The Tao of Pam (2 page)

“Well, not exactly, but it was the way things worked out because he stayed in the city during the week. At least you know Ed will be home every night,” Pam said.

“So what you’re telling me is to leave him alone? That might be difficult. I wait for him to get home every night because I’ve been cooped up in the house with an infant all day.”

“Why subject yourself to that, Lisa? Get out of the house! Just because you have a baby doesn’t mean you should be a slave to her. Sorry I can’t be more sympathetic, but don’t expect your husband to entertain you every night. You have a college education; do something with your days.” Pam remembered being so lonely during the week when she was a young mother. But no one advised her to be proactive like she was telling her daughter to be.

“Really, Mother, I’m not expecting him to entertain me. But if he’s too tired for sex and doesn’t seem interested in even talking to me after only being married a year, what does that say?”

Pam didn’t have an answer for her. Jack was always ready, in spite of screwing his way across Manhattan for thirty years or more. Needing Ed’s attention wasn’t too much for Lisa to expect.

“Maybe the reasons behind him leaving the priesthood need to be investigated further. Do you think his faith could be causing trouble?” Pam asked.

“In what way? You mean guilt? Now that I’m his wife, it’s impure to have sex? Yes, I’ve read the books. I don’t know if it’s his faith, but I’m at my wits’ end.”

“Well, what does he say when you talk to him about it?”

“Talk to him! That’s what I mean, Mother. It’s like he doesn’t understand what I’m saying to him. He can’t relate intimately with me even in conversation,” Lisa admitted. “It’s like he’s withdrawn from me.”

“Ah, you better find a way to talk to him, Lisa. Sexual problems are the number one reason marriages break up. Haha! Like I should be giving you advice.”

Lisa went right to Pam and embraced her. “Mother, I don’t care what happened with Dad. Please don’t stop advising me.”

Pam put a tissue to her eye, turning her back. They were still play-acting, pretending life with Jack was wonderful. Pam remembered a confrontation she’d had with her daughter at Thanksgiving the year after Jack died, in which Lisa admitted she was furious with Pam because of what Jack had done behind her back. Lisa couldn’t believe that any woman could be so stupid not to suspect infidelity when he was practically doing it under her nose. Now, living with a man and seeing how easy it would be to sweep problems under the rug rather than confronting them head on, Lisa had stopped judging Pam.

Chapter 1

Margaret Hsu made a fourth lap around the arrival section at JFK. Her cell phone died during the trip from White Plains, and now she was concerned her daughter Julie wouldn’t know where to look for her. But she was a smart girl and soon figured out where her mother was. Margaret saw her waving frantically, six large suitcases piled up on a dolly and a Red Cap standing to the side. Margaret pulled over and popped the trunk of her Jaguar. Not all of the baggage was going to fit, so she rolled down the window.

“Julie,” she yelled above the din of the airport, “tell him to put the rest in the backseat.” She was sorry she hadn’t thought of bringing a sheet to place over the leather seats as he tossed the filthy canvas bags into the car. Julie dug through her purse and handed over a wad of bills to the Red Cap, who touched his visor and pushed the emptied dolly away after slamming the doors. Margaret moaned with each crash. Julie opened the passenger side and slid in, keeping her face averted from her mother. Margaret pulled away from the curb without looking in the side-view mirror, just as a New York Transit bus came close to hitting her brand-new car.

They drove in silence, and it wasn’t until she was out of the congestion of the airport traffic that she looked over at Julie. She’d heard a sniff, but didn’t inquire. Something was very wrong. They’d spent a small fortune shipping her daughter’s life to California to live with Brent Smith, and by early May, a hysterical Julie called to say she was on the next plane east. Evidently, it was something bad, but it wasn’t like Margaret to dig into her children’s personal business. Her husband, on the other hand, was like a lunatic, shouting, trying to grab the phone out of Margaret’s hand when Julie was on the other line.

Charles Hsu knew Jack Smith, Brent’s father, since college days, and when Julie and Brent started to date, he was thrilled. All he could think of was the advantages there would be to having Brent Smith in the family. Surely, he’d take over his father’s business some day. When Jack died and a young, beautiful researcher came on board to take his place, it didn’t take long for the rumor mills to start generating gossip. Still, Brent was a go-getter, named
Someone You Should Watch
by
Internet Business Weekly
. Julie now knew the title meant more than just success in business. Brent was a reprobate, not even attempting to hide his debauchery from her.

