James tries to smile, but he’s still thinking about what Fang said as they were walking: everyone hated his father. He imagines Fang now, whispering, Look at all of these people here for your mother. No one gathered for your father.
He wouldn’t want them to, James silently argues back. My father didn’t believe in any of this. No chanting or incense, no assistance to a future rebirth in the Pure Land. No repenting of his sins, any reunion with his loved ones in Heaven. He didn’t believe in anything except the primacy of his own self.
Exactly! Fang would say. Your father was the consummate American id, an insatiable narcissist, a shameless capitalist who wanted to screw everyone.
And what did it mean for the Chao brothers, James now wonders, to be the sons of Leo and Winnie Chao? He thinks of Ming, when they talked at the Other Restaurant, and his torment at being a yellow child in the American Midwest. He thinks of Dagou’s radio story of Leo at the post office, mailing gifts to a mysterious recipient, probably a woman. He pictures his mother, wearing herself out working in a restaurant that opened earlier and closed later than any place in town, living ashamed in a community aware of what shamed her; and he, like Ming, is crushed by what this must have been like. How have they been damaged, raised by Leo, who took his sons along the back alleys of Haven on errands of philandering? James considers Dagou, who is sweating, and Ming, standing pale and impatient in his expensive suit. Their father, the immigrant success story. Longtime owner of his own business. What did it mean to all of them, to be raised in this country, promised a life of American achievement, by a man who exploited their labor?
Leo Chao is dead, yet he will always be their father. He has given all three of them an inheritance of himself. And they’ve all accepted a part of this inheritance. Although he has rejected his father’s ambition, Dagou owns Leo’s garrulousness, his sexual palate. Ming has rejected his father’s Asian-ness, but accepted Leo’s ability with math and his goal of a Life Savings. And James?
“No,” James says aloud. “I don’t want it.”
As if she can sense what he’s thinking, Alice looks up.
Gazing at Alice, James knows he’s also accepted his father’s inheritance. That surety of desire, making his hands twitch now as he imagines reaching under her skirt. Over the last few months, he has become attuned to her body in a way he hadn’t known was possible. And it’s as if this new power—the uncanny ability to detect in others the feelings he and Alice have awakened in each other—has grown into something he can’t suppress or ignore. He is changing. For example, he knows from simply standing near them that the stale old sexual feelings between Mr. and Mrs. Fan are enclosed within a kind of talcum-powdered envelope of cordial respect. On the other end of the spectrum, he’s strongly aware that Sister Omi and another novice are awash in a passionate magnetism of very recent sexual feelings. Where will his inheritance take him? Gu Ling Zhu Chi said he would have adventures, live in many places. She said love would matter to him, more than anything else. He wonders, not for the first time since leaving college, what she meant by this.
“James?”
Brenda pulls James aside, into the room where the offering table is. She’s wearing a simple black dress and has twisted her hair into a dark bun, revealing only a glow of blue at the ends. James can sense she’s been affected by the ceremonies marking his mother’s death. Yet she’s no longer thinking about the prayers. She frowns at him, her lashes thickening.
“You seem a little angry, James. Are you okay?”
“No. I mean, sure, I’m functional, if that’s what you mean.” James fixes his gaze over her shoulder, at the black-and-white portrait of his mother hanging above the offering table.
Brenda bites her lip. Her teeth are perfectly white and even; her mouth is full and red even though she’s wearing no lipstick. James is more aware than ever of his sexual attraction to her, but he understands that whatever flirtatiousness she might have felt toward him is gone. It’s been replaced, not by indifference, but by a kind of mutual concern. Family love. He knows she does truly love Dagou.
“James,” she says, “you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. But I’ve been thinking this over a lot. About that night—Christmas Eve.”
“What about it?”
“Are you sure about when Katherine left the restaurant?”
James doesn’t answer. Brenda’s question has brought him up short. “Well, no,” he says after a moment. “I didn’t actually watch her leave. But Dagou and I both know, we’re both pretty sure she was gone. Why?” He’s still looking at Winnie’s portrait. Winnie gazes soberly back at him. For a moment he almost believes she’s trying to tell him something. It would be about tranquility, about how to find tranquility.
“Well, this is just stuff I think about when I can’t sleep,” Brenda says slowly. “But sometimes I get a hunch; I can sense he’s bluffing. He knows she was doing something that night, something she maybe shouldn’t have been doing, and all of this bluster about what he was doing—his whole story about going downstairs, standing at the door, about changing his mind—it’s just some way of protecting her.”
Forgetting his mother, James turns his gaze to Brenda. She is frightened. “Of course he’s protecting her,” he says, determined both to comfort her and to reassure himself. “He protects her all the time, because he feels guilty about being in love with you.”
“She’s been holding something back for months. She’s fighting to control herself, I don’t know why.”
“She still loves him, but he really loves you. That’s all it is.”
“I hope you’re right.”
They rejoin the dwindling group; Brenda takes Dagou’s hand. Several of Winnie’s friends have departed. Jerry Stern is gone. Three nuns stand near Dagou, listening to him patiently, James can see, out of respect for their mother.
“Ma was a singular Chinese mom,” Dagou is saying. “She raised us to believe in the value of a spiritual life. She was a devout Christian and a devout Buddhist. Some people have double happiness, but Ma had double spirituality. And she had faith in us, in her kids.”
“You were a good son to her,” says one of the nuns.
James nods. Even in those terrible days when he was being held and questioned constantly by the police, Dagou sent O-Lan to deliver delicacies to Winnie in the hospital. Now he holds Brenda’s hand tightly and uses his other hand to blot his perspiring face with a wad of Kleenex. “She never gave up on me,” he says. “She told me to believe in myself, she told me to believe in love. She was a really singular….” His voice trickles off.
Fang steps away to the bathroom, the same bathroom where Alf once put his pink tongue into the toilet.
“So, you chose to have a speedy trial?” Ken Fan rescues Dagou.