Radiant (13 page)

It was buried deep in the bowels of Mary's closet. "I still have it, Ba," she said.

"An
áo dài
?" Carter asked. "That means 'long dress,' doesn't it?"

"You see that dress shop over there?
" Ba asked. "Those long tunics with the flowing trousers. Those make up the
áo dài
." She looked at Mary. "You only wore it once to your cousin's wedding. I wish you would wear it again."

Another cousin needed to get married then, Mary thought.
Mary didn't do dresses. Or pink.

"
Anyway, Jean-Marc was wonderful," Ba continued. "He courted me for a while and then came and asked my father if he could marry me. My parents didn't agree at first. He wasn't Vietnamese, and he was a little strange. He was very passionate about many things, and he loved art. He painted as a hobby and taught me how. But my parents finally gave us their blessing. A foreign and odd husband was better than no husband at all. And they saw that we loved each other very much. But a couple months later, things started to get really bad. It was 1975, and the Americans were leaving. Jean-Marc's company pulled all its workers, and I went to France with him. When we got there, we tried to find out if my family made it out, but I never heard from them again."

Mary remembered the first time Ba told her this story. She was about six or seven years old, and Mom had scolded her for something stupid. Mary
screamed that she hated her mother and ran up to the roof to cry. Ba came up shortly after to put her arm around her, and she told her this story. She told her how important family was, and that Mary should never say she hated anyone, especially her mother. You never know if something will happen and you never see that person again.

Ba continued. "When we got to Paris, I was so looking forward to meeting his family. I was hoping that they would love me like
my family had loved him. But when they saw me, they were
furious
! Jean-Marc hadn't told them that he had gotten married, let alone married a Vietnamese girl. His mother actually told him to 'return' me, like I was something he had bought at a store. I felt awful. He was already the odd duck of the family, and I felt like I just made everything worse for him. I had a little money before I had left Saigon. Just enough for one plane ticket to America. I had never been before, and I didn't know which city I was going to nor what I would do once I got there. I knew some English, but not very much. I just didn't want to be the cause of so much trouble for him. So, I left."

Carter
leaned forward in his chair. "What happened?"

She chuckled.
"Jean-Marc followed me. He was angry. Not with me, but with his family. He said he was done trying to please them. 'America should be far enough to get away from them' he said. So we lived here. And you know what else he did? Instead of having me change my last name to his, he changed his to mine! Isn't that funny? Imagine that. A tall, dark, and very French man answering to 'Mr. Phan.' He was so silly."

Carter
smiled. "And you were happy together?"

"
Oh yes." She sighed. "But then the lung cancer came. He had been a heavy smoker all his life. We tried all the treatments available at the time, but the cancer won in the end. Mary's mother took it terribly. She's very passionate, just like him. More so when she was younger. When Jean-Marc died, she didn't know how to deal with it, and she made some bad decisions. She dropped out of college and started living with her boyfriend at the time, of whom I didn't approve. He was very mean to her. When they broke up, she lived with some friends and then more men. I don't know how many men she'd been with in all. She never told me. I stayed up nights crying and thinking about her. And then one day, she came home. Just like that. She was pregnant and she was crying. But she was safe. She told me how sorry she was and how much she wanted to be a good mom and get her life back together. And she did. She went back to school and studied nursing. Now she works with cancer patients. I suppose how her father died had a lot to do with that decision."

Ba took Mary
's hand and smiled. "But this little one here, she's my miracle baby. She brought my daughter home to me. And now she's a smart, talented, and beautiful young lady herself."

Carter looked at Mary. She
blushed but didn't look back at him.

Carter
looked at Ba again. "Thank you for telling me your story."

Ba chuckled. "You're welcome, dear. And thank you for listening.
Well, I feel like a little dessert. What about you two?"

Mary looked at her watch. Half past seven
. "We should probably head back. I said that I'd get you home by eight."

Ba chuckled. "Oh, it'll be all right if I'm a little late. There's a great
café on the way back, and they have the best desserts."

Carter seconded dess
ert, so they hopped on the bus and headed for the café. Mary glanced at her watch frequently. When they arrived, they sat down at one of the little round tables. A waitress came. "Welcome folks! What can I get for you?"

"
I think I would like some
crème brulée
," Ba said. "Oh Carter, they have very good
crème brulée
. You can try some of mine if you want to get something else."

The waitress looked puzzled.
"I'm sorry ma'am. We don't have the
crème brulée
anymore."

Ba looked surprised.
"Not anymore? When did you take it off the menu?"

"
I think it was about two years ago," she said. "Is there something else I can get for you?"

Mary's alert went up. This wasn't good.

"Two years ago?" Ba said. "But we had that just last week!"

Mary was now
on high alert. Ba's memory had lapsed. Calmly, she took hold of her grandmother's hand. "It's all right, Ba. Let's get something else, all right?"

"
We have a really great tiramisu," the waitress suggested.

Suddenly, Ba slapped her hand on the table.
"But I don't
want
tiramisu. I want
crème brulée
! We've had it here for years. Why did they take it off the menu? Is it a new chef?"

