by Vu Tran
I said, “Does Sonny know about her? Don’t lie to me, Happy. Did you say a single word to them about her?”
She dismissed the question with an impatient look. She set her purse on the coffee table and sank into the recliner.
Mai took a step toward her as if to shield her from my intensity. I couldn’t tell if she was playing good cop to my bad cop or if she genuinely felt sorry for Happy. It was undeserved either way.
“So my mom did come to see you?”
Happy nodded tiredly. “She come Sunday night.”
“She say anything about where she was planning to go?”
“No. She come to . . .” Happy bowed her head like she was about to cry, but when she looked up again at Mai, she seemed baffled. “How I can explain it to you?”
I let the silence eat her up for a bit. Then I said, “We know about you and Sonny.”
Her face showed no surprise. Just instant acquiescence. Then she narrowed her eyes at me, and that old glint of knowing amusement returned.
“You think I am horrible person.”
“I do.”
“You think you understand all the story.”
I nodded at Mai. “She figured it out. I was too stupid to. Never thought you’d go for a crazy criminal who nearly killed your best friend.”
“Robert, come on,” Mai said. “Go ahead, Happy, what did my mom—”
“Yeah,” I said, “Go ahead. Explain why you did it.”
“Bob, I tell you something—you think you are good man and you are police and you not like Sonny. But you no different.”
“What? He cheated on her. He locked her all night in an office, threw her down a flight of fucking stairs. And who knows how often he hits her.”
“You hit her too,” Happy noted. She asked Mai, “He tell you what he do to your mother before?”
“That was the first time I ever touched her. You know she’s hit me plenty over the years. That night she fucking hit me. I couldn’t hear out of this ear for a week!”
“You almost break her teeth.”
“Bullshit. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. No way you’re comparing that to what Sonny’s done.”
Happy was shaking her head. “But that not what I mean. You and him—you are both weak man. When you not understand somebody, you scare like little boy. You close your eye and you pretend they not there. You not know when you hurt them. Why you think Suzy not call to you for help? She know you still love her. She know what you do here five month before. Sonny hurt her, she almost die, but she never call you.”
“She didn’t come begging for your help either, did she?”
Happy’s scowl deepened as she sat on the edge of the recliner like an alert cat. All those years, she was always the one calming Suzy or me down, the buffer when the three of us were together, making jokes and changing the subject, never an angry word to anyone. It made me wonder now how often she had humored me, held back all the ugly things she really felt.
She turned from me, exhaling loudly as if to relieve herself of my presence.
Mai was standing warily between us. In a composed voice, Happy said to her, “Your mom—she is difficult woman. She scare just like Sonny and Bob. She hurt them too. I know. Fifteen year I friend with her and she hurt me many time. But she ask me come here because she have nobody, and she help get job for me. I know nothing about Sonny. I know nothing about you. But I know she not happy in Las Vegas. So I come. When I meet Sonny, I see he not good man for her. I tell her, but she not listen. And when they start fighting, I tell her leave but she not leave. What I can do? I just listen to her. But in the summer, she stop talking to me. I call her and she not call back to me. When I go see her, she like other person. So Sonny, he start come every day to my house. He tell me everything. Suzy sleep all day. Suzy not leave the house. She not talk to nobody. He say she not love him anymore.”
Happy’s eyes were glistening. Again, she had that inward-looking, baffled expression.
“How I can explain it? He the one who help get job for me. When I owe money to someone, he pay it. When I date the other man who hit me, Sonny go beat him and make him say sorry to me. I know he do the bad thing, but he always do good thing for me. I thought your mother not love him anymore. I thought . . .”
She grabbed a tissue from her purse and took off her glasses. As she carefully dabbed at her mascaraed eyes, Mai walked to the refrigerator and returned with a bottle of water and set it on the coffee table.
