The Refugees(49)

“My mother and father would never let me wear these.” Phuong hesitated, but then reached for the hand mirror hanging from a nail in the wall. The touch of lace against her skin and the glimpses of her nearly nude body, draped so provocatively, were thrilling. “Only naughty girls would wear this.”

“It’s time for you to be bad,” Vivien said, yawning. “My God, you’re twenty-three! You don’t even want to know what I was doing when I was twenty-three.”

Even after Phuong had put her pajamas back on, she could still see how she looked in the hand mirror, the flashes of skin against the strip of gossamer fabric. She drew the curtain separating her side of the room from her parents’ and slipped into bed with Vivien, who had put away the suitcase and donned her own pajamas. Lying there, arm by arm, she sensed that her sister’s gift had endowed their relationship with even more intimacy and trust.

“What’s the first thing you’ll do in Chicago? Call your mother?”

“Take a long drive by myself. I miss my car.”

“I don’t even know anyone who owns a car.”

Vivien stared at the ceiling fan, stirring the hot air of a typically humid night. The open window allowed in only the merest of breezes.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Vivien said.

“You already told me.”

“What?”

“A secret.” When Phuong turned her head, she could see into Vivien’s ear, the canal small and dark. “At Cu Chi.”

“I guess I did.” Vivien scratched a bite on her neck. “I thought I would come here and I would love my father.”

“You don’t love him?” Phuong propped her head on her hand. “Or you didn’t love him?”

“It’s easy for you to love him.” Vivien sighed. “It’s easy for him to love me. That’s the way it should be. He remembers me. I don’t remember him. Can you love someone you don’t remember? Can you love someone you don’t know?”

“I’m not sure.” A burst of cackling and laughter came from the alley outside, the neighborhood’s old ladies sitting on their thresholds, gossiping before bedtime. “But I know he’s not easy to love.”

“A woman can’t fall in love with a man for whom she feels sorry. Can she?”

“I’ve never fallen in love with anyone, so I don’t know.” The screech of the metal gate that was the living room’s front door announced their father’s return. “But you’re saying it wrong. You’re not falling in love, you just want to love him.”

“You know what my mother told me when I said I was going to Vietnam?” Vivien paused. “Your father’s only going to break your heart, too.”

Then Vivien rolled over on her side to face the wall, where a green gecko clung patiently to the plaster. The stairs creaked as Mr. and Mrs. Ly ascended, the discordant notes together composing a coda to Phuong’s day so familiar only Vivien’s arrival made her aware of it. Her sister’s presence in Phuong’s bed and the caress of the lace on her skin sharpened the dull pencil of Phuong’s perceptions, allowing her to write in her mind with ever-increasing precision the outline of the characters in her life. None was drawn more clearly than her father, whom she pitied and, even worse, did not respect. If he were only an adulterer and a playboy, then there would be cause for resentment, but he was in decline, a failure without even the glamour of decadence and bad behavior. This was a matter of sufficient sadness and embarrassment so that when her father’s shadow appeared in the doorway, Phuong turned on her side as well. There, pressed into her sister’s back under the weight of a humid night, she discovered that even lying down Vivien had broken into a sweat.

At the amusement park the next morning, Mr. Ly photographed his children at the entry gates with a disposable camera, a gift from his ex-wife, delivered by Vivien. After Vivien paid for the family’s fares, Hanh and Phuc seized the lead, the former tugging on his mother’s hand. They picked their way through raucous troops of elementary school boys and girls, a battalion in red shirts and caps. A monorail traversed the park above the keen crowds, and in the distance, a roller coaster rumbled. One exhibition hall soon caught Phuong’s attention, its curious English name being the “Ice Lantern.” On a billboard outside, brightly colored photos depicted glacial facsimiles of the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, and other man-made wonders of the world, lit in a rainbow of neon. “Let’s save this for later,” she said, “when we need to cool down.”

“Good plan,” said Vivien, fanning herself with the park brochure.

After driving the bumper cars at Hanh’s and Phuc’s request, Mrs. Ly insisted on visiting the Japanese orchid garden. Several young couples posed for wedding photographs in different corners, the veiled brides in Western wedding gowns and the grooms in white tuxedos, red roses pinned to their lapels. Mrs. Ly cooed over the spectacle, but Hanh and Phuc rolled their eyes and asked Vivien if the next destination could be the Ferris wheel, rotating slowly above the water slides. It was Mrs. Ly who clambered into one cabin of the Ferris wheel with the boys, while Mr. Ly declined to join his daughters in another cabin, claiming acrophobia. As they ascended, Vivien studied the scenery from the barred window on her side, below which someone had drawn on the blue wall the stick figure of a girl with a mop of hair, fingers flashing a V. -Phuong peeked over her shoulder, her breath tickling a strand of hair on Vivien’s ear. Vivien tucked away the hair and pointed toward the roller coaster climbing slowly into view, an upside-down caterpillar with dozens of human arms wiggling in the air. “I worked on a ride like that,” Vivien said. “All my friends found jobs at the park so we could meet boys.”