“Just bury it in the sand. It’s biodegradable. You thirsty? I’ve got waters, ginger ale.” She shakes her head. Her doctor wants her to keep hydrating, she says, but she doesn’t want to have to go in the water to pee. She suggests we try that walk now. “Okay, sure. Just tell me when you want to turn around.” I get up, put on my sunglasses. “Which way, boss? Toward the nudies or not?”
“Not,” she says, and we start out.
After we’ve walked a while, she asks me what I’ve found out about my Chinese family. “Well, let’s see. They were peasant farmers in the south—a village called Guangnan. I looked it up on a map; it’s not too far from the Vietnamese border. That cousin I’ve been communicating with says her grandfather came over here first. Entered the country in your neck of the woods, actually. San Francisco. Just made it, I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, apparently Chinese immigration was unrestricted in the years when the railroad lines were being built. They needed the labor. But once they were done, California started grumbling about all those pigtailed heathens polluting the good old American gene pool. So Congress shut the door on them. Passed something called the Chinese Exclusion Act. Your great-grandfather had to come here by way of Canada.”
“So much for ‘Give us your tired and hungry, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,’ ” Ariane says.
“Yeah, well, that melting pot stuff was always more about what this country wanted to believe about itself than the way people really felt. But anyway, my cousin says her grandfather had two families, one here and another back in the homeland.”
“He was a bigamist?”
“I guess. Apparently, it was a pretty common practice back then. ‘Split-household’ families, they called them. According to Ellen, his wife over there had only produced daughters, but his concubine here had had a son, so that gave her preferred status.”
“Oh, you men,” Ari says, shaking her head. “Plant your seed wherever and then wave good-bye.” It’s ironic that she’d put it that way, given how she got pregnant. Ironic, too, because that’s what my father did. But I’m not going there with either of those thoughts.
“Ellen’s got some old letters and pictures that she’s going to send me after she gets them scanned. She’s had the letters translated.”
“From what? Mandarin?”
“Cantonese, more likely. Mandarin was the language of the upper classes. But it’s the photographs that I really want to see. She says there’s one of your great-grandfather taken shortly after he arrived, when he was in his late teens or early twenties.”
“Cool,” she says. Shakes her head. “The Chinese Exclusion Act. Boy, racism was right out in the open back then, huh? How about when you were a kid? Did you ever experience any of that anti-Chinese prejudice?”
“Here and there. From other kids in school, mostly. Slant-eyes, Charlie Chan. Stuff like that. One time I was playing basketball at the playground, and when I blocked another kid’s shot, he called me a ‘fucking gook.’ ”
“And you don’t even look very Chinese. Did you call him on it?”
“Not verbally. But when I went for a layup a few minutes later, I threw him an elbow. Gave him a bloody nose that, to tell you the truth, I’m still kind of proud of. How about you? Ever on the receiving end of that kind of stuff.”
She says the only thing she can think of was one time in high school when she was trying out for the math team. “Just before they passed out the tests, this boy told me I had an unfair advantage because I was Asian. Wayne Ogilvie, his name was.”
“How did he even know you were?”
“Because of those registration forms we had to fill out at the beginning of every school year, where you had to put what nationalities you were. He sat in front of me in homeroom, and when we passed them in, he had looked at mine. He was such a pain, that kid.”
“You made that math team, didn’t you?”
“And Wayne Ogilvie didn’t.” She shoots me a mischievous look. “I guess you could say I threw him an elbow with my test score.”
“Atta girl. Hey, what do you say we head back to the blankets? I don’t want you to overdo it.” She nods. Says she’s getting kind of thirsty, that maybe she’ll have one of those waters I brought after all.
“Good. Your doctor’s right about keeping yourself hydrated. And hey, you wouldn’t be the first one who’s ever peed in the ocean.”
When we’re back at the blanket, I decide to go in for a swim. “Watch out for the sharks,” Ari says. I bare my teeth and tell her they better watch out for me. “I’m serious Daddy. Be careful.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The water is gorgeous. Cleansing. Whenever a wave comes, I stick my head into it and let it pass over me. Floating on my back, I think about becoming a grandfather. About my grandfather, my absentee father. I really want to see that picture she’s going to send. . . .