She sat there slumped with her hands over her knees, clutching at the tissue. She looked fragile without her glasses and yet also, in her suffocating vest and crooked bow tie, ridiculous. I could only half listen to everything, distracted by the memory of her naked in my bed, watching me undress and surely knowing that I could not feel for her as I did for her best friend. And yet she had pursued it, plunged into it as she would again a year later with Sonny. Even if it was not for love, it was still a futile thievery, taking something that could never be hers and offering herself too as something provisional. She must have known all that.
She drank the water, wiped her nose with the tissue. “Sonny call to me last month. He tell me Suzy know everything. That it for us. No more. Good-bye.” Happy glanced in my direction as if reminded that I’d done the same to her. “I call Suzy twenty time but she stop answer the phone. One month, I not see her or Sonny. Nothing.”
“So you have no idea what she’d been doing?” Mai asked.
Happy shook her head. “I want to go to the house and explain to her, but I too—I have no idea what I can say. I just stay away. But Sunday night, real late, she knock on my door. I almost not open the door, I too scared. She say she want talk to me. She look calm but—it was too calm, like when she take too much medicine. I say sorry to her and I cry so bad but she—”
Happy had to stop for a moment. Was it the guilt and shame choking her up, or the thought of what she’d lost in the past month?
She said it felt bizarre, her the one in tears and Suzy leading her to the couch, hushing her. How many times had it been the other way around? For a month she’d been steeling herself for this moment, for all that vitriol she knew her oldest friend was capable of. But Suzy began by thanking Happy. The affair had wounded her deeply, but she was long past loving Sonny and had no room left inside her to hate Happy. If anything, the affair and the subsequent end of their friendship had awoken her from “the long dream,” she said, “of these last twenty years”—made her realize, once and for all, that she was alone in the world and had always been, and that perhaps staying that way would not kill her. It could even save her. All she wanted now was to make amends for her sins and leave everything behind for good.
Happy remembered being frightened by the calm finality of Suzy’s voice. She asked her if she was taking her medication. Suzy took the prescription bottle from her purse and set it on the table and said she didn’t need the stuff anymore. When she stood up to go, Happy knew it was the last time she would ever see her.
Mai asked, “Did she say specifically that she was leaving town?”
“She not need to.”
“Well what else did she do then?” I demanded. “She came just to tell you that?”
Happy sat up straight. She dried her nose and eyes and put on her glasses again, then tidied her hair like she was putting herself back together for departure.
Still avoiding my eyes, she said to Mai, “She tell me about you. She leave you twenty year before and now she find you here in Las Vegas. I can’t believe it. Fifteen year I know her, but I never think she have a daughter.”
“She say anything more about me?”
“I ask her so many questions, but she not answer. All she say is Sonny not know about you. She give me your name and your address and . . .” Happy looked at her hands. “She say she forgive me. But she make me . . . she make me promise I watch you. I protect you. Let nobody hurt you.”
“After what you did to her?” I blurted out.
Mai put up a hand to calm me d
own. I turned from them both. It was directed at Happy, but I might as well have been yelling at the walls: “How could you protect anyone anyway? I mean, why would she tell you all that? Goddamn it, she had to know Sonny would come after you for information!”
“You think she not know that?” Happy replied softly. She rose from the recliner, took her purse, and fixed me with one last frigid look. “They do come, but I don’t tell them nothing.”
Mai glanced at me, and she understood too. Suzy knew Happy would tell them nothing. She had wanted them to come. She had wanted them to do the punishing for her. Confiding in her best friend one last time was Suzy’s way of burdening her with Mai’s life. A final offer of redemption. The price of forgiveness.
I was shaking my head, but I wasn’t surprised.
On her way to the door, Happy stopped and put a hand on Mai’s shoulder. They were the same height, though Mai seemed like she was looking up at her.
“Di di, con,” Happy said. Go now, child. “Go somewhere good for you. Your mom, I know she care for you, but she don’t know how to be your mom.”
