If You Lived Here (18 page)

The acknowledgment impressed him. “I’m surprised to hear a rich person say that.” He’d never met a rich person, but he’d had his expectations.

She shrugged. “I’m not rich,” she said. “I have nothing.”

Somehow, the horror of her experience did nothing to diminish the fact that she charmed him. She had delicacy, beauty, and a complex intelligence, qualities that he might have believed existed, but didn’t expect ever to encounter himself. In his mind, he refused even to compare her with other girls—not with the rowdy and fearless ones who filled the craters along the supply routes webbing these mountain passes, and certainly not with the farm girls he remembered from his village, hardworking and amiable enough, but inconsequential. He had chosen to believe the slo-gans of the revolution that he belted out of his bullhorn a hundred times a morning: “Nothing is more precious than freedom and independence!”

“All for the front!” “When the enemies come to the house, even the women fight back!” “United, united, greatly united; successful, successful, greatly successful!” But the grand depictions of a determined army and a just society never allowed for the kind of ambiguity that her mind not only recognized, but accepted. When he thought about the soldiers who had killed her parents, he wondered how there could be righteousness without compassion. Just as this girl began to believe in the justice of the cause, he began to doubt it.

Later, my parents always marked that conversation as the moment they fell in love. My father, the raconteur, described it to me a hundred times: the way the sun slid down beneath the distant mountains, the supernatural calls of the monkeys, the sadness in my mother’s eyes. She remembered the details, too, but described them with less drama: sleeping on the ground made her stiff; he gave his rations to her; she liked the animation in his voice. What they never said, but what I came to understand as I grew older, was the fact that, in addition to their love, they had exchanged something else that evening, something that, in its effect on both their lives, would turn out to be just as important. He had given her a way to live in that world and, in knowing her, had lost some of that ability himself.

At exactly nine the next morning, I return to Vietnam. Or, at least, a little piece of Vietnam in downtown Washington, D.C. Unlike all the mansions Shelley pointed out on Embassy Row, the embassy of Vietnam is located on the fourth floor of an office building on Twentieth Street NW. I stop beside the door, looking at the words “Embassy of Vietnam” written in English and Vietnamese.

“You okay?” Shelley asks. Her hand pauses on the doorknob.

I nod, then follow her inside. I’m just a little disoriented, considering I haven’t been on Vietnamese territory in twenty-three years. That’s all.

The waiting room, simple and utilitarian, could pass for a doctor’s office were it not for the “See Vietnam” travel posters hanging on the walls. Ha Long Bay. A Cham ruin. The Quan Su Pagoda. Shelley walks

straight to the reception window. Because I’m trailing behind, she turns and waits for me to catch up. Her face looks uncertain. “Could you ask?” she whispers, moving aside.

I adjust the strap of my purse on my shoulder, smooth down my dress. It’s Shelley’s dress, actually, her gauzy peacock dress that she knows I love and which she pulled from the depths of her suitcase and handed to me this morning. “Please,” she said. “You look real nice and all, but I think maybe we should try to seem more professional.” I looked down at my worn yellow slacks and faded pink blouse. They are my work clothes; what could be more professional? Shelley refused to yield. I grumbled, but then I put it on. Actually, I felt curious to see how I would look. Standing in front of the motel mirror, I checked myself out. Not bad, really. I spread some of her lipstick over my lips. “Foxy,” I said.

Shelley whistled like boys do when a good-looking girl walks by. “I don’t want to sound like your mother or anything, but see how pretty you can look when you try?” I grinned at my reflection in the mirror.

Even though Shelley is nervous, being with her gives me a sense of security that might explain why I have managed to enter the embassy at all. I don’t feel confident, exactly, but I do feel willing to try. A young woman sits behind the reception window, looking down at a sheaf of papers. Hearing the sound of my approach, she says, “Can I help you?” then lifts her head. As soon as she sees me, she repeats the question in Vietnamese.
“Cô c
Ë
n gì?”

Without even thinking about what I’m doing, I shift into some long

forgotten mode of speech. It’s not the laid-back Vietnamese that Gladys and I speak in Wilmington, but the Vietnamese of my youth—formal, appealing. I’m a Hanoi girl again, facing the stone gray face of the bureaucracy. “I’m sorry to trouble you, miss. I’ve come here to make a request of Mr. Phung Van Luan. Please. I’d like to meet with him if possible.”

