The Price of Silence Page 5

  I plunged my hand into my pocket, felt the scrap of paper with the number I had copied from the phonebook on it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to make the call. It seemed inappropriate, invasive, dumb.

  I gave up the idea when my students scattered across the classroom like diligent ants.As they found their seats I wrote on the blackboard:“When to Use Cause and Effect Order.”

  The students told me what they had learned from the lesson plan and I wrote:

  Use to explain why an event happened.

  Use to explain the results.

  Use to explain what will happen because of a specific event.

  I asked them to write a short essay about something that had happened to them recently, using cause and effect.

  “I have a cold and I go to the doctor,” offered Janna from St. Petersburg.Writing English still frightened her.

  “Write it out,”I told her.“Write what happened before the cold, too. One effect can have many causes.You had a cold because you were tired from studying hard and because you were tired, you overslept, making you late for class, which then made you take the subway when you normally walk.On the subway you stood in front of a sick person who sneezed in your face.

  “The reverse is also true,” I told the class. “One cause can have many effects. I’ll let you work that one out by yourselves.”

  I handed out paper to the usual students who said they had forgotten to bring their notebooks. Most were sincere. A few, the ones who didn’t have pencils either, I suspected needed to save their money.

  I watched them write. Periodically, I sneaked glances at the window. Janna sneaked glances at her neighbor’s paper and copied. She had repeated this class for three years now. She wouldn’t be able to pass her GEDs this year either, but to demote her to the intermediate level would break her heart.

  “Write about yourself,” I whispered to her. “Don’t take someone else’s story.You have your own.Tell it.Two, three sentences, that’s all.”

  What was An-ling’s story?

  “I’ll be right back,” I told the class. In my cubicle, I punched in the phone number, gave my name to the receptionist and asked to speak to Doctor Feldman.

  “A consultation will cost two hundred dollars, which will be deducted from the cost of the procedure you decide upon, if you decide to proceed.”

  I explained that mine was a personal call, that all I wanted was a minute of his time.The doctor and I had a mutual friend, and I needed to find that friend.

  “Doctor Feldman is with a patient. He has a very busy schedule.”The receptionist’s tone was now snippy.

  “Her name is An-ling Huang.” I spelled it for her.“Could you ask Doctor Feldman how I can get in touch with her, please? It’s important.”I spelled my name too,and left my phone number.“Remind him we met at Lenny Gershon’s poetry reading at KGB.”

  The next morning there was a message on my voice mail from Doctor Feldman’s receptionist. “Doctor Feldman knows no one by the name of An-ling Huang.”

  Another lie. A mixture of irritation and disappointment prompted me to make an appointment for a consultation. This time I used Tom’s last name, hoping the receptionist wouldn’t recognize my voice. The earliest Doctor Feldman could see me was in ten days.

  Fishkin stands up, but stays behind his desk. “Mr. Lyubarsky, are there many hardware stores near you?”

  “No. Good location. Next store is twenty blocks away.”

  “How many cans of insulation foam, on average, would you say you sell a week?”

  Lyubarsky looks at Fishkin for a moment, then his eyebrows shoot up and his round face breaks into a smile. “Yes.” He has understood where Fishkin is going.

  “How many?” Fishkin has to repeat.

  “It depends. Maybe none, maybe five.” Lyubarsky’s voice is loud. “Ten, if construction going on. Last year much construction. Two buildings near store. At Tercer Street and Lowry, too.” Lyubarsky rocks in his chair. “My cousins and me make very good business last year.”

  “How many cans of insulation foam did you sell in those two months?”

  “I need to look in book for number, but I know Tercer building buy one case, but in March or April I don’t know. If you want, I go look and come back.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Lyubarsky. That won’t be necessary.”

  FIVE

  DOCTOR ROBERT FELDMAN, regarded as one of the top ten cosmetic surgeons in New York City, sits in the witness box. He is a handsome, grey-haired man, with a gym-enhanced body underneath an impeccably tailored grey suit.

