CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS a headache that woke Arthur, like a hangover without the fun of having been drunk. His mother had been thrifty with the guest sheets and it felt like he was rolling in sand. It was bright beyond the cracks in his curtains so it must have been late. He remembered turning off his work alarm before collapsing into bed but he must have forgotten to set another.
He could smell bacon though. His mother was not a spectacular cook but she could fry up a pan of bacon with the best of them. He stumbled out of bed, pulling on sweats and a t-shirt and followed his nose. Beyond the smell of bacon there was the sharp bite of cleaning chemicals and the burn of dust pulled through a vacuum cleaner.
He stepped into the parlor and found it was clean. His mother always kept a clean house but this was clean. Every inch of furniture looked freshly polished. The rug was vacuumed in such a way that the carpet fibers were all going the same direction. The coffee table books were stacked and dead center. Pictures straightened. The best picture of his father, hardly twenty in his dress uniform, was on the sideboard and bracketed by flowers that had been brought over.
The dining room was polished to a high gloss with the good china set to receive the visitors who would probably start dropping by soon.
He first came across what might loosely be considered a mess when he found a couple of rinsed breakfast dishes that had not yet been put into the washer. Martin and his mother were at the breakfast table in front of a laptop. Martin was thankfully back in a work shirt. He pointed to something on the screen and his mother nodded then looked up.
"Good morning, sleepy head." She smiled at him. It wasn't beaming and bright, but it didn't seem forced.
"Yeah, sorry, I forgot to set my alarm or something."
"Travel is always rough on the system. Get some coffee and have some breakfast." There was an empty setting at the table along with toast and bacon.
"Yeah." He grabbed a cup of coffee from the old pot and sat down across from his mother and Martin, still trying to shake the sleep from his head. "How long have you two been up?" He asked sliding some bacon onto this plate.
"Oh, just a couple of hours, but Martin here was already awake and I've never seen the house so clean."
Martin smiled. "It was really just a little dusting. I'm an early riser."
With anyone else at any other time Arthur might have made a crude joke at that last bit but instead he just sipped his coffee. His mother sighed.
"I know this is all so difficult, but I've decided to hold the funeral at the VA hall instead of the church. Your father would have wanted it that way and the church didn't have a free space open for two weeks. And I just feel it's for the best."
Arthur flicked his gaze to Martin whose face was masked off and unreadable. He had little doubt that his mother's decision was Martin talking her into it but making it feel like it was her idea. He could kiss the man. Instead he nodded solemnly. "Dad always did feel comfortable there."
"We have an appointment with the funeral home first thing tomorrow morning to pick out a coffin and all those other things. It's..." His mother let out a long sigh. "I feel horrible saying this, but this is all so inconvenient. Having to take time off work and all these little fiddly decisions."
There was a ring at the door. Martin managed to stand first. "I'll get it, Faith." He touched her arm.
"Thank you."
Arthur looked down at his t-shirt and took a big swallow of coffee, wincing as it burned on the way down. "Let me grab a quick shower and I'll come and hold up my end of the hosting."
BY THREE Arthur thought he would go nuts if he had to take another bite of sympathetic bundt cake or make any more small talk with the church support committee. The Martin Grove Normal Human act was slowly improving, if becoming no less eerie.
Finally, Jennine came by and Arthur decided it was time to bite the bullet.
"Mom?" He cornered his mother in the kitchen to keep the inevitable fight away from the guests. "Um... I need to step out for a bit." Her face went hard. "Deal with things."
"You're going to see her. See them." There was a hiss in her voice that came out at no other time.
"I need to do this."
"No, you don't. They're not-"
"They're my half-sisters." Arthur cut her off. "And I promise when I get back you can yell and scream and use all the four-letter words you want and say all the things you should have shouted at dad but were too good a wife to say."
She folded her arms tight. "He never stopped loving her."
He pulled his mom into a hug. She didn't uncross her arms or relax her posture. "He loved you as well."
"How can you know that?"
"He ate your cooking, didn't he? Every bite."
His mother gave a tiny chuckle in spite of herself. Arthur placed a kiss on the side of her head, grounding himself in the familiar scent of her shampoo and perfume, unchanged since he was born.
"Tomorrow let's pick out a box to put dad in, then break out the demon gin and get really, really mad at him before we have to be polite again."
She nodded and muttered an 'okay' into his shoulder before he finally let her go.
THE OLD Saigon restaurant could easily seat sixty people and had a separate banquet room. It was the third and largest location Hanh had owned in Arthur's lifetime and the sixth since that first noodle shop. She said it was as big as she could handle now. It wasn't fancy. There weren't set places with cloth napkins. Instead, the chopsticks sat in large cups in the middle of tables next to the bottles of chili oil and fish sauce.
