“Good plan,” said Vivien, fanning herself with the park brochure.
After driving the bumper cars at Hanh’s and Phuc’s request, Mrs. Ly insisted on visiting the Japanese orchid garden. Several young couples posed for wedding photographs in different corners, the veiled brides in Western wedding gowns and the grooms in white tuxedos, red roses pinned to their lapels. Mrs. Ly cooed over the spectacle, but Hanh and Phuc rolled their eyes and asked Vivien if the next destination could be the Ferris wheel, rotating slowly above the water slides. It was Mrs. Ly who clambered into one cabin of the Ferris wheel with the boys, while Mr. Ly declined to join his daughters in another cabin, claiming acrophobia. As they ascended, Vivien studied the scenery from the barred window on her side, below which someone had drawn on the blue wall the stick figure of a girl with a mop of hair, fingers flashing a V. -Phuong peeked over her shoulder, her breath tickling a strand of hair on Vivien’s ear. Vivien tucked away the hair and pointed toward the roller coaster climbing slowly into view, an upside-down caterpillar with dozens of human arms wiggling in the air. “I worked on a ride like that,” Vivien said. “All my friends found jobs at the park so we could meet boys.”
“Did you find a boyfriend?” Phuong leaned a shoulder against her sister’s arm. She hadn’t told Vivien that she was still wearing her gift, delighting in it like a child with a new and magical toy. “Was he handsome?”
“Rod was cute. He’d give me rides home, and we’d go on one of the side streets around my house, park, and . . . kiss. I don’t suppose you’ve done that?”
“Not yet.”
“You haven’t found any boys you like?”
“I don’t want any attachments,” Phuong said firmly. “I don’t want anyone holding me back.”
“From what?”
At the center of the park was a lake the size of a saucer, crumbs of paddleboats floating on its surface. Jutting into the lake was their noon destination, a restaurant in the shape of a dragon’s head, dividing the waters as Vivien’s departure tomorrow would divide the world once more into those who stayed and those who left.
“Can I tell you a secret now?”
Vivien smiled. “Sure.”
Phuong searched for the words to say what she had never told anyone before, how one day she, too, would leave, for Saigon was boring and the country itself not big enough for the desires in her heart. “I want to be like you,” Phuong said, gripping her sister’s hands in her own. “I want to go to America and be a doctor and help people. I don’t want to spend my life waiting on people. I want to be waited on. I want to travel anywhere I want, anytime I want. I want to come back here and know I can leave. If I stay here I’ll marry some boy with no future and live with his family and have two children too soon and sleep in a room where I can touch both walls at the same time. I don’t think I can stand it, I really don’t. Haven’t you ever felt this way?”
“Oh God,” Vivien said, looking up at the ceiling of the cabin. Phuong had hoped for enthusiasm and would have settled for reluctance, confusion, or condescension, but she was not prepared for the panic on her sister’s face. “I told her she should have told all of you the truth.”
The roller coaster plunged down the tracks, the passengers screaming. When Vivien shifted her weight and pulled her hands free, her arm peeled away from Phuong’s shoulder with a moist suck of sound, the air no cooler than down below.
“Who are you talking about?”
“My mother.” Vivien took a deep breath and looked once more through the barred windows. “Did you know that when she came to the States, she told the government she was twenty-five?”
“So?” A drop of sweat trickled down the small of Phuong’s back.
“She was thirty.”
“I can see a woman doing that.”
“My mother also told the government she was a widow.” Vivien turned back to meet Phuong’s gaze. “She wasn’t telling the truth when she told our father I was a doctor.”
Phuong blinked. “You’re not a doctor?”
“I’m a receptionist without a job. I was let go the month before I came here. My mother and my stepfather do not own a house in the suburbs. They live in a condo in West Tulsa. And my mother does not own the Nice Nail Beauty Salon. She works for it as a beautician.”
“Then why tell us you were a doctor?”
“Because you all wanted to know how much I made a month, and what I paid on my mortgage, and how much my car cost. It was easier just to answer than to say I wasn’t a doctor. But just so you know, that whole story about me being a pediatrician was my mother’s idea, not mine.” The cabin had reached its zenith, an elephant chained by its ankle visible far below, a windup toy tottering back and forth. “My mother also told me not to date my boss, especially if he’s married.”
“Your boss? What’s he got to do with this?”
“He said it wasn’t me, it was the economy,” Vivien cried. “Have you ever heard anything so stupid?”