When I come out, I see that she’s fallen asleep. I watch her for a while. When the kids were little and I’d come home late from work, I used to love to go into their rooms and watch them while they were sleeping. Then I’d come back out and have to listen to Annie’s complaints about them: who’d fought with whom that day, who’d spilt their milk at lunch, which one she’d had to put on the time-out chair. One time, to short-circuit her bitching, I asked her if she ever enjoyed her time with the kids, or if it was just torture all day long. She’d poked out her bottom lip and run off to our bedroom to cry. Wouldn’t talk to me for the rest of that night, wouldn’t accept my apology. The ice didn’t start to melt until the end of the week when I’d handed her the flowers I’d bought on my way home from work and got her to smile. But that night in bed, I remember, when I reached for her in anticipation of some makeup sex, she kicked me, hard, and jumped out of our bed. And when one of the kids called for her as she was hurrying down the hall, she’d screamed, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Andrew, I guess it was; he was the one who sometimes suffered those nighttime fears.
Daddy, do you think Mama was a good mother? . . .
Ariane’s out for the next hour or so. Doesn’t wake up until the sun starts sinking behind the dune. It’s cooler now in the shade. “Have a good nap?” I ask her when she stirs, opens her eyes.
“Mmm. But it feels cold now. You want to go?”
When I pull in at Viveca’s, there’s a van parked in the driveway. The sign on the side says LOWER CAPE CLEANERS. A guy and a girl get out—midtwenties, maybe. Well-scrubbed, tanned and fit. “Cleaning service,” the guy says.
“Oh, okay. Sorry to keep you waiting. I didn’t expect you.”
“No problem. We just got here.” He explains that the realty company hires them on behalf of the owners. They come in once a week.
“Oh. Jeeze, I’ve been here for the last two. Did I miss you?”
He shakes his head. “We were away. Family stuff.” He looks over at the girl. “This is my sister.” I introduce myself and my daughter. “Glad to meet you,” they both say. Tell us their names. “Well, we’d better get to work,” the guy says. They open up the back of their van, take out cleaning supplies, an upright vacuum cleaner. When I tell him there’s one in the front hall closet, he says they like to use their own. “The industrial vacs pick up way better.”
“Okay. Right. Well, give us a minute and we’ll get out of your way. We’ll be out on the deck if you need anything.”
“No problem.”
Inside at the sink, I get us drinks. A ginger ale for Ariane, a vodka and tonic for myself. Ari whispers that she was looking forward to a shower. “There’s one outside in the back,” I say. “But you can look down on it from the dining room window.” She glances at the cleaning guy and says she’ll wait.
Out on the deck, with the vacuum cleaner droning away inside, we sip our drinks. The breeze ruffles the leaves on the trees, exposing their silver undersides. The clouds are playing peekaboo with the late afternoon sun. I’m about to ask her about dinner when Ariane s
tarts bitching about her brother. “The way he talks, it’s like Manhattan is Sodom and Gomorrah. I mean, we’ve all had to process Mama’s new lifestyle. But they’ve been together for almost three years now. Why is he still so mad about it?”
I shrug. “He’s worried about Marissa, too, you know. Apparently she told him she goes dancing in gay clubs sometimes. Probably just to shock him, if I know your sister. She still doesn’t get that God thing he’s into now. He thinks New York’s Sin City and she thinks Texas turns you into a Jesus freak.”
“Yeah, well . . . Marissa did have a little thing with a woman when she moved to New York. One of her acting teachers.”
“Really? Well, she’s not the first young woman to try a same-sex ‘thing,’ as you put it.” I smile, thinking about something else. “When I was in grad school, I did a practicum at a women’s prison. They had a saying down there: straight at the gate, gay for the stay. But Marissa? The girl who used to climb out her bedroom window so she could meet that boy she was so madly in love with? The one who worked at the Dairy Queen. What was that doofus’s name?”
