Red Oblivion Read online

  “There are plenty of weirdos out there, Jill. These people have their stupid fun and that’s it.”

  “Did you ever find out who sent it?”

  “Not for certain. I had my suspicions, though.” A trace of a bleak smile, drawing me into a sense of intimacy. “A business deal had gone sour. Billiard halls. One of my father’s old partners was trying to break off on his own, but his venture failed miserably, due to my father’s actions. The guy was pissed. Things got rather ugly for a while.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. This was the first time Terence had ever alluded to his family’s unsavoury past. “What happened?”

  “Dunno exactly. But the cake boxes stopped arriving. And the guy disappeared.”

  “What do you mean? The guy left town?”

  With a shrug, he downed the rest of his drink. “All I can say is that no one ever heard from him again.”

  “I’m not sure how much more we can do for your father, to be honest,” Dr. Lam, the respirologist, says. Although late middle-aged, he dresses like a hipster in a black Paul Smith jacket whose fluorescent detailing keeps distracting me. “And wouldn’t your father be more comfortable at home in his own bed?”

  “Seriously? Isn’t it way too soon? Ba’s nowhere close to being back to his old self.”

  “Um, your father’s ninety-four. And he’s recovered remarkably from the operation.”

  “What about his recent attack?”

  Dr. Lam’s eyes soften in a way that doesn’t come naturally, a practised look. “All the tests came back fine, Jill. Old people can be emotionally sensitive.… It might’ve been a nightmare that set him off. The worst of his illness has passed and his condition’s stabilized for the time being. You can hire a nurse to take care of him at home.”

  A man of Ba’s age is in a palliative state anyway — that’s what the doctors probably think. If spending his remaining days on his own couch means so much to him, who are we to begrudge him these small, parting pleasures?

  My father, not surprisingly, is thrilled by the news.

  “Don’t you think it’d be better to wait, Ba?”

  “No, I want my own blankets and pillows.… And I want Rina to make steamed fish …”

  I stare down at my father’s bedridden body, frail as an invalid child’s. This is nothing like how I imagined he would be upon his return home.

  But the news seems to energize him, his face revealing a vestige of its old intensity. “I’m going to live for another four years. The doctor says my liver’s in perfect shape, as good as the liver of a young man.”

  “Oh? Well, that’s good, I guess.”

  Ba doesn’t appear too pleased by his self-diagnosis. He treats it more like a duty the world has imposed on him, this duty to keep on living, surviving.

  “When I was a boy, my first job paid only five dollars a month.” Wide-eyed as an owl, he expects my rapt attention, like I haven’t heard this story millions of times before.

  “I thought it was ten.” During my childhood, Ba always pegged his salary at ten dollars per month, but over the years it’s somehow been halved. Who knows, maybe he’s adjusting for inflation.

  “It was a grocery store,” he continues. “Stocking shelves, sweeping floors. Knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere with that.”

  “So you went to that bookkeeping office.” I nudge the story along so he won’t tire himself out. “You showed the manager your test scores from your last year at school, right?”

  “Yup. Then I asked for a job. The man looked at my scores and said” — Ba furrows his forehead, mimicking the guy’s astonished expression — “‘Young man, with marks like these, why are you not in school?’ I shook my head. ‘We are very poor, sir. My father cannot afford the school fee. I have to work.’ You know what the man said?”

  Yes, I know, of course I know. But so as not to spoil his enjoyment, I shrug.

  “‘What a pity … what a pity …’”

  The animation seeps from Ba’s face, bitterness and fatigue setting in. I don’t know why he insists on always returning to this same pathetic story that only makes him feel like crap.

  He closes his eyes, drifting off. If he were more energetic, there’d be more he would say, no doubt. He’d tell me about how in addition to working at the grocery store, he cleaned the bookkeeping office at night.

  When my father awakes, he looks troubled. Perhaps he had a bad dream.

