Carpe Limo
One look in the mirror told me I’d tied my necktie too short. I pulled at the knot and muttered under my breath. I’d been regular at going to church since I met Hope, but some things still didn’t feel natural.
The doorbell rang.
“Can you get that?” I called to Hope.
“Can’t,” she yelled back from the downstairs bathroom. “Jin’s on the big-girl potty, and I think we are getting close.”
“Peng?” I yelled down the hallway.
No answer. I threw my tie onto the bed and rushed down the stairs.
I opened the door to a bevy of voices and smiles.
“Where’s my little peaches?” Mimi said as she hugged my neck. “I haven’t seen her in days.”
“First-floor bathroom,” I said. “If you hurry, you might be in time for a breakthrough.”
“Big-girl potty?” Mimi asked, pulling back to look at me.
I nodded.
“Then what am I doing wasting my time here with you?” She rushed past me without another word. Since Hope’s parents lived in Montana, Zack and Mimi had become unofficial grandparents to Peng and little Jin. They were joining us for church today and a backyard barbecue afterward. We were celebrating Peng’s getting a new calling and Shi-Shi’s being accepted into a prestigious dance school.
“Hi, Uncle Matt,” Shi-Shi said, stepping forward and giving me a hug. “Is Peng ready yet?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “Why don’t you go knock on his door and see if you can shake him loose.”
“I’m on it,” she said and rushed up the stairs.
I watched her as she went. Shi-Shi had turned into an amazing young woman. I shuddered to think what might have happened to her had we left her in the orphanage. Even though the trafficking ring had been exposed and broken up, there was no telling what type of situation she might have found herself in. When we’d returned home with three orphans rather than one, we had immediately shared our concerns with Zack and Mimi about placing Shi-Shi in a good home. We’d wanted to take all three but had felt we should start our family venture with just the two siblings to make sure we could do the parenting thing okay. Our suggestion to Zack and Mimi that they might want to consider how Shi-Shi would fit in with their family was tentative. But they didn’t hesitate. They filed their own adoption papers the next day.
I turned back to Zack. He was also watching Shi-Shi, and I don’t think I’d ever seen his face beaming like it was now.
I reached for his big, dark hand and winced as he took me into his grip. Zack was getting older, but he was still one of the strongest men I’d ever known. When I’d first met him, he was my hand-to-hand combat instructor at Quantico. He’d weighed quite a bit more then, and his goal had been to use his weight and skill to crush me into the ground. My goal had been to gain enough skill to stop him. Later, I’d been assigned to work undercover in a Salt Lake singles ward in order to locate a potential terrorist. I’d been surprised when the bishop of the ward and my direct superior for the mission had just happened to be this giant black man. He was no longer trying to bash in my brains, at least not overtly, but he had threatened to cause me bodily harm if I brought harm or heartache to any one of his flock—especially a certain beautiful lady named Hope Winslow. He was probably the closest thing I would ever have to a father, and I loved him dearly.
“Come in, and have a seat,” I said. “This could take a few minutes.”
Zack watched Shi-Shi until she disappeared from sight. I motioned him to sit in my “papa bear chair,” an insanely luxurious recliner that Hope had bought as a thank-you gift for me after we’d returned from China with the kids. Zack settled into it and sighed. I always felt like I was drowning in the chair, but it seemed built to fit Zack. Fatherhood also seemed to fit him a lot easier than it did me. He was still looking at the spot Shi-Shi had just vacated.
“Did Shi-Shi ever have any problems adjusting?” I asked. “It’s been two years, but sometimes I think Peng still looks at us like we’re aliens.”
“Shi-Shi doesn’t adjust; she conquers.” He sighed and pulled the footstool up to rest his feet. “I don’t think there is anything that girl couldn’t do.”
“Do you think we did the right thing?” I asked. “Letting them keep their Chinese names?”
