Inside the Box (Chapter 6 Part2)

Inside the Box Chapter 6 part 2

I see Don sitting alone at the kitchen table in front of multiple plates of food. In any other household, I would wonder when the other twenty people joining us for dinner will come through the door. I've come to accept the fact that my mother's sense of proportion just isn't like other people's. She can be generous to the point where it becomes so uncomfortable for new friends that they start avoiding her. She can be so wary of people especially family members that ordinary dinners or parties turn suddenly hostile because someone didn't say good bye to her loudly or individually enough. It strikes me that her inability to modulate the way she relates to others has something to do with her experiences in Paperson, but it occurs to me now that mom was already like that in many ways before we moved back to my grandfather’s house when I was a teenager.

I start to head towards Don and the table, but my mother steps between her kitchen and me, “I want to talk to you about something.”

Historically, this has meant that she wants to talk about one of two topics. Most often, she'll pull me aside to talk about money issues. My mother was a housewife. She never worked a regular job after she married my father when she was just twenty. She's very aware of money, but not very secure about her capacity to either make it on her own or manage it. She worries constantly that Don is going to leave all of his own money to his children and not make certain that she's taken care of. She also knows me too well. Despite my insistence that I'll take care of her, she never exactly trusts it.

Now and then, she'll bring out some brochure for a modest retirement home and ask me what I think. I should know that she wants me to say “No, never not for my mother!”
Instead, I tend to say “If that's what you want, Mom, but it's not the time yet to worry about things like that.”

In the meantime, she talks about wills. There's Don's will. There was my father's lack of a will after he died unexpectedly a year after I graduated college. My mother was forty eight at the time. There's her mother's very weird will that not only left everything to her brothers but literally disinherited all of her daughters except my mother who received a tiny interest in a single building. There's my will, over which she worries that I'll leave money to Marie who will in turn leave it to some non-relative. She also talks about her own will from time to time, but that’s never quite as compelling for her.

Topic number two is the fortune tellers. Whenever my mother travels, she goes to Chinese fortune tellers. She's always been quite convinced that she has psychic powers in her own right, so it started out as an exercise in reporting back that the fortune teller had confirmed the fact that she has a good heart. After my father died, her visits to the fortune tellers got darker. It didn’t matter if they were reading sand, making her drink tea, or were simply looking into her eyes. In that time, I’ve heard the fortune tellers confirm my mother’s belief that Marie doesn't really like her, how Don's children don't like her, and how my father didn’t want her to remarry and that he’s lonely and unhappy in the other world.

My mother’s reports from the fortune teller routinely include details that are simply impossible. I never hung out at a malt shop with Pops, Archie, and Veronica when I was in high school. I’ve never flown an airplane on my own. We never had a german shephard. Still, she clings to the items that might be right as if this is all the guidance she’ll ever get in this world.

When I was in my early twenties, I did on two occasions get her a session with non-Chinese psychics just because it was something she liked. In my later adult life though, I’ve tried different strategies to discourage my mother’s talk of fortune tellers. For that reason, I’ve never told her that I occasionally see things in dreams that eventually sort their way into my life. I don’t tell her, for instance, that my father’s heart attack wasn’t a surprise or that every few years I have dreams about him being still alive, alone, and wandering his empty restaurant like some prisoner out of a Christmas Carol.

Marie was the one who pointed out to me that my mother was out of balance in certain ways and I’ve since learned from her not to send my mother spinning in certain directions.

My mother says it directly enough, “Don and I talked the other day. We’ve decided that we want to be buried together.”

I’ve always had it in my head that my mother wants to be cremated. My father and I once read a book together called “The American Way of Death” and he was quite taken by the whole idea of the Neptune Society. We wound up burying him partly because there are any number of Chinese customs about the bones of dead loved ones and partly because my father at other times when he wasn’t reading Jessica Mitford had said that he’d never want to be cremated. We compromised instead by giving him the simplest funeral possible as I tried to talk to the Funeral Home salesman about Jessica Mitford.

“Mom, whatever you want to do with your body is fine with me,” I tell her.

She, however, wants to be convinced that it’s okay with me. My mother has a tendency to read facial expression and tones more than listen to what anyone says. At the level of the rational, it’s probably a big part of why she thinks she’s psychic. Most people don’t convey all of their feelings in their words alone.