“Derek,” she says. “God, I forgot about those little rendezvouses. You grounded her and Mama marched her down to Dr. Zahl’s office and had her put on birth control. But anyway, Marissa’s experiment didn’t last very long. She told me sex with a woman was okay, but that she missed cock. Her words, not mine.”
“Yeah, well, that’s a little too much information for dear old Dad.” She turns away, a little embarrassed, I think. The breeze blows the hair away from the nape of her neck and I spot a bug there. But when I reach over to brush it away, I see that it’s a small tattoo. A dime-size ladybug. “And when did milady get inked?” I kid her. “Pray tell.”
“After Axel broke up with me,” she says. “My girlfriend Melanie and I went into San Francisco for dinner. She had just gotten dumped, too, so we both decided to do something a little crazy.”
“And fashionable. So many people have tattoos these days, I’m thinking of getting one myself.”
She’s looking at me as wide-eyed and gullible as ever. “Seriously?”
“Hell, yeah. A skull and crossbones, maybe. And under it, I’ll have them put, ‘Don’t mess with Grandpa.’ ”
She smiles, rolls her eyes. “Oh, yeah. I’m sure Tracy would love that.”
I smile, too, thinking about the tattoos Tracy has: a little butterfly above her left breast, a starfish at the small of her back—both of them highly kissable. I finish my drink, get up off my chair. “I’m going in for a refill. You good?”
“Uh-huh.”
Inside, the girl’s scouring the kitchen sink and the vacuum’s droning upstairs. The house doesn’t really need it; I just vaccumed yesterday. But hey, they’ve got to make a living, too. And it’s not like I’m paying them. “So how long have you and your brother been in the cleaning business?” I ask her.
“Us? Since our mother got sick. It’s really her business, but she’s got cancer.” I ask her how she’s doing. “Better,” she says. “But the chemo kind of wipes her out. My brother’s taken over the business mostly, but I help him out during the summer. I’m in grad school.”
“Really? What are you studying?”
“Business administration.”
“You must be getting ready to go back pretty soon, huh?”
“Uh-huh.” She goes back to her scouring. Guess she’d rather get her work done than chitchat with the clientele. Can’t blame her for that.
I go a little easier on the vodka this time. I’m starting to get a nice little glow from the first one. But then I hear Ari’s question again. Daddy? Do you think Mama was a good mother? I change my mind. Tip the bottle and pour myself a little more.
Back outside, I ask her again why she was asking about her mother’s parenting. “Oh,” she says. “I don’t know. No reason, really.”
No? Then why can’t she look at me? I wait.
“It’s just . . . the way she used to go off on Andrew sometimes.”
“Meaning?”
“The way she’d get so mad at him. Hit him.”
“Hit him? As in, give him a swat on the tush, or we’d better call Child Protective Services?” I meant it as a joke, but she’s not smiling.
“She just . . . She got abusive sometimes. Not with me or Marissa. Just with him.”
“Abusive? That’s a little strong, don’t you think?”
She shakes her head. “She was different when you were at work, Daddy. Not all the time, just sometimes. She’d get furious at something he did. Or didn’t do. And then . . .” I stand there, waiting for her to finish. She takes a sip of her soda. Looks out at the trees instead of at me. “I don’t really want to go into it. Okay?”
But no, it’s not okay. “You’re talking about her yelling at him mostly, right? Verbal abuse, not physical. Except for a slap here and there.”
She shakes her head. When she looks back at me, she’s in tears.
“Then how come Andy never said anything?”
“Because he used to cover for her. You’d come home and ask about some bruise he got and he’d say he fell down or something. Or bumped into something. That he was being clumsy.”
“Well, he was pretty clumsy.” No smile, no nod in agreement. “Right?”
“Daddy, please. Why does it even matter now?”
“I mean, granted, she may have had her faults, but it’s not like she was a child abuser. Was she?” She looks at me but doesn’t answer. “Was she?”
“Not with Rissa or me.”