The receptionist’s face grows hard. “What does this pertain to?”

I glance at Shelley. After much discussion, we decided against try-ing to make an appointment, because the political counselor might have merely refused to schedule it. Instead, we’re counting on the possibility that two desperate women standing in his office would be difficult for Mr.

Phung Van Luan to ignore. “It’s about an adoption, miss. My friend here is scheduled to adopt a baby from Hanoi. There’s been a delay.”

“A baby?” Sympathy seeps across the young woman’s face. “I’ll see what I can do.”

A few minutes later, we’re ushered into the office of Mr. Phung Van Luan, which looks out over a cluster of similar-looking office buildings. The man himself is middle-aged, tall and fit, wearing a green polo shirt and khakis. He walks around his desk as we come in, reaching out to shake our hands. “Good to see you, Ms. Marino. Ms.—” He pauses, jiggling change in his pocket.

“Mai,” I say. “Pham Thi Xuan Mai.”

He looks at me with interest. “Should I call you
cô
or
em,
Ms. Mai?” he asks. His English is perfect.

I look at Shelley, then down at the floor. “Whatever you like.” I can feel my face turning red.

“You’ve got to excuse us, Mrs. Marino,” Mr. Luan explains, motioning for us to sit down. “We Vietnamese are very proper.”

I follow Shelley’s lead and sit down on the couch. She perches on the edge of the cushion, like a rocket about to take off. “Mai’s been teaching me some Vietnamese,” she says, adding, with a stress in her voice, “in anticipation of the arrival of my son. I know that ‘
em
’ is what you’d call a lady younger than yourself. And ‘
cô
’ is what you’d call one who’s older.”

Mr. Luan nods, impressed. I’m impressed, too, that Shelley remembers her lessons, and relieved that she hasn’t added the second part, the fact that “
cô
” is polite, and that “
em
” is also a term you would use for a lover.

“Now, ladies, how can I help you?” Mr. Luan pulls over an armchair and sits down beside us.

Shelley explains her situation, starting as far back as the lost child from Slovakia. She’s clever. She gives just enough detail to make her story compelling, but not so much to risk boring the man. He listens attentively, nodding his head from time to time, occasionally looking at me. When Shelley has finished, he stands and walks to his desk, slides on a pair of glasses, then shuffles through some papers. “Here it is,” he says, holding

up a single page and reading it. “Yes, there’s been a delay. A little boy at the Ha Dong Children’s Center.”

Shelley stiffens, nodding as if each gesture will have some bearing on her future.

Mr. Luan, carrying the paper, walks back to the armchair and takes a seat. He looks at me. “Tell me about yourself, Miss Mai,” he says. Then, adds, “
Em sang M˜y bao lâu r
æ
i
” How long have you been here, Em?

I stare at my hands on my knees. It’s strange, after all this time, how

official power can still intimidate me. And I’m an American citizen now. “Twenty-three years,” I answer in Vietnamese.

“
Em quê
d d
âu?
” Where are you from?

My old lie, the one I use with Gladys, won’t work here. He’s a Communist himself, so he won’t be moved by a story about my parents heading south to flee Ho Chi Minh’s regime. I tell the truth. “I grew up Hanoi,” I tell him, in English, wishing for the millionth time that I could be prouder of the way I speak the language in this country.

The man turns out to be less interested in my political history or linguistic skills than in my personal one. “How old are you?” he asks.

“Forty-two.”

“Are you married yet?”

I shake my head. In Vietnam, I’d feel mortified by this fact, as if I’m damaged goods or something. Here, though, it’s just the question that bothers me. I wonder how long he has been in this country. He hasn’t learned that, in America, we consider certain questions rude.

The political counselor shakes his head in mock dismay. “Forty-two years old and still single. That’s late for such a pretty lady.”

Despite myself, I blush. Back in Hanoi, I would resent this bureaucrat for abusing his post in such a way. I still resent it, but I’m flattered, too. A man hasn’t spoken to me like this in years. Not in Vietnamese. Never in English. A warm feeling courses through my blood. I hate it, but I kind of like it.

Shelley watches.

Mr. Luan stares at me for longer than he should. Then, slapping his hands against his knees, he turns to Shelley. “So, Mrs. Marino,” he begins.

