Vuong Ky Do lived with his family in a triple-decker home near a busy corner off a small shopping plaza in Unionville, perhaps a half-mile from the modest neighborhood were Marta once lived. They were neighbors separated by two or three tree-lined streets. I noted this fact as Hank pulled up to the curb in front of the building. An isolated house, out of place on the commercial block, a Shell gas station next door with plastic streamers blowing in the wind, and a small discount liquor store on the other side. Across the street a strip mall of beauty parlors, laundromats, a mom-and-pop home-style eatery with a neon sign flashing GOO EATS, the “D” unfortunately missing. Cars buzzed in and out of the parking lot, blasted through flashing lights. A Dutch Colonial at the far end of the block had been converted into law offices and an optometrist’s office.
“I wonder how long Willie’s home will last,” I told Hank.
“The last holdout,” he answered. “The greasy wheels of progress.”
I sang off-key. “‘They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.’”
“Hey, how poetic,” he said.
“Hank, I didn’t make up the line.”
A pause. “I didn’t think so.”
Each floor held a front porch with low turned railings, and on the first floor—Willie’s son’s apartment, Hank told me—a dumpy old sofa was pushed back against the clapboard siding. A couple plastic lawn chairs accompanied it, one turned over. What looked like the chrome bumper of an old car was leaning against the wall. Glancing up toward the second floor, I noticed an empty porch—but an old woman stood there, unmoving, staring down at us.
Hank waved. “Aunt Marie.”
She nodded and stepped back into the apartment.
As we sat in front of the house, Hank pointed out a chassis of an old Chevy up on blocks at the end of the long driveway that led alongside the house and ended at a back chain-link fence, rusted and bent in. “Probably gets more mileage than your tinker-toy BMW.”
I wasn’t listening. I was watching an older model Toyota with rusted fenders and a yellow tennis ball bobbing off the top of a wavering antenna. The car bounced into the driveway, disappeared from sight in a lot behind the house. But immediately a young couple walked alongside the house, headed to a side entrance.
Hank yelled out the window. “Hey, Freddy.”
The young Vietnamese man looked sixteen, a skinny kid wearing a baseball cap turned backwards. Shifting a grocery bag from one arm to the other, he said something to the woman with him. We got out of the car and Hank excitedly introduced me to his cousin Freddy, his young wife, Mia, and the chubby baby Sarah she cradled in her arms. Smiles all around, Freddy punching Hank in the shoulder, the baby gurgling her happiness.
Freddy whispered, “We heard all about you coming here.” He was looking at me. “Aunt Marie told us.” He leaned in. “She’s unhappy.”
“Everyone in this house is always unhappy,” Hank offered, but the remark confused Freddy. It also confused me. And it confused Hank himself because he twisted his head to the side, eyes narrowed, as though someone else had made the blanket statement.
Nothing more was said, but we followed the young family up the side stairwell, and waved as they headed to the third floor.
“Tell your mother I love her New Year’s rice cakes,” Freddy yelled down. Hank squinted up at him. “That’s a hint,” Freddy went on, grinning. “For more.”
Aunt Marie was waiting for us on the landing, her back against the open door.
A small, thin woman with large brown eyes in a smooth face, she looked like an adolescent girl, except for the shock of abundant white hair. Probably in her mid-sixties now, she’d pulled her hair back into a loose bun, a yellow silk ribbon sloppily attached at the back. She bowed to me, and I bowed back. “Welcome.” Another bow. But her voice trembled as she looked away, darting back into the room. I followed her nervous gaze, but there was no one else there.
“Vuong is not home yet,” she addressed Hank. She waved at the empty table.
For a moment they chattered in Vietnamese, the easy familiarity of family members, and I understood that he would return shortly. A favor to a friend who needed another hand to hold the end of some drywall going up in his house. She looked at me and said in English, “He cannot refuse a friend.”
“Of course,” I answered.
