Mother and daughter drove in silence the rest of the way home. She no longer felt sad, or hurt. Now she was livid, anger and pride percolating into a poisonous elixir of hate for Brent. So much venom riding the cosmos toward Pasadena had to affect Brent. She hoped he would die, or worse. Imagining horrific scenes with him running from a burning building, his clothing engulfed in flames. Or being pulled from the wreckage of a burning automobile, his neck at an impossible angle. She saw him careening down a snow-covered hill, his ski bindings not giving way, and his legs resting at odd angles when he finally stopped. The only time she felt sad was when she thought of how being in a relationship with him had affected her. Every time Julie imagined having to tell her friends about the failed relationship, she’d start crying again.
Vivid in her mind were the real images, the most recent, waking up at two in the morning just the day before, thinking the roof must be leaking, but what she thought was rain coming through the ceiling was her boyfriend peeing on her. She discovered him naked, straddling her, holding himself. She was so disoriented she thought it was a horrible dream. But when he realized she was awake, he started laughing, waving his dick around in the air like a maniac, trying to squeeze one last drop out on her.
Screaming as loud as she could, she jumped up out of bed, shaking her arms and head, stripping her nightgown off. “Jesus Christ, Brent, what the hell are you doing?”
He jumped down and started running around the house, laughing like a maniac. Locking the bathroom door behind her, she turned the water on in the shower and got in without waiting for it to warm up. She needn’t have bothered locking the door. Brent was out the door on his way to meet up with friends of his who were going to Santa Monica to party. It was just the latest in a series of baffling incidents, frightening her; it was worrisome that she hadn’t recognized Brent had a mental disorder during six years together.
Pulling up in the driveway of her parents’ lovely home, seeing her father and sister waiting at the front door finished her off. She started sobbing, not trying to hide it from her mom. The first words out of her father’s mouth were, “Do you need a lawyer for anything?” She didn’t know, but thought probably not. Unless it was for being a naïve fool.
“No, Dad, but thanks. It’s my own fault for being stupid,” she answered.
“What happened?” her sister, Angela asked. They were crowded around her to take her bags, following her into the living room.
“I don’t want to say in front of Mom.” They turned and looked at Margaret Hse.
“What? You think I am so fragile?”
“No, not at all. It’s of a sexual nature, that’s all. It’s inappropriate and embarrassing,” Julie said.
Charles Hsu clenched his jaw as his temporal artery beat out a rhythm that his family could see. Just like his father, he thought. The stories surfacing since Jack had died disgusted genteel Charles Hsu. The man evidently had been living a double life. Shortly after his death, his picture was plastered all over the tabloids as his sexual partners came forward; it was clear Jack straddled two worlds. Titles like Den of Iniquity, or Call Girl Exposes Manhattan Millionaire, combined truth and lies into a convincing elixir. Charles, like all Jack’s friends and associates, came to his defense. But as time had passed, they began to retreat. It appeared that some of the accusations were true. Jack was a liar and a whoremonger. There was just no explaining how he was able to hide it all of his life. Only his death had the strength to expose him. Charles left the women and went out to his wife’s car to bring in the rest of Julie’s luggage. He looked over the hood of the trunk at his wife as she came toward him, a look of shock on her face.
“What is it?” he asked, eyebrows down.
“He peed on her,” she said in Chinese.
Charles Hsu shook his head in disgust. “At least he didn’t kill her,” he said. He and his wife looked at each other.
“Why’d I say that?” Suddenly frightened, they dragged the rest of the bags in the house. When they got inside, he held his hand out. “Give me your keys. I’ll pull the car in the garage. Make sure the doors and windows are locked.” Fear that Brent Smith might come from California to do Julie harm propelled her parents into action.
While her parents were fortifying the house, Angela was getting an earful of information that vacillated between titillating and horrifying. Brent, it appeared, was into everything. “Once I moved in, it was harder for him to hide. It took about a week before I suspected something was going on.” She went into the bathroom to wash the grime of the flight off her face. Angela followed her.
