A Wedding Invitation (25 page)

Our plates are cleared by a lean waiter with a congenial grin. Carson and I order coffee, and when the waiter brings the cups to our table, we continue our conversation about Lien.

“Huy thinks she might back out.” Carson stirs sugar into his cup.

“From what? Meeting her birth mom?”

“Yeah.”

“No way!” Adamantly, I say, “She’s anxious to meet her again.”

“She refused eight years ago.”

“Refused?” The word tastes bitter on my tongue, a contrast from the sweet sauce I had with my order of Szechuan beef.

“Before Lien and Huy and his parents left Saigon, Lien had the chance to say bye to her mom.”

“But she didn’t?”

“Her mom gave her up, and not saying good-bye was Lien’s way of showing her anger.”

Feeling like I’m the last to know everything, I ask, “How come Lien didn’t tell me this?”

“I think she’s a bit embarrassed that she was so belligerent. You know how she is. She suddenly decided that what she said and did was wrong.”

“Why is it that she tells you everything?”

Avoiding my eyes, he picks up his coffee cup. “She says I remind her . . .”

“Of what?”

“Her father.” The words come out solemnly. He places his cup down without drinking.

“Really? Does she remember him or does she just want to believe he was like you?”

“She has a picture. She showed it to me.”

“And?”

“It was a blurry black-and-white photo. He’s in uniform and about my height.” After a few seconds, he adds, “A mound of curly hair. I guess that’s where Lien gets her mop.”

I focus on drinking my coffee, hoping its strong flavor will soothe the envy that always seems to surface when I come face-to-face with Lien and Carson’s friendship. “I think it’s interesting that she hasn’t tried to search for him.”

“She knows the chances of finding him or that he’d want to be found are slim.”

“But has she tried?”

Carson shakes his head. “I’ve discouraged her.”

“And she always listens to you.” The sarcasm in my voice catches me off guard. I suppose the coffee isn’t strong enough to soothe my tone.

Carson doesn’t let it affect him. “Sam,” he says, “sometimes you have to fight one battle at a time.”

As I let Carson’s words sink in, I take another sip from my cup. My gaze runs over the wall to my left that is crammed with photos. There are more pictures of George Bush Sr. on this wall than anyone else who has eaten here. Apparently, this is one of his favorite restaurants, the Peking duck being the dish he always enjoys. “She’d love seeing this wall,” I say, my mind still on Lien. “ ‘Miss Bravencourt, I know famous people come to my restaurant. Movie stars.’ ” I make an attempt to mimic the young girl’s voice.

With a smile, Carson joins me in observing the pictures. “She does like to claim celebrities have eaten at the Saigon Bistro. If she finds out about this place, she might want you to take pictures of all the patrons that come to her restaurant so that she can display a wall of fame.”

A little after ten, the restaurant prepares to close. Carson pays the bill and then he and I linger in the parking lot. I search for the moon; in the Philippines my fellow teachers teased me because I found comfort in gazing at the moon.

“Do you know how to get back to your hotel?” I locate the moon, obscured behind a tree, glowing like a lantern on the streets of Old Salem.

“I think I can find it.” He was good at driving the agency’s van amid the chaotic traffic of Manila. I suppose the suburbs of D.C. won’t be too much of a challenge for him.

At my car, he hugs me. “Sam, it’s been nice.”

My heart feels like gelato—soft and vulnerable. Quickly, I pull from his embrace. “Thanks for dinner. Mom enjoyed it.”

“Did you?”

“What?”

“Enjoy dinner?” Giving me a boyish smile, he opens my car door for me.

I slip into the seat. “Yes, I did.”
Don’t make me say that I always like being with you, Carson. Because I am not going to admit that to you now.

Deciding I need to check in on her, I drive to Mom’s, the moon’s brightness making a trail along the road. Mom’s lights are still on when I park in her driveway.

I call out to her as I enter the ranch house, reprimanding her for leaving the front door unlocked.

I find her in her bedroom, dressed in a matching nightgown and robe the color of holly berries. “I was about to head downstairs to lock the door,” she tells me.

Sprawling out on her double bed, I watch as she sits on a puffy backless chair, brushing her hair by her vanity mirror and dresser.

“I just don’t know,” she says as the bristles from her hairbrush make their way down the shafts of her hair. After this, she’ll apply Pond’s cold cream to her face and throat and then remove the white film with a damp washcloth. I think the first recollection I have of my mother is in a lavender nightgown, smelling of cold cream and sleep.

“What?” I rest my head against a satin pillow.

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t understand what?”

She turns to face me. “Why you haven’t snatched Carson up and made him your own.”

“Mom!”

“Yes?” She draws out the word so it almost sounds Southern.

“That sounds so . . . so possessive!”

“And your point, darling?” That sounds
very
Southern.

“People don’t snatch people and make them their own.”

“Why not?”

“Sounds like slavery.”

“Love.” She breathes the word.

“Well, I know you think I got your good looks, but that doesn’t mean I can just decide who I want to like me and make him fall at my feet.”

Placing the brush in a drawer, she takes out a large jar of Pond’s. “He’s charming and genuine.”

Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I frown. “You just met him!”

“I know what I see.”

I change the subject. “Are you okay here alone?”

“He’s got a nice smile. Very charming.”