  “Did you know An-ling Huang?” Guzman asks.

  “I did.”

  “For how long did you know her?”

  “Five months, approximately.”

  “Do you know the defendant?”

  “I met her twice.”

  “Under what circumstances?”

  “The first time was at the KGB Bar during a poetry reading.”

  “What happened at that reading?”

  “She walked off with my date.”

  “And who was your date?”

  “An-ling Huang.”

  “What was your impression of their relationship that night?”

  “Objection!”

  “Withdrawn. When was the second time you saw the defendant.”

  “In my office, three weeks later.”

  Emma

  I sat in a deep leather armchair under a canopy of spiky leaves.Two women on the other side of the waiting room flipped through magazines. Another talked on her cell phone, ordering food for a dinner party. Elegant and thin in their designer clothes, they seemed perfectly relaxed, entitled, expecting the impossible to be made possible: to be young again. Maybe I could ask Doctor Feldman to snip at my soul, tug at the grooves of my memory, smooth them out so that I could face the sunshine of the day blameless as a newborn baby, with life still ahead of me, yet to be lived.

  The reason for my visit was much simpler. Possible.

  Finding An-ling.

  The woman on the cell phone was called into the doctor’s office by the receptionist.Through the opening of the door, I glimpsed a female hip, a shoulder, covered in nurse’s white, a thick streak of yellow hair. Minutes passed. I read the book I had brought with me—a slim volume of prose poems by Charles Simic I had started re-reading.Years ago, the title had attracted me: The World Does Not End.

  “Time for you,” a voice said. It took me a minute to recognize her.An-ling had dyed her hair banana yellow.

  “How nice!” was all I could think to say.The surprise of her being there, of her changed appearance, made me uncomfortable. I felt I’d barged in on a complete stranger. “You’re working for him! I never thought of that.”

  “Lady Teacher.” An-ling extended her arm toward the door that opened before me. I couldn’t tell whether my showing up suddenly annoyed her or pleased her.

  Doctor Feldman’s diplomas, recognitions, and prints of bucolic scenes covered the walls of the small office. Plants rested on corner tables. The large mahogany desk was empty except for a couple of photo albums, filled with what I assumed were the before-and-after pictures of his patients.

  “Sit down, please. Doctor Feldman will be with you in a few minutes,” An-ling recited, then added, “Feldy,” with a complicit grin.

  I laughed. “I came here only because I wanted to know how to find you. Over the phone,Doctor Feldman claimed he didn’t know you.”

  “Here I use American name. Easy to say name.”

  “An-ling Huang is a beautiful name and not hard to pronounce at all.”

  An-ling repeated her name, letting me know I’d forgotten the correct intonation.

  “I’m sorry. Point well taken. I’m afraid I’m tone deaf.” I held out the letter the Dean’s office at Columbia had sent back.“I’ve been looking for you because I wanted to invite you to dinner to meet my family.”

  An-ling pushed the letter into the pocket of her uniform, unread.

  “You must have used your Am
erican name at Columbia too,” I said, relieved she hadn’t lied. “What is it?”

  “For you I will be An-ling.” She promised to call me.

  “One last question, Doctor Feldman. Where were you on April nineteenth of last year?”

  “I was in St. Petersburg, delivering a lecture. Cosmetic surgery is a burgeoning business in Russia these days.”

  Ruffling waves of pink tied in eight, ten bundles—peonies— hiding a face. I recognized the green-flowered paper of my local Korean grocer,also the blue-quilted jacket and the paint-stained slacks.

  “Welcome to my home, An-ling.”

  She had come without warning. More than three weeks had passed since I’d gone to Doctor Feldman’s office.We were in the middle of dinner, and I asked her if she’d eaten. She lowered herself onto the chair I held out for her without answering, holding the flowers tight to her chest. The pink tips brushed her chin as her eyes scanned the kitchen, studying every detail as if she were preparing for a memory test. I was pleased to see her, moved by all those expensive peonies, and embarrassed by the paper napkins, and the food on the table, a takeout dinner that I hadn’t bothered to remove from its aluminum containers.