“I’ve looked over your file and I don’t see any reason why we can’t move this thing forward. Your case should be completed in a month. Shall we say that?”

Shelley looks amazed. “Yes,” she stammers. “Thank you so much.”

Mr. Luan looks at me, his eyes moving up and down my body. “My pleasure, Mrs. Marino. My pleasure.”

For the first hour, headed south on I-95, Shelley won’t call me anything but Foxy. I swat the air every time, but I do look good. We drink Diet Cokes and eat Cheetos. Shelley’s put the Rolling Stones in the CD player. I like the James Taylor better, but I don’t mind.

We didn’t leave D.C. until after five, then we got stalled in rush-hour traffic. It’s dark by the time we reach Richmond, and just past eight. Other than a quick stop at McDonald’s, we plan to drive straight through and make it home by one
A
.
M
. After all the joking about Mr. Luan, we’re quiet, staring through the windshield into the black night.

Even with the music blaring, we both hear the pop. The van jogs to the side, then surges forward, then settles back down. Shelley looks at me. “You okay?” she asks.

I nod, keeping my eyes on the road. “What was it?”

“I don’t know.” I don’t think the transmission would make a pop. The van feels strange to the touch, hard to maneuver, cranky. “How far to the next exit?”

Shelley pulls out the map and begins to scour it. “We’re somewhere near Petersburg. Maybe ten miles.”

We drive in silence, but it’s an attentive silence now. I can feel the van losing power, although it continues to move. We pass the first indication of an approaching exit. Three miles. One mile. A quarter mile. I pull off. It feels like I’m going to lose power, so I coast to the edge of the road.

“I’ve got my cell phone,” Shelley says. “I got mine, too.”

“Let’s call triple A.” She pulls her phone and wallet from her purse,

finds her little AAA card, punches in the number, and waits. She listens for a while, punches in a few more numbers, then waits again. I stare out the window. Now that we’re off the interstate, the night seems even darker. “Yes, hello,” says Shelley. “My car broke down. I need some help.” Shelley reads out her membership number to the operator at the other end of the line. I pull the lever for the hood of the van, get out, and go to take a look. The air is mild, breezy. I open the hood and stare down at the engine. Light wisps of steam rise toward the rusty hood. Shelley opens her door and gets out. “They say they’ll be here within an hour.”

It’s nearly nine.

We get back in the car, drink more Diet Coke. Thick stands of trees line both sides of the road. I consider the value of all the frozen food in the rear of my van. I have insurance coverage for the van breaking down, but not for the thousand dollars’ worth of frozen food packed in ice inside it. And eight hours to get home before it spoils.

Lights appear on the road up ahead. “Maybe that’s them,” Shelley says.

Slowly, a car approaches. It’s an old sedan, scuffed and wheezy looking, and it pauses beside us. A man with a cigarette in his mouth motions to us and I roll down the window. He takes a drag on his cigarette, then lets his arm dangle outside his car. “You girls need some help?” he asks, grinning and squinting at us.

Shelley leans over me and yells, “Thanks. Our husbands just called from a cell phone. They’re behind us on the interstate and they’ll be here in a few minutes.”

He looks uncertain. “You sure?”

Shelley nods energetically. “Thanks anyway.” She sits back in her seat, then, under her breath, says, “Roll up the window.” I roll it up. “You never know,” Shelley says. The car pulls away.

We sit a few more minutes. I wish I could see stars, at least. Shelley says, “Good thing I’m here.”

“If we get murdered, you’ll wish you were somewhere else.”

“True,” she admits. Then she turns in her seat to face me and pats her hands against her knees. “Let’s talk about scary things,” she says. Her

voice is light and optimistic, as if she’s suggesting that the two of us throw a party. “Only things that are worse than this.”

It’s a weird idea. “You first,” I say.

Shelley tells me about her senior class trip to the Grand Canyon. The chaperones had made the students promise not to wander off, but late that night, during a game of truth or dare, they came up with the idea that one of them should go off and sleep alone. None of her friends would do it, so Shelley, who felt the need to prove herself that night, volunteered. “There was no moon. I forgot to take a flashlight, and then I was too stubborn to go back for it.” It took her about ten minutes to get lost. Finally, she threw her sleeping bag down on the ground and climbed in. “When I woke up in the morning, I was about five feet from the rim of the canyon,” she says. “I’d never even seen it.”