Aperture on the East (23 page)

Lan stopped the boy when
he was about to leave on his skateboard. “What is your name?” said
Lan.

“My name is
Ivan.”

“Ivan, thank you so much
for helping me,” said Lan. She put her palms together and
bowed.

Ivan reciprocated with the
same gesture and said, “Please, don’t thank me. It was the right
thing to do, and I had a lot of help.”

Lan just kept on thanking
Ivan, who finally broke it up by saying, “Do you need help crossing
the street?”

Lan nodded.

After Lan made it to the
other side with the help of brave Ivan standing in the middle of
the road to force the traffic to stop, she suddenly realized that
Ivan had been speaking to her in Vietnamese. She thought it was
odd, but before she could question Ivan where he learned to speak
her language, he had disappeared.

When Lan finished making
the noodle soup, she was still thinking about the young hero who
came to save her day. She went to rest on the couch in the living
room, her anxiety of meeting Ana completely replaced by the delight
of having met a boy with such kindness and courage. The door
opened, and Vidal came in first, followed by Vo and Ana. Ana was
wearing a modest, somewhat formal knee-length dress, light pink,
with a pair of sensible pumps. Her makeup was simple. She had her
long brunette hair up in a bun, and wore a silver necklace with a
single pearl. Lan had thoroughly inspected Ana within the first few
seconds.

“Something smells really
good,” said Vidal.

After Lan and Ana were
formally introduced to each other, everyone sat down at the kitchen
table to dine. Besides the noodle soup, Lan had prepared a few side
dishes. Vidal commented on how grateful he was that Vo had found
him and asked him to come back so that he could enjoy this
wonderful meal. Vo and Lan laughed. Ana, unaware of what Vidal was
referring to, simply kept silent while enjoying the home-cooked
food. She didn’t know what she was supposed to say or do otherwise,
this being the first time ever she was brought to meet the parent
of a suitor.

“So, Ana, you are from
Russia?” said Lan. She put down her chopsticks, and wiped her mouth
with a napkin.

“Yes, I am from
Novosibirsk. It’s in Siberia,” said Ana.

“What
brings you to Nha Trang?”

“I wanted to try and live
somewhere warm. My hometown is very cold.” Ana fidgeted a little in
her chair.

“I see a lot of Russians
here,” said Lan. “I was surprised when I first got
here.”

Ana gave a nod, but said
nothing.

“It’s a good thing.
Tourism brings money,” said Vidal. “Mrs. Nguyen, you should open a
restaurant here to catch some of that cash. Your restaurant could
easily beat the one Ana works at.”

“I waitress at Quan Bien
Dong,” said Ana.

“Oh, I remember now,” said
Lan. “You were the waitress that took our orders that night when Vo
and Kim were supposed to get engaged.”

Feeling somewhat
embarrassed, Ana shifted slightly in her seat.

“Mom, she works there,”
said Vo. “Ana is a photographer during the day. She won a contest
recently.”

“Did you major in
photography in college?” said Lan.

“I didn’t go to college,”
said Ana.

“You mean you only
finished high school? My son is a PhD and a university
professor.”

“And he is the only PhD
and university professor that you know of, Mrs. Nguyen,” said
Vidal. “Not everyone is as fortunate as Vo to have the resources to
get there.”

“How could you take good
pictures if you didn’t study it in college?” said Lan. She took a
sip of her water.

“I read up on it,” said
Ana, “and I look at a lot of photographs, good ones and bad ones.
But mostly, I just let my instincts tell me what’s going to make a
good picture.”

“So photography is not too
hard, right?” said Lan. “I don’t think Vo can become a marine
biologist just by reading about it or looking at the fish in the
sea.”

“Mom, I do also mostly
read and look at the fish,” said Vo, shaking his head.

Ana kept quiet, feeling
uneasy. She looked down to avoid eye contact with Lan.

