Koko (46 page)

“What
shall
I do, then?” she asked, unable to keep the irony out of her voice.

“You are a caretaker,” the General said. “You are a person who goes where she is needed.
Your friend was in great need of your help. You brought him back to health so successfully
that he no longer required your assistance, your caretaking, and all his usual problems
returned to him. I know men like him. It will be years before he gets to the end of
what combat did to him.”

“Do you think Americans are too sentimental to be good soldiers?” Maggie asked, really
curious to know if he did think this.

“I am not a philosopher,” the General said. He went into a storeroom behind the altar
and returned carrying a stack of hymnals. Knowing what was expected of her, Maggie
came forward and took the hymnals from him. “But you would perhaps be a better soldier
than your friend. I have known some caretakers who were excellent officers. Your father
had a great deal of the caretaker in him.”

“Did he go where he was needed?”

“He often went where
I
needed him,” the General said.

They were walking side by side down parallel aisles, placing hymnals face up on the
chairs.

“And now I suppose you want me to go somewhere,” she said at last.

“You are doing nothing now, Maggie. You help me out here in my church. You live with
your old soldier. I am sure you do a great many things for his restaurant.”

“I try,” Maggie said.

“And if you lived with a painter, you would find the best brushes in the city, you
would prepare the canvases as they were never prepared before, and you would end up
getting him into famous galleries and museums.”

“That’s right,” she said, struck by this vision.

“So either you marry some man here and live his life by proxy, being his partner if
he will let you, or you have your own life by yourself.”

“In Taiwan,” she said, for eventually they would come to this point.

“It is as good as anywhere else, and better for you. I will forget about your brother.
Jimmy would be the same anywhere, so he might as well stay here. But you could go
to college in Taipei now, and then train for a career.”

“What career?”

“Medicine,” he said, and looked at her fully and frankly. “I can pay for your tuition.”

She nearly laughed out loud in astonishment, and then tried to make a joke of it.
“Well, at least you didn’t say nursing!”

“I thought about that, too.” He went on setting down the hymnals. “It would take less
time, and cost much less money. But wouldn’t you rather be a doctor?”

She thought of Pumo and said, “Maybe I ought to be a psychiatrist!”

“Maybe you ought,” he said, and she saw that he knew exactly what she was thinking.

“Always the caretaker,” he said. “Do you remember your mother reading
Babar
to you? The book about the elephant?”

“The books,” she said, for her memory of the French children’s books, which both parents
had read to Maggie during her early childhood, was very clear.

“I was remembering a sentence from one of them—something King Babar says. ‘Truly it
is not easy to bring up a family.’ ”

“Oh, you did all right,” Maggie said.

“I wish I had done better.”

“Well, I was only the tiniest of families.” Maggie smiled over
the rank of intervening chairs and patted his thick old hand. “I haven’t thought of
those books in years. Where are they?”

“I have them.”

“I’d like them someday.” Now they were both smiling. “I always liked the Old Lady.”

“See? Another caretaker.”

Maggie laughed out loud, and if Pumo had seen her at that moment, he would have said
that she had begun to levitate again.

“I would never insist you follow any design of mine,” the General said. “If you decide
to marry your old soldier, I would be happy for you. I would just want you to know
that you were his caretaker as well as his wife.”

This was too much for Maggie, and she turned them back onto safer ground. “I could
sing him the song of the elephants. Do you remember
that
?”

He cocked his close-shaven authoritative head. Maggie was very grateful that he had
at least met Tina Pumo, and promised herself that she would bring whatever man or
men became important to her up before the General’s inspection.

“All I remember is that it was supposed to be very old.” He smiled and said, “From
the days of the mammoths,” as if he were old enough to have seen them himself.

Maggie sang the song from
Babar the King: “ ‘Patali di rapato/Cromda cromda ripalo/Pata pata/Ko ko ko.’

“That’s the first verse. I can’t remember the other two, but they end the same way—
‘Pata pata/Ko ko ko
.’ ”

As soon as she had sung the words again she knew that she was going to go back down
to Grand Street.