She held up a finger, as though remembering something, and scurried into the kitchen.
A neat apartment, hard-pressed curtains covering the windows, flowered slipcovers over the sofa, though the hallway into the rooms was cluttered with two large cardboard boxes tied with string, prominent addresses evident: Ho Chi Minh City. I noticed Hank eyeing them.
She laughed. “We send clothes and too much medicine to Vietnam.”
Hank looked at me. “In the early days they had nothing there, the family that stayed behind.” He addressed Aunt Marie. “But Vietnam is doing fine now—no need for medicine and…”
She shrugged off the comment. “Vuong will never stop sending packages back there. No matter what.” She shrugged. “It’s what he has to do.” She pointed to a small dining room table off the kitchen. It was covered with frayed oilcloth, with old wooden country-style kitchen chairs positioned around it. “Sit, sit. Please.”
As she walked by Hank, she let her hand graze his cheek, smiling at him. “I remember you when you were a little boy, Tan.” She used his Vietnamese name. “Always had an answer for everything. But adorable.”
I almost quipped, “Still does,” but such a remark from me would be untoward, rude.
Hank grinned foolishly. “I’m a man now, Aunt Marie. I’m gonna be a state trooper.”
“And such a handsome one.” She wagged a finger at him. “You give your mother sleepless nights.”
She bustled around the kitchen, refusing our help, though she kept glancing back at us, her face worried. When she caught my eye, she smiled warmly. A kind woman, I realized, a beautiful soul. That simple act of letting her fingers graze Hank’s cheek communicated so much—and for a moment I was jealous of that familial touch.
The aromas drifting from the kitchen reminded me of how hungry I was: the tang of lemongrass, the rich anise-peppered broth for the noodle soup called pho, even the tray of sliced overripe mangoes resting on a table. She placed a pot of jasmine tea next to it, and nodded at Hank. Pour. Sweet to the taste, a hint of flowers, soothing, rich. She placed a dish of goi cuon in front of us—thin rice paper wrapped around bits of shrimp, diced basil, and carrots. We dipped the treat into small bowls of peanut-speckled hoisin sauce. Freshly made within the hour, the appetizer was a mixture of textures and flavors. Hank grunted his approval. Then she served us bowls of Vietnamese comfort soup, pho, the beef noodle, thin strips of uncooked beef dropped into a fiery broth where they immediately cooked. Flavored with bean sprouts we lifted with chopsticks from a plate and sprigs of green basil we broke from the stem, hoisin sauce drizzled in, warm buttery vermicelli noodles floating at the bottom, I could have wept with pleasure. I watched Hank pour hot sauce into his, which I refused.
“Coward,” he whispered.
“This needs nothing but a pair of chopsticks and my appreciation.”
Aunt Marie smiled at me. “You do not live in a Vietnamese world,” she said quietly.
At that moment, startled, I was conscious of my status as bui doi, the almost white man in the room. I also realized why Vuong delayed returning home—or at least I believed I knew. I was a violator in this room, a different sort of ghost from old Saigon—the curse of the American War that took away his life. Generations in America would never forgive. Some folks would never break bread with me. I recalled a friend in college who was Vietnamese and Chinese—most of the first boat people were of Chinese background, in fact, Viet Ching—who traveled with a pack of Vietnamese friends in San Diego—until, that is, he told them that his mother was Chinese. He was shunned from the group. Now I squirmed in my seat, conscious of a bloodline I had no control over, and I caught Hank’s eyes on me. They twinkled. Relax, the look communicated. Friends here, all of us. Then, a sardonic shake of his head. At least until Vuong arrived home.
And yet I was invited here—Hank’s grandma, I figured, and the utter kindness of Aunt Marie. And probably awareness that such an interview was necessary.
“My Vuong,” Aunt Marie suddenly began, “is a difficult man.”
The words hung in the air, ominous.
Hank spoke up. “Rick knows the story, Aunt Marie.”