“I just wanted you to know. It’s nothing about your Dad.”

“Well, you’ve been married to Don almost longer than you were married to Dad.”

“I just can’t stand the idea of being buried with the rest of the Tang family.”

I nod.

My grandfather was still alive when my father died. To be accurate, my grandfather had two months left but was still very much conscious. It was enough for me to tell him that my father, his oldest son, had died. I remember not wanting to have to explain that we’d decided to bury my father didn’t want to be buried with his own family. I made a hasty decision to allow my Dad to be buried in one of the nine plots that my Grandfather had bought for himself, my grandmother, his three sons and their wives, and a mysterious individual known as “Mike Tang” whose real name was “Hagerty” more or less like the Robert Duvall character in the Godfather. Mike Tang was my Grandfather’s one true non-Chinese friend. He trusted him so much that it was “Mike” who lived in the house that fronted the road that led to Paperson from Sacramento.

They had measured the distance and time precisely. The house was as close as it could be to the gambling house in Paperson while still giving Mike enough time to make a warning call in the case of a raid.

At the time, I had simply figured that my mother whenever she died herself would want to be buried next to my father. Now instead, the family plot consists of my grandfather, my grandmother, my dad, and Mike Tang. Uncle Persy’s on his third wife. I only met the second one once. I have no idea what Uncle Leon and his wife’s plans are.

“So, where do you want to be buried with Don?”

“We haven’t worked that out yet.”

I nod again.

“I don’t have to put the directions in a will? You can remember that?”

“Of course, I’ll remember,” I tell her.

I’m aware of the fact that the tone of my voice says otherwise, but this time my mother believes me anyway.
I give my mother a hug and tell her, “Mom, I don’t think anyone would expect you to spend eternity with Dad’s family.”

Mom heads towards her kitchen. As I watch her walk away, I notice that her walk has turned ever so slightly unsteady, as if she can’t just assume that the next three steps will happen on their own. I imagine anyone who didn’t know her wouldn’t notice. It’s not a matter of her being off-balance, it’s more that she’s become just a bit more careful on the tile floor. I’d forgotten that she slipped and sprained her ankle a couple years ago. Strange how you can see time just in the way someone walks.

I make my way over to the grand piano in the living room and begin to improvise. I know it’s an odd thing to do for someone who’s been waiting for the last fifteen minutes to have lunch, but I play an a minor drone for about forty five seconds then come to the kitchen. It’s as if I need to make a few more sounds after my conversation with my mother.

I get to the table where my mother has somehow combined roast beef, with a pile of chow mein, and is that chocolate cake? A large salad adorns the side table and I think there’s a bowl of Chinese turnip soup in the mix.

“See, all the things you like,” she says.

I shake my head and want to say, “But not together…” then stop myself. It’s Marie’s influence. She’s explained to me that this is something my mother will never get and to just look at it as her way of showing love. When my mother was a small child, my grandmother needed time away because she’d had too many children in not enough years. She came from China with four children then in six years in San Francisco had four more with my mother being the last. When my mother was a year old, my grandmother had her live with another family for a few months. The woman used the money my grandmother sent to feed her own sons extra meat and milk. My mother got rickets. When she came back home, they fed her frantically. She shouldn’t remember it, yet the body remembers in ways the mind often does not.

I ask after Don’s health, his children and grandchildren. We talk about his RV. Having been interned at Tule Lake, Don likes the idea of having a motorized house. As he puts it, “I like to be able to go where I want.”

My mother is the one who interrupts, “So you were going to tell me what your Uncle Leon is up to.”

“Mom, I really don’t think it’s anything bad. Paperson’s sat there for almost twenty years. I just want the estate and trust to be done with.”

“I know you want it done with, but you have to make sure that you get your fair share,” my mother’s tone is brittle even menacing, her way of letting me know that she worries that I won’t fight hard enough.

“This is the first time the place has had a named buyer. Luke Howard isn’t a shyster. He can’t afford to be one.”

“What makes you think that? How do you know that he’s not in cahoots with your uncle?”

