The Color of Light Read online

  I remember the excitement when Bart brought Quynh home from the airport shortly after she made contact. She lived in her sister’s house, taking care of Beto, until he was ready for college. We all loved her. It was clear, though, that for Beto, Quynh was his aunt, and never a replacement for his mother.

  “Quynh,” I said. “How nice to see you.”

  Grinning, she placed her palms together and bowed, the traditional Vietnamese greeting. “What is this ‘Quynh’ you say? You don’t call your auntie ‘Auntie’ no more?”

  “Auntie.” I bowed to her, though I wanted to throw my arms around her. She opened the SUV’s back hatch and handed me a five-gallon plastic bucket full of live lobsters without preamble.

  “You can take two?” she asked, holding up a second.

  “Sure.” I reached for the handle. “Are these for the party Saturday?”

  She nodded. “You want to take one home, make a nice dinner?”

  “Thanks,” I said, turning a bit to show her the shopping bag dangling from my shoulder. “But I stopped by the deli and Beto gave me enough food to hold me for a while.”

  She grinned, stacking three long, foil-wrapped roasting pans together. “That Beto, he takes care of his friends. He tells me you have a new boyfriend.”

  “When a man is fifty, do you still call him a boyfriend?” I walked beside her into the house.

  She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “What else you gonna call him?”

  “I call him Jean-Paul.”

  “You better bring him Saturday so Auntie can get a look at him.”

  I smiled, and did not tell her that Jean-Paul and I had made no plans past Friday night. I looked around the immaculate kitchen for a place to set the buckets; the lobsters scrabbled their banded claws against the sides, looked up at me with sad, beady eyes.

  “Auntie, you’re here!” Zaida, Beto’s wife, came in from the backyard. “And Maggie!”

  First she took the pans from Quynh, leaning in to kiss her cheek.

  “Anything else to bring in?”

  “Whole car full,” Quynh said.

  Zaida opened the back door and called out, “Boys, need some help, please.”

  Carlos, the younger of Beto’s sons, came in and took both buckets of lobsters from me as his mother gave instructions to the trio of teenagers trailing after him to finish unloading Quynh’s car.

  “Carlos,” she called after her son. “Put those bugs in the garage refrigerator. They’ll go to sleep until Grandpa is ready for them.”

  “Looks like you have your hands full,” I said to Zaida as she closed the back door after her son.

  “Everything’s under control.” She wrapped her arms around me and smooched my cheek. She was lovely in a way that Gracie would call zaftig, deliciously curvy. “How’s it going over at the house, Maggie?”

  I held up my hands. “It’s going. Thanks for the estate sale referral, but I think we’ll just donate stuff and be done with it.”

  “Anything I can do to help.” She squeezed my arm. “Just whistle. I’ll send the boys over to work and bring a bottle of wine for you and me.”

  The boys were back with the bags, pans, and cartons from Quynh’s car.

  “I might take you up on the offer,” I said as Zaida gave instructions to her adolescent help about where everything should be put. “And right now I think I can help you best by getting out of your way.”

  “Bye, sweetie,” she said, looking up from the refrigerator. “Can’t wait to meet the new guy.”

  Quynh walked me out, but first we stopped in front of the memorial niche in the entry, at one time a telephone alcove, and placed a ripe plum and a pink rice cake next to the golden Buddha presiding there. She gave me a joss stick to light, lit one herself, and placed them in a brass holder. Again she put her palms together and bowed, this time to the spirit of her deceased sister. We shared a quiet moment, each left to her own thoughts.

  At the door, when I said good-bye to her, she hugged me, as she used to.

  Feeling a bit nostalgic about the old neighborhood, so full of memories, I made my way up the hill to Mom’s house. Just as I was unlocking the front door, my mobile phone buzzed in my pocket. The I.D. screen said Jean-Paul Bernard, the boyfriend, new guy, the fella. I checked my watch as I answered the call; the woman from the university housing office was due to arrive in only a few minutes. I sat down on the front steps to talk with Jean-Paul while I waited for her.