I murmured my condolences for the death of her daughter so many years before. But of course that horrific death of a thirteen-year-old girl was the morning’s news, always fresh, forever raw. Always a wound in the heart.
“He’s always waiting for something to happen.” She sat still, her hands folded in her lap, watching me.
“I mean him no harm,” I told her.
She smiled thinly. “I know that. Hank’s grandmother speaks of you with affection. You have her blessing.” I bowed. “But this has nothing to do with you, Rick. This is the story of a man who gets up in the morning and waits for the hour he can go to bed.” Her eyes got wet, and she turned away. “He carries our little Linh in his heart but she won’t speak to him.”
“Aunt Marie,” Hank began, “Rick just wants information.”
She wasn’t listening but spoke softly in Vietnamese. “Thuong nhieu qua.”
The words hung in the air, awful, powerful. So much love. A love so profound it colors any day of any life.
At that moment the door opened and Vuong walked in, a little sheepish, his jacket folded over his arms. His wife immediately stood up and walked to him, tucked her arm into his elbow.
“Mr. Rick Van Lam,” she said.
“Thank you for seeing me.” I bowed.
We exchanged some pleasantries in Vietnamese, my own words catching in my throat, but Hank kept sliding us through the formalities, his own voice tense, brittle.
Vuong spoke now. “I remember you from the college.”
“Of course.”
A sliver of a smile. “A place that does not believe in Lucky Strikes.”
“Like a lot of the world, Uncle,” Hank said.
Surprisingly, the man walked up to me and stuck out his hand. “Willie Do.” His American name. I nodded.
Small like his wife, as slender, but with wired muscles, a bantam rooster of a man, powerful-looking, even in his late sixties, he scratched his balding head. Red blotches covered his scalp. A blood-red scar over his left eye, ragged and broken at the edges.
We sat in the living room, Hank and me on the sofa, Willie in an armchair, his knees drawn up to his chest. Immediately he lit a cigarette and the thick smoke circled his head. He smiled and pointed the cigarette at me. “Here no one will stop me.”
I smiled back.
Aunt Marie did not sit but stood behind his chair, hovering, watching, one of her hands resting on the top of the chair. At one point, as he settled back, twisting his head up to blow smoke into the air, she touched the back of his neck. He frowned.
Willie cleared his throat. “I never liked her.” Said with a finality, as though he understood he had to have this talk—did he see me as some sort of authority?—and wanted to cut to the chase. The information hurled out there—blatant, strong.
“Marta?”
“Who else? That’s why you’re here, no?”
Hank broke in. “Why not, Uncle?”
“A woman that looked at you like you don’t belong in her world. Like her private kingdom.”
“What did you think when you heard she killed herself?”
“I don’t think nothing. I won’t think about her.”
“But you must have wondered why?”
“I know why.”
“What?” From Hank.
“Joshua Jennings was dead.”
“Tell me about that.” I watched him closely.
For the first time he relaxed. “Twice a week I worked his yard. A fussy old man, Joshua. But when he looked at me, you know what I saw there? A man respecting another man. He tells me, ‘No one ever touched the flowerbeds like you, Willie. The lawn like a carpet.’” He locked eyes with me. “We understood each other.” A pause. “And that was the problem.”
“How so?” From Hank.
“Marta worked the inside of the house. But she talked of Joshua like—well…‘Joshua and I…We…Joshua and I…’ Like she and him was, you know…”
“A couple?”
“You could see it in her eyes.”
“You fought with her.”
He waved his hand in the air. “Not a fight because I ain’t said nothing to her. Joshua kept planning to move away. The house was too big, he was too old, over and over. He had trouble with climbing. Marta fought that—like a dream slipping away.”
“But he did move away.”
“She screamed and screamed at him. I could hear it from the garden. I never thought he would, you know. Even with his bad heart. One day he says he sold the place. It’s done. He said he felt—good.”