About the same time that Tina Pumo pressed the button to unlock his street door and
Maggie Lah went up the steps to the 125th Street subway stop, wondering if Tina would
still be in his infantile mood, Judy Poole called up Pat Caldwell to have a serious
conversation. Judy imagined that Pat Caldwell was very likely the most satisfactory
person in the world with whom to have a serious conversation. She did not judge other
people in the way that most people of Judy’s acquaintance, and Judy herself, judged
others. Judy attributed this to the liberating effect of having been born into a great
fortune and grown up to be a kind of displaced princess
who went around pretending to be poor. Pat Caldwell had been born far richer than
even Bob Bunce, and Judy imagined that if she had been born with such an enormous
silver spoon in her mouth, she, too, might have learned to be so artless about concealing
it. Really rich people made the only convincing liberals. And Pat Caldwell had known
Judy Poole for more than ten years, ever since Michael and Harry Beevers had left
the army—they had made a perfect foursome, Judy thought. Or would have, if Harry Beevers
had not been so insecure. Harry had nearly ruined their friendship. Even Michael hadn’t
liked him.

“It’s all because of Ia Thuc,” she said to Pat, once they were talking. “You know
what they remind me of? The men who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, the ones who fell
apart and turned into drunks. They let it become too much for them—almost as if they
expected
to be punished for it.”

“Harry never expected to be punished for it,” Pat said. “But Harry never expected
to be punished for anything. Don’t be too hard on Michael.”

“I used to try not to be,” Judy said. “I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble anymore.”

“Oh dear.”

“Well, you got divorced.”

“Well, I had reasons,” Pat said. “Reasons on top of reasons. Reasons inside reasons.
You don’t want to know about all that.”

Judy did want to know—Michael had told her that he thought Beevers was a wife beater—but
felt that she could not come out and ask.

“Michael called from Bangkok,” she said after a pause, “and I was terrible to him.
I don’t like myself when I’m like that. I even told him I was going out with someone
else.”

“I see,” Pat said. “When the cat’s away?”

“Bob is a very nice, very dedicated, very stable man,” Judy said, somewhat defensively.
“Michael and I haven’t really been close since Robbie died.”

“I see,” Pat repeated. “Do you mean you’re serious about your friend?”

“I could be. He’s
healthy.
He never
shot
anybody. He
sails.
He plays
tennis.
He doesn’t have
nightmares.
He isn’t carrying poison and
disease
around inside him.…” Judy astonished herself by beginning to cry. “I’m lonely—Michael
makes me lonely. All I want is to be an ordinary person and to have an ordinary middle-class
life.” She began to cry again, and took a moment to steady her voice. “Is that a lot
to ask for?”

“Depends on who’s asking,” Pat said reasonably. “But clearly you don’t think so.”

“I
don’t
,” Judy fairly wailed. “I’ve worked hard all my life! I wasn’t born in Westerholm,
you know. I’m proud of my home and my accomplishments, my achievements, the whole
way we live! That
counts!
I’ve never asked for a handout, I never took anybody’s charity. I made a good place
for myself in one of the most exclusive, expensive towns in the entire country. That
means something.”

“No one would dispute that,” Pat soothed.

“You don’t know Michael,” Judy said. “He’s perfectly willing to throw it all away.
I think he
hates
Westerholm. He wants to throw everything away and go live in a slum, it’s like he
wants to cover himself with
ashes
, he can’t stand anything
nice
 …”

“Is he sick?” Pat asked. “You said something about poison and disease.…”

“The war got
inside
him, he carried
death
around inside him, he sees everything upside-down, I think the only person he really
likes here is a girl who’s dying of cancer, he
dotes
on her, he gives her books to read and he finds excuses to see her, it’s awful, it’s
because she’s dying, she’s like Robbie, she’s a smart Robbie.…” Now Judy was in tears
again. “Ah, I loved that poor kid. But when he died I put all his things away, I was
determined to put it all behind me and get on with things.… Oh, I suppose you’ll never
forgive me for getting so emotional.”

