Wendy waved both hands when she spotted Ruth, and then she and Joe eased their way through the restaurant. Gideon trailed a comfortable distance behind. "We found a parking space right in front!" Wendy boasted. She held up her lucky charm, a plastic angel with the face of a parking meter. "I tell you, works every time!" She had given one to Ruth, who had placed it on the dashboard but only received parking tickets. "Hi, sweetie," Gideon said in his usual low-key manner. "You're looking radiant. Or is that sweat and nervousness?" Ruth, who had told him on the phone about Miriam's crashing the party, kissed him on both cheeks and whispered where Art's ex was. He had already suggested he act as spy and report everything appalling that she said.
Art came up to Ruth. "How's it going?"
"Where are Fia and Dory?"
"They went to check out a CD at Green Apple Annex."
"You let them go by themselves?"
"It's just up the street, and they said they'd be back in ten minutes."
"So where are they?"
"Probably abducted."
"That's not funny." Her mother used to say it was bad luck even to speak words like that. On cue. LuLing entered, her petite frame contrasting with GaoLing's sturdier one. A few seconds later, Uncle Edmund came in. Ruth sometimes wondered whether this was how her father would have looked-tall, stoop-shouldered, with a crown of thick white hair and a large, relaxed swing to his arms and legs. Uncle Edmund was given to telling jokes badly, consoling scared children, and dispensing stock market tips. LuLing often said the two brothers weren't similar at all, that Ruth's father had been much more handsome, smarter, and very honest. His only fault was that he was too trusting, also maybe absent-minded when he was concentrating too hard, just like Ruth. LuLing often recounted the circumstances in which he died as a warning to Ruth when she was not paying attention to her mother. "You daddy see green light, he trust that car stop. Poom! Run over, drag him one block, two block, never stop." She said he died because of a curse, the same one that made Ruth break her arm. And because the subject of the curse often came up when LuLing was displeased with Ruth, as a child Ruth thought the curse and her father's death were related to her. She had recurrent nightmares of mutilating people in a brakeless car. She always tested and retested her brakes before heading out in the car.
Even from across the big room, Ruth could see that LuLing was beaming at her with motherly adoration. This gave Ruth heart pangs, made her both happy and sad to see her mother on this special day. Why wasn't their relationship always like this? How many more gatherings like this would they have?
"Happy Full Moon," Ruth said when her mother reached the table. She motioned for LuLing to sit next to her. Auntie Gal took the other chair next to Ruth, and then the rest of the family sat down. Ruth saw that Art was with Miriam at the other table, what was fast becoming the non-Chinese section.
"Hey, are we in the white ghetto or what?" Wendy called out. She was sitting with her back to Ruth.
When Fia and Dory finally showed up, Ruth did not feel she could chastise them in front of their mother or Arlene and Marty. They did a mass wave, "Hi, everybody," then gurgled, "Hi, Bubbie and Poppy," and threw their arms around their grandparents' necks. The girls never voluntarily hugged LuLing.
The dinner began with a flurry of appetizers set on the lazy Susan, what LuLing called the "go-round." The adults oohed and aahed, the children cried, "I'm starved!" The waiters set down what Ruth had ordered by phone: sweetly glazed phoenix-tail fish, vegetarian chicken made out of wrinkly tissues of tofu, and jellyfish, her mother's favorite, seasoned with sesame oil and sprinkled with diced green onions. "Tell me," Miriam said, "is that animal, vegetable, or mineral?"
"Here, Ma," Ruth said, holding the jellyfish platter, "you start since you're the oldest girl."
"No-no!" LuLing said automatically. "You help youself."
Ruth ignored this rite of first refusal and placed a heap of noodle-like strands of jellyfish on her mother's plate. LuLing immediately started to eat.
"What's that?" Ruth heard Boomer ask at the other table. He scowled at the jiggling mound of jellyfish as it swung by on the lazy Susan.
" Worms!" Dory teased. "Try some."
"Ewww! Take it away! Take it away!" Boomer screamed. Dory was hysterical with laughter. Art passed along the entire table's worth of jellyfish to Ruth, and Ruth felt her stomach begin to ache.
More dishes arrived, each one stranger than the last, to judge by the expressions on the non-Chinese faces. Tofu with pickled greens. Sea cucumbers, Auntie Gal's favorite. And glutinous rice cakes. Ruth had thought the kids would like those. She had thought wrong.
Halfway through the dinner, Nicky, Sally's six-year-old, spun the go-round, perhaps thinking he could launch it like a Frisbee, and the spout of a teapot knocked over a water glass. LuLing yelped and jumped up. Water dripped from her lap. "Ai-ya! Why you do this? "
Nicky crossed his arms, and tears started to well up in his eyes.
"It's okay, honey," Sally told him. "Say you're sorry, and next time spin it more slowly."
"She was mean to me." He aimed a pout in the direction of LuLing, who was now busy dabbing at her lap with a napkin.
"Sweetie, Grand-Auntie was just surprised, that's all. It's only that you're so strong-like a baseball player."
Ruth hoped her mother would not continue to berate Nicky. She remembered when her mother would enumerate all the times she had spilled food or milk, asking aloud to unseen forces why Ruth could not learn to behave. Ruth looked at Nicky and imagined what she would have been like if she had had children. Perhaps she too would have reacted like her mother, unable to restrain the impulse to scold until the child acted beaten and contrite.
More drinks were ordered. Ruth noticed Art was on his second glass of wine. He also seemed to be having an animated conversation with Miriam. Another round of dishes arrived, just in time to dissipate the tension. Eggplant sautéed with fresh basil leaves, a tender sable fish coated in a mantle of garlic chips, a Chinese version of polenta smothered in a spicy meat sauce, plump black mushrooms, a Lion's Head clay pot of meatballs and rice vermicelli. Even the "foreigners," LuLing reported, enjoyed the food. Above the noise, Auntie Gal leaned toward Ruth and said: "Your mother and I, we ate excellent dishes at Sun Hong Kong last week. But then we almost went to jail!" Auntie Gal liked to throw out zingers and wait for listeners to take the bait.
Ruth obliged. "Jail?"
"Oh, yes! Your mother got into a big fight with the waiter, said she already paid the bill." Auntie Gal shook her head. "The waiter was right, it was not yet paid." She patted Ruth's hand. "Don't worry! Later, when your mother was not looking, I paid. So you see, no jail, and here we are!" GaoLing took a few more bites of food, smacked her lips, then leaned toward Ruth again and whispered, "I gave your mother a big bag of ginseng root. This is good to cure confusion." She nodded, and Ruth nodded in turn. "Sometimes your mother calls me at the train station to say she's here, and I don't even know she's coming! Course, this is fine, I always welcome her. But at six in the morning? I'm not an early birdie!" She chuckled, and Ruth, her mind awhirl, gave out a hollow laugh.
What was wrong with her mother? Could depression cause confusion like this? The next week, when they had the follow-up visit with Dr. Huey, she would discuss it with him. If he ordered her mother to take antidepressants, maybe she would obey. Ruth knew she should visit her mother more often. LuLing often complained of loneliness, and she was obviously trying to fill a void by going to see GaoLing at odd hours.