"
Ba, please—" Mary tried.

"
I-I'm sorry," the poor waitress stuttered. "I can ask my manager."

"
You do that!" Ba snapped. "And you should be ashamed of yourself. Two years. Like I don't know what I had just yesterday."

"
Okay, Ba. Come on." Mary stood and helped her grandmother from the table.

"
Where are we going?" Ba asked.

"
We're going home. They'll have
crème brulée
there. Better than this place. Come on." As she ushered her grandmother from the café, Mary mouthed her apologies to the waitress. Carter followed.

By the time Mary got her outside again, Ba was calm.
She took a deep breath. "What a wonderful night. Oh, Mary! Look at all the stars!"

Mary breathed a small sigh of relief.
The spell had passed. "It's a great sky, Ba. Look, the bus is here. We'd better get on."

The bus ride back was uneventful,
thankfully. They arrived at Agape about a quarter past eight. Mary and Carter accompanied Ba to her room. A nurse met them there to administer Ba's medicine and get her ready for bed. They waited in the small sitting area in her suite until the nurse returned with Ba in her nightclothes. Mary kissed her goodnight and then left with Carter.

"
We should catch this bus," she said. "The next one doesn't come for another twenty minutes."

They b
oarded and sat across from one another. As the bus rolled down the street, Carter spoke for the first time in a while. "Mary? What happened tonight at the café?"

"
Ba had a lapse in her memory," she explained. "It's confusing for her, you know? She takes medicine for it, but the lapses still happen once in a while. This was a small one, so it wasn't too bad."

"
I see." He was quiet for a moment, but then he asked, "What does a 'big' one look like?"

Mary though
t about what to say next. "She hasn't been at Agape for very long. She used to live at home with us. But between Mom's crazy schedule and my school, it was hard to keep up with her medicine. And it was harder to keep an eye on her all the time." She shifted her weight. "It was just small things at first. Like forgetting keys or leaving clothes down in the laundry room for days. But then it got more serious. Leaving the stove on. Forgetting to lock the door. Heading downstairs to get the mail but along the way forgetting where she was going or what she was doing."

"
What was the final straw?" he asked.

Again, Mary chose her words carefully.
"I came home from school one day. Just like normal. She was in the kitchen chopping up some vegetables for dinner. I came behind her to kiss her on the cheek like I normally do. But I scared her. And when she saw me, she didn't recognize me. She started screaming, asking me how I broke into the apartment and stuff. She still had the knife she was chopping with." She paused.

Carter
asked quietly, "What happened?"

Rather than answer with words, Mary
reached up and pulled the collar of her shirt down a little, revealing a thin pink line just under her collarbone.

His eyes grew wide.

Mary replaced her collar. "She didn't cut anything important. A neighbor had heard the screaming and came to see what was going on. When he saw the blood and the knife, he got me out of the apartment and went next door to call 911. We had forgotten to make sure she had taken her medication that day. Mom took some time off of work to take care of her, but she was running out of vacation time. Then Ba said that she wanted to live at Agape so that we wouldn't have to look after her. Mom and I tried to talk her out of it, but she had made up her mind. A couple months later, she moved there, and we moved into the apartment where we're at now for the cheaper rent."

Carter
stared at her for a moment. He looked off to the side, as if he was trying to remember something. "You never said anything to anyone at school."

She shrugged.
"No one needed to know."

"
But you were hurt."

"
I don't like other people in my business."

He was quiet for a moment.
"I understand now why you don't like instability. You have enough of it with the people you care about. You don't need more from others."

Neither of them spok
e for the rest of the trip. A little while later, they came to the stop near Mary's apartment and got off.

"
Well, thanks for coming along," Mary said. "And sorry about the thing at the café."

"
No need to apologize," he said. "Thank you for inviting me."

"
Have big plans for the weekend?" she asked.

He looked skyward.
"There will be a meteor shower tonight."

"
Really?" she asked. "Will it be early? The roof is a really great place to watch…uh, that is, if you want to watch it from there."

He
kept looking up for a moment. Then he turned his eyes back to her. "I think I had better pass. But thank you."

"
No problem," she said. "Well, I guess I'll see you at school."

"
Mary?"

"
Yes?"

"
Was this evening…a date?"

She
thought for a moment. "Um, I don't think so."

"
Why not?"

She laughed.
"People don't generally bring their grandmothers on dates."

"
Oh," he said. "So it's a date if it were just you and me?"

"
I guess."

"
Then, can we go on a date?"

She
wrinkled her brow. "Huh?"

"
Can we go on a date?" he repeated.

"
You mean…just you and me?"

He nodded.

A myriad of excuses suddenly shot through Mary's head. She had homework. But what if he didn't ask on a school night? She had
a lot
of homework. She had chores. She had to shave the cat. Did people even shave cats? She'd never had one, so she didn't know.

"
When?" she finally managed.

"
How about Saturday night?"

Wow, that soon.

"Uh…"

"
You don't have to if you don't want to," he said.

"
No! I mean, not that I don't want to." She took a deep breath. "But why?"

He smiled.
"I like being around you."