The Refugees(50)

“Did you find a boyfriend?” Phuong leaned a shoulder against her sister’s arm. She hadn’t told Vivien that she was still wearing her gift, delighting in it like a child with a new and magical toy. “Was he handsome?”

“Rod was cute. He’d give me rides home, and we’d go on one of the side streets around my house, park, and . . . kiss. I don’t suppose you’ve done that?”

“Not yet.”

“You haven’t found any boys you like?”

“I don’t want any attachments,” Phuong said firmly. “I don’t want anyone holding me back.”

“From what?”

At the center of the park was a lake the size of a saucer, crumbs of paddleboats floating on its surface. Jutting into the lake was their noon destination, a restaurant in the shape of a dragon’s head, dividing the waters as Vivien’s departure tomorrow would divide the world once more into those who stayed and those who left.

“Can I tell you a secret now?”

Vivien smiled. “Sure.”

Phuong searched for the words to say what she had never told anyone before, how one day she, too, would leave, for Saigon was boring and the country itself not big enough for the desires in her heart. “I want to be like you,” Phuong said, gripping her sister’s hands in her own. “I want to go to America and be a doctor and help people. I don’t want to spend my life waiting on people. I want to be waited on. I want to travel anywhere I want, anytime I want. I want to come back here and know I can leave. If I stay here I’ll marry some boy with no future and live with his family and have two children too soon and sleep in a room where I can touch both walls at the same time. I don’t think I can stand it, I really don’t. Haven’t you ever felt this way?”

“Oh God,” Vivien said, looking up at the ceiling of the cabin. Phuong had hoped for enthusiasm and would have settled for reluctance, confusion, or condescension, but she was not prepared for the panic on her sister’s face. “I told her she should have told all of you the truth.”

The roller coaster plunged down the tracks, the passengers screaming. When Vivien shifted her weight and pulled her hands free, her arm peeled away from Phuong’s shoulder with a moist suck of sound, the air no cooler than down below.

“Who are you talking about?”

“My mother.” Vivien took a deep breath and looked once more through the barred windows. “Did you know that when she came to the States, she told the government she was twenty-five?”

“So?” A drop of sweat trickled down the small of Phuong’s back.

“She was thirty.”

“I can see a woman doing that.”

“My mother also told the government she was a widow.” Vivien turned back to meet Phuong’s gaze. “She wasn’t telling the truth when she told our father I was a doctor.”

Phuong blinked. “You’re not a doctor?”

“I’m a receptionist without a job. I was let go the month before I came here. My mother and my stepfather do not own a house in the suburbs. They live in a condo in West Tulsa. And my mother does not own the Nice Nail Beauty Salon. She works for it as a beautician.”

“Then why tell us you were a doctor?”

“Because you all wanted to know how much I made a month, and what I paid on my mortgage, and how much my car cost. It was easier just to answer than to say I wasn’t a doctor. But just so you know, that whole story about me being a pediatrician was my mother’s idea, not mine.” The cabin had reached its zenith, an elephant chained by its ankle visible far below, a windup toy tottering back and forth. “My mother also told me not to date my boss, especially if he’s married.”


“Your boss? What’s he got to do with this?”

“He said it wasn’t me, it was the economy,” Vivien cried. “Have you ever heard anything so stupid?”

“No,” Phuong said. “No one’s ever broken up with me before.”

“It happens to everybody.” Vivien’s eyes moistened. “So I thought I’d come here. A stupid reason, isn’t it?”

“I thought you came here to see us.”

“That, too.”

“Where’s all the money coming from?” Phuong could not tabulate how much her sister had spent, but she knew it was in the thousands of dollars. Just the gift envelopes alone that Vivien had distributed on her first night in Saigon held six hundred-dollar bills for Mr. and Mrs. Ly, with two more for Phuong and one each for her brothers. “All the dinners and tickets? The trips to Dalat and Vung Tau?”

“In America, they pay you extra when they fire you. Even receptionists get a nice check from big companies.” Vivien fumbled in her purse as their cabin continued its descent. “I also have credit cards. I don’t mind spending money. I wanted to show you a good time. You’ve never been anywhere.”

The park’s most prominent landmark loomed before them, a mountain painted an alluvial red, hollow and metallic. “It doesn’t matter,” Phuong said. None of it did, neither the lies nor the fact that Vivien had everything, even Phuong’s name, which she didn’t care to use. “You don’t have to be a doctor to sponsor me.”

“Where are my tissues?” Vivien wiped her tears away with her hands.