Not fancy didn't mean unpopular. Even at the strange hour of four in the afternoon, there were still a half dozen people in the dining room. He could feel Martin next to him, a calm steady presence. He wanted to reach out and take Martin's hand, feel that contact, ground himself on the warmth of human touch. Instead he waved off the waitress who approached, he didn't recognize her, and headed straight for the kitchen.
It was about as quiet as a professional kitchen ever gets. There was mostly the sound of chopping, the bubbling of soups and stocks, mixed in with the hiss of the industrial dishwasher. His sisters were there and Hanh but no one else, which was unusual. Hanh approached him, her face stony and still, the lines carved in around her eyes and mouth as if chiseled into granite. Her eyes were still sharp, though, as she looked him over. She hardly came up to his chin, but in his mind, she was large, looming over him, her lips pinched tight. He had been nearly ten before he began to really understand what he was to her. The blue eyed, legitimate son of the man she bore three illegitimate daughters to, placed under her roof every weekend and for two weeks in the summer while his own mother volunteered at a bible camp. She was never particularly kind to him but she was never cruel. She made him work, but that was no different from her own children.
He was well into his teens before he recognized her raw strength. Leaving her shattered country with a soldier she hardly knew, with little more than the clothes on her back. Dismissed by other refugees for her French blood and family name. Raising three daughters with only sporadic help, and growing a tiny noodle shop into a local institution. And putting up with both him and his father.
"You're here to work," she finally said. It wasn't a question. It wouldn't have been even if he didn't have his roll of knives tucked under his arm.
"Yes."
She cast a cool look over Martin. "Who's he?"
"Martin Grove. He's a friend from work."
"Can he wash dishes?"
"Yes ma'am, I can." There was a tiny quirk to Martin's lips as the two sized each other up. Their faces still and their eyes speaking volumes. They were a pair, but Hanh had more practice.
"Good. Eduardo got deported yesterday."
Arthur would have been surprised if whoever got deported was actually called Eduardo. She used the name in reference to the never-ending stream of undocumented kitchen help who would show up at the back door, cousin, brother, friend of the previous Eduardo, with their own knives and chef's whites, and step neatly into whichever vacant spot there was. There would probably be three more by lunch prep tomorrow, but for that night, it looked like it would be him, his sisters, and Martin. It wasn't the first time they'd done this, though it might possibly be the last.
Hanh pointed Martin to the dishes and Arthur to a ten-pound cold box of shrimp.
He pushed up his sleeves and grabbed an apron before sliding into place next to Sonia, who was filleting fish with a little more aggression than was possibly necessary. "Dad has crap timing," she growled without looking up at him.
"Is that supposed to be news?"
"I've got a soft opening on Friday and I'm fighting with my berry supplier."
"Number three?"
"Four. Dessert bistro."
"Nice." Hanh might have built an established restaurant but Sonia had built a small, if ever growing, restaurant empire she was ruling with an iron fist.
"Hard to do a chocolate cake with raspberry reduction when you're getting screwed on the price of raspberries."
"Cake still sounds nice."
Sonia just grunted and threw a fish skeleton into a stock pot with considerable force. They didn't talk after that. Arthur did his best not to even think beyond what had to be done next. Shrimp, vegetables, sauces, noodles cooked and cooled. The orders started to come in. They shouted at each other, words he seldom spoke anymore flowing effortlessly over his tongue, a garbled mess of French, Vietnamese, English, and bits of Spanish left by various Eduardos. He sprinkled some thin sliced red onion over the top of a plate of Bo Tai Chanh, feeling more at home than he did in his mother's parlor, and yelled for the next order.
He glanced over to Martin a few times. His white shirt was stuck to his still thin body with sweat and the steam from the dishes, but he worked without hesitation or question, never once dropping a dish or getting in someone's way. Occasionally they looked up at the same moment and again Arthur wanted to take his hand, give it a squeeze, and somehow become part of that cool grace.
IT WAS closing in on eleven before the last customers cleared out, but without comment there was one more set of orders. Arthur assembled a dozen more rolls and took them out to one of the larger tables. Sonia laid out big bowls of pho while Roselyne brought out plates of vegetables and meat. And for the six of them, Yvette laid out a dozen beers. Arthur was sure he'd be drinking at least four of them.
They sat, still sweaty from the kitchen, hardly speaking, and began to eat and drink, the hunger and exhaustion kicking in. He put a roll on Martin's plate out of old lunch habits and Martin picked up a pair of chopsticks. It had only been a couple of weeks earlier that he had started trying to teach Martin how to use them.