  Tom remained seated, his expression puzzled.An-ling had interrupted a sacred family routine, his daily bonding time with Josh, during which I played the role of listener. Josh hunched over his plate, continuing to shovel food down his throat. I touched his shoulder.He stopped, straightened up.

  I introduced An-ling. “She’s one of my new students.”The lie came out before I thought it. “I invited her to dinner,” I added, opening drawers, getting flatware, a napkin, a plate. I turned the radio off. I forgot to set a glass.

  I added a place setting in front of An-ling and offered to take her jacket, to put the flowers in water. She stood up and extended the many bouquets to Tom with a deep bow. Later, she told me that she’d brought peonies because they are flowers of riches and honors.Twenty-five peonies—five times five, five a lucky number. An-ling wanted Tom to like her, but Tom was resistant to any intrusion in his domestic life, even one as innocuous as a dinner interruption.

  An-ling’s dyed hair was in stiff braids that didn’t reach her shoulders and her face was clean of make-up. “Good fortune for your family,” she said in a small voice, her accent deeper from shyness.“You have a beautiful home.”

  While I filled four vases with the flowers, Tom asked questions in a tone that wanted to convey that he was being friendly, but it was an interrogation, pure and simple.

  “How long have you been in this country?” he asked.

  “Seven months.”

  I thought that Tom must have been making her nervous because she had walked into my classroom almost a year and a half before.

  “New York right away?”Tom asked.

  “Before, two weeks in San Francisco.”

  “Why did you leave California?”

  “Tom, stop. Please,” I interrupted, sitting down.“Let’s eat.”

  She did not eat. Instead, she stared at the grouping of pill containers Tom keeps in the center of the table between the salt and pepper shakers. Multivitamins, Echinacea for when he feels a cold coming on. She fingered the container of Ginkgo Biloba he’d bought the previous year after his fifty-fifth birthday.

  “There is a story that tells how it happened that Ginkgo nuts are so good for you. Do you want to know?”

  “Of course we do,” I said.

  “I tell you.” She beamed.

  I put down my fork and elbowed Josh to do the same.

  Tom kept on eating.

  “A mean monk lived in a monastery where there was also a bell tower and three Ginkgo trees. Outside the monastery was a field of herbs that could cure the sick, but the mean monk will not let the poor people of the province pick the herbs. He wants them for himself and many people die. The three trees and the bell tower are angry about this and want to help the poor people.With their magic they change into three maidens and an old man and go to the field to pick the herbs.When the monk sees what they are doing, he complains to his boss, the Jade Emperor, who sends down generals to beat the maidens and the old man.

  The maidens see the generals, swallow the herbs, and turn themselves back into trees. From now on, the nuts of the Ginkgo trees are full of herbs that cure.”

  “That’s a sweet fable,” I said.

  “China has many stories to explain many things.”

  “What happened to the old man?” Josh asked.

  “He is only decoration. Men have too many stories.”

  Tom wiped his mouth, his eyes steady on An-ling.“You speak very well after such a short time. I have Asian students who have been here for many years.They have the vocabulary, but half the time I can’t understand them. I should send them to you, Emma.You’re obviously good.”

  “How about giving her the credit?” Josh pointed a fork at An-ling.“I mean, nothing against you, Mom, but she’s the one who did the work.”

  “You’re right. It is all to An-ling’s credit. I did nothing.” The truth of it made me laugh.

  An-ling giggled and put a string bean in her mouth.

  “Credit to both of you, then.”Tom smiled and shot Josh a glance of parental pride.Then he reverted back to his role as inquisitor.“Do you live with your parents?”

  “My parents are dead. My aunt brought me here. She lives in San Francisco.”

