warm Coke, Larry. For once in your damn existence, reach for a cold one, keep it, enjoy it, don’t fucking blow it.”

  He looks startled, not sure if I’m joking or if there’s an actual edge of anger to my voice.

  “I’ll try,” he says.

  “Don’t try,” I say. “Whatever you do, don’t you dare do that. Trying gets you in more fucking trouble than I’ve ever seen in my life. Just fuck-all do it, plain and simple, do it.”

  Mary and Cherry may not know these are swearwords, but my tone makes them drop their eyes and fidget self-consciously.

  “Dan, I’ve never heard you swear so much in a single sentence—”

  “Shut up, Larry,” I say. “I’m trying to wax self-righteous here for a minute, if I may.”

  Larry sweeps his arm out before him. “The floor is yours.”

  As if on cue, Cherry pushes a knob on the side of the TV. At once the softspeakers fall silent. For the first time, we have no background music. Why wasn’t I able to locate that knob two months ago? What a relief.

  “Listen up,” I say, abruptly pushing Mary’s chair, with Mary in it, so it faces the center of the room. “It’s time to speak hard balls to both of you.”

  “As you wish, Dan,” Larry says, giving me a vacant look.

  Cherry excuses herself, correctly, and leaves the room. In the fresh silence, I fix Mary with a look that tells her I mean business. Carbonation may not have come to her village near North Korea, but straight talk apparently has. She takes hold of Larry’s hand and looks at me as though I’m going to pronounce them man and wife.

  “Mary,” I begin. “Larry is a good man.”

  She is nodding.

  “A good man and a true man.” I’ve never spoken so slowly in my life, never enunciated so carefully. It’s like I’m willing my words into that brain of hers, whether it’s an honest brain or a dishonest brain, whether it’s a product of forty-below temperatures where she was forced to steal or whatever. I want my words in there.

  “And he needs you to be true as well.”

  “True? B-a—”

  “No. True. T–”

  “Oh, true! T-r—”

  “Yes.”

  “T-r-u-e.”

  “Yes, Larry will be true to you, if you become true to him.”

  Mary’s face changes. Her eyes become…what I can only call…true. “I become true to him,” she says. “I be really, really true.”

  I look down at my hands. I see age spots. Where’d they come from? I’ve gotten three age spots since I came here two months ago. This is how we age, I understand. This is how we age.

  “Mary, maybe Larry is a sucker. Do you know what that means? Maybe he keeps wanting to believe you are true, even when we all know you already lied: about your job, and your size, and your age….”

  Mary squeezes Larry’s hand harder. “I lied, yes.”

  “But he needs to believe in you, Mary. He needs it for his life to get better. And he can make your life so much better, Mary. You have no idea how much better your life can become. But he just needs to believe that you’ll be true to him, too. Never lie to him, never, ever lie to him.”

  “No, no, never, I sorry.” Mary is crying, and Larry’s a little choked up, too. No, he’s crying. Those are wet, hot tears skittering down my cousin’s cheeks. They won’t let go of each other’s hand.

  “Human beings are complicated,” I say. “We lie sometimes, because we feel we have to, and because we feel it will help us. But if we are true, it is better.”

  “Is better, is better.” They are both crying.

  “You know, he got the kidney to save his life. We called it Princess. But now he needs someone to make his life worth living. If you turn out to be his real Princess…”

  A cannon sounds from somewhere, like the one from last night. It reminds me not to take up too much time; there are other concerns in the world, most more pressing than ours.

  “Sermon’s over,” I say.

  “I’m going to do you a big favor,” Larry says, “and not tell you who you just sounded like.”

  “My father?”

  “I was going to say Yoda, but sure, knock yourself out.” No time knock anything, however, the job’s not done This sermon of mine turns out to be a twofer, and the target of part two is Larry, himself.

  “Larry,” I say.

  Again he’s taken aback by something businesslike in my voice. He looks up at me.

  “You trust me, right, Larry? Of all the people in the world who’ve double-crossed you and fucked you over, I never have, right?”

  “We’ve had our disagreements, but right,” Larry says.

  “And it looks like we’ve saved your life, right?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘we,’ Dan. All I did was lie here while you harassed the poor citizens of this country.”

  “We’ve always been straight with each other?”

  “Within reason.”

  “And these two months I haven’t asked you for anything, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Because I’m going to ask you for something right now,” I say.

  “Anything you want. You know I have connections. Name it and it’s yours.”

  “For real?”

  “It wasn’t like I had a list of other people who’d come to China and help me with this thing, Dan.”

  “How many would have?”

  “I can’t think of one.”

  “And it turned out to be your cousin.”

  “I don’t hold it against you.”

  I’m still impressed by how he does that: the tough-guy bravado, the unsentimentality that is itself a form of sentimentality.

  “So name it,” he says. “Your wish is my command. Deluxe cruise to Bermuda, remote-control microwave, pinball machine with bump-and-nudge-proof U-Shock Board, you name it.”