  I wanted to invite him to come home with me after the Friday night reception in San Francisco, but felt oddly shy about doing so. I liked him very much, enjoyed being with him enormously. But, so far, we had proceeded into our relationship with caution, first because we were both fairly recently widowed, and second because, as the appointed French consul general to Los Angeles, he served at the will or the whim of his country’s current administration and could be recalled to France at any time. My home base was LA, and probably always would be.

  Cautious or not, when I opened the phone and heard his voice, I flushed all warm and girly.

  “I arrive in San Francisco early tomorrow,” he said after the usual I’m fine-you’re fine was taken care of. “But there are official duties that will occupy me for most of the day. The reception opens at eight so we need to be there by seven-thirty to meet the French museum contingent and check on arrangements. I have commandeered the San Francisco consul’s car and driver. What time should I come for you?”

  “Don’t even try to pick me up,” I said. “Evening traffic out of San Francisco is impossible. I’ll hop on BART and meet you.”

  There was a little back and forth, but when I explained how long it would take for him to make the round trip from the City to Berkeley and back again during rush hour, he reluctantly agreed. We decided I would meet him at about 6:45 at the San Francisco consulate on Kearney Street, near Union Square, giving me time and a place to freshen up before the event.

  “Exactly what is the dress code?” I asked. He had only extended the invitation the previous afternoon during a brief conversation that was soon interrupted on his end by a work-related issue.

  “Dress code?” he asked.

  “Where on the scale between street sweeper and Marie Antoinette should I aim my attire?”

  “Ah. I didn’t tell you? So sorry. What an idiot I am.” I heard papers rustle, then a muttered merde before he came back on the line. “The worst, I’m afraid. Black tie. Is that a problem?”

  “No,” I lied. Who packs formal evening gear to go clear out the family manse? There was enough time, however, for me to come up with something; the Bay Area is hardly a shopper’s wasteland.

  “Chérie,” he said before I had found my opening to invite him for the weekend. “How is the house clearing progressing?”

  “Slowly,” I said. “I didn’t realize how much there was to do.”

  “I have no reason to be back in Los Angeles until Monday morning.”

  “If that’s an offer, I accept,” I said. Bless his heart.

  “The weekend dress code is what you call grubbies?”

  “Yes. And bring something to wear to a backyard Hungry Ghosts celebration Saturday afternoon.”

  “I am afraid to ask what that is,” he said.

  “It’s an Italian neighbor’s version of the Vietnamese version of the end of Hungry Ghosts Month. As I understand it, the gates of the underworld have been open all month and the spirits of our ancestors have been wandering among us. If you’ve taken care all year to honor your ancestors and they lived good lives and died well, they won’t cause mischief to you. But if they’ve been neglected or they lived or died badly, then they are doomed to wander as lost and hungry spirits. They slip through looking for food and maybe a living person to trade places with. You have to make a special effort to bribe the hungry ghosts so that they go back into the underworld for another year. And that’s what we’ll do Saturday.”

  “Ghosts?” he said, sounding bemused.

  “You don’t beli
eve in ghosts?”

  “I believe they reside in the imaginations of the living.”

  “C’est ça,” I said, borrowing the expression from him.

  “What does one wear to a Hungry Ghosts celebration?”

  “Anything comfortable as long as it isn’t black. Think backyard barbecue.”

  He laughed. “Bon. I’ll bring chocolates.”

  A Prius pulled up to the curb in front of the house and a woman in her early forties got out. From the looks of her, slacks and a tailored shirt, and her accoutrements, a clipboard and a camera, I assumed she was the staffer from the housing office. She paused on the sidewalk to take a few pictures of the front of the house. I rose and started down the walk to meet her.

  “I need to say good-bye,” I told Jean-Paul. “I have a visitor.”

  “À demain,” he said.

