“You didn’t let me explain that day,” Mai said. “My mother and me have never talked or seen each other or anything. I got a few brief letters from her last month and that’s it. I don’t even know what she looks like.”
Happy was quiet for a moment. Then she shook her finger at Mai and said something in Vietnamese, like she was gently chiding her.
“Hey, come on,” I said. “English.”
“I ask her why she not leave town. That what I say to her Tuesday. She need to go too.”
Mai was avoiding my eyes. She hadn’t mentioned that part to me. I couldn’t blame her for ignoring the wild exhortations of some strange woman at her door, but even at this point, such dire warnings seemed like invitations to an adventure for her.
I said, “Does Sonny know about her? Don’t lie to me, Happy. Did you say a single word to them about her?”
She dismissed the question with an impatient look. She set her purse on the coffee table and sank into the recliner.
Mai took a step toward her as if to shield her from my intensity. I couldn’t tell if she was playing good cop to my bad cop or if she genuinely felt sorry for Happy. It was undeserved either way.
“So my mom did come to see you?”
Happy nodded tiredly. “She come Sunday night.”
“She say anything about where she was planning to go?”
“No. She come to. .” Happy bowed her head like she was about to cry, but when she looked up again at Mai, she seemed baffled. “How I can explain it to you?”
I let the silence eat her up for a bit. Then I said, “We know about you and Sonny.”
Her face showed no surprise. Just instant acquiescence. Then she narrowed her eyes at me, and that old glint of knowing amusement returned.
“You think I am horrible person.”
“I do.”
“You think you understand all the story.”
I nodded at Mai. “She figured it out. I was too stupid to. Never thought you’d go for a crazy criminal who nearly killed your best friend.”
“Robert, come on,” Mai said. “Go ahead, Happy, what did my mom—”
“Yeah,” I said, “Go ahead. Explain why you did it.”
“Bob, I tell you something — you think you are good man and you are police and you not like Sonny. But you no different.”
“What? He cheated on her. He locked her all night in an office, threw her down a flight of fucking stairs. And who knows how often he hits her.”
“You hit her too,” Happy noted. She asked Mai, “He tell you what he do to your mother before?”
“That was the first time I ever touched her. You know she’s hit me plenty over the years. That night she fucking hit me. I couldn’t hear out of this ear for a week!”
“You almost break her teeth.”
“Bullshit. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. No way you’re comparing that to what Sonny’s done.”
Happy was shaking her head. “But that not what I mean. You and him — you are both weak man. When you not understand somebody, you scare like little boy. You close your eye and you pretend they not there. You not know when you hurt them. Why you think Suzy not call to you for help? She know you still love her. She know what you do here five month before. Sonny hurt her, she almost die, but she never call you.”
“She didn’t come begging for your help either, did she?”
Happy’s scowl deepened as she sat on the edge of the recliner like an alert cat. All those years, she was always the one calming Suzy or me down, the buffer when the three of us were together, making jokes and changing the subject, never an angry word to anyone. It made me wonder now how often she had humored me, held back all the ugly things she really felt.
She turned from me, exhaling loudly as if to relieve herself of my presence.
Mai was standing warily between us. In a composed voice, Happy said to her, “Your mom — she is difficult woman. She scare just like Sonny and Bob. She hurt them too. I know. Fifteen year I friend with her and she hurt me many time. But she ask me come here because she have nobody, and she help get job for me. I know nothing about Sonny. I know nothing about you. But I know she not happy in Las Vegas. So I come. When I meet Sonny, I see he not good man for her. I tell her, but she not listen. And when they start fighting, I tell her leave but she not leave. What I can do? I just listen to her. But in the summer, she stop talking to me. I call her and she not call back to me. When I go see her, she like other person. So Sonny, he start come every day to my house. He tell me everything. Suzy sleep all day. Suzy not leave the house. She not talk to nobody. He say she not love him anymore.”
Happy’s eyes were glistening. Again, she had that inward-looking, baffled expression.
“How I can explain it? He the one who help get job for me. When I owe money to someone, he pay it. When I date the other man who hit me, Sonny go beat him and make him say sorry to me. I know he do the bad thing, but he always do good thing for me. I thought your mother not love him anymore. I thought. .”
She grabbed a tissue from her purse and took off her glasses. As she carefully dabbed at her mascaraed eyes, Mai walked to the refrigerator and returned with a bottle of water and set it on the coffee table.
She sat there slumped with her hands over her knees, clutching at the tissue. She looked fragile without her glasses and yet also, in her suffocating vest and crooked bow tie, ridiculous. I could only half listen to everything, distracted by the memory of her naked in my bed, watching me undress and surely knowing that I could not feel for her as I did for her best friend. And yet she had pursued it, plunged into it as she would again a year later with Sonny. Even if it was not for love, it was still a futile thievery, taking something that could never be hers and offering herself too as something provisional. She must have known all that.
She drank the water, wiped her nose with the tissue. “Sonny call to me last month. He tell me Suzy know everything. That it for us. No more. Good-bye.” Happy glanced in my direction as if reminded that I’d done the same to her. “I call Suzy twenty time but she stop answer the phone. One month, I not see her or Sonny. Nothing.”
“So you have no idea what she’d been doing?” Mai asked.
Happy shook her head. “I want to go to the house and explain to her, but I too — I have no idea what I can say. I just stay away. But Sunday night, real late, she knock on my door. I almost not open the door, I too scared. She say she want talk to me. She look calm but — it was too calm, like when she take too much medicine. I say sorry to her and I cry so bad but she—”
Happy had to stop for a moment. Was it the guilt and shame choking her up, or the thought of what she’d lost in the past month?
She said it felt bizarre, her the one in tears and Suzy leading her to the couch, hushing her. How many times had it been the other way around? For a month she’d been steeling herself for this moment, for all that vitriol she knew her oldest friend was capable of. But Suzy began by thanking Happy. The affair had wounded her deeply, but she was long past loving Sonny and had no room left inside her to hate Happy. If anything, the affair and the subsequent end of their friendship had awoken her from “the long dream,” she said, “of these last twenty years”—made her realize, once and for all, that she was alone in the world and had always been, and that perhaps staying that way would not kill her. It could even save her. All she wanted now was to make amends for her sins and leave everything behind for good.
Happy remembered being frightened by the calm finality of Suzy’s voice. She asked her if she was taking her medication. Suzy took the prescription bottle from her purse and set it on the table and said she didn’t need the stuff anymore. When she stood up to go, Happy knew it was the last time she would ever see her.