“Ana is also a teacher,”
said Vidal. “She teaches Russian. Some of her students are local
businessmen, doctors and lawyers. She is teaching PhDs how to speak
Russian.”

“That’s true. I am her
student, too,” said Vo.

Ana gave a thankful smile
at the two men speaking in her defense.

Lan took another sip of
her water and said, “Tell me about your parents.”

“They are both deceased,”
said Ana.

“Tell me what they did for
a living, what they liked to do for fun, what their personalities
were like,” said Lan.

Ana hesitated for a few
seconds, then she said, “I don’t really know. They died when I was
very young. My grandmother brought me up. She was a seamstress. We
didn’t do much for fun. We could hardly get enough food to eat, or
enough firewood to keep warm. My grandmother would hum a little
tune and twirl me around when we waited in line for bread. I
suppose that was fun.” She looked down again.

No one said anything for a
while. Ana wondered if perhaps she shouldn’t have mentioned her
despairing childhood.

“Any other family in
Russia?” said Lan.

“No family in Russia. My
two kids are here with me.”

“Two kids?” said Lan. Her
eyes enlarged as she leaned forward. She turned to look at
Vo.

“Yes, my boy is eleven,
and my daughter will turn seventeen soon,” said Ana.

“Did you
know this?” said Lan. It was directed at Vo. Vo nodded.

Lan looked back at Ana and
said, “So you are divorced?”

“Yes, I divorced last
year,” said Ana.

Lan frowned and leaned
back into her seat.

“Mrs. Nguyen,” said Vidal,
“this soup is delicious. What’s your secret ingredient?” He held
his bowl with two hands and dumped the broth in his mouth in an
exaggerated loud slurp.

Lan didn’t answer. She
folded her arms across her chest, and looked slightly annoyed. She
said something to Vo in Vietnamese in a scornful tone. Vo said
something back to Lan, sounding equally scathing.

Ana held her hands on her
lap under the table, one rubbing the other out of nervousness. Her
heart was racing and she felt slightly dizzy and
nauseated.

Lan said, switching back
to English, looking straight into Ana’s eyes, “You will have more
kids, I hope, if you and my son get married. He is an only son.
There will be no one to carry on our bloodline if he does not have
a son of his own.”

Ana felt as if a gust of
wind had blown her into a vacuum and the blood was now rushing away
from her head. She was struck speechless. Her mouth was half-open,
but no word came out of it.

“Mrs. Nguyen, we can only
pray about these things,” said Vidal. “Vo can’t just have a son by
simply wanting one. It’s up to God.”

“Mom, why are we
discussing this again?” said Vo. “We are in the twenty-first
century, for crying out loud.”

Lan was persistent, and
she repeated her statement to Ana. She seemed to have her eyes
fixed on Ana’s until Ana would give a response.

Vo reached out to hold
Ana’s hands, which were trembling slightly, turning cold and
sweaty. His hands were warm and comforting to Ana; she would be
brave, and tell the truth.

“I had a
stillbirth last year,” said Ana, “a week before the due date. My
bleeding wouldn’t stop and the doctors had to operate to save my
life.”

Everyone was looking at
Ana, listening intently. It felt like the center of a tropical
storm, quiet and still.

Ana took a deep breath in
and said, “I survived, but the doctors had to perform a
hysterectomy to stop me from bleeding to death. I-I can’t have any
more children.” Ana turned to look at Vo, who gave Ana’s hand a
gentle squeeze, and then took her in his arms.

Zoe didn’t tell anyone that it was her
birthday. She met up with Ivan and had a durian smoothie, and
listened to Ivan talk about Sofia the entire time. Before they
parted Ivan gave her a hug and wished her a happy birthday. She
could not recall ever having a more festive birthday celebration
anyway. On a typical birthday in the past, she would get a book
from her teacher at school, and her great grandmother would buy her
a small box of fancy chocolates. Her mother would get her a new
dress, but this was not predictable, because her mother did not
always remember her birthday.