She went to the door. She hesitated with her hand on the knob, melodramatically, and in that instant I considered swallowing my anger and calling her back to apologize for what I’d said, what I’d thought, for everything I’d ever done to her and Suzy. Maybe then she’d tell me the rest of the story.
Another part of me hoped it was the last time I’d ever see her.
She opened the door and walked out. I listened to her footsteps hurry down the balcony along echoing clangs, fading fast into the night.
14
SOME PEOPLE you will never know beyond what they give you. To be with them requires a bridge, an interpreter, and even then you’re only ever approaching them as you would the horizon.
Happy’s visit—though it raised more questions than it answered—finally helped me see that she’d been my interpreter for Suzy, the only recourse I had beyond my own stubbornness and curiosity, my love. She was there for our entire marriage, at our home nearly every week, eating meals with us, sleeping on the couch some nights, on the phone with Suzy every other day. Had I not seen her merely as Suzy’s confidante, I would have understood that she was mine as well. How many times had I asked her to explain my own wife to me, what I had done wrong, what secret or foreign custom or female vagary I was not privy to? She always had answers ready for me, and even if they had been lies, they were the only things I could hold on to in the hope that one day I’d get it right.
I suppose it was envy and exasperation that made me lose it back at the apartment. Happy was closer to Suzy than I ever was, but how can you be that close to someone and still not know them?
By the time we’d driven halfway back to the Coronado, my anger had given way to Mai’s impenetrable silence. She seemed either crestfallen or still unsatisfied by what Happy had told us. Who knew what she had wanted to hear about her mother? Chances were she didn’t know either.
It was 7:45 and we were only a few blocks from the Stratosphere, but the closer we got to the Strip, the worse traffic became. Four lanes bumper-to-bumper with stretch limos and restless taxis jumping lanes, mobile billboards of near-naked dancers creeping alongside us like a prowling peep show. Every other car had a California tag, which only made me more anxious to ship Mai off as soon as possible.
The Jeep’s heater finally worked but was fogging up the windshield. Every few minutes, Mai would curse and wipe at the glass with a dirty T-shirt she grabbed off the floor. Those were her only words for the first fifteen minutes of the ride.
Soon we saw droplets of rain. She turned on the wipers, and they squealed across the windshield.
“Stupid things,” she muttered. “I use them maybe once a year.”
“It’s cold enough to snow. Can it actually snow here?”
She looked up at the night sky, bathed in the glow of casino lights, but did not reply.
“Twice I’ve been here,” I said. “And each time the weather’s been shit. Last time there was a goddamn monsoon.”
A red Mercedes cut us off and she pumped the brakes, immediately laying on her horn for a good three seconds as the guy stuck his middle finger out the window.
“Asshole,” she muttered and glared at the guy as we idled in traffic a foot from his bumper. She checked her watch, the first time I’d seen her antsy about our 8:30 deadline.
A few moments later, though, she was back to being pensive, her elbow up on the door panel and her head resting on a fist.
“I wasn’t lying back there,” I said. “I only hit your mother that one time. I’ve regretted it ever since.”
I thought she didn’t hear me, but then she replied evenly, “We barely know each other. You don’t need to defend yourself.”
“It matters to me that you know that.”
“Why?”
“Because. I don’t want you thinking I’m . . . like that.”
“Like Sonny?”
“You know, it’s easy for Happy to say that. She didn’t live with your mother for eight years. She wasn’t afraid of her like I was.”
“How do you know Sonny wasn’t afraid of her too? And what does that mean anyway? What exactly were you afraid of?”
“Victor explained plenty, didn’t he?”
“I want you to explain it. Were you afraid she’d lose her mind? That she’d hurt herself—or hurt you? No longer love you? I mean, what was it?”
I was quiet for a moment, though I already knew the answer. I’d always known. Traffic crawled forward and we followed and I was glad to hear the Jeep’s heaving engine fill the silence in the cab.
