“Because,” Fang says, “if you’re wrong—if you remembered wrong, and the key was not on the shelf at the end of the party—then your father could have been killed by anybody, and not just Dagou. By anyone during the party, or even anyone who happened to be inside the restaurant to sneak it off the shelf in the weeks before the party.”
“No,” James says. The pigeons above are no longer circling but clucking, cooing, listening. “Here’s where we disagree: I do remember seeing the key on the shelf. But, even if I remembered it wrong, I believe someone could have stumbled down there and accidentally removed it. It was an accident.”
“James,” Fang says, “you loved your dad. But don’t let your love make you so blind you can’t see you were the only person who did. Everybody hated him.”
“No one hated him enough to kill him.”
“How can you say what depths of hatred people keep to themselves? The Skaers, for example. Do we know what the Skaers feel about your family’s restaurant, what they think your parents’ workaholism has done to drain their family businesses over the years? And there are others.”
James doesn’t answer. He remembers Dagou’s story about Ken Fan, shamed by Leo’s behavior at the post office. My father made them all look bad.
Fang is still talking. “Did your dad’s claim that he was going to sell the restaurant make Dagou angry enough to do it? Is Ming mercenary and bitter enough to do it? Or what if Dagou wasn’t alone in this? How about Brenda? Why’s she involved with your brother? If all she wants is money, she would start sleeping with an older man. Either she’s, one, got yellow fever; or, two, she’s hot for your brother specifically. What if she’s unwilling to give up having sex with your brother? What future does he have, except his father’s restaurant?”
“You’ve got sex on the brain.”
“It takes one to know one,” Fang says, raising his brows. “But thanks for giving me credit. Because I can’t attract sexual partners, people think it doesn’t matter to me.” He wards off James’s objection with an upraised hand. “Anyway, I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but something was going on.”
“Well, you’re wrong about Brenda. She’d never get Dagou into so much trouble.”
“Why wouldn’t it be an employee? I know JJ was in California, but what about that woman who chops vegetables?”
“O-Lan? She never goes near the freezer. She couldn’t read the sign, so she didn’t know about the key.”
“Then back to Brenda. How did she get hired? Your father usually hires FOBs.”
“My dad’s hired outside servers before. Brenda’s broke, and so my dad gave her a job. As a favor,” James adds, although he knows Fang won’t believe him.
“You know as well as I do, your father didn’t give favors. It was all a transaction for him. And he never made a simple transaction. He made a deal. Listen, I know! My mother is much tougher than she appears, but even she had to pull some stunts in order to do business with your dad. He would’ve run her out of business if he hadn’t figured out it would be too time consuming and potentially risky to buy his ‘oriental groceries’ on his own. Oh no, he let my mother stay afloat as a calculated cost. He didn’t think about anyone except himself. You know it’s true.”
“It could be true,” James acknowledges.
“An apparent transaction, James. Just admit that he screwed everyone: women for sex, and men for money. Anyone might have had the motive to kill Leo, might have had an itch they needed to satisfy. Might still need.”
They’ve reached the end of the alleyway. They’re walking out onto a sidewalk that runs along a broad avenue. Two blocks away, in an older residential neighborhood, is the former school where the Spiritual House is located. James lowers his voice because they’re no longer shielded. “What do you mean, still?”
Fang peers at James from under his cap. “Well, where’s your father’s money? There’s not a peep in the news that anyone has found any of his money.”
A Mysterious Visitor
Winnie Chao’s three sons know as much about her as most sons know about their mothers. They remember her smell, sound, and touch; and now, after her death, they can recall a hundred ordinary details; but from these facets the larger story of her life can’t be completed. They’re well acquainted with the hack of her ironic laugh, but they’ve never heard the eager giggle of her early youth; they remark upon her appetite for food, but they have no idea that she liked to bite even her husband in the throes of passion. They know only that she hated him and don’t understand she’d loved him. They’re still nursing their own shame, as men.
For seven times seven days, as Winnie’s spirit wandered quietly between the living and the dead, her sons didn’t see her: not in the restaurant kitchen, where Dagou gestured at O-Lan from the stove; nor in the dining room, where James reread a note from Alice while Ming and Katherine bent together over a laptop. Katherine looked up, sensing she was being watched, but after a moment she turned back to the screen. Only some of the nuns knew Winnie was there. One evening at the Spiritual House, with bright snow falling outside the windows, Sister Omi paused while heaping cabbage leaves into a stainless-steel bowl. She felt a restlessness pass through the room, into the cabbage, which seemed to hover in her hands. Nearby, Sister Chung-Hung bent over a bowl of rice and vegetables. A large, pensive woman who frequently had visions during meals, she wasn’t surprised to see a black-haired Winnie, wearing the same wool coat and plaid scarf from the day of her arrival at the Lake Haven Station, in the middle of winter, more than three decades ago.
Now, on the forty-ninth day, Dagou, Ming, and James, together with her essential people, gather at the Spiritual House to support Winnie’s spirit as it makes the transition to a rebirth in the Pure Land. Gu Ling Zhu Chi is here again, with An at her elbow. Also, the nuns; also, Winnie’s closest friends among the Chinese families in Haven. Fang and Alice are here, and Brenda. Jerry Stern arrives early, uncharacteristically professional in a suit and tie, and spends some time with Dagou in Gu Ling Zhu Chi’s sitting room, making sober conversation. Katherine can’t take the day off from work. She has sent an arrangement of plum blossoms and a generous donation.
When the prayers are over, the group stands near the entrance, unwilling to depart quite yet, telling stories. How Winnie came to the U.S. as the paper sister of a distant cousin and met Leo Chao in Chicago, standing in line at a convenience store. Leo, who had somehow managed to make it to the U.S. on his own, and who was already managing a restaurant. (He hired her immediately.) Within a year, they had set out for Haven, “like pioneers,” Leo always said, among the first Chinese people ever to live there.
“Do you know, James,” says Ken Fan, “that in those early days your mother was being courted by a man named Pu? In the end, your dad said, he had to step in and marry her, to save her from the fate of being named Winnie Pu.”