We ate around the kitchen table that was mostly quiet, a clink here and there against the bowls.
Mom ate slowly and methodically, as if forcing herself to ingest each bite. She sat directly across from Marlow. I never found out what Marlow did or didn’t do. What her expression was or what she could have mouthed.
But whatever it was did not agree with Mom.
Her spoon dropped loudly, clanging like a cowbell in her dish. She dusted her hands and drew her chair back.
“Is there something wrong?” Dad asked without looking up, as if he didn’t want to give her irritation any more life.
She looked over at him, eyes narrowing before retreating into weariness. “I’m not sure, Patrick. What could possibly be wrong?” Her hand took part of the light-green plastic bowl and held tight.
Moni’s jaw clenched as she sucked in her breath.
Dad remained silent, his head bowed down before he dipped his spoon in again.
“That’s right. We’re all fine. Everything is fine,” Mom said. She shook her head tightly, quick with irritation, before leaving us all in the kitchen.
I heard Moni exhale slowly and heavily. Her relief also washed over me.
Later that summer, Dad would take me to his office occasionally. The shelves on the wall were packed with books, the spines shiny and smooth under my finger. There would be students who popped in and left, a brief chat or question that had to be addressed. I didn’t take that much notice for the most part.
But there was a woman with long, curly auburn hair. I remember her because I thought her to be especially pretty. She looked like Ariel incarnate. (I was fixated on The Little Mermaid right then.) I wanted to ask her if she knew her, but it seemed a silly question, so I kept my mouth shut. She never told me her name, yet she acted as if she knew me because she handed me a sticker book. It was brand new and there was a unicorn bookmark with a pink tassel tucked inside.
Dad told me to wait outside.
He closed the door, and I sat in one of the hard wooden chairs in the hallway. Some of the stickers were scratch and sniff. I put my nose deep into the one with a dancing grape. There were other times like that, with other stickers. Other trinkets and cheap toys to preoccupy me.
It’s funny how you can remember such details. And then other things get washed away into an unintended indifference.
I can remember Moni’s face whenever she made oxtail soup. Her eyes in a dull concentration as she skimmed fat off the boiling broth, tedious in getting every drop. But I can’t remember what it looked like the last time I saw her. Was she smiling? Did she have on her glasses? Or did she leave them off, sitting on a stack of magazines in her bedroom?
There are the memories that stick to your bones, that feed you when there is nothing left to cling to. And there are the ones that fade in and out, a tattered cloth that ripples in the wind and then flaps away with one final gust.
CHAPTER 14
WREN
1980s
Wren looked around the basement apartment with blank eyes.
The cement walls, low ceiling, and single egress window would have deterred most from saying yes. She was new to the Twin Cities but she wasn’t new to living in places like this. She nodded as the landlord stated the monthly rent and handed her a set of worn keys.
“I don’t take late payments,” the middle-aged woman said, a slight Eastern European accent curling at the end of her tongue. “You pay or you’re out.”
“I understand,” Wren replied, taking note of the cobwebs in the corners and rusted pipework overhead.
The landlord suddenly eyed her. “How old? You even twenty-one?”
“Yes.”
“You Chinese?” she asked.
“No. But I am part Asian.”
The woman turned with a grunt; the door jammed a few times before it shut. Wren locked it instinctively, despite the woman’s seeming to be harmless. She reached up to touch the dusty lightbulb, twisting it to stop its flickering. She suddenly felt so tired. The single mattress in a metal frame was her only piece of furniture. Her eyes fluttered into sleep quickly as she lay on it.
She spent the next few weeks looking for a job. Work. Anything to make a few dollars. Whenever her pen came to a certain part in an application, she would pause and then leave. There was nothing to put in those blanks. There was nothing to share.
She was a ghost that no one would hire.
Meals were often instant noodles or bags of chips. Anything that was cheap and could fill her up with calories. She turned to one of her previous habits of lingering near restaurant patrons dining outdoors. She didn’t look the part of desperate; maybe that was why she could get away with it. There was an innocence to the shape of her face, a collegiate look. To most, she was a student sitting down for a meal. No one knew that the girl sitting at the café table was eating a stranger’s leftovers.
At one of her haunts, a Mediterranean bistro, a server she had seen a few times seemed to catch on. He was a tall young man, hard to miss. She was in the middle of putting rolls into her purse when he strode toward her with his hands behind his back. She shot up, head ducked down, but his hand reached her shoulder first.
“Here,” he said softly, as his smile stretched across his shiny dark cheeks.
She looked down to a white paper takeout bag. Her hand clutched the top of it, shaking with embarrassment.
“Thank you,” she said as she began to exit.
“Julien.” He placed his hand on his chest.
“Wren,” her voice came out hushed.
When she reached the security of the basement apartment, she hurriedly opened the bag to find a container of creamy chicken pasta tossed with sundried tomatoes and herbs. Her eyes closed as she ate slowly, savoring each bite.
She was shy at first to return, but the thought of a decent meal overrode any further inhibitions. Julien always spoke so gently to her, trying to probe more out of her. But she would only smile politely and eat as he did most of the talking. He told her about some work she could do for the restaurant owner—cash-under-the-table kind of work. A few early mornings a week, she brought in the day’s crates of provisions and helped wash and peel all the produce the kitchen staff needed.
