Face (27 page)

No dogs or Chinese.

A fancy lady with a thick German accent had visited Li’s store. She wore a green velvet suit, diamonds in her ears, and though
she must have been as old as my father, her skin had the smooth, tender look that comes with years of facials.

“It is like a miracle to find you,” she said. “What will Mama say when she sees! All the way from Bubbling Well road…” She
shook her head in amazement, staring at a brocaded love seat.

“Please.” Lao Li lowered his eyes. “You say hello for me.”

“Yes, yes. Of course.” The lady gave him a handful of bills.

“Xie-xie ni,”
he said.
“Xie-xie.”

“Xie-xie,”
she replied, delighted. “Yes.
Xie-xie ni!”

“You knew her in China?” I asked after she was gone.

Lao Li raised his hands and dropped them. “She was a little girl. I knew her mother. Very beautiful lady. Very beautiful.”

Then he winked at me in a way that said he had confided a naughty secret, and in this wink I saw that, before the cobwebs
and lizard’s hands, when his hair was still shiny black, he must have been a terrible ladies’ man. Terrible not in the sense
of evil, for, despite my first impression, I could not now imagine Lao Li as being at all bad or dangerous, but in the sense
of a holy terror. My mother called such men Hairbreadth Harrys.

A Chinese Hairbreadth Harry. The thought made me burst out laughing.

“What is so funny?”

“You’re funny.”

“I am not funny. I am old.”

“You really did like the ladies.”

“Never too old to like ladies.” He winked again. “And never too young to like boys, I think.”

I made a face at him and changed the subject. “Tell me about China. Not ancient stories, you know. Your life. You lived in
Shanghai, right? Tell me about Shanghai.”

“Ai ya, your papa can tell you about that.”

“But he never says
anything
about it.”

“I think it is young person’s duty to ask about old person’s life, and it is old person’s duty to tell about old times. You
know. Otherwise, only ghosts know truth.”

“So, tell me what Shanghai was like.”

He thought for a moment. “That lady who is just here, you know? That lady live in big big house, many rooms, many servants.
Her papa was officer in German navy. They had parties all night—ate whole cows, whole pigs. All around the sky light up with
their dancing.” He wiggled his fingers high and wide.

“Did you go to these parties?”

“I?” Li snorted. “No. Foreigners only at these parties. Foreigners only in parks. In clubs. Swimming pool. Signs say, ‘No
dogs or Chinese allowed.’”

“But it was
your
country!”

“You ask about Shanghai in my time. That Shanghai my time. American, English, French, Russian, Italian, German—and Japanese—own
whole city. Chinese leaders take bribe money, give foreigners whatever they ask. Chinese people work for foreigners, not for
China.”

“But you were friendly with that lady and her mother.”

“Of course. She was one of my best customers. She pawned very precious jewelry, some furniture. Paid big money to get it back.”
He rubbed his fingers together and smiled. “Foreigners like to gamble even more than Chinese. You know. Sometimes they gamble
at their bridge and pinochle. Mostly they gamble in their stocks. In Shanghai they have big houses, cars, servants, but many
times they have no money to buy gas or pay servants. Then they come to me!” He grinned and nodded his head. “The ladies come
to me. Foreign men prefer to keep gam
bling, hope their luck will change. Until they end up with nothing. Ladies are more practical. You know.”

I considered his inlaid chairs, ornate ginger jars, dragon screens, the cases of pearls and jade and ivory, hanging scrolls,
and ceramic Buddhas.

“The
foreigners
pawned all this stuff?”

“Not all. Some come from Chiang’s officers. They stole it from communist sympathizers, then sold quick. But most from Europeans
who are not as rich as they pretend. So they get away from the Japanese.”

“Didn’t you run when war came?”

“
Dui
. I run. I hate Chiang. I hate Mao. Japanese take everything I own, maybe kill me, too. So right away after they begin fighting
for Shanghai delta, I close my shop. I use lot of bribes, lot of
guanxi
with foreigners and friends of the Generalissimo. You know. I send everything to Hong Kong, then San Francisco.”

“Then New York.”

“After while. Yes, then New York.”

And he had rebuilt his shop in New York. Had embraced his borrowed treasures and gone to great lengths to bring them with
him across the ocean, across a foreign continent. Far from rejecting his past life, he had resurrected it here. My father
had only pieces of paper, strips of celluloid to carry, but for him even that was too much.

D
ad returned the toolbox this morning. I was shooting a miniature Christmas tree, the Traveling Tree, as it would be called
in the catalog, on a bed of crushed Styrofoam.

He wagged his head back and forth. “Some old battle-ax gave me the third degree downstairs.”

“Harriet. The building manager. What’d she want to know?”

“Who I was. Where I was going.”

“You tell her?”

“Sure.” He handed me the toolbox. “Any reason I shouldn’t have?”

I shrugged, avoiding his eyes. “Did this help?”

“An idea or two.” He watched me adjust a light, try a different filter, lower the tripod. I wondered if he had some suggestions
or criticisms, but as usual it was impossible to read his expression. One thing I knew, though, he’d stay longer if I continued
working. He’d think his presence made no difference.

“How close are you?”

“I put it aside.”

“Working on something else?”

He sat fingering a matchbook, folded the cover diagonally, then again with attention, as if doing origami. He studied the
results for a moment, then slipped it back in his shirt pocket, behind a soft pack of cigarettes. “Bad luck to talk about
it.”

I started shooting. “Since when are you superstitious about your work?”

What I saw through the viewfinder was a lone pine in a snowy meadow, no scale. I’d already done one set with the tree’s branches
covered with tiny ornaments, but I preferred this cleaner, stripped-down image. Ironically it was the more artificial; the
contraption was closer to a Christmas tree than to a real pine. Noble would probably use the decorated version.