  “It’ll be good to be home. That way, if more mail arrives …”

  “There hasn’t been any more mail, Ba. Just drop it, okay?”

  A tremor passes through the air between us. Soon, I’ll be compelled to wheel him down to the lobby many times a day so he can peer into the mailbox himself.

  “If you’re so concerned, Ba, it’d help if you talked to me.”

  “It has nothing to do with you.”

  “Nice try.”

  The fear in his eyes lingers. “Things weren’t supposed to end like this for me. But for you … for you … it’s not too late.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re no spring chicken, you know.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “There’s one thing I want you to promise me, in case I die tomorrow.”

  Oh, God. Here we go again.

  “Promise me that you’ll stay in Hong Kong … get married … start a family.”

  “That’s three promises, not one.”

  “Well, I can ask for three, can’t I?” As something tickles his throat, he starts hacking up a storm. I wonder if he’s faking, in an attempt to win my sympathy. “My work on this planet isn’t done yet. I … I haven’t accomplished all I wanted to.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with me getting married and having kids.”

  “Future generations, a grandson … wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Not grandchild, but grandson. My jaw clenches. That old, familiar tightness in the back of my throat. It gives way to a burst of laughter. The last thing I need is a little clone of Ba following me around from beyond the grave, clutching at my calves.

  “Well, Ba, what can I say? I’m single. You might have better luck talking to Celeste. Plus, I can’t promise you I’m going to stay in Hong Kong. My whole life’s in Canada. You know that.”

  All his features pinch together in a lumpy knot. “Do you know how much real estate in this city’s gone up?” He tells me how much he paid for our condo, over forty years ago, compared to how much it’s worth today. “Can Canada say that? And taxes there are sky high.”

  For a brief second, I consider raising the point that boys with poor, sickly fathers can’t go to school and have a decent shot in life unless somebody pays the taxman. But why waste my breath? The only lesson this man has learned from his Dickensian childhood is survival of the fittest.

  “Plus,” Ba continues, “we never get snow here. Not like in Canada.”

  “I don’t mind the snow, Ba. It’s actually kind of pretty.”

  When I first visited Toronto, over twenty years ago, I remember being struck by how flat and empty and grey everything appeared. That was my first impression. It was hard to believe this was Canada’s largest city. Even the high-rises appeared strangely low compared to what I was used to, and they were spaced so far apart that they had the solitary air of lone trees. Nothing like the forests of high-rises in Hong Kong. And where were all the people? According to the taxi driver, Yonge Street was the longest street in the world. But if Yonge was such a big deal, why did it have this eerie, post-apocalyptic calmness to it? Whole blocks went by and I saw only a handful of folks trudging along in their puffy zipped-up coats, past the convenience stores and auto shops and cottage-like houses still bordered in garish Christmas lights.

  It was February. The air was frigid like I’d never experienced before. The asphalt had a chalky appearance, but I knew it couldn’t be snow, because snow was supposed to be fluffy and fly away, wasn’t it? At least that’s how it looked in movies.
r />   A hard veneer came over my mother’s face in that first taxi ride as she stared out the window and pressed her lips together, magenta lipstick feathering into the fine creases around her mouth, the sunspots on her complexion like faint, indelible stains. At that moment, she probably wished she’d listened to my father, who’d remained in Hong Kong. He didn’t think any of this was necessary; he was simply indulging her desire for a Canadian passport. So here we were. Me, my mother, and Celeste, who was already snoozing on my shoulder. After this brief visit to get the ball rolling, the plan was that we’d move to Toronto over the summer. With the help of an immigration consultant, my parents were going to buy a condominium, and my sister and I would begin our final years of high school in this bleached-out, frostbitten wilderness.