  “I’m so sorry.” I stretched a hand across the table, but didn’t touch her. At the school, she had only said they’d stayed behind.

  “When Baba, my father, died I was two. Mama, I was twelve. I lived with Nyah-Nyah, my father’s mother, until Goo-Goo Chai sent for me—that is my father’s sister. I do not love my aunt. She wants to bind my brain so it will be as small as hers.” An-ling punctuated the end of each sentence with a bob of her head. A smile appeared on Josh’s face, like the sudden bright flash of a fish in a pond. I grasped that smile as a sign that he liked An-ling.

  Tom too, I thought, let his diffidence soften, for he said, “Well, good luck to you.” He fell into silence as he finished his meal. An-ling ate nothing after the one string bean. Josh cleaned his plate twice while his sneakers made little mouse sounds against the rubber tile floor. I reached below the table to steady his knee while I reiterated the beauty of her flowers, chatted about school and the students An-ling had met only once, whom she probably didn’t remember. I avoided asking questions.

  An-ling listened, head cocked, giving my chit-chat importance.

  Tom folded his paper napkin, as always. “When exactly did you start studying with my wife?”

  An-ling straightened her neck, gave me a look. I returned her gaze.Tell him if you want, I thought, as if she could read my mind.Tell him the truth.You and I barely know each other.There are no connections between us except for the red peony you painted on my blouse.

  “Maybe one or two weeks after I come to New York,”

  An-ling said.

  Her complicity encouraged me. “An-ling is my best student.”

  Josh

  All those flowers. It was over the top. She was trying to butter up Mom; that’s what popped in my head then.Now I think she was scared, maybe. She wanted us to like her right away.

  At first,An-ling was just someone Mom knew, one of her students. Three or four times before Mom had invited her students home for a party.They came with CDs, tapes from their countries, and they danced. It was fun. One woman tried to teach me how to samba. She wouldn’t give up. I’ve got some beat in my arms, but I’m lousy with my feet. It was at one of those parties that I learned about Tito Puente.

  What a great drummer!

  Last time, I couldn’t find my Discman after a party and Dad was sure one of Mom’s students took it. Mom got real upset with him for thinking that. I felt really bad because a few days later she found my Discman in the laundry basket. I must have thrown it in there with my sweatshirt, I guess. She never had another party.

  The first time An-ling cam
e over, Dad, right off the bat, started rapping out questions like he was Jerry Orbach. Dad doesn’t know it, but he can be pretty intimidating. It didn’t faze her for a second. She answered and bounced her head up and down like she was having such a good time she was going to start dancing. I tapped a counter beat with my feet. I wanted to laugh, but that wouldn’t have gone over real well.

  Later I found out from An-ling that the Chinese don’t talk while they’re eating. And when you ask questions, they don’t always tell you how it is. If you ask if they’re hungry, they’ll say no even if they’re starving. “Saving face,” she said. For a while I thought being Chinese is about keeping secrets. An-ling sure had enough of them, but so did Mom and Dad.Then I started keeping some of my own.

  She came over a lot after that night. I’d come home from school and she’d be in the kitchen with Mom, chopping up vegetables. An-ling wanted me to help her. “Learn how to cook, you will have many girlfriends.” She asked what year I was born. I told her and she said I was born the year of the rabbit. According to her, it meant I had a lot of talent and could be trusted, which I guess is nice, but I didn’t believe it.

  The afternoons she was there, I’d get a Coke and go to my room or to the basement until dinnertime. I’ve always done that. Gone off by myself, I mean. Even when she wasn’t there. I had nothing against her.

  Mom thinks I’m shy. I don’t get into conversations when I’m not interested, that’s all. There’s no point to it unless there’s something really neat going on.

  One time I saw Mom reading to An-ling in the park across the street from our building. Riverside Park. I stopped to listen to a guy playing Jimi Hendrix on his guitar— “Purple Haze”—what I’d just been playing in the basement.