“It hasn’t slowed Shi-Shi down a bit,” Zack said. “But girls seem to do well with unique names. If they don’t have them, they just make them up anyway. I’m not sure it’s the same with boys though. Is Peng still having issues?”
“You know Peng. He doesn’t talk about it. I wish he would have considered changing his name. I know he gets teased. I even hear it in the halls at church. ‘Did you get that name when your parents dropped a spoon on the floor, or were you just a royal peng in the neck?’ Stuff like that.”
“And how does Peng react?”
“He doesn’t react, but I do. Sometimes I want to find a long spoon to shove down their insensitive little throats.”
“Ah,” Zack said with a knowing nod.
“What do you mean, ‘Ah?’”
“I’ve got a friend who’s a coach. He says there are two kinds of crazy. The kind that puts you in a psychiatric ward and the really crazy kind.”
“The really crazy kind?”
“The kind where someone says something bad about your kid. That turns rational people into potentially violent psychopaths. Welcome to parenthood.”
I knew what Zack was talking about. I’d probably go Rambo if anyone ever teased or threatened little Jin. But with Peng, it was different. Maybe it was because of his age when we got him, but I didn’t really feel like his parent, even if I did want to punch the kids who teased him.
“How is it?” I said. “With you, Mimi, and Shi-Shi?”
Zack leaned back in his chair, and a broad grin stretched across his face. He sighed deeply.
“I owe you a great debt, son. A debt I know I will never be able to repay. When you brought Shi-Shi to us and suggested adoption, I didn’t know what to think. Mimi and I were set in our ways and had pretty much prepared ourselves to be content as surrogate grandparents to the baby you and Hope were bringing home. We had given up on the idea of being parents long ago. But as soon as we met Shi-Shi, all of that changed. I can honestly say these past few years have been by far the best years of our lives. I can’t imagine life without these kids in it.” Zack had expressed this same sentiment several times before.
I watched Zack for a moment and felt a pang of jealousy.
He must have felt my gaze because his penetrating eyes turned to me, and he asked a typical Zack question. “What about you, Mr. Knight? How’s parenthood treating you these days?”
I squirmed a bit in my chair. I should agree with Zack and say these were also the best years of my life, but I couldn’t lie to him. After being my combat instructor, my boss, and my bishop, he would see right through me.
“Truthfully,” I said, “it’s been a struggle. Sometimes I long for the days when it was just Hope and me. Together. Alone. I mean, I can’t imagine life without little Jin, but I also tend to worry a lot more than I used to. I think I found a gray hair the other day.”
“What about Peng?” Once again Zack seemed to know how to get to the crux of the matter. I had been avoiding talking about Peng.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s great with Jin, and when he visits Hope at her work with the cancer kids, you can tell he has a good heart. But he seems somehow disconnected. Maybe he’s just a typical teenage boy, but that kid has more layers than an onion. I don’t think he considers us his parents, and I certainly don’t feel like his father. He barely speaks, he disappears at night to who knows where, and he causes Hope to lose a lot of sleep. You know, I’ve been able to work my way inside the heads of some of the most devious and secretive terrorists in the world. I’ve been able to understand them, even build relationships with them, but I tell you, Peng is still a mystery to me.”
I heard a rustling behind me, and I hoped it wasn’t Peng. It wasn’t. It was worse. Hope had walked in, and she was glaring at me.
“How long have you been there?” I asked.
Zack stood, and Hope stepped over to him and gave him a hug.
“Long enough to hear Zack gushing about the best years of his life,” she said, releasing Zack and turning to me. “Long enough to hear you comparing our son to a terrorist.”
“That long,” I said, really wanting to change the subject. “Any success on the potty-training front?”
Hope was about to say something else when a two-foot-tall missile launched herself into my arms.
“Daddy, Daddy,” Jin said. “I get big-girl panties for church.” She pronounced it “choach.”
I held her up in the air above my head and twirled her around. “Did you go in the big-girl potty?”
Jin nodded vigorously.