“
What are you thinking
about?” said Tam as she came into the restroom. Zoe was standing in
front of a mirror, lost in her thoughts until now.

“
Nothing,” said
Zoe.

“
You’ve been really quiet
lately. Anything on your mind?”

Zoe had decided not to tell Tam or the
rest of her band about Irisa, who had been providing a steady
stream of information that Zoe passed on to Tuan. Zoe had been
urging Tuan to swoop in to arrest Boris and rescue Irisa, but Tuan
asked her to be patient so that he could follow up on the leads.
His superior wouldn’t give the go-ahead anyway when he brought it
up, he told Zoe. He was instructed to leave the Rocking Waves
alone. It was a legitimate business operation, confirmed and
verified by officers far more senior and experienced than Tuan. In
fact, it was hinted that Tuan might face disciplinary actions if he
were to pursue further investigation.

Zoe had also been hiding her bruises
from her band. Thankfully, Yurik had not gotten to her face. Boris
might not like it, as the Cardinal’s Choir was still a draw for
many customers. In order to keep her job, however, Zoe had given in
and her band had started playing songs that Boris considered more
popular and mainstream. Zoe had to stay in the nightclub to get
information from Irisa. Her band members never liked the idea, and
wanted to find employment elsewhere, but Zoe persuaded them to
stay, as a favor. She wouldn’t explain, however, the reason behind
it.

“
Zoe?” said Tam
again.

“
What is it?” Zoe blinked,
and looked at Tam as if she just returned from another
dimension.

“
Never mind,” said Tam.
“Ready to rock and roll?”

There was a large crowd that night,
and it was already loud before Billie started the band off with her
foot-stomping beats on the drums. Nelly took the lead vocal because
Zoe didn’t care to sing any of the songs that Boris wanted her band
to perform. Zoe was only putting up with it for as long as it took
to get Irisa out; she wasn’t even thinking about her own livelihood
at this point. She wasn’t certain whether she could find another
job if the Rocking Waves got taken down, but that was minor in
comparison to her ambition to put an end to Irisa’s
suffering.

“
Hey, it’s your mom
again,” said Aiko. She was tuning her bass guitar during a break
when she spotted Zoe’s mother.

Zoe looked toward where Aiko was
pointing. Ana was sitting at a table with a man, someone that Zoe
had not met before. They were laughing, holding hands on the table,
and kissing every now and then. Zoe decided to stay put, and
observe her mother from a distance.

“
That’s my daughter over
there. She’s staring at me right now,” Ana nodded toward Zoe, who
looked away.

“
So that’s the birthday
girl,” said Vo.

“
Yes,” said Ana. “I hope
she’ll like this dress.” She looked into a gift bag under the
table.

“
She’ll appreciate the
fact that you remember it and want to celebrate it.”

“
I don’t know why they are
not singing their usual songs,” said Ana. “She normally does not
like this stuff they are playing tonight. She’s into gothic metal,
you can tell from her look.”

“
Are we going to say
hi?”

“
Let’s just stay here for
now. She and I had a fight. It’s too soon for us to start talking
just yet.” Ana took a sip of her Coca Cola on ice.

Vo put on a serious face, looked into
Ana’s eyes and said, “About the other day, with my mom. She could
be a little difficult at times. Normally she’s very easy
going.”

“
Good thing I am not going
out with her,” said Ana.

It had taken Lan more than a minute to
fully comprehend what Ana said at the end of their conversation.
Lan had gotten up from the dining table and returned to her bedroom
without saying goodbye to Ana. Ana regretted that she couldn’t have
left a better impression on Lan. It was too late now; Lan had
returned to the United States.

“
You were brave. It must
have been painful to talk about losing a child,” said Vo. “I wish I
had known about it beforehand, and maybe I could’ve helped steer
the conversation away from that topic.”

“
You are not upset that I
can’t have another child?” said Ana.

“
I didn’t know we were
planning to start a family,” said Vo. “I haven’t thought about
it.”