“He fought with Marta. Told her to stay away, no?” From Hank.
Willie was quiet for a long time. “Because of me, I think. But maybe not. Maybe something else.” He shrugged. “Joshua, he knocks on the window for me to come in and get my money. A muddy day, I wasn’t thinking. In the kitchen he is laughing with me, happy, but Marta starts to yell at me. She followed me outside and yelled and yelled. She called me a ‘lousy foreigner.’ I glared at her and went home. Days later she called the cops.” He trembled. “They come here.”
Aunt Marie spoke up. “We don’t like cops coming into the house.” She touched Willie’s shoulder. “It was like the old days in…”
“In Saigon,” her husband finished.
“But they went away,” I said.
“A waste of their time.”
“But then Marta fought with Joshua?”
He nodded. “Joshua heard how she talked to me. How she called the cops. When I came back to mow the lawns, he told me she would not be coming back. He said—well, never such a way to treat a man…in his house. I mean, he turned red in the face. They had fights, he said.”
Willie’s comment surprised me. So that skirmish in the kitchen was perhaps only a small part of the reason for Marta’s exile and her movement into depression. Another fight with Joshua?
“He never saw her again?” Hank asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. But I think the fights with her made him decide to move away. One day he tells me the house is sold. He gives me a pile of money. Over five hundred dollars and says, ‘For you. Take it.’ He laughs and tells me to have a good life.”
Willie sat back, finished. He lit another cigarette.
“You ever see Marta again?” I asked.
He grunted. “Once in the aisles of Walmart. She walks by and said I should go back to where they eat dogs.”
Hank was readying to say something, but choked, rolled to the side.
“It wasn’t funny.”
Willie folded his arms over his chest, the cigarette tight in the corner of his mouth. He dipped his head down, and I realized he was through talking. Everything he’d told me had been thought through, planned, out of some sense of obligation. Something he had to do—and now it was done.
Hank said what I hadn’t planned on saying. “Marta’s niece thinks someone murdered her.”
A long silence, as I watched Willie’s face harden. Even his eyes got dull. His lips were drawn into a thin line. He glanced through the kitchen door and I followed his gaze to the religious icons resting on a shelf. Once again that curious melding of Jesus Christ and Buddha. A Catholic wife and a Buddhist husband. The joss sticks and the blood-red tangerines. The dried Sunday Mass palms. He looked back at me. “It doesn’t matter now. The minute you are born you begin your journey to death. She got there ahead of the rest of us.”
The door opened, and Tony Do stormed in. A rough-looking man, short as his parents but thick, barrel-chested, a thin whisper of a moustache above his lip. A narrow head with a high flat forehead. Tony worked in a body shop in town, and he’d once ignored me when I’d stopped in to check on some repairs. Spotting another Vietnamese there, greasy in overalls and watching me from a doorway, a wrench in his hand, he turned away at my friendly nod. Now, glaring at me and then at Hank, he positioned himself behind his father. A curious tableau, I thought—mother and son as guardians of the wounded old man.
“Hey, Tony,” Hank began, standing. “We were just leaving.”
Tony looked at his mother. “Everything okay?”
She nodded. “Your father has answered all the questions.”
Tony breathed in, but he still didn’t look happy.
“Did you ever meet Marta?” I asked him.
For a moment he stared at me, unfocused, but finally he answered, though he looked at Hank, whose head was bobbing up and down. “Yeah, once or twice. Maybe more. I don’t know. Around town. Sometimes I helped out at Jennings’ place. When Pop needed another hand for something. Like to move the lawn tractor onto a rack. She’d be there, looking out the window, frowning.”
“Tony…” His mother began. “We are through here.”
Tony wasn’t listening. “She treated Pop like a piece of shit.”
His mother shuddered. “Tony, please.”
“And calling the cops. Christ Almighty.”