He put them into place one and a time and slowly, with great concentration, he tried to pick up the roll. Everyone else at the table slowed down their own eating to watch. Arthur flushed with embarrassment. If he'd known he would be bringing Martin here, he would have started teaching him months ago. As it was, he'd just have to manage.
It was like watching a video of the space station's robot arm trying to catch a satellite knowing they would only really have one chance.
'Not too tight. Just enough to raise it.'
Arthur gave a little internal cheer as Martin got it off the plate on the first try. He got it to his mouth, took a bite, then squeezed too hard. It fell back to the plate, half disintegrating on the way.
There were some small chuckles and the mood lightened at the table.
Sonia upended her first beer before letting out a long sigh. "I'm guessing there's no point in me asking, but when's the funeral?"
Arthur took a long drink of his own beer. Thin and a bit bitter, it was still cold enough to go down easily. "Saturday. It'll be at the VA hall so..."
"Faith will not want us there," Hanh snapped. It was the first thing Hanh had said to him in hours.
"She doesn't get a choice." Arthur snapped back.
"Are you going to tell her that?" Yvette asked with a sneer in her voice. The youngest of the three, they had never fully gotten along.
"Yes." Arthur finished his beer in one very long pull. "And it will be a fucking mess and I will deal with it."
"Don't swear at the table."
He pulled the top off of another beer. He'd managed to forget for a moment. With half cramped hands, sore feet, and the taste of cheap imported beer, he'd convinced himself he was sixteen again for a moment and it was a Sunday night and after they ate his dad would drive them home so they would be there when his mother returned on Monday morning.
"Dad was..." he didn't even know how to finish that sentence. "Mom would never divorce him, you would never marry him, and his idea of responsibility was to try to have his cake and eat it too. This is what we have now, so on Saturday at--"
"Ten thirty," Martin provided.
"Ten thirty, everyone can front up at the VA hall. Listen to someone give a eulogy."
"Your mother wants you to do it."
'Fuck my life.'
"Sure. Fine. Listen to me mumble something about dad that doesn't make him sound like a total jerk, then we all take a deep breath and just... We just take a deep breath."
"Fuck that fucking bastard," Roselyne muttered and didn't react to her mother hitting her on the arm for language.
Martin dropped his roll again. Hanh looked him over. "You don't eat enough."
It was Arthur's turn to try to hold back the laughter.
Martin sighed. "So I've been told."
MARTIN WAS warm. Arthur tried not to lean too heavily on him as he stumbled through the restaurant doors, but he'd had too many beers and it was well after midnight. Martin steered him to the passenger's side of the car. He could have probably made it himself with a bit of work but there was something nice about Martin manhandling him and he let it happen.
Things had relaxed a bit. They drank and cursed his father's name and watched Martin get through two rolls and some noodles while holding the chopsticks in a death grip of stubbornness. He didn't tell his sisters it was more than he'd ever seen him eat ever for any reason. He leaned his cheek on the side of Martin's head.
"'M proud you," he mumbled as Martin shoved him into the passenger's seat.
"Thank you." He couldn't tell if Martin was amused or just bored with his behavior. It would be easier to tell if he could see him but his eyes were feeling a bit unfocused. It was hard enough to catch those little quirks and twitches when sober.
"'M gonna teach you to cook," Arthur stated with the certainty of a drunk. "Not hard and you're smart."
"Buckle yourself in."
He fumbled with the straps, yanking them several times before managing to pull them across his body and click them in place. The seat seemed deeper than he remembered and he felt as though he was sinking through it, maybe right down to the ground under them. He kept his eyes on Martin as he slid into the driver's seat of his father's car, his face as still as if they were at work. It wasn't right.
"I like seeing you smile on Saturdays. You're so... Those kids love you. You should be a teacher not-," he waved an arm around trying to convey the whole grand idea of the Agency. "They make you happy. You should be happy. You're not happy at work, I can tell."
"Neither are you."
Arthur tried to form an argument, but even sober he didn't think he'd be able to. "You're good with the kids. You just get them or something."
"Children are simple. They want support, the opportunity to learn, safety to fail, and when they lash out, it is in fear or frustration. Easy enough to manage."
"But not grownups. Grownups suck. That's why you don't smile at grownups."
"A child who is disappointed can be difficult. An adult who is disappointed is dangerous."
Arthur closed his eyes. He felt sad and heavy and the dark seemed warm. "'m not dangerous." He blindly reached out and tried to land a hand on Martin's shoulder.
Martin sighed. "Everyone is dangerous."