Page 24

TWENTY-TWO

VERA

Well, isn’t that a turnup for the books? Somehow, Vera has gone from a murder to a break-in and now to the house of the aforementioned murder victim. And his lovely wife and daughter, of course.

Vera is never one to be presumptuous or to trouble others, and so she is determined to be the very picture of courtesy, the ideal houseguest. This is why, when she gets to Julia’s house, she marches right in, stopping at the hallway to take off her shoes. Emma walks in behind her, and Vera says, “Take off your shoes, Emma, we are not animals.”

Emma does so, and after a moment’s pause, so does Julia, who is wearing a little smile as she follows Emma and Vera inside, lugging Vera’s giant suitcase. Once in the living room, Vera sighs loudly before plopping down on the sofa with more drama than she intended. Though of course, she always intends maximum drama, all the time, so is more drama actually possible?

“Shall I put your things in the bedroom?” Julia says, heaving as she tugs the suitcase behind her. “Gosh, Vera, what do you have in here?”

“When you get to my age, you will need so many things just to keep everything where they belong,” Vera says cryptically, with a vague gesture at her own body.

Emma’s eyes widen. “Why? What might fall out?” She turns to Julia, wide-eyed. “What might fall out, Mommy?”

“Oh, this and that,” Vera says. “After you breastfeed, no bra will be able to control all the flopping.”

“Honey, why don’t you go play in your new tent?” Julia says quickly.

“Come,” Emma says, pulling Vera’s hand. “I show you my new tent.”

Vera can’t help smiling as she follows the little girl down the hall. Is there anything sweeter than having your hand held firmly by tiny fingers? Behind her, Julia pants as she yanks the suitcase down the hallway. Vera considers telling her that it’s a fancy new design with hidden wheels that pop out with the push of a button, but Julia seems so happy to be helpful. Anyway, it’s probably empowering to be able to lug such a huge and heavy burden without any help.

Emma’s room is small and humble, but very neat. In one corner is an impressively decked-out tent, complete with soft toys and cushions. Emma crawls in and beckons Vera to come in after her, but Vera says, “At my age, even with all the extreme stretching I do, if I kneel down, there is chance I don’t get back up.”

She lowers herself carefully and sits down on the edge of Emma’s bed. Emma’s head pops out from the tent flaps.

“You see dead body?” Emma says.

Vera, who has watched Sixth Sense , knows enough to keep an open mind. “Do you mean did I see dead body last week, or do you mean am I seeing dead body right now?”

“Both.”

“I see a dead body last week, yes. But there are no dead bodies right now.”

“What dead body look like?”

Vera mulls this over carefully. She believes that honesty is the best policy, but when the truth involves telling a two-year-old about her father’s dead body, maybe a little fudging is in order. “Hmm, it looks like normal body, but dead.”

Emma seems satisfied by this answer, and her head retreats back inside the tent and she starts singing to herself. It’s a tuneless song sung in her raspy voice. Shame, but it seems that Emma does not have a future as a singer. Which is fine, as being a singer is definitely not one of Vera’s preapproved careers. In Vera’s opinion, Emma is better suited to be an architect. Vera sits there for a while, half listening to the very not-gifted voice, and looking around the room to get a better idea of Emma’s life.

Although the room itself is small and the furniture obviously secondhand, on the walls hang breathtakingly beautiful photos. Vera stands and peers closer at them. She’s never seen such fairy-tale-esque colors in photographs before. They’re all of Emma throughout the infancy stages of her life, and in each one, the photographer managed to capture some magical quality so that Vera can practically hear baby Emma’s coos and gurgles just by looking at these images. And the colors! My god , Vera thinks. They are beautiful sun-kissed pastel hues, and something about them transports Vera to when Tilly was a little kid who sat on her lap as she read fairy tales to him. The greenery in these photos is lush, with a gentle teal and emerald shade, making the leaves and grass look as soft as blankets. And everything is tinged with golden sunlight. The entire effect is ethereal, like Emma is a little baby stolen by elves.

As a Chinese mother, Vera has often prided herself on being immune to the seduction of art. She does have some calligraphy hung up in her shop and her house, but they’re less art and more reminders to be fortunate . But now, standing here in front of these photos, even Vera has to admit that there’s something here. Something very, very special.

