- 13 -
Lapse
They spent about an hour and a half at the show. When it was close to dinnertime, Mary's stomach was growling.
"I think it's time to eat," Ba said. "How about soup?"
"Oh yeah!" Mary said.
They thanked Ben and congratulated him before heading out. As they stepped outside, Mary was surprised at how cool it felt. Then again, it wasn't unusual for the temperature to move up and down quickly this time of year. Mary had a sweater in her bag, but she had left that at Agape.
"Man, it got cold fast," she said as she hugged her arms.
Ba joked, "It's because you're too skinny! You need more fat like me to keep warm."
Carter was wearing his black sweater. He removed it and handed it to Mary. "Here, you can wear this."
"But won't you be cold, too?" Mary asked.
"I'll be fine."
Desperate for relief from the biting air, Mary put on the sweater. It warmed her instantly, as if it had been sitting in the sun all day. "You're really warm," she chuckled.
He smiled and didn't say anything.
They took another cab to a part of town called "Little Asia." Chinese shops and restaurants sat on one block, and Korean businesses occupied the next one over. A couple Thai places and Japanese joints were sprinkled about as well. Not far away was a huge grocery store that was owned by Vietnamese people. There were smaller shops inside the grocery store, like a hair and nail salon, a cell phone store, a bookstore that only sold volumes in Viet, a clothing store, and an impressive food court. Tucked into the corner of the food court was a little booth that always had lines. They sold different kinds of soup, including Mary's favorite, bún bò Huế. Most non-Viet people knew about the traditional noodle soup called phở, which was often mispronounced like "foh." It actually sounds like "fuh."
"I've not had this before," Carter said. "What's in it?"
"Noodles and beef, similar to phở," Ba explained. "But it's a different style from the central part of Vietnam."
"It's also pretty spicy, because they put hot chili paste in it," Mary said. "We can ask them to leave it out if you want."
"I'll be fine," he said. "I'll have mine the same way you have yours."
They placed their orders, and the woman at the counter gave them a number to put on their table. Soon, their soups were brought out to them, along with a plate full of shredded cabbage, herbs, and the wicked hot little chili peppers that could burn holes in your intestines.
Carter watched Mary and Ba for a moment as they broke apart their disposable chopsticks and began eating. He took his chopsticks as well, but his fingers fumbled about to hold them. He tried picking up some noodles, but they just slipped back into his bowl.
"We can get you a fork," Mary said.
But he shook his head. "I just need some practice." He watched her hands and arranged his in a similar way. When he tried for the noodles again, he managed to get one into his mouth before the others splashed back into the broth.
Mary and Ba laughed.
"Maybe I do need a fork," he chuckled, wiping the splatters from his face with a napkin.
"I'll grab one," Ba said. "I want to buy some soybean drink, too."
She stood and headed for the counter. Mary took the bottle of red sauce that came with the other condiments and squeezed a little into her soup.
"What is that?" Carter asked.
"Chili sauce," Mary said. "Do you want to try it? It's pretty hot, so just heads up."
"Yes please." He took the bottle and added a little to his broth. He tasted it with a spoon.
Mary waited for him to start crying.
"It's good," he said. And he squeezed a bunch more in.
"Are you nuts?" Mary cried. "You're making it like a nuclear bomb!"
Carter stirred the soup with his spoon until it was bright red and took another taste. "I like it."
Mary stared at him. Then, she picked up one of the atomic grade chili peppers from the condiment plate. "Try this."
Carter bit into it like a pickle. "These are good, too. Can I put it in my soup also?"
Mary was too shocked to answer.
"Here you are, Carter," Ba said as she returned with his fork and three cans of soybean drink. "Oh, so you like the peppers?"
He nodded as he bit into another.
Ba chuckled. "You're like Jean-Marc. He loved spicy food, although it gave him bad heartburn some times. Oh, Jean-Marc was my husband. Mary's grandfather. He was such a fun man. He probably would have challenged you to see if you could eat as many peppers as him."
Carter chuckled. "He sounds like a wonderful person. How did you meet him?"