Certain archaic American words stuck in my parents’ vocabulary. With my father it was calling young women “Janes” and to a group of friends as a “cats”. My mother uses “cahoots”, “bigwig”, and referring to soft drinks as “pop” and alcohol as “hooch”. Sometimes they would sound bizarrely like Midwestern gangsters from the Capone era. I think it was because they learned most of their collogquial American English at Saturday double features.

“Mom at least let me tell you what’s going on before I have to stop whatever it is you think Uncle Leon’s going to do.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. He’s always up to something. He always has an angle. You’re not asking enough questions .”

“Mom, believe me, I ask questions.”

“Then you’re not asking the right questions if you think he’s on the up and up with this.”

“Luke Howard wouldn’t get involved if he thought he’d be taken advantage of.”

“Your mother’s not talking about Luke Howard getting taken advantage of. She’s talking about you,” Don pushes his plate to the side, “Lucky, there can be a lot of angles in a land deal.”

Before he met my mother, Don sold his farm to a developer. No one’s really sure how he came away with as much money as he did. All anyone knows is that he retired while most of the people who farmed near his land had to take jobs after the deal for the subdivision.


Platters of more food cover the counters. There’s a plate of melon slices, more roast beef, and another mound of chow mein sits atop a bright orange platter next to half a chocolate cake.
“You must be hungry,” she tells me.
“Not really, “ I tell her.
“You like roast beef. I know you don’t get it at home. I know you never get chow mein. I made the other batch for you to take home to Marie.”
Marie doesn’t cook well and she definitely doesn’t cook Chinese food well. After all, she’s not Chinese.

“I’m not that hungry mom.”

Even as I say it, I find myself piling food on a plate while my mother sits across from me at the table with her pre-measured meal from Weight Watchers and a cup of hot water.

“It’s good roast beef. I got it from Corti’s. You remember Corti’s.”

I roll my eyes and nod my head. At the moment, I’m facing the two ton metal dragon also salvaged from my father’s restaurant that’s mounted on the fence and whose tennis ball sized green eyes stare fixedly at our kitchen table. It was a few years before I realized that my mother did it this way so that she could feel like my Dad was with her when she ate. He was the one who loved to cook and to talk about food.

“Mom, you know who Luke Howard is?”
She looks up from her hot water and drops a sliver of chocolate cake next to the chow mein on my plate.

“Try this. It’s from a new bakery. I need to know how you like it. They said they’d give me the recipe. It’s supposed to be the best chocolate cake according to Kathy.”

“Mom, can’t I wait on the cake.”

The older my mother gets the less willing she seems to be to wait on anything.

“Just try it.”

Again, even as I argue with her, I find myself taking two bites of chocolate cake. My palate knows what my mouth and mind can not. My mother always wins these struggles.

“Why should I care who Luke Howard is? Your Uncle Leon is up to no good. Whatever he’s doing with that town, there’s something in it for him.”

“I don’t think so. Uncle Leon didn’t even know that the woman who came to represent Luke Howard went to Harvard with me.”

My mother’s face lights up.
“Someone you went to school with.”

“Yes, Jan Grady was a friend of mine.”

“But she’s so young.”

“Mom, she’s not that young and I’m not that young.”

“Well she must have done well for herself.”

It occurs to me that my mother still supposedly doesn’t know who Luke Howard is, so how can she be commenting on Jan Grady’s success simply as someone who works for him?

“I also don’t think Uncle Leon has any idea why the Howard Company is interested. He thought they wanted to buy Paperson to develop a shopping center.”

For some reason when it comes to family matters, I never manage to explain anything to my mother in logical order, but this at least gets her attention.

“You never mentioned any Jan Grady when you were in Cambridge.”

“Well Mom, you never met all of my friends and I didn’t talk about everyone I met at Dunster House or everyone I ever had a class with.”

That’s not exactly true. On their trips east, my parents insisted on meeting as many of my friends as they could, always offering to take them along to dinner, quizzing them about their lives before Harvard, their plans beyond graduation. It became a running joke whenever my parents came back there.

“You would have mentioned a girl.”

This is certainly true enough. If there had been a girl to mention or introduce I would have.

“Well, we weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend or anything.”