When she’s done admiring the photos, Vera realizes that the little tent is quiet. She creeps over and takes a peek to find that Emma has fallen asleep. After checking to make sure there are no choking hazards around Emma, Vera creeps out of the room and closes the door gently behind her. Then she makes her way to the kitchen, where she finds Julia doing the dishes.

“Did Emma fall asleep?” Julia says over her shoulder.

“Yes.” Vera stands next to Julia and starts drying the dishes.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

Vera ignores Julia, because just look at the state of this kitchen. “What you do all day?”

Julia glances at her before turning her focus firmly back onto the plate she’s scrubbing. “I look after Emma.”

“Hmm. Do you work?”

Julia sighs, shaking her head and scrubbing the plate with what Vera thinks is excessive force. “No, Vera. I’m a stay-at-home mom.”

“Ah.” Vera wisely chooses not to say anything more, letting the silence stretch on and on, knowing from years of experience that she won’t be the first one to fold.

And, of course, she turns out to be right. “I don’t need your judgment, you know,” Julia says.

“Oh, I’m not judging. My mother was stay-at-home mother too. But she had nine children, so maybe is not the same. But,” Vera adds quickly, “no judgment.”

Julia rolls her eyes. “Right. I know it’s not trendy to be a stay-at-home mom, but it’s not like I had a choice, you know? Not many places would take a college dropout. Hell, not many places would take even people with college degrees. Nowadays, you need to have a master’s or something to even get an entry-level job.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Vera says. Gently, she takes the plate before Julia can scrub it to the thinness of a piece of paper. “Julia, I not saying being a stay-at-home mom is bad. When my Tilly is little, I stay at home with him until he go to kindergarten. But... I wonder, is it your choice to be stay-at-home mom?”

Julia gapes at her. “Wha— Yes, of course it is,” she insists.

“Hmm.” Vera peers at her, unconvinced. She’s had years of worming the truth out of Tilly. Her interrogation skills would humble most CIA agents. “I just asking, because I see the photos in Emma’s room, and I find it hard to believe that a photographer with your talent doesn’t want to pursue a job in photography.”

“I—” Julia’s mouth drops open before closing. “How do you know I took those pictures?”

Vera leans across Julia and turns off the tap. “Come, you go sit down and I make some tea.”

“But—”

Silly girl, probably about to protest and insist on making the tea herself. Vera has no time for that. She shoos Julia out of the kitchen and bustles about, filling a saucepan and putting it on the stove before opening one cupboard after another until she finds the tea cabinet. Of course, Julia is in dire need of some proper Chinese tea, but Vera is knowledgeable enough to not turn her nose up at Lipton. She knows that teas like Lipton aren’t necessarily bad, as long as they’re prepared properly. Lipton, like many other Western brands of black tea, uses inferior tea leaves that are then roasted at a higher temperature, killing all traces of subtle flavoring. The result is a strong black tea that can stand up to aggressive boiling and generous amounts of sugar and milk. Vera cuts open three tea bags and pours the leaves into the pot of water, letting it boil for at least five minutes to make sure that every bit of flavor seeps into the water. By the time she’s done, the tea is midnight black. She strains it before adding a splash of fresh milk and—ah, what luck—a spoonful of condensed milk.

The smell that wafts from the tea is so comforting it’s like a hug. Vera notices Julia’s shoulders tensing when Vera walks out into the dining room, but after a sip of the milk tea, Julia releases her breath, the tension leaving her face. Vera smiles inwardly. Good tea always has that effect on people. It’s a comforting drink, which is why Vera has chosen to dedicate her whole life to bringing it to more people. The last thing that these youngsters need is coffee, which only serves to make them more stressed-out and unhappy, why can’t they see that?

“So,” Julia says after taking another sip, “how did you know I took those photos?”

“Well, at first I think they are so good you must have hire a professional. But then I look closer, and I see something in it. I think to myself, this photographer capture the essence of this baby. You can sense the love behind the camera. I can sense these things, you know,” Vera says with a touch of smugness. “I am a mother, I can sense mother’s love.”

Julia smiles, but it looks so sad it’s almost wrong to call it a smile. She looks down at her mug. “You’re right, I took those photos. Sometimes I’m tempted to take them down because seeing them is almost painful.”

