What We All Long For Read online

  The latest tenants went in and out of the doorway. Carla searched their figures for any familiarity. Doesn’t a life leave traces, traces that can attach themselves to others who pass through the aura of that life? Doesn’t a place absorb the events it witnesses; shouldn’t there be some sign of commemoration, some symbol embedded in this building always for Angie’s life here? She guesses perhaps not, though she stands on the lawn as if she should be noticed or acknowledged. What did she actually want here? Acknowledgment or release? She was holding on to a precious bundle; there was a woman’s face there and scraps of conversations and what felt like nerves and emotions and sinews—and the bundle was fragile and elliptical and she wished that she were not the only one responsible for it. Angie would disappear if Carla let the bundle fall. And why should Angie disappear, what had she done? She had, yes, crossed a border. But wasn’t that daring! Wasn’t it hopeful? How come she had to disappear for it? Angie had lived dangerously, as one should. How else could anything be done. That was what Carla was holding for her. If only because Angie had made her and Jamal, if only for that, Carla would hold Angie’s bundle of sinews, impressions, and her face.

  Jamal was waiting for her to do something to get him out of Mimico. His next bail hearing was in three weeks’ time. There was nothing else for it, she had to go see her father before that. She turned away from 782 Wellesley if not energized then purposeful. It was afternoon now, three o’clock or so, and she felt hungry—she would walk across the great arc of the bridge to the Danforth—it wasn’t far, but turning to the bridge, her body sank, she couldn’t summon up the stomach to go there. Not now.

  TEN

  TUYEN’S FATHER’S HOBBY was drawing all the buildings in the city as if he had built them. In his spare time, which was brief, after the restaurant was shut for the night, after the produce was put away, and the kitchen cleaned, and the lights dimmed, Tuan would go home and draw. Because after all that work he couldn’t sleep. He had gone past tired to that wide-awake state that prevented him from sleeping until three or four in the morning. Tuan would often begin working on his drawings at one of the tables in the restaurant, not bothering to go home when the rest of the family left. He could not always endure his wife’s insomnia, which was not a restful one like his, but a continuous pacing, throughout which she went over again and again the scene at the bay when they both lost sight of Quy.

  Cam played the vision over in her head, trying to regain the moment when she did not see, trying to alter the sequence of events so that she would arrive at herself in the present with her family and her mind intact. Just a split second would have been all the difference. Why hadn’t she noticed that moment as she should have? Why couldn’t she reclaim the time? Why had this happened to them? It was she to blame, it was she who could have with one turning of the head caught sight of Quy and pulled him to her. She could taste that moment, she longed to live it, it terrified her. She had such a deep sense of shame she felt inhuman.

  Tuan, for his part, worked to stave off his own lessening. No work was back-breaking enough for him. He welcomed the rebuff of Canadian officials and employers to his licensing as a civil engineer as it matched his sense of unworthiness and dishonour. There was nothing they could take away from him, nothing he had that he had not lost already. Though despite both himself and the powers that be he was successful. But he drew buildings as if he was still what he was.

  He did not like to think of that moment the way Cam did—if he did, he would have days of paralysis when he could not get out of his pyjamas, his limbs felt weak, and he could not work. He would glimpse himself at the bay, feeling relief that they were finally leaving, ticking off in his mind all the preparations he had made, all the months of secret negotiations on getting his savings out and then the dangers of talking to the wrong people about their departure. Had he hesitated a moment too long or a second too short in all these phases of the planning, and had that hesitation pushed events off-centre? He was only too aware of how important it was to have the right weight of objects, the correct angle of alignment for a stable structure. So too with events. To be able to stop when seeing danger, is knowledge. It was all dangerous, but he had not been able somehow to measure the danger, to apprehend the most crucial moment like the weakest point in a structure. Guard the home you have, and regret vanishes. This is what in his outward demeanour he strove for. Keep the order of the household—when people in the home are strict, it is auspicious to be conscientious and diligent. The household was strictly committed to these mantras. But, still, neither of them, Cam nor Tuan, could find a cure for their alertness.