Mimi followed her in and confirmed. “At first it was just a trickle, but then we got Niagara Falls. She’s officially a big girl now.”
Jin spotted Zack in the chair and almost jumped out of my grasp.
“Grampa, I’m a big girl.” She ran to show him her panties. My guess was that she would be showing anyone who would listen to her today. I was glad we were still a few years away from when that would not be appropriate any longer. Thinking about that time, I felt a sense of loss for the innocence of a two-year-old. An innocence I wasn’t sure Peng had ever had the chance to experience.
At that moment, Shi-Shi pulled Peng into the room by his tie. “Look what I found hanging from the handsome tree.”
Mimi scolded her daughter, “Let go of that tie, girl. You’re going to put a wrinkle in it.” She grabbed Peng by the shoulders and swung him around so she could pull him into her arms. Peng wasn’t really a hugger, but somehow Mimi could get away with it.
“Not only has he been hanging around the handsome tree, but apparently he’s been visiting the smell-good tree too. What is that you’ve got on, boy?”
Peng looked at the floor. “Shi-Shi made me put it on.”
“Well, she was right to do it. Now go give your gramps a hug before he falls asleep in that big ol’ chair.”
Zack stood, and Peng gave him the halfhearted hug of a teenager.
“You are getting tall, son. I swear you’ve inherited some of my genes.”
“I don’t think so, Pops,” Shi-Shi said. “If he had your genes, he’d be a freakish giant by now.”
“You watch your mouth, young lady. You’re not too old for a spanking.”
“But I am too fast. I don’t think you could catch me, old man.” Shi-Shi stood with her hands at her hips and her chin in the air as if in challenge.
Zack waved her off with a smile.
“Jin, come over here and get your dress on,” Hope said. She was still eyeing me as if to say we would talk later. “We need to get moving, or we’ll be late for church.”
The doorbell rang again. I got up to answer because I wasn’t sure that anyone else had even heard it. I opened the door to a horrifying sight: an elderly woman in a frilly white dress and a chauffeur’s cap.
“I hope I’m not too late for the pickup, Captain,” she said, saluting me.
“Permelia, why are you wearing a chauffeur’s hat?” I asked, not knowing if I really wanted to know the answer.
“I’m your ride,” she said, stepping aside and letting me see the white stretch limo sitting in front of our house. Permelia was also a member of the singles ward where I had once been assigned undercover. She had been Hope’s roommate at the time and had been the first person who had asked me out on a date. She had also tried to kiss me. She may have been seventy, but I don’t think she had really ever completely grown up. Everything she did was way over the top.
I stepped outside with her and pulled the door closed behind me. “Permelia, I really don’t think this is a good idea. Peng already thinks we are making too much of this.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “You only live once, and you don’t get any younger. My turkey neck can attest to that. This is one of the items on my bucket list, and the rope on my bucket is wearing thin. Lighten up, Matthew. Sometimes you just have to say carpe limo and take life by the horns.”
As I tried to figure out how to get Permelia to remove the limo from our street, the door opened behind me, and I heard a loud squeal. Shi-Shi emerged, pulling Peng by his tie again and jumping up and down with excitement. “Aunt Permelia, is that your limo? Can we see inside?”
“You’re not just going to see it, honey; you’re going to ride in it,” Permelia said. “We’re all going to ride in it. I’ve got it rented for the rest of the day. Maybe later we can go cruising and see if we can pick up some hot guys, but right now we are going to celebrate your dancing and Peng’s new calling by showing up to church in style. This is what I like to call making an entrance.”
Peng looked at me with pleading eyes. I could only shrug. When Permelia got something in her head, it was impossible to stop her.
“Carpe limo,” I said and stood back as everyone else flowed out of the door and into the fantasy world.
It was complete and utter chaos. We were a mixture of black and white, Asian and Caucasian, old and young, yet no one here seemed uncomfortable or out of place.
No one except me. I felt as out of place as Goldilocks trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable in the overwhelming vastness of the papa-bear chair.