For the rest of the vacation, my family and I spent lazy afternoons with my grandmother by the koi pond in the courtyard of her nursing home, watching Henri gleefully toss hunks of stale bread at the fish. We had scrumptious dim sum lunches followed by long strolls through cool shopping malls. We visited the aviary in Hong Kong Park, and afterward, whenever Henri spotted a city sparrow, he’d point to the sky and squawk.
One particular morning my aunt and I snuck away to Pacific Place to do some shopping. On my own, without Henri to corral, I marveled at how I didn’t have to strain to reach the subway handles, at how the jeans I tried on fell to right above my anklebone, no hemming required, at how every pair of shoes that caught my eye accommodated my wide yet bony feet. For once in my life, my body wasn’t a problem to be solved. How different a person would I be, I wondered, if I’d grown up in a place like this? Like my aunt and my mom. Like Winnie.
Everything about the trip was perfect, except for the way my uncle repeated, each time Henri made one of his animal sounds, Don’t worry, we’ll get him talking, isn’t that right, little one? Say mom, dad, yes, no, dog, cat.
I tried to remember that Uncle Mark was trying to help, that my dad said the same kinds of things, that I was lucky to have these relatives in my life, and weren’t relatives legally obligated to be a little bit annoying at least some of the time?
Whenever I raced my uncle to pay for a meal with my newly thawed credit card, my thoughts alighted on that bizarre day in the apartment with Ah Seng. Already it felt like something that had happened to someone else, a long time ago.
You see, Detective, in my mind, this thing with Winnie was over. Each of us had gotten what we’d needed; no one had been harmed.
On the last day of our trip, my aunt, Henri, and I returned to the nursing home to say goodbye to my grandmother. She was sitting in her wheelchair by the window, and when I walked into the room with Henri, she got so excited she forgot her legs were prone to giving way without warning and tried to stand.
My aunt hurried over saying, Don’t get up!
As on all the previous afternoons, my son grew bashful and clung to me.
Call your great-grandmother, I urged. Tai-ma. Tai-ma.
He buried his head in my neck and I smiled apologetically at my grandma.
This time, instead of laughing it off, my grandma clucked impatiently. She held out her arms and demanded to hold him.
I felt his small body tense but lowered him to her all the same.
It’s Taima, Cookie, I said, my pulse fluttering. You had so much fun with her yesterday. She gave you bread to feed the fish.
What did my son remember from day to day? What could account for his mercurial moods?
My grandma reached out and lightly pinched Henri’s earlobe. The day before she’d said he had his great-grandfather’s fleshy earlobes, a sign of good luck.
Henri wrenched away from her and began to howl. I wondered if he sensed something different about his great-grandmother, a whiff of acerbity that us adults were too desensitized to notice.
I explained that he hadn’t slept well the previous night, but my grandmother ignored me, crowing, What a crybaby.
Ma, my aunt warned, placing a hand on her shoulder.
Come here, Henri, my grandma said. And then to my aunt, Don’t you think he’s too big to be crying all the time?
I set him on the ground and tried to turn him to her, but he mashed his face against my leg. At least he quieted down.
How old are you? my grandma asked.
He peered up at her sulkily.
Who’s this? She pointed at me. Who’s that? She pointed at Aunt Lydia. Silly boy, why can’t you talk?
Blood pounded in my ears. If I’d been anywhere else, I would have enveloped Henri in my arms and whisked him away.
Too many questions, Ma, Aunt Lydia said. He’s overwhelmed.
Right then, the sweet, chatty nurse I’d gotten to know over the past few days knocked on the door and held out a bag of stale bread to Henri. I seized the opportunity to move us all outside to the koi pond.
I wheeled my grandma to a shady spot beneath a lush tree with bright red leaves interspersed among the green. My aunt and I sat on the stone bench beside her, while Henri prowled the pond, searching for his favorite fish, the largest, with silver and vermillion spots.
Not too close, don’t fall in, I called out from time to time.
My grandma was prodding me about when I planned to go back to work and whether Oli was a supportive husband when I noticed my son crouched low to the ground, gnawing on a heel of old bread.
I flew at him. Henri, no! It’s old! It’s only for fishies. I snatched up the plastic bag, which naturally devastated him. I held out my palm and ordered him to spit into it, and then gave up and cradled his heaving form.
From somewhere behind us, my grandma said to my aunt, What is with that child? Something isn’t quite right in his head.
Suddenly I missed Oli fiercely. He who didn’t hesitate to tell busybodies to save their child-rearing advice for after they’d studied pediatric development and earned medical degrees.
Don’t listen to them, I whispered in my son’s ear, even as I made up my mind to use some of Winnie’s money to take him to a speech therapist in secret.
You wonder, Detective, why it had to be secret? Because Oli would have declared it totally unnecessary and a big waste of money. He knew I was a worrier, you see, who needed constant reassurance that I was raising my kid right.
As usual, Oli would be correct. A month and a half after our return to San Francisco, the city’s premier speech therapist would take one look at me and peg me for the high-achieving, overanxious mother that I was.
Go home, the therapist said. (I’m paraphrasing here.) He’s two. As long as you’re reading to him, he’ll catch up.
I never told Oli about that visit. Why give him more reason to gloat?
7
A strange thing happened when Henri and I landed at SFO. Right before we disembarked, I removed my amethyst Kelly from my backpack, slid my wallet and passport into it, and slung it over my shoulder for the first time. This way, if Customs stopped us, they’d assume the bag was old. Pushing a dazed, half-dozing Henri in his stroller down the Customs line, I noticed passengers of all ages, from teenagers in faded jeans to grandmothers in orthopedic shoes, glancing my way. The pattern was always the same: their bored, tired gazes would sweep the hall, landing on my Kelly, and their eyes would swell in admiration and envy. Surreptitiously they studied my weary face, lank hair, rumpled clothes. How, they wondered, had such an ordinary-looking woman come to possess such a spectacular bag? Upon realizing that I’d caught them watching me, they invariably broke into shy smiles. I felt like a minor celebrity—a fashionista with a burgeoning social media following, a chef who’d made it through a couple rounds of a televised cooking contest. These strangers wanted to be me, or, at least, to be my friend.
So this was why people spent money on gigantic diamond rings, flashy sports cars; this was the allure of ostentatiousness. To think I’d spent my entire adult life—perhaps my whole life—trying to disappear in dark, understated clothing, sensible low-block heels. I’d had the same boring but flattering shoulder-length lob since junior year of college. I’d never once worn a shade of eye shadow that could not have been described as taupe.