  She paced, he drew.

  Tuyen learned to draw from her father. She had imitated his posture and the movement of his drawing hand since she was a child unaware of what he was actually doing. Amused by her mimicry, Tuan gave her pieces of paper and a ruler and they both sat creating drawings of boxes, bridges, pipelines, buildings. Tuyen’s drawings quivered on the fantastic, first because she was a child and her lines would become wavy, or as her mind wandered she would include a face here and a kite there, but as she grew older these inclusions became more deliberate. Her father’s annoyance only spurred her to perfect the fabulous as a practice. A head growing out of a drainpipe, a river flowing through the roof of a house. Gradually Tuan became used to it, convinced by then that she would not, as he had hoped, become an engineer like himself. Architectural school, perhaps, then. There she could express that creativity. Even with this, though, she had dropped out, and Tuan was at a loss to figure out how to control her. He had in his estimation lost control of his family since the night in the bay. All his efforts were to hold together the constantly slipping limbs.

  It was inevitable that Tuyen would apprehend the seepages in her family’s life. There was always in the house the double life, the triple images. Not to mention the outside world, which was threatening and which was the engine behind the manufacture of still more fantasies. Tuyen’s love of the unexplainable was inevitable. Her parents became for her subjects for observation and intuition. In art school, which she went to next, she discovered Remedios Varo. Remedios Varo’s father was a hydraulics engineer. He trained Remedios to draw by having her copy his diagrams and drawings. From imitating him, she learned depth and detail. Added to which, they say, she had a rich dream life that leaked into her own drawings and paintings. Tuyen discovered this coincidence with her own life at art school, and her brief stay there, if it was good for anything, awakened her at least to this.

  When Tuyen had found her father at home in the middle of the day in his pyjamas, she knew that meant he had spent the night awake drawing, and that meant a paralysis had overtaken him. Her mother, too, must have been awake pacing, as she had done over the last many years. Pacing or writing an endless stream of letters to authorities in every Southeast Asian country, searching for Quy. Terrified of returning to that part of the world herself, Cam had become involved with a network of officials, charlatans, magicians, crooks, and other distraught parents like herself in her search. Tuyen had once happened on a collection of these letters, whose duplicates her mother kept for easy referral and follow-up, and hope.

  Dearest Mr. Bowles, UNCHR,

  Please excuse my bad English but my state of distress is great. I believe that you can help find my Quy and know where he is. I have no sleep since he disappear from me and my husband. Enclose is a photo of him. If in your list of lost boys, please to find him, and his mother and father is awaiting at Refugee Settlement House, Toronto.

  Please do your best.

  Sincerely, Vu Duong Cam

  Dearest Mr. Chao, Hong Kong,

  I am sending the money here which will pay for your investigation. I’m happy that you are close to finding our boy and eager for his return. Whatever is necessary we will do. We left Chi Ma Wan Camp on September 29, 1980, at 1 P.M.

  Sincerely, Vu Duong Cam

  July 7, 1985

  Dearest Mr. Thieu,

  I was sent your n
ame as a person who could help us find our son Quy. He will be ten years old now. Enclosed is a laminated picture of him. He will not be much changed. Here is a laminated picture of my family so you can know what he would look like. Also money is in close to.

  Sincerely, Vu Duong Cam

  April 25, 1986

  Dearest Sir, Mr. Chao,

  I’m happy that you think you have found Vu Quy. The money is coming for his passage to us. You brought me so much joy.

