Under Cover (4 page)

They didn’t have much luggage. Maybe it was
going to be a short visit. Grandma made us wait in front of the
building while she went to get her car.

Right by the door was not a good place, with
people coming and going, with taxis, porters, and baggage carts.
Dad herded Mei and me to one side and asked, “Where’s Liam?”

“Who?” I said, and then realized. “Is that
Hey Buddy?”

“Eh?”

“Um—” We shuffled again to allow for taxi
pickups. “We got a letter, um—addressed to us but it started ‘Hey,
buddy.’ I think you might have mixed up the envelopes. We didn’t
know who Hey Buddy was or if he got your flight information, so we
came ourselves. I mean Grandma and I did. Mom had to work.”

“Is that what I did? Mixed up the envelopes?”
It seemed to fluster him. Mei giggled. I wondered if they were
married, or going to be. I looked at her covertly and tried to
imagine her as a stepmother.

She must have been way younger than Mom. And
had black hair, of course, being Chinese. She wore it in sort of a
pageboy, like Maddie’s, except Maddie’s was brown and curled more.
She had on peach-colored pants and a matching jacket. Off-white
sandals with stiletto heels. If it weren’t for those heels she’d
have been shorter than me. I am five feet six. She made me feel
clunky and unfashionable even in my designer jeans with flowers
embroidered on the back pocket. I had bought them last fall for the
Harvest Moon Dance but never got to go because that was when Troy,
my boyfriend, dumped me. Until today, I couldn’t stand the sight of
them.

Grandma drove up and pressed a button that
opened the trunk. After stowing their luggage, Dad stowed Mei and
me in the back seat while he sat in front with Grandma.

As we started off, I looked at Mei. She was
busy watching the airport go past with all its terminal
buildings.

When she turned my way, I tried asking. “Do
you have any idea who Hey Buddy is?”

The look on her face was blank.
“Hey—bud-dee?”

Of course she wouldn’t know. That was Dad’s
own phrasing.

I remembered what Dad had said. “Liam. Do you
know who Liam is?”

For a moment I thought I saw some
recognition. Then the blankness came back. “Li-am? Who is?”

Maybe she didn’t know much English. I found
it hard to believe that Dad could speak Chinese. Or Malayan, or
whatever they talk in Borneo, even though he lived there. I
couldn’t see him as being that cosmopolitan.

“Thanks, anyway.” I gave her a nice smile.
She’d tried.

I tapped Dad on the shoulder. He was chatting
away with Grandma. “Would you please tell me—”

He waved his hand and patted his ear. I took
it to mean he couldn’t hear me from up front. Or maybe he didn’t
want to hear me. He half-turned and said, “We’ll talk later.”

Sure we would.

Murmurs and laughter came from the front.
Grandma always was a flirt. But flirting with my dad seemed a bit
much.

Mei asked, “This is…Long Eye-lan?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Soon we’ll go over a
big, long bridge and then we’ll be on the mainland.”

She nodded wisely, but I could tell she
didn’t understand much.

“You’ll know when we get to the bridge,” I
said. “It goes off in several directions and it touches three
boroughs.”

I was quite sure she didn’t get that, but she
gave me her wise nod again.

In the silence I heard Grandma mention the
name Hudson Hills. With a question mark. What was that about, the
high school murder? Grandma was something of a crime buff, but I
couldn’t see her launching right into anything so gruesome. Dad
only just got here.

“There’s the bridge up ahead,” I told Mei.
“Can you see it?”

She leaned forward to look through the
windshield. She didn’t try the word “bridge.” She said, “Ah-h-h,”
as if it were awesome. It sort of was. I wondered if they had
bridges like that in Borneo. I hadn’t gotten much from the
Internet, and hardly anything from the pictures Dad sent.

He stopped talking to Grandma and looked out
the window. Was this all new to him? I couldn’t remember how he got
to Southbridge the last time he came. If Mom picked him up at the
airport, I’d have been with her. I would have insisted, but didn’t
remember any such trip. Maybe someone else had picked him up. Maybe
Hey Buddy.

We went up a ramp and onto the bridge. From
there, most of the view was buildings and a river or two. Not very
spectacular, but Mei seemed fascinated. I used to think of Borneo
as mostly jungle, but those pictures of fancy resorts said there
was more to it. Of course that’s what they’d show on the Internet,
for reasons of tourist trade.