"We met in Vietnam, during the war," she said. "He was working in Saigon for a French-owned company, and I was making my family nervous. All of my sisters had husbands and children, and I was thirty-seven-years-old and still not married. My mother tried matchmakers and everything, but nothing worked. They said I was too stubborn and that no man wanted me. I was also told that I was too skinny and wouldn't be able to have strong children." She looked at her expanded waistline and laughed. "That was a long time ago!"
"But you still found each other," Carter said.
Ba nodded. "My parents had a store in the front of our house. We sold all kinds of food. I worked there sometimes, when I wasn't at my part time job as a receptionist for the college. One day when I was watching the store, this Frenchman came and asked me which were the good cakes to buy. We sold these cakes that the American soldiers and other foreigners really liked. So I told him which ones, and he asked me to wrap them up and he paid for them. But then he handed the cakes back to me and said, 'These are for you.' I still remember. I was wearing my pink silk áo dài because I was supposed to be going out with a friend later that day. You know the one, Mary. I gave it to you last year when you turned sixteen."
It was buried deep in the bowels of Mary's closet. "I still have it, Ba," she said.
"An áo dài?" Carter asked. "That means 'long dress,' doesn't it?"
"You see that dress shop over there?" Ba asked. "Those long tunics with the flowing trousers. Those make up the áo dài." She looked at Mary. "You only wore it once to your cousin's wedding. I wish you would wear it again."
Another cousin needed to get married then, Mary thought. Mary didn't do dresses. Or pink.
"Anyway, Jean-Marc was wonderful," Ba continued. "He courted me for a while and then came and asked my father if he could marry me. My parents didn't agree at first. He wasn't Vietnamese, and he was a little strange. He was very passionate about many things, and he loved art. He painted as a hobby and taught me how. But my parents finally gave us their blessing. A foreign and odd husband was better than no husband at all. And they saw that we loved each other very much. But a couple months later, things started to get really bad. It was 1975, and the Americans were leaving. Jean-Marc's company pulled all its workers, and I went to France with him. When we got there, we tried to find out if my family made it out, but I never heard from them again."
Mary remembered the first time Ba told her this story. She was about six or seven years old, and Mom had scolded her for something stupid. Mary screamed that she hated her mother and ran up to the roof to cry. Ba came up shortly after to put her arm around her, and she told her this story. She told her how important family was, and that Mary should never say she hated anyone, especially her mother. You never know if something will happen and you never see that person again.
Ba continued. "When we got to Paris, I was so looking forward to meeting his family. I was hoping that they would love me like my family had loved him. But when they saw me, they were furious! Jean-Marc hadn't told them that he had gotten married, let alone married a Vietnamese girl. His mother actually told him to 'return' me, like I was something he had bought at a store. I felt awful. He was already the odd duck of the family, and I felt like I just made everything worse for him. I had a little money before I had left Saigon. Just enough for one plane ticket to America. I had never been before, and I didn't know which city I was going to nor what I would do once I got there. I knew some English, but not very much. I just didn't want to be the cause of so much trouble for him. So, I left."
Carter leaned forward in his chair. "What happened?"
She chuckled. "Jean-Marc followed me. He was angry. Not with me, but with his family. He said he was done trying to please them. 'America should be far enough to get away from them' he said. So we lived here. And you know what else he did? Instead of having me change my last name to his, he changed his to mine! Isn't that funny? Imagine that. A tall, dark, and very French man answering to 'Mr. Phan.' He was so silly."
Carter smiled. "And you were happy together?"
"Oh yes." She sighed. "But then the lung cancer came. He had been a heavy smoker all his life. We tried all the treatments available at the time, but the cancer won in the end. Mary's mother took it terribly. She's very passionate, just like him. More so when she was younger. When Jean-Marc died, she didn't know how to deal with it, and she made some bad decisions. She dropped out of college and started living with her boyfriend at the time, of whom I didn't approve. He was very mean to her. When they broke up, she lived with some friends and then more men. I don't know how many men she'd been with in all. She never told me. I stayed up nights crying and thinking about her. And then one day, she came home. Just like that. She was pregnant and she was crying. But she was safe. She told me how sorry she was and how much she wanted to be a good mom and get her life back together. And she did. She went back to school and studied nursing. Now she works with cancer patients. I suppose how her father died had a lot to do with that decision."
Ba took Mary's hand and smiled. "But this little one here, she's my miracle baby. She brought my daughter home to me. And now she's a smart, talented, and beautiful young lady herself."