  Sincerely, Vu Duong Cam

  October 19, 1991

  Dear Editor, Thai Daily,

  Please post this ad in your newspaper: Reward of Canadian dollars for information as to the whereabouts of Vu Quy, last seen at bay on March 28, 1980. If you were at that place and have any information about this person, please write to Vu Cam, 5713 Meadow Way, Richmond Hill …

  January 15, 1991

  Dear Ms. Ebhard, UNCHR,

  Please also to forgive my English. Your Mr. Bowles has sent me to you. Our boy is lost now few years. We hear of a list of lost people and we ask for it. If in any of your travels you have seen him. Here is a laminated photograph of my family to help you searching.

  Sincerely, Vu Duong Cam

  Dear Editor, Bernama, Malaysia,

  I’m looking for a small boy by the name of Vu Quy. He knows his name and his parents’ name. If you find this boy, please hold him. There is a reward of money for his return.

  Sincerely, Vu Duong Cam

  May 5, 1997

  Dear Editor, Lienhe Zaobao, Singapore,

  Why do you not print my letter any more? Have you no heart? Have you no mother or children? …

  June 29, 1999

  Dear Mr. Chiu, astrologer,

  I am sending you $350 today as agreed. The day is indeed auspicious as you promised. I slept somewhat last night for the first time since arriving in this country and I know that must mean that my son is safe.

  Respectfully and sincerely, Vu Duong Cam

  Yet Tuyen found her father slightly elated on the drive to the city. He seemed to have forgiven her for her reference to the family secret.

  “Where you off to, Tuyen?”

  “Home, Bo.”

  “Oh, home is not where your family is? Home is that nasty place?” She sensed slightly less conviction in him. As if he were joking with her a little.

  “Oh, Bo, don’t start again.”

  “Okay, okay. You know, soon maybe we will have some news …” He broke off as if he’d said too much. She prompted him.

  “What good news, Bo? Did you buy another restaurant?”

  “Oh, never mind. New restaurant? No, well. You see.”

  It was the most confidential the father had ever been with her except when he indulged her in drawing with him. But on serious matters he was a virtual tomb. The rest of the ride to Toronto was mostly silent. Tuyen felt slightly uncomfortable. She wanted to apologize for insulting him, but her usual forthrightness deserted her. She changed the subject to Binh.

  “How’s Binh? Where was he today?” Did her father know about Binh’s plans? she wondered. Was that the news he was referring to?

  “Binh? Good boy. You should come home if you want to see him.” All conversation led to this point with her father. “And why don’t you help him when he asks you? You have a duty …”

  “Oh, Bo, you know I don’t like selling. It would be very bad if I helped him. No one would buy anything.”

  Her father laughed. “It’s true. What? What are you good at?”

  “Bo, I’m sorry for hurting your feelings.”

  “Don’t be sorry. You come home and everything will be fine.”

  He either deliberately misunderstood her or hadn’t taken what she’d said in the same way as she thought. She kept quiet for the rest of the ride; he took it as an acknowledgment of his rightness and seemed prepared to leave it at that this time. He did not launch once again into his usual harangue about friends and family, about duty and obligation and honour.

  When the car neared the Saigon Pearl, Tuyen asked her father to drop her off. She was always afraid of Tuan dropping by the apartment, even though she often told him to come see for himself that she was fine. He didn’t put up the usual fight this time, just said, “Binh is a good boy, you respect him. You call.” Tuyen hugged him and hopped out of the car. “You come home,” he called after her.

  She felt there was something odd about her father’s behaviour. Not his behaviour, more like his demeanour. She sensed a lightness about him. Something she’d never sensed before. She wouldn’t say that her father was a gloomy man, but he cherished correctness, propriety, and in this he appeared dour. Now she perceived a slight change in him that was startling to her. He was usually so purposefully serious that the hint of any lightness, and it was only the merest hint, seemed extravagant. She would have to call Binh after all. Perhaps agree to help him out at the store again. That twinge of embarrassment she had felt when Carla said the word “mine” about her own brother returned.