  “All right if I have five wishes? I’d like to press my advantage.”

  “Go for it: I certainly would.”

  “Okay, Wish Number Five. You know those sagas you’re always telling? I might want to tell a couple myself, about our little adventure here. And if I do, I want you to let me tell them the way I want, no interference.”

  “By all means, Dan, why would I care? My sagas are mine, yours are yours—tell anything you want.”

  “Just confirming.”

  “Okay, that’s a fair answer to what I think was a fair question. So moving along, Wish Number Four?”

  “Number Four,” I begin.

  “But wait, before you hit me with Number Four, let me just put in a request that in any sagas you tell, don’t make me out t
o be lovable, okay? I mean, I know you’re not a sappy guy, but please don’t suggest that I’m cuddly in any way, because what the hell do you know? Don’t have your listener fall in love with my complexity, or my human contradictions, or any of that crap. I don’t need a larger fan base.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Matter fact, feel free to maximize my dark side, I’d appreciate that. Demonize me to your heart’s content.”

  “Mais oui,” I say with some exasperation. “Can we get to Number Four?”

  “Number Four, sure. Oh, but one last thing before we leave Number Five? You may have noticed I try to include a moral in most of my sagas. Something the listener can take away with him. But often I’m guilty of leaving it too implicit, and that’s a failing I don’t want you to make. Give ’em a nice clear moral, something—”

  “All right, I’m skipping to Number Three, because you’re wearing me down here.”

  “I’m a professional negotiator, what do you think I’m doing—”

  “Number Three. Never use the word ‘Chink’ ever again. ‘Chink, rice-picker, zipperhead’—none of those: The Chinese have been absolutely unstinting on your behalf. So banish those words from your vocabulary.”

  “Done. That was easy. Next.”

  “Number Two. Stop the rest of my hair from falling out.”

  “Beyond my power.”

  “Then just leave me the little I have left?”

  “No can do.”

  “Okay, in that case I’m going to load everything onto Wish Number One, the only one I really care about, the hardest one, maybe the hardest you’ve ever had, for big boys only. You up for it?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Ready?”

  Larry sucks in his breath like a heavyweight before the opening bell. His brain is buzzing: Am I going to ask him to reimburse me for the past two months? I can see him calculating costs, adding figures. At last he nods.

  “Ready,” he says.

  “Release Burton,” I say.

  My request catches him sideways, like a roundhouse punch to the jaw after some playful poking. This is even huger than he expected. I see it in his impassive face.

  “I’m not saying you have to forgive him,” I elaborate. “Just let him go. Release him.”

  “You bastard,” he says.

  “Tough, huh? That’s my only request. Can you do it?”

  “Oh, you would have to choose that one. That was the sweetest revenge I was ever going to take.”

  “You’re using the past tense. Does that mean it’s over?”

  Larry closes his eyes. He does not sigh. He doesn’t breathe at all for a minute. He looks like a zombie. But then he often looks like a zombie: waxy, inert.

  Then: “Yes, Dan.”

  “I have your word, right? No reaching out to underworld connections…?”

  He extends his hand to offer me a weak handshake. “Of course, Dan. Now leave me be. I’m exhausted suddenly. I’m drained.”

  I stand up to take my leave. “Thank you, cuz,” I say.

  “Thank you.” He says this impersonally, like a guy thanking a bartender for extra olives. But I know he doesn’t mean it impersonally.

  That’s how I wanted our conversation to go, but call it wishful thinking, because reality doesn’t always follow the script you’d like it to. Rewinding the tape a bit, here’s how the conversation actually goes:

  “Release Burton,” I say.

  “Absolutely not,” he says. His head has pulled back, the neck muscles coiling. He watches me warily, with great slowness, like a snapping turtle readying itself to spring. “Not on your life,” he says. “It’s set in stone.”

  “Larry—”

  “Look, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a magnificent idea, aesthetically. It has a certain artistic merit that even a cretin like me can appreciate. You come here to save one cousin and end up saving two. But no, I can’t do it, I won’t do it, and in fact I’m deeply offended that you would ask such a thing.” He holds up a hand to keep me from interrupting. “It makes me think you’re on Burton’s side, that you’re a backstabber after all, that maybe you’ve been in collusion with Burton this whole time, and I ought to put a fatwa on you, too—”

  “Slow down there, pardner,” I say, taking a deep breath. “You’re going to blow an artery. I’m asking this for your sake as much as for Burton’s. You’ve got a brand-new kidney inside you, but if you subject it to all the revenge that’s in your system, you’re going to poison it faster than a—”

  “It’s a strong kidney,” he reminds me. “It’s the kidney of a killer.”

  “Oh, that fact has not escaped me,” I say. “But believe me, it’ll shrivel up and die against all the bitterness and self-pity you’ve accrued. You’ll have wasted it. You’ll prove yourself unworthy of it. I’m asking this for the sake of your life as much as for Burton’s. You’re both my cousins. I want what’s best for both of you.”