Carter looked at Mary. She blushed but didn't look back at him.
Carter looked at Ba again. "Thank you for telling me your story."
Ba chuckled. "You're welcome, dear. And thank you for listening. Well, I feel like a little dessert. What about you two?"
Mary looked at her watch. Half past seven. "We should probably head back. I said that I'd get you home by eight."
Ba chuckled. "Oh, it'll be all right if I'm a little late. There's a great café on the way back, and they have the best desserts."
Carter seconded dessert, so they hopped on the bus and headed for the café. Mary glanced at her watch frequently. When they arrived, they sat down at one of the little round tables. A waitress came. "Welcome folks! What can I get for you?"
"I think I would like some crème brulée," Ba said. "Oh Carter, they have very good crème brulée. You can try some of mine if you want to get something else."
The waitress looked puzzled. "I'm sorry ma'am. We don't have the crème brulée anymore."
Ba looked surprised. "Not anymore? When did you take it off the menu?"
"I think it was about two years ago," she said. "Is there something else I can get for you?"
Mary's alert went up. This wasn't good.
"Two years ago?" Ba said. "But we had that just last week!"
Mary was now on high alert. Ba's memory had lapsed. Calmly, she took hold of her grandmother's hand. "It's all right, Ba. Let's get something else, all right?"
"We have a really great tiramisu," the waitress suggested.
Suddenly, Ba slapped her hand on the table. "But I don't want tiramisu. I want crème brulée! We've had it here for years. Why did they take it off the menu? Is it a new chef?"
"Ba, please—" Mary tried.
"I-I'm sorry," the poor waitress stuttered. "I can ask my manager."
"You do that!" Ba snapped. "And you should be ashamed of yourself. Two years. Like I don't know what I had just yesterday."
"Okay, Ba. Come on." Mary stood and helped her grandmother from the table.
"Where are we going?" Ba asked.
"We're going home. They'll have crème brulée there. Better than this place. Come on." As she ushered her grandmother from the café, Mary mouthed her apologies to the waitress. Carter followed.
By the time Mary got her outside again, Ba was calm. She took a deep breath. "What a wonderful night. Oh, Mary! Look at all the stars!"
Mary breathed a small sigh of relief. The spell had passed. "It's a great sky, Ba. Look, the bus is here. We'd better get on."
The bus ride back was uneventful, thankfully. They arrived at Agape about a quarter past eight. Mary and Carter accompanied Ba to her room. A nurse met them there to administer Ba's medicine and get her ready for bed. They waited in the small sitting area in her suite until the nurse returned with Ba in her nightclothes. Mary kissed her goodnight and then left with Carter.
"We should catch this bus," she said. "The next one doesn't come for another twenty minutes."
They boarded and sat across from one another. As the bus rolled down the street, Carter spoke for the first time in a while. "Mary? What happened tonight at the café?"
"Ba had a lapse in her memory," she explained. "It's confusing for her, you know? She takes medicine for it, but the lapses still happen once in a while. This was a small one, so it wasn't too bad."
"I see." He was quiet for a moment, but then he asked, "What does a 'big' one look like?"
Mary thought about what to say next. "She hasn't been at Agape for very long. She used to live at home with us. But between Mom's crazy schedule and my school, it was hard to keep up with her medicine. And it was harder to keep an eye on her all the time." She shifted her weight. "It was just small things at first. Like forgetting keys or leaving clothes down in the laundry room for days. But then it got more serious. Leaving the stove on. Forgetting to lock the door. Heading downstairs to get the mail but along the way forgetting where she was going or what she was doing."
"What was the final straw?" he asked.
Again, Mary chose her words carefully. "I came home from school one day. Just like normal. She was in the kitchen chopping up some vegetables for dinner. I came behind her to kiss her on the cheek like I normally do. But I scared her. And when she saw me, she didn't recognize me. She started screaming, asking me how I broke into the apartment and stuff. She still had the knife she was chopping with." She paused.
Carter asked quietly, "What happened?"
Rather than answer with words, Mary reached up and pulled the collar of her shirt down a little, revealing a thin pink line just under her collarbone.
His eyes grew wide.