  Though Tuyen and Binh were not far apart in age—he was eighteen months older—they were in sensibility. They’d never been particularly close. Mostly they had fought each other for their parents’ attention. Binh considered Tuyen a usurper in his quest for their affections—he was the only boy and the favourite, it seemed, until Tuyen came along. Then no amount of cherishing was sufficient for him. Tuyen seemed to get attention simply by being the newcomer. It would be easy to say that this sibling animosity followed them to adulthood, but it didn’t: their roles were simply different. Binh was the cherished boy, Tuyen the baby.

  Yet they could not get along even though they were collaborators of a kind as regards translating the city’s culture to their parents and even to their older sisters, they were both responsible for transmitting the essence of life in Toronto to the household. It was a job Binh took tremendously seriously and Tuyen took, as far as he was concerned, with too much whimsy. Binh would translate instructions from teachers or a mailman or the hydro man. He would invariably slant these to his own interests, as when a bill arrived, he added arrears to the amount, pocketing the extra, or when notices from the parent-teacher meetings were sent home, he would suggest that teachers wanted to discuss the fact of his father making him work too much in the restaurant. Tuyen, on the other hand, always threw those notices away, and when the hydro had to be cut off for fixing a main, she would tell the household there was an emergency in the city and that she would not be allowed to go to school for the day. With the exception of when they were quite small, they never fought outright since an all-out war would not be beneficial.

  The uneasy collaboration made them wary of each other and therefore mistrustful. So when her father said Binh was a good son with that minutely discernible sense of elation, Tuyen was immediately suspicious—this lightness she ferreted out of her father had something to do with Binh and that dangerous idea he had hinted at a few weeks ago. Her brother was once again trying to focus the drama of the family on himself, and that could not be wholly good. For him perhaps, but not for everyone else.

  Binh was a mercenary trained in the trenches of childhood to get his way. And in the particular war waged in the Vu household, his way was sucking up all the attention. He perceived, like all his siblings, the vacuum left in his parents by that night long ago in the bay on the Vietnamese coast, and in his efforts to fill that unnamed space he went to great lengths. Not knowing precisely what was necessary, he tried every angle. Recently he had assumed more and more of the responsibility for the restaurant. Lately it was packed at night with his friends occupying several of the tables toward the back all evening long. His interest in the restaurant had been spasmodic—usually around some bright idea for a karaoke machine, or small jukebox machines on the tables. Tuan would shoo him away, telling him he had no head for business and asking him how those ideas would make money.

  Binh had been sent to the University of Toronto to do business and had left with all the credentials of an M.B.A., name
ly a distaste for the straightforward and honest, a mistrust of social welfare, and a religious fervour for what was called the bottom line. His education had enhanced his penchant for ungenerousness and solidified his resolve that only he mattered, though he had also been indulged at home beyond the bounds of favourite son. Since he was, in effect, two sons, the one lost and the one found.

  But it was a difficult task to stand in for a mythic tragic brother who, not having to do anything, never failed at anything. And who, not having a physical presence, could never be scrutinized for flaws and mistakes. That mythic brother grew in perfection, it seemed, as Binh felt himself struggle for adequacy.

  Binh was that strange mix of utter overconfidence and insecurity, utter ruthlessness and squeamishness. So while he invested fifteen thousand dollars in a shipload of migrants from Fushen to British Columbia, he did not want to know the details or, of course, be named if they were discovered. Though if they were not discovered, and even if they were, he stood to make a profit of three or four hundred per cent on his investment. His was not the lion’s share in this enterprise. He was a small investor. But he stood to make even more if some of those migrants found their way to Toronto, from which he and several colleagues would arrange their transportation to New York City with proper documents. He also had a small investment in a home-based Ecstasy manufacturing plant, which distributed to high schools and raves. Binh, like all businessmen who run multinational operations, could swiftly pull his money out of one concern or another and invest elsewhere. For safety, and because he did love electronic gadgets if he loved anything, he ran a small electronics store in Korea Town on Bloor Street.