I was flipping the pages of the album fast now, until a large group photograph made me stop. There was our whole family, La Guardia Airport, Christmas, my sophomore year of boarding school. My parents still the perfect couple for the camera: Daddy, his hair almost completely white now, my mother close beside him with her dutiful, distant smile. Uncle Richard in a Russian fur hat, which he must have kept mainly in mothballs, for who would need such a thing in Florida, his arm raised in a bon voyage salute—his other arm around my aunt, who looked caught off-guard. Me in an army jacket and ragged-hem jeans, my sister with heavy mascara and a bad layered haircut. Between the two of us my Nai-nai, wearing the long beige cashmere coat my mother and aunt had given her for Christmas. I could see in the photograph how it hung off her shoulder blades, she had gotten so thin. By that time she was wearing turtlenecks rather than high-collared blouses to hide her mole because she couldn’t manage buttons. A couple of years before, she had broken her hip, and still sported an ivory-handled cane.
“Your Nai-nai look distinguished, eh?” she said to me. “Not just like any old lady.” When I walked her to the boarding gate she leaned against me, clutching my arm, and I could feel the brittle bones of her fingers through her soft leather gloves. It was the last time I ever saw her, touched her.
My mother was fussing, asking if Nai-nai was sure she had her ticket. My grandmother ignored her. “You much taller,” she said to me. “It’s good to be tall. Tall girl stands out.”
And I remembered how I had felt comforted, although I had heard it a hundred times before.
The phone rang and my uncle started, in the middle of a snore. “Hello?” Aunty Mabel said. Then she handed the receiver to me. “For you.”
“Ma?” I asked, but my aunt shook her head.
“Sally? It’s Mel.”
“Oh my God, how are you?” His voice was like elixir, cool, filling, impossible to describe how glad it made me feel. “Where are you calling from?”
“My parents’ house.”
“Are you on pass?”
“I’m out, Sal. They sprung me.”
“That’s great! What are you up to?”
“Well, for starters, I thought I’d come down and see you.”
“I thought you said you were broke.”
“There are ways, darling, there are ways. I think I can borrow some wheels.”
“It’s a little crowded here—”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, Sal, I wouldn’t impose on your family. I have a place to stay.”
“When?”
“Not sure yet. I’ll call you in a couple of days. Is it hot down there?”
“Ninety-five in the shade.”
“Beautiful. We’ll go sailing. I have to go, hon. Just sit tight, I promise I’ll call you. Bye.”
Aunty Mabel was bowed over her embroidery, but my uncle, now fully awake, leaned forward on the couch, rubbing his pudgy palms together. “Boyfriend, eh?”
“No. Just friend.”
“Just friend. Ni kan,” he said to my aunt, “see how she blushes.”
18
Aunty Mabel was in the kitchen, answering questions: Is she eating enough, is she sleeping, is she being a help to you. My aunt’s Shanghainese was so quick the sibilant syllables seemed to trip over each other.
I was summoned to the phone. Before she handed it to me, my aunt whispered: “Your sister’s in an accident.”
When I asked, Ma said: “No, no, nothing serious. Marty’s rental car, it went into a ditch. Insurance covers everything. She has a broken arm, that’s all.”
“Where is she?”
“Still up in Vermont now, but she’s coming back down. Her friend drives her this weekend.”
“Are you sure she’s all right?”
“Of course, of course. I think she’s getting tired of there anyway. I think it’s time for her to come home.”
While my aunt was out of the house at her library job, Uncle Richard and I played gin rummy, a penny a point. The cards were special ones, with giant print, for people with bad vision. My uncle leaned back on the sofa, his eyes sly over his half glasses. On the table in front of him was a pair of silver globes, the kind you see for sale in Chinatown in satin boxes, that he picked up and clacked together when he was thinking. It drove me crazy.
“You’re just like Captain Queeg.”
“Hah hah. Humphrey Bogart.” My uncle had four cards left. His eyes narrowed and he threw down the queen of hearts into the discard pile. I reached for it, hesitated, and then pulled my hand back. He laughed. “That’s right, Niece. You have to weigh things, think them out. You think it looks like a treasure, it might be a poison.”
“I need a cigarette.”
Without taking his eyes off his cards, Uncle Richard reached behind him into the crack between the cushion and the back of the sofa and pulled out a battered pack of Camel nonfilters. He shook them expertly so that one slid out toward me. “Be my guest.” With his slippered toe he poked under the sofa fringe and nudged out an old tuna can full of butts.
“Looks like you’ve got it all set up.”
“That’s right.” He took a gold lighter out of his shirt pocket and lit my cigarette, then his, and set the can on the coffee table.
“Doesn’t she smell it?”
“Nah. She too busy worry about other things.” He frowned down at his hand.
“Uncle Richard, what did you think of my father?”
“What’s this, you studying your roots?”
“No, I’m just curious.”
“Pau-yu was a very intelligent man. And he has charisma, like movie star. Not like your old uncle.”
“Do you think he loved my mother?”
“Why you ask all these questions, Niece? He cherish your ma-ma. She is very able woman. Your turn.”
I picked up the king of spades, one of my favorite cards, but I couldn’t use it, since all I was holding was low clubs, so I laid it down. I remembered, sinkingly, that I hadn’t seen a lot of high spades in this game. “Ah,” my uncle said. His hand hovered over the facedown pile, teasing me, then swooped down for the king I’d just discarded. “Gin. Forty-five points.” Jack, queen, king, ace. Royal flush.
“Luck,” I said.
“I tell you, Niece, that’s what it is. Luck. Everything is luck.”
“Someone else’s good luck is your bad.”
“In cards, maybe. Not in other things. You know feng shui?” He pronounced it the Cantonese way, “shwee.”
“Wind water.”
“Very good. I have friend in Queens, expert in this. He came down, look at our house, make recommendations. You gotta bad angle on your door, he says, no money can come in, you put a mirror here to fix. Energy trapped behind this window, you put something glass to catch it. Then what happened? We get a six-thousand-dollar refund from IRS. What do you think?”
“I think you had something to do with that refund.”
“See these bells and chime hanging here? That’s for chi to play. You give it toy, good luck wants to come in. Hah, I can see you don’t believe. I tell you what. We go see some real luck in action. The puppies. You ever see greyhound race?”
“Once. A documentary on TV.”
Uncle Richard laughed raucously. “Forget TV.” He counted his cards quickly, swept them together. “One hundred thirty points. You owe me seven dollars.”
“What’s the matter, Niece? This old car is too much for you? Japanese-made, very good, we got it secondhand.”
“No, no, everything’s fine.” It was a good thing my uncle was nearly blind, he wouldn’t be able to pick up details like the fact that my palms were sweating all over the steering wheel. It was the first time I’d been in the driver’s seat since I’d gotten sideswiped in Ma’s Honda. I put on my sunglasses and adjusted the rearview mirror, casual, like I did it all the time, like I was born driving.