“Maibelle,” my father said, “Diana’s upset with you.”

I tightened focus until the needles became blades of cut green plastic. “I’ve been busy.”

“That’s good.”

Dad picked up the
National Geographic
lying next to him on the couch, open to Marge’s photograph of an Indian boy doing a handstand on the back of a water buffalo.

“She wanted me to say something. I take it you didn’t hit it off with Foucault.”

I lowered the tripod. “It’s not important.”

My father sucked at his dentures. “The man’s a horse’s ass. Whatever she tells you.”

“I know.” I began to shoot. The hidden pictures. Mum and Foucault. The scheme to bring Dad back from the dead and screw him
at the same time. The knowledge that I’d so decisively sought now felt like a bomb just waiting for me to trip it.

“That picture in your lap.” I said. “It’s by a woman named Marge Gramercy. She lived here before me.”

“Here?” He gave the place another look around, then studied the picture. His thumb rubbed the margin of the page. He took
his time. “I knew her.”

Naturally I thought he was joking. But the way his thumb just kept
working that paper, and he wouldn’t look up, and then I began to think and it made perfect sense. She was older, but not by
much. They covered some of the same territory. During some of the same years.

“She was a doctor, you know.”

I pretended to take a meter reading.

“Her parents were missionaries in Singapore. They sent her back to the States to medical school. She was supposed to do God’s
work, but it got away from her.”

He put the picture down and shook out a Kent, lit it with a steady hand. I gave him his plate, which he balanced on his knee,
and pulled the curtains back just enough to open the window. A cool breeze, jagged with city sounds, blew through.

“How did you know her?”

“Burma. Rangoon during the war. There was one hotel where all the journalists stayed. She wore a Yankees cap. Backwards before
her time.” He smiled.

“Did you love her?”

He let out a little grunt to inform me in no uncertain terms that I was off track. “Everybody did. But I hardly knew her.
Never saw her again after that.”

“I feel as if I know her. From her pictures. And living here.”

His eyes toured the walls, the fireplace, windows, the abbreviated kitchen. “I saw in the paper she died last winter.” He
closed the magazine. “You have more of these?”

I pointed to the bottom orange crate where most of the
National Geographies
were stacked.

“She never worked for
Life,
then?”

I thought I saw his head twitch, but all he said was “No.” He made no move to look at the magazines or the tearsheets on the
mantelpiece. I pushed the collapsible tree aside, swept the fake snow into a shoe box. I pretended Marge was guiding my hand.

“I didn’t know you got Mum her job with Foucault.”

The red and white checks of his shirt marched up the rise of his belly as he smoked. No answer.

“I always thought it was like her and him against you.”

“And now?”

“Now I don’t know.”

He ground his cigarette into the plate. “Neither do I.”

“But you could have stopped her. You hated the gallery. Art. When you came back from China—”

“When I came back from China, I was bloody grateful she had a paying job. She seemed to like it. That’s all that mattered.”

“And later?”

“Later the gallery was her career.”

“But she still wants her superstar.” I nearly said “back.” Wants him back. I nearly told him about Mum’s plan.

Not yet.

I glanced down at the old lady in the garden with her bird. It wasn’t her high wheedling voice, though, or the bird’s rasp.

“How are you getting along with the Leica?”

So, while arranging snowman and Santa Claus soap dispensers for the next shot, I told him about my work in Chinatown, about
Tommy’s book. I thanked him with the news that I’d put his gift to use. And not for art. I was looking and seeing.

Seeing shiny round men with plastic pumps growing out of their skulls.

“I could show you,” I said.

“No.”

The swiftness of his reply, and the decisiveness, made my hand jerk, wasting a shot. Could he see through my bluff? I had
nothing developed. You can’t rush free work, I’d warned Tommy. Had he called my father to complain, to urge him to push me
forward? The thought was ludicrous, a diversion. That’s not what Dad meant at all, and I knew it. No meant no. He wouldn’t
look. He didn’t want to see. He wouldn’t mention this to Mum, either.

“Bad luck.” I straddled the stool on the edge of the set, not quite facing him.

“What?”

“You said it’s bad luck to talk about your work. Is that why you hold back so much?”

“Do I?”

“When I was little, I thought you were a spy.”

“I wasn’t.”

Two horizontal lines cut across my father’s forehead. He was picking at his fingernails, his shoulders tipped forward, elbows
pulled in as if he were hiding something in the center of his body. He did not straighten up.

“Did something happen to us, Dad? Something bad? When I was very little, maybe, or later. That I could have forgotten?”

“Why? Why do you ask?”

“I have nightmares.”

“Oh.” He patted his breast pocket, but the cigarette pack was empty. “Well. So do we all.”

“Okay, then. What are yours about?”

“Awwk! Bye. Bye. Blackbird!” The parrot’s song leapt over the outside sounds. It seemed to land in the center of the room
and stopped as unexpectedly as it had arrived.

My father grinned, exposing large square yellowed teeth, one gold. He strode to the window, poked his head out to see the
bird and its mistress. He stayed there long enough to ignore my question, but when he pulled back he gave himself a shake
and said, “I don’t remember my dreams. Never have. Doesn’t mean I don’t have them.”

“Maybe if you remembered them, you might change them. For the better.”

“I don’t think so.”

I lifted the plastic tree and folded its branches. Fully collapsed, it was the size and shape of a calligraphy brush.

“Li
used
to say it was important to remember, to pass those memories on. He said if we didn’t, only ghosts would know the truth.”

I thought that would get a rise, because of the way he used to talk about Li, because I wasn’t sure if he ever knew how much
time I’d spent with the old man. But Dad placed one hand on top of my head as if
blessing me. Then he hitched up his pants and moved to the door. It hardly made a sound behind him.