Alice gets out of the car. Together, they walk through the red double doors, under the banner that has been up for three months and is beginning to fly a bit loose on windy days, grand re-opening.
The sun streams into the dining room, lighting up the same old booths upholstered with red vinyl. Yet there are notable changes. The lampshades are new. The place looks cleaner than before, and the air is less sticky, as if someone has personally wiped the decades-thick film of cooking oil from every square inch of every table and booth. Someone has. The walls have been repainted smoothly in “Himalayan Paw,” a matte golden color chosen by Katherine. An enormous lucky bamboo, which Katherine purchased for an unreasonable sum, stands near the door. There’s a flock of framed black-and-white photographs on the walls, snapshots of the Chao family members over the last dozen years: James and Dagou, when James was in middle school; Dagou posed with his instrument; all three brothers; the brothers with their parents. Near the register, there’s a photograph of Alf and Winnie, taken sometime in the year before James left for college. Winnie kneels with her arms around Alf, who’s beaming at the person behind the camera. Someone has gone to the trouble of removing the glow of the flashbulb from his eyes.
“There’s no need to hide anything,” Katherine said, on the day when she brought over the stack of framed photographs wrapped in brown paper.
In the kitchen, the old counter has been replaced. The office has been cleaned out. The bathroom has been remodeled, and, downstairs, the refrigeration in the freezer room has been disconnected.
Mary Wa asks to be seated. “Alice needs something to eat. All she would have this morning was orange juice. Dumping cold acid into her stomach, first thing.”
Nervously, James gestures to a table.
“I’m okay, Ma,” says Alice. She sits down in a resigned way and looks at the menu.
She’s dressed characteristically out of season, wearing an arsenic-green cotton print that emphasizes her long, thin arms. The dress is the kind another girl might have bought at a vintage store, but James guesses it came from an old suitcase in the basement. He remembers the smell of her skin. He wants to run his hands up and down her arms, to make her shiver.
Alice asks for tofu and mushrooms; she must have decided to continue with her plan to stop eating meat. Is she getting enough protein? James adds extra tofu and a beaten egg into her soup. From the kitchen, he watches her profile as she eats. He wants to take a photograph but he’s sure she would be disturbed by that, and it does seem voyeuristic. Still, how else to imprint in his memory the exact slope of her forehead, the long curve of her nose against the gold wall of the restaurant, glowing in the winter light? As he stands there watching her eat, each moment stretches into a translucent pool of time—endless, and yet over in an instant.
He has to leave her alone. Still, he interrupts her as she makes her way to the bathroom. “When are you going to New York?”
“I told them I would start on January fifteenth.” She’s taking a job in Brooklyn as a babysitter for one of Ming’s old coworkers, sharing a studio apartment with one of Lynn’s classmate’s sisters.
“So, really soon,” he says.
He’s afraid he’s guilt-tripped her, but she studies him somewhat gently and asks, “How are you?”
James shakes his head. “I miss you,” he says quietly, but her mother is hovering. “I’ll see you tonight, at the party.”
Alice nods. James stares at his sneakers. After the verdict, Alice said it made sense for them not to be alone together for a while. Of course, they’ll always be friends, but why bring back old feelings? James wonders now. Have the feelings Alice once felt for him vanished in the same way so much of Dagou’s anger and hatred for Leo Chao have gone? After emotions are felt, expressed, where do they go? Is there a place where spent passion collects? Surely it can’t simply vaporize, disappear like smoke. There must be a secret hiding place. For every old love affair, a locked room.
Now Alice is leaving with her mother. He waves from the door as they get back into their car. It’s hard to be the one left behind.
He’s staring at Mary Wa’s vanishing station wagon when he senses the opening of a portal. Hears Dagou’s deep, husky voice. I forget you have such bad Chinese. You’ll live a big, important life, you’ll grow up into a powerful man. You’re going to have adventures—expansive, challenging adventures; you’re going to live in many places. Maybe, when the appeal is successful, he’ll say goodbye to Dagou, and to the restaurant. Maybe he’ll go out into the world. He could have other lovers, perhaps many more. And he’ll be all right financially, he’ll find a job. Didn’t Ming say he, James, had a nose for money like their father and like Ming himself? Didn’t Gu Ling Zhu Chi say he would remember everyone he ever knew? It’s possible that, somewhere out in the world, he’ll meet up with Alice, and they’ll be together again.
Family
By five o’clock the restaurant tables are rearranged in preparation for another, much smaller Christmas party. Instead of long rows, the tables are set up in a square, with chairs along the outside. There are red tablecloths and napkins, and in the center there is another table with a very tall vase that Katherine has filled with red roses, holly, and fancy white mums. For Christmas the brothers have planned a menu of sea bass and vegetables—nothing grandiose this year—although, to honor their parents, they’ve also stewed a large kettle of pork hocks.
Around four o’clock, Jerry Stern enters the restaurant and sits down in his usual booth. James, wearing an apron, waits on him.
“Talked to Dagou yesterday, about the appeal,” Jerry says genially. “How about a beer?”
While James gets the beer, Jerry picks up one of the restaurant menus and flips through it. The plastic cover and the laminated pages are smooth and glossy. James wiped each of the menus with Windex one night when he found it impossible to sleep. The menu is also fat with new inserts reflecting ideas Dagou dreams up and persuades them to try.
“How did Dagou feel about the appeal?” James asks, returning with the beer.
“Of course, discussing it made him a bit anxious, but—” Jerry frowned at the “Chef-at-Large Menu,” an orange sheet of paper. “Bird’s nest soup? Think the chef-at-large might be getting you in over your head?”
“You tell him.”
Jerry says, “I’ve suggested to your brother that he find someone else. There’s an attorney from Milwaukee Katherine wanted to bring in—”
“She was just anxious, Jerry. You know Dagou would never agree to be represented by anyone else.”
“Katherine is a big help to me and Sara,” Jerry says. “For an attorney at an accounting firm, she’s showing a real gift for litigation.”
“She told me she’s thinking of quitting her job and becoming a public defender.”
“Talk her out of it.” Jerry squints at the menu again.