Mary replaced her collar. "She didn't cut anything important. A neighbor had heard the screaming and came to see what was going on. When he saw the blood and the knife, he got me out of the apartment and went next door to call 911. We had forgotten to make sure she had taken her medication that day. Mom took some time off of work to take care of her, but she was running out of vacation time. Then Ba said that she wanted to live at Agape so that we wouldn't have to look after her. Mom and I tried to talk her out of it, but she had made up her mind. A couple months later, she moved there, and we moved into the apartment where we're at now for the cheaper rent."
Carter stared at her for a moment. He looked off to the side, as if he was trying to remember something. "You never said anything to anyone at school."
She shrugged. "No one needed to know."
"But you were hurt."
"I don't like other people in my business."
He was quiet for a moment. "I understand now why you don't like instability. You have enough of it with the people you care about. You don't need more from others."
Neither of them spoke for the rest of the trip. A little while later, they came to the stop near Mary's apartment and got off.
"Well, thanks for coming along," Mary said. "And sorry about the thing at the café."
"No need to apologize," he said. "Thank you for inviting me."
"Have big plans for the weekend?" she asked.
He looked skyward. "There will be a meteor shower tonight."
"Really?" she asked. "Will it be early? The roof is a really great place to watch…uh, that is, if you want to watch it from there."
He kept looking up for a moment. Then he turned his eyes back to her. "I think I had better pass. But thank you."
"No problem," she said. "Well, I guess I'll see you at school."
"Mary?"
"Yes?"
"Was this evening…a date?"
She thought for a moment. "Um, I don't think so."
"Why not?"
She laughed. "People don't generally bring their grandmothers on dates."
"Oh," he said. "So it's a date if it were just you and me?"
"I guess."
"Then, can we go on a date?"
She wrinkled her brow. "Huh?"
"Can we go on a date?" he repeated.
"You mean…just you and me?"
He nodded.
A myriad of excuses suddenly shot through Mary's head. She had homework. But what if he didn't ask on a school night? She had a lot of homework. She had chores. She had to shave the cat. Did people even shave cats? She'd never had one, so she didn't know.
"When?" she finally managed.
"How about Saturday night?"
Wow, that soon.
"Uh…"
"You don't have to if you don't want to," he said.
"No! I mean, not that I don't want to." She took a deep breath. "But why?"
He smiled. "I like being around you."
"Other than at school?"
"Let me rephrase. I like being with you."
More excuses came to mind.
"Your silence is difficult to interpret," he said.
"Sorry, I'm just thinking of what I have to do. I was thinking of—" cleaning out the fridge. "Or, I think I have to—" refinish the kitchen cabinets. "What I mean is, I was planning to—" soundproof the ceiling against the little monsters and their obnoxious video games. Actually, that was a pretty good idea.
She sighed. "Never mind. Saturday's fine."
"Is that a yes?" he asked.
She chuckled. "Yes."
He beamed. "I will meet you here at seven o'clock."
"Sounds good," she said.
"Good night, Mary."
"Night, Carter."
She watched him walk down the street and disappear around the corner. Then she rocketed up to the apartment and looked online for the meteor shower. It was scheduled for 11:28 that evening with high visibility from North America. That gave her plenty of time to clean the dishes in the sink and take some laundry down to the machines. Mary then went to her room for her telescope, since she wanted to look at some of the planets in between watching the meteoroids. She also grabbed a jacket, since it was still a little cool outside.
As she rummaged through her closet, her hand found the pink áo dài. She pulled it out and unzipped its protective garment bag.
Ba had been one of the luckier ones when she fled Saigon. She had enough time to pack a few belongings, and she didn't have to spend any time in a refugee camp. Mary heard stories of how some people had nothing when they left, and how women were raped in the camps and on boats as they were trying to get to safety. Others, like Ba's family, didn't make it out at all when the Americans pulled out.
This pink dress was one of the few things that survived the trip to France and then to the States. It had traveled farther than Mary had in her life. That was the biggest reason why she kept it hidden in her closet. She didn't wear many dresses, but this was one of the few pieces linking her to her past. One day, when Ba passed away, it would be the only thing.
Mary zipped the garment bag shut and tucked the áo dài back into its safe place. Then she grabbed her telescope and headed for the roof.
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