I leave after that, locking her front door with my key.

thirty-three

February 1986

W
hen Carson left the camp, I was clueless. True, I knew that his sister was sick with something the doctors were still trying to figure out and that his mother had asked him to come home. But he loved teaching and being with the refugees, and his one-year contract still had six weeks left.

I wanted him to confide in me like he did whenever we talked of our fathers. I liked it when he would single us out—
“We know what it’s like, Sam, to miss our dads.”
Instead of asking me what he should do, he spent time in Dr. Rogers’s office.

The day he left PRPC, I was inside the admin building planning a lesson on the expectations of being a student in an American school. I planned to tell my new class the rules they’d be expected to follow in their new schools.

I looked up from my notebook at Brice, who stood in front of me. “Gonna be lonely here without him,” he said.

My stomach cramped. “Without who?”

“Dr. Rogers drove Carson to Manila today.”

I didn’t want to ask why, yet even so, the word came out unbridled. “Why?”

“Carson’s flying back to the U.S.”

I just sat there and felt my heart turn to mush. The room was stuffy, the air thick with sadness. I left the building and longingly looked over at the dormitory where he had lived. He was gone. I would not see him entering or leaving that rustic building’s door ever again. Blinded by tears, I rushed into my dorm and went straight to my bedroom. The tropical air dried my tears, causing my cheeks to stiffen. I knew more would come; I could feel them building up behind my eyes. But they didn’t find their way to my cheeks. Instead, I pounded my pillow and sobbed, “I will never ever think about you ever again.”

Which was a promise I knew I could never keep. I thought of him the rest of the day, remembering all the places we’d talked and walked together.

I was surprised later when I got a letter from him, postmarked Raleigh, North Carolina.

His sentences were filled with how much he’d missed sweet tea, fried chicken, and hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains. How nice it was, he said, to be back in air-conditioning and experience the blooming of the azalea bushes in the spring.

I replied, a lengthy tome about all the happenings at the camp, answering his many questions about refugees he was friends with who were still in Bataan. I gently reprimanded him for not telling me good-bye, a reprimand he never commented on. He wrote a few more times, and when he didn’t mention Mindy, I hoped that she was no longer a large part of his life. I imagined him as he visited his sister in the hospital, wishing I was with him to comfort him as his sister went through tests, wanting to feel my arms around him as they had been when we were together in his classroom.

With Carson gone from camp, things were not the same for me. The anticipation of running into him at the mess hall or riding with him to our classrooms was gone. Each time I went to the marketplace to buy bean sprouts, onions, and cabbage for the stir-fry dinners I cooked in my dorm, I wished Carson were with me to share the meal.

After his fourth letter to me, I waited for another. One night I realized that anticipating his letters was consuming me. I was here to teach the refugees. I was supposed to be praying for my students and their families. Instead, I scanned my mailbox for a letter postmarked from Raleigh.

The letters stopped. The fourth one was the last one I received from him, and I reread it many times, saving it along with the others in the back of my closet.

It didn’t take much time until I was counting the days before my contract ended and I was scheduled to leave the refugee camp. When my sun-starched calendar on the wall of my bedroom showed that there were only forty-two days left, I began to prepare my good-byes. The heat was getting to me, as well as the torrents of rain that came during the rainy season. I was tired of living in a fishbowl with either fellow teachers or students constantly at my side. Even the thrill of being in Manila on weekends lost its luster.

Brice’s year in the camp was nearly over too, but he decided he’d extend his contract for another. “I like it here,” he said one evening as “Borderline” blasted from someone’s tape player. “I’m feeling more at home.”

I nodded, because I did understand. But I looked forward to not having to boil drinking water on the stove, and being able to drink soda with real ice cubes, enjoy Hershey’s chocolate, and even my mother’s crock-pot meals. Although I would miss aspects of the camp, especially the laughter of the children, I was ready to leave.

thirty-four

C
arson’s eyes are shining and warm, a look I haven’t seen since our days at PRPC. After greeting each other in the parking lot with a hug, we step inside Sanjay’s bakery. The air-conditioning is working today, and within minutes I feel chilly.

“You got it fixed,” I say to Sanjay as Carson stands at the glass counter filled with tasty treats, looking over the menu. A few days ago, Sanjay asked Mom and me for the name of a trusty HVAC repairman, saying the air-conditioning in his shop was not cooling no matter how low he set the thermostat.

Sanjay gives me one of his wide-eyed grins. “Venya said she must have it cooler or she would stay her entire pregnancy at home.”

“Venya’s pregnant?”

“Oh yes, very much so. The baby is all she talks about now, all she talks of every day.”

I congratulate him and then Carson orders a breakfast bagel with egg and bacon. I choose a gooey pastry topped with raspberries and cream cheese—one of those baked goods that leaves your mouth and fingers sticky.

“Something to drink?” Sanjay asks.

“Coffee,” I say, hoping it will warm me, and Carson says he’ll take some, too.

We sit side by side in wicker chairs, away from customers entering the shop to pick up styrofoam cups of coffee and bagels to go.

I take mini bites, making sure to wipe my mouth frequently. The coffee is stronger than usual, and hot.

“Do you think your mom’s at the boutique yet?” Carson asks after chewing some bacon.