  As it turned out, Mom had another plan up her sleeve — for herself, in any case. A tour of the Eaton Centre and then a trip up to Holt Renfrew left her very homesick. Consequently, she held off on purchasing that condo and rented a serviced apartment at Yonge and Eglinton instead. The three of us moved in at the beginning of the summer. In August, however, she announced that she’d be returning to Hong Kong the very next week. She’d found a nice Chinese-Canadian family for us to board with, out in Markham.

  If Mom felt at all guilty about leaving us behind, she hid it well. I was seventeen, my sister sixteen. When Mom was only fourteen, she and her younger brothers had been sent to live in an apartment all by themselves with only a maid to take care of them (presumably because my grandfather’s first wife no longer wanted another woman’s kids in her face). “You girls are old enough to take care of yourselves,” our mother said, with a brusque energy that made her permed hair flounce outward. Self-reliance and the ability to adapt to quickly changing circumstances were the most important skills in life, according to her. Funny how she proved about as adaptable as a hothouse flower where moving to Canada was concerned.

  Whatever bitterness I felt at the time got shoved aside in the flurry of activity to get us settled. Autumn in Canada was actually rather pretty, I discovered, with spacious suburban front yards and tree-lined streets, leaves lit up in fiery blotches. The older couple who owned the house where Celeste and I boarded were pleasant enough folks, but we both kept to ourselves, retreating to our rooms right after dinner.

  Every day, we took the bus to Markham District High, a sprawling red-brick building where the halls echoed with slamming lockers and high fives and whoops of glee that never had anything to do with us. That was fine by me; I was content to let the noise of strangers bubble up and flow past. I immersed myself in my studies, I took long walks, I read a lot. Since I had already covered most of the curriculum in the maths and sciences in previous years, I had time to read for pleasure — existentialist authors, in particular. I liked how Camus’s characters were cut off from the ordinary world and laws of morality, ensconced in the solitude of their own demented minds.

  To my surprise, I didn’t miss Hong Kong much, its crowded streets, hung with giant neon signs and billboards of airbrushed complexions, skyscrapers looming like mountaintops, the onslaught of sweaty bodies streaming out of subway stations. That other life was still there; it never really faded from my mind. But I didn’t feel any yearning to return to it. At the same time, it wasn’t like I had a surge of affection for my new surroundings. If anything, what I felt was calm, cool indifference. I could live anywhere, because I wasn’t homesick. I’d never had any true sense of “home.” This realization offered a strange, diffuse comfort. Everything around me assumed a bright, immaterial quality, as if composed of nothing more than projections of coloured light: a pale, wintery street, the last bit of sunset glaring off ice patches, an old TV in a dim, musty basement, an alarm clock ticking away on a bedside table, my hand reaching over to pick it up. Even those ticks — those tiny increments of sound — seemed arbitrary, fleeting. I drifted through the days, aware only of the randomness of the world around me, one place interchangeable with the next.

  Over time, I managed to make a few friends at school, other exiles from Hong Kong. But I knew these connections wouldn’t survive the semester. Having these kids to chat with in Cantonese over lunch hour and to drive me to the movie theatre didn’t make me feel any less alone, if you want the truth. And I was quite all right with that, because I’d discovered that I rather liked being alone.

  “When am I …?”

  “Relax, Ba. The doctor says you’ll be released early next week.”

  I’m glad that I’ve got a bit of time, at least, to get the condo in order. I’m stocking up on adult diapers. I’m running around to buy rubber handles to attach to the shower wall, along with a lot of other equipment my father needs. And while I’m in this hamster-on-a-wheel mode, I figure that Rina and I might as well throw out a ton of crap. Boxes of empty bottles and jars stashed under the kitchen counter, saved for God knows what. Threadbare, yellowed undershirts, crammed into a dresser. Yesterday, the internet guy came over, as did the AC repairman, who restored our living room to a bearable temperature. What a joy not to be damp and sticky all the time.