  “I’m sorry, Dan.”

  “Larry, don’t you see that you’re trying to do to Burton exactly what was done to you, by Uncle Auguste? You want to screw him just as you yourself were—”

  “I don’t see. I don’t care.”

  “You have to see! You have to care! In the context of all the good that Burton has done, you have to let go of one or two bad things—”

  “Never. He has to pay the price.”

  “Larr—”

  “The answer is no, Dan. He almost got a huge gift from you that he doesn’t deserve. But no. It will happen on my death. You can quote me.”

  “Goddamn it, Larry—”

  “Here’s what you don’t get,” Larry says, shading his eyes. His face has darkened. The baby pink flush has withdrawn itself into little pinpricks of rage through a thunderhead of gray. “What you don’t get is that it would be shameful for me not to do it. That I haven’t done it yet is shameful to me, and it will remain shameful until the day the deed is done. I’m doing it for my mutha, who was crying on her deathbed—”

  “But on her deathbed, or wherever she is now, Larry—”

  “Watch where you’re going with this, Dan—”

  “—she would not have wanted you to avenge her death.”

  A tear rolls down his cheek. “That’s strike two. You’ve been warned, Dan.”

  “I don’t want to feel like I’m being threatened here, Larry. Haven’t I earned the right to say what I have to say?”

  “Say it.”

  “Here it is: I think you’re fixating on Burton instead of the real issue. Burton may have tried to screw your mother, or he may not have, I have no way of knowing, but what I do know is that you’re spending all your energy plotting revenge against him rather than doing the work you have to do.”

  “What work?”

  “The grief work. It’s too easy this way, Larry. You have to do a difficult thing, and that’s to accept that families die: yours, mine, everyones’s. They just die, that’s all. It’s life, Larry, and life’s a bitch. But the fact is that Burton’s not responsible for their deaths, and obsessing about him is keeping you from feeling the rage—”

  “What rage?”

  “About everything! About the lousy cards you were dealt in life! About not having a father who taught you how to hit a baseball and about having a sister who killed herself without letting you use her kidney and about all the bad that’s ever been done to you, from your childhood on.”

  Larry’s looking down at his hands.

  “Hate Burton all you want, but keep that hate in a separate box, is all I’m saying. You know that’s what your mother would want you to do. She wouldn’t want you to injure Burton.”

  He lifts his head to gaze at the scroll across the room. “Poor goldfish,” he says, “not enough room to turn around….”

  I know my words have sunk in, but I need to nail this down. I pick up the cell phone and start tapping numbers.

  “Who you calling?”

  “Burton, for you to tell him it
’s over.”

  But this is going too far. I’ve lost him. Larry gets up on one elbow, the neck vein throbbing. “One last time,” he says distinctly. “The answer is no.”

  “All right,” I say, putting down the phone. “I’m going for broke here. Larry, not to be blunt, but don’t you think you owe me the one and only thing I truly want, after taking out two months to get you a kidney?”

  “You know how I see it, Dan?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I see it that we’re even.”

  “How you figure?”

  “You got me a kidney. I got you a nice adventure to tell your kids. You can go home with a great saga for your friends, bragging rights from here to—”

  “Jesus Christ, Feldman, you think I give a damn about—?”

  “We’re even-steven. And notice I’m not even asking you for a cut, if you make this into a movie or something, though it would be nice if you could get Clint Eastwood to play me—”

  “He’s like ninety years old, Larry.”

  “Oh, yeah, I must still be a little misoriented. But don’t ask me for anything extra, that’s pushing it. And by the way, not that I’m not grateful for all you’ve done, because I am, but just in case you feel like doing something extra for me?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you ever find yourself walking with Burton and a car is out of control coming toward you? Push Burton out of its path. Make sure he’s not hurt. Because I want it to happen to him my way.”

  Neither of us knows what to say for a moment.

  “In the good-news department, though, lying here with all this free time, I’ve come up with a killer invention: Autumn Foliage Sunglasses, the lenses flecked with paint for stay-at-home leaf peepers….”

  Subjects are closed, all of them, as effectively as if he’s withdrawn his head into its shell and snapped it shut. If that’s how he sees things, I’ve banked no obligation. I’ve accumulated no leverage. Mary raises her eyebrows to me in sympathy, for the sucker punch that’s just laid me out cold.

  Over the next few days, I prepare both of us for departure. Larry doesn’t really need me anymore while he recuperates. I book our flights—me to my family at home, after a good-bye to Jade in Beijing; Larry directly to Florida from Shi a few days afterward. I crate up his belongings, six boxes in all, and cab them to the post office so he’ll have nothing but a shoulder bag to tote home. The cost is fifty dollars per box, and it may take them a couple of months to get to Florida, but it would be four times that amount to do air. I figure he can make do with the delay.