“Of course I forgive you, there’s nothing to forgive. You’re upset. But are you implying
that Michael is suffering from an Agent Orange-related illness?”

“Have you ever lived with a doctor?” Judy laughed unpleasantly. “Do you know how hard
it is to get a doctor to go to a doctor? Michael’s not healthy, I know that much.
He won’t go for a checkup, he’s like some primitive old man, he’s waiting for it to
go away—but I know what it is! It’s Vietnam, it’s Ia Thuc! He
swallowed Ia
Thuc, he ate the whole thing up, he drank it the way you’d drink some poison, and
it’s eating
him
up. For all I know, he blames me for all his problems.” She paused, and collected
herself. “Then, as if all that wasn’t enough, there’s my anonymous caller. You ever
have one of those?”

“I’ve had a few obscene telephone calls,” Pat said. “And Harry used to call me up,
after I made him move out of my apartment. He never admitted it, but he’d stay on
the phone, just sort of breathing, hoping I’d get scared or feel sorry for him or
something.”

“Maybe
Harry’s
calling me up!” Judy uttered a muffled sound that might have been laughter.

Intimations that something had gone wrong followed Maggie all the way to Pumo’s door.
A crowd of boys at the subway’s exit surrounded her as soon as she came up the steps,
dancing in close to her and calling her “little Chinkie.” “I show you a good time,
little Chinkie.” They were just aimless, bored adolescents, too frightened of women
to approach them individually, but Maggie suddenly felt too scared of them to risk
doing anything but shoving her hands into her pockets, averting her head, and walking
straight ahead. The odor of marijuana surrounded the boys like a cloud. Where was
Pumo? Why didn’t he answer his phone? “Look at me, look at me, look at me,” one of
the boys begged, and Maggie lifted her chin and gave him a look so powerful that he
fell back on the spot.

The rest of the boys continued following her for nearly a block, making half-intelligible
growls and yells. The night had become very cold, and the wind burned Maggie’s face.
The street-lamps shed a morbid yellow light.

She needed time to absorb the General’s offer. She would not reject it without fully
considering it, and she might not reject it at all. It was possible that in time the
General might accept her training at a medical school in New York, if any such school
would take her in. If she were a medical student with her own room up in Washington
Heights or over in Brooklyn, if she were busier than any four restaurant owners, if
Tina could see that she had her own life … then he couldn’t accuse her of making a
meal of his own.

The worst intimation yet that something had gone wrong interrupted the pleasant pictures
this possibility gave her. From the end of the block Maggie had been seeing a sliver
of yellow light beside the entrance to Saigon, and had taken for granted that it was
a reflection in a pane of glass or a strip of polished metal awaiting storage inside
the foyer. Now it struck Maggie that it was at least half an hour too late for the
workmen to be around. In this neighborhood, they would never leave anything outside
at night.

As soon as she got closer to the restaurant, Maggie saw that
the door itself hung open half an inch, letting the light from the staircase spill
out. This was not merely an intimation of trouble, it rang like an alarm bell. Pumo
would not have left his street door gaping open in a thousand lifetimes. Maggie jogged
toward the shaft of light.

When she put her hand on the door, she realized that if Pumo had not left it open,
some other person had. She was already pressing the buzzer that communicated with
the apartment, and snatched her hand away before it gave any more than the dot of
Morse code.

She hung in the doorway a moment, fairly panting with indecision. She moved a few
steps to the side and pushed the buzzer for the restaurant, thinking that Vinh might
be inside. She pressed it again, and this time held it down, but nothing happened.
Vinh was not home.

There was a pay telephone around the corner on West Broadway, and Maggie moved away
to call the police. But maybe Pumo
had
simply left the door unlocked, and was sitting upstairs in a blue funk.

Or maybe Dracula had returned to ransack the loft. The memory of how she had found
Pumo lying on sheets stiff with drying blood moved her back to the door again and
lifted her hand to the buzzer. She pushed, held it down longer than she had the restaurant’s
buzzer, and listened to the noise ring out through the loft and down the stairs.