Tony had a raspy, cigarette smoker’s voice, and he started to cough, gagged. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
I spoke up. “Your father handled her the best way, Tony. He ignored her.”
Snidely, not looking at me. “And still the goddamn cops knock on his door.” He swung around to look into his father’s face. God knows what he saw there, but it gave him pause. He backed up. “Enough.”
I headed to the door. “Thank you.”
Tony interrupted. “Old man Jennings respected my father because Pop understood how a job was supposed to be done. Pop took pride in that yard, and Jennings understood that. He valued—order. When he moved away, up to Amherst, he thanked my father.”
Willie struggled from the chair and faced his son. “No more.”
Tony faltered. “I just want them to understand that you have pride…yes, pride.”
His father moved toward the kitchen. I could tell he was embarrassed by his son’s declarations. A man does his job and does not need a son to declare how good he is at it.
“Yes,” I noted. Then, perhaps foolishly, I quoted Buddha. “A man is the leaf he touches.” Then I tried to remember the line in Vietnamese. “Mot nguoi dan ong la anh cham vao la.” I stammered, mumbled the last syllables.
A flicker in Willie’s eye corner. A quick nod.
But Tony was rattling on. “Christ, even after he sold the place, before he left town, he called Pop and told him to work in the yard before the new owners—you know them, the Canterburys—arrived.”
His father shot him a look that I had trouble reading. He disappeared into the kitchen. Tony was oblivious.
“Did you ever see Marta again?” I asked Tony.
“As a matter of fact, I did. She was at the post office one afternoon when I walked in. She was telling someone that Joshua Jennings had died.”
“How did she act?”
“She was sobbing out of control.”
“That’s sad,” Hank noted.
“I didn’t think so,” Tony said. “I hated what she did to Pop.”
Hank and I said our good-byes, and left, Tony trailing behind us. On the first floor he turned toward his doorway, but then, rushing back, grasped Hank’s elbow. “Come inside for a minute.”
We followed him into his apartment. “Pop’ll be mad at me for what I said upstairs. He says I talk too much. I don’t care. I had to say something.”
We stood in the doorway, looking in on a messy apartment. His wife was nowhere in sight, but a scraggly fifteen-year-old boy was stretched out on a ripped sofa, playing some video game off the TV. He glanced up and made no effort to lower the volume.
“Turn that goddamn noise down, Big Nose,” his father yelled.
The boy ignored him.
Tony motioned us to a desk near the kitchen. It was really an old maple table, cluttered with bills and magazines and folded plastic bags from a local Vietnamese market named Bo Kien. He reached under some Vietnamese newspapers and pulled out what looked like an old scrapbook. “Here.”
In a voice that was soft and gentle, removed from the brutal rasp he’d used upstairs, he flipped open the yellowing pages. He thumbed past slick color photos of his family in America. But at the back he slipped out a black-and-white photograph that was perhaps six inches long. I held it in my palm. Wrinkled, bent, one side water-stained, the other side faded and torn, it was a photograph of his family.
“My father carried this on the boat from Saigon. The only picture we got. Ruined, yes, but every week Pop comes downstairs and looks at it.”
A dim photograph of Vuong as a sharp-looking young man, standing next to his pretty wife, whose hand rested on the boy Tony’s shoulder. Tony was maybe fourteen years old. But in the faded section on the right was the faint ghost of a young girl, nearly faded out of view. Her father’s head was inclined down toward her neck, and his hand rested on her shoulder. A tattered, miserable remnant, this relic that had barely survived the rough waters of the South China Sea, but I noticed Tony lovingly replaced it in the scrapbook.
“Pop won’t keep it in his place,” he told us. “Every time he holds it he mumbles the same words.” And then Tony chanted in Vietnamese: Kinh cau sieu.
A prayer that the dead would find peace.
I closed my eyes, a little dizzy.
“He is waiting for her to come to him and say that she is at peace. Every day he waits for her ghost to move through him.”