I could empathize with Philip. Ask any Chinese in our generation, we all hated the Japanese. We’d lost our youth to digging bomb shelters and hiding from airstrikes, eating roots and insects because our fields were razed and we had no more food. Learning basic Japanese words so if their soldiers came barging into our homes, we could at least beg for our lives.
But the war had ended decades ago. Marigold and her boyfriend hadn’t even been born. It didn’t feel right for them to suffer the same miscarriages of fate that we had.
“You can’t blame the boy for his ancestors’ crimes.”
“You sound like your mother.”
It’s just that Marigold’s been happy.She smiled like a cat when she came home, practically bouncing up to her room and wearing dimples that I didn’t know she had.Mydimples.
I had smiled that way once.
“Marigold’s never brought a friend to dinner. We should at least—”
“What? Pay for that murderer’s dinner?” This wasn’t what Philip had wanted to hear. “She went behind our backs to date that devil. She lied to us! Marigold!”
“She didn’t lie, she was afraid to tell us.”Because she knew you’d react like this,I thought.
Philip would never admit that his anger went beyond the Japanese boyfriend. Marigold had always been studious and filial, the daughter he was most proud of. Ever since she’d started college he hadn’t gambled once.“We need to save asmuch as we can,” he said. “Marigold’s going to get into the best medical school. I don’t want her to turn it down because we don’t have enough money.”
For her, he’d changed. Now he felt hurt. Betrayed.
“She’s our daughter,” I tried. “You weren’t happy about Francis and Eugene at first, but look at how you two—”
“Francis is my brother, not my son, and he’s not having children. You want to have those murderers’ blood in the family?”
Philip punched the radio on, his way of sulking. The station was Rosie’s, some sort of loud funk that he disliked and would always change, but today he left it on, deciding to punish us both.
We were almost at the Bay Bridge. Philip was rifling through his pants pocket, and I assumed he was looking for his wallet to pay the tolls, but he took out his lighter and a cigarette.
“Help me light it,” he had the gall to request. “Don’t look at me like that, Helen. Ihavequit.”
“That’s not quitting.”
“My head hurts. And this nonsense with Marigold isn’t helping.”
“No more smoking.” I reached over to take the cigarette, but it slipped from his fingers and the lighter fell to the floor.
I was about to scold him again when he slumped over the wheel. His arm had gone stiff as a rod, and his jaw was locked. “Take the wheel,” he grated.
“What?”
“The wheel! I can’t—feel . . . my arm.”
I slid down the bench just as Philip’s foot fell off the pedal and the car swerved. I screamed, my leg scrambling over his to jam my foot down on the brakes.
Our tires shrieked against the pavement. Cars honked as I steered us, careening across lanes, to the shoulder.
“Philip?” I asked once we came to a stop on the side of the freeway. “What happened?”
Philip unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his door.
He didn’t make it one step out before he collapsed on the pavement.
Chapter Fifty
It was a stroke, the nurse said. That was all I understood before she went back into the emergency treatment room.
I paced the waiting room. My mind was restless. Were Mama and my daughters still at dinner? Had Philip’s friends at the restaurant served them the usual free crabcakes? Would the station wagon be towed? My thoughts wandered in tortured circles, fixating on every possible wrinkle in the evening except for the actual one that had torn it apart: Philip.