“Honey, don’t you want to tell me what happened? Daddy will pester you unless you have some explanation. What could have been so bad that you would leave your new home? I just don’t understand. Was it a lover’s quarrel? What?”

“Mom, trust me, you don’t want to know, so don’t ask,” Julie answered, crying again. She was so angry, so humiliated. Brent Smith had lived a lie and then tried to convince her to live it with him. She was in denial about her role in it, begging for an engagement ring, giving him an ultimatum. He’d dropped everything to fly east and ask for her hand in marriage.
What a mistake that would have been.

Mother and daughter drove in silence the rest of the way home. She no longer felt sad, or hurt. Now she was livid, anger and pride percolating into a poisonous elixir of hate for Brent. So much venom riding the cosmos toward Pasadena had to affect Brent. She hoped he would die, or worse. Imagining horrific scenes with him running from a burning building, his clothing engulfed in flames. Or being pulled from the wreckage of a burning automobile, his neck at an impossible angle. She saw him careening down a snow-covered hill, his ski bindings not giving way, and his legs resting at odd angles when he finally stopped. The only time she felt sad was when she thought of how being in a relationship with him had affected her. Every time Julie imagined having to tell her friends about the failed relationship, she’d start crying again.

Vivid in her mind were the real images, the most recent, waking up at two in the morning just the day before, thinking the roof must be leaking, but what she thought was rain coming through the ceiling was her boyfriend peeing on her. She discovered him naked, straddling her, holding himself. She was so disoriented she thought it was a horrible dream. But when he realized she was awake, he started laughing, waving his dick around in the air like a maniac, trying to squeeze one last drop out on her.

Screaming as loud as she could, she jumped up out of bed, shaking her arms and head, stripping her nightgown off. “Jesus Christ, Brent, what the hell are you doing?”

He jumped down and started running around the house, laughing like a maniac. Locking the bathroom door behind her, she turned the water on in the shower and got in without waiting for it to warm up. She needn’t have bothered locking the door. Brent was out the door on his way to meet up with friends of his who were going to Santa Monica to party. It was just the latest in a series of baffling incidents, frightening her; it was worrisome that she hadn’t recognized Brent had a mental disorder during six years together.

Pulling up in the driveway of her parents’ lovely home, seeing her father and sister waiting at the front door finished her off. She started sobbing, not trying to hide it from her mom. The first words out of her father’s mouth were, “Do you need a lawyer for anything?” She didn’t know, but thought probably not. Unless it was for being a naïve fool.

“No, Dad, but thanks. It’s my own fault for being stupid,” she answered.

“What happened?” her sister, Angela asked. They were crowded around her to take her bags, following her into the living room.

“I don’t want to say in front of Mom.” They turned and looked at Margaret Hse.

“What? You think I am so fragile?”

“No, not at all. It’s of a sexual nature, that’s all. It’s inappropriate and embarrassing,” Julie said.

Charles Hsu clenched his jaw as his temporal artery beat out a rhythm that his family could see.
Just like his father
, he thought. The stories surfacing since Jack had died disgusted genteel Charles Hsu. The man evidently had been living a double life. Shortly after his death, his picture was plastered all over the tabloids as his sexual partners came forward; it was clear Jack straddled two worlds. Titles like
Den of Iniquity,
or
Call Girl Exposes Manhattan Millionaire,
combined truth and lies into a convincing elixir
.
Charles, like all Jack’s friends and associates, came to his defense. But as time had passed, they began to retreat. It appeared that some of the accusations were true. Jack was a liar and a whoremonger. There was just no explaining how he was able to hide it all of his life. Only his death had the strength to expose him. Charles left the women and went out to his wife’s car to bring in the rest of Julie’s luggage. He looked over the hood of the trunk at his wife as she came toward him, a look of shock on her face.

“What is it?” he asked, eyebrows down.

“He peed on her,” she said in Chinese.

Charles Hsu shook his head in disgust. “At least he didn’t kill her,” he said. He and his wife looked at each other.