I pointed out Manhattan, way in the distance.
Right now, I told Mei, we were going through the Bronx. I wasn’t
sure how much she got of what I said.

How could she not know who Liam was? Or Hey
Buddy, and whether or not they were the same person. From Dad’s
letter I had the impression that this trip was mostly about Hey
Buddy. So why couldn’t somebody tell me?

Soon we were back on ground level, once more
among apartment buildings. Mei seemed transfixed. It must have been
quite a change from fancy resorts and jungles. Wasn’t Borneo where
they had a horrible tsunami some years back? A lot of people were
killed, including tourists. My dad never mentioned it. He must have
been somewhere else when it hit, lucky him.

Mei asked, “What is this B-l-onx?” She
couldn’t say it all in one syllable.

I wasn’t clear what she was asking, but did
the best I could.

“It’s the only one of New York’s five
boroughs that’s on the mainland,” I said, feeling like a
schoolteacher. “The rest are all islands. Way back it used to
belong to a guy named Jacob Bronck. I think it was a farm, or
something. It must have been humongous.” I doubted she knew what
“humongous” meant. “Since it was his, they called it ‘Bronck’s.’
And then it turned into ‘the Bronx.’”

The expressway got us through it and on into
Yonkers. You couldn’t tell the difference except for signs. I
wished Grandma would take the parkway instead. It was prettier.

After a while, she did. Now Mei could see
that we had some nice scenery. And no tsunamis.

We got off at the exit before our usual one.
What was Grandma trying to do?

It didn’t take me long to find out. We passed
a green sign announcing Hudson Hills. I’d been through there before
but never gave it much thought. It didn’t mean anything to me. It
had a speed limit and Grandma slowed.

The slowness made for less noise. I could
hear what they said up front. I heard Dad say, “Salt Street. Do you
know where that is?”

“Can’t say that I do,” Grandma replied.
“You’ll have to guide me.”

We passed a thing called Jade Avenue. If I
had to choose, I would rather live on Jade Avenue than Salt Street.
They both looked the same, rows of ordinary houses with little
yards in front. Some had garages, some only a driveway. That was
what we had at home, just a driveway long enough for two and a half
cars.

She slowed still more when we were partway
down Salt Street. I wondered if there was a Pepper Street. We
stopped, and my dad leaped from the car.

So did Mei, not wanting to be left behind.
Grandma popped the trunk and Dad whisked out their luggage. He set
his typewriter down on the sidewalk so he could blow kisses. He
called, “Nice seeing you again, Cree.”

Those were his only words to me.

Chapter
Four

I thought Dad would look back, but he didn’t.
Not even once. Mei did, and waved. They went up the front walk to a
dreary-looking house, dark brown with dark green trim. It had a
paved driveway but no garage. There weren’t any cars in the
driveway. While Grandma waited to be sure they got in, I moved to
the front seat.

Dad rang the doorbell and stood listening.
Nice seeing you again, Cree.
That was it? His own daughter?
After six years?

The door opened. I couldn’t see who opened
it, but I heard a loud exclamation that could have been male or
female. Dad and Mei disappeared inside.

“I was hoping they wouldn’t be there,” I
said.

“How come?”

“Then he’d—” Then he would have to come to
our house, at least for a while. I didn’t want Grandma to know how
I felt. Let her think I didn’t care.

I said, “That must have been a surprise, him
showing up like that. Unless he called them on the way.”

“Not from the road. I’d have noticed.”
Grandma pulled away from the curb. “Now how do I get out of
here?”

“Back the way we came.” I directed her as
best I could remember. As soon as we were on familiar ground, I
started in.

“Okay, I’m guessing that’s Hey Buddy’s home.
Do you have any clue who Hey Buddy is? I asked Mei and drew a
blank.”

“Nope. Not a clue,” Grandma said.

“He didn’t say anything in all that
time?”

“He said plenty, but not about Hey Buddy. Now
I got a question. Who’s Mei in all this? Is she a girlfriend? A
wife? A secretary?”

“Why would he need a secretary? He doesn’t do
anything. I thought she must be a girlfriend of some sort.”