“What happened that led to you finding out?”
“Alcohol. What else? He lost all his inhibitions when he was drunk. He even drinks during the week. All that crap about him being so busy because of more responsibilities at work was lies. He does just enough work to keep his job, and the rest of the time, he’s in pursuit of sex. And I mean sex of every kind, shape and form. The last thing I did in California before I left for home was get tested for STDs.” She lowered her head again and started to cry.
“What makes me the saddest is the Brent I knew was the sweetest guy! It’s like something came unglued last year. That’s when I think most of this bizarre stuff started. He held it together until then, and after he graduated, something snapped, and he just gave into every lustful desire he had. If you could have seen him, kneeling to propose on my apartment floor, it was so cute! I mean, he was just cute. To think that one of my last memories is of him standing over me with his little pee pee in his hand, urinating on me, well, it just makes me sick.”
Angela turned her head to hide her smile from Julie. But it wasn’t necessary. Julie went back to her bed, lay down on it, and started laughing.
“Now that I’m home, I realize how comedic it is. He is so nice looking, has everything going for him, and then I discover he is into every sexual aberration I’ve ever heard of. We had a huge fight last week. He’d been after me to try some weird shit, and I just wouldn’t do it. He accused me of being puritanical.
“We were only sixteen when we started dating, and we were both virgins. I don’t know when our relationship ceased being enough for him. All along, I thought he was being faithful while we were apart during college. Then I found out the truth.
“I called his mother and told her off, too. She had to know what he was up to, yet she let me give up my apartment, quit my job, and move across the country for him.”
“Why do you think his mother had anything to do with it?” Angela asked, confused.
“She had to! She flew out to California to see him all the time. There’s no way she didn’t know. She should have warned me. She’s a real piece of work, his mother, a case of mistaken identity. They come off as high society, and they’re really just one step away from white trash.”
Getting up to start the process of moving into her childhood bedroom until she could find a job, Julie Hse changed her focus from sending negative vibes to Brent, to sending them to his mother.
***
Brent Smith arrived back home from Santa Monica with barely the time to shower before he had to be at work. His boss had sent him a warning the week before via Brent’s secretary, Joanne: work from nine to five, five days a week, or look for another job. It was an empty threat, one she delivered on a monthly basis. Tired of admonishing Brent himself, the message sent by the secretary had the same effect as when he’d delivered it. Nothing. Brent hadn’t gotten off probation in two years. His boss kept him on because when he worked, he was amazing. But it was difficult getting him to work. He was late most of the time, rarely completed forty hours of work in a week, and missed at least one day a month. In a time when jobs were scarce and talent competed for entry-level positions, he should have considered himself lucky to have a job.
The problem was his trust fund. Pam held it over his head, threatening him with it when he was rude to her, but his lawyer told him there was nothing she could do to block him from getting it when he turne
d twenty-five. And that date was just around the corner. It wasn’t a fortune, but it would take care of his basic needs as long as he didn’t touch the principal.
He brushed his teeth and tried to shave, but his hands were shaking. He put a clean white shirt on, and pulled a pretied tie on over his head. He pulled his chin up to tighten his tie, and the simple movement caused a searing pain to zip through his head. Quickly lowering his upper body to the bathroom counter, he didn’t move for several seconds as the pain made its journey through his neck and filtered through his body. Nausea gripped him, and he was able to make it to the toilet to throw up, remembering to hold his tie out of the way. Acid and old beer splashed in the bowl. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate. When the waves finally ceased, he bent over the sink, washed his face, and brushed his teeth again. Today he had to go to work, sick or not. They’d never believe him if he called out anyway, having cried wolf once too often. He dried his face and turned off the bathroom light as he left.