  And then there’s Ba’s building, of course. Checking in with Ming every couple days, I take note of all the things that need to be repaired and the squabbles between our tenants that he seems to think I’d want to get involved in, for some reason. Friction over the mess in a shared washroom. The disgusting smell of burning meat in a hallway, coming from an office microwave every lunch hour. I nod and smile tightly, Ming’s long-winded reports registering in only a vague way. But I let him go on, dreading the end of the conversation, when my stomach always gallops in that moment right before he hands me the stack of mail. And yet, there’s nothing of any consequence — just bills, flyers. Maybe Terence is right, maybe these things die out on their own.

  Occasionally, I glance at Facebook to catch up on the lives of my friends and colleagues in Toronto. They lead such happy, normal, balanced lives. Family picnics on Centre Island. Canoeing at the cottage. My old roommate’s gotten married, Vegas style. (I wonder if she’s giving the impression they eloped only because she doesn’t want her Facebook friends to feel bad about not being invited to the wedding.) A basement has been renovated. Blueberry muffins have been baked. Two babies have been born, a dog has died. Nick and his new girlfriend have moved in together and she has a pixie of a daughter with blond-white hair and an irresistible, shy smile.

  That all-too-familiar handwriting, the Guangzhou postmark. A long white envelope, light as if it contains nothing at all.

  I’m not at Ba’s building, I’m at home. It’s late in the day, so the area of the lobby around the mailboxes is full of people returning from work. I rush toward the door to get outside, not wanting to run into any neighbours, incapable of hiding my horror, my strange sense of humiliation. The doorman looks up as I rush past, my heart pattering madly.

  A few streets down, I find a parkette with an empty bench. By now the envelope’s damp from my sweaty fingers and while I open it, I have to hold the letter delicately at the edges to avoid smearing the ink.

  It’s in Chinese. It’s been so long since I’ve read anything of any length that for the first several moments the characters appear cryptic, meaningless. An endless tangle of black lines.

  Then, all too quickly, the ink becomes decipherable:

  Dear Comrade,

  You probably thought you’d gotten rid of me, since I haven’t been in touch for a while. True, I was getting bored and thinking of moving on to more pressing matters, like tending my garden. However, as you of all people are no doubt aware, the stock market has taken a nasty tumble in recent weeks. While men like you can ride out the storm, for folks like us it ain’t so easy.

  In view of the long history our families shared, I feel well within my rights to turn to you in our time of need. You were once very skillful at hunting down and capitalizing on our family heirlooms. That’s why we no longer have anything to hock and make up for our shortfall.

  For most of your life, you
probably thought little of your misdeeds. But I’m hoping that now, in the wisdom of old age, you will recognize the error of what you did to us and try to redress the situation.

  And so, let me come to the point of this letter, without wasting time on niceties. My son is currently at university in Hong Kong. His name is Ma Kaiming, though most people, I understand, call him “Benjamin” these days. He is a bright, diligent student. Due to the plunge in the stock market, no one in our family is able to help the boy out with his tuition and living expenses.

  We trust that you — acting out of the goodness of your heart, no doubt — will step forward and help out. My father always considered you someone who could be depended upon.

  A certified cheque for $700,000, made out to Ma Kaiming, is what the situation requires. The cheque should be mailed to:

  PO Box 53466

  General Post Office

  Hong Kong

  Since fall tuition is overdue, it would be best if we received the cheque by the end of the week.

  Considering that what we are asking for is so little, why not settle the books once and for all?

  Respectfully yours,

  An Old Friend from Guangzhou

  EIGHT

  “No, I don’t think I’m going overboard, Terence. Blackmail isn’t an exaggeration at all!”

  Terence pops a dumpling into his mouth, flushing at the hot explosion of juices. It takes him a moment to recover. Or maybe he’s biding his time, trying to word his thoughts delicately.

  “The thing about blackmail is it usually requires some kind of actual threat.”

  “The whole letter is dripping with threats!” I pluck it off the table and begin skimming it again, somewhat manically perhaps. Where did all those menacing words disappear to?