“Look, kiddo. I’m a trained psychologist. If something like that was going on in my own home, don’t you think I would have picked up on it? Whether he was ‘covering for her,’ as you put it, or not. I would have read the signs. Or one of you would have come to me. That’s the pattern with kids in an abusive situation. If one parent is dangerous—physically dangerous, I mean, not just hotheaded—the kids may try to hide it for a while, but eventually they disclose it to the ‘safe’ parent.”
“No, you’re right. Forget I even said anything. I was just being stupid.”
“Stupid? You? No way. But I bet I know where this is coming from. You’re getting ready to be a parent yourself, so naturally you’re analyzing everything about your parents. Deciding what you want to re-create in your relationship with your own child, and what you want to do differently.”
“Yeah, but . . . that’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Meaning?”
“What if I lose control? Hit my child? Don’t kids who grow up in abusive homes become abusers themselves?”
“Sometimes. But you didn’t grow up in an abusive home. Look, your body’s changing. It’s probably just your maternal hormones kicking up—sending you into overdrive so that you start worrying about all the what-ifs that are never even going to happen. And sure, your mother might have swatted him once or twice when he was bugging her. God knows, he was good at that. But it’s not like she was . . . dangerous.”
“Daddy, you don’t have to defend her. Not from me. And yeah, my hormones probably are—”
“Trust me, honey. If she had been abusive, I would have known.” But she’s looking at me skeptically. “Okay, you’re not convinced. So let’s examine it a little more. Give me an example.”
She frowns, thinks about it. “Well, one time—”
“Knock knock,” someone says. When I look back, there’s Tracy standing behind the slider. “Am I interrupting something?” she says. “You both look so serious.”
“No, no, come on out,” I say, standing. And then to Ariane, “To be continued.” Tracy slides open the screen and steps onto the deck. When I ask her if she’d like a drink, she shakes her head.
“I’ve spent the afternoon analyzing the contents of a twelve-foot basking shark’s abdomen. Trust me. I need a shower more than a cocktail. Don’t get too close.” Turning to Ariane, she asks her how she’s feeling.
“Okay, thanks,” Ari says. “Daddy’s been very solicitous.”
“Well, I should hope so. Hey, I went online this morning and looked up morning sickness remedies. Made a list and had Megan, my grad assistant, pick up some stuff that might help. She was pregnant last year and had a go-around with morning sickness, too. So she added a few things that helped her.”
“Oh my god, that’s so nice of you,” Ariane says. She takes the bulging plastic bag that Tracy’s holding out to her. Reaches inside and pulls things out one by one. Ginger candies, peppermint tea, Saltines, a box of something called Preggie Pops.
When I ask Tracy what we owe her, she points a finger at me. “Don’t even go there, buster,” she says. I throw up my hands in surrender. She turns back to Ari. “I’ve also written down some of the foods they recommend—things that are rich in Vitamin B-6. Fatty fish, baked potato, oatmeal, spinach. Oh, and there’s a little bottle of lemon oil in there, too. Megan says during her first three months, certain odors would make her queasy. So she’d sprinkle lemon oil on a handkerchief and keep it in her pocket. When some smell was bothering her, she’d take it out and sniff that instead.”
“That’s a great idea,” Ari says. “Tell her I said thanks.”
Again, Tracy declines my offer to get her a drink. Says she really wants to go clean up. “Then come back after you do,” I say. “Join us for dinner.”
“Not tonight,” she says. “I’m teaching that online course, and I’ve got a bunch of my students’ lab reports to get to. I’ll take a rain check, though. How about tomorrow night?”
“Sounds good.”
“And thank you so much,” Ariane says. “I really appreciate it.”
“No big deal. I just hope it helps. Okay, I’m out of here.”
I walk her back through the house. The cleaning woman’s dusting now. When we’re out the front door, Tracy says, “My, my, maid service? Some guys really know how to live.”
I shrug. “Not my idea. The realtor sent them.” We head over to her car.
“Hey, I hope I didn’t barge in at the wrong moment back there,” she says. “Whatever you two were talking about, it looked heavy-duty.”
I shake my head. “Just some old family history.” I thank her for helping Ariane. Reach over and kiss her. She gets in her car, starts it and backs up. I wave to her as she drives off.