His place was a pigsty; Julie wasn’t the neatest woman, and the two of them could make a mess in a matter of days. His cleaning lady was coming that afternoon, so at least it would be clean for the weekend when he left for New York. He picked up the briefcase that he hadn’t opened for days and headed for the office.
A typical busy Friday, he got through it but was subdued; a concerned Joanne asked him if he was okay. Finishing one task after another, he produced in a day what it took his colleagues a week or longer to accomplish. He was oblivious to what was going on around him as he sent the completed files to his boss, job security reinstated a final time.
At five, he picked up the briefcase Joanne packed for him, knowing it would probably be in the same condition when she opened it on Monday, loosened his tied, and left the office without saying goodbye.
Chapter 2
Dan’s sister, Catherine Chua walked through the rambling farmhouse her ancestors built almost two hundred years before, opening windows and pulling shades up, letting as much fresh air in as she could before air-conditioning season started. Wearing her usual working attire—knit stretch pants and a T-shirt with an adolescent cartoon character printed in the front—Catherine didn’t give much thought to her clothes. Framed by hair peppered with gray strands she’d tried dyeing with brown dye, her face was relatively unlined. The brown dye faded to a reddish color she hated, but it didn’t cross her mind to have it done professionally. Coral lipstick was the only makeup she wore. Her husband never seemed to notice what she had on or if she even combed her hair in the morning. He’d left hours ago; part of the business they ran was the dairy farm her father had started in the nineteen fifties, and he milked the cows at sunrise. All of the feed they needed, the corn and alfalfa hay, was grown on their place.
Until the early settlers arrived in the sixteen hundreds, her people had hunted and fished, grew corn, and harvested hay from the salt marsh. Now, they had one of the last farms in the area, employing over fifty men and women year round. During the busy seasons, the younger members of the family were called to help supplement the seasonal workers. Her baby brother, attorney Dan Chua, Pam Smith’s boyfriend, showed up the week before, working eighteen hours a day, driving the tractor, pulling a disc plow behind him. He’d get as much planting done as he could in the week he’d taken off work.
Catherine started breakfast for the crew working today. She maintained the precepts her mother and grandmother started, cooking and serving food to everyone who worked on the farm. She had it down to a science now; her sister Agnes helped every morning before she left for her nursing job in Brooklyn, and college-age nieces, Faith and Carol, accompanied her when school was out. They used crockpots for oatmeal and froze casseroles ahead of time so they weren’t slaves to the stove as her mother had been. The difference now was that they only served one meal a day. Workers brought their own lunch. She heard a car pull up to the front of the house and the laughing voices of Agnes and her girls.
“Hey,” she said, looking up from the toaster. They greeted her as they went to the sink to wash their hands. The banter would go on for two hours during the preparation, serving and clean up. Eventually, the conversation rolled around to the party at Pam’s house in a few weeks. They’d attended last year, and it was just as ostentatious as the newspapers had said. Dan never suggested they dress a certain way, but they knew ahead of time that their farm clothes weren’t going to cut it.
“So what are you wearing to the famous picnic this year?” Agnes asked.
“The same thing I wore last year,” Catherine said.
The girls laughed.
“Aunt Cathy, you better hide from the photographers, then,” Carol said.
“I ask you; who on earth has professional photographers at a summer picnic? It is about as pretentious as you can get.”
“Catherine, they were from the paper. She didn’t invite them,” Agnes said. “Besides, I bragged about it to everyone at work. It was nice being in the style section of the New York Times. The doctors have been nicer to me ever since.”
The women laughed together.
“They wouldn’t be if they knew the truth,” Faith said, raising her eyebrows.
“You said it,” Catherine said, agreeing.
“Shush, you two! Jesus, if Dan ever found out I repeated what he told me, he’d never forgive me. Promise me you won’t say anything to anyone else,” Agnes said passionately. She moved quickly to help prepare the rest of the meal, ignoring the whispering, and took a tray of plates and cutlery out to the mess hall.