  “Until tomorrow.”

  Chapter 4

  It seemed to me that the woman from University Housing, ­Evelynne M. Sanchez according to the card she gave me, had a bit of an attitude, as if she were put upon by the chore of this visit. I did not understand why she would be. It seemed to me, and to the people Mom had spoken with at the housing office, that Mom was doing the university a favor by leasing the house for their use.

  The cost of housing in the San Francisco Bay Area is wickedly high, a problem whenever the university wants to recruit talented researchers and faculty. In recognition of that problem, and as a sort of memoriam to Dad who always put up visiting colleagues, the rent Mom was asking covered property taxes, insurance, a reserve account to cover repairs and maintenance, and little else. The bite was far below the going market rate for a house its size in the area. I did not expect Ms Sanchez to bow down in gratitude, but I thought a certain level of professional politesse was called for.

  “How much of this furniture will remain?” she asked, running her hand over the surface of a very old table with a marquetry-work top that Dad had found left on a curb by a student who was moving out of an apartment.

  “The house will be fully furnished,” I said. “But exactly which pieces will be here and which won’t I can’t say until Monday. A family member is coming to decide on things she might want.”

  “The pianos?” Ms Sanchez asked.

  “Mom is keeping the baby grand, but the upright in the sun porch is staying if you want it.”

  As she opened kitchen cupboards stocked with crockery and cutlery and pots and pans she said, “You know to expect wear and tear. If any of this—” Ms Sanchez turned over a dinner plate and checked the trade mark on the bottom before putting it back on the shelf. “Things do get broken.”

  “Mom expects that families will live here,” I said, stowing Beto’s food containers into the refrigerator. “And that they will make themselves comfortable for the duration of their stay. She isn’t leaving anything that is particularly valuable or irreplaceable.”

  I walked her upstairs and showed her the bedrooms and the bathrooms.

  “As far as I know, the house is in good repair,” I said as we toured. “Mom put on a new roof late last winter and repainted all the rooms upstairs. The water heater is only a couple of years old and the gravity heater in the basement has always been more than adequate. The house is within the university’s Wi-Fi umbrella, so residents will be able to connect online using their Cal accounts.”

  “Is there a full basement?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “The gravity heater is in a big cement-lined hole under the house. There’s an access hatch in the dining room.”

  I saved the master bedroom for last because it was a mess. Mom had left her wardrobe rejects in a heap on the bed for me to bag and deliver to the women’s shelter thrift store. Stacks of books on the floor were waiting to be boxed and taken to the library’s used book store.

  A muslin garment bag hanging on the closet door caught my eye. Mom had debated whether to take the dress inside with her, or to leave it. In the end, she decided that she could no longer bring herself to wear something that plunged in the back. She could also not bring herself to throw that particular dress onto the heap with the others. For decades, the dress had been her favorite to wear out on special evenings. It was a genuine couturier designed and crafted floor-length gown, made originally for some San Francisco society maven; her initials were embroidered into a side seam. Mom bought it at an Opera Guild rummage sale, but even at rummage sale prices it had been a splurge for her.

  While Ms Sanchez was looking through the en suite bathroom, I took the dress out of the bag and gave it a careful going-over, thinking that I might have something to wear to Jean-Paul’s reception after all.

  The dress was as timelessly elegant as I remembered: long sleeves, a ballerina neckline, the lines kept from being severe by an almost daring plunge in back and the graceful way the skirt swirled around the legs. The fabric, a tissue-thin black silk and wool knit, had some benevolent give. Cut on the bias, the dress was narrow through the midriff and then gradually flared; a wonderful dress to dance in. I hadn’t asked Jean-Paul if there would be dancing.

  The dress did show some signs of age, but who doesn’t after forty? The cuff end of the right sleeve was a bit frayed, but I could turn that under with a couple of stitches. If the lighting at the reception was subdued, as it should be at a party, who would notice a couple of tiny moth holes here and there? If the dress fit, and didn’t fall apart on me, it would be better than just fine.

