Chapter Forty-Nine
Berkeley
Helen
“Where is Marigold?” Philip asked.
“She’s not coming with us,” replied Rosie. “She’ll meet us at the restaurant.”
“It’d be nice if she’d told us.”
I agreed. These days she’d been coming home later and later.
“I was in the library . . . I lost track of time.”
“I had study group with some pre-med friends. We were working on applications until late. I’ll let you know next time.”
Philip believed her each time. She certainly had the marks to explain her late hours: She’d scored in the top two percent on the MCAT, and unless her grades took a nosedive in the next semester, she’d be graduating with highest distinction.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Marigold was keeping something from us.
Once or twice, I’d overheard her giggling into the kitchen phone.
Recently she’d hinted about going on dates with someone, but after Philip said, “So long as he’s Chinese,” she’d stopped talking about it.
Philip sank onto a chair, his eyes closed. His cough came out a deep and rattling hacking sound. Rosie brought him a glass of water. “I’m fine,” he said gruffly, taking a sip. “Just a headache.” He looked haggard, his eyes flat and pupils glazed like lozenges.
Philip unwrapped a new stick of gum. He’d finally given up smoking and chewed gum incessantly. He coughed again, wheezing.
“Francis’s car is still here from last week,” I said. “Rosie can drive Mama to Caruso. We’ll go to the store first to buy aspirin.”
“I’ll pack the tarts,” said Rosie. “Po Po, can you help me?”
Mama was descending the stairs into the kitchen. “Give me a box.”
“Thirty-two tarts, right?” Rosie asked me, getting to work. “Two for everyone.”
“We only need thirty. Paul’s grandmother can’t come.”
“But Marigold’s bringing Kenji—” Rosie’s hand jumped to her mouth.
Too late. Philip’s voice went lethally soft. “Who is Kenji?”
“Her boyfriend,” my mother replied. “I invited him.”
Philip’s headache was forgotten. He clenched the car keys, the blue veins in his fist bulging. He turned to Rosie. “I want to talk to your sister.”
“She probably left already—”
“Call her. Now.”
Fingers trembling, Rosie dialed a number on the kitchen phone. Someone picked up, and in English Rosie asked for Marigold. “I’m sorry, Jeh,” she burst out. “I didn’t mean to—”
Philip snatched the phone. “Are you with that devil?”
I couldn’t hear Marigold’s response, but whatever it was, Philip only grew angrier.
“Don’t you take that tone with me, Mei Yoong,” he barked. “I don’t care how nice he is, you break it off right now and get to dinner. I don’t want to hear his name ever again.”
Philip practically threw the phone at me. “Helen, you talk to her.”
Pressure rose to my left ear, which began ringing painfully. I was already dreading what was about to come. Anyone else, your father would’ve accepted with enough time. But a Japanese boy? Oh, Marigold, why?
“Yut Ying.” My mother touched my arm. I knew her look. Have compassion. Take her side.
If only it were so simple.
“Rosie,” I told my youngest daughter, who was still shellshocked by Philip’s outburst. “Take the tarts and tell everyone we’re running late. Bring Po Po. Go!”
I picked up the phone. “Marigold, are you still there?”
She didn’t speak, but I knew she was listening.
“Don’t upset your father. You know his asthma is getting worse—”
“His asthma always flares up whenever things don’t go the way he wants.”
Though Marigold’s voice trembled, it was steel and unyielding. No wonder Philip was furious.
I closed my eyes, unable to reason with her over the phone. Not when my ear felt like it was in a storm. “Your father and I have to go or we’ll be late to Po Po’s birthday party,” I said. “We’ll talk after dinner.”
I hung up.
It made me nervous whenever Philip drove angry.
He coughed, his grip on the steering wheel tense. “That boy better not be at dinner.”
“And if he is? Don’t you make a scene at my mother’s birthday.”
Another cough. Philip spat into a napkin. “Why aren’t you upset?”
“Of course I’m upset.” I opened the bottle of aspirin. “Here.”
Philip swallowed the tablet. “You don’t look angry. The Japanese murdered your neighbors. They looted your father’s ancestral home and would’ve stolen you away to become one of their comfort girls—”
“Yes, I remember.”
“We’ve been too soft on her. How many times have we told the girls: Date Chinese, marry Chinese. Never Japanese!”
I could empathize with Philip. Ask any Chinese in our generation, we all hated the Japanese.
We’d lost our youth to digging bomb shelters and hiding from airstrikes, eating roots and insects because our fields were razed and we had no more food.
Learning basic Japanese words so if their soldiers came barging into our homes, we could at least beg for our lives.
But the war had ended decades ago. Marigold and her boyfriend hadn’t even been born. It didn’t feel right for them to suffer the same miscarriages of fate that we had.
“You can’t blame the boy for his ancestors’ crimes.”
“You sound like your mother.”
It’s just that Marigold’s been happy. She smiled like a cat when she came home, practically bouncing up to her room and wearing dimples that I didn’t know she had. My dimples.
I had smiled that way once.
“Marigold’s never brought a friend to dinner. We should at least—”
“What? Pay for that murderer’s dinner?” This wasn’t what Philip had wanted to hear. “She went behind our backs to date that devil. She lied to us! Marigold!”
“She didn’t lie, she was afraid to tell us.” Because she knew you’d react like this, I thought.
Philip would never admit that his anger went beyond the Japanese boyfriend.
Marigold had always been studious and filial, the daughter he was most proud of.
Ever since she’d started college he hadn’t gambled once.
“We need to save as much as we can,” he said.
“Marigold’s going to get into the best medical school.
I don’t want her to turn it down because we don’t have enough money. ”
For her, he’d changed. Now he felt hurt. Betrayed.
“She’s our daughter,” I tried. “You weren’t happy about Francis and Eugene at first, but look at how you two—”
“Francis is my brother, not my son, and he’s not having children. You want to have those murderers’ blood in the family?”
Philip punched the radio on, his way of sulking. The station was Rosie’s, some sort of loud funk that he disliked and would always change, but today he left it on, deciding to punish us both.
We were almost at the Bay Bridge. Philip was rifling through his pants pocket, and I assumed he was looking for his wallet to pay the tolls, but he took out his lighter and a cigarette.
“Help me light it,” he had the gall to request. “Don’t look at me like that, Helen. I have quit.”
“That’s not quitting.”
“My head hurts. And this nonsense with Marigold isn’t helping.”
“No more smoking.” I reached over to take the cigarette, but it slipped from his fingers and the lighter fell to the floor.
I was about to scold him again when he slumped over the wheel. His arm had gone stiff as a rod, and his jaw was locked. “Take the wheel,” he grated.
“What?”
“The wheel! I can’t—feel . . . my arm.”
I slid down the bench just as Philip’s foot fell off the pedal and the car swerved. I screamed, my leg scrambling over his to jam my foot down on the brakes.
Our tires shrieked against the pavement. Cars honked as I steered us, careening across lanes, to the shoulder.
“Philip?” I asked once we came to a stop on the side of the freeway. “What happened?”
Philip unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his door.
He didn’t make it one step out before he collapsed on the pavement.