Working steadily until nine when Catherine rang the bell, they stood at the kitchen door, watching the farmworkers file in. “How much longer will we be able to do this?” Agnes asked. Catherine shook her head as the girls looked on. They’d go back to school in the fall, and when they graduated, who knew where life would take them? Certainly not to the mess hall.
“I know I’m about done,” Catherine replied. “I want to do something else before I die.”
Agnes frowned at her. “What? Stop with the dying talk.”
“You know what I mean. I see Dan with Pam, and she’s almost as old as we are. I want to go to the gym and get my hair done and stand in the third position of ballet looking cute like Pam does,” Catherine said, looking at her sister. “I want to take care of myself for a change. Turning sixty means I get to do what I want to do.” She’d made up her mind. She wanted her husband to notice her again. She wanted to remember what it felt like to be a success at learning something new. She didn’t want to be the woman who served breakfast.
Agnes was worried; she didn’t want to do breakfast alone. “So what’s the answer?”
“We cut down to one day a week, or stop all together, or pool our resources and pay to have someone else do it. I just know my days here are numbered. And to answer your question about what I’ll wear to the picnic, I changed my mind. I’m getting new duds, and I’m getting my hair done.”
While they debated the wisdom of self-care, they watched as their brother walked into the mess hall with a group of farmworkers. “Dan fits right in,” Agnes whispered, alluding to his tanned body and dust-covered hair.
“Yeah, only he’s better looking than anyone else in here,” Carol said, and the others nodded their heads in agreement.
“Look at that body,” Catherine said, whistling. “I can say that because he’s my brother.”
They laughed.
“You’re being creepy, Aunt Cathy,” Faith replied, laughing.
Dan Chua had pulled his T-shirt back on before coming in to eat, but it didn’t hide his physique. The few women workers who were sitting down to eat couldn’t take their eyes off him.
“He could have any woman he wanted, yet he’s with that old gal. What the hell is that all about?” Catherine whispered. “He’s our last hope to continue the Chua name. And she’s not giving birth again, that’s for sure.”
The others looked on, frowning, thinking the same thing but not saying out loud that the
ir brother and uncle had settled for someone who was too old for him, and echoing the thoughts of the rest of the family.
“She’s got money,” Carol said.
“Yes, but so does he,” Catherine argued.
“Not like she does. He doesn’t have to work unless he wants to, thanks to Miss Pam,” Agnes said. “Must be nice. I, on the other hand, have to get to work.” She kissed her daughters on the cheek and squeezed her sister’s shoulder. “Hang in there, old woman. You’ll get over this resentment you’ve got brewing.”
“I don’t think so,” Catherine said. “But have a good day.”
Agnes left to take her hour-long drive to work. Catherine grabbed a gallon jug of orange juice and started walking around the dining hall, offering juice to workers. When she reached her brother, he looked up at her and smiled his fabulous smile. But she wasn’t going to let it sway her.
“We need to talk, sonny boy,” she said.
He frowned. “What now?”
“You got time after breakfast?” Catherine asked.
“I’ve got time now,” Dan said, pushing his chair back and picking up his plate. He had a bad feeling about what his sister was about to say to him. They walked to the wash kitchen, and she waited while he scraped his plate into the garbage pail.
“So what’s going on?” he asked.
“I’m tired of doing this,” she said simply. “We need to decide if feeding everyone is really necessary, and if it is, get someone else to do it, or have it catered.”
Dan tried to keep his face neutral. He looked at her, but she was keeping her face neutral too.
“What’s going on?” he repeated. “I mean, you’ve never said anything before about breakfast.”
“Everyone takes it for granted that I’ll get up with Harvey at five in the morning and start cooking a feast. I’m tired of it. I don’t want to do it anymore. I’ve been doing it for…” She put her hands up to count. “Forty-five years. Since I was eighteen. I’m sick of it. I want do something for myself before I croak.”
The Tao of Pam: Pam of Babylon Book # 6 Page 2
