The Better Mother

PART FOUR





THE CAFÉ

1947


Val stood in the café window, watching as the men left work, locking doors behind them, folding their stained aprons and tucking them under their arms. The streets of Chinatown, like they did every evening, would soon transform. The drab fish shops and diners would be abandoned, making way for the preternatural colours and sounds that unfurled in the night. Red-clad prostitutes leaning against doorways. Men, their faces hidden by brown brimmed hats and a navy darkness, scuttling through doors that went unused during the day. Music spilling out of the neon-lit clubs in booms and tinkles. Val slowly turned back to the empty restaurant and began stacking the chairs on the tables so that Mr. Chow could mop the floors.

One by one, the cooks left, nodding at Val as they walked out the door. Suzanne was the last of the waitresses to leave. A scarf covered her curly hair, and she winked at Val as she hurried through the room. “Hugh’s taking me out again tonight. Wish me luck.”

In the back office, Val took off her apron and hung it on a hook. The floor, wet with soapy water, shone in the light like the slick of sweat on hot skin. She looked down at her brown skirt and picked off a crumb clinging to the rough fibres.

As she pulled her handbag from a shelf above the desk, Mr. Chow walked in, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his apron balled in his hands. Val felt caught, like he had disturbed her while she was changing her stockings. She clutched her bag to her stomach, wanting an extra layer to hide behind.

Mr. Chow looked equally startled. “I’m sorry. I thought you had left. Am I interrupting something?”

“No. Not at all. I’m just leaving.” The office was small, and Mr. Chow was standing in front of the door. His broad chest and the light-blue checked pattern on his shirt seemed to fill the room.

It was like the pure, bright crash of lightning, that moment when Val understood there was nothing she wanted more than to taste this man and feel his body on hers. She might pant from the heat seeping outward through her skin.

When he placed his hands around her waist, she tilted her head up and stared at the stubble on his chin. His lips were parted the tiniest fraction of an inch. She closed her eyes long enough to let out a small, barely there breath. She knew he could feel her exhale on his neck, trailing around his Adam’s apple like a finger on fire. Funny how the smallest movements can churn the depths of a body.

Their lips together blew a wind through her, a wind flecked with the dampness of their tongues, a wind that shot straight from her throat and arched her back. She reached for the tail of his shirt and pulled it from his pants. When he touched the backs of her thighs beneath her skirt, she shuddered at the jolt. This was the simple feel of body on body, when she could be rewarded by the goosebumps on the side of this man’s neck as she brushed him with her hand.

He smells like pancakes.

The desk rocked as he lifted her onto its edge and steadied himself. His hand was between her legs, pulling at her underwear and skirt and she thought, There. She unbuttoned her blouse and he licked her nipple, a long hot graze that left a damp crescent on her skin. His eyes simmered like hot tar under an unforgiving sun. He pushed into her, the desk banging against the wall, his shoes slipping on the wet floor. She was being torn in half, but she pushed back in a rhythm that made no sense to anyone but them. Val cried out, clenched her teeth, and Mr. Chow, his hair now fallen forward over his eyes, pulled away from her, shuddered and spoke one word: “Christ.” She looked down at her warm, wet belly before he collapsed against her, his pulse pounding like a snare drum against her skin.

Val wanted to say something, wanted to whisper words that he would remember for the rest of his life, but she knew “I love you” was wrong and, in some ways (but not all), untrue. She sucked in the smell of them together—rust and breakfast and the earthiness of moss. The silence grew thicker.

Mr. Chow zipped up his trousers and tucked in his shirt. Val cleaned her stomach with a paper napkin and re-buttoned her blouse, her eyes staring at her shoes, still tied securely to her feet. She was afraid to look up in case she saw disgust or shame or disappointment (yes, disappointment would be the worst) on his face. She wondered if she should leave, even run. This silence, she thought. Lord help me.

“My first name is Sam.”

Val looked up. He gazed steadily into her face, the lines of his jaw set.

“You can call me that if you like. But not in front of the others, if that’s all right.”

Val smiled, took his square hand in hers. “Sam,” she said, “I’m hungry.”


Every night, Val waited with a cleaning rag in her hand for everyone else to leave the restaurant. After locking the door behind the last employee, she met Sam in the office. There, his brown eyes travelled over her body as she undressed. Afterward, they clung to each other as if they depended on the weight of each other’s body for survival.

She stopped going home for dinner, telling Joan that the café was now providing an evening meal for any staff who helped close up. Sam cooked for her, using the leftovers in the icebox for simple sandwiches and warming up soup. After a few weeks, Val asked him to cook Chinese food, the kind that he remembered his mother making. And so, in the dark restaurant with a single candle burning on their table, Sam brought her stir-fried greens, pork short ribs in black bean sauce and buckwheat noodles tossed with soy sauce and green onions. She ate it all as Sam smiled at her from across the table. When she was full, he massaged her feet, rubbing out the stiffness from the long day.