“Why’d I say that?” Suddenly frightened, they dragged the rest of the bags in the house. When they got inside, he held his hand out. “Give me your keys. I’ll pull the car in the garage. Make sure the doors and windows are locked.” Fear that Brent Smith might come from California to do Julie harm propelled her parents into action.

While her parents were fortifying the house, Angela was getting an earful of information that vacillated between titillating and horrifying. Brent, it appeared, was into everything. “Once I moved in, it was harder for him to hide. It took about a week before I suspected something was going on.” She went into the bathroom to wash the grime of the flight off her face. Angela followed her.

“What happened that led to you finding out?”

“Alcohol. What else? He lost all his inhibitions when he was drunk. He even drinks during the week. All that crap about him being so busy because of more responsibilities at work was lies. He does just enough work to keep his job, and the rest of the time, he’s in pursuit of sex. And I mean sex of every kind, shape and form. The last thing I did in California before I left for home was get tested for STDs.” She lowered her head again and started to cry.

“What makes me the saddest is the Brent I knew was the sweetest guy! It’s like something came unglued last year. That’s when I think most of this bizarre stuff started. He held it together until then, and after he graduated, something snapped, and he just gave into every lustful desire he had. If you could have seen him, kneeling to propose on my apartment floor, it was so cute! I mean, he was just
cute
. To think that one of my last memories is of him standing over me with his little pee pee in his hand, urinating on me, well, it just makes me sick.”

Angela turned her head to hide her smile from Julie. But it wasn’t necessary. Julie went back to her bed, lay down on it, and started laughing.

“Now that I’m home, I realize how comedic it is. He is so nice looking, has everything going for him, and then I discover he is into every sexual aberration I’ve ever heard of. We had a huge fight last week. He’d been after me to try some weird shit, and I just wouldn’t do it. He accused me of being puritanical.

“We were only sixteen when we started dating, and we were both virgins. I don’t know when our relationship ceased being enough for him. All along, I thought he was being faithful while we were apart during college. Then I found out the truth.

“I called his mother and told her off, too. She had to know what he was up to, yet she let me give up my apartment, quit my job, and move across the country for him.”

“Why do you think his mother had anything to do with it?” Angela asked, confused.

“She had to! She flew out to California to see him all the time. There’s no way she didn’t know. She should have warned me. She’s a real piece of work, his mother, a case of mistaken identity. They come off as high society, and they’re really just one step away from white trash.”

Getting up to start the process of moving into her childhood bedroom until she could find a job, Julie Hse changed her focus from sending negative vibes to Brent, to sending them to his mother.

***

Brent Smith arrived back home from Santa Monica with barely the time to shower before he had to be at work. His boss had sent him a warning the week before via Brent’s secretary, Joanne: work from nine to five, five days a week, or look for another job. It was an empty threat, one she delivered on a monthly basis. Tired of admonishing Brent himself, the message sent by the secretary had the same effect as when he’d delivered it. Nothing. Brent hadn’t gotten off probation in two years. His boss kept him on because when he worked, he was amazing. But it was difficult getting him
to
work. He was late most of the time, rarely completed forty hours of work in a week, and missed at least one day a month. In a time when jobs were scarce and talent competed for entry-level positions, he should have considered himself lucky to have a job.

The problem was his trust fund. Pam held it over his head, threatening him with it when he was rude to her, but his lawyer told him there was nothing she could do to block him from getting it when he turned twenty-five. And that date was just around the corner. It wasn’t a fortune, but it would take care of his basic needs as long as he didn’t touch the principal.

He brushed his teeth and tried to shave, but his hands were shaking. He put a clean white shirt on, and pulled a pretied tie on over his head. He pulled his chin up to tighten his tie, and the simple movement caused a searing pain to zip through his head. Quickly lowering his upper body to the bathroom counter, he didn’t move for several seconds as the pain made its journey through his neck and filtered through his body. Nausea gripped him, and he was able to make it to the toilet to throw up, remembering to hold his tie out of the way. Acid and old beer splashed in the bowl. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate. When the waves finally ceased, he bent over the sink, washed his face, and brushed his teeth again. Today he had to go to work, sick or not. They’d never believe him if he called out anyway, having cried wolf once too often. He dried his face and turned off the bathroom light as he left.