“How many sorts are there?” Grandma
asked.

“You’re evading me again. I want to know who
Hey Buddy is and who Liam is and if they’re the same person.”

“When you find out, tell me. I don’t know
anything about his family. Could be a brother, a cousin, a friend.
Who knows?”

It was possible she really didn’t know. But I
couldn’t understand why nobody had any answers. Someone, like Mom,
must have known something.

I had a sudden longing for Ben. Okay, it
wasn’t sudden, it was all the time. So what if he had his odd
moments? At least he was sane, not like everybody else in my
life.

As soon as we were home, and through the
greeting routine with Jasper, I said, “I think I’ll take a walk.
I’ve been sitting too long.”

Grandma looked at me in surprise. “Oh, to be
young. Me, I’m gonna crash. It’s kinda nice I don’t have to make
lunch and be a hostess.” That was Grandma’s way of looking on the
bright side.

I set off on foot for Frosty Dan. My feet
were all I had. Sometimes I got to use Grandma’s car, but this time
I didn’t ask. She would say it needed rest as much as she did. To
her the car was a person, not a machine. She even gave it a name.
She called it Archie.

According to my watch, it was a little after
three. Ben started work as soon as school let out. When I got
there, he was serving two freshman girls who eagerly chatted him
up. Ben did his best to be polite, but I could see he wasn’t
genuinely interested. That made me happy. I settled myself at the
end of the counter and waited till he had a free moment.

More customers came in. Ben had to serve the
tables as well as the counter. They should have given him an
assistant, namely me.

After everybody got what they wanted, he
picked up a rag and began mopping. When he worked his way down to
where I was, he asked, “How did it go?”

“Weird,” I said. “He went to a house in
Hudson Hills. Grandma dropped him off there and that was the last
we saw. If they never got word he was coming, it must have been
quite a shock, especially because he brought his girlfriend. The
one in the picture I showed you. Her name is Mei and she doesn’t
know anything either, not about Hey Buddy. That really stumped her.
As for Liam, I couldn’t tell.”

“Who’s Liam?” he asked.

I forgot Ben didn’t know. “It’s a name that
came up at the airport. Dad was surprised to see us there and
asked, ‘Where’s Liam?’ I’m thinking it might be Hey Buddy, but
that’s not much help.”

Ben went on mopping, with nothing to say. I
asked, “Do you know anybody in Hudson Hills named Liam?”

He took a moment to squint at me. “I don’t
know anybody in Hudson Hills named anything.”

“He lives on Salt Street.”

“Never heard of it.”

The two girls watched us, yearning after Ben
and probably wishing I would disappear. Maybe Ben wished so, too.
Finally they finished their sundaes and left, looking over their
shoulders. One of them called, “You should be in the movies.” They
giggled and fled.

A party of four came in and sat at a table.
While they debated what to order, Ben came back my way. I said,
“Seventy-nine Salt Street.”

“Never heard of it,” he said again.

“It’s brown with dark green trim.”

“So?”

“Is there any way you can find out? You have
all those Internet search things you know how to do.”

“What do you want found?”

“I want to know who lives there.” I thought
that would be obvious.

“What’s it to you who lives there?”

“Well, he is my father, or so they tell me. I
might even have relatives.”

“You have doubts about him being your father?
How about a DNA test?”

“Oh, boy. I can just imagine asking for that.
What would Mom say?”

“One way to find out.”

Frosty Dan got busier. I knew I was in the
way, so I went home.

Grandma offered me an egg salad sandwich. It
was late afternoon, but Grandma was a stickler for three meals a
day. I ate it in the kitchen while she puttered.

“Have a nice walk?” she asked. Translation:
Where did you go, and why, and what did you do there?

So I told her. “I went to Frosty Dan but I
didn’t eat anything.”

“Yeah? How’s the hunk?”

“Hunky, as usual.”

“You didn’t stay long.”

“No, he was busy.”

“Did he kick you out?”

That was getting too close. He might have, if
I hadn’t left. I didn’t tell her that and she didn’t ask.

I wanted answers, too, and didn’t ask. Why
bother? Nobody answered me anyway.

I went upstairs to my room and lay on the
bed. I kept it near the window so I could look out.