Late at night, through the windows of the café, Val watched the streams of people walking from club to gambling den to brothel, mostly stumbling men with half-closed, drunken eyes, or sober ones with a speeding walk who focused their eyes straight ahead, perhaps concentrating on the possibility of arousal and the give of soft flesh under the thumb. But she saw the women too. The dancers walked with their overcoats tied tightly around them, but the sequins and glitter still peeked out from underneath hems and around collars.

One night, a trio of black women hurried through the wet street, their heads lowered against the rain that fell in heavy drops.

“They’re dancers from the all-black club around the corner.” Sam’s voice made her jump. When she turned around, he was standing in the dark, holding a steaming bowl of chicken congee. “We could go, if you want. I know you’re bored staying in the café all the time. I’m sorry my room at the boarding house is so small.”

She imagined the clubs to be hot and damp, with the odour of dancers and men alike, the floors sticky with spilled rye and whatever else the crowd brought in on their shoes. It would be warmest close to the stage, where the lights cut through the gloom and where high kicks spun the humid air. Maybe she could go, just the once.

A thin woman, her cheekbones like sharp rocks, staggered down the sidewalk. Her dress was pulled to one side, exposing a bony shoulder. One stocking pooled around her ankle. Val could see the makeup streaming down her face, black streaks from eyes to jaw. A man ran after her and pulled her arm so roughly that she spun into his arms. “You’re to give me what I asked for,” the man shouted, and she collapsed on his shoulder. He dragged her away, her body limp.

“Well, do you want to go?” Sam’s voice was soothing.

Val shook her head.

That night, well past midnight, she took him to the waterfront. As she began to lead him toward the waves, he hesitated, whispering, “I can’t swim.” She gently untied his shoes, peeled off his socks and rolled up his pants before taking his hand and walking him over the sand and rocks. He stood in the cold water up to his knees and shivered, his lips set in a grimace.

“How can you live here and never touch the water?” Val asked, but Sam didn’t answer and briskly rubbed his hands together.

She kissed him and felt the chattering of his teeth against hers. He held her tightly and pushed his face into her hair. As big and tall as he was, the water reduced him to a cold sliver of a man. Val wanted to laugh, but she stroked his back and led him to dry land. He reached into the paper bag he had left on a flat rock and passed Val a packet of sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, the pork in the centre still steaming.

She woke up the next morning in her room, warm and smug with the cobwebs of happy dreams still clinging to her. Today Joan might sulk over the fabric of her wedding dress, or drag Val to look at potential apartments, but none of it mattered. For the first time in her entire life, Val was finally, deliciously full.


The wedding took place that June in the front garden of the boarding house. Joan and Peter said their vows under an arch covered in purple clematis, and the guests stood in the grass in a small circle, smiling and nodding as the two said their vows and kissed. Val’s eyes narrowed. Like brother and sister, she thought. If they’re in love, who could tell?

She was acutely aware of her parents standing beside her. When she met them at the train station, she was shocked at how old and brittle they seemed. They stood waiting with their suitcases on the floor between their legs, looking confusedly at the crowds. But it didn’t take long for her to realize they hadn’t changed at all; rather, in the year she had been away, she had grown used to their absence. With time and distance, her memories of them, now small and indistinct, had become smoother and more loving. Cleaner. The sight of them reminded her of Joan’s baby, his sharp bones, the way he clutched her skirt whenever she held him on her lap. She wondered if her parents ever visited his grave, but she didn’t ask. On the way to the boarding house they spoke about her father’s job at the cannery, where he had been downgraded to working half-shifts, like a lot of men. The foreman never said why, but everyone supposed it was because the war was now over, and they could hire cheaper men from the Chinese and Japanese crowds that were begging for work each day.

“They’ll take over soon. Mark my words,” he mumbled. When an Oriental walked past, Warren spat in the street.

At the wedding, Meg stood with her hands behind her back, her unfashionably long dress blowing against her ankles. Val could see that her father had been drinking, but he was sober enough to lean himself against the cherry tree and keep his hands clasped so that others would think that he was praying, not dozing in and out. His face was tinted with layers of dirt that had accumulated over the years and repelled water and soap, no matter how often he washed.

Peter’s parents, who had travelled all the way from Toronto, wore dark clothes and stood to the side, inches apart from each other. His mother silently wiped the tears from her face. They stared straight ahead, not daring to look into the eyes of Meg and Warren or to look too directly at Joan, in case one of them spoke, forcing a response. Val could sense their disapproval in the way Peter’s mother pursed her lips and in the sound his father made when he cleared his throat every few minutes. It was easy to imagine the conversation they might have had with each other that morning.

“Have you seen her parents? Hicks. They probably don’t even know how to use indoor plumbing.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do? He loves her, and she is a pretty girl.”

“Pretty! All you see is that blond hair and those blue eyes. She has no class. Just a step up from your common whore.”

“Come on now, that’s cruel.”

