“Vivien?” Mrs. Ly said, reading the name signed at the bottom of the letter. “Is she too good to use the name you gave her?”
But Phuong knew instantly why her sister had taken upon herself a foreign name, and whose name it must have been: Vivien Leigh, star of Gone with the Wind, her father’s favorite film, as he had once told her in passing. Phuong had seen the film on a pirated videotape, and was seduced immediately by the glamour, beauty, and sadness of Scarlett O’Hara, heroine and embodiment of a doomed South. Was it too much to suppose that the ruined Confederacy, with its tragic sense of itself, bore more than a passing similarity to her father’s defeated southern Republic and its resentful remnants?
It was easy, then, in the weeks leading to Vivien’s arrival, for Phuong to pass her days at home and at work constructing scenarios of a noble, kindly sister, somewhat solemn and sad, but nevertheless gentle and patrician, who would immediately take to her and become the mentor and guide Phuong never had. Her first glimpse of Vivien at the airport only confirmed the appropriateness of such a movie star’s name for the young woman who paused at the terminal’s glass gates, her eyes hidden behind enormous sunglasses, her lips slightly parted in a glossy pout, pushing a cart loaded with her own weight in crimson luggage. As she jumped and waved to get Vivien’s attention, Phuong was thrilled to see that her sister bore utterly no resemblance to the throngs of local people waiting outside to greet the arrivals, hundreds of ordinary folk wearing drab clothes and fanning themselves under the sun.
Even after a week in Saigon, Vivien would appear no more of a native than on the day she arrived, at least in outdoor settings. On the streets, at sidewalk cafés, or hopping into a taxi, she was easily mistaken for a Korean businessman’s frazzled wife or a weary Japanese tourist, her frosting of makeup melting under the tropical glare. In certain indoor settings, however, she was clearly the mistress of her domain. This was the case at the restaurant Nam Kha, on the street Dong Khoi, where Phuong had worked as a hostess for the two years since her graduation from college. It was Vivien’s idea to treat the family to dinner at Nam Kha, a way to celebrate the halfway point in her vacation and something Phuong would never have suggested, the restaurant’s offerings being far more than Phuong or her family could afford.
“But it’s a crime, don’t you think?” Vivien said, glancing over the entrées. Their table was by the reflecting pool, across from which two young women sat upon a cushioned dais, wearing silken, ethereal ao dai and plucking gently at the sixteen strings of the zithers braced upon their laps. “You should be able to eat where you work at least once in your lifetime.”
“The real crime is five dollars for morning glory fried in garlic,” Mrs. Ly said. She sold silk at the Ben Thanh market and possessed the eyes of an experienced negotiator, smooth and unreadable as the beads of an abacus. “I can buy this for a dollar at the market.”
“Look around,” Mr. Ly said, his tone impatient. All the other guests were white with the exception of an Indian couple in the corner, the man in a linen suit and the woman in a salwar kameez. “These are tourist prices.”
“These are foolish prices.”
“Price aside, this is a good restaurant,” Vivien declared. Her voice was authoritative, the way she must sound in her examination room in Chicago. Not for the first time, Phuong imagined herself in her sister’s place, wearing a white coat in a white room, looking out a wall of windows at a haze of white snow. “What do you think?” Vivien nudged her knee. “Too outrageous for you?”
“Not at all!” Phuong hoped that she projected an air of confidence and ease, unlike her brothers. Hanh and Phuc were speechless, their silk-bound menus considerably more handsome than any textbook they owned. “I could get used to this.”
“That’s the spirit.”
The guests at the neighboring table rose, and on the way out, two of them paused beside Phuong, the brunette taking a photograph of the musicians strumming their zithers. “They’re just like butterflies,” she said in an Australian accent, squinting at the image on her camera. Eavesdropping on them, Phuong was relieved not to be the object of their fascination. “So delicate and tiny.”