“We were always gonna fail,” I said. “On our honeymoon, I knew it. There was some denial there, but really I knew it was just a matter of time. The longer we stayed together, weirdly enough, the stronger the feeling became, and when it was clear that something was seriously wrong with your mother, I started wondering what was wrong with me. Why did I hold on? Why did it feel like I needed her more than she needed me? I don’t know—I guess I was afraid of the inevitable. And I didn’t want it to be more my fault than hers. Turned out it was at the end.”
Another red light. Mai sat there, still not quite satisfied. I was ready to try another explanation, but she said, “So what happened that night?”
“We were fighting about something stupid. I tracked mud on the kitchen floor. She was yelling at me in Vietnamese, cursing me. I couldn’t stand it. It wasn’t fair.”
“How did you hit her?”
“I hit her hard, okay? She hit me many times too.”
“No, tell me. You want to defend yourself, so tell me exactly what you did.”
“I slapped her. Twice. Three times. The third time was a backhand—hard as I could. She bled at the mouth. Nearly fell over. You really want the truth? It was like fulfilling a fantasy. Each time I hit her, it felt like something coming true. It felt like a fucking remedy.”
I could hardly believe what I was admitting, but Mai’s questioning had been like a challenge. Was I man enough now to lay it out straight to her and to myself?
“I knew it was wrong,” I added. “I knew I’d regret it. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good.”
The light turned green, and Mai revved up close to the red Mercedes like she was ready to roll over it. But then she turned right and we were on Las Vegas Boulevard again, trailing another long line of cars.
Finally she said, “I’ve decided I don’t care anymore. I care about the money and I care that she gave it to me, but she never wanted anything more than that. So why should I go chasing after her like she’s someone I lost? She was never mine to lose anyway.”
For the first time since we met, I had no pity for her, even if she had it for herself. Maybe her moment of clarity was my own too. I looked in the Jeep’s side-view mirror to check if my face looked as defeated as I felt.
“What would I have said to her anyway?” Mai concluded.
“Go to Vietnam with the
money,” I said. “Go find yourself a husband somewhere. Have a kid or two.”
She laughed suddenly, a slightly bitter laugh. “No need for a husband really. But I’d like to have a son. Teach him how to play cards one day. Raising a daughter would be like mothering yourself.”
THE FIRST THING we encountered as we reentered the Coronado was a guy in baggy corduroys and a Christmas sweater hitting a jackpot on the slots. Over five grand. It was one of those Elvis slots, so “Viva Las Vegas!” was blaring obnoxiously as lights flashed atop the machine, terrifying the little girl in his arms. Heads turned, a swarm of eyes pausing out of envy before returning gradually to their own pursuits.
Mai stopped to watch. The guy was so busy freaking out that he seemed oblivious to his sobbing daughter, whom he cradled in one arm like a bag of groceries as he peered stupidly at the clanging machine. An attendant arrived to handle his winnings, and all the guy could ask, over the little girl’s wails, was, “Do I get it all now?”
“Let’s go,” I said to Mai.
She started moving again but kept eyeing the scene until we turned the corner and headed toward the elevators.
The casino floor felt like an endless theater stage swarming with actors, the floodlights glaring, a balcony of eyes watching from somewhere above. I wondered if Victor had gotten anxious about how long we’d taken, if he was still keeping his word. One more question had started worrying me, ever since I retrieved the room key from the potted plant in the garage. It had been nearly eight hours since Junior sent me here, and neither he nor his father had called.
We rode the elevator with four drunk businessmen on their way to some room party. They leered at Mai the entire way, smirking quietly at each other until I started glaring at them. As we got off on the twelfth floor, one of them whispered, “Sayonara, missy,” and the elevator doors closed on their dumb sniggering.
We walked side by side to room 1215, and I unlocked it. The lamp was still on, the curtains still drawn, and the brown suitcase still standing glumly where we had left it inside the closet.
I opened it with Mai’s chrome key to check the money. I took back the five hundred Junior had given me, just in case I had to return it to him in person.