“Why painful?” Vera can venture a guess as to why it might be painful, but it’s polite to ask questions. Tilly says it always pays to play dumb. Or something.

“Because you’re right, Vera. I wanted to be a photographer. I wanted to study photography. That was what I majored in, and I loved every single class I took. It was the best time of my life.” The last sentence comes out in a pained whisper, and as soon as she says it, Julia covers her mouth like she’s let slip something dirty. “I didn’t mean—god, that’s such a shitty thing for a mom to say, isn’t it? I love being Emma’s mother, but...”

Vera places a hand on top of Julia’s. With their hands so close together, she can’t help noticing how wrinkly and age-spotted hers looks compared to Julia’s youthful skin. She hurriedly removes her hand. Vera may be sixty, but that doesn’t mean she is immune to vanity. “I know what you are saying,” she says. “I love being Tilly’s mother, but if you ask me what is the best time of my life, I will say is when I am twenty, still going to school, the world is still full of possibilities.” For a moment, Vera stares off into space wistfully, remembering that invincible way she’d felt back then, before she graduated college and was spat out into the unforgiving real world.

Julia nods. “Yes, exactly. Anyway, even though I dropped out, I’d accrued a lot of debt, so I had to take whatever job I could find to start paying it off. Marshall too.”

“Why do you drop out? You fail your classes?”

“No.” Julia laughs. But the laugh is short-lived. “Well, Marshall said college is overpriced. I mean, he’s not wrong,” she adds a tad defensively. “Especially to study something like photography. He said I could just pick the skill up myself rather than waste tens of thousands of dollars on it. I thought he had a point. So I dropped out, found a job at a department store. He also wanted to start trying for a family, and that took a lot longer than we expected.” Her voice fills with pain at the memory, but then she forces a smile. “Anyway, he proposed sometime after he graduated and we kept trying for a baby, and finally after years of trying, I had Emma, and that was that. I never had a chance to do much photography. I had all these plans, all these dreams for it, but... I guess that was all they were. Just dreams.”

“Unrealized dreams are one of saddest things in life,” Vera says. “Well, after serious illness and death and all that.”

“Yes, it’s kind of a first-world problem.” Julia snorts. “I feel like an asshole complaining to you about it when your shop was broken into.”

Vera waves her off. “Oh, you don’t worry about that.” Then she claps, once. “So! What is stopping you from doing photography now?”

Julia stiffens. “What do you mean?”

“You go online and look, I’m sure there are many people looking for photographer. You do portraits?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then start there. Charge very little, you are only starting out. Maybe even do it for free until you are more comfortable.”

“But there’s Emma, and—”

“I look after Emma,” Vera says.

“Wh—” Julia’s mouth drops open. “Uh...”

“I am mother too. Actually, I am Chinese mother. You can’t get better than that. We raise the best children in the world, you just look at any hospital, all the surgeon are Chinese.” Vera beams with pride, as though she has personally been responsible for all the surgeons in every hospital.

“Um... but... she’s very—” Julia gestures helplessly. “She’s not very good with being left behind with other people. Believe me, I’ve tried. I found this affordable childcare place right down the street—it’s actually a neighbor who runs a little nursery from her house—but oh god, when I tried leaving Emma there, the screaming...” Julia grimaces from the memory. “My neighbor basically refused to take her in.”

“Tch, then your neighbor is not a good caretaker,” Vera tuts. “You see how Emma is with me. She knows I am safe.”

She can see that despite everything, Julia agrees with her. It’s true; Emma has taken to Vera like a baby duck recognizing a mother duck.

“You don’t have to leave the house if you don’t want,” Vera continues. “Just work in bedroom, or maybe in backyard. Don’t worry about Emma, okay? Good. I am glad we agree.”

Without giving Julia any time to answer, Vera pats Julia on the shoulder and stands. She stretches dramatically and says, “Okay, now you go on computer, look for photograph job. I will make healthy snack for Emma and then wake her up.”

Julia looks slightly dazed, something Vera has become familiar with over the years. Vera is pleased to see, however, that after a few moments of stunned silence, Julia gets up, fetches her laptop from the dining table, and carries it into the bedroom.