Ming hesitates. “She was waiting to talk to me.”
“You’ve got it all figured out.” James tries to placate him.
But James can’t possibly understand; because of the false language barrier, he never had a conversation with O-Lan. He’s never eaten her food. For a moment Ming can almost taste the red radishes, the thin white lotus like the lace of bones. With an effort, he trains his mind back to the conversation. “Of course,” he says, “that still doesn’t solve the question of where Dad was planning to put the money after retrieving it from the hospital. There’s the biggest mystery: What was his real way of hiding money? He left the money in the hospital and died planning to get it back and bring it to his secret hiding place. You know he was sitting on a pile of cash, years and years of cash. His Life Savings.”
“You think he was loaded.”
“I know. Some people, they go through life, and what they have to show for it is money. I know Ba was that way.” He finishes the thought. “It takes one to know one.”
They sit silently in front of the TV. Ming is aware of Christmas Eve oppressing them. James checks his phone. He’s about to leave for the restaurant, to set up for the party. They must both be at the restaurant soon. James puts his phone away, and Ming senses something he’s never felt around his younger brother before—not love, not exactly. Comfort, gratitude, and trust. He knows he must take a risk and bring up the matter he’s been keeping back, something that’s been growing in his mind. He stares at the screen’s bright, meaningless images.
“I suspect you’re another one,” he says. “I think you’ve got a taste for treasure, James.”
There is a tick of quiet between commercials.
“Ming,” says James, glancing over, trying to meet his eye. Ming looks away. “So, it’s about the freezer room. I don’t think Dad’s stash is invested out in the world. I think it’s at the restaurant, in the basement.”
Ming keeps his gaze trained at the television.
“You were going on about a lot of stuff, when you were sick. I had a hunch—so I went and looked it up. Eight hundred thirty-eight thousand dollars, that was the going price of a bar of gold, last winter.”
So the old nun was right, and James is, indeed, cannier and more relentless than they’ve been giving him credit for. “You fucking well know Dad wasn’t talking to me from the spirit world. That was just a crazy fucking hallucination, James.”
“Listen, Ming,” James says, “I went downstairs last week, to check it out. The room seems like it’s falling apart. The south wall, in the back, it’s like part of a brick wall was halfway taken down. There are at least three skinny bricks, recently painted.”
“Stop.”
“He told you about it,” James persists. “He must have wanted you to go find it. He must have trusted you not to waste it.”
“No, no, thanks. I don’t need it and I don’t want it.”
They sit together in silence. “We can leave it down there,” James says. “In case one of us needs it in the future. For the restaurant. Or for more legal costs, or—”
“All right.”
When James is gone, Ming heaves himself out of his father’s chair and goes upstairs to get ready for the Christmas party.
What the four of them (Ming, James, Brenda, and Katherine) rarely mention is the fact that they’re keeping the restaurant open for Dagou, who will need the place after the appeal is successful and he’s out of prison. This is the advantage of a family business, Ming thinks, as he gets into the shower: it can employ an ex-convict as a matter of policy.
Anyway, they have time on their hands. Business has become less steady after the verdict. The Haven regulars haven’t abandoned them, but the peripheral customers have stayed away because of the persistent rumor about dog meat. The rediscovery of Alf might help somewhat. But people are cautious: the restaurant is now marked, or marred. It’s no longer an upstart business founded by new arrivals, but a local institution with a history and tragedy of its own.
Are the Chaos immigrants anymore? Ming wonders, as he searches for his reflection in the steam-covered mirror. Are they still an immigrant family, now that their mother and father are gone, and after all the passion they’ve spent, the transgressions they’ve committed in Haven? He remembers the luncheon at the Spiritual House: Leo shouting, Alf pressing his butt against his shoes, he himself retreating safely into his hunting blind. He can’t pretend he’s innocent, can’t protect himself anymore. If the past year has been about anything, it has been about their recognition—his, Dagou’s, and James’s—that they are Americans now. This country is the place where they have made their ghosts. It’s home.
The Portal
The midday sun, unseasonably warm, shines through the last oak leaves that drop into James’s path, as he rides his bicycle, without haste, down Cosgrove Avenue, toward the restaurant. At a long traffic light, he digs his hand into his pocket and discovers the piece of sesame candy given to him a year ago by his mother, at the Spiritual House. He unwraps the sticky candy and eats it slowly, enjoying the sweetness, popping the seeds between his teeth.
Arriving at the restaurant, James skids to a stop to avoid the small figure of Mary Wa, emerging from the station wagon in which she sometimes makes deliveries. She’s insisted on delivering the supplies for the party.
“Let me help,” says James, leaning his bicycle against the restaurant. In the front seat of the car, Alice is sitting with her sketchbook. James’s heart pummels his chest. He hasn’t seen Alice in almost four months.
“Where’s Fang?”
Mary opens the back of the station wagon. “Fang is still asleep,” she says. “And what are you doing, awake?”
James shrugs, smiling slightly.
“You never used to be this way, James Chao. Keeping my son up until three o’clock in the morning, drinking and talking about who knows what. Fang says you and Lynn make him apply to Madison. But what about you, James? You’re not going back to school? You don’t want to be doctor anymore?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Wa. I’m taking a break.”
“Just because your brother is not allowed to live his life, it doesn’t mean you don’t live yours,” she says, with an uncharacteristically sage expression. “You get on with your own life.” She puts a hand on his shoulder. “You’re getting strong,” she says. “Well, you need some time. Time to get over everything, and time to get used to the fact that Winnie is no longer on this earth.”
James says nothing, but it is comforting to have a motherly hand on his shoulder. After a while, he moves away, toward the entrance.
“You’re not locking up that bike?”
“No one’s going to steal my bike.”
“We need something to eat,” Mary says unexpectedly. “Come on, Alice.”