“Mark my words: she’ll never make him a proper wife. When we sent him out here for school, I didn’t think he’d get married for a long time. Or at least not to a girl like this.”

And there’s so much they don’t even know, Val thought.

A crow began cawing from its perch on the roof. Val watched as it opened and closed its sharp beak, its neck pulsing with the effort. The crow’s talons, curled over the shingles, glinted in the sunlight. It emitted one last caw and flew off, the shadow of its body floating over the lawn, changing shape as it drifted over the bushes and trees.

After lunch was served on the veranda, Val sat with Suzanne on a bench by the lavender bush at the very edge of the garden, both of them enjoying the day off from the café. They could see Joan floating over the grass in her white dress, touching guests on the shoulders as she passed, holding her skirt away from the dirt in the flower beds. Suzanne smiled.

“She looks pretty.”

“Yes, she does,” said Val, trying to keep her voice light.

“Hugh and I, we’re going to get married with no fuss. Just the minister and us, I guess.” Suzanne spun the plain gold band on her ring finger with her other hand. “My parents couldn’t come anyway, not in the summertime when there’s so much to do on the farm.”

“That’s too bad.” Val watched as her mother smoothed a wrinkle on Joan’s skirt. Joan turned around and stared at the fabric their mother had touched, looking, Val knew, for a dirty handprint.

Their landlady, dressed in yellow with a white hat, bounded across the lawn. “You must be so proud,” she boomed at Meg.

Val thought her mother was in danger of blowing away, her body small and dry, no match for the landlady’s generous bosom and wide smile.

“Proud,” Meg answered in a loud, strained voice, as if trying to match the merriment around her. “Yes. Very.”

“And you, sir, are you a little sad at marrying off your little girl?”

Warren nodded slowly, his eyes wandering from tree to guest to the landlady’s rouged cheeks. “I was sad when she left home last winter. She’s got a good husband now and doesn’t need to worry about herself anymore. Between you and me, I was never much of a provider. Shiftless, my father always said.” He laughed and spilled half his wine on the grass. Val leaned forward, ready to rush across the lawn and coax her father into a chair.

“The café will be busy next month,” Suzanne continued. “I’m leaving, and Mr. Chow is off to China again.”

Val turned and stared at Suzanne’s freckled face. “He’s going away?”

“Didn’t you know? Yes, he’s going to visit his family one more time to tie up some loose ends in the village. His wife and kids are moving here next spring, he told me. They’ve been apart for so long. I don’t think he’s been back in at least two or three years.” Suzanne laughed lightly. “I wonder sometimes if he even knows the names of his children.”

Val felt a throbbing behind her right eye and wondered if Suzanne could see the muscles of her face stretching and contracting.

“Children?”

Suzanne turned and looked at Val, her eyebrows knitted together. “He never told you, did he. I think there are three. One set of twins and another little girl? I can’t remember.” She paused and tilted her head to the side before speaking more quietly. “I do feel sorry for his poor wife, though, raising those kids alone back in China all this time and not knowing what her husband is getting into. I don’t know how she does it.”

“His wife.”

“He doesn’t talk about the family much, so I’m not surprised you’ve never heard of them.” Suzanne opened her mouth to say more, but the living-room clock chimed, and she turned her head at the sound. “Lord, is it three o’clock already? I have to go. Hugh is waiting for me. Make sure Joanie gets my gift, will you?” She stood up and put a hand on Val’s shoulder. “He’s still a good man, sweetie. Try to remember that.”

And Val was left sitting alone, smelling the off-sweet scent of lavender. She thought of the sweetness of dried sweat that comes from two people, the taste detectable only after the salt has been kissed away.


That night, she lay in bed beside her mother and felt the heat coming off her body in a way that was unfamiliar; Joan was always cool, her feet clammy. Val kicked the covers off and turned to the open window. Across the room on the floor, her father mumbled in his sleep and pulled his blanket up over his chin.

If it weren’t for her parents, she would walk down to the beach in her nightdress and step into the cold, churning water. Soak her body until she could no longer feel anything. She could hear the waves breaking on the rocks, followed by the whisper of water as it ran down the length of the sand and through tide pools that would be empty by morning. She could float face-up, her nightdress both billowing and flattening around her, and see nothing but the night sky.

She knew exactly how naive she had been. She had never asked, and he had never told. He had watched her undress, night after night. There were no secrets, only truths she hadn’t discovered yet. Her own fault for never guessing that a man his age—a man who owned a thriving business and yet lived in a single room on the second floor of a boarding house—would have a family to save his money for. Ridiculous. Stupid, stupid girl.

She sat up in bed and leaned in closer to the scissor-sharp air cutting through the open window. Even if she were swept away or chilled to the bone in that unforgiving ocean water, she would never forget the way he sucked her fingers or the hours they spent breathing in tandem or his bemused face watching her eat plates of food like she had never eaten before. She chewed on her fingers, remembering. There was no doubt about it. His cooking had left its mark.