  “I remember that dress.”

  I wheeled around, startled. I hadn’t heard Ms Sanchez come back into the room. “You do?”

  “Your mother wore it to a couple of concerts,” she said. “My mom said it came from Paris.”

  “Originally, I think it did,” I said, looking at her more closely; why did she seem so cranky? And who was she to recognize the dress? “Mom bought it at a rummage sale.”

  With her knuckles on her hips, she challenged me: “You have no idea who I am, do you?”

  This was not the first time someone had asked me that particular question. Because I work in television, I meet a lot of people. Frequently those meetings consist of little more than a handshake and a comment about the weather or something just as impersonal and noncommittal. But sometime later they might see me on the living room TV and the nature of that glancing acquaintance changes in their minds. Generally, when I encounter them a second time and nothing familiar registers, I apologize for my memory lapse and ask for help. But because we were in my home town and I had once known a goodly number of its inhabitants, I gave Ms Evelynne M. Sanchez another looking-over before saying anything.

  Through the open window, I heard someone shake the back gate hard enough to make Mr. Sato’s padlock knock against the wood. The racket jarred me, but it was also a welcome interruption. I folded the black dress over my arm and went to the window to look down into the yard.

  “What is it?” Ms Sanchez asked, standing close behind me.

  I couldn’t see who was out there, but I had my suspicions. Through the open window I called down, “Hello there.”

  Whoever it was stopped shaking the gate. There was a pause. Then I heard running feet.

  “Who is it?” Craning to look over my shoulder, Evelynne M. Sanchez pressed against me. A bit too familiar, I thought. And that’s when enlightenment came: Evie Miller. She sat behind me in fifth grade and was on the same swim team in middle school. What I remembered most about her was that she was forever leaning forward in her chair to see what I was doing or to talk to me, demanding attention.

  “I don’t know, Evie,” I said, turning back around and edging away from her. “Maybe just some kids. With luck it’s someone who wants to steal zucchini. If it is, I hope they come back.”

  “So you do remember me.” She sounded sarcastic, though she smiled. “Took you a while.”

  “It’s been a long time,” I said. “Middle-school graduation, maybe?”

  “We doubled to the prom,” she said, scolding. “Junior year.�
�

  “So we did.” Did we? All I could remember about the other couple in the backseat of Kevin’s dad’s car the night of his prom—I went to a different high school than he and Evie—was a lot of fluffy pink satin, frothy blond hair and the sounds of some serious groping going on back there. Was that Evie and her date? Guess so.

  I showed her around the yard and she filled me in on her life so far: married a boy she met in college, had one daughter, now in college like my own. Her husband got caught fooling around with someone else I was supposed to know but could not place, so here she was, single again and on the prowl.

  “Know any available guys?” she asked. “I married cute. Now I want rich. You must know plenty of rich guys in Hollywood. Age doesn’t matter.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open,” I said as I walked her back through the house.

  “You always had the cute boyfriends,” she said.

  “Only one boyfriend, ever,” I said. “Kevin.”

  “Have you seen Kevin recently?” she asked, snooping, I thought.

  “I have,” I said because there was no point equivocating about it, not after Karen Loper had made her rounds. The old home town was a tough place to keep secrets.

  “You know about him and Lacy.”

  “We didn’t talk about Lacy.”

  “She’s really jealous of you.”

  “She has no reason to be.”

  “Oh, Maggie,” she scoffed. “Think about it. Even Larry Nordquist had a crush on you.”

  “Bullshit.” And it was. As a kid, I was a scrawny nerd.

  “Remember the day you made Larry cry?” she said, grinning. “God, I thought I would plotz when he took off running.”

  Was she there? I studied her face, trying to picture her among the dozen girls walking to school that day. It took a moment, but I could place her in the film, a profusion of brightly colored ribbons in her curly hair.