Chapter 68
CHAPTER 68
S CHOOL BEGAN LIKE ANOTHER CYCLE OF LIFE, A SEASON ALL ITS own. B?o started his first week of school knowing he had at least one friend at Bellegrove Intermediate and another who, although older, gave him a pocket watch after he was released from the hospital. “It was waiting for its new owner,” Jack said as he gifted him the timepiece they’d restored together. Anh started working part time at Kepler’s Market and soon began saving for a down payment to rent a nearby apartment for her and B?o.
One afternoon during those first weeks of autumn, Anh finally did what she had wanted to do since she brought B?o home from the hospital. She wanted to personally thank Jack for how he had the saved the child she now considered her son.
She knew how deeply private he was, that he kept himself away from prying eyes, but she felt compelled to express her thankfulness to him. So, despite her self-consciousness about her English, Anh heard the encouraging words of Dinh in her head, reminding her that she needed to honor Jack in some way for his heroic act.
Anh realized it was still too early in the day for Jack to be working at the store. That he was probably tucked inside his apartment, maybe reading or watching TV. But she hoped that he’d still allow her to say some words of gratitude in person to him, so she walked to the side entrance of the old brick building and looked for the single buzzer for the apartment upstairs. She took her finger and pressed it.
The sound of the buzzer caught Jack off guard. He had been living above the Golden Hours for nearly five years, and he could still count the number of times someone had rang the intercom. Tom had stopped by on a few occasions during his first few weeks there, when Jack hadn’t even unpacked yet, and there were a few visits from a plumber or electrician coming by to make a repair that Jack himself couldn’t fix.
The voice on the other end now surprised him.
“It is me, Anh,” she announced. “I have come to thank you.”
Jack was still in his bedclothes. His hair uncombed. His face unshaven. The only one who had begun his morning ablutions was Hendrix, who had eaten his breakfast and now sat curled next to Jack’s chair calmly licking his front paws.
The apartment reflected Jack’s near-monastic way of life, so there was hardly anything now to clean up. “Just give me a minute,” he spoke into the receiver quickly, reaching for his khakis draped over one of the two chairs by the small card table where he ate. “I’ll let you up in a sec.…”
He jumped up, hurriedly brushed his teeth, and quickly combed his hair to hang over the left side of his face.
After he buzzed Anh in, Jack quickly pulled the duvet over his bed and glanced around the studio apartment. There was little else he could do in such a small amount of time except apologize about the sparseness of his existence.
He opened the door just as she was coming up the second flight of stairs. She carried in front of her a small basket of perfectly ripe apples and pears.
“I wanted to bring you gift.…” She offered him the fruit. “I hope I don’t bother you … coming to your place.”
He felt awkward and humbled by the earnestness of her gesture.
“You saved my boy.” She touched her chest. “I must find right way to thank you.”
“It was just fortunate that I took my walk a little earlier than normal that night,” he said, deflecting her praise. He felt shabby standing in his worn clothes. “I suppose we all just have to be grateful for this guy,” he gestured toward Hendrix, who had happily trotted to the door to greet the unexpected guest. “He’s the one who wanted to head out early.”
“I am grateful to you, too,” she said and knelt down and patted Hendrix lightly on his back. “You save my B?o. He safe because of you.”
In that second, Jack felt a softening of his shame and the embarrassment of his scars and humble circumstances melt away.
“Do you want to come in?” He surprised himself by the offer. “I mean, I never have people over, but I could make you a cup of tea or something.…” He lifted the basket of fruit and his face twisted into a smile. “It’s awfully nice of you to have brought me this.”
“Yes.” She dipped her head and followed him inside. “Thank you.”
The cushions on the soft brown leather couch that had followed him from his apartment in Foxton barely sunk under Anh’s delicate frame. With her hands folded elegantly in her lap, she looked around the sparse room for clues about this man who she knew so little about, other than he wore his suffering on his face. His scars, she knew, were a result from serving in the American War, his pain tethered to a place she once called her home—and she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with that knowledge. But Anh could do nothing but accept his wounds as a terrible fact she had no power to change.
As he went to boil a kettle of water on the stove, she looked around and noticed how few possessions he had. A hanging plant with ropes of heavy green leaves dangled from the ceiling, a stack of records was neatly placed by his stereo, there was a cardboard box that look liked it had recently been rummaged through, containing some papers and a purple medal on top. But in the corner of the room, where his bed lay with the coverlet pulled hastily to the top, there was a photograph of a young man with his arm thrown around the shoulder of a girl with long brown hair.
She took the cup of steaming hot tea between her two hands and breathed in the fragrant vapor with closed eyes.
“This smells good,” she said, blowing on the rim of the mug before she drank.
“It’s just Lipton,” he laughed. “But I like it.”
She lifted her cup for another sip and smiled.
“You are kind man,” Anh said. “I wish I could do more to thank you. Or thank Grace and her family.”
Jack sat back in the hard dining room chair he had pulled closer to the sofa. “Ever since I moved here”—he lifted one hand and gestured around the apartment—“from the moment I started working nights downstairs … I’ve thought the same thing … how can I thank them for everything they’ve done for me?”
She nodded and her eyes wettened. “It so hard at first when we get here. To be alone. Then B?o run away, and I feel …” She placed her cup down on his wooden coffee table. “I feel I fail him.”
In Anh’s company, Jack felt his typical steely veneer soften. Was it because they were relative strangers that they could be this open with each other? He wasn’t sure, but something in him welcomed being able to speak so freely.
“You didn’t fail him.” Jack leaned forward and put his hands on the table. “I think you’re very brave just to have even come to a new place. You study to learn a new language, to build a new life.…”
Anh looked down and knotted her hands. None of the things Jack described were the hardest things she had endured.
“My husband, the men they beat him. Killed him. My baby died soon later. If you not find B?o, I lose him too.” She bit her lip and tried not to let her tears fall. “You lose wife, girlfriend, too, Jack?” She pointed to the lone picture frame.
The silence that followed was thick as smoke. Jack lifted his tea to his lips and swallowed, his eyes staring into his cup. “Yes and no, I suppose,” he finally answered. He hadn’t spoken about Becky to anyone for years now, and yet she was still a part of his daily existence, never far from his every thought.
“She wasn’t my wife, but I loved her.” Jack placed the mug down and his eyes drifted toward the hanging plant. Did he dare unburden himself to this woman who was only starting to learn English, who he knew for far less time than he did Grace or Tom? Even they did not know his story fully.
“She didn’t die, and I didn’t lose her, exactly.” He took a deep breath. Then another. “I know exactly where she is.”