‘I don’t. Phone and drive too dangerous.’ Tommy sighed - and was slightly rattled by the reali-zation that his sigh sounded exactly like his mother’s. ‘I’ve never had an accident, Mom.’
‘You will,’ she said firmly.
Even with one hand, he was able to handle the Corvette with ease on the long straightaways and wide sweeps of the Coast Highway. Rack and pinion steering with power assist. Rear-wheel drive. Four-speed automatic transmission with torque converter. He was gliding.
His mother changed the subject: ‘Tuong, haven’t seen you in weeks.’
‘We spent Sunday together, Mom. This is only Thurs-day.’
They had gone to church together on Sunday. His father was born a Roman Catholic, and his mother converted before marriage, back in Vietnam, but she also kept a small Buddhist shrine in one corner of their living room. There was usually fresh fruit on the red altar, and sticks of incense bristled from ceramic holders.
‘You come to dinner?’ she asked.
‘Tonight? Gee, no, I can’t. See, I just-’
‘We have com tay cam.’
‘-just bought-’
‘You remember what is com tay cam - or maybe forget all about your mother’s cooking?’
‘Of course, I know what it is, Mom. Chicken and rice in a clay pot. It’s delicious.’
‘Also having shrimp and watercress soup. You remem-ber shrimp and watercress soup?’
‘I remember, Mom.’
Night was creeping over the coast. Above the rising land to the east, the heavens were black and stippled with stars. To the west, the ocean was inky near the shore, striped with the silvery foam of incoming breakers, but indigo toward the horizon, where a final blade of bloody sunlight still cleaved the sea from the sky.
Cruising through the falling darkness, Tommy did feel a little bit like a god, as Jim Shine had promised. But he was unable to enjoy it because, at the same time, he felt too much like a thoughtless and ungrate-ful son.
His mother said, ‘Also having stir fry celery, carrots, cabbage, some peanuts - very good. My Nuoc Mam sauce.’
‘You make the best Nuoc Mam in the world, and the best com tay cam, but I-’
‘Maybe you got wok there in car with phone, you can drive and cook at same time?’
In desperation he blurted, ‘Mom, I bought a new Corvette!’
‘You bought phone and Corvette?’
‘No, I’ve had the phone for years. The-’
‘What’s this Corvette?’
‘You know, Mom. A car. A sports car.’
‘You bought sports car?’
‘Remember, I always said if I was a big success some day-’
‘What sport?’
‘Huh?’
‘Football?’
His mother was stubborn, more of a traditionalist than was the Queen of England, and set in her ways, but she was not thick-headed or uninformed. She knew perfectly well what a sports car was, and she knew what a Corvette was, because Tommy’s bedroom walls had been papered with pictures of them when he was a kid. She also knew what a Corvette meant to Tommy, what it symbolized; she sensed that, in the Corvette, he was moving still farther away from his ethnic roots, and she disapproved. She wasn’t a screamer, however, and she wasn’t given to scolding, so the best way she could find to register her disapproval was to pretend that his car and his behaviour in general were so bizarre as to be virtually beyond her understanding.
‘Baseball?’ she asked.
‘They call the colour “bright aqua metallic.” It’s beauti-ful, Mom, a lot like the colour of that vase on your living-room mantel. It’s got-’
‘Expensive?’
‘Huh? Well, yeah, it’s a really good car. I mean, it doesn’t cost what a Mercedes-’
‘Reporters all drive Corvettes?’
‘Reporters? No, I’ve-’
‘You spend everything on car, go broke?’
‘No, no. I’d never-’
‘You go broke, don’t take welfare.’
‘I’m not broke, Mom.’
‘You go broke, you come home to live.’
‘That won’t be necessary, Mom.’
‘Family always here.’
Tommy felt like dirt. Although he had done nothing wrong, he felt uncomfortably revealed in the headlights of oncoming cars, as though they were the harsh lamps in a police interrogation room, and as though he was trying to conceal a crime.
He sighed and eased the Corvette into the right-hand lane, joining the slower traffic. He wasn’t capable of handling the car well, talking on the cellular phone, and sparring with his indefatigable mother.
She said, ‘Where’s your Toyota?’
‘I traded it on the Corvette.’
‘Your reporter friends drive Toyota. Honda. Ford. Never see one drive Corvette.’
‘I thought you didn’t know what a Corvette was?’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Oh, yes, I know,’ making one of those abrupt hundred-eighty-degree turns that only a mother could perform without credibility whiplash. ‘Doctors drive Corvette. You are always smart, Tuong, get good grades, could have been doctor.’
Sometimes it seemed that most of the Vietnamese-Americans of Tommy’s generation were studying to be doctors or were already in practice. A medical degree signified assimilation and prestige, and Vietnamese parents pushed their children toward the healing pro-fessions with the aggressive love with which Jewish parents, of a previous generation, had pushed their children. Tommy, with a degree in journalism, would never be able to remove anyone’s appendix or perform cardiovascular surgery, so he would forever be some-thing of a disappointment to his mother and father.
Anyway, I’m not a reporter anymore, Mom, not as of yesterday. Now I’m a full-time novelist, not just part-time anymore.’
‘No job.’
‘Self-employed.’
‘Fancy way of saying no job,’ she insisted, though Tommy’s father was self-employed in the family bakery,
as were Tommy’s two brothers, who also had failed to become doctors.
‘The latest contract I signed-’
‘People read newspapers. Who read books?’
‘Lots of people read books.’
‘Who?’
‘You read books.’
‘Not books about silly private detectives with guns in every pocket, drive cars like crazy maniac, get in fights, drink whiskey, chase blondes.’
‘My detective doesn’t drink whiskey-’
‘He should settle down, marry nice Vietnamese girl, have babies, work steady job, contribute to family.’
‘Boring, Mom. No one would ever want to read about a private detective like that.’
‘This detective in your books - he ever marry blonde, he break his mother’s heart.’
‘He’s a lone wolf. He’ll never marry.’
‘That break his mother’s heart too. Who want to read book about mother with broken heart? Too sad.’
Exasperated, Tommy said, ‘Mom, I just called to tell you the good news about the Corvette and-’
‘Come to dinner. Clay-pot chicken and rice better than lousy cheeseburgers.’
‘I can’t come tonight, Mom. Tomorrow.’
‘Too much cheeseburgers and French fries, soon you look like big fat cheeseburger.’
‘I hardly ever eat cheeseburgers and fries, Mom. I watch my diet and I-’
‘Tomorrow night we have shrimp toast. Pork-stuffed squid. Pot-roasted rice. Duck with nuoc cham.’
Tommy’s mouth was watering, but he would never admit as much, not even if he were placed in the hands of torturers with countless clever instruments of persuasion. ‘Okay, I’ll be there tomorrow night. And after dinner, I’ll take you for a spin in the Corvette.’
‘Take your father. Maybe he like flashy sports car. Not me. I simple person.’
‘Mom-’
‘But your father good man. Don’t put him in fancy sports car and take him out drinking whiskey, fight, chase blondes.’
‘I’ll do my best not to corrupt him, Mom.’
‘Goodbye, Tuong.’
‘Tommy,’ he corrected, but she had hung up.
God, how he loved her.
God, how nuts she made him.
He drove through Laguna Beach and continued north.
The last red slash of the sunset had seeped away. The wounded night in the west had healed, sky to sea, and in the natural world, all was dark. The only relief from blackness was the unnatural glow from the houses on the eastern hills and from the cars and trucks racing along the coast. The flashes of headlights and taillights suddenly seemed frenzied and ominous, as though all the drivers of those vehicles were speeding toward appointments with one form of damnation or another.