My mother shrugs. “I didn’t say that. I’ve just never understood why we send you to Harvard and you’ve never used any of the connections you could have made in a place like that.”

I want to tell her there’s a difference between being good at school and having actual social skills, but it’s the sort of thing we’ve never much talked about. I was so shy as a child that my mother used to insist on finding me possible friends. I just never had much to say to them nor did I like hanging out with people my age much until I was well into college and away from Paperson. Among my cousins it was worse. At family gatherings, they would cluster in small groups and I would skirt the perimeters of their conversation never able to find an angle to join in and those circles never quite opening either to let me talk about the stupid things that friends of theirs I’d never met had done or would do.

When I got to Harvard, it was hard enough for me to make friends much less girlfriends in a place where the males still significantly outnumbered the females.

My mother, Don, and I eat in silence for several minutes. I then remember Marie’s complaint that I tend to visit my mother, get frustrated with her ways, and walk away from the table leaving her to deal with my mother and stepfather.

“Jan is in “Acquisitions” for Luke Howard. Uncle Leon assumed that meant real estate because it’s what he knows. Jan doesn’t acquire land or buildings for Luke Howard, she’s buying ideas.”

“Ideas? What kind of ideas would anyone want from that old place? It’s just a bunch of old mildewy buildings and your Grandfather’s house.”

“When she brought it up, Uncle Leon was in complete shock. I don’t see how he could be working an angle if it’s something he knows nothing about. Luke Howard wants to do some sort of multi-media history thing with Paperson.”

Don and my mother look at me blankly.

“You mean like a newspaper?”

“No, that’s the media. Multi-media is where they have pictures, sounds, and other stuff.”

My mother nods then says,“You still better be careful.”

“Mom, this is Luke Howard, the most famous movie producer in the world. He makes movies about other planets and stuff.”

“I don’t see those kinds of movies.”

“Mom, Luke Howard’s worth billions. There’s nothing Uncle Leon has that he could offer him.”

“Why would someone who’s worth billions care about an old abandoned town run by a selfish old man? Something doesn’t make sense. You say your Uncle Leon found these people?”

“Mom, you don’t understand,” exasperation boils in my voice.

My mother says nothing for a few moments, then begins cleaning crumbs off the table. I struggle to stay in chair.

“Why would I, why should I? Maybe you do, but I don’t.”

“Mom, it still has history.”

“Not everything needs to be remembered.”

“Mom, I seriously don’t think Luke Howard is interested in anything that happened in the Tang family. He wants the other history.”

“There is no other history in that place. There was nothing in Paperson that ever happened that your Grandfather didn’t have something to do with.”

My mother measures out a second packet of food for herself then asks if I want a cup of hot water of my own. She believes that plain hot water has purifying properties.

She looks back at the dragon and tilts her head.

“What was her name again?”

“What was whose name?”

“Your friend who works for this Howard guy…”

“It’s Jan Grady.”

My mother shakes her head.

“I remember that name.”

“I know you never met her.”

“Maybe not, but I think you mentioned her….She was someone you liked.”

Weirdly, my mother remembers a moment that I’d buried. One evening my parents were there and I was walking down the staircase with them towards town when I stopped briefly to say “Hi” to Jan Grady on the landing where I normally had my conversations with her.

Jan said “Going somewhere with your parents?”

I shrugged, but my Dad noticed Jan Grady.

“Who was that?” he asked twice.

“It’s Jan, she’s from New York City.”

“She’s more like it.”

I exhaled loudly.

“She has a boyfriend. I’m probably not her type.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Lucky. She smiled at you.”

“She smiles at everyone. Can we talk about something else?”

My father died before I ever had the chance to introduce any woman to my parents.

I gulp down hot water that’s a bit too hot to drink.

“Mom, if she was someone I liked, nothing ever came of it and I don’t think she ever noticed me that way.”

My mother takes an expanding breath. “It seems like she found you this time. It’s not a coincidence.”

“Mom it’s a business deal. I told you she’s doing a project for Luke Howard.”

“Is she married now?”

“I have no idea. We haven’t talked about it.”

“Have you mentioned Marie to her?”

“Of course, I have….Why wouldn’t I?” I say it as forcefully as possible, but the truth is that I don’t know the answer to my own question.